permaculture

[venaurafarm <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>]

On 8/7/2012 10:02 AM, Toby Hemenway wrote:
> > If we want to survive . . . each and every family as much as
> > possible needs to be able to produce it's own food for itself, and
> > as many other people as possible.

Right on and thumbs up, onward relentless, let nothing stand in your way.

> I don't need to grow my own food.

But there are millions of others who do need to grow their own food in 
order to have a healthy diet, involve themselves in very worthwhile 
activities as practitioners and learners. Many need to do this to put 
food on their tables as they try to weather the poor economy, job loss, 
keep their homes and land, keep transportation or seek working 
alternatives (bus, bicycle, carpool), have adequate healthcare, etc.

> I need to be part of a healthy
> network that does.

Those networks, if they exist, are not necessarily available to millions 
of people and for a varieties or reasons. Let's hear more about your 
networks. Who forms them, who is part of them and who keeps them going 
and functionsl?

The LL plan for America includes a computer/web/internet-based product 
and services production, marketing and distribution network, PSPMDN.
It could be created and made to work and serve everyone participating, 
no matter how small, as consumer or seller, barter, trade, donate, have 
its own currency and be compatible and cooperative with the IRS.

> While I'd love it if everyone gardened, a
> coordinated community food system

Where are they and how many are there; what is the projected future for 
this resource?

> is more resilient and allows more
> diversity than individual dachas, and fits better with American
> culture and land ownership patterns. The US has a very different
> history from Russia.

Not so. At all. You're conception of this is too fixed and limited
and too limited to the past.

> And most yards are too small to produce "all our
> own food."

Straw man argument. They need to produce as much of their food needs as 
possible, themselves. This can be done in pots or windowsills in 
apartments, urban or suburban homes, rural homes and homesteads and 
farms. How many thousands of books have been written encouraging people 
to grow their own for table fare and health, and to share or sell. How 
many tens of thousands of videos exist on YouTube demonstrating every 
aspect of home food production and renewable energy, and cottage 
industry possibilities. We need 21st Century Victory Gardeners 
Practicing Permaculture. We need a nation of them. Think of the savings 
in energy, materials and equipment.

Its a mass movement already, a happening thing, thank providence.

This is what permaculture is really all about down to its core set of 
principles.

> A single 18th-Century farmer could feed 50 people. Making the
> household, instead of the farm, the neighborhood or even the town,
> the core unit of a food system atomizes the community.  Let's not
> default to "go it alone." It reduces the many options for reaching a
> goal--meeting our food needs--to a single tactic: grow it all
> yourself. It means that this critical function is done only one way,
> with all the attendant hazards (what if you get hurt?) and reduces
> most people to serfs farming for a banker. It's part of the mix, but
> not the solution.
>
> The dachas are well worth looking at.  But severe food and economic
> disruptions tend to be brief in developed countries (see Argentina,
> Iceland, Weimar Germany, Mexico, etc.), stabilizing soon at a
> simplified level. So to redesign as though the unstable period will
> be permanent is unwise.
>
> While Russians were busy farming their 2.5 acre dachas all day, the
> oligarchs were seizing control of everything else. They still have
> it. Let's learn from that. We need to organize at a higher level than
> the household.

And the oligarchs, the cabal, corporations, etc. are not doing this now? 
Stealing their investments, causing profound inflation and profiteering 
from price rises (charge what the market will bear, law of supply and 
demand), sending most American jobs overseas and not creating a 
significant number of new ones to replace those lost, largely factory 
and small local businesses ceasing operation in the face of competition 
from chain stores selling imported goods (at inflated prices). And 
people do not need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, reorganize 
their lives and livelihoods, seek self sufficiency, independence, 
personal sovereignty, freedom, liberty, family security and access to 
the basic necessities of live? Of course they do, now as much as ever, 
including during the Great Depression.

> Toby http://patternliteracy.com

This is a good thread, keep it going.
Are you reading, Koreen and Bob Waldrop?

LL