permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>]

On 4/8/2011 2:18 PM, Paul Cross wrote:
> I've often wondered why people seem to think coir is ecological. It is
> produced as a byproduct of industrial agriculture that destroys
> rainforests and plants monocrops of palms. As permaculturalists we have
> to recognize that any outside input impacts the site from which it was
> taken. Maybe in our accounting that is acceptable, or maybe it is not.
> We can think we're doing good by washing our dishes in coconut oil soap
> instead of petrochemical detergents, growing seedlings in coir instead
> of peat, but the orangutans who lost their habitat to palm plantations
> don't see it that way. We're always causing impacts.

To back you up on this here's something I picked up on recently:

"The biggest problem agriculturally is that the most profitable crop 
here and in Indonesia is palm trees for palm oil, the universal cooking 
oil in this part of the world.  Problems are that palm oil is hideously 
viscous and overwhelms anything cooked in it.  In addition, there is no 
life form that can survive in a palm oil forest.  Zero ecological balance."