permaculture

["Nicholas Roberts, Permaculture.coop" <permaculturecoop@gmail.com>]

yep, this list is becoming a bit reactionary, old-boy,
back-scratching... and the rest of us get shouted down...

i guess thats what a design science is all about.. or maybe a pyramid
selling scheme for rich-people garden designers ?

anyway... back to the empire

a while back I wrote a post which included a section on RANDs report
on using perennial polyculture (with GMO, cue Toby) as the next Green
Revolution...

McGaia - corporate permaculture - family friendly geo-, genetic &
socially engineered organic perennial polyculture

RAND corporation had a military analyst research and publish a couple
of papers on the potential for perennial polyculture to be used to
save the environment and create employment. Seeds of Another
Agricultural. Revolution?.
http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/2007/RAND_OP179.pdf
http://gaiapermaculture.com/projects/climatewar/blog/2009/08/15/mcgaia-corporate-permaculture-family-friendly-geo-genetic-socially-engineered-organic-perennial-polyculture/

A recent book, by University of Davis couple, have managed to “marry
their separate fields to argue logically for the use of GM
technologies to improve organic agriculture” Tomorrow’s Table: Organic
Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food
http://www.amazon.com/Tomorrows-Table-Organic-Farming-Genetics/dp/0195301757/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213293058&sr=1-1

as Mark Dowie has written, the first Green Revolution;
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Mark_Dowie

The primary objective of the program was geopolitical: to provide food
for the populace in undeveloped countries and so bring social
stability and weaken the fomenting of communist insurgency.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution#Political_impacts

The transition from traditional agriculture, in which inputs were
generated on-farm, to Green Revolution agriculture, which required the
purchase of inputs, led to the widespread establishment of rural
credit institutions. Smaller farmers often went into debt, which in
many cases results in a loss of their farmland.[10][36] The increased
level of mechanization on larger farms made possible by the Green
Revolution removed a large source of employment from the rural
economy.[10] Because wealthier farmers had better access to credit and
land, the Green Revolution increased class disparities. The rich -
poor gap widened due to that. Because some regions were able to adopt
Green Revolution agriculture more readily than others (for political
or geographical reasons), interregional economic disparities increased
as well. Many small farmers are hurt by the dropping prices resulting
from increased production overall.[citation needed] However,
large-scale farming companies only account for less than 10% of the
total farming capacity.
The new economic difficulties of small holder farmers and landless
farm workers led to increased rural-urban migration. The increase in
food production led to a cheaper food for urban dwellers, and the
increase in urban population increased the potential for
industrialization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution#Socioeconomic_impacts

In the most basic sense, the Green Revolution was a product of
globalization as evidenced in the creation of international
agricultural research centers that shared information, and with
transnational funding from groups like the Rockefeller Foundation,
Ford Foundation, and United States Agency for International
Development (USAID). Additionally, the inputs required in Green
Revolution agriculture created new markets for seed and chemical
corporations, many of which were based in the United States. For
example, Standard Oil of New Jersey established hundreds of
distributors in the Philippines to sell agricultural packages composed
of HYV seed, fertilizer, and pesticides