permaculture

[KAKerby@aol.com]

And in all your examples, not once did you mention that any of it was  
aquaponics as we've been discussing here.  Hydroponics with peat moss as a  
growing medium is most definitely not aquaponics.  Even if we were to  expand 
our conversation to include hydroponics, peat moss is considered one of  the 
flimsier media, not a good candidate for long-term plantings because it's so  
short lived.  It also has serious acidity issues, so plants which cannot do 
 well in acidic conditions need to stay well clear of it.  On the other  
hand, it is inexpensive, and does exceedingly well for short-lived plants 
which  don't mind the acidity, or where the water is naturally  alkaline.  
Which 
is the blend of pro's and con's which I mentioned in  one of my first 
posts.  
 
And in all of your examples, not once did you give an example of how a  
family with access to NO soil, or soil which has already been demonstrated to 
be  barren of sufficient nutrients to grow even light-feeding veggies, could  
possibly magically summon food from somewhere else, where the water is 
clean and  the soils are fertile and the sun shines on schedule, at a price 
they 
can  afford.  I also wonder how "true" hydroponic products would be shipped 
to  all the inland cities and communities that don't have access to the 
coast.   Most folks would call that extractive, non-renewable fishing or  
farming, and petroleum-intensive long-distance commodities marketing.   Which 
is 
what I thought we were trying to move away from.

Like I have said in every post so far, if you don't like it, don't use  it. 
 Very simple.  What I saw in those first posts which upset me  most, was 
that folks didn't know much about it but had already decided it wasn't  going 
to work, never had worked, never could work, and if it ever did work,  would 
never be as good as natural soil.  I have been working diligently to  lay 
all those claims to rest, at least all the claims but that last.  And  that 
last claim is merely an opinion.  There was a time when all of  humanity had 
access to rich soil.  By a variety of practices and accidents  and 
socio/political/economic policies, only a minority of us do now.  So  what of 
the 
rest of the world?  Do we leave them out in the cold, or tell  them to go 
improve their soils slowly and steadily over time, and darn if they  starve 
in 
the process?  If we were scrapping for our meals, I don't  think we'd insist 
quite so hard on "natural".
 
I'm trying to raise a voice for all those who don't have good soil, don't  
have access to the coast, don't have access to all the wonderful natural  
planting alternatives that some of us enjoy, yet inconveniently still want to 
 
eat.  There are quite a few folks like that out in the world; some  
estimates now are that 3/5 of humanity doesn't enjoy a regular, well-balanced 
 
diet.  Can the 2/5 of us who are more fortunate, deny them the chance to  
grow 
their own?  Aquaponics offers a well-tested way to bring food  reliably to 
communities around the world, who don't have access to sufficient  volumes of 
locally grown food now.  And it can do so without all the GMOs  and 
herbicides and pesticides that so much of conventional ag is trying to  
insist is 
necessary to feed the world.  Most folks look to conventional ag  to solve 
the 
problems of world hunger.  Are we comfortable with that?   Some very few 
look to places like permaculture instead, to answer those  questions.  Will 
the permaculture community insist on what only a few of us  have, and 
everyone 
else can just muddle along without permaculture's help?   To turn away from 
such a promising approach for feeding so many, and in such a  self-reliant 
way, because it's not 'natural', seemed amazingly elitist to  me.   Natural 
in this context is hardly appropriate, since none of us  are 
hunters/gatherers anymore.  Everything we eat has been cultured away  from 
what was once 
found in the wild.  
 
That's why I keep hammering on this topic.  Who is permaculture really  
serving, if it's just a club for those who own rich soil, and can use it as 
they  see fit?  If that's the population you're serving, you're destined to 
only  reach roughly 1% of the entire human population.  In which case I guess 
you  can shout your objections about aquaponics as loudly as you want, 
because no one  will be listening.  The other 99% of humanity will be trying 
to 
figure out  how to feed themselves.  Without your guidance, because you've 
already  voluntarily excluded yourself from their conversations.  The choice 
is 
 yours.
Kathryn Kerby
frogchorusfarm.com
Snohomish, WA
 
 
In a message dated 10/10/2012 11:15:14 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
dfjager@yahoo.com writes:

I don't  see any arguments crumble actually. I see misunderstanding and  
misinterpretation of natural processes.

I remember that they tried to  grow this famous wild berry, Cloudberry, in 
Finland artificially, on peat sods  in a hydroponics system. They couldn't 
do it. It died no matter what they  tried. It apparently only grows wild. And 
this is just one  example.

True, the products of *natural* hydroponics, seafood and sea  vegetables, 
give the best nutrition to man. Why not stick with that instead of  trying 
all these artificial things. No matter how hard you try, the whole of  the 
ocean is infinitely more complex than the best aquaponics design you can  
ever 
create. So why bother.

Another example: Using semi-wild species  and direct seeding those in even 
fairly poor soil will still give you a  healthy plant. I observed this many 
times here in Thailand. My direct seeded  semi-wild guavas grew healthy and 
strong in even relatively poor sandy soil,  whereas my grafted, superior 
guava cultivars planted in excellent soils  continued to attract pests and 
fungus no matter what I did. Same with my  custardapples, my pomegranates, my 
lime-trees.
After the floods in  Thailand, I saw many plants (more than half of which 
were wild edibles) sprout  up naturally from seed... absolutely healthy. But 
most grafted and  transplanted trees died, and many planted vegetables after 
the flood suffered  from pests and diseases.

How would one explain that? Or is the story of  plant nutrition and health 
not fully known yet. And is creating even more  artificial systems then 
really an answer?

Daniel


> From:  Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>
> Subject: Re:  [permaculture] pc aquaponics
> 
> Thanks, again, Kathryn, for  being so nicely rational. I
> think you're spot on about the "gadgety"  nature of
> aquaponics being a turn-off for a lot of us natural  types.
> I'd like to add that plants spent a few hundred million
>  years evolving in the sea before crawling onto land, so they
> have a  long genetic legacy within them of living without
> soil and  soil-penetrating roots.
> 
> There is little that is "natural"  about agriculture,
> either--we've just gotten used to it over 10,000  years. I
> can imagine the first response: "Wheat that doesn't lodge  or
> shatter? Using a plow? That's not natural!" (we could segue
>  here to the whole argument about domestic species having
> lower  nutrition, but that's a condemnation of agriculture,
> not  aquaponics).
> 
> We grow thousands of varieties of plants never  seen in
> nature, in light fluffy, heavily manured soil that is  also
> unnatural. All the plants we are talking about in  aquaponics
> are domestic varieties with highly plastic genomes that  have
> been messed with for millennia. Many of them cannot  survive
> without our intervention, and quite a few are only  found
> near people.
> 
> It's very helpful for me, as a  skeptic, to see the arguments
> against aquaponics crumble when you look  at them more
> closely.
> 
> Toby
>  http://patternliteracy.com
> 
> 
> On Oct 10, 2012, at 12:31  AM, KAKerby@aol.com
> wrote:
> 
> > These questions are  part genetics, part philosophy and
> part  practicality.   
> > I'll try to answer in similar veins:
> > 
> >  What would happen to root strength if one were to grow
>  aquaponics  
> > vegetables over a few plant  generations? 
> Aquaponics has been around now  for 50  
> > years in its modern form, more or less.  And some
>  claim that the  concept has 
> > been used by multiple  generations for thousands of
> years, with the  first 
> >  well-documented system possibly being the water gardens
> of  Babylon.   But let's 
> > skip that historical  precedent and stick with modern
> aquaponics.   Even  
> > with that limitation, hundreds if not thousands of
> plant  generations have  come 
> > and gone never seeing anything but  an aquaponics
> system.  Their seeds,  cut
> > tings,  divisions or other reproductive methods can be
> put right back into  
> > the  garden or field and grown alongside plants
>  whose forebears never grew in 
> > an  aquaponics system.   The plants grown in
> an aquaponics system would  
> >  undoubtedly change over time, just as any plant's genes
> would change  over time  
> > when grown in a fabulously fertile, deep, soft,  crumbly
> perfectly irrigated  
> > garden soil.   Take either of those plants and put
> them in the desert and   
> > they'd both die.  Does that mean we don't want to
>  work towards  fabulously 
> > fertile, deep, soft, crumbly,  perfectly irrigated
> garden soil, lest  that 
> > weaken  our plants as well?  Aquaponics can provide
> rich,  diversified  root zone 
> > communities, via the methods I've  already
> described.  That rich  web can and 
> >  does rival soil-based communities from the best
> gardens.   So  any genetic 
> > abormalities that come from aquaponics  growth would
> come from rich  garden 
> > growth as  well.  
> > 
> > "What would happen to the strength of  a
> vegetable/fruit  strain........."   
>  > The same thing that happens to that vegetable or 
> fruit  strain when it's 
> > grown in rich garden soil.  It  grows
> stronger,  it grows faster, it grows 
> > larger,  it puts forth more leaves and/or more
> seed  and/or more  propagation 
> > vines and/or whatever genetic cues it has  when 
> presented with everything it 
> > needs.  It  has fewer pests, fewer diseases
> and  lives longer with less  stress.  
> > Again, let's compare apples to apples, no   pun
> intended.  A well balanced 
> > aquaponics system  gives the plant everything  it
> needs.  So does a 
>  > well-balanced garden soil.  If you find
> fault  with  using the former, you'll have to 
> > logically find fault with   using the latter.
> > 
> > "What would happen when human  ingenuity stops and
> Nature takes charge  
> >  again?"  Once again, if two plants of the same
> variety, one grown  in a  
> > well-balanced aquaponics system and one grown in  rich
> garden soil, were suddenly  
> > uprooted and moved  to a different climate, both of them
> would be limited in   
> > response to whatever their genetic code plus their
>  current condition allowed  
> > them to have.  If you took  an aquaponic tomato
> vine and a garden-grown  
> > tomato  vine, and transplanted them both to the North
> Slope of Alaska, neither  
> > of  them would do well.  If you took those
> two  plants and transplanted them  
> > both to some tropical  location with adequate solar and
> water and drainage 
> >  and  nutrients, they'd probably do quite
> well.  If something  happened to  
> > dramatically impact the growing conditions for  the
> aquaponics system, those  
> > plants would probably  die.  Just like if something
> happened to dramatically   
> > impact the growing conditions in a garden, those plants
>  would also probably  
> > die.
> > 
> > And as  we've also discussed, a mature aquaponics system
> starts to very   
> > closely resemble a mature fertile garden soil, in the
>  richness of the  
> > microorganisms that live there, in the  diversity and
> ratios of nutrients present  in 
> > the  root zone, and in the diversity and health and
> branching of the  roots  
> > growing through the root zone.  I suspect  that
> after 10 years, most folks  
> > would have a hard  time differentiating between the
> two.
> > 
> > If  folks find the concept of aquaponics distasteful or
> alienating  or  
> > whatever, that's fine.  But admire it, or  fault
> it, for the characteristics  it 
> > truly has,  which are much the same as the
> characteristics of the very best   
> > gardening soil we fantasize about creating and working
>  with.  If our plants  
> > are turning into wimps in  aquaponic systems, then
> they'll become wimps in  
> >  our very best gardens as well.  One of the true
> strengths  of  aquaponics is 
> > that we can fine-tune the nutritional  balance in a
> matter of  weeks.  Yet 
> > most  gardeners and farmers will spend years, if not
> decades,  trying  to achieve 
> > that same balance.  If your dinner could only  come
> from  the quality of the 
> > growing medium you  used, would you be so willing to
> wait ten  years for a 
>  > good meal?  
> > 
> > I think a lot of folks have  philosophical problems with
> the "gadgety"  
> > nature  of aquaponics, and that it could never be "as
> good as" our more  familiar  
> > gardens and fields.  But honestly, that's  the
> opinion of a well fed  
> > stomach.  For folks  who live where flood, famine,
> political upheaval,  economic  
> > hardship and other challenges don't allow them the
>  pleasantries of  
> > well-tended soil and regular meals,  aquaponics can keep
> them fed and fed pretty  darn 
> >  well.  Fed so that they have the energy and health
> to go out and  heal  
> > whatever is going wrong with their  region. 
> Perhaps then they'll have the  time, 
> >  money and resources to pour into their soils what we've
> poured into  ours,  
> > and finally bring those soils back into  healthy
> production.  Then they'll  
> > have the  chance to sit back and mull which system is
> better.  But  insisting  
> > on the use of nice fertile soils is to exclude a  lot of
> humanity from the 
> > dinner  table, if not now  then in the very near
> future.
> > Kathryn Kerby
> >  frogchorusfarm.com
> > Snohomish, WA
> > 
> >  
> > 
> > 
> > In a message dated 10/9/2012  11:36:03 P.M. Pacific
> Daylight Time,  
> >  dfjager@yahoo.com
> writes:
> > 
> > Plant   evolution created root systems for land
> plants to penetrate the  
> > soil. To grow  in soil that is not nutritionally
>  balanced, and can *never be* 
> > totally  balanced in Nature.  And to adapt plant
> species to specific soils and 
> >  climate  conditions.
> > 
> > * What would happen to  the root strength if one were
> to  grow aquaponics 
> >  vegetables over a few plant generations?
> > 
> > * What  would  happen to the strength of a
> vegetable/fruit strain, if you  
> > provide all  nutrients in easily accessible form?
>  By analogy: what happens to 
> > humans when  they have to do no  effort, and get
> everything they need 
> > whenever they   want...???
> > 
> > * What happens when human 'ingenuity'  stops, and
> Nature  takes charge 
> > again? Would we  have natural aquaponics ecosystems, or
> just murky  wetlands,  
> > nutrient poor bogs, estuaries, tidal flats, and the
>  like. With the  natural 
> > plant and animals species adapted  to the specific
> constraints of that  
> > ecosystem:  both climatologically, soil physiologically
> and   nutritionally.
> > 
> >  Daniel

_______________________________________________
permaculture  mailing list
permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
subscribe/unsubscribe|user  config|list  info:
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture
message  archives:  https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/permaculture/
Google  message archive search:
site: lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/permaculture  [searchstring]
Avant Geared   http://www.avantgeared.com