Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

permaculture - [permaculture] Land use and the availability of space (fwd)

permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: permaculture

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: venaurafarm <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] Land use and the availability of space (fwd)
  • Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2012 20:15:05 -0400

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: RE: [fukuoka_farming] Re: "Land use and the availability of
space"
Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2012 08:54:19 +1000
From: Linda Shewan <linda_shewan@yahoo.com.au>
To: <fukuoka_farming@yahoogroups.com>

I agree Alan, there is a movement in Russia and surrounding areas (also in a tiny way in many other countries) based on the Ringing Cedars series. In Russia, many largely abandoned towns are giving land freely to people wanting to start Anastasia based eco-villages because they are rapt that new people are coming to the area instead of leaving it. Apparently it was enshrined in law that every person is entitled to 1 hectare of land which is not subject to any taxes, and the produce etc grown or manufactured on these sites are also not taxed. This is in addition to the dachas situation which has been in action for many decades. In reality a lot of states are not allowing people to do that but there is a definite movement back to the land being supported by abandoned town councils.

I believe there is a potential in all countries to do this. It will require a massive movement as they had in Russia (apparently 10 million people read the series). But in a lot of countries there is a lot of land that is considered worthless as industrial farming has completely killed the soil.
We know natural farming could rehabilitate it, with perhaps a little
'outside' help in the first few years. There may be land around that the
older generation still owns but is useless and they may be convinced to go into a share to get it back productive, as their children etc have moved to the city. I am just rambling but I do believe there is potential but we need to make it happen, not sit around waiting for it too. It will require huge commitment and an outside income for a few years - as we see from some of our Indian members that are doing just that - and many in the Anastasia eco-villages are doing the same thing. Good on you!!!

It is difficult because we are entrenched in our current way of thinking and our current way of living.

Cheers, Linda

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [fukuoka_farming] Re: "Land use and the availability of space"
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2012 12:29:33 +0100
From: Alan Sloan <alan851603@gmail.com>
To: fukuoka_farming@yahoogroups.com

Hi,

The average age of "farmers" in Japan is said to be 66, up from 51 in 1980. UK arable per capita is a bit more (I think about 0.1 ha) but there are areas of degraded land in the west of the islands, (often peversely labelled Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty!)
UK average age per farmer is around 60, the youngsters being more in
livestock.....but inheritance laws and the way we define a farmer will
probably be distorting much of the true picture

The UK, has similar issues to Japan. There is a very reasonable but
un-articulated argument for allowing land-based settlement by unemployed
or mis-employed young peoples wanting productive contact with nature and a place to uild their own house and life. Such a thing is "rightly" (righteously) restricted (in effect prohibited) by the planning system, but those same laws could be adapted (perhaps in conjunction with the benefit system) in such a way to discourage or eliminate property speculation and encourage carbon trapping forms of cultivation which are designed to be sustainable. The need to reduce carbon emissions and sequester carbon is already recognised. A major drawback is the lack of knowledge on scaleable and appropriate farming practices - this would be needed to support such a scheme.

I'd like to know more details of the Japanese Government "giveaway" scheme to encourage recovery of the the forest uplands - what was it called and what was/is the outcome?

Alan

On 17 September 2012 03:43, iyo.farm@ymail.com
<mailto:iyo.farm%40ymail.com> <iyo.farm@ymail.com
<mailto:iyo.farm%40ymail.com>> wrote:
In fukuoka_farming@yahoogroups.com Marcos G. wrote:

If you have in japan 0.0003 km2 for each person to cultivate the land
we should see the source of these assertions, see if it's true or not), here in Argentina there is much more land available for each inhabitant.
The source was FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) and the figure
down from twice that in 1961.

In fairness, it was the figure for "arable land" and so would not include other possibilities such as domestic and forest gardening etc. I think it also did not include adjustments for double harvesting.
I'm very interested in land use and find the current changes, and ongoing eco-cide (or rather ecocaust) deeply saddening. Rice field by rice field is being sold off to families who sold mock American dream nuclear family homes that are not even worth the poor materials they are built from.
What is the point of packing crate home if you cannot produce food to eat? It seems the Japanese government are going to deliver the Japanese people into the servitude of the American agro-industrial conglomerates and, hence, its politics.

That's why in the early twentieth century Spanish immigrants, Italians
and others who were starving in Europe came to this land and cultivated.

As did the starving Japanese to South America too; Brazil, Chile and
elsewhere. They should leave their land and go to cultivate larger land which are everywhere. That would be a resilient or sustainable solution.
They did tried that. The Koreans and Manchurians were 50:50 about the
experiment and ultimately the British-American Imperialists took such an
offence to an Asia nation successfully challenging them that they put a
stop to it. One current trend now though is for large Japanese
companies to go back into China and peacefully lease large swathes of agricultural land.

You're right, sustainability could be done. Forests could be re-grown and marginal lands recovered. Unfortunately, the current trend of global
geo-politics stand in our way from doing so. I suspect we will have
to wait until the collapse of the oil economy until people are forced to do so. I only hope that we have not lost all the skills and seedbanks and impaired the land by the time it happens.



  • [permaculture] Land use and the availability of space (fwd), venaurafarm, 09/18/2012

Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page