Large scale permaculture

I am interested in any work that has been done on how practical and cost effective a large scale commercial growing operation using permaculture principles is or might be.

Does anybody know of:

1) Any publicly available study of the potential of large scale permaculture 2) Any case of a large scale permaculture operation now working or under construction

David

Reply to
David Hare-Scott
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Lettuce, tomatos, cucumbers, You can find the latter two in the ABC landline archives.

As mentioned above.

BTW. "large scale" means having significant impact on the Australian marke, rather than large scale as in broad acre,

Reply to
Terryc

look here:

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sure where you are but it's as close as google..... Jock

Reply to
Jock

Woops, those are hydroponics. Real brain fart there.

Tried the Permaculture sites? Its whole focus is really small scale, although I believe they have organised a few village size sites in various places OS, such as Africa, Cuba, etc.

Reply to
Terryc

g'day david,

there is this place here in south aus'

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't know that it fits your scale or not they are growing edible stuff using p/c principals, but it is still marginal land that is being used for less the habitat which it would serve the community better as.

permaculture is more a mind set of ideas to look after the planet better, once commercialism comes into it then profit will over ride.

anyhow the place above was featured on ABC landline last sunday.

permaculture would be all about farming sustainably, that is supporting a well developed habitat as well as being close to those who need what you are growing (food miles), it's not that you can produce something out of very marginal land.

On Mon, 7 Apr 2008 21:56:18 +1000, "David Hare-Scott" wrote: snipped With peace and brightest of blessings,

len & bev

-- "Be Content With What You Have And May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In A World That You May Not Understand."

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Reply to
len gardener

again david,

here is the transcript link to that food forest story i don't think it is the same as the food forest link:

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On Mon, 7 Apr 2008 21:56:18 +1000, "David Hare-Scott" snipped With peace and brightest of blessings,

len & bev

-- "Be Content With What You Have And May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In A World That You May Not Understand."

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Reply to
len gardener

I agree about the mindset. But we are embedded in a largely free enterprise society in which you have to be commercially viable to keep going. Mollison's philosophy is such that he would remake much of society, its values and motives not merely how we get our food. Although he does give a nod to "legality, people, culture, trade and commerce" as a component in creating a design. So perhaps he does accept that commerce and making a dollar is not altogether evil. The question is how do you do it in a society whose agriculture is based on permaculture?

I know of small scale operations where on a few acres a family is growing enough to mainly feed themselves and sell some to make a dollar to buy what they cannot grow. This makes that family very happy, they have the ability to live in the way that they see it is proper to live.

However Mollison puts forward the idea that permaculture could/should replace broadacre farming altogether. This leads me to a problem. I cannot see how every family can have a few acres nor the will/ability to farm it. I cannot see how we can get away from at least some specialists who use their skill to get food from the land efficiently on a scale that permits the feeding of the non-farmers who produce other things. In the long run the choice is to do it sustainably or to starve when we have mined out the soil. So what replaces broadacre?

David

Reply to
David Hare-Scott

They need to become organic.

Reply to
Terryc

I haven't seen anything by them directly, but Pollan and many reporters are showing some of their outputs.

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from the Headwaters site:

According to Michael Pollan, on one 100 acres of grassland and 450 acres of woods, Salatin and his family now produce:

? 30,000 dozen eggs ? 10,000 broilers ? 800 stewing hens ? 50 beeves (25,000 pounds of beef) ? 250 hogs ? 1,000 turkeys ? 500 rabbits

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I've gotta tell ya', these figures impress the hell outta me.

I'm not sure if this is the sort of information you are looking for. Your questions got me interested and searching your terms found quite a few news articles about polyface.

I find it encouraging, and I have read others state this, that permaculture, organic, sustainability....you have the idea....*can* feed the world. In a safe and harmonious manner.

Charlie

Reply to
Charlie

AGRICULTURE IN THE CITY A Key to Sustainability in Havana, Cuba read it online or download it

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a squiz at
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Reply to
George.com

g'day david,

as humasn we need to get aways from the broadacre export farmer mentality, the cost to habitat destruction is huge, and it also impacts on our weather ie.,. reducing our chances of rain in the droughts that are part of earths cycle. the b/a farmers here decimate vast aeas of habitat on somewaht merginal ground, and after around 7

+- years they simply move on and leave the newly created desert behind there is no requirement as there is with mining to rehabilitate the area as they further encroach.

our farmers need to be in our communities where on small holdings maybe up to 40 acres +- they produce in season staples for those communities and supplied from farmer to consumer no middle man, the farmer then gets to share the common wealth of his community, instead of the way they now do it through a series of middle men who onsell not so fresh food at prices people can barely afford and not representative of what the farmers meager offering was.

like that adelaide hills thing that land should basically be returned to habitat is has always been very marginal land (why do people think the farmers walked away from it after they ahd milked it for waht they could?), anyone living there should alocate enough land use for their own personnal food needs, as any commercial venture sooner or later is driven by the need for more and more turn over.

people can grow enough of the non staples their family needs in a very small space, we had this type of system back in the late 40's and into the 50's+, fresh in season food was affordable for all families, and the food miles was very low so another positive factor, the farmer casme around a couple or so times a week selling fresh produce, or we went to the farm. eggs were right there as fresh as the day from the farm, and fresh unadulterated milk was delivered intoi 1 gallon stainless billy at our front door not sure may have been each second day?? homes should be modest enough and land sufficient enough for families to grow some of their own.

so to me the permaculture sustainable farmer is the one who is moving closer to his consumers, not lauding themselves growing stuff on denuded dry habitat land.

mollison uses those asian communities in asia where the farmer is a neighbour and produces all the staples for that neighbourhood, makes a lot of sense and no good putting it in the too hard basket because if the oil crisis is as bad as what is indicated then our broadacre farmers are going to have huge problems getting their produce to market at an affordable profit making price.

need to think outside the square, the answers will come and the sooner the better.

On Tue, 8 Apr 2008 11:15:17 +1000, "David Hare-Scott" wrote: snipped With peace and brightest of blessings,

len & bev

-- "Be Content With What You Have And May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In A World That You May Not Understand."

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Reply to
len gardener

How do you make this system work for Los Angeles or Mexico City or Bombay? If the largest city you've seen is Sydney you don't really understand the problem.

Reply to
J. Clarke

On Tue, 8 Apr 2008 14:41:57 -0400, "J. Clarke" wrote: snipped

maybe john just maybe it is you who have no understanding of "the problem"??

once you take the liberty to pidgeon hole what is current then you take away any thinking outside the square.

all tall buildings have rooves?

there are balconies?

most cities have large parklands?

melbourne is noted for it's culturaly diversified gardens shared by occupants who live in medium to high rise tennaments.

and back in the 40's and 50's over here what produce the market farmers had left they took into the general market situated in the city proper where all could access it by various public transport, now the markets are so situated it is a hectic drive to even attempt to get there.

and people lived in suburbs and business was in the city.

and in your scenerio or the current scenerio food is going to become very very expensive to buy i the cities, and much can happen to stop the harvest or the harvest being distributed, you may be affluent enough right now? but very many aren't and everyone could be in their shoes at any time.

in the US of A some of the so called fresh food can be in transit for up to 2 weeks from what i have read at various times?

i never said it was going to be easy, but when do we start? when it is way too late maybe?

outside the square and the comfort zone. With peace and brightest of blessings,

len & bev

-- "Be Content With What You Have And May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In A World That You May Not Understand."

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Reply to
len gardener

Any cites to support that claim of moving on after 7 years? I've not seen any such suggestion anywhere even though I do know that Queensland has a reputation for being full of knuckledraggers.

Unfortunately that thought now lives with the Ark.

The best land near the cities has all gone under revolting McMansions and people actually choose those things over living in high rises or older smaller houses.

My Grandfather used to run a market garden in Botany in NSW. Every time I drive anywhere near Sydney Airport, I think of those market gardens and how fertile that land would have been given what is growing in the area round there now. Mind you if it had come down the line of inheritance, my bloody cousin would also have sold it off to developers as he has done with the farm that he inherited as the eldest male. So poof, there goes a farm of 5 generations on land that was first selected and cleared by the first ancestor who came to this country. No sentiment for the fact that it was the only farm left in the district which was still entire and as selected and which was the only one still in original hands after 150 years. And because he likes money. And he really IS a good farmer.

Have you looked over the back fences in your area? What you say is all fine in theory, but I know from living in the country where there is lots of land, and even in the drought we still had enough water to grow veggies round here, how few people actually grow anything edible. Not even a herb patch!

They'll go and spend 2 bucks buying a plastic packed bunch of miserable coriander rather than spending a few minutes putting in a few seeds and doing a bit of watering now and then. A whole seasons worht of coriander could be had for the 2 bucks they spend, but they'd rather buy it than put in a small effort.

And if you've taken notice of some of the questions that appear here time and time again, it is obvious how out of touch with the soil most people are, and this is supposed to be a gardening group!

No-one with even a modicum of observational skills and who has grubbed about in soil for more than a few years would use a raft of chemicals on plants or would fail to understand the importance of insects in having a balance in the garden. But the basic questions keep coming... "how do I kill....", "how do I improve...." I often wonder whether people have heard of the library/google or know the role of the earthworm, or understand the most simple things about the soil, like microflora etc.

Most people seem to see their garden environment as a place that they treat like they are doing some form of extension of their home decorating. " A row of Mop Top Robonia and on the other side some standard roses" type thinking. That is all quite nice to achieve, but first principles of soil and it's management and how everything else relies on it seems to be almost an afterthought.

You and I both know that plants and gardens aren't home decorating, but we actually grub in the soil. Too many people seem to get wacky ideas from those ghastly TV/magazines on gardens rather than getting out there and learning by doing. And there really is no better teacher than time and experience.

Given that people now have to live in that denuded dry habitat land (and increasinlgy will have to do so in the future) I see no problem with trying to learn to use it and rehabilitate it.

They already DO have that problem. But given that consumers don't bloody care how many food miles their food has done, just so long as they can eat what they want, when they want, it is consumers who will get hit time and time again till they get a bit smarter and start to shop smarter. I cannot believe that any Australian would buy oranges produced in California, but the shops are full of them and they sell. I won't buy them but I certainklys ee many shoppers who will buy them without even checking the little sticky label on them.

No it won't. It will just continue with consumers telling the government to DO something. They are too lazy to do anything themselves like dig a veggie patch or even grow a few herbs. I despair of humanity. A good dose of plague might not be such a bad thing.

Reply to
FarmI

but wouldn't most of us, if we could? :-) in reality of course, societies remake themselves as they go (seeing as how benign dictators are so very thin on the ground ;-)

Although he does give a nod to

well, i'm fabulously iffy about permaculture - not because of the permaculture itself, which is fine, but because of all the dippy twits who do everything badly & then walk away because it hasn't worked. also, it's quite a quiet movement (like organics in general, biodynamics, etc) so i believe you would find there's a great deal more going on than you immediately realise. and yes, making a dollar isn't inherently evil whatsoever. most of us cannot (for example) make shoes - we need money for that. true self-sufficiency by one person or family is impossible. it becomes possible within communities, though. permaculture farms most likely just carry on in obscurity, we don't know that they are there, really, even if we buy their products we can't see the farm & probably don't think about it much.

see, i believe that sort of thing is really much more common than we think. much of it can't be measured via "market forces" & other foolishness, so it's not. things that can't be measured via capitalist economics tends not to be counted statistically, so we cannot officially "know" about them. (sigh).

\ truthfully, i'm not sure anything does "replace" it. you'll have noticed that broadacre farming is changing itself, though. like you said, the choices are rapidly becoming to either do it sustainably, or starve. perhaps movements such as the permaculture movement have an obligation to cease being slightly obscure & to get out there more, i'm not sure; but when you consider things such as how mainstream organics has become (despite how quiet it is), how the most ossified farming brains are coming to use nature belts & windbreaks & things like that as part of their practice, i suppose that broadacre (for grains, etc) will carry on, just a bit differently than in the past.

you are dead right in that not everyone can have a bit of land, & truthfully i doubt that everyone should (imagine if everyone had to travel the distances many countryfolk do! it would be unsustainable). yet things such as the current tendency for completely mainstream gardening magazines & newspaper columns to encourage people to grow what they can in their yards or balconies, etc, is a taste of where this is all going (in my hopelessly optimistic view). sadly, the pace of progressive change can be positively glacial, it seems to me.

one last tiny rant: one thing i would love to see, which i can't see happening yet (but is probably going to have to happen very soon) is that governments need to put their foot down re overconsumption. according to statistics (tee hee) something like a third of westerners have an anti-consumerist mentality & tend not to participate in rabid consumption. governments think this is Bad & want people to consume until they drop (then consume something else to get them back up again). the day that govts get the brainwave that overconsumption itself is what is bad, things are going to change very much for the better, for everyone, because they have the power to legislate and we do not. in the meantime it is up to individuals to buy local, to limit consumption of stuff they don't need, etc; but people who do so find a lot of support with like minds (of which there are actually many).

all these things are interrelated. thank you for reading my rant! :-) kylie

Reply to
0tterbot

Well "the when it's too late" scenario seemed to be what got the Cubans working on the problem so I wouldn't be surprised if it takes the same thing to get the first world doing the same thing. In Australia, given our problems, I don't think it will be too long before we are faced with the need to "do something" but for the US, I think it will take longer. There are many Americans who still don't believe in climate cahnage but I don't think there would be many Australians who don't believe in it. Till there is a shift in attitude in the majority of the popultion, no change happens as there is no pressure to do so.

Reply to
FarmI

Who cares. Megatropoliss are not that great for the planet anyway and there is really no modern reason for them.

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Reply to
Terryc

Len I agree with your sentiments that we need to change our way of thinking but it will take more than that.

Very harsh environments for growing, with much effort you could get some boutique crops but not enough to really matter. It would be very inefficient.

Yes but the people need them. Sure strolling through a nice vege garden is relaxing but what of those who want to play sport etc?

Melbourne is quite low density compared to the mega cities. The Aussie 1/4 acre block is very uncommon in many places. We have no experience of what really high density housing is like.

And those market gardens have been swallowed up by housing developments that can hardly be torn down now. The population is 3 times what it was then. The institutions and organisation of 60 years ago will not serve for the next 60.

I support your philosophy that major change in how we deal with the world is essential. And backyard and inner city growing plots would certainly be a step in the right direction. But this will never be more than a minor part of the calories required to feed a big city.

Look at the people who are doing this on a small scale (ie one or a few families). They need acres to do it. Evan if yields could be increased many times (doubtful, especially in Oz) those acres just aren't available in or near big cities, nor are the numbers of skilled people prepared to lovingly tend them.

It is this very problem of the efficiency of scale that made me ask the question in the first place.

David

Reply to
David Hare-Scott

How do we prevent them forming? How do take down the ones that are there?

David

Reply to
David Hare-Scott

Well it would rip right through those mega cities. A nice virulent avian flu that is human transmitted would do the trick, coming soon to your neighbourhood? I hope not.

There is absolutely no doubt that in the end climate change, overpopulation, land degradation, water pollution, peak oil and daytime soap operas WILL be dealt with. The challenge is to do it without allowing the four horsemen to cause untold misery to billions along the way.

David

Reply to
David Hare-Scott

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