The April 11 Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) course at Zaytuna Farm (home base for the PRI, in northern NSW) is now full. People keen to attend this particular course are welcome to email education (at) permaculture.org.au to register your interest, and we’ll put you on a waiting list in case any of the existing registrants cancel.

Alternatively there’s Morocco on April 17 with David Spicer, otherwise our next Zaytuna PDC is on July 11 (there are still a few spaces left on this one).

Welcome to round three 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):

• Farmers Fighting for Their Health: Taking on Chemical Companies and Transitioning to Sustainable Ag – a legal precedent that we would do well to note and support.
• A Backlash After San Francisco Labels Sewage Sludge "Organic" – Activists wearing face masks and haz-mat suits dumped a pile of sewage sludge on the steps of San Francisco’s city hall to protest the city’s practice of marketing the material to home gardeners as "organic compost."
• It is estimated that food wasted by US and European consumers could feed the world three times over. This is good news in that we see massive potential here in relocalising. Also remember that this article only takes into account the post-sale end of the industrial food production system. Add in waste throughout the rest of the line, from harvesting to processing (including discarding perfectly good food that doesn’t fit chain store requirements for size and shape) to storage, transport and distribution, and we’ll come to realise that the industrial system of food production that Big Agribusiness promotes is a complete waste of land and resources. Transferring food from garden to plate eliminates all these steps.
• Meet the Radical Homemakers – How families are achieving ecological, social, and economic transformation… starting under their own roofs.
• Residents of a Belgian town are to be offered chickens as part of a campaign to reduce household waste. Organic waste is a major thorn in the side of municipal waste systems, This solution deftly solves this problem whilst also bringing the added benefit of free eggs. The initiative includes training on how to take care of chickens. Now that’s progressive thinking from local government if ever I saw it.
• The Foreign Policy website has an excellent piece on How Locavores Could Save the World.
• Ultracool student housing created with shipping containers.
• The US backs an international proposal to ban the trading of the endangered Bluefin Tuna. Will Japan join the party?

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

• Vultures Eye Haiti: While Permaculturists are actively making constructive debate over the pros and cons of different options to provide shelter, food, sanitation and training for destitute Haitians, in other quarters people are arguing what’s more important – food aid or soldiers? This situation is a boon for private military contractors, an industry I expect will become one of the few to see significant growth over the next decade. My post of two years ago highlights the real motivations behind the military backed neo-liberal moves in Haiti, and this book looks to be an even deeper examination. Remember, peace is the enemy of profit-motivated private armies, in the same way as self-sufficiency is the enemy of extractive, perpetual-growth-based capitalism.
• "40 per cent of UK’s [electricity] generating capacity due to disappear in the next few years": I’m often depressingly bemused when I hear people who, with a serious case of cognitive dissonance, believe that we’ll somehow escape peak oil catastrophe, and its resulting perpetual recession, and, significantly, retain our present lifestyles, by implementing renewable technologies – not recognising that most of these target electricity production, not the creation of liquid fuels. Yes, we could transition to all-electric vehicles in many cases, but such a transition would take many years, a lot of energy, and enormous funds that won’t be present as our economies collapse in post-peak oil mayhem. In addition to these factors, this article – How Will David Cameron Keep the Lights On – written specifically about the UK’s energy situation, makes for a very interesting read on how renewables won’t cover the nation’s impending major shortfall in energy production for existing demand, let alone produce enough to cover the enormous amount of power required for an all-electric transporation system. Lifestyle change is on the way, whether we design for it or not….
• Fears of Undersea Methane Leaks Already Coming True – Prodigious plumes of planet-warming methane are bubbling from sediments across a broad region of Arctic seafloor previously thought to be sealed by permafrost, new analyses indicate. The resulting increase of methane gas in the atmosphere may accelerate climate warming, scientists say.
• One of the most common weed-killers in the world, atrazine, causes chemical castration in frogs and could be killing off amphibian populations worldwide, a study published showed.
• The Wrong Kind of Green looks at the economics behind the sellout of environmental groups to Big Business.
• The not-so-happy Happy Story of GM Crops.
• A vast iceberg that recently broke off eastern Antarctica could not only make life more difficult for creatures of the region, but also potentially disrupt the ocean conveyor system, with implications for world climate. More here.

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

• Something we wouldn’t normally consider when fighting for the right to life of the world’s largest mammals is the CO2 emissions resulting from whaling activities – due to the release of carbon within their massive bodies.
• Animals can be compassionate too! Check out these amazing shots of predatory cats helping a lost little impala.
• A baby bobcat and fawn survive a fire and become firm friends too!
• While on the animal topic – we learn that as population levels for different species plummet, local knowledge about them, and even knowledge of their ever having existed, quickly disappears. The rapid rate of extinctions currently underway thus go largely unoticed as our fellow earth-inhabitants become out of sight and out of mind.
• Foot traffic to light up London? It sounds like a lot of batteries and wiring involved, but a novel idea all the same.
• How Chile’s quake could have made the earth spin faster.

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

Hat Tip: Thanks to Killian O’Brien, John Calvert, Wesley Roe, Marcin Gerwin and Geoff Lawton for their contributions to this week’s linkfest!

It was a moment of fulfillment for us at Strawberry Fields Eco Lodge (SFEL). The head of the Konso Woreda Education Bureau, Mr. Geyeto Gedeno, stood in front of those gathered, his fumbling speech soon beginning to gather momentum:

We now want to see this program expanded to all the schools in Konso, making us an example to the whole society and the rest of Ethiopia! Permaculture shows us how to achieve food security and environmental preservation, how to improve our nutrition and benefit our ecology, all through direct community action!” We all clapped and cheered heartily.

Gathered around the training room were teachers, parents and children from the three schools where the Permaculture in Konso Schools Project (PKSP), pilot project, had been underway since May 2009, when it began with training of teachers at SFEL, in a PDC that was part funded by a former volunteer (and a good friend of ours, Sarah Davis from Austin Texas) and part funded by Save the Children Finland (STCF).

Tichafa Makovere, our lead trainer, who had lead the pilot project, now stood before that selection of people from around Konso, and repeated The Parable of the Sparrows, his own analogy for inspiring community empowerment and breaking the mentality of aid-dependence, which has become so deeply ingrained in southern Ethiopia that it seems as much of an obstacle to the development of food sovereignty as climate change or population growth.

God feeds the birds of the air! But he does not let them sit in their nests while he comes and puts food in their mouths. Unless they fly out of their nests to scratch the ground in search of their food, they will go hungry.

The analogy sums up Tichafa’s approach to the development of food security in Africa. As opposed to the (mostly) well-intentioned, but counter-productive, habit of most westerners, individuals and organisations alike, of splashing around hand-outs to “the poor starving Ethiopians”. Tichafa, a Zimbabwean of the Shona ethnic group, knows better about what will benefit Africans in the long-run.

Empowering communities is about getting them to provide for their own needs, not just giving them whatever they ask you for so they become dependent on you.

It was when he had visited his first Konso school, in early 2009, with an Italian NGO Director, that he had first confronted the Konso community with The Parable of the Sparrows. The school principal had been complaining to the Italian that he had not delivered them the furniture that he had been promising (not delivering on promises was a habit of this particular Italian), but Tichafa stepped in to his rescue:

Don’t embarrass me! I am an African like you. We are not beggars! Look at all these Eucalyptus trees you have here, they are destroying your soils. You should cut these down and sell them, then use the money to buy your own furniture. And plant better trees at the same time!

At this the Italian pricked up his ears.

Oh, I need Eucalyptus for beelding my new conference hall!

Such is the mentality of self reliance that SFEL’s Permaculture instills. While many NGOs are throwing around thousands and even millions of dollars into white-elephant projects (such as superfluous conference halls), there are often far simpler solutions to the chronic needs of communities on the ground that they could solve by themselves, if they were able to make more effective use of the resources. This is the key aim of the Permaculture in Konso Schools Project (PKSP) the pilot phase of which culminated with Mr Geyeto Gedeno’s speech last Saturday.

The format of the PKSP is similar to that of the ReSCOPE and SCOPE programs, which Tichafa lead in a number of countries around southern Africa over the past 15 years with great success; two key teachers from a school are given the full 72-hour Permaculture Design Certificate course, during which they produce designs for “retro-fitting” their school grounds. The follow-up then brings in the kids and parents, to implement those designs (with input from Tichafa, where necessary) on the ground. The whole community gets involved – hauling in manure from their animals, mucking in together and singing in great spirits as they do – intensive gardens, tree nurseries, soil and water harvesting infrastructure are all laid out on the ground and channels are dug to run rain-water from roofs into keyholes where banana suckers soon explode into lush thickets. Moringa, papaya and mango (the first 70 seedlings provided by SFEL) will soon close a canopy over the flourishing vegetable beds in the intensive gardens. Permaculture is included on the school curriculum, with resource materials designed for the purpose, so kids gain theoretical insight as well as being involved practically. Within a year the school can supplement its children’s diet with fresh fruit and greens and gain income from sales of vegetables and tree seedlings to the community. The skills are also taken home by the kids, so penetrate into the community for the long-run. The bare school yard soon becomes a lush and fascinating jungle for the exploration of the young mind, and these people are taking control of their own destiny, no longer sitting by the roadside waiting for UN grain convoys to roll in with hybrid wheat over-produced on the other side of the planet – the solution lies right here, in their own back yard!

A program of monitoring and evaluation continues over the following 24 months, with exchange visits between the schools, bi-annual refresher courses for the teachers at SFEL, visits to our own model farm to promote new ideas and improve motivation. The culmination of phase 1 (the pilot) was the competition between the schools which came in February 2010 with SFEL’s most recent international PDC, the participants of which were asked to judge between the schools for the best implementation, as part of their own PDC training.

The PDC had a multinational complexion with American Peace Corps sending two Ethiopian-American officers, an Ethiopian estate owner from Norway, two freelance American volunteers, a Swedish SFEL volunteer for five months, an Italian couple, a British volunteer on a mission to develop a windmill for SFEL, a Welsh lady working the Karrayou Tribe from the rift valley in East Shoa, and a veterinary surgeon – a Karrayou also working with the Welsh tribe. Criteria for the participants appraisal of the schools, included:

• The presence of the design map on the wall
• The presence of a tree nursery
• Effective intercropping of species to reduce disease and promote companion relationships
• Evidence of innovation in water harvesting
• Evidence of eating the vegetables produced in the gardens
• Evidence of gaining an income for the school from sales of produce

Overall it was decided that Sawgume (the same school where Tichafa had first embarrassed the teachers with the parable of the sparrows a year ago) deserved to win the competition, but all three schools were given prizes as an encouragement. The prizes were donated by local businessmen, such Mr Samuel, the owner of Bela Abyssinia Tours, a customer of SFEL, who agreed to contribute 3000 Birr for exercise-books, pens, watering cans, spades and hoes, which were awarded to the teachers and most industrious parents and kids of the three schools.

And the PKSP pilot phase has been proclaimed a resounding success! The Konso Education Bureau are keen to see its expansion to all the schools in Kosno. STC Finland have agreed to include two more schools in their program in 2010, however we at SFEL are keen to go beyond that. If more NGOs, GOs or individuals will involve themselves, by adopting or sponsoring schools in various ways, we can keep Permaculture actively growing in Ethiopia in the coming years. We are ready to work with you.

You can also support our activities by joining our next international PDC in at SFEL in Konso: Permaculture for the Rural African Environment – Oriented towards food security development for rural communities lead by Tichafa Makovere Shumba, at Strawberry Fields Eco-Lodge: April 05 – 18, 2010.

For more information please contact info (at) permalodge.org also visit our website www.permalodge.org and see more photos of project work here.

Welcome to round two of our Weekly Linkfest! Where possible, I’ll put up a weekly roundup of interesting environmental and permaculture news – with the intention that it’ll be an easy way for readers to jump to important and/or interesting news and practical or inspiration material.

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. Please put ‘Weekly Linkfest’ in the subject line, as I have a message rule that will move these messages into a specific folder for this purpose. This is a great way to share information of merit with the greater permaculture community.

Let’s get started:

Good News (coz we all need it):

• E. coli fears spark 4.9 million pound meat recall. I put this in the good news section, as it’s great to see BigAgri hurting financially from their own stupidity and inability to work ethically and within ecological constraints. These kind of recalls are on the rise – and are helping fuel an ever-increasing desire from citizens to see their food coming from more natural sources. A post from yesterday on this site shares a more humane, healthy and sustainable way to provide meat for those who refuse to be vegetarian.
• The Indian government puts controversial new BT Brinjal GMO crop on hold amidst rising concerns over the safety and efficiency of biotech ‘products’.
• Readers of the Chicago Chicken Ordinance post may enjoy this resource: It’s the Chickens In The Yard (C.I.T.Y.) Chicken Revolution, where you’ll find resources to help you legalise urban chicken raising in your area.
• David Holmgren’s book Future Scenarios gets reviewed.
• Neri Oxman gives an interesting talk on ‘Material Ecology’.
• If we can only get BigAgri to ponder this incredible act of principle-based decision making, we might see millions of landless being given land with which to develop small scale productive permaculture systems worldwide, and thus avoid revolution…: U.S. Teen Hannah Salwen Convinces Family to Sell Home and Donate Half the Proceeds to Charity.
• Cat food and ants may be biological answers to Australia’s cane toad problem?

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

• A very interesting article on the U.S.’s descent into becoming a ‘third world country’.
• Ocean acidity rates are soaring as CO2 emissions rise. Do not underestimate the impacts of this.
• The much lauded ‘miracle’ biofuel crop – Jatropha – has been wreaking havoc for the people it’s supposed to help.
• Despite, through articles such as my own, an increasing awareness of the great health disaster of pouring plastic trash into our oceans, a recent classified German report tells us that Global Ocean Protection Measures Have Failed across the board. We have signally failed to address the problem despite decades of warnings and efforts and "our oceans have devolved into vast garbage dumps."
• As if oceans of plastic aren’t enough, the amount of toxic e-waste piling up in developing countries is surging. E-waste in India alone is expected to rise 500% by 2020.
• World’s top firms cause $2.2tn of environmental damage, report estimates
  - a report for the UN into the activities of the world’s 3,000 biggest companies estimates one-third of profits would be lost if firms were forced to pay for use, loss and damage of environment.
• Eight foot long, flying, diver-attacking squid have been invading the California coastline and feasting on the state’s limited fish stocks. Reminds me of concerns over an explosion of the deadly box and other jellyfish (see also here and here) that changing climates can bring. As our ecosystems unravel, if we can just find tasty new ways to serve up squid, jellyfish, scorpions and cockroaches we might just be okay.
• Inuit elders talk about the many signs of a changing climate as U.S. scientists study the effects of global warming from their northernmost city of Barrow, Alaska.

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

• I love this story about dogs who ride trains. Animals always fascinate and inspire me.
• Eco-friendly glowing wallpaper to replace light bulbs? The ‘wallpaper’ emits the full colour range and can be connected to a dimmer. It’s said to be even more energy efficient than LEDs. I’m curious if there would be health implications from the chemicals used.
• Check out 33 of the world’s strangest buildings. It shows the great imagination of the human mind. It also makes one think of what we could achieve if all our energy and ingenuity were put towards constructive endeavours.
• A school in the U.S. is accused of using webcams in student laptops to spy on their activities at home.
• The National Wildlife Federation just announced winners of their 2009 photo competition.

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

Hat Tip: Thanks to Rhamis, Sudeep and Mac for their contributions to this week’s linkfest!

Welcome to the first edition of our new Weekly Linkfest! Where possible, I’ll put up a weekly roundup of interesting environmental and permaculture news – with the intention that it’ll be an easy way for readers to jump to important and/or interesting news and practical or inspiration material.

I would greatly appreciate readers getting involved in this weekly linkfest. Please email editor (at) permaculture.org.au with links (and ideally a sentence outlining key points) to noteworthy articles and news reports on the internet (put ‘Weekly Linkfest Fodder’ in the subject line, as I have a message rule that will move these messages into a specific folder for this purpose). This is a great way to share information of merit with the greater permaculture community.

Let’s get started:

Good News (coz we all need it):

• Coming soon for UK residents are more permaculture-oriented material to arrive via mainstream media channels, with the BBC’s upcoming ‘The Edible Garden‘ series. This is perhaps due to popular reception of their ‘A Farm for a Future‘ feature they did recently.
• A leftover New Orleans FEMA trailer becomes a mobile garden and permaculture library.
• Even Richard Branson is warning the world about peak oil.
• Imagine that – product packaging, and maybe even buildings, made from fungus? (See also.)
• Indoor plants are good at removing toxins from the air of our living spaces, NASA studies show.
• While human powered bicycles in relocalised agricultural communities would be better, electric bicycles for China have got to be a better option than a billion cars.

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

• World’s soils gone in 60 years? That’s not good…. A recent study calls for drastic change, stating that the world’s soils are being lost at rates many times faster than they can be replaced (57 times faster in the case of densely populated China). People that question whether sustainable farming can feed the world (we know it can) should consider these figures – whatever they may think of sustainable agricultural methods and yields, we know for sure that industrial agriculture is not an option, and we need to move fast if we want to avoid spiraling into widespread famine, and even cannibalism. And, despite this, we’re vaporising biomass to fuel cars instead of using it to build humus.
• Our glaciers are melting faster than ever – and with it goes our water supplies.
• Mexico, the U.S.A.’s #3 oil supplier may soon be unable to supply….
• Bill Gates may fund us into darkness in a plan to halt global warming through global dimming.
• There are perhaps as few as 3,200 tigers left in the world, and China has only fifty wild tigers left.
• Obama embarks on a big Nuclear push.This may be one of the causes of the great uranium stampede that’s underway. All this while nuclear is looking increasingly unsafe in the present – without even taking long-term energy and water requirements (and the necessary technological knowhow of our descendents for many generations) for safe storage into account.
• New Zealand now has more cows than people. It seems the country is selling its soil and its soul (and its water) to provide millions of chinese, many of them lactose intolerant, with milk power and cheese they never needed before. Someone has got to be making a few dollars though.
• Oases of silence are harder to find. The world is just plain getting noisy.

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

• Jenny Pell asks the question – "How do I invite you to grow food?"
• Dubai’s ‘The World’ project looks to be not only sinking into history due to lack of money, but also literally sinking into the ocean. Despite pouring billions of dollars and millions of tons of sand and rock into the project, it looks like ‘The World’ is going down the gurgler.
• You’ve gotta love these panda pics.
• Man and whale become firm friends.
• How much life can you find in one cubic foot?
• What does the famous sci-fi ‘Dune’ and permaculture have in common? Find out here.

Don’t forget to send me your links for next week’s linkfest!!

As we enter 2010, the script for a futuristic agriculture, which brings back the smile on the face of farmers, without leaving any scar on the environment, is being rewritten.

What began as a small initiative some six years back in a non-descript village in Khamam district, has now spread to over 2 million acres in 21 districts of Andhra Pradesh. I remember when I first talked about the miracle brought about in village Pannukula in Andhra Pradesh, many thought I was simply trying to romanticise agriculture. How farming can be done without the use of chemical pesticides, I was repeatedly asked.

Pannukula dug out a lonely furrow, but eventually blazed a trail. In the next four years, more than 318,000 farmers in 21 out of the 23 districts of Andhra Pradesh have discarded the intensive chemical farming systems, and shifted to a more sustainable, economically viable and ecologically friendly agriculture. A silent revolution is in the offing. In Kharif 2009 (the monsoon season), some 1.4 million acres was covered with what is now known as Community Managed Sustainable Agriculture (CMSA).

As I write this in the first week of January 2010, the area had expanded to 2 million acres of 21 districts. More than 0.6 million acres increase in a farming system that does not use chemical pesticides, and is also phasing out chemical fertiliser, that too in matter of few months, is a record of sorts. And all this has happened without any push from the government agencies and the private sector. I see no reason why this environmentally safe, and a farmer-friendly system of sustainable agriculture, cannot cover 200 million acres across the country in another ten years or so if the government gets serious.

60,000 acres increase in a farming system that does not use chemical pesticides, and is also phasing out chemical fertiliser, that too in matter of few months, is a record of sorts. Ten years from now, in 2020, when we try to look back, Indian agriculture can be transformed into a healthy and vibrant system where farmer suicides have been relegated to history, where distress and despondency has been replaced by the lost pride in farming, and where agriculture becomes sustainable in the long run and does not result in climate change.

What began as an experiment to evolve a farming system without the application of chemical pesticides is now also phasing out the use of chemical fertilisers. It uses a mixture of scientific proven technologies, indigenous knowledge and traditional wisdom. Farmers are replacing chemical fertilisers and pesticides with microbial formulations, intensive use of composting techniques, vermi-composting, and apply bio-fertilisers, and use bio-extracts for controlling pests.

Paddy crop has increased significantly under CMSA. It therefore brought in a complete shift from conventional agriculture and offered secure and stable livelihoods. The crop yields have remained the same, the pest attack has drastically reduced, and the soil is returning back to its natural fertility levels. As soil fertility improves over the years, crop yields have started going up still further. More importantly, farmer’s expenditure on health problems emanating from pesticides application has also gone down by 40 per cent on an average.

There is more money now in the hands of the farmers. The cost of cultivation per acre has also come down by 33 per cent. Take the case of cotton, a CMSA farmer saves more than Rs 12,500 per hectare in a year on account of no application of pesticides alone. With his crop productivity remaining stable, cotton farmers have got a new lease of life. The environment too has become healthier and safe.

What began as an experiment to evolve a farming system without the application of chemical pesticides is now also phasing out the use of chemical fertilisers by relying on a mixture of scientific proven technologies, indigenous knowledge and traditional wisdom. Normally, 56 per cent of the cost of cotton cultivation is primarily on account of pesticides. And don’t forget, elsewhere in the State and for that matter in the country, 70 per cent of the farmers who are committing suicide are engaged in cotton cultivation.

No farmer has committed suicide in the areas where non-pesticides management system of farming is being followed.

More money in the hands of farmers means less debt. I haven’t seen any other village in the country in past three decades of my work in agriculture, which has been able to recover its entire mortgaged land from the money lenders in just three years of adopting non-pesticides management. This happened in village Ramachandrapuram in Khamam district where all 75 farmers have even paid back the outstanding rate of interest.

Studies in five districts show that out of the 467 families that had mortgaged their land, at least 386 have recovered it in two years time.

This is a roadmap for the future of Indian agriculture, and for that global agriculture. It not only provides a sustainable path, with a very low carbon footprint, and has tremendous potential to remove poverty and hunger. It has been conclusively demonstrated that household food security has improved with a 40 per cent drop in the purchase of food from the market. The crop yields have gone up, and farmers are now able to cultivate two crops in a year. This is the Zero Hunger model that I normally talk about which needs to be adopted under the proposed National Food Security Act.

Women and farmer Self Help Groups’ play a critical role in CMSA. Savings have increased, and a federation of 850,675 self-help groups now involves 10 million women from the poor households. This federation now holds a corpus of US $ 1.5 billion providing a bundle of economic services. No wonder, sustainable agriculture without external inputs can revolutionise the rural landscape, where hunger and poverty becomes history.

Devinder Sharma is an award-winning journalist, writer, thinker and researcher respected for his views on food and trade policy. His writings focus on the links between biotechnology, intellectual property rights, food trade and poverty. He is a regular contributor to leading national print publications.

Those who watched Greening the Desert II will recognise some of my footage from Jordan as well.

Having the mainstream media peek at our work is getting to be a habit. Now we just need to move them from looking at this as a ‘novel idea’ to regarding it as an urgent necessity.

The ABC just ran an interesting spotlight (video – or transcript here if you prefer) where we learn that one of Yeomans’ properties, ‘Yobarnie’, in Richmond, north of Sydney, is facing ‘development’ that would turn this important historical demonstration site into a housing estate. In the 1950s and ’60s the site attracted busloads of people on weekend tours where observers could see the transformation his methods effected and learn about their implementation.

Yeomans’ methods, which have heavily influenced permaculture design systems, are increasingly seen today as having tremendous potential to not only increase agricultural productivity but also to have a significant impact on reducing atmospheric CO2 concentrations through increasing soil carbon levels.

It’s a sad day when such a site, with not only such historical significance, but also present relevance, would be paved over.

For good measure, here’s a YouTube clip of Darren Doherty showing the before and after effect of a single keyline plowing on his property.

Resources:

• Keyline Plowing with Compost Tea Application
• The Keyline Plan by P. A. Yeomans
• The Challenge of Landscape by P. A. Yeomans
• The City Forest by P. A. Yeomans

We’re pleased to announce that we’re partnering with the makers of the video above, WeForest, to help establish self-replicating permaculture reforestation demonstration sites in accordance with our Permaculture Master Plan, in several worldwide locations – starting in Zambia in the first instance. Our Geoff Lawton has just agreed to be on their advisory board, and we’ll be working to supply guidance, knowhow and staff to pioneer these projects.

This is just one example of the many encouraging collaborative results we get as people boil current events down to their only logical conclusion – discovering we need to quit battling nature and get busy harnessing biological synergies to repair the earth and rebuild sustainable community interactions.

In the United States, there has been a surge of interest in eating fresh local foods, corresponding with mounting concerns about the climate effects of consuming food from distant places and about the obesity and other health problems associated with junk food diets. This is reflected in the rise in urban gardening, school gardening, and farmers’ markets.

With the fast-growing local foods movement, diets are becoming more locally shaped and more seasonal. In a typical supermarket in an industrial country today it is often difficult to tell what season it is because the store tries to make everything available on a year-round basis. As oil prices rise, this will become less common. In essence, a reduction in the use of oil to transport food over long distances—whether by plane, truck, or ship—will also localize the food economy.

This trend toward localization is reflected in the recent rise in the number of farms in the United States, which may be the reversal of a century-long trend of farm consolidation. Between the agricultural census of 2002 and that of 2007, the number of farms in the United States increased by 4 percent to roughly 2.2 million. The new farms were mostly small, many of them operated by women, whose numbers in farming jumped from 238,000 in 2002 to 306,000 in 2007, a rise of nearly 30 percent.

Many of the new farms cater to local markets. Some produce fresh fruits and vegetables exclusively for farmers’ markets or for their own roadside stands. Others produce specialized products, such as the goat farms that produce milk, cheese, and meat or the farms that grow flowers or wood for fireplaces. Others specialize in organic food. The number of organic farms in the United States jumped from 12,000 in 2002 to 18,200 in 2007, increasing by half in five years.

Gardening was given a big boost in the spring of 2009 when U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama worked with children from a local school to dig up a piece of lawn by the White House to start a vegetable garden. There was a precedent. Eleanor Roosevelt planted a White House victory garden during World War II. Her initiative encouraged millions of victory gardens that eventually grew 40 percent of the nation’s fresh produce.

Although it was much easier to expand home gardening during World War II, when the United States was largely a rural society, there is still a huge gardening potential—given that the grass lawns surrounding U.S. residences collectively cover some 18 million acres. Converting even a small share of this to fresh vegetables and fruit trees could make an important contribution to improving nutrition.

Many cities and small towns in the United States and England are creating community gardens that can be used by those who would otherwise not have access to land for gardening. Providing space for community gardens is seen by many local governments as an essential service, like providing playgrounds for children or tennis courts and other sport facilities.

Many market outlets are opening up for local produce. Perhaps the best known of these are the farmers’ markets where local farmers bring their produce for sale. In the United States, the number of these markets increased from 1,755 in 1994 to more than 4,700 in mid-2009, nearly tripling over 15 years. Farmers’ markets reestablish personal ties between producers and consumers that do not exist in the impersonal confines of the supermarket. Many farmers’ markets also now take food stamps, giving low-income consumers access to fresh produce that they might not otherwise be able to afford. With so many trends now boosting interest in these markets, their numbers may grow even faster in the future.

In school gardens, children learn how food is produced, a skill often lacking in urban settings, and they may get their first taste of freshly picked peas or vine-ripened tomatoes. School gardens also provide fresh produce for school lunches. California, a leader in this area, has 6,000 school gardens.

Many schools and universities are now making a point of buying local food because it is fresher, tastier, and more nutritious and it fits into new campus greening programs. Some universities compost kitchen and cafeteria food waste and make the compost available to the farmers who supply them with fresh produce.

Supermarkets are increasingly contracting with local farmers during the season when locally grown produce is available. Upscale restaurants emphasize locally grown food on their menus. In some cases, year-round food markets are evolving that market just locally produced foods, including not only fruit and vegetables but also meat, milk, cheese, eggs, and other farm products.

Food from more distant locations boosts carbon emissions while losing flavor and nutrition. A survey of food consumed in Iowa showed conventional produce traveled on average 1,500 miles, not including food imported from other countries. In contrast, locally grown produce traveled on average 56 miles—a huge difference in fuel investment. And a study in Ontario, Canada, found that 58 imported foods traveled an average of 2,800 miles. Simply put, consumers are worried about food security in a long-distance food economy. This trend has led to a new term: locavore, complementing the better known terms herbivore, carnivore, and omnivore.

Concerns about the climate effects of consuming food transported from distant locations has also led Tesco, the leading U.K. supermarket chain, to label products with their carbon footprint—indicating the greenhouse gas contribution of food items from the farm to supermarket shelf. Sweden is a recent pioneer in labeling food with its carbon footprint along with nutritional facts.

As agriculture localizes, livestock production will likely start to shift away from mega-sized cattle, hog, and poultry feeding operations. The shift from factory farm production of milk, meat, and eggs by returning to mixed crop-livestock operations facilitates nutrient recycling as local farmers return livestock manure to the land. The combination of high prices of natural gas, which is used to make nitrogen fertilizer, and of phosphate, as reserves are depleted, suggests a much greater future emphasis on nutrient recycling—an area where small farmers producing for local markets have a distinct advantage over massive feeding operations.

In combination with moving down the food chain to eat fewer livestock products, reducing the food miles in our diets can dramatically reduce energy use in the food economy. And as world food insecurity mounts, more and more people will be looking to produce some of their own food in backyards, in front yards, on rooftops, in community gardens, and elsewhere, further contributing to the localization of agriculture.

Adapted from Chapter 9, “Feeding Eight Billion People Well,” in Lester R. Brown, Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2009), available on-line at www.earthpolicy.org/index.php?/books/pb4