Comments on: The Farmers Are At It Again

By: leo

leo — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 14:57:03 +0000

well thats exactly why i dont have dreads or a tie dyed shirt then things may have moved a bit quicker, permaculture also should have nothing to do with religion or belief but more and more articles i see contain this. i think farmers are put off, nobody would listen to me when i did have long hair and no fixed abode but when i did finally meet farmers (all of whom are nice people but a little misinformed) they took to the ideas described to them and recollected old styles of farming to me that were naturally permaculture techniques.

By: Bradley

Bradley — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 12:06:40 +0000

I dont want to sound as if im blaming ALL farmers for not implementing certain techniques into thier own farms, since yes you are right Richard, in that certain farming techniques have been actively encouraged through offical academic and agricultural channels for a very long time, i have traveled pretty extensively throughout Australia and have seen many farmers on many farms growing many different crops or livestock, some seem to have more common sense then others. A quick drive out west from Brisbane shows this, in the past there have been excuses for not doing certain things on farm, but with even the most simple technology or farm practice theres little excuse for any farmer to be doing some things, for example allowing stock to drink directly from river banks or dams, thats if you dont want to keep pulling them out of the mud when things start drying up.

By: Øyvind Holmstad

Øyvind Holmstad — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 15:43:50 +0000

The link for A Viable Food Future is broken, here is the new link:

http://www.utviklingsfondet.no/filestore/ViableFuture-web.pdf

Or download from the link at bottom of this page (pdf):

http://www.utviklingsfondet.no/Utviklingsfondet_-_forsiden/Aktuelt/Aktivitetskalender/Ny+rapport%3A+Verdens+matproduksjon+ved+et+veiskille.b7C_wtHWW6.ips

This is interesting stuff!

By: Paul Douglas

Paul Douglas — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 08:35:04 +0000

Richard,

I’ve been around hundreds of farmers over the last few decades and I’ve never seen any of them practice anything remotely similar to this. Just because “this way of thinking is well and truly entrenched” in your agricultural studies does not mean it is common farming practice.
I appreciate that many farmers are getting great qualifications and are becoming what Joel Salatin calls “agrarian intellectuals”, but I don’t belive they are the majority yet. I think in the next decade or so, these sorts of farming techniques with be the new paradigm and then we will truly have a system of PERMAnent agriCULTURE.

Paul

By: Richard

Richard — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 00:18:16 +0000

This sort of thing has been going on for decades, it’s not that farmers are just realising it now , it’s that some of us are only just looking at this side of farming. I studied Agricultural Science in the early nineties and this way of thinking was well and truly entrenched then.
If you haven’t noticed it, don’t blame the farmers.

By: Bradley

Bradley — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 04:40:22 +0000

Yep, i watched a recent Landline report on this and the only thing i could think was, What? its taken farmers this long to see the obvious, if its already growing there, and the animals eat it, might be a good idea to incorporate it into the farm system.
Better late then never, hopefully the process will be sped up Australia wide.

By: Øyvind Holmstad

Øyvind Holmstad — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 20:13:39 +0000

Read the new report “A Viable Food Future”, written by The Development Fund:

http://www.utviklingsfondet.no/filestore/AViableFoodFuture2.pdf