permaculture

[Claude William Genest <genest@pivot.net>]

Enjoying this thread fellas....

One point I just got from Lester Brown's new book "Plan 2.0" is that  
growing food for fuel competes directly with growing food for people.  
Service stations and supermarkets will soon vie for the same  
commodity. This incentive to grow more monocrops means more  
deforestation, soil loss etc. Means costlier food means derailing  
attempts to eradicate poverty as rich nations out bid the poor for  
food/fuel....

Also I hear the ratio of energy in to energy out is substantially  
better with sugarcane and switchgrass than with corn...
Best Regards,

Claude William Genest

 - Founder  Green Mountain Permaculture Institute of Vermont
Solutions, Sustenance, Sustainability
www.greenmountainpermaculture.com

- Creator  "Regeneration - The Art of Sustainable Living"
From "Something-Must-be-Done" to Something we can do !
www.regenerationshow.com

- Ecological Coordinator
Club St.Paul Ecological Golf Course

- Vice-President  Green Party of Quebec "pour nous et nos enfants"
www.pvq.qc.ca

- National Spokesperson Green Party of Canada
"The Future is Now ! "
www.greenparty.ca




On Jan 31, 2006, at 2:00 AM, robscott@freeshell.org wrote:

> To Dylan, and others who must be having the same thoughts,
>
> I agree with you
> A small-scale farmer, running a solar still, could be viable
> micro-enterprise. As a single component of a diverse farm, re-using  
> all
> outputs for multiple on farm uses, and creating a variety of  
> products, its
> a way to keep fueled vehicles in the equasion. Good point.
>
> The portrait Fortune magazine paints is a very different one, and  
> that's
> what I'm referring to. The gas stations here in Illinois have "10%
> Ethanol" in every pump, and we may soon see that go 20%, 30% and  
> more as
> the mentality sets in. And this flies in the face of the environmental
> scientists in the midwest who designed these systems - they're the  
> ones
> saying NO because it's just PR and handouts to giant landlords, not
> environmentalism.
>
> The USDA is primed to promote ethanol as a major U.S. corn-belt  
> product.
> Remember the original mixed enthusiasm for USDA Organic Certification?
> That's what I'm trying to point out.
>
> There are often calls to mainstream Permaculture, and I've begun to
> undersand mainstreaming to mean "commercial mainstreaming" -- in other
> words: understanding the significance of hard numbers isn't mainstream
> activity...
>
> Until micro-farming is a way to be in the mainstream,
> scientific data can be used to fight the mainstreaming.
>
> Rob Scott
> Urbana, IL
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