Subject: Re: [permaculture] Fwd: Permaculture TV ... Dr Phil Howard, MSU
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 2009 10:50:58 -0800
Dear Dr. Howard,
RE The food system involves all of
the steps required to produce food
and get it to our plates–from farming and
processing to distribution and consumption.
The food system does not--or should not--end on our plates.
I hope you can draw on past experience, especially at UCSC, to note
this. The food system--to be a system--must not end but continue. The
process goes through when the food in back to a non-food elemental
state via composting or other decomposition processes so it is once
again available as food to the soil food web.
I have a small business taking that linear food "system" you describe
and extending it to its true circular form.
I support a process where people gather uneaten but harvested food,
more deliver it to a local soup kitchen, others help prepare food for
the hungry, and then I take food scraps and waste from the plate home
to the compost pile and the chickens.
In this way, I complete the circle, returning the nutrients, elements,
gases, and other materials back into the soil. I hope to enlarge this
project and begin returning compost to the farmers.