permaculture

[Koreen Brennan <cory8570@yahoo.com>]

I spent some time at Will Allen's Growing Power and he gets a lot of his 
yield by closing the loop on the waste stream that is available in an urban 
environment (he composts, creates worms, feeds some to fish, gets restaurant 
waste to feed soldier fly larvae, etc). He gets a lot of input from the urban 
waste stream. He was trying things like heating the greenhouse with compost 
(it was working a little), growing mushrooms in sawdust from a local mill, in 
unused corners, etc.  He has a lot of different systems and approaches going.

They use worm castings and coconut coir for a soil mix for some of the plants 
including some in the aquaponics system. The coconut coir comes from SE Asia 
and they were looking for a closer source. I suggested Haiti. They felt it 
was more sustainable to use coir from Asia than to use peat moss.  He was 
feeding the fish with commercial fish food when we were there and said that 
is mostly what they do. To be commercially viable, most aquaponics places 
I've seen feel that they have to pack the fish into the tanks, and grow them 
fast. So, just like plants that are fed exact amounts of nutrients in 
hydroponics, commercial aquaponics places tend to feed their fish specially 
prepared nutrient dense fish food formula that will make them grow up fast. 
Fish in tanks are factory farmed, very packed in, in most aquaponics systems 
that I've seen. Not sure how commercially viable it would be to do it 
otherwise, especially in urban areas because of space requirements
 but definitely something some permaculture designer(s) should try to figure 
out! There were a lot of great design elements at Growing Power when I was 
there and a lot more connections, closed loops, yields that could have been 
gotten. 

Hydro or aero or aquaponics appear to be one of the waves of the future. I 
was just told that there is a big US grocery store chain that is going to 
start growing veggies on their roofs in hydroponic greenhouses - not sure how 
long that roll out will be but it's based on successes in Canada and England, 
etc. Talk about reducing the energy footprint! - Though the nutrients source 
from petroleum and natural gas for most hydro systems (organic nutrients clog 
the system - another job for a designer to solve!). It is still way less of a 
footprint than maybe even a lot of organic ag because of reduced water use, 
reduced food loss in shipping/packing, etc. There are high rise hydroponics 
factories going up in Hong Kong and elsewhere.  So it would be good to apply 
some permaculture design tools to the area to see how it could be improved. 
Aquaponics in backyards or small scale seems to have the best potential for 
incorporating full permaculture design
 principles. I'm far from expert on these topics, just sharing what I've 
seen. 
 
Koreen Brennan

www.growpermaculture.com
www.facebook.com/growpermaculturenow
www.meetup.com/sustainable-urban-agriculture-coalition



On Monday, December 30, 2013 3:18 PM, Toby Hemenway 
<toby@patternliteracy.com> wrote:
 

On Dec 30, 2013, at 9:43 AM, Pete Gasper, Gasper Family Farm wrote:
s
> To me, fish food is a huge input, and one that is often unsustainable. What 
> examples do you know of that do it without fish food inputs (or very 
> little)?
> 
> Pete

Yes, fish food inputs  are one weak point, for sure, just as are fertilizer 
inputs or farm-animal feed in manure-based farming. I've seen some systems 
that use compost to grow black soldier fly larva to feed insectivorous fish. 
Vegetable wastes are recycled from the growing beds to feed the larvae, but 
since the 2nd law of thermodynamics is in effect,
 they still need a few additional sources of food, though minor ones. And 
I've also seen algae and duckweed being grown to feed tilapia.

Feeding the animals that provide manure, or generating permanent compost for 
crops, is the hidden defect of all organic farming. John Jeavons and others 
have calculated that for every acre of food production, 4 to 6 acres of 
compost or animal-feed crops are needed to have a sustainable system. 

One obvious open loop that remains to be closed is for the people being fed 
by these systems to recycle their urine and feces back into the aquaponics 
(or farms) in some way. That open loop exists for almost all western 
agriculture.
  
To me the biggest weakness of aquaponics is the high-density fish population 
needed to supply manure. This stresses the fish and makes them subject to 
disease, and I can't imagine they are happy
 at those densities. One solution might be to grow at lower fish densities 
and filter the manure-water to concentrate the nutrients before it goes to 
the plants, but then you are adding another layer of technology on the system.

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com



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>From holger@tierramor.org  Mon Dec 30 21:03:59 2013
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Date: Tue, 31 Dec 2013 02:55:58 +0100
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Allways good & necessary to cuestion our believe systems and conceptual
frameworks
I also came across this thanks to Davids recent article- (actually a
very good one from PCs co-originator)

Peter Harper`s piece is a valid critique from a longtime sustainabiity
expert, that should be taken seriously by all serious PC activists
its true, that some expressions of Permacukture became a "Cult",
Unfortunately, Bill Mollisons early activism (& slogans as "The designer
becomes a recliner") re-enforced that a little bit too much
everyone who seriously gets into setting up & especially developing/
maintainig systems, quickly finds out about those flaws
we should be aware of that, and balance this with good examples

saludos desde México

Holger



El 29/12/13 08:20, permaculture-request@lists.ibiblio.org escribió:
> Asunto:
> [permaculture] A critique of permaculture
> De:
> Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>
> Fecha:
> 28/12/13 20:00
>
> Para:
> permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
>
>
> Via David Holmgren's website I came across an article that is a relatively 
> accurate critique of permaculture. It's principal flaw is that the author, 
> Peter Harper, seems to view permaculture more as a set of techniques than a 
> design system, but in part, that is his critique: that many permaculturists 
> too broadly apply nebulous principles without testing whether the methods 
> they use are giving good results.
>
> I found his comparison of "smart permaculture" vs "cult permaculture" to be 
> accurate in nearly every assessment, with a couple of  misses.
>
> http://www.thelandmagazine.org.uk/sites/default/files/The%20Big%20Rock%20Candy%20Mountain.pdf
>
> A couple of quotes:
> "Most people attracted to Permaculture are young, dreamy idealists looking 
> for some kind of system to structure their activities and impart meaning. 
> It does not matter much whether things 'work' because you are not obliged 
> to depend on them. It is their symbolic value that counts. I have 
> encountered numerous 'permaculture gardens' with abysmal levels of 
> productivity that have nevertheless persuaded their creators that they are 
> virtually self-sufficient in food. A few measurements and numbers would 
> quickly dispel this illusion, but Permies just don't do numbers."
>
> "The permaculture movement has done us a service in drawing attention to 
> the possibilities of perennial plants, tree crops and 'three-dimensional' 
> horticulture. But it has entirely oversold the idea, claiming to have found 
> the Holy Grail of a low-input/high-output system."
>
> This is why my hat is off to Rafter and others who are out there getting 
> numbers.
>
> Toby
> http://patternliteracy.com
>
>
>

--
Holger Hieronimi -holger@tierramor.org
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