It seems Darwin was a permaculturist!

In his days globetrotting aboard HMS Beagle, Darwin set in motion the transformation of a dead, volcanic island rock – Ascension Island, described by nearby islanders as "a cinder" – into a green, rain-creating oasis. How did he do it?

Ascension was an arid island, buffeted by dry trade winds from southern Africa. Devoid of trees at the time of Darwin and Hooker’s visits, the little rain that did fall quickly evaporated away.

Egged on by Darwin, in 1847 Hooker advised the Royal Navy to set in motion an elaborate plan. With the help of Kew Gardens – where Hooker’s father was director – shipments of trees were to be sent to Ascension.

The idea was breathtakingly simple. Trees would capture more rain, reduce evaporation and create rich, loamy soils. The "cinder" would become a garden.

So, beginning in 1850 and continuing year after year, ships started to come. Each deposited a motley assortment of plants from botanical gardens in Europe, South Africa and Argentina.

Soon, on the highest peak at 859m (2,817ft), great changes were afoot. By the late 1870s, eucalyptus, Norfolk Island pine, bamboo, and banana had all run riot. – BBC

And he did it by breaking what is to some a cardinal rule, the rule of not using non-native plant species. (This island never had any ‘natives’, as it came into existence from being vomited up out of the ocean through volcanic activity.)

Dr Dave Wilkinson is an ecologist at Liverpool John Moores University, who has written extensively about Ascension Island’s strange ecosystem.

He first visited Ascension in 2003.

"I remember thinking, this is really weird," he told the BBC.

"There were all kinds of plants that don’t belong together in nature, growing side by side. I only later found out about Darwin, Hooker and everything that had happened," he said.

Dr Wilkinson describes the vegetation of "Green Mountain" – as the highest peak is now known – as a "cloud forest". The trees capture sea mist, creating a damp oasis amid the aridity.

However, this is a forest with a difference. It is totally artificial. – BBC

Imagine what could happen if people could see the earth-transforming potential evidenced here – and take up the urgent challenge and joy of utilising intelligent plant assembly to create productive food forests everywhere!

Dr. Wilkinson seems to be excited:

"What it tells us is that we can build a fully functioning ecosystem through a series of chance accidents or trial and error."

In effect, what Darwin, Hooker and the Royal Navy achieved was the world’s first experiment in "terra-forming". They created a self-sustaining and self-reproducing ecosystem in order to make Ascension Island more habitable. – BBC

Have you ever tried to instill a concept in a child or adult, and got excited to observe an apparent spark of realisation in their eyes, just to see your excitement suddenly dissipate when the person speaks… when you realise that ’spark’ was totally off base? Unfortunately Dr. Wilkinson appears to have come to a remarkable conclusion – the island’s cobbled-together eco-system should be studied, not for re-greening all the dead spaces we’ve created on the Earth, but for colonising Mars instead.

Wilkinson thinks that the principles that emerge from that experiment could be used to transform future colonies on Mars. In other words, rather than trying to improve an environment by force, the best approach might be to work with life to help it "find its own way".

Believe me Dr. Wilkinson – if you got out the gardening gloves and put a thousand spaceship loads of mixed plants on the red rock, you will not a habitable planet make.

How about people take more notice of such discoveries to do something real and viable, right here on terra firma? And to the BBC – please… for everyone’s sake – get with the program….

Further Reading:

• The Biology of Global Warming
• Greening the Desert
• The Development of Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration
• A Call to Large Scale Earth Healing and Lessons from the Loess Plateau

Tongue-in-cheek instructional video

Note: This is an update on PRI’s position and direction, and an opportunity for you to get paid to help!

The short version: We’re now paying you to write for us! Click here to get started.

The background/long version follows:

Over the last two years since I took over the running of this site, I’ve been pleased to see significant growth in traffic. I’m not so narrow-minded as to believe this is just due to my efforts or Geoff and Nadia Lawton’s or the rest of the PRI team, however. Aside from the tremendous support and input from the wider permaculture community, I also note that current events and the spread of information through the internet is threatening to actually wake the world up – and this ‘awakening’ is seeing an unprecedented growth in interest in sustainability, transition and the creation of resilient people systems. This interest certainly isn’t coming too soon, but better late than never.

For whatever reasons, though, this site is today regularly recognised as one of the, or even the, leading permaculture website worldwide. This has come about with a lot of help from readers like yourself, and permaculture project leaders and workers worldwide. This growth is helping increase permaculture exposure, and is helping our aim to drive permaculture into mainstream consciousness. (Examples: CNN, SBS, ABC, etc..)

But, whenever a site or entity grows, there are always questions about its purpose. I want to share the Permaculture Research Institute’s intentions as succinctly as possible here, and also solicit your support to help us in our goals – goals I believe many of you subscribe to. And no, I’m not asking for donations! (Although these are always appreciated!)

The Permaculture Research Institute (PRI) is an independently audited (annually) non-profit entity. But, it’s a non-profit with a difference. While a large part of our focus is on project aid work, where we seek to implement permaculture solutions in some of the most challenging places in the world, we don’t subscribe to the traditional strategies that NGOs often ‘utilise’. It was my personal prediction that many NGOs will, as our energy and economic woes intensify, lose their funding as charitably-minded people and businesses lose their liquidity and reprioritise expenditure. From some of the NGOs I’ve worked with and spoken to over the last couple of years, these predictions seem to be coming to pass. More and more people and businesses are finding they just don’t have excess funds to pass on to ‘feel good’ causes. In a peak oil world, this can translate to huge humanitarian disasters as dependent populations find supports removed.

In other words, if we only ran on donations, we’d be as finite an endeavour as industrial civilisation.

The PRI, instead, wants to see permaculture education and uptake spread – despite a failing/flailing economy. We thus seek to be as resilient financially as our on-the-ground systems are biologically. As such, our methods differ not only in the solutions proposed (we prefer to teach a man to fish, and how to manage fish stocks sustainably, rather than just dump piles of them at his feet) but also in the financial model that keeps our permaculture evangelism growing and working while we’re still, reluctantly, in the ‘money economy’ era of the society we find ourselves in and are trying to transition ourselves out of.

Another point of difference, while I’m discussing this, is that we regard the suburbs of Los Angeles or Brisbane just as ‘challenging’ as rural Ethiopia or Vietnam – in that people in ‘first world’ countries are acutely vulnerable in so many ways (economy, energy, centralised food systems, etc.), but just don’t see it, nor where they’re headed – and thus don’t see the desperate need to transition to a life based on real-time sunlight. In contrast, ‘two thirds’ world people are generally struggling on a day to day basis, so can be highly appreciative of tools that make their lives more productive, resilient and efficient – and they are often barely only a generation or so removed from a sustainable, low-impact lifestyle, so their skill-set is usually far more practical. As such permaculture ‘aid work’ is just as essential in London and Melbourne as it is in Lesotho and Mombai. Given what’s looming on the horizon, some might say even more so….

The Permaculture Master Plan

Anyway, the PRI seeks to develop and support the growth of successful, mutually beneficial, interdependent relationships (both between individuals and communities, and between these and the land at their feet), with these successful interdependencies occurring by largely self-reliant individuals cooperating with each other to meet human needs in holistically sound ways. The emphasis here is that we seek to build relationships that are mutually supportive/symbiotic, and not competitive. Just as in the plants and organisms around us and at our feet, we believe the success of the permaculture movement as a whole is entirely dependent on our leaving behind the selfish ambition that most of us in the west have been programmed with through our education, media and through our participation in the contemporary, competitive economic model almost universally applied today – and instead to find ways to interact harmoniously to support each other.

Furthermore, we seek for our projects to transition to localised resilience in food and other base human requirements (housing, clothing, etc.), but also to become financially self-sufficient. As we do not believe in contributing to globalisation, but, rather, to help transition away from it, we do not encourage projects to be self sufficient through sales of produce or goods, or at least not to make this their primary endeavour, but, rather, to sell knowledge, so the people around them can begin to grow and produce their own goods. The idea, expressed by our Permaculture Master Plan, is to educate the world in permaculture design principles and application – making each project site both an impressive demonstration site of what is possible and achievable by and for local people in their respective regions, as well as a professional education site sharing the ‘how’ of it. Following this demonstrate-and-educate recipe enables project leaders and their teams to concentrate on transitioning/building the community around them while course and consultation fees finance this evangelisation.

We don’t see any losers in this scenario. The ideal and ultimate goal is that these projects will self-replicate to the point where they will saturate the global landscape with mutually interdependent and resilient communities of knowledgeable permaculture practitioners – setting the stage for a softer landing on the peak-oil downslide. Although the income from course fees would gradually diminish over time, as more and more demonstration/education sites multiply – this income would become increasingly redundant/unnecessary as the growth of resilient permaculture sites and communities fills the void created by a crashing money economy.

Time is of the Essence

If you’re following the logic so far, you will recognise that time is of the essence. To have paying students finance the ballooning of permaculture demonstration/education sites worldwide, we need to get a large portion of this ‘evangelisation’ work done before the economic mayhem born of peak oil and climate change begins to hit us even harder than it already has. At the moment, increasingly, people are seeing the need to get permaculture-educated while they still have the finances to do so. Many can still afford to take flights to learn at locations where their hardish western currency can not only train themselves in modern permaculture design systems whilst gaining valuable indigenous knowledge but also subsidise the training of poverty-stricken locals. This will not always be the case. We’re working in a window of opportunity that will close in the ensuing years.

Making the Most of the Time Window We Have

As such, we feel that leveraging the impact of this website (www.permaculture.org.au) is paramount. I note many permaculture individuals endeavouring to develop their own readership in fragmented efforts that, often with the best of intentions, fail to achieve much. The reason they fail to achieve much is that it takes a lot of time and dedication to grow a website, and that growth is largely dependent on a consistent stream of quality content that keeps people returning to, and linking to, your site. People are too busy on the ground to maintain such sites, or dedicate staff to the task. A million small websites sharing intermittent posts is not nearly as efficient as a few larger sites with far higher traffic counts sharing regular engaging content. I like to think of the networking and leveraging of grass-roots permaculture labour and resources – to build mainstream momentum in all things permaculture – as represented by that largest of all biological organisms: mycelium. While various plants and rocks and microorganisms appear independent of each other, there is a common link – in soil biology – that connects them all. In like manner, the internet, perhaps one of the few real gifts the industrial revolution has given us, is enabling us to connect and share our energies in symbiotic and synergistic ways for the benefit of all. For us to reach mainstream consciousness, funneling our experiences and knowledge through reliable website ‘portals’ is, I can say categorically, far more efficient than expecting readers to browse a thousand sites to get the information they need.

How to Leverage Our Collective Energies to Spread Permaculture Fast

The lifeblood of my work, that of trying to drive permaculture thinking into mainstream consciousness, is found in sharing quality reports from around the world. My logic goes like this: when people in mainstream consumer society confront permaculture, if they believe it’s only practiced by a few sandal-wearing souls living on the fringes of society, they’ll conclude "nice idea, but it’s too little, too late", and they’ll write the concept off as being idealistic dreaming. But if, instead, they realise the reality – that this is a movement of many tens of thousands of people working, right now, in almost every country on every continent of this jewel of an earth we call home – then they’ll instead think to themselves – "hell, change is afoot, and I’m getting left behind – I want to get involved, and now!"

The work is happening, and it’s building momentum. But while the word ‘Permaculture’ is now finally in the Oxford English dictionary, it needs to be on the lips and in the hands of everyone if humanity-saving goodness is to reach that tipping point where it’ll take off and meet the enormous challenges we face today.

Those tens of thousands of people are working hard, accomplishing great things, but they’re often too busy to look up and around to view where they fit in the big picture – the big mycelium fungal net, as it were. I would like to say to those people that by writing articles and sharing your work, frustrations, challenges, successes, observations and inspiration, your effort to report, as an ‘element’ in your system, does in itself serve several ‘functions’.

1. You inspire others to imitate/emulate your example.
2. You educate people in the ‘how’ of it.
3. You make your work known. People can’t help and support you if they don’t know you or your work exists. Such assistance can come by way of encouragement, gifting practical knowledge/information that is relevant to you, and actual physical involvement and financial support.
4. You enable us (PRI) to better understand your situation, and tailor support to assist, assuming you are seeking such assistance.

As many of you will know, I regularly undertake to do such reports myself, and have done so in places as far afield as Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Chile, Jordan, the West Bank, Slovakia (and), Australia, (and, and, etc.). But, while I will continue to seek to profile successful examples of permaculture around the world, we want to hear your views, your experiences, your challenges, your successes and gain knowledge and inspiration from your particular observations. You don’t have to understand the science of web promotion – that’s my job. You don’t have to understand how to deal with websites, image optimisation and editing – that’s also my job. I get tired of hearing my own voice, as I’m sure do our readers. We want to hear yours! I want to see the permaculturists out there, from novice to guru expert (we don’t believe in gurus – but rather, real people doing real doable things), sharing their knowledge for the benefit of all.

Get paid to spread knowledge and inspiration

And guess what – we’ll even pay you to do it! Recognising people are very busy, and that in today’s world time is food, we will pay to hear your stories on a per-post basis. Click here to learn more.

We of course still welcome volunteer posts. Again, we’re a non-profit, so the more money we save the more we can inject into starting and assisting projects worldwide. In the last year, for example, we have donated approximately $100,000 to projects worldwide, either by way of direct donations or through teaching or consultation time. Over the next year we anticipate this figure will increase again. And we’ve assisted further through my time – utilising this high-traffic website to bring course adverts for diverse locations worldwide to the attention of our readers. We’ve seen sites where they were struggling to find students, but after an advert here the courses filled up. This is what it’s all about! This is funneling information and resources to spread permaculture as fast as we can!

This website and our forums (which we’ve recently upgraded by the way) have been a gift from PRI to the permaculture community. We’re very glad to see them getting utilised. I still see many people, however, not quite understanding our ’services’. Many almost appear to think we’re some kind of independently wealthy (or even publicly funded?) entity with a duty to spread research knowledge and long term analysis of various aspects of permaculture systems, and share it freely, not understanding that within our current capitalist framework such important but time-consuming work is impossible to do, simply because it’s price prohibitive. We remain financially independent, yes, but only due to the hard work of people within the team – and that work is based on classroom and field education. We’d love to initiate research-and-document projects, and create unending ‘how-to’ videos and articles, but doing so takes time and money. As such, we encourage all permaculturists to undertake these tasks as they are able, and to share them to the largest audience possible. We’ll help subsidise this work, by paying per-post as an encouragement/incentive to take the time out to do so.

So, in the busyness of life, I hope you will see that, as I’ve often said to PDC students, reporting on your work and observations is just as important as the physical design work itself. Make your voice heard. Share your knowledge and we’ll ensure it gets maximum exposure.

I look forward to receiving and sharing your articles!

P.S. Until today we’ve had excellent results from our arrangement with people interested to advertise their courses on our site. In exchange for a separate non-promotional article (i.e. something inspirational or educational or both), we’ve put their course adverts up at no charge. This arrangement will continue.

In May 2010 life changed dramatically for the community here at Groot Marico, South Africa. We became aware of a prospecting and mining company called ‘African Nickel’ and its plans for us.

The lifeblood of our area is the Groot Marico River, which begins a few kilometers south of the historical town of the same name.

The Marico River is graded as an A/B (least impacted) river, and is one of the few remaining such rivers in the country. This means that the water is clear and safe to drink! In fact the town of Groot Marico and all the farms along the river derive their drinking and household water directly from the river.

The waters of the Marico River flow through the Marico Bushveld Dam, the Molatedi Dam and the Tswasa Weir, and at the confluence with the Crocodile River gives rise to the Limpopo River.

The fertile plains along the Marico River, together with its pristine waters, provide for an extensive crop and cattle industry, as well as drinking water for huge communities. In the area below the Marico Bushveld Dam, a major irrigation scheme supports many thousands of Black restitution farmers.

The Molatedi Dam, which is mainly dependent on the Groot Marico River for its waters, is the sole supplier of water to the Madikwe Game Reserve, and the Tswasa Weir, just north of the Dam, provides, by pipeline, the major water supply for the city of Gaberone, Botswana.

The Marico River has two sources – the first being a complex of three dolomitic eyes, which pour crystal clear, pristine waters into the start of the river, the second, being the catchment area immediately next to the eyes and several other springs.

The catchment area surrounds the town of Groot Marico and constitutes a magnificent Bushveld area of koppies, kranse, ancient indigenous trees and bush. It is home to naturally occurring game, birds and aquatic creatures. The area is beautiful beyond description and attracts visitors from all over the world. There are also many game farms. Almost all property owners in this area are dedicated to preservation and conservation.

‘African Nickel’ seeks to perform massive and destructive open cast mining in this very area. Numerous pits of up to 2 kilometers by ½ km and up to 200m deep are being contemplated.

These pits will be blasted constantly, causing shock waves, noise and dust, and removal of masses of ore will require a conveyer belt of huge trucks to transport the ore to the nearest processing plants, probably in Rustenburg.

At present ‘African Nickel’ is applying for prospecting rights in the catchment area but already have prospecting rights a short distance from the Groot Marico Eyes and have been conducting extensive diamond drilling there! They are already advertising for investors.

We do not know how ‘African Nickel’ secured these rights since none of the interested and affected parties (IAPs) were informed of ‘African Nickel’s’ application and had any knowledge of their activities until recently. ‘African Nickel’ also maintained that they are only a prospecting company, but finally admitted that they will convert to a mining company when the time comes.

Dolomitic eyes are geological formations where groundwater from aquifers is forced through fractures in the earth to the surface. The ecology in these areas is dependent on the surface water and groundwater and any alterations or disturbances to these will obviously affect entire ecosystems. Eyes are incredibly sensitive and unique landscape features with unique ecosystems and biodiversity found nowhere else.

No wonder the Groot Marico Eye is such a popular diving site. It is amazing to discover this pure, untainted, crystal clear body of water in the middle of the hot and dry Bushveld. The water is so clear that water lily leaves under the surface look close enough to touch, yet when you reach in they are meters below.

Drilling, even for prospecting alone, may alter normal water flow. Chemicals used in the drilling process enter the water systems and can cause irreversible damage. Other chemicals and/or heavy metals may also be released as the layers of the earth are disturbed. Once again, this pollution is irreversible.

By interfering with the natural flow routes of water, water levels could actually be reduced at the eyes.

Now, imagine a mine in this area! Mining will have a massive impact on the supply of water downstream – from the points of both quantity and quality. The Groot Marico Eyes and catchment area are very important ecologically and are a conservation priority.

Clearly rehabilitation will be impossible! In any event ‘African Nickel’ shows a callous attitude towards rehabilitation. An example of this is shown in the budget of one their prospecting programs – the amount budgeted for stationery and cell phones is more than the amount they intend to spend on rehabilitation. Anyway, mining houses are notorious for declaring bankruptcy when it comes to “rehabilitation”.

There is nothing African about ‘African Nickel’: 74% of the Company is registered in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) and its BEE partner, ‘Sephaku’, sold its 26% shareholding to Chinese investors during the week ending 18 June 2010.

No job opportunities will be created since (according to ‘African Nickel’s own document) “nickel mining is highly technical and highly mechanized, employing skilled, highly paid personnel”.

The directorate of ‘African Nickel’, on their own statement, stand to make exceptional amounts of money, and Director Richard Hornsey described the company as “better the devil you know”.

‘African Nickel’ has not followed procedure at any stage of their application. They neglected to inform much of the Groot Marico community of their application for prospecting, and many locals were sent letters from them with insufficient postage, which had to be paid in order to receive the letters. Many letters were posted past the due date. A few members of the community who received notification called for a meeting with African Nickel and informed other members of the community of African Nickel’s existence. At this meeting on 15 May 2010, three hundred locals stood up against ‘African Nickel’ and formed a committee to spearhead the action against ‘African Nickel’. This Committee formed an association called MALEPA – the Marico Land and Environmental Protection Association, which has an extensive membership of land owners, land residents and other IAP’s.

African Nickel is clearly attempting to place the affected community at a disadvantage by not properly informing us of what they intend doing and thereby depriving us of our constitutional rights to be heard.

At meetings on 10 June 2010, held at the Regional Manager’s office of the Department of Mineral Reserves in Klerksdorp, attended by representatives of African Nickel, MALEPA, and other affected parties, the Regional Mining Development and Environmental Committee (REMDEC) gave African Nickel two months to get their house in order.

MALEPA is currently launching a full investigation into African Nickel’s activities and if any fraudulent practices are uncovered we will refer the matter to the NPA.

If the Marico catchment area is destroyed it is gone forever – and this for the sake of maybe ten years (if that) of greed to line the pockets of foreigners and a few unscrupulous locals.

South Africa is a water impoverished country. The region through which the Groot Marico River flows is dry. These waters are more valuable than the minerals African Nickel seeks to extract. Any sentient being with a modicum of sense and intelligence will say: “preserve at all costs”.

Nickel mining is a toxic enterprise, which requires very strict controls. In many parts of the world it is no longer allowed. Can we be so naïve as to allow it here?

This enterprise must not be allowed to happen. Please help us to raise awareness of this evil so that we can fight it successfully. If we lose this battle, the lives and livelihoods of thousands will be destroyed, as well as a rare, precious and irreplaceable ecosystem . Our very special Groot Marico, with its fascinating cultural heritage and unique feel will cease to exist.

Nature’s bounty is not infinite and should not be taken for granted.

Please email comments and objections to prospecting and mining in the Groot Marico area to info (at) marico.co.za

Please petition here: www.thepetitionsite.com/2/save-the-groot-marico-river

Us on Facebook.

We thank you for your time and support.
Warm regards,
Community of Groot Marico

Santa van Bart
Groot Marico Information Centre
info (at) marico.co.za
083 272 2958

With phyloplankton levels crashing and the whole marine food chain going belly-up, perhaps marine life should follow this whale’s example, and be a bit more pro-active.

Do not delay registering for this premier event and promote it throughout your business, training and social networks.

An exciting programme of forums, presentations, workshops, round-table discussions, plenary speakers both skyped in and visiting from around Australia and the world.

Talking about Transition Towns, Indigenous knowledge, urban planning, agriculture, humanitarian & emergency responses, ethics, advocacy, population, gender, business, education & training and so much more.

Plenary speakers and presenters include: Bill Mollison, Daryl Hannah, Maj. Gen. Michael Jeffery, Mark O’Connor, Gunter Pauli, Janet Millington, Sonya Wallace, Russ Grayson, Geoff Lawton, Darren J.Doherty, Andrea Pape, Robin Clayfield, David Holmgren and Costa Georgiadis and many, many more.

An event for newcomers, as well as the traditional Convergence.

All set within the pristine, protected beauty of the tropical Queensland wet tropics rainforest.

www.apc10.org

Read the July Update and the Programme (PDFs).

Do not leave it to the last minute. Do not miss out.

Welcome to round eight of our Weekly Linkfest, where we share the good, the bad, the ugly and the just plain interesting from what we’ve seen this week.

I would greatly appreciate readers getting involved in this weekly linkfest. Please email editor (at) permaculture.org.au with links (and ideally a summary sentence outlining the key point of each link) to noteworthy articles and news reports on the internet.

Off we go:

Good News (coz we all need it):

• The best use of a backyard pool that I’ve ever seen! It feeds a whole family – a very clever little permaculture design. See more on this topic here.

• Driling bid in the arctic blocked – something good to come from the shear scale of damage in the gulf no doubt.
• Roundup creating superweeds… but I put it in the good news section because the article talks about their first supreme court case and the growing awareness that we can’t keep doing this sort of stuff.
• Book for download: Teaming with microbes, a gardener’s guide to the soil food web.
• The once popular homegarden is making a comeback.
• 5% solar coming to Victoria, Australia by 2020. There is room for an increase there as Victoria has some of Australia’s dirtiest coal plants but we have to start somewhere.
• This month, the Italian utility Enel unveiled "Archimede", the first Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) plant in the world to use molten salts for heat transfer and storage.

Bad News (coz we need to understand the challenges if we’re to design our way out of them):

• Housing affordability taking its toll in Canada.
• Looks like Saudi Arabia wants to keep their oil in the ground for future generations, which is good for them, but unless we mobilise yesterday to kick the habit it’s going to make it tough for everyone else.
• Australia: More delays on climate action with the Prime Minister promising to form a community advisory panel post-election to decide whether it’s worth acting on climate change.
• Sudden Oak Death threatens British trees. A new disease that can attack and kill more than 100 varieties of plants and trees is sweeping across Britain, leaving a trail of devastation in forests and gardens.
• The price of BP’s dispersants.

Just plain interesting or odd (coz we’re curious creatures):

• Gadget that turns toilet water into electricity.
• While on the toilet theme: An outdoor toilet gallery.
• First there was Spaceballs: the Movie. Then, of course, Spaceballs: the T-shirt, Spaceballs: the Coloring Book, and Spaceballs: the Flamethrower. Now scientists using the Spitzer Space Telescope (and possibly the Schwartz) have discovered real spaceballs, aka buckyballs, the mysterious form of pure carbon they’ve sought in space for some 40 years, according to a new study.
• Caterpillars Crawl Like None Other: Unique Means of Animal Locomotion Has Implications for Robotics, Human Biomechanics.
• Boffins develop greenhouse invisible to night-vision goggles.

Don’t forget to send me your links for next week’s linkfest!! – editor (at) permaculture.org.au

One of the most transformative experiences in my life was from studying soil science many years ago. Getting something of an understanding of the inner workings of that thin skin which covers our earth created thought-connections in my mind that had me looking at the world in a profoundly new way.

Amongst the many things I realised and gained appreciation for was the myriad mechanisms in natural systems that, in concert with each other, provided incredible stability and harmony. I recognised that if only many more people would come to study and learn genuine, holistic, biological soil science (rather than the reductionist chemistry- and product-focussed ’science’ encouraged in universities today by industry) we are actually well able to mimic these systems to bring the same harmony into our own fields, and thus retain resilience whilst still providing for our needs. We could give back to the soil as much as we take. Indeed, we could even reverse our current soil inventory deficit by building soil.

I learned that the carbon cycle was a, or the, critical element. Contrary to popular belief, water soluble nitrogen applications actually depletes soil carbon, rather than builds it – because soil micro-organisms, if I am to use simplistic terminology, feed on nitrogen, and excess soluble supplies send them into a frenzy of activity. That activity is focussed on breaking down organic matter (carbon rich humus). Regular dousings of water-soluble nitrogen fertiliser (and yes, that also includes concentrated chicken litter and blood meal) turns our microscopic soil buddies into hyperactive, and short lived, soil baddies. The same thing occurs with over-aeration of soil from ploughing and other manipulations. The result is rapid plant growth, but at the expense of plant health – and, significantly, resulting in our effectively burning up the organic matter content in our soils, without which there can be no life on this earth.

I learned these things a decade and a half ago, and from reading books decades older, and yet today we still find articles titled ‘New research: synthetic nitrogen destroys soil carbon, undermines soil health‘.

The case for synthetic N as a climate stabilizer goes like this. Dousing farm fields with synthetic nitrogen makes plants grow bigger and faster. As plants grow, they pull carbon dioxide from the air. Some of the plant is harvested as crop, but the rest—the residue—stays in the field and ultimately becomes soil. In this way, some of the carbon gobbled up by those N-enhanced plants stays in the ground and out of the atmosphere.

Well, that logic has come under fierce challenge from a team of University of Illinois researchers led by professors Richard Mulvaney, Saeed Khan, and Tim Ellsworth. In two recent papers (see here and here) the trio argues that the net effect of synthetic nitrogen use is to reduce soil’s organic matter content. Why? Because, they posit, nitrogen fertilizer stimulates soil microbes, which feast on organic matter. Over time, the impact of this enhanced microbial appetite outweighs the benefits of more crop residues.

And their analysis gets more alarming…. – Grist (emphasis ours)

This is an excellent article that I’d recommend all to read and absorb. But, the worrying aspect is that we’re calling it ‘new research‘. The things I learned years ago have been known for decades, something the article above expresses also – quoting from renowned organic pioneer, Sir Albert Howard, from the 1940s – but in a competition- and product-oriented world it has not been a popular concept, because widespread uptake and implementation of this knowledge would make most agricultural products not only redundant, but they’d also be seen as an enemy to sustainable, and healthy, human existence.

The ’self-interest’ basis of our western ‘invisible structures’ (economics, politics, etc.) is the foundational motivation that ensures extraction today with little thought for tomorrow. We create a perception of need, by creating problems that don’t, or shouldn’t, exist – so we can simultaneously create saleable ’solutions’ for them. The self-interest, economy-must-grow mindset thus either consistently ignores or, as is the case here, actively obscures important ecological truths.

How many times will we ‘discover’ these facts? How many times must we re-invent the wheel? As long as profits are the basis of our society, and private interests the controlling powers, then this information will never reach momentum. Why? Because when schools operate for the public good, unbiased, non-commercialised research can be undertaken with taxpayer dollars. When private interests reign, and schools operate without government support, then schools either close, or get funded by BigAgri.

While it’s clear that funding cash is the carrot used by agribusiness to entice researchers into asking the questions industry is most interested in having answered, there is a stick involved: corporately held patents used to block them from asking others. – Monsanto U: Agribusiness’s Takeover of Public Schools

It should be no surprise that the privatisation of our schooling systems worldwide has helped BigAgri propagandise the next generation and has leveraged their control of the world’s food systems.

Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium on the Menu. Courtesy: Marc Roberts

As our soils continue to degrade through the use of Big Agri’s ‘products’, I see an explosion of social and environmental disasters coming to pass. Amongst all the obvious issues, there will also be an ever-increasing public health disaster as the nutrient density of the ‘food’ grown on ever-more-inert, ever-more-lifeless, soils continues to diminish.

We often call this an agricultural treadmill. Our use of nitrogen depletes soils, creating the need for more nitrogen applications. The resulting unbalanced, nutrient-starved plants attract legions of insects, resulting in the need for increasing pesticide applications. The land’s natural effort to restore balance causes soil-restoring plants to spring up (some call them ‘weeds’), inspiring farmers to douse their land with herbicides. In both cases we’re effectively pouring poison on our own food. That’s not smart – but we’ve somehow come to regard it as normal.

Things progressively deteriorate in a downward spiral, but instead of solving the root issue we instead move to genetic engineering to try to patch things up.

Now, you probably assume the ‘root issue’ I’m talking about is our lack of understanding of soil science. And, you’d be right. But perhaps even deeper is the root issue of the kind of economics we base our society on – the kind of economics whose existence relies on obscuring the truth, to preserve and grow a customer base. This entire agricultural treadmill is caused by ’self-interest’ perpetually expressing itself in creating desire and/or need for products that should not exist, and the genetic tinkering of plant genes is an effort to see if we can’t get nature to adapt to the economic framework we’ve built, rather than discover and build a social framework that can work harmoniously with her unchangeable laws.

Using the term treadmill is arguably increasingly inappropriate too, as it leads people to think it can continue ad infinitum. The reality is we’re now watching it collapse. Just as we’ve all but completely exhausted our soils with the fossil fuel based Green Revolution, we’re also at, or fast approaching, peak oil.

Let’s stop calling this ‘new research’. This knowledge needs to saturate and become ‘established fact’ in our school systems, and our school systems need to fulfil the needs of society, not private interests, to help transition us to a world where we recognise our place in the carbon cycle, amongst all the other interdependent elements within the biosphere.

The Dark Side of Synthetic Nitrogen Fertilizers

~~~~~~~~~~

P.S. If you can’t wait for a widespread transformation in our mainstream educational institutions (I’m turning blue as I hold my breath), and want to understand more about soil science now – then I’d really encourage you to take Paul Taylor’s excellent five-day course on the topic. At time of writing, his next course begins September 20, 2010. Keep an eye on our course listings for other dates.

This video can be downloaded in high resolution from Vimeo (see ‘About this video’ section on lower right side’).

I hope you’ll enjoy this clip. More, I hope it encourages you to dare to be different, and dare to have your work noticed. The garden we profile in the video above, as you’ll discover after watching it, has just won a national competition held by the Jordanian Department of Education – for schools who incorporate environmental projects into their curriculum. This means that thousands of schools, in what is arguably the most water-stressed country on the planet, now have the possibility to learn from this humble example of permaculture in action – and get inspired to do similar.

Special thanks to Lesley Byrne for her enthusiastic support, and to Nadia Lawton for her vision and determination to help her own people – and in so doing setting such an excellent example for us all.

What: Queensland Southen Beaches Community Gardens Open Day and Working Bee
When: Saturday 31 July 2010, from 1pm (Sausage sizzle from 3pm, finish by 4pm)
Where: Tugun Community Centre (Please bring own gardening tools.)

During my internship (at the Permaculture Research Institute Aus) I had the privilege of getting involved with some dedicated community minded people. I met Margot James, a focused, determined lady on a mission to set the ball rolling on a project called Southern Beaches Community Gardens. It was named this for a very good reason. The Southern beaches take in a handful of suburbs from the Queensland Border up the coast approximately 12km to Palm Beach. So this has set the framework for not just one garden, but a network of gardens and has started cementing some form of future food security for the southern Gold Coast.

I’m a part of the steering committee whose main focus is to ensure that members of the garden group are supported in their activities as the garden develops, and to promote the principles of Permaculture design science to the Southern Gold Coast. On a personal level I want the Gold Coast to live and breathe Permaculture. The Gold Coast is the second largest city in Queensland with around 600,000 residents. It’s also the sixth most populous city in Australia.

I need the help of closet Permaculturalists – who I’d ask to dust off their design manuals and come and help push the Permaculture barrow and make this a world class demonstration community garden in our backyard and set the bench mark for all community gardens in the Gold Coast City.

And with all of the hard work of the committee now paying off we are ready to start DIGGING!!!

A massive thank you goes to Gold Coast division 14 councilor Chris Robbins for her support and the substantial funding of $30,000 for 2010. Thanks also to all of our sponsors and especially the Tugun Community Bank who have started their sponsorship of the garden with $1,000. Their support will be ongoing over the years and we will be supporting the bank in any way we can. Local partnerships are very important to the community garden and we would love to hear from any individuals, groups, government departments or businesses that would like to be involved.

So on Saturday 31 July from 1pm we will be holding our official opening and inaugural working bee.

On that day we will be planting a variety of fruit and nut trees donated by the Gold Coast City Council as well as 50 other beneficial nursery and nitrogen fixing species donated by local native nursery Gecko Regen. A “no dig” garden will be work-shopped and also a composting workshop held by Permaculture practitioners.

Imagine the possibilities…

This is very early stages so we would appreciate that everyone bring gardening tools that may be of use on the day (i.e. shovels, wheelbarrows, etc.), as we don’t have a supply of tools at this time. Also, we want this garden to run in as much of a recycling way as possible, so if you have anything you don’t need any more – hold on to them until we have a shed that we can store them in.

We have set up a Facebook page, so please feel free to visit us at Southern Beaches Community Garden and invite your friends to become members as well. We will be posting all future workshops and social events here as well as sending out the usual emails.

The lawn is just itching to be liberated

Over the next month or two we will be holding regular workshops on various subjects to help us all bond together and help us all become educated in the many facets of gardening.

Looking forward to seeing you all then!

P.S. I’m also calling anyone with specific skills – e.g. composting, tree planting, Permaculture, or no dig gardening – to please contact me on the details below. We would like to empower people within the community to share their skills with all of us.

Nick Huggins
e: hugginsn (at) bigpond.net.au
p: 0417 010 965

Welcome to round seven of our Weekly Linkfest, where we share the good, the bad, the ugly and the just plain interesting from what we’ve seen this week.

I would greatly appreciate readers getting involved in this weekly linkfest. Please email editor (at) permaculture.org.au with links (and ideally a summary sentence outlining the key point of each link) to noteworthy articles and news reports on the internet.

Off we go:

Good News (coz we all need it):

• A forward thinking Sicilian town has ditched its expensive, smelly, dirty diesel trucks in favour of donkeys for collecting the garbage (on YouTube and as podcast). This serves as a good proof of concept for the Maribyrnong council in Melbourne which is one of only two councils in Australia with a public peak oil policy. The policy mainly covers how to keep council services such as waste disposal running, as society as we know it starts to collapse.
• Major wins as biotechs back-off in Brazil and organic beats GE in India.
• An article about our perpetual assault on ‘weeds’ and permaculture as the answer to a war that can only end with nature winning, whether we join it or not.
• A New Orleans’ Zoo is teaching kids about the impact of the Gulf Oil Spill, and the effect we’re having on the environment.
• The creation of new power capacity from renewable energy has exceeded new fossil fuel power generation in the United States and Europe for the second year running, according to two United Nations reports published Thursday.

Bad News (coz we need to understand the challenges if we’re to design our way out of them):

• The Energy Descent Pickle – Explained using an analogy of Tigger and Piglet from Winnie the Poo.
• Vigilante group releases detailed private information of 1300 illegal immigrants.
• As we run out of time to act on climate change, we continue to argue over matters that should be settled already, clearing the way for action. Two new reports say the science of climate change is fine, but that some scientists and the institutions they work in need to change their attitudes.
• January-June warmest first half of year on record.
• More questions about the policing at the G20 with Liam McHugh Russell asking “I would like to know why I was stripped naked and forced to sit naked. I find this cruel and unusual and unnecessary. This is how I was treated for attempting to exercise my right to counsel upon detainment, just to know what was going on and the validity of my arrest.?”
• Ontario’s rate cut for solar power a blow to green energy with Ontario Power Authority quietly chopping the rate being paid to more profitable installations from 80.2 cents to 58.8 cents per kilowatt hour.
• Gulf Oil Spill Altering Food Web Scientists Say, Long-Term Impact Unknown.

Just plain interesting or odd (coz we’re curious creatures):

• New non-GM apple that’s red to the core!
• How can a smart species be so dumb?
• Team Develops Non-Toxic Oil Recovery Agent.
• Nanopillars that Trap More Light could lead to cheaper solar cells.
• Finally! Something that eats jellyfish.

Don’t forget to send me your links for next week’s linkfest!! – editor (at) permaculture.org.au