Subject: Farm scale permaculture, lets get those feet on the ground

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 1997 17:35:28 -0600

RE Not just farming etc. etc....
Wow, Aprial and Dan Et. Al., quite a lot of  writing on all this farm
stuff, I thought this was a great place for me to jump in.
Hi, I'm Mark, I have a bad farm habbit and I don't want to quit now or any
time soon.  I think if farms are good for nothing else they keep the well
armed masses in this country from having food riots and destroying the
world.  Ive been having quite the dialoge with Dan from Elfin on just this
topic and must say we have a number of disagreements.
I think sustainable farms are possibe and desireable.  I think mineral flow
is a very manageable issue and could be controled quite well by retaining
such things as animal bones after slaughtrer.  There is also plenty of
technology for powdering rocks which will also keep us going for a long
while if we do it right.  The major limiting element in our farm systems
today is nitrogen, which is easily delt with by planting more legumes and
improving our soil's  biology and overall mineral ballance.
    I also think hesitating get into farming is bad advice in this day and
age.  IF you really want to be a farmer, a dangerous and overworked
profession, there are oppprotunities available.  The average age of
american farmer is in the 50's, and the pool of young people who are
willing to do it is small.    Asking the neighbors in a rural comunity that
still has family farms will almost certianlly yeild job or volunteer
oppritunities on farms.   If you want to do it yourself, just try not to
get spread to thin.  Ask your county agent to visit with you BEFORE you try
anything, hey know lots of folks and may be able to provide opprotunities
with the very best of them.   Dan's right about plenty of other opinions,
big time.  Sorry if this advise D/N apply to you.
I'm interested in discussing farm scale permaculture, and I love to spout
off my opinions on farm issues.  I'm in school right now for a beginning
grass based dairy program and am very sold on the idea of maximizing
pasture usage and agroforestry to regenerate family farms.  This is
permaculture, it's just a little bigger and has more cows.

Mark Ludwig
[email-masked]

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 15 Jan 1997 09:37:50 -0500 (EST)

To be sustainable a food system must:
1) Generate more energy than it consumes,
2)  At a minimum not deplete its resource base; preferentially build it up
against difficult times (for the resource base),
3) Avoid depleting off-farm and out-of-bioregion resources.  (E.g. by
creating strip mines for limestone, fossil fuels, depending on financial
subsidies, etc.)

I have never seen a farm that meets all of these requirements which most any
organic garden can meet quite easily.  I am not sure if I have ever seen a
farm that meets ANY of them.  

These are not arbitrary requirements.  To be sustainable, something must be
able to keep going the way it is going indefinately.  (Not that it has to, it
just has to be able to.)  

I'll grant that there is a fuzzy zone where gardening and farming blend
together and I suspect that a thousandth of a percent of all land in food
production would be a high estimate for the area of such lands.

Sustainable agriculture is a nice myth, a story to head people in a less
destructive direction to buy time to get permaculture on the ground.  It also
is good propaganda to keep farms in family hands.  The idea that people won't
be hungry if they are farmers, as Mark Ludwig suggests, disregards facts.
 The last big gobble up of farms by agribiz, superficially seen as a credit
crisis, saw US farmers on food stamps.  They no more knew what to do with
their wheat and corn and soybeans than if it had been vegetation from Mars.
 The dairy farmer who lived next to me in Massachusetts for a decade or so
didn't have a vegetable garden, didn't know how to slaughter his own beef,
and depended on me for eggs (which I swapped for milk.)  He could at least
drink the milk.  And he knew how to catch the trout in the creek.  He
anticipated the breakdown in society and suggested that we blow up all the
bridges around and become an hidden self-sufficient island.  Well he's dead
from other causes and we never got far with THAT idea.  

Are we afraid that too many sensitive farmers are reading this list or can we
cut the bull and stop with the "sustainable agriculture" hype.  It's a nice
idea whose time will never come.

Lets bypass the issue with the phrase "sustainable food systems" so Mark can
go play at permaculture on farms and still be part of the gang.  (This sounds
sarcastic on re-reading--we should all be playing at permaculture--its fun!)

Finally, there will be flames and disagreements 1) that my definition is too
stringent, 2) that it is irrelevant, and 3) that it leaves out other
attributes, like a living for the farmer.  If you think about it, you can see
that every addition will be a subcategory of the three criteria or else not
strictly necessary for sustainablity.  For example, a good living from
farmers is subsumed under not depleting one's resource base.  If farmers
aren't a resource for their farms, they should run for office where they'll
be out of the way.  Having said that, it is reasonable and predictable that
people with axes to grind, such as more money from farming, will make that a
separate category and put it at the head of the list.  Like Murphy and God
(who may be the same),  politics is everywhere.

The economic issue is one we in permaculture need to be careful about,
however. There is no reason why sustainable food systems must have money
aspects.  A garden that produces food from found resources and saved seed,
for example, is independent of cash.  While cash is the common denominator in
Western society because it is a way to control people, we can deal with it
without granting it exaggerated status.  Its handy when its there and we can
use it, then, to not need it in times when there is less or none.  Most
discussions on sustainability see cash as essential as say, water.  That is
giving up before we begin to design.

For Mother Earth, Dan Hemenway, Yankee Permaculture Publications (since
1982), Elfin Permaculture workshops, lectures, Permaculture Design Courses,
consulting and permaculture designs (since 1981), and now correspondence
permaculture training by email. Copyright, 1996, Dan & Cynthia Hemenway, P.O.
Box 2052, Ocala FL 34478 USA  [email-masked]  

We don't have time to rush.