and they will continue to do so until there is nothing left living and free.

This is why I think sickness or age pensions should have been flat, independent on your former earnings, not stressing people to earn so much, and instead living sustainable lives.

ah, had such a discussion quite recently with a biochemistry grad student who was very enthusiastic about C4 rice. I asked him if he ever had heard of SRI before. (He hadn’t – I showed him the Cornell website). I pointed out to him that I saw this as a symptom of a skewed (screwed?) education system. In a saner world, wouldn’t we make sure our biology experts get a broad education when it comes to a subject such as rice that ensures they at least have heard of Fukuoka’s contemplations, of SRI, of the history of growing rice by the paddy method, and a number of other important aspects rather than exclusively receiving specialist training “just on the properties of rubisco”?

Having said that, people from the US and their attitude towards tech is a subject of its own. And certainly one which at least in part seems to have been shaped by DC comics (not for the better). I remember that the english Wikipedia entry for “radioactivity” for quite some time stated that “contrary to common belief, exposure to radioactive waste causes cancer and death, rather than granting superpowers”. Says a lot about what’s going on inside people’s heads if they consider such a statement as appropriate for an encyclopedia, actually.

The more I think about this, the more I am drawn to a conclusion I actually don’t like. It would be a very good thing to have a piece of software, available under a free license, that makes some aspects of permaculture design – in particular, polyculture design in conjunction with earthworks – simple, and hence accessible to a broad audience. Why don’t I like that idea? There’s no substitute for both close observation and doing the digging and planting. We certainly do not want an army of polyculture designers armed with software and an attitude of “if the world does not behave the way it should according to these models, all the worse for the world”. On the other hand, observations keep on reminding me that the most effective way in order to get the point across what sort of approach permaculture actually is when addressing a techie audience seems to be to let them play around with and explore a piece of software. Typical issues such a tool should address are: “Given these microclimatic conditions, this is a long list of species we might want to take a closer look at”, “this is a complete list of ground cover legumes that might work for this soil and microclimate”, “in order to meet the nitrogen requirements of this acre, we will use this approach”, “the strategy to supply food for predators through the seasons is presently incomplete – and the list of nectary plants that might fill the early summer food gap for predatory insects is…”, “the economic potential for this particular timber species is…” etc. (I sometimes feel that itch in my fingers to write just such a tool, and I’m quite confident I could cobble together a useful working prototype within one week of concentrated work. But deep inside, I’m still a bit unconvinced about whether this would be such a good idea.)

The point is that many techies presently have pretty much no clue about the actual level of technical sophistication in permaculture. And if I may say so – neither have a number of “permies”. The way I understand it, permaculture is about both science and wisdom (and not geomantic feng-shui herb spirals). The “wisdom” part being especially important with respect to the problem that “an idea is a very dangerous thing if it is the only one you have” – something which I encounter very often in discussions about all sorts of things – including GMOs. But that (techies having a wrong mental picture of permaculture or none at all) seems like a solvable problem to me.

A final (unrelated) comment, coming back to rice now: The evidence seems to be that growing more food might not be the best strategy to deal with a massively growing population. I’ve come to the conclusion that both overconsumption in the “first world” and population growth in the “third world” have a common cause: old age security. Who will feed, clothe and house me when I am old and my physical strength isn’t anymore what it has been? The first world philosophy is: “a strong economy, retirement savings, my pension insurance fund, etc.” – hence the need for an industry that keeps on creating and satisfying artifical wants – which goes hand in hand with excessive resource consumption. The third world philosophy is: my descendants. This goes hand in hand with large families and population explosion.

So – if we were serious about actually solving problems, wouldn’t we then think hard about how to systematically reduce the amount of effort that perpetually has to be expended in order to provide our needs? Sort of, can’t we eliminate the need to till by producing food from perennial crops? Or along the lines of “By the time when I’m old, the nut trees which I planted will be producing prolifically, economic security problem solved.” Hmmm. I seriously wonder if anyone ever had such a ‘funny’ idea… (Evidently, that’s not what mainstream economic thinking would try to do – remember the need to make the world more complicated by multiplying wants?)

You start the article with:

“I’m often accused of murdering millions.”

That makes me wonder – by whom? By gardeners, or rather by people who never grew an ounce of food themselves? The biggest single problem I identify with the food supply systems which we have today is that in the industrialised nations, the majority of people by now seem to have basically no knowledge about growing food – and still make decisions about how it should be done.