Permaculture News

https://www.amazon.com/One-Straw-Revolution-Introduction-Natural-Class… https://www.permaculturenews.org/2020/07/25/the-philosophy-of-masanobu…

Counterpoint: In permaculture design you intentionally dedicate part of your own property as a wild area, called Zone 5.[0] >Do not touch! Well… kind of. Zone 5 is the “wild child” of all the zones, and one that doesn’t need (and should not have!) any interaction. Do nothing and let nature take its course. Even the smallest permaculture garden should have a zone 5. This zone attracts wildlife, which will encourage diversity and benefit our animals and garden. Zone 5 is a completely wild ecosystem, a great place to observe and learn from nature. [0] https://www.permaculturenews.org/2017/04/07/five-zones-permaculture-zo…

"Fruit flies and yeast in a bottle are embarked upon suicidal endeavors. They can’t help it. They don’t know any better, lacking the cognitive equipment to 'know' anything at all. "Human beings, we are told, are different.... But history teaches us that all too often, human beings simply refuse to apply [what they know] and, like the mindless fruit flies, march blindly into oblivion. [Recent examples follow.] [0]" [0] https://www.permaculturenews.org/2010/09/20/fruit-flies-in-a-bottle/ It's not that we're doing nothing. But we're doing too little too late. Human lives a century from now will be much more limited because of this failure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism 1798 book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Essay_on_the_Principle_of_Population

I have a handful of old back-to-the-land-era books from the 70s, and for protein the most compelling way I've seen it recommended is to create a fish pond and have ducks. That will set you up with meat and eggs! The traditional Vietnamese style of farming[1] seems to provide full nutrition needs in a compact space, and it's based on that model. It should provide all the needs on as small as .5 acres (and has been successfully proven for many years and many people!) [1] https://www.permaculturenews.org/2008/10/04/vuon-ao-chuong-the-traditi…

Sounds like they need a little Permaculture… https://www.permaculturenews.org/2009/12/11/greening-the-desert-ii-fin… The video above is a followup (6 years later) to greening a section of the desert in 2003.

First, population is leveling off, not booming. Second, yes, by definition regenerative agriculture is scalable. It might require as much as double the labor requirements (so 3% of the population rather than 1.5%) but it's likely that automation will amortize that. See "How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20537409 which describes some aspects of China's agriculture that are regenerative. Also, I recommend Toby Hemenway's "Redesigning Civilization with Permaculture" talk for background and future directions. http://tobyhemenway.com/videos/redesigning-civilization-with-permacult… Geoff Lawton's "Greening the Desert" project converted salty desert to producing figs and other food in just two years. https://permaculturenews.org/2007/03/01/greening-the-desert-now-on-you… - - - - Just to mention one (gross) example: It's a little-known fact that Eisenia fetida worms will devour "night soil" (#2's) and produce clean-smelling castings, while doubling in biomass in approximately 40-50 days. This could easily be scaled to handle urban sewage densities, returning that matter directly to the ecosystem without expensive treatment/chemicals etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenia_fetida

There is permaculture. Growing crops turned out an important part of it but the original thought was the design of a permanent culture. https://www.permaculturenews.org/what-is-permaculture/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture

TIL: https://www.permaculturenews.org/2016/03/14/is-newspaper-safe-for-your…

This was on the outside https://www.permaculturenews.org/2017/03/27/aggressive-fungus-found-gr…

Yes, that's a very effective method. Such initiatives are all over the world, and those "seed bombs" are being distributed even from planes. It's based on ancient method of seedballs, promoted by Fukuoka. https://www.permaculturenews.org/2014/06/18/making-seedballs-ancient-m… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqYTz6-zGcg

> Self-driving cars are going trigger a new wave of automobile growth, at least in the US. They won't be dangerous, will run clean, be super convenient and unbelievably inexpensive to own and operate. My guess is that you are wrong. At least what comes to driving in cities. As the (current) main problem of cars in cities is not accidents, emissions, lack of convenience or even cost. It is the massive amount of space one car takes[1]. And self driving tech is not going to do anything to solve that. If not the opposite, when empty cars are driving around looking for a parking spot. [1] https://permaculturenews.org/images/bus_car_bike_compare.jpg

No, it's simply a collectively difficult thing to accomplish on our current path. Your take is simply a disempowering reason to stay stuck. We can always reconnect with nature in various ways. Your perspective is self-limiting and keeps you from realizing ways to accomplish it. Other people are probably figuring out how to do it and you haven't even bothered to find out how. Here's the first link I found from googling "how to reconnect with nature while living in a city." These are decent approaches and I would say are barely scratching the surface. https://permaculturenews.org/2017/02/20/can-connect-nature-cities/

Additionally: Digging trenches and planting at the appropriate time have long been known to be useful in these arid places. https://permaculturenews.org/2008/11/19/desert-ways/

The permaculture slogan for handling water is "stop, spread, and soak". A contour is at a right angle to runoff, so by digging a swale with a downhill berm you bring it to a halt. And yes, you can deliver water elsewhere by putting it on a 1-2% grade. You can get some more context on what I'm describing from this article, though it sounds like your swale might be shallower. https://permaculturenews.org/2015/07/24/how-to-build-a-swale-on-contou… If you do it, you might consider filling yours with wood chips for appearance, easy maintenance, extra filtration, and to encourage soil building.

Indeed. Permaculture practitioners have borrowed heavily from provably long-term sustainable aquaponics systems, though these tend to be larger scale (field-sized) and seasonal (wet season you have ponds, dry season you don't). I haven't seen numbers on effectiveness, but similar to the article you linked, there's fly traps (easy to enter, hard to find their way out) that float on a pond - you put a stinky bit of old meat, cow pat, etc in there, flies lay eggs, fish either eat the larvae that drop through slats, or the flies when they touch the water. Similarly, small solar lights at night near the water's surface to attract more free food. Geoff Lawton's 80 square metre aquaponics pond here: https://permaculturenews.org/2014/01/25/perfect-permaculture-fish-pond…

There's an episode [1] of Bill Mollison's Global Gardener series that addresses this well. [1] I don't know of a link to watch it, but this blog post explains it well enough: https://permaculturenews.org/2014/10/11/discovering-oasis-american-des…

You're right, industrial rates in Anchorage are around 11ct/kWh. Also, it's possible to use LEDs tuned to the absorbtion spectra of chlorophyll, as you say. If my back of the envelope calculations above are wrong by more than an order of magnitude, it might in fact be a commercially viable option for farming. Is this [1] the Singaporean project you were refering to? They probably don't need heating, but nonetheless their quoted energy needs of 3$/month/structure are astonishingly low. [1] http://permaculturenews.org/2014/07/25/vertical-farming-singapores-sol…

Deep pipe irrigation (if they aren't already using it). http://permaculturenews.org/2014/04/24/get-started-efficient-irrigatio…

It's long been known how to fix soil; see for example from 1987: "Towards Holistic Agriculture: A Scientific Approach" by R.W. Widdowson: https://www.elsevier.com/books/towards-holistic-agriculture/widdowson/… Or from 1911: https://permaculturenews.org/files/farmers_of_forty_centuries.pdf More: http://soilandhealth.org/ Adding rock dust works wonders too: https://remineralize.org/ My wife and I wrote a FOSS garden simulator in the 1990s (a six+ person-year labor of love) to help people understand some of this: http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/summary_gwi.html I got the idea while working as the Program Administrator on summer for the NOFA-NJ Organic Farm Certification Program in the later 1980s, but it took many years (including more education in grad school in biology) to make the software. See especially from the help system of that software on how conventional agriculture destroys the soil: http://www.gardenwithinsight.com/help100/00000385.htm "In the soil, tiny charged particles called micelles usually have many areas of negative charge (called sites) on their surfaces. Positively charged ions (cations) are drawn to these negative charge sites and stick to the clay particles (are adsorbed). In most soils, 99% of soil cations can be found attached to micelles (clay particles and organic matter) and 1% can be found in solution. Mineral cations in the soil (mainly Ca2+, Mg2+, K+ and Na+) maintain an equilibrium between adsorption to the negative sites and…

Re. reversing desertification: Came across this technique - imprinting - recently - seems interesting: Imprinting soils – Creating Instant Edge for Large Scale Revegetation of Barren Lands: 1) https://permaculturenews.org/2012/09/19/imprinting-soils-creating-inst… Excerpt: [ Imprinting is a method for instantly adding what permaculturists call the ‘edge effect’ to soils, utilising a heavy and dimpled/wedged roller to ‘imprint’ soils with patterned depressions. The bottom of these depressions then become collection points for all the crucial elements needed for seed germination and soil building: seeds themselves, water, organic matter (including plant debris and animal manure) and wind-blown silt and clay particles. ] Check the before and after photos in the article. 2) http://imprinting.org/ Bio of Dr. Robert Dixon, who started this: 3) http://imprinting.org/biography.htm

You can convert it to oil instead of burning(which releases dioxins/heavy metals and other chemicals). http://www.plastic2oil.com https://www.instructables.com/id/Waste-Plastic-to-Fuel/ https://permaculturenews.org/2014/03/21/home-scale-conversion-plastics… https://plastics.americanchemistry.com/Plastics-to-Oil/ https://www.sciencealert.com/holy-crap-watch-this-guy-turn-plastic-bac…