permaculture

[Permaculture Cooperative <permaculturecoop@gmail.com>]

you can find a lot of people in Australia who have similar views.... got
sold a dream by Mollison and then went to do it, slogged away at it for
years and years, trying really extreme low-input farming systems, and then
realised after nearly killing themselves that a lot of what he told them was
"optimistic" etc... the ideas are great, the ethics (especially Fair Share)
golden, and the framework is highly promising if you are a skilled
gardener/farmer and have a good position in life...

my favorite myth is the "set-up a permaculture garden and then go away and
teach and travel and come back and it will be all good, productive,
in-balance with nature etc" as if set-up of a climax ecosystem is easy or
quick... its equivalent to the perpetual motion machine



> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 10
> Date: Wed, 2 Dec 2009 10:20:11 -0800 (PST)
> From: Rain Tenaqiya <raincascadia@yahoo.com>
> Subject: [permaculture] Overly optimistic permaculture attitude
>        towards land
> To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
> Message-ID: <242911.74792.qm@web112407.mail.gq1.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
>
> Well, Toby, I don't have the time to do a literature search to back up my
> claims, but I run into a lot of people like the one Christopher mentioned
> who didn't seem to get an appropriate permaculture education.? As for
> myself, I was deeply influenced by Bill Mollison, and he definitely seems
> like a booster to me.? I remember him saying not to worry too much about
> soil since you can always transform it with?organic matter and amendments
> (which is common in Australia given the poor soil).? His Global Gardener
> videos make it all look so easy.? He talks about how cheap earthworks are
> (not!) and gives inflated statistics about how radically you can transform
> local climate.? For results within one person's lifetime, I'm learning to
> expect much less.
> ?
> If you are only wanting to grow food for a small household (which is
> probably all that is truly sustainable in the long run), it is possible to
> do impressive things in tough circumstances, if you are willing to do all
> the work.? But it takes a long time without unsustainle inputs from
> outside.? Agriculture (which is not sustainable, even though included in
> Mollison's books) is not worth considering on most marginal land, in my
> opinion.
> ?
> Gotta go,
> ?
> Rain
> ?
>
>
>
>
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>
> End of permaculture Digest, Vol 83, Issue 4
> *******************************************
>



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