permaculture

[Dennis Argall <dennisargall@bigpond.com>]

These may be of interest, from ABC Australia (non-commercial national 
broadcaster)

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/stories/s1256017.htm

[quote]Tim Jones: Well, we’ve actually calculated back to look at the 
environmental effects of food loss in the United States, and again, if 
we simply cut the amount of food loss in this country in half, which as 
I said could be very easy to do, it’s not a big program, probably could 
be done for less than $200 million a year and you would save probably 
$50 billion in the economy. But the ramifications back to the 
environment would be you would cut pesticides, herbicides, fertilizer 
and soil depletion down by 10% alone, probably the biggest impact ever 
- the biggest  positive impact - on the environment that you could 
think of. Can you imagine cutting all that back by 10%?
Robyn Williams: It’s amazing, you should call Washington.
Tim Jones: Ah, Washington has been called.
Robyn Williams: Any response?
Tim Jones: No response, zero response.
[end quote]

We coincidentally caught up with Agnes Varda's film, 'The Gleaners and 
I" http://www.detnews.com/2001/entertainment/0105/18/e03-225371.htm 
which is very relevant to that issue; more on waste, but also some of 
the history of traditional 'gleaning'. Catch it if you can!

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/stories/s1256016.htm

[quote]The plan is to set up demonstration sites in a number of 
locations [in Australia, may be a model of value] and to work towards 
developing the systems that can provide enterprise diversity based on 
native environments. The FATE team will bring the people together and 
help to facilitate the process - organising and running meetings, 
connecting with markets, researching species. The local participants 
will explore the possibilities and begin the difficult process of 
getting it to happen on the ground. Then we will all work together to 
keep it going. [end quote]


cheers

Dennis