permaculture

[Koreen Brennan <cory8570@yahoo.com>]

Thought you might find this interesting. Gil Friend is one of the top 
corporate green consultants out there. 
 
 
----- Forwarded Message -----
From: "Gil Friend, CEO, Natural Logic Inc." <gfriend@natlogic.com>
To: cory8570@yahoo.com 
Sent: Friday, August 2, 2013 8:10 PM
Subject: 1) I'm just not able to do it. I've tried. I can't. Can you? 2) Is 
this bragging?
 





One mid-sized idea: A few months ago I wrote a series of posts about "beyond 
sustainability"—decrying (or at least bemoaning) the flabbiness and 
vectorlessness of the term (as Braungart, Ehrenfeld, McDonough and others 
have been wont to do), the erosion of its essential and once provocative 
value. Perhaps it's a kind of linguistic inflation, rendering each word worth 
less even as it become more popular. Or perhaps it's something about the very 
concept the word entrains, of a world of stasis, without evolution, 
innovation or delight.

So I pledged to go cold turkey, to eschew "sustainability"—at least the 
word—for a week or a month, I forget how long. It doesn't matter, really, 
since I failed utterly.

It was a failure born partly out of failure of discipline; I got lazy, as I 
reached for better words, more compelling turns of phrase, and reverted to 
habit when I didn't find them quickly. And it was partly born out of the 
challenge of landing something meaningful with conversation partners who have 
learned, over past decade or so of successes, to listen for the S word.

What do I prefer? Well, I like regenerative. A lot. (A bow to Bucky and Bob 
Rodale.) I like its subtle invocation of life force, creativity and 
possibility. Restorative is ok, but seems to face backwards. Flourishing 
(thank you, John Ehrenfeld) is potent, and fecund, but seems to take a lot of 
explaining. Maybe that's not a bad thing.

Tell me: How do you speak about this world we're trying to bring into being?

Tweet of the week:Redefining Value: The New Metrics of Sustainable Business 
#NewMetrics sbshare.co/1clfchq

Is this bragging? Guardian Sustainable Business has launched in the US, and 
has named me #7 (tied in that position with Jeremy Heimans) on their list of 
the the 30 most influential sustainability voices in America. I've had the 
honor to write the intro in strategy+business for an excerpt from John 
Ehrenfeld's book, Flourishing—A Frank Conversation About Sustnaiability. 
Kathleen Connell's done a nice interview with me in San Diego Loves Green on 
Rebuilding 21st Century Companies Using The Wisdom Of Living Systems.

Opportunities: Natural Logic is inviting three companies—courageous enough to 
challenge their value propositions, their business models and their notions 
of future  potential—into a deep, powerful business systems design and 
innovation process that we are willing to bet will uncover (in the word of 
one of our clients) "massive" value in your value chain. Is your company one 
of them?

Events: Just added: VERGE (Take a 10% discount with this code: 
VSFspeakerguest) Other upcoming speaking gigs include keynotes at 
Sustainability Applied: Unlocking Hidden Value in Toronto and CleanTech 
Future in San Francisco—and some others still to be announced. (You can book 
me here to have a "resonant, inspiring and grounded" speaker to keynote your 
next conference or company retreat.)

With best regards,
Gil

Gil Philip Friend
President & CEO Natural Logic Inc. | Building value at the intersection of 
profit, brand, risk and purpose.
Tel: 1-510-248-4940 | Cel: 1-510-435-6346 | Skype: gil_friend | Blog | 
LinkedIn | Twitter | About.Me

PS: Our strategic coaching services are now available for leadership teams 
(as well as individual leaders and entrepreneurs). Maybe yours?



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Natural Logic, Inc, PO Box 119, Berkeley CA, 94701
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Subject: Re: [permaculture] The Gas We Eat
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I think we all know that permaculture is the solution.  The problem is that 
most of the world is reliant on cheap nitrogen to survive- and my question 
is: How do we pragmatically shift from fossil fuel food to realtime sunlight 
food on the global scale?

Fossil fuel food is cheap to produce, at least in the current system which 
does not account for all the externalities- which is basically environmental 
damage (ecosystem debit) as a result of food production.  Chemical fertilizer 
is about 1/10th the price of organic.  For example, if I am to give each tree 
1 lb of actual nitrogen, it means I need to put out 25 lbs of organic 
fertilizer (4-0-0), or 2.5 lbs of urea (40-0-0).  When a farmer who is 
already struggling to make ends meet looks at this they say its impossible to 
be profitable with organics.  With annual systems you can rotate crops, and 
it is easier to grow your own nutrient.

Of course we all know that there are other sources of nitrogen besides 
granular fertilizer, but this (biology) can take time to develop.  Transition 
from chemical farming to organic can be a slow and expensive process, 
especially in perennial systems (orchards), so many farmers will not take 
that leap.  The transition to permaculture farming is even slower but 
potentially less expensive and more productive, as long as you don't have to 
pay for labor. 

It would take a tremendous effort (ie labor, hands) to produce the same 
amount of food the permaculture way as opposed to the way most of it is grown 
now- with machines at super high efficiency (albeit reliant on fossil 
resources, so not really efficient when we do a caloric accounting).  I am 
not promoting chemical or industrial farming, just making an observation.  To 
feed the world with permaculture farming every family would have to grow 
their own food, and this is a pretty unrealistic proposal though definitely 
not impossible.

It is indeed a total conundrum- how would we feed the world without fossil 
fuels?  At this point the system is so entrenched that it is more likely that 
many millions (or billions) of people would die of starvation without cheap 
oil and natural gas.  And I am sure none of us would really want this to 
happen, as much as we may loathe fossil fuels.  

Loren Luyendyk
(805)-452-8249
ISA Certified Arborist WE-7805A
www.sborganics.com
www.surferswithoutborders.org
www.globalpermaculture.com




> From: dhondt@eircom.net
> To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
> Date: Sat, 3 Aug 2013 00:35:48 +0100
> Subject: Re: [permaculture] The Gas We Eat
> 
> Well yes, agriculture is sometimes defined as the conversion of oil into 
> food through the agency of land. And as long as oil is cheap what with all 
> environmental costs being externalized and companies like Monsanto making 
> sure that there is no way back to more environmentally sound systems that 
> is 
> likely to stay for a while. Until oil gets more expensive or until we 
> become 
> extinct whichever comes first.
> Permaculture is our only hope really. I have never used artificial 
> nitrogen- 
> there are some 8 metric tons of nitrogen gas pressing down on every square 
> meter of surface on the planet and with a little bit of good management 
> there are plenty of soil organisms that can convert more than enough of 
> this 
> into plant useful food. Feed those organisms and you have all the nitrogen 
> you could possibly want for free. Put out expensive artificial stuff and 
> you 
> kill them off. Simple to solve I would think.
> John
> 
> 
> 
> Nearly half of the world�s population owes its existence to food
>  grown with industrial nitrogen fertilizer produced from natural gas. (1)
> In 2004, journalist Richard Manning published an intriguing, if somewhat 
> controversial, article in Harpers magazine called The Oil We Eat: Tracing 
> the food chain back to Iraq. Manning notes that growing our food under the 
> usual practices requires about 10 calories of fossil fuel energy for every 
> calorie of food energy.
>   Preparing the soil to grow grains, especially corn and wheat, requires
>  a lot of energy and maintenance to rip up the soil every year in order
> to exclude other plants and create a non-competitive environment for the
>  seed to grow. In the case of no-till farming, energy is spent to make
> herbicides that, like the plow, block the natural process of ecological 
> succession.
> 
> full article:
> http://blogs.agu.org/terracentral/2013/04/28/the-gas-we-eat/
> 
> Loren Luyendyk
> (805)-452-8249
> ISA Certified Arborist WE-7805A
> www.sborganics.com
> www.surferswithoutborders.org
> www.globalpermaculture.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
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