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  • From: Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>
  • To: sustagnet@googlegroups.com, permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>, sustain@groups.io
  • Subject: [permaculture] Fwd: [growingsmallfarms] Fwd: [sustagnet] Who will feed the world?
  • Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2020 18:54:21 -0500

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Pamela Schwingl <pschwingl82@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Jan 26, 2020 at 11:23 AM
Subject: Re: [growingsmallfarms] Fwd: [sustagnet] Who will feed the world?

Thanks all...I also want to suggest a pretty wonderful book, *Nothing Lowly
in the Universe: An Integral Approach to the Ecological Crisis* by Jennie M
Ratcliffe, Ph.D. (who lives in Hillsborough!!!) - in it she shares a
similar vision.....

Jennie M. Ratcliffe is an environmental research scientist, Quaker, and
activist. She has worked for the US Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, the US National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences,
and the Universities of London and North Carolina, and has been active in
peace, social and ecological concerns for many years in the Quaker
community and beyond. Jennie's thesis is that the ecological and climate
crisis is, at its heart, a spiritual and moral crisis. Nothing Lowly in the
Universe explores the connections between the scientific, technological,
economic, cultural, psychological and religious forces driving the crisis
and shows how our current approaches can only delay ecological destruction
and conflict unless we address the deeper roots of our predicament and
transform the ways of thinking that got us here.

Drawing on the Quaker testimonies of integrity, reciprocity, nonviolence,
simplicity, and the equality of the commonwealth of life, on other wisdom
traditions, and the work of visionaries from Gandhi and Arne Naess to E.F.
Schumacher and Thomas Berry, Jennie M. Ratcliffe explores the spiritual
principles of an integrated deep ecology, economy and peace, grounded in
the power of life, love and the truth of our unity, and shows how they can
and are being put into practice around the world.

Despite the formidable and urgent challenges we face, these principles and
practices, far from being utopian, offer attainable paths to long-term
sustainability and a more peaceable and just world for the whole
commonwealth of life.
Pam

On Sun, Jan 26, 2020 at 11:09 AM Rachel Watersong <
rachelwatersong@fastmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks for sharing these resources!
>
> I'm with you that a shift to smaller-scale "integrated farmsteads" is
> ultimately the only way that humans will be able to continue to eat in a
> post-industrial world (which is coming just down the pike). The
> international community/movement of folks who use the word "permaculture"
> represents, as far as I know, the most organized and coherent vision for
> how to use traditional and indigenous technologies and systems theories to
> create a world in which people are able to eat, play, rest, and find
> shelter in collaboration with natural environments rather than in a way
> that is self-destructive. Permanent agriculture- ways of living and
> growing food that can continue indefinitely within an ecosystem.
>
> I am also grateful for our local organic farmers, who are trying to feed
> people (and make a living) in a way that reduces the poisoning destruction
> of conventional farming methods.
>
> And, I trust and hope that the space between these two perspectives-
> permaculture and organic farming- is shrinking, as permaculture folks work
> on making systems that can scale up a bit and recognizing that making a
> living must (for now) be part of the equation, and organic farmers work on
> incorporating methods and principles of permaculture into their farms bit
> by bit.
>
> With love and sweet potatoes,
>
> Rachel Watersong
>
>
> --
> Rachel Watersong
> rachelwatersong@fastmail.com
>
> ***I live off grid and don't check my email every day. If I haven't
> responded to you in a few days, or you need a more urgent response, please
> call or text me at 314-269-7734.***
>
>
>
> On Sat, Jan 25, 2020, at 8:47 PM, Lawrence London wrote:
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ---------
> From: *Karl S North* <knorth@binghamton.edu>
> Date: Sat, Jan 25, 2020 at 6:00 PM
> Subject: [sustagnet] Who will feed the world?
> To: <sustagnet@googlegroups.com>, sustain list <sustain@groups.io>
>
>
> In recent years a flurry of studies have argued the thesis that, crudely
> put, "Organic farming can feed the world". Frequently such studies display
> statistics that show that already, global agriculture is producing enough
> food calories to support its nearly 8 billion human inhabitants, were the
> calories distributed fairly. Unfortunately, energy intensive industrial
> methods are responsible for most of those calories. Synthetic nitrogen
> fertilizer alone is responsible for tripling global population in the last
> century. And unfortunately, current organic farming is also heavily
> dependent on fossil energy. And unfortunately, in the words of the prophets
> of old, the end of the oil age is nigh. In fact, decades ago, resource
> depletion and attendant ecological damage sent human consumption into
> overshoot of planetary carrying capacity, eroding the latter in ways that
> are obvious to students of this 'great turning'. For a synopsis of this
> argument, see my The Industrial Economy is Ending Forever: an Energy
> Explanation for Agriculturists and Everyone <http://karlnorth.com/?p=1176>
> .
>
> When a plague species occurs, its population eventually collapses, and
> this collapse will happen to the population of the species that William
> Catton in his landmark study, *Overshoot: the Ecological Basis of
> Revolutionary Change
> <https://www.amazon.com/Overshoot-Ecological-Basis-Revolutionary-Change/dp/0252009886/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1579989725&sr=8-1>
> *called
> Homo Colossus. In view of humanity's situation, in recent decades I have
> been exploring systems of food production that could support the humans
> that might survive the die-off. As an anthropologist by training as well as
> a farmer, I drew heavily on models of pre-industrial food production for
> inspiration and ideas. I recently summarized my findings in a paper, Human
> designs for ecosystem management and survival after the oil era
> <http://karlnorth.com/?p=1197>.
>
> As it happens, I recently discovered that anthropologist Robert McC.
> Netting had made a similar exploration his life work, culminating in the
> book, *Smallholders, Householders: Farm families and the ecology of
> sustainable agriculture
> <https://www.amazon.com/Smallholders-Householders-Intensive-Sustainable-Agriculture/dp/0804721025/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=netting%2C+robert&qid=1579990848&sr=8-1>,
> *published about the same time as my first effort on the subject, The
> Small Scale Integrated Farmstead: A Model for Sustainable Agriculture
> <https://www.amazon.com/Smallholders-Householders-Intensive-Sustainable-Agriculture/dp/0804721025/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=netting%2C+robert&qid=1579990848&sr=8-1>,
> in 1992. Netting corroborates in great detail the sophistication I found in
> intensively managed traditional agrarian systems the world over, which
> equal modern agriculture in productivity while supporting village
> populations on permanently managed land for many generations. Netting's
> examples of successful agrarian communities range from tropical Africa to
> alpine Switzerland, to Mayan milpa and Aztec chinampa systems. In every
> case the key to their success is ecological knowledge drawn from
> experience, not the technological superiority that is the mantra of the
> dominant modernist narrative.
>
> Hence, perhaps a kernel of truth lurks in the "Organic farming can feed
> the world" thesis, if we but turn seriously to the study and design of
> farms as ecosystems, and look to the best traditional models for a wealth
> of ideas for survival of the species as something other than Homo Colossus,
> as the oil age draws to an end.
>
>
> --
> Karl North - http://karlnorth.com/
> "Pueblo que canta no morira" - Cuban saying
> "They only call it class warfare when we fight back" - Anon.
> "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son
> will ride a camel."
> —Saudi saying
>
>
> --
> Visit the sustagnet group at
> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/sustagnet to post and browse
> messages
> ---
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> .
> --
> Lawrence F. London, Jr.
> lfljvenaura@gmail.com
> Avant Geared
> walnut and oak serving and kitchen cutting boards
> https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared
> <https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared/avant-geared-products/woodworking>
>
>
>
>

--
Lawrence F. London, Jr.
lfljvenaura@gmail.com
Avant Geared
walnut and oak serving and kitchen cutting boards
https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared
<https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared/avant-geared-products/woodworking>




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