permaculture

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

On 11/5/2011 8:58 PM, Richard Archer wrote:
> On 4/11/11 1:35 AM, Thomas Paul Jahn wrote:
> > There is a sheer iron resistance to the idea that farming can be done
> > without heavy machinery. Hundreds of horse powers are out their on our
> > fields. And people have completely lost confidence that it can be done
> > otherwise.
>
> Hi Thomas,
>
> You introduce your post with a criticism of modern farming practices.
> This caught my attention because integration of permaculture into
> farming is something I am keenly interested in.

So am I, and I market garden for part of my living.

> > However, maintaining a healthy garden gets down to *one  simple
> > method*called “chop and drop”.
> > ...
> > I rackon, once the physical primary work is done, I can manage 2 hectares
> > and maintain them in a state of a paradies just as a single guard ...
>
> This technique works well on a garden-scale. As you say, up to a couple
> of hectares. After the initial earthworks are complete, there isn't
> really much need for hundred-horsepower equipment at this scale.
>
> But if instead you had 500 hectares to manage, what sort of approach
> would you take?
>
> Would you set up a small village of 200 people to help you work this land?
> Would you set up passive permaculture systems?
> Could animals perform the tasks of tractors and machinery?
> Would you use tractors to perform the "chop and drop"?
> How would you harvest grain and hay crops for storage?
> Could you grow enough oil crops to fuel a tractor to work the rest of
> the land?
>
> Because whether we like it or not, modern agriculture is an industrial
> process on a massive scale. How can permaculture help make that process
> more efficient in a carbon-constrained world?

Just a quick simplistic reply:
Involve more people - just like the 99%-1% economics, get more people 
doing agriculture, on all levels, share the profits fairly, reduce 
unemployment, you know the story.

"..the greatest change we need to make is from consumption to 
production, even if on a small scale, in our own gardens. If only 10% of 
us do this, there is enough for everyone. Hence the futility of 
revolutionaries who have no gardens, who depend on the very system they 
attack, and who produce words and bullets, not food and shelter."
- bill mollison