permaculture

[Jennifer Nazak <jnazak@yahoo.com>]

Greetings Permies,

I'm planning to visit my family for the holidays and am determined to minimize
the carbon footprint of my travel. And think it would be great fun to share a 
ride with. 
a fellow permie(s).

Am looking for a ride from Florida (Daytona Beach area) to Northern Va/DC, 
arriving 
Tuesday the 22nd or Wed the 23rd. Can help with driving and share gas money. 
Please contact me if you are interested. Thanks! 

And maybe there are permies in other places looking for holiday rideshares 
too? 
Seems to me that would be a valid use of this list. Certainly ridesharing is 
aligned with 
permie principles. Craigslist ride-board has been really sparse lately. I did 
post on the
Couchsurfing ride-board.

BTW I plan on staying with my family through Christmas (extending family time 
while 
avoiding the carbon footprint of two separate trips!) and will be seeking a 
rideshare for 
the return trip also.

cheers,

jenny nazak
freelance permaculture educator
www.jennynazak.com

>From hwaldock@telus.net  Sun Nov 13 22:11:54 2011
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Subject: Re: [permaculture] [coabc_list] Grain Sector background - who is
        profiting and why the Canadian Wheat Board is so important
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Lisa,

Thanks for the warmth of the hello and your forgiveness.  I hope you are 
doing well. Your Kelowna vegetable delivery looks successful. With #590 
newsletter, that number suggests you have been doing this weekly for over 10 
years.  Congratulations.

The Colony Garden Organic Farm seems to be doing well and now has expanded to 
2x the original size.  I've not been involved or visited the place for years. 
 It was my first public project involvement and I had much to learn.  My most 
recent success is continuing with out my input is 
http://www.yarrowecovillage.ca which is building out its final residential 
stage. It has some planned commercial stages near Yarrow Central Road.  There 
are 2 or 3 teams of organic farmers on the back 20 ac.  I'm more out of touch 
than I should be.  

I've been working on community currency more recently and am strategizing how 
to profitably introduce something that first began more than 1000 years ago 
but still exists in an attenuated, confused perhaps corrupted form.

Look for another provocative essay that I sent to the Van. Permaculture 
Network and the Lawrence London's international Permaculture List 
<permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org> in a separate email.


Harold
 
On 2011-11-13, at 12:11 PM, Lisa McIntosh wrote:

> Thank you for sharing this perspective, Harold.  I appreciate benefiting 
> from the thought and research you’ve done in this area.  I look forward to 
> checking out the Distributist Review.
>  
> Lisa McIntosh
> www.urbanharvest.ca
>  
> P.S.  I remember meeting you through FarmFolk/CityFolk many years ago in 
> Coquitlam – specifically, working on the Colony Farms community garden 
> project, in the formation stages.  It’s nice to see your name again.
>  
> From: Harold Waldock [mailto:hwaldock@telus.net] 
> Sent: Saturday, November 12, 2011 10:48 PM
> To: coabc_list@certifiedorganic.bc.ca
> Subject: Re: [coabc_list] Grain Sector background - who is profiting and 
> why the Canadian Wheat Board is so important
>  
> I have already seen and heard reports that the agri-food 
> monopolists-oligopolists such as Cargill, Bunge, Viterra, 
> Archer-Daniels-Midland Company (ADM), ConAgra Foods, Inc, are considered by 
> investors to be on the prowl for Canadian Wheat Board assets and markets.   
>  
> The Canadian Wheat Board was an attempt to solve the problem of agri-giants 
> control (some are direct ancestors of the families and corporations who 
> plan to capture the assets of the CWB now) of the Canadian grain markets in 
> the pre-ww I and 1920's periods that led to impoverishment of the farmers.  
> It was the market power of these oligopolists-monopolists in the so called 
> "free markets" that turned the those markets into instruments of an 
> economic slavery.  The CWB provided relief since 1934.  It did not operate 
> in a federated structure of many different markets and locations but as a 
> centralized bureaucracy, with a majority of the board elected by farmers.   
> With the context of Canadian government policies with inflation, 
> agricultural policies of corporate  but not family farm subsidy, and the 
> allowed practices of farm consolidation by corporate interests, of energy 
> and petrochemical intensity to the exclusion of the care of the soil, 
> families (and their family farm) or ecology, the CWB did only a little to 
> benefit the farmers.  It has come at a cost of creativity, diversity and 
> organic production, after all, all human organizations grow inefficient, 
> out of touch and corrupt given time. The Wheat Pools (farmer coops) have 
> been destroyed in the last 25 years just as they were driven to bankruptcy 
> in 1929.  Now there are no effective ways for farmers to show solidarity 
> with other farmers for their benefit and the common good of all if the CWB 
> is dismantled.   Just as workers are allowed to organize and form union 
> that become the negotiators for worker, so too farmers have the right to 
> organize as producers and negotiate on behalf of the farmers.  
>  
> We do not have to have to inhale the poisoned smoke of the 
> neo-conservatives and their free market liberal ideology of the divine 
> right of capitalists ("him who has, gets"-common good be dammed), divine 
> right of "free market" (no juridicial safeguards such as position limits (a 
> market with one or few owning gigantic % of all positions) etc), and a 
> government that never sees anything wrong with pandering to special 
> interests especially if they have campaign contributions.  This has lead to 
> corporatism; government for the big companies, paid by company lobbyists 
> against all others in society - using the bureaucracy to destroy the 
> competition and control the market for the benefit of the rich few.  The 
> main problem of the unjust free market capitalism is not that there are 
> capitalists but that there are too few of them, too few who are not wage 
> slaves and too few who own property and their means of production.  Capital 
> and ownership is best when widely spread across the whole society.
>  
> Nor do we have to imbibe the poisoned drink of the socialists who claim 
> that government is be the solution through control through unlimited 
> bureaucratic policies, central planning, unlimited legislation, unlimited 
> spending, unlimited taxation and unlimited social transfers.  There is no 
> divine right of government with out limits. Any government big enough to 
> give you everything you need is big enough to take everything you have. 
> Unlimited government always leads to tyranny, with the right to life, 
> liberty, property (with ownership and markets) destroyed. The problem with 
> socialism is that it seems fine until it runs out of other people's money. 
> Instead, the dignity of persons must be protected through the ownership of 
> productive property, intermediary occupational and other civil society 
> organizations that deal with markets and access to legal redress i.e. such 
> as position limits (the idea that monopoly and oligopoly must be denied - 
> 80% of the market must not be cornered by less than 20 participants) create 
> ordered free markets. 
>  
> Solutions to these well known problems have been proposed and implemented 
> in many places and times over the last 120 years.  Examples of strategies 
> and philosophies include coop movement, Mondragon coop, Post WWII Germany 
> under Chancellors Konrad Adenauer and Ludwig Erhard  with the "Ordo-Liberal 
> Market" (Ordered free Market) and the building of the Mittlestat - a 
> productive class of small and middle sized companies mostly family or 
> family and worker owned now the backbone of Germany's wealth that are 
> protected from predatory capitalists by law. An important body of ideas by 
> the name of Distributism that gave rise to programs such as producer 
> marketing boards, credit unions as well as savings & loans, Antigonish Coop 
> Movement, consumer coops (eg Coop Stores, Mec etc),interesting work of E.F. 
> Schumacher author of Small is Beautiful, antitrust & anti-competition laws, 
> support for labour unions, ESOP programs (Employee Stock Ownership 
> Programs), Open Book Management of Jack Stack, Italy’s Emilia Romagna 
> region's small worker coop network, worker union members appointed to 
> management boards as is done in Germany, land ownership reform, Taiwan, 
> Japan and Korean economic reordering post WWII that produced economic 
> miracles and many other programs and social institutions that are common as 
> well as known but whose roots are not so well known.
>  
> There are three key uniting principles 1) the dignity of the human person 
> that persons must never be treated as means like a machine but are the ends 
> or object of what society must serve, 2) Solidarity which is the 
> recognition that a state is a single whole that is possessed not only of 
> many individual goods, but also a single common good. A government is not 
> to have the job to conciliate or mollify competing special interests for a 
> campaign contribution at the expense of the many but see what would benefit 
> all of society. 3) Subsidiarity - the principle that decentralizes by 
> saying that what must be decided should be decided by those who are most 
> affected and at the most local level possible with the more central levels 
> coming to their aid only when resolution must be dealt with at a higher 
> level.  Human persons never do well in centralized bureaucratized societies.
>  
> So, in my opinion the centralized bureaucratized CWB should be reformed on 
> a more localized basis and by a more specialized basis (eg organic 
> producers have their own board) and work with the highest board as a 
> federation.  However, it seems many more civil organizations would be 
> better to serve the farmer communities.  Organizations to lower taxes and 
> the dismantling of the huge horizon to horizon agribusiness farms as well 
> as cut the corporate subsidies would rejuvenate prairie small towns and 
> villages putting people back on the land.  I think it would take a quite a 
> change in the philosophy of the people, way of life and governance to make 
> a good life for these farmers.  Ultimately, it would be best if they would 
> decide for themselves, after having being informed and having themselves 
> studied the opportunities and alternatives.
>  
> More on Distributism at www.distributistreview.com
>  
> Harold Waldock
>  
>  
>  
> On 2011-11-11, at 10:22 AM, Cathleen Kneen wrote:
> 
> 
> There are a few things we need to keep in mind.
> 
> 1. Opposing the Harper agenda to dismantle the Wheat Board does NOT mean 
> that we support everything the Wheat Board has done. Absolutely there are 
> reforms needed, and I understand the Directors have been discussing some of 
> these before they were derailed by the government action.
> 2. The Wheat Board is not the Milk Marketing Board or the Poultry Board. It 
> has far fewer powers. It is simply a mechanism to ensure that Canadian 
> wheat and barley are marketed in such a way as to protect the quality of 
> the product (and thus both the market and the price premium for Canadian 
> grain) and to ensure that the farmers get the maximum return, distributed 
> fairly among the farmers.
> 3. If the Wheat Board's monopsony is removed, it will disappear. The 
> government's notion that it can become an independent marketer of grain is 
> delusional. Look at the NFU website for more detailed information on why.
> 4. If the Wheat Board disappears, Cargill and the other grain giants will 
> simply gobble up the market, and all grain growers will suffer -- or just 
> disappear too. We will also lose the capacity of the Wheat Board and the 
> bodies associated with it to address quality issues of importance to all 
> Canadians -- for example, stopping the implementation of GMO wheat.
> 5. I am one of the country's strongest supporters of local markets. We are 
> still left with food products that are beyond the country's capacity to 
> absorb, and so we trade them and buy other things we like (coffee, 
> anyone?). The question is one of priorities, and of flexibility to adapt 
> and support local and organic production. That can be achieved through the 
> current structures, although it's not easy.
> 6. What the government is doing is not only illegal, it is a really scary 
> precedent. They have already shown their willingness to ride roughshod over 
> trade unions. Agreements enshrined in law might as well be written on 
> toilet paper as far as they are concerned. Who is next?
> 
> Cathleen Kneen
> 
> On 11-11-2011 12:50 PM, Jan Steinman wrote:
> I also share an ambivalence about the Wheat Board.
>  
> On the one hand, I can see that without the legal price-fixing that the 
> Wheat Board performs, the big buyers will simply starve individual farmers 
> into submission.
>  
> On the other hand, I see such things as stifling innovation, as Wayne so 
> aptly describes.
>  
> When I hear "wheat board," I hear "monopoly milk marketing board," and the 
> insane situation regarding raw milk and raw cheese in Canada. You are more 
> likely to be injured on your drive to pick up your raw milk than you are to 
> be sickened by drinking it! And yet, public health authorities use 
> flak-jacketed, fully-armed SWAT teams to go in and bust small, responsible 
> raw dairy producers, merely on the belief that raw milk "may" contain 
> pathogens -- none are ever detected after such raids.
>  
> The one thing that makes me favour the Wheat Board ever so slightly is who 
> it is who is dismantling it. I am not convinced that the Harper Government 
> has anything but the big buyers' interests in mind.
>  
> I could actually see Jack Layton (RIP) or Elizabeth May taking a similar 
> action, but for completely different reasons. For this dismantling to have 
> my support, I would want the Harper Government to make a strong stand -- 
> with money behind it -- to do the sorts of things Wayne asks for, like 
> developing local, specialty markets, and becoming less "dependent on 
> commodity wheat sales."
>  
> But that ain't gonna happen, so I find myself backing a structure that I 
> think is fundamentally flawed.
>  
> On 11 Nov 11, at 09:21, Wayne Osborne wrote:
>  
> I'm torn on the whole wheat board issue. I'm going to share my thoughts so 
> that if I'm missing any key points to the debate, maybe someone could 
> kindly fill in the gap. 
>  
> First, my agricultural focus is all about producing local food for our 
> local community. When I say local food, I don't mean just local labour 
> growing corporate controlled inputs, but local labour working with locally 
> controlled inputs. 
>  
> With this in mind, I've always thought that the wheat board stood in the 
> way of the utilization of non standard sources of wheat. Now please forgive 
> me if I word this wrong, I'm not well versed in this area, but it was my 
> understanding that the wheat board made it illegal to market many of our 
> heritage wheats. If this is the case, then I say good riddance.
>  
> However, I do fully agree with the assessment that dismantling the wheat 
> board will undermine the position of commodity focussed wheat farmers. 
> Farming legacies are sure to be destroyed. If I was a farmer in this 
> position, I would be looking for ways to adjust the focus of my farm so 
> that it was less dependant on commodity wheat sales. Shift towards 
> specialty products for specialty markets, the very thing the wheat board 
> stood in the way of. Maybe even downsize. Also, maybe a breakup of the big 
> mega farms is just what our prairie farmers need. Sure, overall food prices 
> could go up as a result of mega farmers leaving the wheat business, but 
> isn't this exactly what our agricultural sector (organic) needs?
>  
> I really don't see the downside for the organic community.
>  
> Wayne
>  
>  
> -- 
> Organically Grown * Heritage Conservation
> http://www.omegabluefarms.webs.com/
>  
> ----------------
> It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no 
> God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. -- Thomas Jefferson
> :::: Jan Steinman, EcoReality Co-op ::::
>  
>  
>  
>  
>  
> If you wish to unsubscribe from this list email:
> coabc_list-unsubscribe@certifiedorganic.bc.ca
> from your email client.
>  
>  
> 
> 
> -- 
> Cathleen Kneen
> 2746 Cassels Street
> Ottawa, ON, K2B 6N7
> phone 613-828-6047
>  
> If freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose, then revolution 
> could be just another word for nothing left to eat. -- Wayne Roberts
> If you wish to unsubscribe from this list email: 
> coabc_list-unsubscribe@certifiedorganic.bc.ca from your email client.
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