The Domestication Spectrum: How Our Relationships With Plants and Animals Define Our Existence
Biodiversity, Bird Life, Consumerism, Economics, Fish, Food Forests, Food Plants - Annual, Food Plants - Perennial, General, Livestock, People Systems, Plant Systems, Society, Village Development — by Kyle Chamberlain March 4, 2010
by Kyle Chamberlain, The Human Habitat Project
Our bonds with other species are as vital, to survival, as our bonds with other people. If we don’t choose our company carefully, disaster is likely to ensue.
As a species, we should be shopping for the best relationships. There’s a lot a stake, and we don’t want to be abused or neglected. When searching for a good fit, we should keep in mind the following characteristics of good relationships.
Comments (2)Permaculture and the Western Syndrome
Aid Projects, Deforestation, Food Forests, General, Insects, Plant Systems, Rehabilitation, Society, Trees — by Warren Brush January 30, 2010
For tens of thousands of years intact peoples from around the world have been intricately woven into the fabric of the landscape that nourishes them. Culture itself has sprung from the land through the people’s relationship with all that sustains them. This is not as esoteric as it sounds… Imagine a group of people who live in a particular watershed with a distinct mix and availability of flora and fauna, weather patterns, sun angles, sound resonance, distance to other bio-regions, etc. Everyday necessity would be provided for by these and other more subtle structures and influences that would provide unique implements for survival, foods, hunting practices, shelters, musical instruments, honoring practices, ceremonies and stories. These peoples have known the origins stories of all that give them life, this in turn became the foundation of true, intact culture where the land would express itself very tangibly through the people
Michael Pollan Gives a Plant’s-Eye View
General, Society — by Craig Mackintosh January 27, 2010
Author Michael Pollan asks us to see the world from a plant’s-eye view.
Comments (0)Permaculture Examined by SBS
General, News — by Craig Mackintosh January 11, 2010
Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) recently visited the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia to check out the work of Geoff Lawton at Zaytuna Farm.
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.
Comments (3)120 Most Read Posts of 2009
General — by Craig Mackintosh January 6, 2010
Given it’s holiday season for many of you, and, with the recession and all, many of you in the southern hemisphere will be, hopefully, spending time in the garden preparing for uncertain times. But, there’ll be rainy days where you may well be pressing your nose up against the glass, wishing you could go outside and play but not being allowed to, and of course the rest of us in the northern hemisphere may have a few months to go before the ice melts….
As such, to give you something worthwhile to do, I thought I’d put up the most read posts from this site from 2009. Our internal stats give us a breakdown of clicks, and so the posts below are listed in the order of popularity of visit. You voted for them with your mice.
Comments (1)The Buffalo Commons
Biodiversity, General, Livestock, Rehabilitation, Soil Conservation — by Rhamis Kent January 3, 2010
Here’s an idea that should be embraced and championed by all earth repair advocates: The Buffalo Commons.
The Buffalo Commons is a conceptual proposal to create a vast nature preserve by returning 139,000 square miles (360,000 km2) of the drier portion of the Great Plains to native prairie, and by reintroducing the buffalo, or American Bison, that once grazed the short grass prairie.
Comments (8)The Tricks of the Human Mind
General, Global Warming/Climate Change, Society — by Thomas Fischbacher December 19, 2009
Editor’s Note: Thomas Fischbacher has been a valued commenter on this site for a while now. Today Thomas makes his PRI post debut, with a great piece on why sometimes logic and facts are neither logical nor factual in the context of our cherished beliefs. Others that would like to contribute articles are very welcome to do so.
When studying the human mind, one of the most fascinating – and at times startling – insights is that there is sometimes a serious discrepancy between the tale the human mind spins to itself, and actual reality.
One especially striking demonstration of the extent of the distortions introduced by the brain’s data pre-processing was given by Edward Adelson, MIT professor of vision science, with the "checkershadow illusion":
The squares marked A and B are the same shade of gray
Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
This innocent illusion is so extremely appealing because it conveys its profound message in the most direct, most immediate, most rapid way possible: Your eyes lie, and much more than you actually might ever have imagined.
Comments (5)The Art of Scything
General — by Trish Allen December 18, 2009
by Trish Allen of Rainbow Valley Farm
A modern take on an ancient farming method is becoming a new movement sweeping the lush pastures of New Zealand.
The art of scything has seen a recent resurgence with permaculturalists and Ecoshow directors Joanna Pearsall and Bryan Innes holding a series of workshops around the country starting at Rainbow Valley Farm under the expert eye of visiting Austrian scything teacher Christoff Schneider.
A scythe can be used for many things: mowing the lawn, cutting long grass, harvesting grain or cutting scrub, tasks normally done using a mower, brushcutter or weedeater. New and lighter ergonomically designed tools with specialist razor-sharp blades are able to be wielded with an almost effortless effectiveness that would put the average weedeater to shame.
Comments (8)Permaculture Miracles in the Austrian Mountains
Demonstration Sites, General, Rehabilitation — by Craig Mackintosh May 21, 2009
I’d like to introduce you to Sepp Holzer, a man who not only produces food in a very unlikely location, at a high and frigid altitude in Austria, but is also growing very unlikely crops there as well — and all without the use of chemicals, and with minimal input of human labour.
I guess you could call him a European counterpart of people like Bill Mollison and Masanobu Fukuoka — as all three independently discovered ways of working with nature that save money and labour and that don’t degrade the environment, but actually improve it. In Holzer’s case, he was effectively running a permaculture farm for more than two decades before he even realised his unconventional approach could be termed ‘permaculture’.
Comments (0)The Key to Management is Trust
General — by John Wilson February 9, 2009
PIJ #40, June – Aug 1991
Very often ‘management’ is mistaken for control. And control usually leads to friction and so is inefficient – there is wasted energy. Control also stifles creativity, our best management tool. True management then, is a far more subtle relationship in which trust, communication and control intermingle towards common goals. And the key to it all is trust.
Possibly the only way to lasting peace and harmony, whether between states or within communities or even families is the gradual dissolution of the hierarchical approach and the building up of trust.
And so too with the Earth. We try to control the earth as we do people. We call it management. But true management of the earth and its resources is about understanding and trust. If we do not trust the millions of years of development that has brought the earth to today, if we do not trust the ability of the earth and its ecosystems to provide what we need when we manage it (instead of trying to control it) we are doomed to fail.
Comments (0)Rejoining Gaia – Restore Our Ecosystem Symbiosis
General — by Chuck Burr January 27, 2009
The first step to solving a problem is admitting to it. To change, use different thinking than what created it. How do we get from “our lifestyle is not negotiable” to “living a mutually beneficial lifestyle for us and our ecosystem?”
The mother of all long-term problems is that our culture has become an “anti-ecosystem.” Humans lived in symbiosis with all life for three million years before the agricultural revolution. Humanity fixed nitrogen, created carbon dioxide, and compost for plants in exchange for food, shelter, water, and air/oxygen.
Comments (2)Bill Mollison Interview from 1991
General — by Craig Mackintosh October 7, 2008
Editor’s Note: Here’s a great Bill Mollison interview to throw into the mix. The interviewer is Alan AtKisson, who caught Bill in Seattle in ‘91, and interviewed him in a downtown hotel to the ironic accompaniment of traffic noise.
Alan: Permaculture is a slippery idea to me. But from what I read, it seems that not even those who actually do permaculture really know what it is.
Bill: I’m certain I don’t know what permaculture is. That’s what I like about it – it’s not dogmatic. But you’ve got to say it’s about the only organized system of design that ever was. And that makes it extremely eerie.
Alan: Why "eerie"?
Comments (3)Projects – On-the-Ground Permaculture Experience
General — by Craig Mackintosh September 16, 2008
Why roughing it in Africa or South America or Asia might be the best thing to happen to you.
The more astute amongst you may have noticed we’ve added a ‘Projects’ section to the site. Over time we’ll build this section up to better reflect the kind of permaculture work that is going on worldwide. We also plan to add a ‘People’ section, where we profile permaculturists (minimum requirement that they’ve taken a Permaculture Design Certificate course), so that project leaders can find workers, and vise versa.
As we see it, PDC courses serve a great need to give people an overview of permaculture design methods, but post-PDC activity is critical for people to gain hands-on experience in developing permaculture systems. People with experience can ultimately consult for individuals in their area, and those with sufficient knowledge and experience can consult for aid organisations, NGOs and even governments. As the global food crisis deepens, and energy issues become more pronounced, we’re seeing demand for such consultants significantly increase.
Ask people like Geoff Lawton, Darren Doherty and others and you’ll discover they do not have enough hours in their days to fill all the requests that are being fired at them. The more humanitarian-minded amongst you will quickly see the potential here, where consulting for cash for a business or individual in a wealthy country one week can enable you to consult for free for a poor community the next.
Comments (0)Developed?
General — by Craig Mackintosh August 19, 2008
Okay class – hands up all who live in a developing nation. Hmm… not so many. Now, hands up those that live in a developed nation. Aah… quite a few.
Developing. Developed. International media of every kind use these words constantly. They seem to be globally understood, at least if the frequency of their usage is anything to go by, but despite using these terms myself I must confess that I’m struggling with their meaning. I get the context okay; I’m pretty sure I’m placing the words in the correct place, using them in appropriate contexts – but when I stop to consider the base definition, that’s when the proverbial spanner is thrown into the whirring cogs and gears of my mind.
Hypocrites Unite!
General — by George Monbiot August 9, 2008
At least we have some ideals to fall short of.
by George Monbiot – journalist, author, academic and environmental and political activist
In her new book, Not In My Name, Julie Burchill reserves her grandest fury about hypocrites for environmentalists. We are, she says, pious, sexless and contemptuous of humankind. All of us are posh and rich, and have found in environmentalism a new excuse for lecturing the poor. We tell other people to live by rules we don’t apply to ourselves.
Like all stereotypes, these claims are lazy, familiar and sometimes true. Burchill knows nothing about environmentalism and, almost as a point of pride, hasn’t bothered to find out, but when you use grapeshot you are bound to hit someone. Yes, many prominent greens are posh gits like me. The same can be said of journalists, politicians, artists, academics, business leaders: in fact of just about anyone in public life. But it is always the greens who are singled out. In truth, while the upper middle classes are, as always, over-represented in the media, the movement cuts across the classes. A recent ICM poll found that more people in social classes D and E thought the government should prioritise the environment over the economy (56%) than in classes A and B (47%)(1).
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