permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Jul 19, 2015 at 7:19 PM, Scott Pittman <scott@permaculture.org>
wrote:

> I certainly agree with option #1 with the exception of needing to engage in
> "mass production",  I think that we need "mass Producers" who provide for
> their regional market.  As soon as one gets into mass production one enters
> the mono-crop world which not true farming but is factory farming just like
> the big producers practice now.
>
> Scott
>

The OP was concerned about the need to feed vary many people so I suggested
that
large scale agriculture systems centered around permaculture design could
produce the amount needed
while being sustainable, regenerative, polycropped with a variety of
production systems such as food forests
and specialty crops harvested from edge zones (elderberry, eleagnus, plum,
blackberry, etc) and through biocontrol
with beneficial organism habitat and breeding, all categories of pests
could be reduced incrementally year by year.
I don't see why permaculture design for agricultural systems could not be
scaled from the micro to the grandiose.
If this could be done then you could use all the modern equipment currently
applied to conventional farming complete with
harvesters (carrots, potatoes, onions, grapes). A large worker owned
cooperative or agrarian village-commune could handle this level of
production and networks of them could share surplus profits through some
ingenious economic system of loan and barter as well as
market cooperatively, share and recycle equipment, share and distribute
seeds, plants and rootstock as well as set up a large seed saving network.
The more local, micro production option could be a grandiose national
production and services marketing and distribution network
comprised of its smallest nodes, a backyard gardener to the largest units
described above. A balance between the small node network and the large
scale production farms would happen naturally such that the smallest ones
could outcompete or not have to compete, by choice, with the larger units,
for sales very close to the local gardens and farms as well as taking
advantage of the ease with which the customer can get to know and buy from
his farmers of choice. This opens the door to a variety of marketing
systems that include food hubs, marketing coops, neighborhood buying clubs,
pick your own, CSA's, roadside or farm stands and direct delivery or pick
up at farm for customers.
This is a nice inrellectual exercise. It would be great if any of this
could come to pass. - LL



-- 
Lawrence F. London
lfljvenaura@gmail.com
https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared/