permaculture

[Dieter Brand <diebrand@yahoo.com>]

Suraj,
 
I'm not from India, but I'm interested in Natural Farming or Zero Farming, as 
you call it.  I think the term Zero Input Farming, more descriptive, may be 
easier to understand.  I do practice this on the garden scale and run trials 
on a small scale farming scale.  However, due to climatic conditions it has 
been difficult to implement on the farming scale.  I haven't had any external 
input, fertilizers etc. for over 5 years.  I still do make some compost from 
plant residues, but mostly I use mulching and in-place composting.  I'm not 
aware of any commercial farm practicing Natural Farming.  Yield is likely to 
be a problem, especially if the soil has been much degraded by conventional 
farming.  It takes years to improve a degraded soil to the point where it is 
possible to grow food "naturally" with a reasonable yield.
 
I would be very much interested about what is happening in this respect in 
India.
 
Dieter Brand
Portugal

--- On Sun, 6/29/08, Suraj Kumar <suraj@sunson.in> wrote:

From: Suraj Kumar <suraj@sunson.in>
Subject: [permaculture] Zero farming, anyone?
To: "permaculture" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Date: Sunday, June 29, 2008, 7:24 PM

Hello!

I'm relatively new to permaculture and I'm pretty new to this list as
well (joined about a week ago). Infact, I haven't even been able to
read in depth about permaculture except through wikipedia and such
online resources. I've just placed an order for Holmgren's
Permaculture book from Amazon. Besides that, I can only say I'm fairly
worried about the future given the multitude of crises humanity as a
whole is facing on this planet (warming, energy crisis, resource
depletion, etc.,.). I'm from India and permaculture seems to be a
thing of the 'past'. Yes, of the past. I can find news items on the
web about permaculture-related stuff from the past but I see none at
present. Nor do I know of anyone who is interested / practising
permaculture.

So, the purpose of this mail is to see if there is anyone from India
out here talking / doing permaculture.

Secondly, I recently read about a practice called 'Zero farming'
which, given the lack of information about what it exactly is about,
makes me think its very similar to Permaculture. Maybe not 'as
inspired by nature' as Permaculture, but quite close in practice.
Here's an article I found related to this:

http://www.theacademyofnaturalfarming.com/Zerofarm.html

I'm planning to buy some farmland (2 or 3 acres) down south in India
(Tamil Nadu) and keep buying additional land as I save up more money.
To begin with, I plan to stay employed the way I am employed because I
need a regular salary and have the land taken care of using a friend's
friend who has been a farmer for generations. The idea is to gradually
become less dependent on my salary and be able to smoothly transition
to doing agriculture (permaculture :) ) on this land.  So, short term:
I'm trying to devise ways to reduce my time spent in my current job
and gradually start visiting this land and thereby understand
agriculture.  Given I'm going to buy land, is there any specific /
general piece of advise that pops up in your head? If there is anybody
out here from India (I'm in Bangalore) who would like to experiment
permaculture on a small portion of my land, I'd definitely welcome you
to join me in the experiments :)

I'm hoping to learn from the collective knowledge of this community :)

Cheers,

  -Suraj

-- 
Home: http://sunson.in/
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>From LBSALTZMAN@aol.com  Sun Jun 29 20:05:56 2008
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Subject: Re: [permaculture] what are your thoughts... Warming world sends
 plants uphill
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I don't pretend to know what the future holds for ecosystems, but remember, 
the warming is happening at unprecedented speed and who knows if there will 
be the time for eco-systems to move northward at this pace.


-----Original Message-----
From: T Remiarz <tomasremiarz@cooptel.net>
To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Sat, 28 Jun 2008 3:04 am
Subject: Re: [permaculture] what are your thoughts... Warming world sends 
plants uphill





> so here is my question... why would global warming lead to increased
> desertification and a benefit to grasses. in my bioregion Douglas firs
> have evidence in the fossil record 50 million years, to the triassic and
> confirmed fossils are found in navada in the eocene... which was warm and
> wet and tropical...
>
> I guess i don't see how warming will do what this article says...
>
> -j

what the article actually says is:


>> "Long-life plants, such as trees and shrubs, did not show significant
>> shifts, whereas short-life species, such as herbs,
>> showed a strong upward shift," he said.
>>
>> "Herbs, by having a short life cycle, have had several generations
>> during
>> a decade that allows for a faster dispersal of
>> seeds.

there are (at least) two posible explanations for this difference
- trees react slower to temperature changes and therefore move slower
- trees are less affected by temperature changes, and therefore move
little or hardly at all

the timescale of this study has obviously not allowed for a  conclusive
answer to which of the two is correct, or if something else entirely is
going on.

what may be happening is a change in the woodland ground flora, while the
canopy remains relatively stable. that said, there has been a shift in
british woodlands with beech moving further north, which is only partly
related to them being planted where they wouldn't have occured naturally.
still that would represent a change canopy composition rather than a
wholesale change in ecosystem type.

best
tomas

---------------------------------
---------------------------------

Tomas Remiarz - GreenLand Services

Ecological Restoration
Woodland Creation and Management
Permaculture Design and Practice



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