permaculture

["ontignano" <ontignano@tiscali.fr>]

Hello everyone, I've not studied invasives/weeds/exotics etc but there are
some broad points I'd like to make: the undoubted negative connotation of
these words suggest they are used and applied by those with intentions
regarding the land in question or, more primordially, suggest an unconscious
belief in the 'right' of humans to utilize the land, sea, rivers etc for
their own needs. They are words after all and all words are simply
conceptualisations of the human world. There might be other perspectives
from which such words are simply meaningless - ie every other perspective
but human.
Similarly, the apparent invasiveness of some plants might have more to do
with land and water degradation. Thus our negative attributions might have
more to do with our previous actions than they do with the plants
themselves.
The debate may be nothing more than anthropocentrism, an alienation from
nature, where we happily foist upon other life our own failings.

I have been told that Masanobu Fukuoka would happily use any plant seed,
open-pollinated or hybrid, bought in a packet or prepared from the food we
buy and eat. And, extraordinarily, he would also happily use GMOs if that
were all he had to hand. The point being that the state of the earth is so
degraded that any green, any disruption of monocultures and creation of
polycultures, is better than the status quo. Perhaps it is possible to
detect in such a view the sense that some of the debates that so exercise
our time and passions (GMOs as well as the native/exotics debate) might be
simply a way of (anthropocentrically) passing the time while the earth
burns.

Jamie


-----Original Message-----
From: permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org]On Behalf Of Bart Anderson
Sent: Wednesday, December 29, 2004 11:32 AM
To: Permaculture List
Subject: [permaculture] Background on invasives

Lawrence Landon's links to the Danoff-Burg website at Columbia U. reminded
me of an excellent web page I've seen at that site.  It's a long page of
lecture notes on Invasion Biology:

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/cerc/danoff-burg/invasion_bio/invbio_lectures.ht
m

Another website I've found useful for background on invasives:

"Triumph of the Weed" by John H. Tibbets at
http://www.scseagrant.org/text_version/pubs/library_coaher_winter_2001.htm
OR
http://www.scseagrant.org/pdf_files/ch_winter_01.pdf  ( 2 MB PDF )

The controversy about invasives frustrates me because I have friends on both
sides.  I see how easy it is to lapse into dogmatism and blaming.

The intensity of emotion seems to be inversely proportional to the amount of
knowledge we really have. Invasive behavior is probably much more complex
than we currently suspect.

- Bart

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