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  • From: Martin Naylor <martinwnaylor@yahoo.com.au>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] lawn
  • Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2007 08:36:08 +1000 (EST)



J Kolenovsky <garden@hal-pc.org> wrote: I am really enjoying all the
responses to this topic. And, I might add,
well, o-k I will, that I've and I'm sure others have gotten some killer
ideas from these responses. If there is anyone else out there that has
some grubstake on this topic, let us hear from you.
--
J. Kolenovsky, habitat environmentalist www.celestialhabitats.com
Energy shortages proves its right. Peak Oil is changing your lifestyle.
www.energybulletin.net www.peak-oil-news.info/ www.theoildrum.com/

*Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard Into a Garden & Your
Neighborhood
into a Community
* by Heather Colburn Flores
2006, $25, 330pp.
US Canada Elsewhere
$27.50 $28.75 $31.00

FOOD NOT LAWNS! Can you dig it!?!?
By Tobias Policha
>From the Winter 2000 issue of Green Anarchy
http://www.proactiveecology.org/

The vast expanse of forever-green American lawn is not only the most
resource intensive agricultural crop in the world, but also an obscene
icon to our arrogant privilege and total alienation from a life in
harmony with nature.

For those of us living in the cities, surrounded by cars and concrete
where we can't even see the stars, it is not difficult to see the ways
we are disconnected from nature, and the cycles out of which we receive
the elements essential to life. This has enormous implications in how
we interact both biologically and socially. Agri-culture, taken at the
root to mean "culture of the soil," out of which all life springs, is
related to all aspects of our cultural life. For example, today most of
our foods come to us via established cultural institutions governed by a
handfull of agro-chemical/ pharmaceutical/"life-sciences" corporations.
Our entire industrial civilization is needed to provide for our basic
needs. Besides global inequity and agricultural chemical dependence,
some elements of this culture include the erosion and lose of our top
soil. at the rate of 38 tonnes per acre per year and the pollution and
salinification of whole watersheds by fertilizers and industrial wast
e, leading to the desertification of once fertile land and mass
species extinction. This is also facilitated by the 2,500,000 tonnes of
pesticides used every year. We are losing diversity both in nature and in
our agricultural systems, as represented by a 75% decrease in crop
diversity in the last hundred years. Besides the "costs" of production, there
are a myriad of social implications related to how our sustenance
reaches our tables, these include: colonialism, war, and the use of food as
a weapon through artificially created famines, embargoes, etc. One
could go on.

In an age when genetically-engineered entrees are served to diplomats
and heads-of-state at the White House, can we expect this dominant
culture, with it's apparent goal of destroying the biosphere, to provide us
with the nourishment that we need to over-come and transcend that very
same system? A system wherein the same interests that profit from
selling us the chemicals and transgenic seeds which lead to death and
disease, are the very same interests that profit by selling us the drugs that
compound the physical and spiritual degeneration caused by our food.
All this under the facade of feeding the world and bringing us health.

Something I once heard Ramona Africa say rings true. "A system so
diabolical that it poisons the very food that we need to eat, the very water
that we need to drink and the very air that we need to breathe, needs
to be resisted!"

A permanent agriculture, a culture based on the care of and respect for
the biosphere, is the only counter-balance to the industrial prison in
which our world is trapped. We need to regain control of our food and
our lives to free ourselves from the death culture. To relearn and
develop a supply of food, fiber and medicine that is sustainable and
inherently non-violent is the only way we will develop autonomous communities
that can serve as a base for our resistance.

All of what I have touched on is of particular relevance to those of us
living in cities. As areas that produce very little or none of what
they consume and that do not take responsibility for their waste (unused,
potential resources i.e.. compost, greywater etc.), cities are
significantly vulnerable to the whims of economic (and military) interests.
Almost by default, we are also fully dependent on the exploitation of land
somewhere else, by not returning our "waste" to this land we also
create huge amounts of trash which becomes pollution somewhere else. Our
garbage often travels hundreds of fossil fuel-driven miles to the
landfill.

This doesn't have to be the case. Cities grew up around the places that
were prime farmland with fertile soil and good access to fresh water.
Today, 2,000 acres of farm land is being paved over daily, as our
disposable suburban culture devours the countryside. But the point is that
under all the asphalt and under all the trash is what were some of the
most productive and biologically rich soils in the world. With cautions
observed and actions taken to deal with potential toxins in the soil,
there is no reason that we cannot or should not return the life,
fertility, beauty and productivity to these urban areas.

I present here a vision of people breaking free of the dying system and
using the land close at hand to generate potentially all of their food,
medicine, fiber and fuel needs and to introduce beauty in the place of
urban decay and suburban sprawl. Gradually we could see the emergence
of self-reliant, cooperative communities providing the nourishment, both
physical and spiritual, that we need to take up and manifest our
visions of a better world. As this happens in more and more places, the land
formerly exploited and pilaged by chemicals and mono-cultures,
over-grazing and resource extraction can be freed and re-enlivened as native
plant and wildlife refuges.

Either we take responsibility for living in an ecologically sustainable
way or we and the earth will certainly perish. The choice is ours. The
techniques are not difficult and can be learned from books,
experimentation and the people around you. Seeds will grow. We just need to
plant
them. We need FOOD NOT LAWNS! Dig It!


Martin



For activist readers who believe activism is a political pursuit, [this
book] offers a different viewpoint, maintaining that growing food where
you live is a key method of becoming a food activist in the community.
Chapters advocate planting home and community gardens with an eye to
drawing important connections between the politics of a home or
community garden and the wider politics of usage, consumption, and
sustainability. Another rarity: chapters promote small, easy changes in
lifestyles to achieve a transition between personal choice and
political
activism at the community level, providing keys to change any reader
can
use. - Diane C. Donovan, California Bookwatch






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