Subject: Re: "sustainable" v. permaculture

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 1998 23:28:34 EST

Carly,

Sure, got a few weeks?

"Sustainable agriculture," as taught by any educational institution that I
have yet to hear about, is a present day oxymoron or two buzzwords linked
together. Any monocropped system run by machinery, sustained by chemicals and
worked by fewer and fewer people is, by definition, unsustainable if the
fossil fuels, pertrochemicals and transportation economics are factored in.
Monocropping, per se, devalues land and soil and people. We are hooked on it.
It is sort of like a junkie who has gone off heroin and onto crack or speed.

"Permaculture" which is locally focused, polyculture emphasizing ordering of
natural systems organized to meet the needs of all creation within it, may be
sustainable or at least come nearer to approximations thereof. 

Probably not as profitable to corporations, though, unless they succeed in
irradiating permaculture, co-opting and pre-empting it as "sustainable" has
been.

Milo Clark
Berkeley CA USA