Large scale permaculture

[David Hare-Scott]

I am interested in any work that has been done on how practical and cost
effective a large scale commercial growing operation using permaculture
principles is or might be.

Does anybody know of:

1) Any publicly available study of the potential of large scale permaculture
2) Any case of a large scale permaculture operation now working or under
construction

David

[Terryc]

David Hare-Scott wrote:

> 1) Any publicly available study of the potential of large scale permaculture

Lettuce, tomatos, cucumbers,
You can find the latter two in the ABC landline archives.

> 2) Any case of a large scale permaculture operation now working or under
> construction

As mentioned above.

BTW. "large scale" means having significant impact on the Australian
marke, rather than large scale as in broad acre,

[Jock[_2_]]

look here:
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=permaculture+adelaide&meta=
not sure where you are but it's as close as google.....
Jock

"David Hare-Scott" > wrote in message
...
>I am interested in any work that has been done on how practical and cost
> effective a large scale commercial growing operation using permaculture
> principles is or might be.
>
> Does anybody know of:
>
> 1) Any publicly available study of the potential of large scale
> permaculture
> 2) Any case of a large scale permaculture operation now working or under
> construction
>
> David
>
>

[Terryc]

Terryc wrote:
> David Hare-Scott wrote:
>
>> 1) Any publicly available study of the potential of large scale
>> permaculture
>
>
> Lettuce, tomatos, cucumbers,

Woops, those are hydroponics.
Real brain fart there.

Tried the Permaculture sites?
Its whole focus is really small scale, although I believe they have
organised a few village size sites in various places OS, such as Africa,
Cuba, etc.

[len gardener]

g'day david,

there is this place here in south aus'

http://foodforest.com.au/

don't know that it fits your scale or not they are growing edible
stuff using p/c principals, but it is still marginal land that is
being used for less the habitat which it would serve the community
better as.

permaculture is more a mind set of ideas to look after the planet
better, once commercialism comes into it then profit will over ride.

anyhow the place above was featured on ABC landline last sunday.

permaculture would be all about farming sustainably, that is
supporting a well developed habitat as well as being close to those
who need what you are growing (food miles), it's not that you can
produce something out of very marginal land.

On Mon, 7 Apr 2008 21:56:18 +1000, "David Hare-Scott"
> wrote:
snipped
With peace and brightest of blessings,

len & bev

--
"Be Content With What You Have And
May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In
A World That You May Not Understand."

http://www.lensgarden.com.au/

[len gardener]

again david,

here is the transcript link to that food forest story i don't think it
is the same as the food forest link:

http://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2006/s2208413.htm



On Mon, 7 Apr 2008 21:56:18 +1000, "David Hare-Scott" snipped
With peace and brightest of blessings,

len & bev

--
"Be Content With What You Have And
May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In
A World That You May Not Understand."

http://www.lensgarden.com.au/

[David Hare-Scott]

"len gardener" > wrote in message
...
> g'day david,
>
> there is this place here in south aus'
>
> http://foodforest.com.au/
>
> don't know that it fits your scale or not they are growing edible
> stuff using p/c principals, but it is still marginal land that is
> being used for less the habitat which it would serve the community
> better as.
>
> permaculture is more a mind set of ideas to look after the planet
> better, once commercialism comes into it then profit will over ride.
>

I agree about the mindset. But we are embedded in a largely free enterprise
society in which you have to be commercially viable to keep going. Mollison's
philosophy is such that he would remake much of society, its values and
motives not merely how we get our food. Although he does give a nod to
"legality, people, culture, trade and commerce" as a component in creating a
design. So perhaps he does accept that commerce and making a dollar is not
altogether evil. The question is how do you do it in a society whose
agriculture is based on permaculture?

I know of small scale operations where on a few acres a family is growing
enough to mainly feed themselves and sell some to make a dollar to buy what
they cannot grow. This makes that family very happy, they have the ability to
live in the way that they see it is proper to live.

However Mollison puts forward the idea that permaculture could/should replace
broadacre farming altogether. This leads me to a problem. I cannot see how
every family can have a few acres nor the will/ability to farm it. I cannot
see how we can get away from at least some specialists who use their skill to
get food from the land efficiently on a scale that permits the feeding of the
non-farmers who produce other things. In the long run the choice is to do it
sustainably or to starve when we have mined out the soil. So what replaces
broadacre?

David

[David Hare-Scott]

<Charlie> wrote in message ...
> On Mon, 7 Apr 2008 21:56:18 +1000, "David Hare-Scott"
> > wrote:
>
> >I am interested in any work that has been done on how practical and cost
> >effective a large scale commercial growing operation using permaculture
> >principles is or might be.
> >
> >Does anybody know of:
> >
> >1) Any publicly available study of the potential of large scale
permaculture
> >2) Any case of a large scale permaculture operation now working or under
> >construction
> >
> >David
> >
>
> Maybe you will find these helpful.
>
> http://www.polyfacefarms.com/default.aspx
>
>
http://kjpermaculture.blogspot.com/2008/03/pastured-poultry-polyface-farm-model.html
>
> Charlie

Thanks. From the look of their customer list they seem to be in the size
category I am interested in. I wonder if they have published anything on
their overall economics, the inputs they use and the productivity of their
land.

I would love to see such an operation but sadly that's out of the question.

David

[Terryc]

David Hare-Scott wrote:
> So what replaces
> broadacre?

They need to become organic.

[Billy[_4_]]

In article >,
"David Hare-Scott" > wrote:

> "len gardener" > wrote in message
> ...
> > g'day david,
> >
> > there is this place here in south aus'
> >
> > http://foodforest.com.au/
> >
> > don't know that it fits your scale or not they are growing edible
> > stuff using p/c principals, but it is still marginal land that is
> > being used for less the habitat which it would serve the community
> > better as.
> >
> > permaculture is more a mind set of ideas to look after the planet
> > better, once commercialism comes into it then profit will over ride.
> >
>
> I agree about the mindset. But we are embedded in a largely free enterprise
> society in which you have to be commercially viable to keep going. Mollison's
> philosophy is such that he would remake much of society, its values and
> motives not merely how we get our food. Although he does give a nod to
> "legality, people, culture, trade and commerce" as a component in creating a
> design. So perhaps he does accept that commerce and making a dollar is not
> altogether evil. The question is how do you do it in a society whose
> agriculture is based on permaculture?
Energy is costing more. Local food tastes better than trucked in food.
Diversified farmers cut out the middle man and get top dollar (for what
it is worth these days) for their crops. It looks like the market could
work to the consumers benefit. Unfortunately not all crop land is near
its' consumers, so something needs to be done about the expensive
bottlenecks i.e. Cargill, Archer Daniel Midlands, et al. and some kind
of social support and remediation for growers of mono-cultures.
>
> I know of small scale operations where on a few acres a family is growing
> enough to mainly feed themselves and sell some to make a dollar to buy what
> they cannot grow. This makes that family very happy, they have the ability to
> live in the way that they see it is proper to live.
>
> However Mollison puts forward the idea that permaculture could/should replace
> broadacre farming altogether.
> This leads me to a problem. I cannot see how
> every family can have a few acres nor the will/ability to farm it.

> I cannot
> see how we can get away from at least some specialists who use their skill to
> get food from the land efficiently on a scale that permits the feeding of the
> non-farmers who produce other things. In the long run the choice is to do it
> sustainably or to starve when we have mined out the soil. So what replaces
> broadacre?

The Cuban Model
The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved by Sandor Katz
p. 28 - 30
Local and seasonal eating usually requires that we adjust our
expectations. Some foods we are used to eating on a daily basis may
simply not be possible in this scheme. For instance, unless you live in
Florida, you might have to let go of that morning glass of orange juice.
But other foods, no less delicious or nutritious (in fact generally far
more so), will replace them. We can learn to love what grows abundantly
and easily around us and reorient our tastes and our habits. Another
completely different take on the idea of a local food challenge a "land
fast," a period of eating only what can be harvested in the immediate
vicinity, in the gardens and the woods. In certain seasons, one could be
very satisfied.
Relatively few people have voluntarily chosen to make the switch to
exclusively local foods. But in some cases circumstances have resulted
in the abrupt disappearance of global trade, and it has been
demonstrated that people can survive and restore food sovereignty. Take,
for example, Cuba. Until 1989 Cuba's major trading partners were the
Soviet nations of Eastern Europe. Cuba exported sugar and imported most
other foods, as well as fuel, machinery, and chemicals. In 1989 about
three times as much Cuban land was planted in sugar cane than was
planted in all other food crops combined. Fifty-seven percent of the
calories in the Cuban diet were imported. But the abrupt disintegration
of the Soviet-allied governments and the Soviet Union itself resulted in
the sudden loss of these trading partners.
The loss of its trade partners meant a loss of two-thirds of Cuba's food
supply, as well as the fuel, machinery, and chemicals upon which its
agricultural system depended. Compounding the shortages was a tightening
of the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba in the early 1990s. The food
shortage was so acute that diseases of malnutrition became widespread.
Lacking the "inputs" (such as chemicals, fuel, and hybrid seeds)
required for industrial-style monoculture, Cuba was forced to transform
its farming system. Food production was decentralized, and farmers in
each region were encouraged to diversify rather than specialize. Urban,
family, and community gardening, which had always been features of Cuban
life, were officially encouraged, and a program ot public education and
model farms was undertaken to spread knowledge about biological farming
methods. The Ministry of Agriculture even replaced its front lawn with
vegetable gardens.

By 1999, Cuba had become a nation of food producers. Urban gardens alone
produced more than eight hundred thousand tons of food, mostly
vegetables. There is no way to compare this sector to pre-1989 levels,
because until then this sector was considered insignificant[ and not
counted. However, this remarkable statistic shows that cities can
produce food, though not in the style of acres upon acres of grain
fields; instead, intensive cultivation of yards and parks and rooftops
can ensure a steady supply of fresh produce to urbanites (for more on
urban gardening, see chapter 3).

The prospect of a crisis is obviously not the only compelling reason to
revive local food production. There are many benefits of local food,
starting with flavor, continuing through nutrition, and definitely
including community economic stability. But it's good for us who live in
a culture of constant convenience consumerism to be reminded that the
time-honored methods of producing food can still feed people perfectly
adequately.

For most people in most places throughout time, the food available has
been organic and local. Organic was all there was until the
mid-twentieth century, and anything beyond local, to the extent that it
was available at all, was an expensive luxury, out of daily reach for
average people. Abundant globalized food may not always be available to
us either. It is easy for me to imagine the United States, or the whole
world, in suddenly different economic circumstances, with an abrupt halt
to all international trade, as Cuba faced in 1989, that forces a
transition to greater dependence on community-based food production. The
skills and practice of food production are important to revive and to
prevent from disappearing.

The following is a little messy because I haven't finished cleaning it
up but perennial crops that can replace annual crop are being
developed. Scientific American, August, 2007

For many of us in affluent regions, our hath-room scales indicate that
get more than enough to eat, which may lead some to believe that it is
easy, perhaps too easy, for farmers to grow our food. On the
contrary, modern agriculture requires vast areas of land, along with
regular infusions of water, energy and chemicals. Noting these
resource demands, the 2005 United Nations-sponsored Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment suggested that agriculture may be the
³largest threat to biodiversity and ecosystem function of any single
human activity."
Today most of humanity's food comes directly or indirectly (as animal
feed) from cereal grains, legumes and oilseed crops. These staples are
appealing to producers and consumers because they are easy to
transport and store, relatively imperishable, and fairly high in protein
and calories. As a result such crops occupy about 80 percent of global
agricultural land. But they are all annual plants, must be grown anew
from seeds every year, typically using resource-intensive cultivation
methods. More troubling, the environmental degradation caused by
agriculture will likely worsen as the hungry human population grows to
eight billion or 10 billion in the coming decades. That is why a number
of
plant breeders, agronomists and ecologists are working to develop
grain-cropping systems that will function much more like the natural
ecosystems displaced by agriculture. The key to our collective success
is transforming the major grain crops into perennials, which can live
for many years. The idea, actually decades old, may take decades more
to realize, but significant advances in plant-breeding science are
bringing this goal within sight at last.


Roots of the Problem

Most of the farmers, inventors and scientists who have walked farm
fields imagining how to overcome difficulties in cultivation probably
saw
agriculture through the lens or' its contemporary successes and
failures. But in the 1970s Kansas plant geneticist Wes Jackson took a
10,00 year step into the past to agriculture with the natural systems
that preceded it. Before humans boosted the abundance of annuals through
domestication and Farming, mixtures of perennial plains dominated nearly
all the planet's landscapes-as they still do in uncultivated areas
today. More than 85 percent of North America's native plant species, for
example, are perennials. Jackson observed that the perennial grasses and
flowers of Kansas'S tall-grass prairirs were highly productive year
after year, even as they built and maintained rich soils.They needed no
fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides to thrive while fending off pests
and disease. Water running off or through the prairie soils was clear,
and wildlife was abundant.
In contrast, Jackson saw that nearby fields of annual crops, such as
maize, sorgum, wheat, sunflowers and soybeans, requent and expensive
care to remain productive. Because annuals have relatively shallow
roots-most of which occur in the top 0.3 meter of soil-and live only
until harvest, many farmed areas had problems with soil erosion,
depletion of soil fertility or water contamination. Moreover, the eerily
quiet farm fields were mostly barren of wildlife. In short, sustaining
annual monocultures in so many places was the problem, and the solution
lay beneath Jackson's boots: hardy
and diverse perennial root systems.
----------

Key Facts
o Modern intensive land use quashes natural biodiversity and ecosystems.
Meanwhile the population will balloon to between eight billion and 10
billion in the coming decades, requiring that more acres be cultivated.
o Replacing single-season crops with perennials would create large root
systems capable of preserving the soil and would aillow cultivation in
areas currently considered marginal.
o The challenge is monumental, but if plant scientists succeed, the
achievement would rival humanity's original domestication of food crops
over the past 10 millennia-and be just as revolutionary.
-The Editors
---------

If annual crops are problematic and natural ecosystems offer
advantages, why do none ofour important grain crops have perennial
roots? The answer lies in the origins of farming. When our
Neolithic ancestors started harvesting seed-bearing plants near their
settlements, several factors probably determined why they favored
annuals.

The earliest annuals to be domesticated, emmer wheat and wild barley,
did have appealingly large seeds. And to ensure a reliable harvest every
year, the first farmers would have replanted some of the seeds they
collected. The characteristics of wild plants can vary greatly, however,
so the seeds of plants with the most desirable traits, such as high
yield, easy threshing and resistance to shattering, would have been
favored. Thus, active cultivation and the unwitting application of
evolutionary selection pressure quickly rcsuhed in domesticated annual
plants with more appealing qualities than their wild annual relatives.
Although some perennial plants might also have had good-size seeds,
they did not need to be replanted and so would not have been subjected
to-or benefited from-the same selection process.

Roots as Solution
Today the traits of perennials are also becoming better appreciated.
With their roots commonly exceeding depths of two meters, perennial
plant communities are critical regulators of ecosystem functions, such
as water management and carbon and nitrogen cycling. Although they
do have to invest energy in maintaining enough underground tissue to
survive the winter, perennial roots spring info action deep within the
soil whenever temperatures are warm enough and nutrients and water
are available. Their constant state of preparedness allows them to be
highly productive yet resiliant in the face of environmental stresss.
environ i nental stresses.

In a century-long study of factors affecting soil erosion, timothy
grass, a perennial hay crop, proved roughly 54 times more effective in
maintaining topsoil than annual crops did. Scientists have also
documented a five fold reduction in water loss and a 35-fold reduction
in nitrate loss from soil planted with alfalfa and mixed perennial
grasses as compared with soil under corn and soybeans. Greater root
depths and longer growing seasons also let perennials boost their
sequestration of carbon, the main ingredient of soil organic matter, by
50 percent or more as compared with annually cropped fields. Because
they do no! need to be replanted every year, perennials require fewer
passes of farm machinery and fewer inputs of pesticides and
fertilizers as well, which reduces fossil-fuel use. The plants thus
lower
the amount ol' carbon dioxide in the air while improving the soil's
fertility.

Herbicide costs for annual crop production may be four to 8.5 times
the herbicide costs for perennial crop prodiiclion, so fewer inputs in
perennial systems mean lower cash expenditures for the farmer.
Wildlife also benefits: bird populations, for instance, have been shown
to be seven times more dense in perennial crop fields than in annual
crop fields. Perhaps most important for a hungry world, perennials are
far more capable of sustainable cultivation on marginal lands, which
already have poor soil quality or which would be quickly depleted by a
few years of intensive annual cropping. For all these reasons, plant
breeders in the U.S. and elsewhere have initiated research and breeding
programs over the past five years to develop wheat, sorghum,
sunflower, intermediate wheatgrass and other species as perennial
grain crops. When compared with research devoted to annual crops,
perennial grain development is still in the toddler stage . Taking
advantage ofthe significant advances in plant breeding over the past
two or three decades, however, will make the large-scale development
of high-yield perennial grain crops feasible within the next 25 to 50
years.

Perennial crop developers are employing essentially the same two
methods as those used by many other agricultural scientists: direct
domestication of wild plants and hybridization of existing annual crop
plants with their wild relatives. These techniques are potentially
complementary, but each presents a distinct set of challenges and
nclvnnrngcs as well.

Assisted Evolution

Direct domestication of wild perennials is the more straighcforward
approach to creating perennial crops. Relying on time-tested methods
of observation and selection of superior individual plants, breeders
seek to increase the frequency of genes for desirable traits, such as
easy separation of seed from husk, a nonshattering seed, large seed
size, synchronous maturity, palatability, strong stems and high seed
yield. Many existing crops, such as corn and sunflowers, lent
themselves readily to domestication in this manner. Native Americans,
for example, turned wild sunflowers with small heads and seeds into
the familiar large-headed and largeseeded sun flower [see box on page
88].
Active perennial grain domestication programs are currently focused
on intermediate wheatgrass (Thinopyrum intermedium), Maximilian
sunflower (Helianthus maximiliani), Illinois bundleflower (Desmanthus
illinoensis) and flax (a perennial species of the Linum genus). Of
these,
the domestication of intermediate wheatgrass, a perennial relative of
wheat, is perhaps in the most advanced stages.

To use an existing annual crop plant in creating a perennial, wide
hybridization-a forced mating of two different plant species-can
bring together the best qualities of the domesticated annual and its
wild perennial relative. Domesticated crops already possess desirable
Attributes, such as high yield, whereas their wild relatives can
contribute genetic variations for traits such as the perennial habit
itself as well as resistance to pests and disease.

Of the 13 most widely grown grain and oil-seed crops, 10 are capable
of hybridization with perennial relatives, according to plant breeder T.
Stan Cox of the Land Institute, a Kansas non-profit that Jackson co-
founded to pursue sustainable agriculture. A handful of breeding
programs across the U.S. are currently pursuing such interspecific
(between species) and intergeneric (between genera) hybrids to
develop perennial wheat, sorghum, corn, flax and oilseed sunflower. For
more than a decade, UniversityofManitoba researchers have studied
resource use in perennial systems, and now a number of Canadian
institutions have started on the long road to developing perennial grain
programs as well. The University of Western Australia has already
established a perennial wheat program as part of that country's
Cooperative Research Center for Future Farm Industries. In addition,
scientists at the Food Crops Research Institute in Kunming, China, are
continuing, work initiated by the International Rice Research Institute
in
the 199Os to develop perennial upland ncr rice hybrides.

At the Land Institute, breeders are working both on domesticating
perennial wheatgrass and on crossing assorted perennial wheatgrass
species (in particular, Th. intermedium, Th. ponticum and Th.
elongatum) with .annual wheats. At present, 1,500 such hybrids and
thousands of their progeny are being screened for perennial traits. The
process of creating these hybrids is ilself labor-intensive and time-
consummg. Once breeders identify candidates for hyhridization, they
must manage gene exchanges between disparate species by
manipulating pollen to make a large number of crosses between plants,
selecting the progeny with desirable traits, and repeating this cycle of
crossing and selection again and again.

Hybridization nonetheless is a potentially faster means to create a
perennial crop plant than domestication, although more technologyis
often required to overcome genetic incompatiibilitiess between the
parent plants. A seed produced by crossing two distantly related
species, for example, will often abort before it is fully developed.
Such
a specimen can be "rescued" as an embryo by growing it on artificial
medium until it produces a few roots and leaves, then transferirng the
seedling to soil, where it can grow like any other plant. When it
reaches
the reproductive stage, however, the hybrid's genetic anomalies
frequently manifest as an inability to reproduce seed.

-------------

10 CROPS
Annual cereal grains, food legumes and oilseed plants claimed 80 percent
of global harvested cropland in 2004.
The top three grains covered more than half that area.
CROP LAND %
1. Wheat 17.8
2. Rice 12.5
3. Maize 12.2
4. Soybeans 7.6
5. Barley 4.7
6. Sorghum 3.5
7. Cottonseed 2.9
8. Dry beans 2.9
9. Millet 2.8
10. Rapeseed/mustaic! 2.2

-------------

A partially or fullv sterile hybrid generally results from incompatible
parental chromosomes within its cells. To produce eggs or pollen, the
hybrid's chromosomes must line up during meiosis (the process by
which sex cells halve their chromosomes in preparation for joining with
another gamete) and exchange genetic information with one another. If
the chromosomes cannot find counterparts because each parent's
version is too different, or if they differ in number, the meiosis line
dance is disrupted. This problem can be over come in a few ways.
Because
sterile hybrids are usually unable to produce male gametes but are
partially fertile with feni a 1c gametes, pollinating them with one of.
the original parents, known as backcrossi ing, can restore fertility.
Doubling the num1 ber of chromosomes, either spontaneously or by adding
chemicals such as colchicine, is another strategy. Although each method
al- lows for chromosome' pairing, subsequent chromosome eliminations in
each successive generation often happen in perennial wheat hybrids,
particularly to chromosomes in her if cd from the perennial parent.
Because of the challenging gene pools created by wide hybridization,
when fertile perennial 'hybrids are identified, biotechnology techniques
that can reveal which parent contributed parts of the progeny's genome
arc useful. One of these, genomic in situ hybridization, for example,
distinguishes the perennial parent's chromosomes from those of the
annual parent by color fluorescence and also detects chromosome
anomalies, such as structural rearrangement between unrelated
chromosomes (see bottom illustration on next page). Such analytical
tools can help speed up a breeding program once breeders discover
desirable and undesirable chromosome combinations, without compromising
the potential for using perennial grains in organic agriculture, where
genetically engineered crops are not allowed.
Another valuable method for speeding and improving traditional plant
breeding is known as marker-assisted selection. DNA sequences associated
with specific traits serve as markers that allow breeders to screen
crosses as seedlings for desired attributes without having to wait until
the plants grow to maturity [see &quotBack to the Future of Cereals," by
Stephen A. Goff and John M. Salmeron; SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, August 2004].
At present, no markers specific to perennial plant breeding have been
established, although it is only a matter of time. Scientists at
Washington State University, for example, have already determined that
chromosome 4E in Thelongatum wheatgrass is necessary for the important
perennial trait of regrowth following asexual reproduction cycle.
Narrowing down the region on 4E to the gene or gene's that produce the
trait would reveal relevant DNA markers. that will save breeders a year
of growing time in assessing hybrids.
Perennialism is nonetheless an intricate life
path that goes well beyond a single trait, let alone
a single gene. Because of this complexity, trans-
genic modification (insertion of foreign DNA) is
unlikely to be useful in developing perennial
grains, at least initially. Down the road, trans-
genic technology may have a role in refining sim-
ple inherited traits. For example, if a domesticat-
ed perennial wheatgrass is successfully devel-
oped but still lacks the right combination of
gluten-protein genes necessary for making good-
quality bread, gluten genes from annual wheat
could be inserted into the perennial plant.
Trade-offs and Payoffs
Although perennial crops, such as alfalfa and
sugarcane, already exist around the world, none
has seed yields comparable to those of annual
grain crops. At first glance, the idea that plants
can simultaneously direct resources to building
and maintaining perennial root systems and
also produce ample yields of edible grains may
seem counterintuitive. Carbon, which is cap-
tured through photosynthesis, is the plant's
main building block and must be allocated
among its various parts.
Critics of the idea that perennials could have

high seed yield often focus on such physiologi-
cal trade-offs, assuming that the amount of car-
bon available to a plant is fixed and therefore
that carbon allocated to seeds always comes at
the expense of perennating structures, such as
roofs and rhizomes. Doubters also often over-
look the fact that the life. spans of perennial
plants exist along a spectrum. Some perennial
prairie plants may persist for 50 to 100 years,
whereas others live for only a few years. Fortu-
nately for breeders, plants are relatively flexible
organisms: responsive to selection pressures,
they are able to change the size of their total car-
bon &quotpies" depending on environmental condi-
tions and to change the allocation of pie slices.
A hypothetical wild perennial species might
live 20 years in its highly competitive natural'
environment and produce only small amounts
of seed in any year. Its carbon pie is small, with
much of it going toward fending off pests and
disease, competing for a few resources and per-
sisting in variable conditions. When breeders
take the wild specimen out of its resource-
strapped natural setting and place it into a man-
aged environment, its total carbon pie suddenly
grows, resulting in a bigger plant.
Over time, breeders can also change the size
of the carbon slices within that larger pie. Mod-
ern Green Revolution grain breeding, when
combined with increased use of fertilizers, more
than doubled the yield of many annual grain

crops, and those increases were achieved in
plants that did not have perennating structures
to sacrifice. Breeders attained a portion of those
impressive yield expansions in annual crops by
selecting for plants that produced less stem and
leaf mass, thereby reallocating that carbon to
seed production.
Yields can be similarly increased without
eliminating the organs and structures required
for overwintering in perennial grain crops. In
fact, many perennials, which are larger overall
than annuals, offer more potential for breeders
to reallocate vegetative growth to seed produc-
tion. Furthermore, for a perennial grain crop to
be successful in meeting human needs, it might
need to live for only five or 10 years.
In other words, the wild perennial is unnec-
essarily &quotoverbuilt" for a managed agricultural
setting. Much of the carbon allocated to the
plant's survival mechanisms, such as those al-
lowing it to survive infrequent droughts, could
be reallocated to seed production.
Greener Farms
Thus, we can begin to imagine a day 50 years
from now when farmers around the world are
..walking through their fields of perennial grain
crops. These plots would function much like the
Kansas prairies walked by Wes Jackson, while
also producing food. Belowground, different
types of perennial roots-some resembling the
long taproots of alfalfa and others more like the
thick, fibrous tangle of wheatgrass roots-
would coexist, making use of different soil lay-
ers. Crops with alternative seasonal growth
habits could be cultivated together to extend the
overall growing season. Fewer inputs and great-
er biodiversity would in turn benefit the envi-
ronment and the farmer's bottom line.
Global conditions-agricultural, ecological,
economic and political-are changing rapidly
in ways that could promote efforts to create pe-
rennial crops. For instance, as pressure mounts
on the U.S. and Europe to cut or eliminate farm
subsidies, which primarily support annual crop-
ping systems, more funds could be made avail-
able for perennials research. And as pnergy pric-
es soar and the costs of environmental degrada-
tion are increasingly appreciated, budgeting
public money for long-term projects that will re-
duce resource consumption and land depletion
will become more politically popular.
Because the long timeline for release of pe-
rennial grain crops discourages private-sector
investment at this point, large-scale government
or philanthropic funding is needed to build up
a critical mass of scientists and research pro-
grams. Although commercial companies may
not profit as much by selling fertilizers and pes-
ticides to farmers producing perennial grains,
they, too, will most likely adapt to these new
crops with new products and services.
Annual grain production will undoubtedly
still be important 50 years from now-some
crops, such as soybeans, will probably be diffi-
cult to perennialize, and perennials will not
completely eliminate problems such as disease,
weeds and soil fertility losses. Deep roots, how-
ever, mean resilience. Establishing the roots of
agriculture based on perennial crops now will
give future farmers more choices in what they
can grow and where, while sustainably produc-
ing food for the burgeoning world population
that is depending on.them. *
BREEDING HYBRID plants can
require rescuing an embryo
from the ovary (/eft). A
researcher bags annual sor-
ghum heads to collect pollen,
with tall perennial sorghum in
the background {right}.
Perennial Grain Crops: An Agri-
cultural Revolution. Edited by
Jerry D. Glover and William Wilhelm.
Special issue of Renewable Agricul-
ture and Food Systems, Vol. 20, No. 1
March 2005.
Wes Jackson (35 Who Made
a Difference). Craig Canine in
special anniversary issue oiSmithson
ian, Vol. 36, No. 8, pages 81-82;
November 2005.
Prospects for Developing Peren
nial Grain Crops. Thomas S. Cox,
Jerry D. Glover, David L. Van Tassel,
Cindy M. Cox and Lee D. DeHaan in
BioScience, Vol. 56, No. 8, pages 64?
659;August 2006.
Sustainable Development of the
Agricultural Bio-Economy. Nich
las Jordan et al. in Science, Vol. 316,
pages 1570-1571;June 15,2007.
The Land Institute:




(THE AUTHORS]
ibii; :.; ^ r i; r. an agroecolo-
gist and director of graduate
research at the Land Institute in
Salina, Kan., a nonprofit organiza-
tion devoted to education and
research in sustainable agriculture.
Cindy M. Cox is a plant patholo-
gist and geneticist in the insti-
tute's plant-breeding program.
John P. Reganold, who is Regent;,
Professor of Soil Science at Wash-
ington State University at Pullman,
specializes in sustainable agricul-
ture and last wrote for Scientific
American on that subject in the
June 1990 issue.
---------

I hope you find something useful in the above.





>
> David
--

Billy

Impeach Pelosi, Bush & Cheney to the Hague
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/
http://rachelcorriefoundation.org/

[George.com]

"David Hare-Scott" > wrote in message
...
>I am interested in any work that has been done on how practical and cost
> effective a large scale commercial growing operation using permaculture
> principles is or might be.
>
> Does anybody know of:
>
> 1) Any publicly available study of the potential of large scale
> permaculture
> 2) Any case of a large scale permaculture operation now working or under
> construction
>
> David

AGRICULTURE IN THE CITY
A Key to Sustainability in Havana, Cuba
read it online or download it
http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-31574-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html#begining

have a squiz at
http://www.cosg.org.uk/rosset.htm
http://www.cosg.org.uk/mario.htm
http://www.organicconsumers.org/organic/cuba_organic_food.cfm
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/120103_korea_2.html
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~cohousing/cuba/an95rpp1.htm

rob

[len gardener]

g'day david,

as humasn we need to get aways from the broadacre export farmer
mentality, the cost to habitat destruction is huge, and it also
impacts on our weather ie.,. reducing our chances of rain in the
droughts that are part of earths cycle. the b/a farmers here decimate
vast aeas of habitat on somewaht merginal ground, and after around 7
+- years they simply move on and leave the newly created desert behind
there is no requirement as there is with mining to rehabilitate the
area as they further encroach.

our farmers need to be in our communities where on small holdings
maybe up to 40 acres +- they produce in season staples for those
communities and supplied from farmer to consumer no middle man, the
farmer then gets to share the common wealth of his community, instead
of the way they now do it through a series of middle men who onsell
not so fresh food at prices people can barely afford and not
representative of what the farmers meager offering was.

like that adelaide hills thing that land should basically be returned
to habitat is has always been very marginal land (why do people think
the farmers walked away from it after they ahd milked it for waht they
could?), anyone living there should alocate enough land use for their
own personnal food needs, as any commercial venture sooner or later is
driven by the need for more and more turn over.

people can grow enough of the non staples their family needs in a very
small space, we had this type of system back in the late 40's and into
the 50's+, fresh in season food was affordable for all families, and
the food miles was very low so another positive factor, the farmer
casme around a couple or so times a week selling fresh produce, or we
went to the farm. eggs were right there as fresh as the day from the
farm, and fresh unadulterated milk was delivered intoi 1 gallon
stainless billy at our front door not sure may have been each second
day?? homes should be modest enough and land sufficient enough for
families to grow some of their own.

so to me the permaculture sustainable farmer is the one who is moving
closer to his consumers, not lauding themselves growing stuff on
denuded dry habitat land.

mollison uses those asian communities in asia where the farmer is a
neighbour and produces all the staples for that neighbourhood, makes a
lot of sense and no good putting it in the too hard basket because if
the oil crisis is as bad as what is indicated then our broadacre
farmers are going to have huge problems getting their produce to
market at an affordable profit making price.

need to think outside the square, the answers will come and the sooner
the better.

On Tue, 8 Apr 2008 11:15:17 +1000, "David Hare-Scott"
> wrote:
snipped
With peace and brightest of blessings,

len & bev

--
"Be Content With What You Have And
May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In
A World That You May Not Understand."

http://www.lensgarden.com.au/

[J. Clarke]

len gardener wrote:
> g'day david,
>
> as humasn we need to get aways from the broadacre export farmer
> mentality, the cost to habitat destruction is huge, and it also
> impacts on our weather ie.,. reducing our chances of rain in the
> droughts that are part of earths cycle. the b/a farmers here
> decimate
> vast aeas of habitat on somewaht merginal ground, and after around 7
> +- years they simply move on and leave the newly created desert
> behind
> there is no requirement as there is with mining to rehabilitate the
> area as they further encroach.
>
> our farmers need to be in our communities where on small holdings
> maybe up to 40 acres +- they produce in season staples for those
> communities and supplied from farmer to consumer no middle man, the
> farmer then gets to share the common wealth of his community,
> instead
> of the way they now do it through a series of middle men who onsell
> not so fresh food at prices people can barely afford and not
> representative of what the farmers meager offering was.
>
> like that adelaide hills thing that land should basically be
> returned
> to habitat is has always been very marginal land (why do people
> think
> the farmers walked away from it after they ahd milked it for waht
> they
> could?), anyone living there should alocate enough land use for
> their
> own personnal food needs, as any commercial venture sooner or later
> is
> driven by the need for more and more turn over.
>
> people can grow enough of the non staples their family needs in a
> very
> small space, we had this type of system back in the late 40's and
> into
> the 50's+, fresh in season food was affordable for all families, and
> the food miles was very low so another positive factor, the farmer
> casme around a couple or so times a week selling fresh produce, or
> we
> went to the farm. eggs were right there as fresh as the day from the
> farm, and fresh unadulterated milk was delivered intoi 1 gallon
> stainless billy at our front door not sure may have been each second
> day?? homes should be modest enough and land sufficient enough for
> families to grow some of their own.
>
> so to me the permaculture sustainable farmer is the one who is
> moving
> closer to his consumers, not lauding themselves growing stuff on
> denuded dry habitat land.
>
> mollison uses those asian communities in asia where the farmer is a
> neighbour and produces all the staples for that neighbourhood, makes
> a
> lot of sense and no good putting it in the too hard basket because
> if
> the oil crisis is as bad as what is indicated then our broadacre
> farmers are going to have huge problems getting their produce to
> market at an affordable profit making price.
>
> need to think outside the square, the answers will come and the
> sooner
> the better.

How do you make this system work for Los Angeles or Mexico City or
Bombay? If the largest city you've seen is Sydney you don't really
understand the problem.

--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

[Billy[_4_]]

In article >,
"J. Clarke" > wrote:

> len gardener wrote:
> > g'day david,
> >
> > as humasn we need to get aways from the broadacre export farmer
> > mentality, the cost to habitat destruction is huge, and it also
> > impacts on our weather ie.,. reducing our chances of rain in the
> > droughts that are part of earths cycle. the b/a farmers here
> > decimate
> > vast aeas of habitat on somewaht merginal ground, and after around 7
> > +- years they simply move on and leave the newly created desert
> > behind
> > there is no requirement as there is with mining to rehabilitate the
> > area as they further encroach.
> >
> > our farmers need to be in our communities where on small holdings
> > maybe up to 40 acres +- they produce in season staples for those
> > communities and supplied from farmer to consumer no middle man, the
> > farmer then gets to share the common wealth of his community,
> > instead
> > of the way they now do it through a series of middle men who onsell
> > not so fresh food at prices people can barely afford and not
> > representative of what the farmers meager offering was.
> >
> > like that adelaide hills thing that land should basically be
> > returned
> > to habitat is has always been very marginal land (why do people
> > think
> > the farmers walked away from it after they ahd milked it for waht
> > they
> > could?), anyone living there should alocate enough land use for
> > their
> > own personnal food needs, as any commercial venture sooner or later
> > is
> > driven by the need for more and more turn over.
> >
> > people can grow enough of the non staples their family needs in a
> > very
> > small space, we had this type of system back in the late 40's and
> > into
> > the 50's+, fresh in season food was affordable for all families, and
> > the food miles was very low so another positive factor, the farmer
> > casme around a couple or so times a week selling fresh produce, or
> > we
> > went to the farm. eggs were right there as fresh as the day from the
> > farm, and fresh unadulterated milk was delivered intoi 1 gallon
> > stainless billy at our front door not sure may have been each second
> > day?? homes should be modest enough and land sufficient enough for
> > families to grow some of their own.
> >
> > so to me the permaculture sustainable farmer is the one who is
> > moving
> > closer to his consumers, not lauding themselves growing stuff on
> > denuded dry habitat land.
> >
> > mollison uses those asian communities in asia where the farmer is a
> > neighbour and produces all the staples for that neighbourhood, makes
> > a
> > lot of sense and no good putting it in the too hard basket because
> > if
> > the oil crisis is as bad as what is indicated then our broadacre
> > farmers are going to have huge problems getting their produce to
> > market at an affordable profit making price.
> >
> > need to think outside the square, the answers will come and the
> > sooner
> > the better.
>
> How do you make this system work for Los Angeles or Mexico City or
> Bombay? If the largest city you've seen is Sydney you don't really
> understand the problem.
>
> --

Look a the Cuban system. Their system is working but they only started
it because they had no choice.
--

Billy

Impeach Pelosi, Bush & Cheney to the Hague
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/
http://rachelcorriefoundation.org/

[len gardener]

On Tue, 8 Apr 2008 14:41:57 -0400, "J. Clarke"
> wrote:
snipped
>How do you make this system work for Los Angeles or Mexico City or
>Bombay? If the largest city you've seen is Sydney you don't really
>understand the problem.
>
>--
maybe john just maybe it is you who have no understanding of "the
problem"??

once you take the liberty to pidgeon hole what is current then you
take away any thinking outside the square.

all tall buildings have rooves?

there are balconies?

most cities have large parklands?

melbourne is noted for it's culturaly diversified gardens shared by
occupants who live in medium to high rise tennaments.

and back in the 40's and 50's over here what produce the market
farmers had left they took into the general market situated in the
city proper where all could access it by various public transport, now
the markets are so situated it is a hectic drive to even attempt to
get there.

and people lived in suburbs and business was in the city.

and in your scenerio or the current scenerio food is going to become
very very expensive to buy i the cities, and much can happen to stop
the harvest or the harvest being distributed, you may be affluent
enough right now? but very many aren't and everyone could be in their
shoes at any time.

in the US of A some of the so called fresh food can be in transit for
up to 2 weeks from what i have read at various times?

i never said it was going to be easy, but when do we start? when it is
way too late maybe?

outside the square and the comfort zone.
With peace and brightest of blessings,

len & bev

--
"Be Content With What You Have And
May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In
A World That You May Not Understand."

http://www.lensgarden.com.au/

[FarmI]

"len gardener" > wrote in message
> as humasn we need to get aways from the broadacre export farmer
> mentality, the cost to habitat destruction is huge, and it also
> impacts on our weather ie.,. reducing our chances of rain in the
> droughts that are part of earths cycle. the b/a farmers here decimate
> vast aeas of habitat on somewaht merginal ground, and after around 7
> +- years they simply move on and leave the newly created desert behind
> there is no requirement as there is with mining to rehabilitate the
> area as they further encroach.

Any cites to support that claim of moving on after 7 years? I've not seen
any such suggestion anywhere even though I do know that Queensland has a
reputation for being full of knuckledraggers.

> our farmers need to be in our communities where on small holdings
> maybe up to 40 acres +- they produce in season staples for those
> communities and supplied from farmer to consumer no middle man, the
> farmer then gets to share the common wealth of his community, instead
> of the way they now do it through a series of middle men who onsell
> not so fresh food at prices people can barely afford and not
> representative of what the farmers meager offering was.

Unfortunately that thought now lives with the Ark.

The best land near the cities has all gone under revolting McMansions and
people actually choose those things over living in high rises or older
smaller houses.

My Grandfather used to run a market garden in Botany in NSW. Every time I
drive anywhere near Sydney Airport, I think of those market gardens and how
fertile that land would have been given what is growing in the area round
there now. Mind you if it had come down the line of inheritance, my bloody
cousin would also have sold it off to developers as he has done with the
farm that he inherited as the eldest male. So poof, there goes a farm of 5
generations on land that was first selected and cleared by the first
ancestor who came to this country. No sentiment for the fact that it was
the only farm left in the district which was still entire and as selected
and which was the only one still in original hands after 150 years. And
because he likes money. And he really IS a good farmer.

> like that adelaide hills thing that land should basically be returned
> to habitat is has always been very marginal land (why do people think
> the farmers walked away from it after they ahd milked it for waht they
> could?), anyone living there should alocate enough land use for their
> own personnal food needs, as any commercial venture sooner or later is
> driven by the need for more and more turn over.
>
> people can grow enough of the non staples their family needs in a very
> small space, we had this type of system back in the late 40's and into
> the 50's+, fresh in season food was affordable for all families, and
> the food miles was very low so another positive factor, the farmer
> casme around a couple or so times a week selling fresh produce, or we
> went to the farm. eggs were right there as fresh as the day from the
> farm, and fresh unadulterated milk was delivered intoi 1 gallon
> stainless billy at our front door not sure may have been each second
> day?? homes should be modest enough and land sufficient enough for
> families to grow some of their own.

Have you looked over the back fences in your area? What you say is all fine
in theory, but I know from living in the country where there is lots of
land, and even in the drought we still had enough water to grow veggies
round here, how few people actually grow anything edible. Not even a herb
patch!

They'll go and spend 2 bucks buying a plastic packed bunch of miserable
coriander rather than spending a few minutes putting in a few seeds and
doing a bit of watering now and then. A whole seasons worht of coriander
could be had for the 2 bucks they spend, but they'd rather buy it than put
in a small effort.

And if you've taken notice of some of the questions that appear here time
and time again, it is obvious how out of touch with the soil most people
are, and this is supposed to be a gardening group!

No-one with even a modicum of observational skills and who has grubbed about
in soil for more than a few years would use a raft of chemicals on plants or
would fail to understand the importance of insects in having a balance in
the garden. But the basic questions keep coming... "how do I kill....",
"how do I improve...." I often wonder whether people have heard of the
library/google or know the role of the earthworm, or understand the most
simple things about the soil, like microflora etc.

Most people seem to see their garden environment as a place that they treat
like they are doing some form of extension of their home decorating. " A
row of Mop Top Robonia and on the other side some standard roses" type
thinking. That is all quite nice to achieve, but first principles of soil
and it's management and how everything else relies on it seems to be almost
an afterthought.

You and I both know that plants and gardens aren't home decorating, but we
actually grub in the soil. Too many people seem to get wacky ideas from
those ghastly TV/magazines on gardens rather than getting out there and
learning by doing. And there really is no better teacher than time and
experience.

> so to me the permaculture sustainable farmer is the one who is moving
> closer to his consumers, not lauding themselves growing stuff on
> denuded dry habitat land.

Given that people now have to live in that denuded dry habitat land (and
increasinlgy will have to do so in the future) I see no problem with trying
to learn to use it and rehabilitate it.

> mollison uses those asian communities in asia where the farmer is a
> neighbour and produces all the staples for that neighbourhood, makes a
> lot of sense and no good putting it in the too hard basket because if
> the oil crisis is as bad as what is indicated then our broadacre
> farmers are going to have huge problems getting their produce to
> market at an affordable profit making price.

They already DO have that problem. But given that consumers don't bloody
care how many food miles their food has done, just so long as they can eat
what they want, when they want, it is consumers who will get hit time and
time again till they get a bit smarter and start to shop smarter. I cannot
believe that any Australian would buy oranges produced in California, but
the shops are full of them and they sell. I won't buy them but I
certainklys ee many shoppers who will buy them without even checking the
little sticky label on them.

> need to think outside the square, the answers will come and the sooner
> the better.

No it won't. It will just continue with consumers telling the government to
DO something. They are too lazy to do anything themselves like dig a veggie
patch or even grow a few herbs. I despair of humanity. A good dose of
plague might not be such a bad thing.

[0tterbot]

"David Hare-Scott" > wrote in message
...

> I agree about the mindset. But we are embedded in a largely free
> enterprise
> society in which you have to be commercially viable to keep going.
> Mollison's
> philosophy is such that he would remake much of society, its values and
> motives not merely how we get our food.

but wouldn't most of us, if we could? :-) in reality of course, societies
remake themselves as they go (seeing as how benign dictators are so very
thin on the ground ;-)

Although he does give a nod to
> "legality, people, culture, trade and commerce" as a component in creating
> a
> design. So perhaps he does accept that commerce and making a dollar is
> not
> altogether evil. The question is how do you do it in a society whose
> agriculture is based on permaculture?

well, i'm fabulously iffy about permaculture - not because of the
permaculture itself, which is fine, but because of all the dippy twits who
do everything badly & then walk away because it hasn't worked. also, it's
quite a quiet movement (like organics in general, biodynamics, etc) so i
believe you would find there's a great deal more going on than you
immediately realise. and yes, making a dollar isn't inherently evil
whatsoever. most of us cannot (for example) make shoes - we need money for
that. true self-sufficiency by one person or family is impossible. it
becomes possible within communities, though. permaculture farms most likely
just carry on in obscurity, we don't know that they are there, really, even
if we buy their products we can't see the farm & probably don't think about
it much.

> I know of small scale operations where on a few acres a family is growing
> enough to mainly feed themselves and sell some to make a dollar to buy
> what
> they cannot grow. This makes that family very happy, they have the
> ability to
> live in the way that they see it is proper to live.

see, i believe that sort of thing is really much more common than we think.
much of it can't be measured via "market forces" & other foolishness, so
it's not. things that can't be measured via capitalist economics tends not
to be counted statistically, so we cannot officially "know" about them.
(sigh).
>
> However Mollison puts forward the idea that permaculture could/should
> replace
> broadacre farming altogether. This leads me to a problem. I cannot see
> how
> every family can have a few acres nor the will/ability to farm it. I
> cannot
> see how we can get away from at least some specialists who use their skill
> to
> get food from the land efficiently on a scale that permits the feeding of
> the
> non-farmers who produce other things. In the long run the choice is to do
> it
> sustainably or to starve when we have mined out the soil. So what replaces
> broadacre?
\
truthfully, i'm not sure anything does "replace" it. you'll have noticed
that broadacre farming is changing itself, though. like you said, the
choices are rapidly becoming to either do it sustainably, or starve. perhaps
movements such as the permaculture movement have an obligation to cease
being slightly obscure & to get out there more, i'm not sure; but when you
consider things such as how mainstream organics has become (despite how
quiet it is), how the most ossified farming brains are coming to use nature
belts & windbreaks & things like that as part of their practice, i suppose
that broadacre (for grains, etc) will carry on, just a bit differently than
in the past.

you are dead right in that not everyone can have a bit of land, & truthfully
i doubt that everyone should (imagine if everyone had to travel the
distances many countryfolk do! it would be unsustainable). yet things such
as the current tendency for completely mainstream gardening magazines &
newspaper columns to encourage people to grow what they can in their yards
or balconies, etc, is a taste of where this is all going (in my hopelessly
optimistic view). sadly, the pace of progressive change can be positively
glacial, it seems to me.

one last tiny rant: one thing i would love to see, which i can't see
happening yet (but is probably going to have to happen very soon) is that
governments need to put their foot down re overconsumption. according to
statistics (tee hee) something like a third of westerners have an
anti-consumerist mentality & tend not to participate in rabid consumption.
governments think this is Bad & want people to consume until they drop (then
consume something else to get them back up again). the day that govts get
the brainwave that overconsumption itself is what is bad, things are going
to change very much for the better, for everyone, because they have the
power to legislate and we do not. in the meantime it is up to individuals to
buy local, to limit consumption of stuff they don't need, etc; but people
who do so find a lot of support with like minds (of which there are actually
many).

all these things are interrelated. thank you for reading my rant! :-)
kylie

[FarmI]

"len gardener" > wrote in message
> On Tue, 8 Apr 2008 14:41:57 -0400, "J. Clarke"
> > wrote:
> snipped
>>How do you make this system work for Los Angeles or Mexico City or
>>Bombay? If the largest city you've seen is Sydney you don't really
>>understand the problem.
>>
>>--
> maybe john just maybe it is you who have no understanding of "the
> problem"??
>
> once you take the liberty to pidgeon hole what is current then you
> take away any thinking outside the square.
>
> all tall buildings have rooves?
>
> there are balconies?
>
> most cities have large parklands?
>
> melbourne is noted for it's culturaly diversified gardens shared by
> occupants who live in medium to high rise tennaments.
>
> and back in the 40's and 50's over here what produce the market
> farmers had left they took into the general market situated in the
> city proper where all could access it by various public transport, now
> the markets are so situated it is a hectic drive to even attempt to
> get there.
>
> and people lived in suburbs and business was in the city.
>
> and in your scenerio or the current scenerio food is going to become
> very very expensive to buy i the cities, and much can happen to stop
> the harvest or the harvest being distributed, you may be affluent
> enough right now? but very many aren't and everyone could be in their
> shoes at any time.
>
> in the US of A some of the so called fresh food can be in transit for
> up to 2 weeks from what i have read at various times?
>
> i never said it was going to be easy, but when do we start? when it is
> way too late maybe?

Well "the when it's too late" scenario seemed to be what got the Cubans
working on the problem so I wouldn't be surprised if it takes the same thing
to get the first world doing the same thing. In Australia, given our
problems, I don't think it will be too long before we are faced with the
need to "do something" but for the US, I think it will take longer. There
are many Americans who still don't believe in climate cahnage but I don't
think there would be many Australians who don't believe in it. Till there
is a shift in attitude in the majority of the popultion, no change happens
as there is no pressure to do so.

[Terryc]

J. Clarke wrote:

>
> How do you make this system work for Los Angeles or Mexico City or
> Bombay? If the largest city you've seen is Sydney you don't really
> understand the problem.

Who cares. Megatropoliss are not that great for the planet anyway and
there is really no modern reason for them.
>

[Billy[_4_]]

In article
>,
"FarmI" <ask@itshall be given> wrote:

> "len gardener" > wrote in message
> > On Tue, 8 Apr 2008 14:41:57 -0400, "J. Clarke"
> > > wrote:
> > snipped
> >>How do you make this system work for Los Angeles or Mexico City or
> >>Bombay? If the largest city you've seen is Sydney you don't really
> >>understand the problem.
> >>
> >>--
> > maybe john just maybe it is you who have no understanding of "the
> > problem"??
> >
> > once you take the liberty to pidgeon hole what is current then you
> > take away any thinking outside the square.
> >
> > all tall buildings have rooves?
> >
> > there are balconies?
> >
> > most cities have large parklands?
> >
> > melbourne is noted for it's culturaly diversified gardens shared by
> > occupants who live in medium to high rise tennaments.
> >
> > and back in the 40's and 50's over here what produce the market
> > farmers had left they took into the general market situated in the
> > city proper where all could access it by various public transport, now
> > the markets are so situated it is a hectic drive to even attempt to
> > get there.
> >
> > and people lived in suburbs and business was in the city.
> >
> > and in your scenerio or the current scenerio food is going to become
> > very very expensive to buy i the cities, and much can happen to stop
> > the harvest or the harvest being distributed, you may be affluent
> > enough right now? but very many aren't and everyone could be in their
> > shoes at any time.
> >
> > in the US of A some of the so called fresh food can be in transit for
> > up to 2 weeks from what i have read at various times?
> >
> > i never said it was going to be easy, but when do we start? when it is
> > way too late maybe?
>
> Well "the when it's too late" scenario seemed to be what got the Cubans
> working on the problem so I wouldn't be surprised if it takes the same thing
> to get the first world doing the same thing. In Australia, given our
> problems, I don't think it will be too long before we are faced with the
> need to "do something" but for the US, I think it will take longer. There
> are many Americans who still don't believe in climate cahnage but I don't
> think there would be many Australians who don't believe in it. Till there
> is a shift in attitude in the majority of the popultion, no change happens
> as there is no pressure to do so.

Take a look at http://www.adn.com/matsu/story/365375.html/ . Politics
stymied the truth about global warming in America because the
corporations will have to spend money to ameliorate their carbon
emissions. The result was that the corporate line was paid for in
Congress and sponsored by that right-wing nut case, Rupert Murdoch.
Murdoch's Fox News is the only news cast in America where faithfully
watching it, will leave you more ignorant than if you had done
nothing.The corporations are on board now, more or less, like New
Orleans, I think now they see it as an opportunity.

If you read the "uh-oh thread", it might occur to you that a perfect
storm is brewing. Some countries are starting to withhold export crops,
in order to feed their own citizens. That will never happen in America.
Others, like Australia, have had crop problems (drought) and have no
export crop. Other countries are having food riots.

In any event, whether it was the bio-fuel scam, a conspiracy by the oil
companies, or the government encouragement you own your own home at any
cost, the American economy is set to tank. Asian banks don't want our
money anymore. Our top 1% will get more stinking rich while the rest of
us get acquainted with the way the rest of the world lives. Problem is
that crazed American consumers was the market of choice for most of the
world.

No society will escape the personal need to grow more food. Not just for
sensory satisfaction, but for survival.
--

Billy

Impeach Pelosi, Bush & Cheney to the Hague
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/
http://rachelcorriefoundation.org/

[David Hare-Scott]

"len gardener" > wrote in message
...
> On Tue, 8 Apr 2008 14:41:57 -0400, "J. Clarke"
> > wrote:
> snipped
> >How do you make this system work for Los Angeles or Mexico City or
> >Bombay? If the largest city you've seen is Sydney you don't really
> >understand the problem.
> >
> >--
> maybe john just maybe it is you who have no understanding of "the
> problem"??
>

Len I agree with your sentiments that we need to change our way of thinking
but it will take more than that.

> once you take the liberty to pidgeon hole what is current then you
> take away any thinking outside the square.
>
> all tall buildings have rooves?
>
> there are balconies?

Very harsh environments for growing, with much effort you could get some
boutique crops but not enough to really matter. It would be very inefficient.

>
> most cities have large parklands?
>

Yes but the people need them. Sure strolling through a nice vege garden is
relaxing but what of those who want to play sport etc?

> melbourne is noted for it's culturaly diversified gardens shared by
> occupants who live in medium to high rise tennaments.
>

Melbourne is quite low density compared to the mega cities. The Aussie 1/4
acre block is very uncommon in many places. We have no experience of what
really high density housing is like.

> and back in the 40's and 50's over here what produce the market
> farmers had left they took into the general market situated in the
> city proper where all could access it by various public transport, now
> the markets are so situated it is a hectic drive to even attempt to
> get there.
>

And those market gardens have been swallowed up by housing developments that
can hardly be torn down now. The population is 3 times what it was then. The
institutions and organisation of 60 years ago will not serve for the next 60.

> and people lived in suburbs and business was in the city.
>
> and in your scenerio or the current scenerio food is going to become
> very very expensive to buy i the cities, and much can happen to stop
> the harvest or the harvest being distributed, you may be affluent
> enough right now? but very many aren't and everyone could be in their
> shoes at any time.
>
> in the US of A some of the so called fresh food can be in transit for
> up to 2 weeks from what i have read at various times?
>
> i never said it was going to be easy, but when do we start? when it is
> way too late maybe?
>
> outside the square and the comfort zone.
> With peace and brightest of blessings,
>

I support your philosophy that major change in how we deal with the world is
essential. And backyard and inner city growing plots would certainly be a
step in the right direction. But this will never be more than a minor part of
the calories required to feed a big city.

Look at the people who are doing this on a small scale (ie one or a few
families). They need acres to do it. Evan if yields could be increased many
times (doubtful, especially in Oz) those acres just aren't available in or
near big cities, nor are the numbers of skilled people prepared to lovingly
tend them.

It is this very problem of the efficiency of scale that made me ask the
question in the first place.

David

[David Hare-Scott]

"Terryc" > wrote in message
...
> J. Clarke wrote:
>
> >
> > How do you make this system work for Los Angeles or Mexico City or
> > Bombay? If the largest city you've seen is Sydney you don't really
> > understand the problem.
>
> Who cares. Megatropoliss are not that great for the planet anyway and
> there is really no modern reason for them.
> >

How do we prevent them forming? How do take down the ones that are there?

David

[David Hare-Scott]

"FarmI" <ask@itshall be given> wrote in message
...

> > need to think outside the square, the answers will come and the sooner
> > the better.
>
> No it won't. It will just continue with consumers telling the government to
> DO something. They are too lazy to do anything themselves like dig a veggie
> patch or even grow a few herbs. I despair of humanity. A good dose of
> plague might not be such a bad thing.
>
>

Well it would rip right through those mega cities. A nice virulent avian flu
that is human transmitted would do the trick, coming soon to your
neighbourhood? I hope not.

There is absolutely no doubt that in the end climate change, overpopulation,
land degradation, water pollution, peak oil and daytime soap operas WILL be
dealt with. The challenge is to do it without allowing the four horsemen to
cause untold misery to billions along the way.

David

[J. Clarke]

len gardener wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Apr 2008 14:41:57 -0400, "J. Clarke"
> > wrote:
> snipped
>> How do you make this system work for Los Angeles or Mexico City or
>> Bombay? If the largest city you've seen is Sydney you don't really
>> understand the problem.
>>
>> --
> maybe john just maybe it is you who have no understanding of "the
> problem"??
>
> once you take the liberty to pidgeon hole what is current then you
> take away any thinking outside the square.
>
> all tall buildings have rooves?
>
> there are balconies?
>
> most cities have large parklands?
>
> melbourne is noted for it's culturaly diversified gardens shared by
> occupants who live in medium to high rise tennaments.
>
> and back in the 40's and 50's over here what produce the market
> farmers had left they took into the general market situated in the
> city proper where all could access it by various public transport,
> now
> the markets are so situated it is a hectic drive to even attempt to
> get there.
>
> and people lived in suburbs and business was in the city.
>
> and in your scenerio or the current scenerio food is going to become
> very very expensive to buy i the cities, and much can happen to stop
> the harvest or the harvest being distributed, you may be affluent
> enough right now? but very many aren't and everyone could be in
> their
> shoes at any time.
>
> in the US of A some of the so called fresh food can be in transit
> for
> up to 2 weeks from what i have read at various times?
>
> i never said it was going to be easy, but when do we start? when it
> is
> way too late maybe?

Demonstrate that you can feed half the population of Australia on 150
square miles of land.

There is no "my scenario". We feed the populations of those cities
now. The methods used may offend your sensibilities but they work.
You are the one proposing pie in the sky without running the numbers
and showing that they can work.


--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

[J. Clarke]

Terryc wrote:
> J. Clarke wrote:
>
>>
>> How do you make this system work for Los Angeles or Mexico City or
>> Bombay? If the largest city you've seen is Sydney you don't really
>> understand the problem.
>
> Who cares. Megatropoliss are not that great for the planet anyway
> and
> there is really no modern reason for them.

Whether they are "great for the planet" or not is irrelevant. It can
be argued that 6 billion humans are not good for the planet. So what
would you do about either?

--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

[David Hare-Scott]

"0tterbot" > wrote in message
...
>
> one last tiny rant: one thing i would love to see, which i can't see
> happening yet (but is probably going to have to happen very soon) is that
> governments need to put their foot down re overconsumption. according to
> statistics (tee hee) something like a third of westerners have an
> anti-consumerist mentality & tend not to participate in rabid consumption.
> governments think this is Bad & want people to consume until they drop (then
> consume something else to get them back up again). the day that govts get
> the brainwave that overconsumption itself is what is bad, things are going
> to change very much for the better, for everyone, because they have the
> power to legislate and we do not. in the meantime it is up to individuals to
> buy local, to limit consumption of stuff they don't need, etc; but people
> who do so find a lot of support with like minds (of which there are actually
> many).
>
> all these things are interrelated. thank you for reading my rant! :-)
> kylie
>
>

Current economic dogma says you must have growth around 3% per year for a
healthy economy. Nobody knows how to do it with much less without having
unacceptable unemployment. Thus the current model condemns us to be
constantly expanding: population, energy use, mineral use, land use, must all
grow indefinitely. Except that obviously in the real world they cannot.

Political systems around the world that reward short term popularity and
punish long term planning don't help.

David

[FarmI]

"Billy" > wrote in message
> "FarmI" <ask@itshall be given> wrote:
> >> "len gardener" > wrote in message
(snip)
>> > i never said it was going to be easy, but when do we start? when it is
>> > way too late maybe?
>>
>> Well "the when it's too late" scenario seemed to be what got the Cubans
>> working on the problem so I wouldn't be surprised if it takes the same
>> thing
>> to get the first world doing the same thing. In Australia, given our
>> problems, I don't think it will be too long before we are faced with the
>> need to "do something" but for the US, I think it will take longer.
>> There
>> are many Americans who still don't believe in climate cahnage but I don't
>> think there would be many Australians who don't believe in it. Till
>> there
>> is a shift in attitude in the majority of the popultion, no change
>> happens
>> as there is no pressure to do so.
>
> Take a look at http://www.adn.com/matsu/story/365375.html/ .

Did that. He sums up some of the problems quite well. Thanks.

Politics
> stymied the truth about global warming in America because the
> corporations will have to spend money to ameliorate their carbon
> emissions. The result was that the corporate line was paid for in
> Congress and sponsored by that right-wing nut case, Rupert Murdoch.
> Murdoch's Fox News is the only news cast in America where faithfully
> watching it, will leave you more ignorant than if you had done
> nothing.The corporations are on board now, more or less, like New
> Orleans, I think now they see it as an opportunity.
>
> If you read the "uh-oh thread", it might occur to you that a perfect
> storm is brewing. Some countries are starting to withhold export crops,
> in order to feed their own citizens. That will never happen in America.
> Others, like Australia, have had crop problems (drought) and have no
> export crop. Other countries are having food riots.
>
> In any event, whether it was the bio-fuel scam, a conspiracy by the oil
> companies, or the government encouragement you own your own home at any
> cost, the American economy is set to tank. Asian banks don't want our
> money anymore. Our top 1% will get more stinking rich while the rest of
> us get acquainted with the way the rest of the world lives. Problem is
> that crazed American consumers was the market of choice for most of the
> world.
>
> No society will escape the personal need to grow more food. Not just for
> sensory satisfaction, but for survival.

That time will come although I'm not convinced that we are there just yet.

[FarmI]

"David Hare-Scott" > wrote in message
> "FarmI" <ask@itshall be given> wrote in message

>> No it won't. It will just continue with consumers telling the government
>> to
>> DO something. They are too lazy to do anything themselves like dig a
>> veggie
>> patch or even grow a few herbs. I despair of humanity. A good dose of
>> plague might not be such a bad thing.
>>
>>
>
> Well it would rip right through those mega cities. A nice virulent avian
> flu
> that is human transmitted would do the trick, coming soon to your
> neighbourhood? I hope not.

So do I (when I'm not feeling particularly negative), but I would be
surprised if we don't get another major pestilence of some sort.

> There is absolutely no doubt that in the end climate change,
> overpopulation,
> land degradation, water pollution, peak oil and daytime soap operas WILL
> be
> dealt with. The challenge is to do it without allowing the four horsemen
> to
> cause untold misery to billions along the way.

At least 3 of those horsemen are already raging through the world in Iraq,
Africa and each winter as Flu carts off a huge number of people. I can't
quite see why the fourth wouldn't raise it's ugly head in due time too, but
I do agree with the sentiment that we shouldn't wish for it.

[Billy[_4_]]

In article >,
"J. Clarke" > wrote:

> len gardener wrote:
> > On Tue, 8 Apr 2008 14:41:57 -0400, "J. Clarke"
> > > wrote:
> > snipped
> >> How do you make this system work for Los Angeles or Mexico City or
> >> Bombay? If the largest city you've seen is Sydney you don't really
> >> understand the problem.
> >>
> >> --
> > maybe john just maybe it is you who have no understanding of "the
> > problem"??
> >
> > once you take the liberty to pidgeon hole what is current then you
> > take away any thinking outside the square.
> >
> > all tall buildings have rooves?
> >
> > there are balconies?
> >
> > most cities have large parklands?
> >
> > melbourne is noted for it's culturaly diversified gardens shared by
> > occupants who live in medium to high rise tennaments.
> >
> > and back in the 40's and 50's over here what produce the market
> > farmers had left they took into the general market situated in the
> > city proper where all could access it by various public transport,
> > now
> > the markets are so situated it is a hectic drive to even attempt to
> > get there.
> >
> > and people lived in suburbs and business was in the city.
> >
> > and in your scenerio or the current scenerio food is going to become
> > very very expensive to buy i the cities, and much can happen to stop
> > the harvest or the harvest being distributed, you may be affluent
> > enough right now? but very many aren't and everyone could be in
> > their
> > shoes at any time.
> >
> > in the US of A some of the so called fresh food can be in transit
> > for
> > up to 2 weeks from what i have read at various times?
> >
> > i never said it was going to be easy, but when do we start? when it
> > is
> > way too late maybe?
>
> Demonstrate that you can feed half the population of Australia on 150
> square miles of land.
>
> There is no "my scenario". We feed the populations of those cities
> now. The methods used may offend your sensibilities but they work.
> You are the one proposing pie in the sky without running the numbers
> and showing that they can work.
>
>
> --
No one ever said that you would make money with the "Cuban Solution".
you'd just get fed. If you want capitalism, you'll need to go elsewhere.
--

Billy

Impeach Pelosi, Bush & Cheney to the Hague
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/
http://rachelcorriefoundation.org/

[Billy[_4_]]

In article >,
"David Hare-Scott" > wrote:

> "FarmI" <ask@itshall be given> wrote in message
> ...
>
> > > need to think outside the square, the answers will come and the sooner
> > > the better.
> >
> > No it won't. It will just continue with consumers telling the government to
> > DO something. They are too lazy to do anything themselves like dig a veggie
> > patch or even grow a few herbs. I despair of humanity. A good dose of
> > plague might not be such a bad thing.
> >
> >
>
> Well it would rip right through those mega cities. A nice virulent avian flu
> that is human transmitted would do the trick, coming soon to your
> neighbourhood? I hope not.
>
> There is absolutely no doubt that in the end climate change, overpopulation,
> land degradation, water pollution, peak oil and daytime soap operas WILL be
> dealt with. The challenge is to do it without allowing the four horsemen to
> cause untold misery to billions along the way.
>
> David

If it is you and yours' then maybe Farml is right. If it is me and mine,
I'd like a second opinion.
--

Billy

Impeach Pelosi, Bush & Cheney to the Hague
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/
http://rachelcorriefoundation.org/

[Billy[_4_]]

In article
>,
"FarmI" <ask@itshall be given> wrote:

> "David Hare-Scott" > wrote in message
> > "FarmI" <ask@itshall be given> wrote in message
>
> >> No it won't. It will just continue with consumers telling the government
> >> to
> >> DO something. They are too lazy to do anything themselves like dig a
> >> veggie
> >> patch or even grow a few herbs. I despair of humanity. A good dose of
> >> plague might not be such a bad thing.
> >>
> >>
> >
> > Well it would rip right through those mega cities. A nice virulent avian
> > flu
> > that is human transmitted would do the trick, coming soon to your
> > neighbourhood? I hope not.
>
> So do I (when I'm not feeling particularly negative), but I would be
> surprised if we don't get another major pestilence of some sort.
>
> > There is absolutely no doubt that in the end climate change,
> > overpopulation,
> > land degradation, water pollution, peak oil and daytime soap operas WILL
> > be
> > dealt with. The challenge is to do it without allowing the four horsemen
> > to
> > cause untold misery to billions along the way.
>
> At least 3 of those horsemen are already raging through the world in Iraq,
> Africa and each winter as Flu carts off a huge number of people. I can't
> quite see why the fourth wouldn't raise it's ugly head in due time too, but
> I do agree with the sentiment that we shouldn't wish for it.

Atta girl.
--

Billy

Impeach Pelosi, Bush & Cheney to the Hague
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/
http://rachelcorriefoundation.org/

[Billy[_4_]]

In article >, Charlie wrote:

> On Wed, 9 Apr 2008 12:00:51 +1000, "David Hare-Scott"
> > wrote:
>
> >
> >"FarmI" <ask@itshall be given> wrote in message
> ...
> >
> >> > need to think outside the square, the answers will come and the sooner
> >> > the better.
> >>
> >> No it won't. It will just continue with consumers telling the government
> >> to
> >> DO something. They are too lazy to do anything themselves like dig a
> >> veggie
> >> patch or even grow a few herbs. I despair of humanity. A good dose of
> >> plague might not be such a bad thing.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Well it would rip right through those mega cities. A nice virulent avian
> >flu
> >that is human transmitted would do the trick, coming soon to your
> >neighbourhood? I hope not.
> >
> > There is absolutely no doubt that in the end climate change,
> > overpopulation,
> >land degradation, water pollution, peak oil and daytime soap operas WILL be
> >dealt with. The challenge is to do it without allowing the four horsemen to
> >cause untold misery to billions along the way.
> >
> >David
>
> I fear that is not possible, David. Speaking truth to power has, in my
> experience, little effect, and history bears this out, as witnessed by
> various prophets, seers, visionaries, and other illuminated and schmart
> folks who were ignored by the rich and famous and powerful.

Doesn't have much to do wit schmart people. Sensible people in
industrial societies have fewer children. In the United States of you
know who, each kid costs about a half million $. That is incentive to
anyone who can use their brain.

>
> It is alos interesting that John prophesied so long ago about a world
> situation that is taking on an amazing resemblance to what he said.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeSSwKffj9o&feature=related
>
> The challenge and the attempt are noble, and required, but I also fear
> we are simply ****in' in the wind. Yet try we must, while maintaining
> a watchful posture to sidestep what we are able.
>
> I hope I am wrong, but like farml, I too despair of humanity most
> times.
Your a Lutheran aren't you Charlie? I listen to Prairie Home Companion
and I'd recognize you anywhere. Just waiting for God's coup de gras?
Well I think we would do just fine if we could get these freakin'
parasites off'en us.(Like Gov. Shrub, he wasn't really elected to
anything else).
>
> Charlie
--

Billy

Impeach Pelosi, Bush & Cheney to the Hague
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/
http://rachelcorriefoundation.org/

[Billy[_4_]]

In article >,
"David Hare-Scott" > wrote:

> "Terryc" > wrote in message
> ...
> > J. Clarke wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > How do you make this system work for Los Angeles or Mexico City or
> > > Bombay? If the largest city you've seen is Sydney you don't really
> > > understand the problem.
> >
> > Who cares. Megatropoliss are not that great for the planet anyway and
> > there is really no modern reason for them.
> > >
>
> How do we prevent them forming? How do take down the ones that are there?
>
> David

Some are dense like NY. Others are burbs like LA.
--

Billy

Impeach Pelosi, Bush & Cheney to the Hague
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/
http://rachelcorriefoundation.org/

[Billy[_4_]]

In article >, Charlie wrote:

> On Wed, 9 Apr 2008 11:46:18 +1000, "David Hare-Scott"
> > wrote:
>
> >
> >"Terryc" > wrote in message
> ...
> >> J. Clarke wrote:
> >>
> >> >
> >> > How do you make this system work for Los Angeles or Mexico City or
> >> > Bombay? If the largest city you've seen is Sydney you don't really
> >> > understand the problem.
> >>
> >> Who cares. Megatropoliss are not that great for the planet anyway and
> >> there is really no modern reason for them.
> >> >
> >
> >How do we prevent them forming? How do take down the ones that are there?
> >
> >David
> >
> The irony of the situation is that so many of these cities are being
> swelled by displaced farmers and those once dependant upon the land.
>
> Charlie

Especially Mexico City.
--

Billy

Impeach Pelosi, Bush & Cheney to the Hague
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/
http://rachelcorriefoundation.org/

[Billy[_4_]]

In article >,
"David Hare-Scott" > wrote:

> "len gardener" > wrote in message
> ...
> > On Tue, 8 Apr 2008 14:41:57 -0400, "J. Clarke"
> > > wrote:
> > snipped
> > >How do you make this system work for Los Angeles or Mexico City or
> > >Bombay? If the largest city you've seen is Sydney you don't really
> > >understand the problem.
> > >
> > >--
> > maybe john just maybe it is you who have no understanding of "the
> > problem"??
> >
>
> Len I agree with your sentiments that we need to change our way of thinking
> but it will take more than that.
>
> > once you take the liberty to pidgeon hole what is current then you
> > take away any thinking outside the square.
> >
> > all tall buildings have rooves?
> >
> > there are balconies?
>
> Very harsh environments for growing, with much effort you could get some
> boutique crops but not enough to really matter. It would be very inefficient.
Are you not listening? This is how Cubans get fed. If you don't want to
eat, continue on with your ignorance.
>
> >
> > most cities have large parklands?
> >
>
> Yes but the people need them. Sure strolling through a nice vege garden is
> relaxing but what of those who want to play sport etc?
They won't feel like playing sports if they are hungry. Let's think
priorities. No one said no sports fields. We're just saying first things
first. Unlike:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/06/south_central_farm_shut_down.php

After weeks of tension, waiting, and nightly vigils, supporters of
downtown South Central Farm in Los Angeles were awakened before dawn
yesterday by sheriff¹s deputies forcing entry into the property. (See
our prevous coverage here and here). Advocates of the farm, working with
The Annenberg Foundation and the Trust for Public Land, were able to
meet the $16 million asking price, albeit after the set deadline.
Although the asking price was eventually met, landowner Ralph Horowitz
rejected the offer and initiated the eviction. Supporters, both those
camping inside and those in the surrounding streets, staged civil
disobedience protests resulting in almost 50 arrests. Deputies in a 100
ft. fire department ladder truck cut away branches to remove and arrest
Daryl Hannah and veteran tree-sitter John Quigley from the walnut tree
they had been sitting in.

More than 250 LAPD and Sheriff¹s Dept. officers flooded the surrounding
area outfitted in riot gear and crowd-control weapons. Most arrestees
spent less than six hours in jail and received minimal punishment. After
supporters were removed from the farm by the sheriff¹s dept., Bobcat
bulldozers, hired by Horowitz, proceeded to thrash and uproot plants and
trees while flattening fences and the minimal infrastructure of the
farm, a symbolic gesture of victory by the vilified Brentwood developer.
LA Mayor Antonia Villaraigosa said he regretted the outcome and that he
had made multiple appeals to the developer to accept the farmers¹ offer
to buy. Advocates of the farm criticize the mayor and local Councilwoman
Jan Perry for not doing more to sway the outcome.

Daryl Hannah has become a recognized figurehead for the struggle to save
the farm from development, and helped propel this most recent showdown
into international view. By the time she was arrested yesterday she had
spent more than three uninterrupted weeks encamped at the farm without
returning to her Malibu home‹taking cold showers in the cornfields, and
being the subject of daily media attention, as well as posting on her
own vlog. ³I'm very confident this is the morally right thing to do, to
take a principled stand in solidarity with the farmers,² she told the AP
by cell phone before being removed from the tree yesterday. Hannah
regrouped with supporters in the evening after her release for a press
conference and an evening vigil near the now locked gates of the farm.
Hannah will appear on Larry King Live tonight to discuss the issue.

and New York Community Gardens
http://www.earthcelebrations.com/gardens/10bc_1.html

It almost makes you think that some people are born with "stupid genes".

>
> > melbourne is noted for it's culturaly diversified gardens shared by
> > occupants who live in medium to high rise tennaments.
> >
>
> Melbourne is quite low density compared to the mega cities. The Aussie 1/4
> acre block is very uncommon in many places. We have no experience of what
> really high density housing is like.
>
> > and back in the 40's and 50's over here what produce the market
> > farmers had left they took into the general market situated in the
> > city proper where all could access it by various public transport, now
> > the markets are so situated it is a hectic drive to even attempt to
> > get there.
> >
>
> And those market gardens have been swallowed up by housing developments that
> can hardly be torn down now. The population is 3 times what it was then. The
> institutions and organisation of 60 years ago will not serve for the next 60.
>
Same in California, good agricultural land used for housing tracts. Just
totally mindless.
> > and people lived in suburbs and business was in the city.
> >
> > and in your scenerio or the current scenerio food is going to become
> > very very expensive to buy i the cities, and much can happen to stop
> > the harvest or the harvest being distributed, you may be affluent
> > enough right now? but very many aren't and everyone could be in their
> > shoes at any time.
> >
> > in the US of A some of the so called fresh food can be in transit for
> > up to 2 weeks from what i have read at various times?
> >
> > i never said it was going to be easy, but when do we start? when it is
> > way too late maybe?
> >
> > outside the square and the comfort zone.
> > With peace and brightest of blessings,
> >
>
> I support your philosophy that major change in how we deal with the world is
> essential. And backyard and inner city growing plots would certainly be a
> step in the right direction. But this will never be more than a minor part of
> the calories required to feed a big city.
>
You are just blowing this out you burro. Read about the Cuban solution
before you make such stupid comments.
> Look at the people who are doing this on a small scale (ie one or a few
> families). They need acres to do it. Evan if yields could be increased many
> times (doubtful, especially in Oz)
Oz has the oldest and most depleted soils on the planet but it still
seems with crop rotation and green manure, the situation could be turned
around.
> those acres just aren't available in or
> near big cities, nor are the numbers of skilled people prepared to lovingly
> tend them.
Some American you are. The American answer is supposed to be, why not?
Local can be 100 miles, an hour and a half to two hour drive. If you can
eat a plant within hours of its' harvest, you're not doing too bad.
>
> It is this very problem of the efficiency of scale that made me ask the
> question in the first place.
I guess the question is what do you consider EFFICIENT? You won't mind
if the rest of us eat while you explain.
>
> David
--

Billy

Impeach Pelosi, Bush & Cheney to the Hague
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/
http://rachelcorriefoundation.org/

[George.com]

"Billy" > wrote in message
...
> In article >,
> "J. Clarke" > wrote:
>
>> len gardener wrote:
>> > On Tue, 8 Apr 2008 14:41:57 -0400, "J. Clarke"
>> > > wrote:
>> > snipped
>> >> How do you make this system work for Los Angeles or Mexico City or
>> >> Bombay? If the largest city you've seen is Sydney you don't really
>> >> understand the problem.
>> >>
>> >> --
>> > maybe john just maybe it is you who have no understanding of "the
>> > problem"??
>> >
>> > once you take the liberty to pidgeon hole what is current then you
>> > take away any thinking outside the square.
>> >
>> > all tall buildings have rooves?
>> >
>> > there are balconies?
>> >
>> > most cities have large parklands?
>> >
>> > melbourne is noted for it's culturaly diversified gardens shared by
>> > occupants who live in medium to high rise tennaments.
>> >
>> > and back in the 40's and 50's over here what produce the market
>> > farmers had left they took into the general market situated in the
>> > city proper where all could access it by various public transport,
>> > now
>> > the markets are so situated it is a hectic drive to even attempt to
>> > get there.
>> >
>> > and people lived in suburbs and business was in the city.
>> >
>> > and in your scenerio or the current scenerio food is going to become
>> > very very expensive to buy i the cities, and much can happen to stop
>> > the harvest or the harvest being distributed, you may be affluent
>> > enough right now? but very many aren't and everyone could be in
>> > their
>> > shoes at any time.
>> >
>> > in the US of A some of the so called fresh food can be in transit
>> > for
>> > up to 2 weeks from what i have read at various times?
>> >
>> > i never said it was going to be easy, but when do we start? when it
>> > is
>> > way too late maybe?
>>
>> Demonstrate that you can feed half the population of Australia on 150
>> square miles of land.
>>
>> There is no "my scenario". We feed the populations of those cities
>> now. The methods used may offend your sensibilities but they work.
>> You are the one proposing pie in the sky without running the numbers
>> and showing that they can work.
>>
>>
>> --
> No one ever said that you would make money with the "Cuban Solution".
> you'd just get fed. If you want capitalism, you'll need to go elsewhere.

Roberto Perez, Cuban permaculturalist, recently visited NZ and Aus. He
recounted an event from the Cuban 'special period' of a neighbourhood going
to work with picks and axes on a car park in order to create a rudimentary
garden. The concrete was split and pulled up and rough gardens created. The
neighbourhood had precious few skills of farming, that came later. They
found a piece of idle land and set about growing on it. That was extreme
however, those people faced hunger or grow their own food. I guess hunger
gives you some motivation eh. If the ground is used for something now, not
to mean in a period of food shortage it won't quickly be converted. I have 5
raised beds in my 1/4 acre back yard, a small polytunnel & a good area of
grass. My front lawn is in lawn as well. The neighbours on one side have a
landscaped garden with rockeries. neighbours on the optherside have a
cobbled back yard. If we had a food shortage I guess the rockeries & cobbled
back yard would be secondary to growing some veges or having chickens.

rob

[J. Clarke]

George.com wrote:
> "Billy" > wrote in message
> ...
>> In article >,
>> "J. Clarke" > wrote:
>>
>>> len gardener wrote:
>>>> On Tue, 8 Apr 2008 14:41:57 -0400, "J. Clarke"
>>>> > wrote:
>>>> snipped
>>>>> How do you make this system work for Los Angeles or Mexico City
>>>>> or
>>>>> Bombay? If the largest city you've seen is Sydney you don't
>>>>> really understand the problem.
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>> maybe john just maybe it is you who have no understanding of "the
>>>> problem"??
>>>>
>>>> once you take the liberty to pidgeon hole what is current then
>>>> you
>>>> take away any thinking outside the square.
>>>>
>>>> all tall buildings have rooves?
>>>>
>>>> there are balconies?
>>>>
>>>> most cities have large parklands?
>>>>
>>>> melbourne is noted for it's culturaly diversified gardens shared
>>>> by
>>>> occupants who live in medium to high rise tennaments.
>>>>
>>>> and back in the 40's and 50's over here what produce the market
>>>> farmers had left they took into the general market situated in
>>>> the
>>>> city proper where all could access it by various public
>>>> transport,
>>>> now
>>>> the markets are so situated it is a hectic drive to even attempt
>>>> to
>>>> get there.
>>>>
>>>> and people lived in suburbs and business was in the city.
>>>>
>>>> and in your scenerio or the current scenerio food is going to
>>>> become very very expensive to buy i the cities, and much can
>>>> happen to stop the harvest or the harvest being distributed, you
>>>> may be affluent enough right now? but very many aren't and
>>>> everyone could be in their
>>>> shoes at any time.
>>>>
>>>> in the US of A some of the so called fresh food can be in transit
>>>> for
>>>> up to 2 weeks from what i have read at various times?
>>>>
>>>> i never said it was going to be easy, but when do we start? when
>>>> it
>>>> is
>>>> way too late maybe?
>>>
>>> Demonstrate that you can feed half the population of Australia on
>>> 150 square miles of land.
>>>
>>> There is no "my scenario". We feed the populations of those
>>> cities
>>> now. The methods used may offend your sensibilities but they
>>> work.
>>> You are the one proposing pie in the sky without running the
>>> numbers
>>> and showing that they can work.
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>> No one ever said that you would make money with the "Cuban
>> Solution".
>> you'd just get fed. If you want capitalism, you'll need to go
>> elsewhere.

Billy's post seems to have gotten lost in the ether, or maybe it's
just taking forever to propagate, so I'm responding here.

Who said anything about "make money"? You can get x amount of food
off of y amount of land. You can feed z number of people with x
amount of food. If y amount of land doesn't produce enough food for z
number of people then any solution proposing to feed them off of that
amount of land will not work.

In most large cities (New York, Los Angeles, Bombay, etc) there is
less than 500 square feet of land for each resident. After deducting
for things like streets and sidewalks and considering that much of
that space gets limited sunlight, can you grow enough safe, edible,
uncontaminated food on what's left to feed the populace?

Note that something that works in Cuba, where the population density
in Havana is such that there is almost 5000 square feet of land for
every resident, is not necessarily going to work where the population
density is more than ten times as high.

--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

[Billy[_4_]]

In article >,
"J. Clarke" > wrote:

> George.com wrote:
> > "Billy" > wrote in message
> > ...
> >> In article >,
> >> "J. Clarke" > wrote:
> >>
> >>> len gardener wrote:
> >>>> On Tue, 8 Apr 2008 14:41:57 -0400, "J. Clarke"
> >>>> > wrote:
> >>>> snipped
> >>>>> How do you make this system work for Los Angeles or Mexico City
> >>>>> or
> >>>>> Bombay? If the largest city you've seen is Sydney you don't
> >>>>> really understand the problem.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> --
> >>>> maybe john just maybe it is you who have no understanding of "the
> >>>> problem"??
> >>>>
> >>>> once you take the liberty to pidgeon hole what is current then
> >>>> you
> >>>> take away any thinking outside the square.
> >>>>
> >>>> all tall buildings have rooves?
> >>>>
> >>>> there are balconies?
> >>>>
> >>>> most cities have large parklands?
> >>>>
> >>>> melbourne is noted for it's culturaly diversified gardens shared
> >>>> by
> >>>> occupants who live in medium to high rise tennaments.
> >>>>
> >>>> and back in the 40's and 50's over here what produce the market
> >>>> farmers had left they took into the general market situated in
> >>>> the
> >>>> city proper where all could access it by various public
> >>>> transport,
> >>>> now
> >>>> the markets are so situated it is a hectic drive to even attempt
> >>>> to
> >>>> get there.
> >>>>
> >>>> and people lived in suburbs and business was in the city.
> >>>>
> >>>> and in your scenerio or the current scenerio food is going to
> >>>> become very very expensive to buy i the cities, and much can
> >>>> happen to stop the harvest or the harvest being distributed, you
> >>>> may be affluent enough right now? but very many aren't and
> >>>> everyone could be in their
> >>>> shoes at any time.
> >>>>
> >>>> in the US of A some of the so called fresh food can be in transit
> >>>> for
> >>>> up to 2 weeks from what i have read at various times?
> >>>>
> >>>> i never said it was going to be easy, but when do we start? when
> >>>> it
> >>>> is
> >>>> way too late maybe?
> >>>
> >>> Demonstrate that you can feed half the population of Australia on
> >>> 150 square miles of land.
> >>>
> >>> There is no "my scenario". We feed the populations of those
> >>> cities
> >>> now. The methods used may offend your sensibilities but they
> >>> work.
> >>> You are the one proposing pie in the sky without running the
> >>> numbers
> >>> and showing that they can work.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> --
> >> No one ever said that you would make money with the "Cuban
> >> Solution".
> >> you'd just get fed. If you want capitalism, you'll need to go
> >> elsewhere.
>
> Billy's post seems to have gotten lost in the ether, or maybe it's
> just taking forever to propagate, so I'm responding here.
Do you ever get into a conversation where you feel like there a two
conversations going on? I'm having that feeling right now.
>
> Who said anything about "make money"?
You did in your exchange with Len in which you accepted his evaluation
of p/c and then, seemingly, blew it off.

Len - " permaculture is more a mind set of ideas to look after the planet
better, once commercialism comes into it then profit will
over ride.

David - "I agree about the mindset. But we are embedded in a largely
free enterprise society in which you have to be
commercially viable to keep going.

If we get food riots, there may be some social readjustments.

> You can get x amount of food
> off of y amount of land. You can feed z number of people with x
> amount of food. If y amount of land doesn't produce enough food for z
> number of people then any solution proposing to feed them off of that
> amount of land will not work.
>
> In most large cities (New York, Los Angeles, Bombay, etc) there is
> less than 500 square feet of land for each resident. After deducting
> for things like streets and sidewalks and considering that much of
> that space gets limited sunlight, can you grow enough safe, edible,
> uncontaminated food on what's left to feed the populace?
My guess is that form would follow function. No I don't think that New
York City can grow, on its' own, sufficient produce for it's population
(Although, cockroaches have more protein, pound for pound than beef,
maybe urban ranching?). It is the sum of the efforts. Kansas grows more
corn than it can use. Montana grows more wheat than it can use. Ideally,
permaculture would address these conflicts. Monocultures are bad for
flora, fauna, and the soil but economy of scale argues for extensive
agricultural areas. Joel Salatin has done this for meat production. Now
it needs to be extended into produce and grain production. The model
would be urban produce grown wherever it can find a niche (house plants,
balconies, patios, rooftops, community gardens
[http://www.earthcelebrations.com/gardens/9bc.html]). Surrounding the
cities would be a belt of truck farms and beyond the truck farms the
large agricultural tracts of land*. The ideal is permaculture but as I
said, form will follow function. The function is to get everyone fed,
fed well, and renewing the land. The social frame work of the feeding is
less important.

*Work is being done on converting annual crops to perennial crops.
Multiple crops could be grown in the same area e.g. grasses, ground
cover, and root crops could coexist. The agricultural lands may even
take on the aspect of parks.
>
> Note that something that works in Cuba, where the population density
> in Havana is such that there is almost 5000 square feet of land for
> every resident, is not necessarily going to work where the population
> density is more than ten times as high.
>
> --
--

Billy

Impeach Pelosi, Bush & Cheney to the Hague
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/
http://rachelcorriefoundation.org/

[Billy[_4_]]

In article >, Charlie wrote:

> On Tue, 08 Apr 2008 23:10:24 -0700, Billy > wrote:
>
>
> >Your a Lutheran aren't you Charlie? I listen to Prairie Home Companion
> >and I'd recognize you anywhere. Just waiting for God's coup de gras?
>
> Nice try. Please insert another quarter to play again.
What? Not even a smiley face? You are in a mood;-)
However, you are right, as usual. Millions of people around the world
demonstrated against Gov. Shrub's (only office he was ever elected to)
vanity war and they were ignored. Demonstrations never brought the boys
back from Vietnam either. And we have seen that revolutions seem to get
hijacked by hinderbinders that have their own agenda.

Oh, remember that ****ing in the wind, especially on lemon trees, is OK.
It's ****ing into the wind that creates problems;-) (learned this from
Omelet, the smiley faces, not the ****ing, and I can't seem to stop:-)
>
> >Well I think we would do just fine if we could get these freakin'
> >parasites off'en us.(Like Gov. Shrub, he wasn't really elected to
> >anything else).
>
> You really think so? There are will always be psycopaths and
> narcissists in the wings waiting to exert control over the masses.
>
> Twas ever thus.
>
> Charlie
Fortunately, those who follow us will have their own hopes and dreams.
Five thousand years ago, the Egyptians said that the world was going to
ruin in a hand basket and here we are, still going. The rich keep trying
to get richer. If we had a revolution, the new leaders would socialize
the wealth and make themselves chairmen of the board.

But seriously, something has to be done about feeding and housing the
people living one $ 1- $2 a day (1/3 of the planet's pop.) before they
come to our doors and take it.

Hoping the daylight puts you into a better mood;-) dang!
--

Billy

Impeach Pelosi, Bush & Cheney to the Hague
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/
http://rachelcorriefoundation.org/

[len gardener]

whatever john?

for the records i haven't proposed anything i have merely help to
raise the wareness that as supposedly (some of us maybe?) intelligent
human beings we need to grasp the matter now as the changes needed in
our cities and suburban planning are going to take some time to
implement.

but i guess for now your square and comfort zone are well in place.



On Tue, 8 Apr 2008 22:03:35 -0400, "J. Clarke" snipped
With peace and brightest of blessings,

len & bev

--
"Be Content With What You Have And
May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In
A World That You May Not Understand."

http://www.lensgarden.com.au/

[J. Clarke]

len gardener wrote:
> whatever john?
>
> for the records i haven't proposed anything i have merely help to
> raise the wareness that as supposedly (some of us maybe?)
> intelligent
> human beings we need to grasp the matter now as the changes needed
> in
> our cities and suburban planning are going to take some time to
> implement.
>
> but i guess for now your square and comfort zone are well in place.

So you don't have a proposal, you just want to "raise the wareness"?
Why not instead work toward finding a solution that will work and then
proving that it will work? But no, you'd rather just "raise the
wareness" because that doesn't actually require any _effort_ on your
part.


--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

[Ross McKay[_2_]]

On Wed, 9 Apr 2008 10:31:42 -0400, "J. Clarke" wrote:

>Note that something that works in Cuba, where the population density
>in Havana is such that there is almost 5000 square feet of land for
>every resident, is not necessarily going to work where the population
>density is more than ten times as high.

Worth noting also that Cuba is closer to the equator and hence has
longer daylight hours pretty much all year and thus can grow more
vegetation than most densely populated cities in OECD countries. I can
imagine Australia and New Zealand coping, but don't hold out high hopes
for some American cities like New York.
--
Ross McKay, Toronto, NSW Australia
"Let the laddie play wi the knife - he'll learn"
- The Wee Book of Calvin

[Billy[_4_]]

In article >,
"J. Clarke" > wrote:

> len gardener wrote:
> > whatever john?
> >
> > for the records i haven't proposed anything i have merely help to
> > raise the wareness that as supposedly (some of us maybe?)
> > intelligent
> > human beings we need to grasp the matter now as the changes needed
> > in
> > our cities and suburban planning are going to take some time to
> > implement.
> >
> > but i guess for now your square and comfort zone are well in place.
>
> So you don't have a proposal, you just want to "raise the wareness"?
> Why not instead work toward finding a solution that will work and then
> proving that it will work? But no, you'd rather just "raise the
> wareness" because that doesn't actually require any _effort_ on your
> part.
>
>
> --

The main thing to being a good conversationalist, is being a good
listener. No one is offering a 5 year plan but we know what the results
should look like. There are many roads up the mountain. What we are
doing now hasn't worked, isn't working, and won't work in the future.
Mining the top soil is a horribly bad idea.
--

Billy

Impeach Pelosi, Bush & Cheney to the Hague
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/
http://rachelcorriefoundation.org/

[David Hare-Scott]

"len gardener" > wrote in message
...
> g'day david,
>
> as humasn we need to get aways from the broadacre export farmer
> mentality, the cost to habitat destruction is huge, and it also
> impacts on our weather ie.,. reducing our chances of rain in the
> droughts that are part of earths cycle. the b/a farmers here decimate
> vast aeas of habitat on somewaht merginal ground, and after around 7
> +- years they simply move on and leave the newly created desert behind
> there is no requirement as there is with mining to rehabilitate the
> area as they further encroach.
>
> our farmers need to be in our communities where on small holdings
> maybe up to 40 acres +- they produce in season staples for those
> communities and supplied from farmer to consumer no middle man, the
> farmer then gets to share the common wealth of his community, instead
> of the way they now do it through a series of middle men who onsell
> not so fresh food at prices people can barely afford and not
> representative of what the farmers meager offering was.
>
> like that adelaide hills thing that land should basically be returned
> to habitat is has always been very marginal land (why do people think
> the farmers walked away from it after they ahd milked it for waht they
> could?), anyone living there should alocate enough land use for their
> own personnal food needs, as any commercial venture sooner or later is
> driven by the need for more and more turn over.
>
> people can grow enough of the non staples their family needs in a very
> small space, we had this type of system back in the late 40's and into
> the 50's+, fresh in season food was affordable for all families, and
> the food miles was very low so another positive factor, the farmer
> casme around a couple or so times a week selling fresh produce, or we
> went to the farm. eggs were right there as fresh as the day from the
> farm, and fresh unadulterated milk was delivered intoi 1 gallon
> stainless billy at our front door not sure may have been each second
> day?? homes should be modest enough and land sufficient enough for
> families to grow some of their own.
>
> so to me the permaculture sustainable farmer is the one who is moving
> closer to his consumers, not lauding themselves growing stuff on
> denuded dry habitat land.
>
> mollison uses those asian communities in asia where the farmer is a
> neighbour and produces all the staples for that neighbourhood, makes a
> lot of sense and no good putting it in the too hard basket because if
> the oil crisis is as bad as what is indicated then our broadacre
> farmers are going to have huge problems getting their produce to
> market at an affordable profit making price.
>
> need to think outside the square, the answers will come and the sooner
> the better.
>
> On Tue, 8 Apr 2008 11:15:17 +1000, "David Hare-Scott"
> > wrote:
> snipped
> With peace and brightest of blessings,
>
> len & bev

Len I seem to have missed this post somehow and gone on to reply to you
further down the thread - maybe I have a propagation problem, I swear I
couldn't see this yesterday.

Anyway I find much good sense in what you say here. I recall fondly the
market gardens embedded in or close to the city and it does make sense in a
world where transport costs are set to rise hugely. But how to stop or even
reverse the trend of turning such areas into housing?

David

[David Hare-Scott]

"Billy" > wrote in message
news:wildbilly-0C1D70.23375308042008@c-61-68-245-> > > all tall buildings have
rooves?
> > >
> > > there are balconies?
> >
> > Very harsh environments for growing, with much effort you could get some
> > boutique crops but not enough to really matter. It would be very
inefficient.
> Are you not listening? This is how Cubans get fed. If you don't want to
> eat, continue on with your ignorance.

Please spare me the attitude. I will take it that you feel strongly about
this and so get a bit carried away sometimes but I would rather hear from you
in a civil way about your passion.

Are you seriously suggesting that the roofs and balconies of large urban
buildings are a suitable place to grow food? Have you ever tried to grow
anything in that situation? The wind and heat (and added heat island effects)
make your water consumption huge and anything tender gets burned.

I see in your quote that the author claims this happened in the Cuban
situation. I don't have the book. I don't know what the city buildings of
Cuba are like or how they managed this, I will take your word that it happened
at least on some scale.

I doubt that roof/balcony gardens in the big cities of my acquaintance
(Sydney, Melbourne) are ever going to produce more than a supplement to the
diets of the inhabitants and that would be at a great cost of materials.
These cities are looking at permanent water restrictions and great increases
in the cost of water. Squandering tap water in this way is pointless. Roof
water is insignificant in high rise due to the high ratio of people to roof
area.

> >
> > >
> > > most cities have large parklands?
> > >
> >
> > Yes but the people need them. Sure strolling through a nice vege garden
is
> > relaxing but what of those who want to play sport etc?
> They won't feel like playing sports if they are hungry.

You seem to be assuming there will be a great catastrophe and that drastic
measures will be required to survive. My original question was about whether
permaculture was a suitable replacement for broadacre farming, I am more
interested trying to find ways of not having a catastrophe.

>
> >
> > > melbourne is noted for it's culturaly diversified gardens shared by
> > > occupants who live in medium to high rise tennaments.
> > >
> >
> > Melbourne is quite low density compared to the mega cities. The Aussie
1/4
> > acre block is very uncommon in many places. We have no experience of what
> > really high density housing is like.
> >
> > > and back in the 40's and 50's over here what produce the market
> > > farmers had left they took into the general market situated in the
> > > city proper where all could access it by various public transport, now
> > > the markets are so situated it is a hectic drive to even attempt to
> > > get there.
> > >
> >
> > And those market gardens have been swallowed up by housing developments
that
> > can hardly be torn down now. The population is 3 times what it was then.
The
> > institutions and organisation of 60 years ago will not serve for the next
60.
> >
> Same in California, good agricultural land used for housing tracts. Just
> totally mindless.
> > > and people lived in suburbs and business was in the city.
> > >
> > > and in your scenerio or the current scenerio food is going to become
> > > very very expensive to buy i the cities, and much can happen to stop
> > > the harvest or the harvest being distributed, you may be affluent
> > > enough right now? but very many aren't and everyone could be in their
> > > shoes at any time.
> > >
> > > in the US of A some of the so called fresh food can be in transit for
> > > up to 2 weeks from what i have read at various times?
> > >
> > > i never said it was going to be easy, but when do we start? when it is
> > > way too late maybe?
> > >
> > > outside the square and the comfort zone.
> > > With peace and brightest of blessings,
> > >
> >
> > I support your philosophy that major change in how we deal with the world
is
> > essential. And backyard and inner city growing plots would certainly be a
> > step in the right direction. But this will never be more than a minor
part of
> > the calories required to feed a big city.
> >
> You are just blowing this out you burro. Read about the Cuban solution
> before you make such stupid comments.

I did read it. Convince me that it translates to other situations.

How would it be applicable to a medium sized low density city like Melbourne?

How would it be applicable to a huge high density city like Tokyo?

> > Look at the people who are doing this on a small scale (ie one or a few
> > families). They need acres to do it. Evan if yields could be increased
many
> > times (doubtful, especially in Oz)
> Oz has the oldest and most depleted soils on the planet but it still
> seems with crop rotation and green manure, the situation could be turned
> around.

You make it sound so easy. I would like to see numbers.

> > those acres just aren't available in or
> > near big cities, nor are the numbers of skilled people prepared to
lovingly
> > tend them.
> Some American you are. The American answer is supposed to be, why not?

I am no sort of American. The references to Melbourne and the Aussie 1/4 acre
block and the poverty of Australian soils was not there to confuse. But let's
leave nationality out of it.


> Local can be 100 miles, an hour and a half to two hour drive. If you can
> eat a plant within hours of its' harvest, you're not doing too bad.
> >

It's in that ring area about 1 1/2 hours from the city centre that so much
good land is getting turned into housing estates. I agree with you and Len
that there is a problem there. I don't see how to fix it though, do you?


> > It is this very problem of the efficiency of scale that made me ask the
> > question in the first place.
> I guess the question is what do you consider EFFICIENT? You won't mind
> if the rest of us eat while you explain.
> >

This is the third shot you have taken, what's it for?

How did we go from agrarian economies to the present? By huge increases in
specialisation and efficiency. Sadly broadacre farming has serious unwanted
side effects and demands inputs that are going to be much more expensive or
not available in future. I mention efficiency because it must be a factor in
any system of sustainable growing that replaces the broadacre farming. In a
future of very limited resources where the per capita consumption of resources
will have to be reduced in countries like yours and mine how can we
countenance inefficiency?

David

[Chookie]

In article >,
"FarmI" <ask@itshall be given> wrote:

> They'll go and spend 2 bucks buying a plastic packed bunch of miserable
> coriander rather than spending a few minutes putting in a few seeds and
> doing a bit of watering now and then. A whole seasons worht of coriander
> could be had for the 2 bucks they spend, but they'd rather buy it than put
> in a small effort.

Hah. I've tried to grow coriander in Sydney. I'd never seen a plant with
only two leaves bolt before...

> They already DO have that problem. But given that consumers don't bloody
> care how many food miles their food has done, just so long as they can eat
> what they want, when they want, it is consumers who will get hit time and
> time again till they get a bit smarter and start to shop smarter. I cannot
> believe that any Australian would buy oranges produced in California, but
> the shops are full of them and they sell.

There was the time I bought a few lemons -- and I KNEW that lemons were in
season at the time, and assumed they were local -- got home and saw the word
California on the stickers! Aiee!

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

http://chookiesbackyard.blogspot.com/

[len gardener]

On Thu, 10 Apr 2008 17:41:18 +1000, "David Hare-Scott"
> wrote:
snipped
>
>Len I seem to have missed this post somehow and gone on to reply to you
>further down the thread - maybe I have a propagation problem, I swear I
>couldn't see this yesterday.
>
>Anyway I find much good sense in what you say here. I recall fondly the
>market gardens embedded in or close to the city and it does make sense in a
>world where transport costs are set to rise hugely. But how to stop or even
>reverse the trend of turning such areas into housing?
>
>David
>
g'day david,

some here think that this is my idea totally? but that is so they can
protect their comfort zones at this time. i responded to your post,
and along with what mollesin and holmgren also say we need change and
as you poijnted out it needs to start at some point or the change will
be harder and harder to do.

it took around 40 or 50 years for us to be taken to where we are now
so it could easily take that long to turn around. so it is no good
anyone exposing the hind quarters with their head in a bucket of sand,
you know what happens while your behind is exposed hey?

this will take a drive from the whole community, but alas once we say
never then never it will be. there is a lot more food could be grown
at home than what there currently is so even there, there is no effort
going on.

but anyway unless something new comes along this will be my last
response as i see it i'm only a messenger, the problem is already
occuring.

we need farmers with insight who can see that even without the
permaculture label (which is about all you can realy say) they need to
be very much more sustainable, and the farmers won't budge until
pressure comes from the community.

every time i see tv shows of england i see this monolithic castles and
edifaces with vast areas of well kept lawn and pretty gardens, yet i'm
sure like here there are people in those communities that are short on
food, so waht if you have to walk along paths between productive vege'
gardens or fruit trees to get to the building.

food does not grow overnight it takes time for all crops to mature.

take care mate.

With peace and brightest of blessings,

len & bev

--
"Be Content With What You Have And
May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In
A World That You May Not Understand."

http://www.lensgarden.com.au/

[0tterbot]

"David Hare-Scott" > wrote in message
...

> I doubt that roof/balcony gardens in the big cities of my acquaintance
> (Sydney, Melbourne) are ever going to produce more than a supplement to
> the
> diets of the inhabitants and that would be at a great cost of materials.
> These cities are looking at permanent water restrictions and great
> increases
> in the cost of water. Squandering tap water in this way is pointless.
> Roof
> water is insignificant in high rise due to the high ratio of people to
> roof
> area.

you might be over-focussing on roof growing, here, david :-)

sydney & melbourne have a lot of land space in people's yards. while back
yard (and balcony!!) fruit & veg growing seems insignificant, it's not
really (particularly when you consider how common it was once and (i dearly
hope) will be again. have you seen any of the designs (e.g. clive blazey's)
for food gardens in the ordinary smallish yard? it's actually fairly
impressive. considering that farming itself (on farms) isn't going away any
time soon, i can't see that there'd be too many problems anyway, but
certainly cities like sydney & melbourne would be fully capable of most
(although not all) householders growing a surprising quantity of fruit & veg
_if they wanted to_.

added to that, another of c. blazey's "things" is substituting food plants
for ornamentals (food plants being handily ornamental as well, nice that). a
tiny yard (such as i had myself in sydney, various locations) with some
ornamentals can be refigured to a tiny yard full of food plants. i doubt
that such a yard could meet all the householders' needs, but you need to
consider how much they _could_ produce. as more people make such changes, we
will know more. it's endless really - small town near here has a strip where
the street trees are fruit trees (possibly planted by householders, i don't
know). people are thinking of new ways to make gardening more vertical, to
handle small spaces. etc. i have lived nearby to food-oriented gardens in
the burbs of canberra! hence that is why i believe they're more common than
we think, and are entirely practical too. anyone could do it.

> You seem to be assuming there will be a great catastrophe and that drastic
> measures will be required to survive. My original question was about
> whether
> permaculture was a suitable replacement for broadacre farming, I am more
> interested trying to find ways of not having a catastrophe.

i think the poster's point is that cuba actually had that catastrophe, but
they turned it around. in a crisis, people are galvanised. until such a
crisis, well, they're not, & until then tend not to think about the problem,
even. this is actually a problem, because things like "loss of agricultural
land" or even "climate change" don't really affect anyone in (say) sydney at
this time. they cannot conceive what the problem might be. yet, we all know
that in an unforseen severe crisis, you could starve the population out
within a week (although it actually takes longer than a week to starve to
death, of course - say 3 or 4). there's no food storage there beyond 3 or 4
_days_, it would be (relatively) easy (for an Organisation of Baddies) to
block the roads so nobody could go in or out. really!

now, i doubt that will ever happen of course, but equally i doubt the
populace even realises how vulnerable they potentially are. the cuban
situation was apparently national, so therefore a bit more easily solved by
the populace as a whole. gardening is entirely empowering, for quite obvious
reasons. what a high-density mega-city could or would do i don't know, & i
must admit it's really not my problem, so i don't have any intention of
devoting more thought to that.

> It's in that ring area about 1 1/2 hours from the city centre that so much
> good land is getting turned into housing estates. I agree with you and
> Len
> that there is a problem there. I don't see how to fix it though, do you?

get the developers on the run! <g> seriously, in nsw it is looking like
developers' days of doing whatever the hell they like are going to be, of
necessity, numbered. not a bad thing, that.

> How did we go from agrarian economies to the present? By huge increases
> in
> specialisation and efficiency.

no, because the industrial revolution happened!

"huge increases in specialisation and efficiency" really only occurred in
the way that (i assume) you are thinking of, post ww2. hello, herbicides!

Sadly broadacre farming has serious unwanted
> side effects and demands inputs that are going to be much more expensive
> or
> not available in future.

it's also not AT ALL efficient in the way (i assume) you are thinking of.
for example, backyard veggie gardens are massively more water-efficient than
a broadacre veggie farm & more able to supply their own inputs. small farms
are more efficient than big ones. sheer magnitude does not equal something
being genuinely efficient - it brings a certain economy of scale, but in
every other way is less efficient - even growth and plant health is not so
good, because it's monocultural, so you don't get the returns per square
metre that you would on a small, mixed farm. so yes, the cost of inputs is
inefficient as well, and the undesirable outputs impinge seriously on any
genuine "efficiency". someone told me recently (no idea how true it is, but
it doesn't sound "wrong" to me based on my observations) that with broadacre
farming, you only expect to make 6% over your inputs (ie. make $106 dollars
for every $100 spent) which doesn't count the eventual cost of damaging
outputs. by any measure, that is wildly inefficient & is going to have to
change rapidly.

I mention efficiency because it must be a factor in
> any system of sustainable growing that replaces the broadacre farming. In
> a
> future of very limited resources where the per capita consumption of
> resources
> will have to be reduced in countries like yours and mine how can we
> countenance inefficiency?

we can't countenance it now, yet we do :-)

solutions would include: smaller, more mixed farms. farms focussing on
growing crops or livestock which work in the conditions that exist, not to
continue trying to alter conditions when it can't be done. the populace
growing more of its own food (whether that means in one's own yard, or
buying locally, as directly as possible). further reducing the import sector
(which actually is quite small at the moment in terms of food, thankfully -
to not allow this to increase whatsoever, and actively work on reducing it
to near-zero). active governmental preservation of agricultural land
(including putting their foot down re expanding cities even more). proper
support for farmers - rather than bailing them out of disaster after
disaster, to aid in remaking the farming sector a bit & utilising knowledge
which is there, so that people are getting good outcomes for all, rather
than struggling on as is, inefficiently & in some cases disastrously. to
educate the public (this isn't going to happen this week - as i said the
govt wants you to buy a cabbage, not to grow one. most governments need
their heads read on this matter - they are simply _wrong_.) there are lots
of things to be done, it's a question of will, not of possibility.

two other things i was told recently by different people, neither of which i
have checked, but include as discussion points perhaps - firstly, that john
macarthur's obsession with sheep put the mockers on other peoples' ideas for
farming more suitable livestock. secondly, that a chicken farmer needs
(iirc) 20,000 birds to be considered a primary producer. (20,000!!! i
consider 20 birds to be primary production! ;-) clearly, there's a bit of
re-thinking that needs to be done. re-thinking is good.
kylie

[0tterbot]

"David Hare-Scott" > wrote in message
...

>> all these things are interrelated. thank you for reading my rant! :-)
>> kylie
>>
>>
>
> Current economic dogma says you must have growth around 3% per year for a
> healthy economy. Nobody knows how to do it with much less without having
> unacceptable unemployment. Thus the current model condemns us to be
> constantly expanding: population, energy use, mineral use, land use, must
> all
> grow indefinitely. Except that obviously in the real world they cannot.
>
> Political systems around the world that reward short term popularity and
> punish long term planning don't help.

we know that the current model doesn't help - it's getting the beancounters
& other bottom-feeders to accept that is the problem. the first world govt
to actively remake the situation is going to be everyone's hero.

of course, most govts that have a great idea are invaded by the u.s. &
crushed for the next 50 years ;-)
kylie

[0tterbot]

<Charlie> wrote in message
...
> On Thu, 10 Apr 2008 23:59:33 GMT, "0tterbot" > wrote:
>
>
>>of course, most govts that have a great idea are invaded by the u.s. &
>>crushed for the next 50 years ;-)
>>kylie
>>
>
> Hey, you need to update! We are now on the Hundred Year Plan. Our
> Repugnican candidate, John McCentury is talking a hundred years in
> Iraq.

truly?! my goodness.

Got Oil!

(er, won't all the oil be gone by then?)

>
> Foo, we yanks, gonna grab it all. All for us and none for others.
>
> **** me, hurry and put us out of our misery and save yerselves.
>
> Charlie

well, not to rain on your parade, but self-hating americans are nearly as
tedious as the other kind! <g!> i know, it hurts to realise that nothing
about yourselves is unique or particularly interesting in either a good or a
bad sense, but you'll manage :-)

have you seen our spiffy new prime minister creating necessary, yet polite
and pleasant, runctions in china? what a one he is!! i don't know that the
general public actually _likes_ him or not, but my word, there is a great
deal to be admired. sometimes he makes my jaw drop right off my head. you
want to find yourselves someone more like that. (obama?)
kylie

[Terryc]

Chookie wrote:

> Hah. I've tried to grow coriander in Sydney. I'd never seen a plant with
> only two leaves bolt before...

Lol, I know exactly what you mean.

[Billy[_4_]]

In article >,
"0tterbot" > wrote:

> <Charlie> wrote in message
> ...
> > On Thu, 10 Apr 2008 23:59:33 GMT, "0tterbot" > wrote:
> >
> >
> >>of course, most govts that have a great idea are invaded by the u.s. &
> >>crushed for the next 50 years ;-)
> >>kylie
> >>
> >
> > Hey, you need to update! We are now on the Hundred Year Plan. Our
> > Repugnican candidate, John McCentury is talking a hundred years in
> > Iraq.
>
> truly?! my goodness.
>
> Got Oil!
>
> (er, won't all the oil be gone by then?)
>
> >
> > Foo, we yanks, gonna grab it all. All for us and none for others.
> >
> > **** me, hurry and put us out of our misery and save yerselves.
> >
> > Charlie
>
> well, not to rain on your parade, but self-hating americans are nearly as
> tedious as the other kind! <g!> i know, it hurts to realise that nothing
> about yourselves is unique or particularly interesting in either a good or a
> bad sense, but you'll manage :-)
I beg to differ with you 0tterbot. We Americans seem to live in a
strange state of schizophrenia. Most people who meet us find that we can
be charming and thoughtful, yet most people would say that our
government is self-serving at best, and at worst, criminal. We consume
25% of the worlds energy and presently have plans to continue fouling
the air that you breath by extracting fossil fuel from oil shale and tar
sands long after the Saudi wells run dry. Global warming just may be a
new marketing opportunity;-) Our government, with our tax dollars,
spends 40% of the worlds budget on weapons. That means that we are a
bunch of dangerous motherf***ers. We are also the world largest arms
suppliers, so any war is a good war for us:-) You, my friend, have no
control over the 800 lb. gorilla in the cage with you, we do, and don't
exercise it. I am always impressed that a six month old child from
anywhere sounds and acts the same. We are all born equal (no nation has
a monopoly on saints or sinners) but the tribe that we are born into
determines our personal power and pecking order. We, the Americans, are
in a position to exert pressure on that gorilla. Charlie, was selflessly
ignoring his tribe, and beseeching his brothers and sister of our
species to save humanity. Can you imagine his hubris?

>
> have you seen our spiffy new prime minister creating necessary, yet polite
> and pleasant, runctions in china? what a one he is!! i don't know that the
> general public actually _likes_ him or not, but my word, there is a great
> deal to be admired. sometimes he makes my jaw drop right off my head. you
> want to find yourselves someone more like that. (obama?)
> kylie
--

Billy

Impeach Pelosi, Bush & Cheney to the Hague
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/
http://rachelcorriefoundation.org/

[jellybean stonerfish]

On Thu, 10 Apr 2008 20:14:17 -0500, Charlie wrote:

> Hey, you need to update! We are now on the Hundred Year Plan. Our
> Repugnican candidate, John McCentury is talking a hundred years in Iraq.
> Got Oil!

They call themselves the Project for a New American Century for a reason.

[FarmI]

"0tterbot" > wrote in message

> have you seen our spiffy new prime minister creating necessary, yet polite
> and pleasant, runctions in china? what a one he is!! i don't know that
> the general public actually _likes_ him or not, but my word, there is a
> great deal to be admired. sometimes he makes my jaw drop right off my
> head. you want to find yourselves someone more like that. (obama?)

There's something about Obama that I feel is a bit plastic. Dunno what it
is but I just haven't warmed to him.

[FarmI]

"Terryc" > wrote in message
> Chookie wrote:
>
>> Hah. I've tried to grow coriander in Sydney. I'd never seen a plant
>> with only two leaves bolt before...
>
> Lol, I know exactly what you mean.

Plant in your winter. You must both be in a much hotter climate than I am.
I had huge bushes and I planted in spring.

[David Hare-Scott]

"Chookie" > wrote in message
news:ehrebeniuk-E4EAEC.23360110042008@news...
>
> Hah. I've tried to grow coriander in Sydney. I'd never seen a plant with
> only two leaves bolt before...
>

I only grow it during the winter, it's frost hardy.

David

[0tterbot]

<Charlie> wrote in message
...
> On Fri, 11 Apr 2008 01:28:55 GMT, "0tterbot" > wrote:
>>have you seen our spiffy new prime minister creating necessary, yet polite
>>and pleasant, runctions in china? what a one he is!! i don't know that
>>the
>>general public actually _likes_ him or not, but my word, there is a great
>>deal to be admired. sometimes he makes my jaw drop right off my head. you
>>want to find yourselves someone more like that. (obama?)
>>kylie
>>
>
> What? He's sucking up to the new big money since our economy is going
> down the shitter? What a louse. :-)

no, i meant that sincerely!! i am very impressed. it's not many p-m.s who
can or would tell the chinese (in mandarin) that they have a few human
rights issues!

>
> You're right. I am not sure about obama, as far as his policies are
> concerned, but, damn, the boy has charisma and is fast on his feet.
> *If* things were to go as he portarys, perhaps you all would love us
> again. But one must always ask, who really controls the show?

well, don't ask me!

i also think yanks have an over-inflated idea of how much they were ever
loved in the first instance <g>
kylie

[FarmI]

"0tterbot" > wrote in message
> <Charlie> wrote in message

>> What? He's sucking up to the new big money since our economy is going
>> down the shitter? What a louse. :-)
>
> no, i meant that sincerely!! i am very impressed. it's not many p-m.s who
> can or would tell the chinese (in mandarin) that they have a few human
> rights issues!

I agree that seeing him talking directly to the Chinese was very impressive.
I dont think too many world leaders would have the range of languages that
he does. But I do think they have to get off their arses and start doing
something.

Since they've taken over the role as the Government, they've probably only
sat for about 4 weeks. Not enough to do a bloody thing of use, yet.
>
>>
>> You're right. I am not sure about obama, as far as his policies are
>> concerned, but, damn, the boy has charisma and is fast on his feet.

The trouble with 'charismatic' leaders is that the instant people see
through the 'charisma', they drop like a ton of lead. I'm not yet convinced
that Obama has anything of substance. Hillary does, but she certainly has
baggage.

>> *If* things were to go as he portarys, perhaps you all would love us
>> again. But one must always ask, who really controls the show?

> i also think yanks have an over-inflated idea of how much they were ever
> loved in the first instance <g>

:-)) It does tend to come as a surprise to many Americans that they aren't
universally loved, but I do think that Charlie might be an exception to that
grouping as he seems to have made an effort to look beyond his borders.

It's not so difficult to understand such a mind set if you think of us
having 300 million people on our continent - imagine trying to keep up with
current affairs within the nation in that circumstance, let alone trying to
know what is going on in the rest of the world. Add to that being the most
powerful nation on earth and it must be a bit of a heady mix.

I've always thought that we were extraordinarily lucky to be where we are
and what we are. We're a piddling little, unimportant nation stuck at what
other nations see as being the bottom of the world, but that works to our
benefit. We take in news and media from all sorts of nations and because we
all feel that we are isolated, we travel, and for our size, we travel a lot.

[Jonno[_6_]]

Love Kevin,
Love his approach, but lets face it.
You cant change course overnight re change of government.
It seemed to me that the Libs were acting as if they knew what was
around the corner before they lost the plot.
With pipelines being blown up, English oil workers on strike, they have
all the excuses to have every ones budgets blow sky high.
Better be careful in investing, except locally.
French Truffles look like a good market to be in...
Weather had better shape up this season.
We will all be in trouble.
Seems like the government knows this, and so restricting what
supermarkets are doing to farmers prices. And about time too....
Re human right issues, we may have a few locally too, with our natives.
Thats the pommy influence of past generations.
Lets get it right this time.




FarmI wrote:
> "0tterbot" > wrote in message
>> <Charlie> wrote in message
>
>>> What? He's sucking up to the new big money since our economy is going
>>> down the shitter? What a louse. :-)
>> no, i meant that sincerely!! i am very impressed. it's not many p-m.s who
>> can or would tell the chinese (in mandarin) that they have a few human
>> rights issues!
>
> I agree that seeing him talking directly to the Chinese was very impressive.
> I dont think too many world leaders would have the range of languages that
> he does. But I do think they have to get off their arses and start doing
> something.
>
> Since they've taken over the role as the Government, they've probably only
> sat for about 4 weeks. Not enough to do a bloody thing of use, yet.
>>> You're right. I am not sure about obama, as far as his policies are
>>> concerned, but, damn, the boy has charisma and is fast on his feet.
>
> The trouble with 'charismatic' leaders is that the instant people see
> through the 'charisma', they drop like a ton of lead. I'm not yet convinced
> that Obama has anything of substance. Hillary does, but she certainly has
> baggage.
>
>>> *If* things were to go as he portarys, perhaps you all would love us
>>> again. But one must always ask, who really controls the show?
>
>> i also think yanks have an over-inflated idea of how much they were ever
>> loved in the first instance <g>
>
> :-)) It does tend to come as a surprise to many Americans that they aren't
> universally loved, but I do think that Charlie might be an exception to that
> grouping as he seems to have made an effort to look beyond his borders.
>
> It's not so difficult to understand such a mind set if you think of us
> having 300 million people on our continent - imagine trying to keep up with
> current affairs within the nation in that circumstance, let alone trying to
> know what is going on in the rest of the world. Add to that being the most
> powerful nation on earth and it must be a bit of a heady mix.
>
> I've always thought that we were extraordinarily lucky to be where we are
> and what we are. We're a piddling little, unimportant nation stuck at what
> other nations see as being the bottom of the world, but that works to our
> benefit. We take in news and media from all sorts of nations and because we
> all feel that we are isolated, we travel, and for our size, we travel a lot.
>
>

[0tterbot]

"FarmI" <ask@itshall be given> wrote in message
...

> I agree that seeing him talking directly to the Chinese was very
> impressive. I dont think too many world leaders would have the range of
> languages that he does. But I do think they have to get off their arses
> and start doing something.
>
> Since they've taken over the role as the Government, they've probably only
> sat for about 4 weeks. Not enough to do a bloody thing of use, yet.

well no, but what can you do in just 4 weeks? :-)

i do, however, think that symbolic actions are important (in terms of
getting us all moving on to where we are going) & there's been a lot of
that. actual sitting time isn't set by govts, so what can one do? in the
meantime, i love the way they are going through like a dose of salts. we
NEEDED it!

also, i am secretly shallow so keep that in mind when i say: i hate his
ties. he never wears a tie i like. his taste in ties is absolutely foul.
something should be done..!

but i can forgive a bad tie in someone who i sincerely believe is all set to
do the right things, not awful things like <ahem> did.

>>> You're right. I am not sure about obama, as far as his policies are
>>> concerned, but, damn, the boy has charisma and is fast on his feet.
>
> The trouble with 'charismatic' leaders is that the instant people see
> through the 'charisma', they drop like a ton of lead. I'm not yet
> convinced that Obama has anything of substance. Hillary does, but she
> certainly has baggage.

all i can really say on this subject (like i even CARE!) is that neither of
them (none of them!) could be worse than the incumbent.

>>> *If* things were to go as he portarys, perhaps you all would love us
>>> again. But one must always ask, who really controls the show?
>
>> i also think yanks have an over-inflated idea of how much they were ever
>> loved in the first instance <g>
>
> :-)) It does tend to come as a surprise to many Americans that they
> aren't universally loved, but I do think that Charlie might be an
> exception to that grouping as he seems to have made an effort to look
> beyond his borders.

charlie is noice. :-)

having said that, any country probably has a majority of nice (in their way)
individuals. it's how they act collectively that matters, in many ways. that
seems to be the problem with the farcical olympic torch business - most
chinese people are lovely, but the govt there is appalling. i think some
chinese are feeling rather oppressed in a personal way by the protests when
it's actually a governmental thing that shouldn't be taken personally.

> It's not so difficult to understand such a mind set if you think of us
> having 300 million people on our continent - imagine trying to keep up
> with current affairs within the nation in that circumstance, let alone
> trying to know what is going on in the rest of the world. Add to that
> being the most powerful nation on earth and it must be a bit of a heady
> mix.
>
> I've always thought that we were extraordinarily lucky to be where we are
> and what we are. We're a piddling little, unimportant nation stuck at
> what other nations see as being the bottom of the world, but that works to
> our benefit. We take in news and media from all sorts of nations and
> because we all feel that we are isolated, we travel, and for our size, we
> travel a lot.

i think obscurity is great. not to mention, necessary.
kylie

[FarmI]

"0tterbot" > wrote in message
> "FarmI" <ask@itshall be given> wrote in message
>> I agree that seeing him talking directly to the Chinese was very
>> impressive. I dont think too many world leaders would have the range of
>> languages that he does. But I do think they have to get off their arses
>> and start doing something.
>>
>> Since they've taken over the role as the Government, they've probably
>> only sat for about 4 weeks. Not enough to do a bloody thing of use, yet.
>
> well no, but what can you do in just 4 weeks? :-)

Sweet Fester Arbuckle, but they really have to do something PDQ when they do
sit again because it's now stretching out a bit too long.

> i do, however, think that symbolic actions are important (in terms of
> getting us all moving on to where we are going) & there's been a lot of
> that. actual sitting time isn't set by govts,

It is actually. I think it's the Gov't Whip who sets it but if not, then at
least someone in the Government.

so what can one do? in the
> meantime, i love the way they are going through like a dose of salts. we
> NEEDED it!

No doubt about that. A major purging.

> also, i am secretly shallow so keep that in mind when i say: i hate his
> ties. he never wears a tie i like. his taste in ties is absolutely foul.
> something should be done..!

:-)) and Therese needs a bit of fashion advice too :-))

> but i can forgive a bad tie in someone who i sincerely believe is all set
> to do the right things, not awful things like <ahem> did.
>
>>>> You're right. I am not sure about obama, as far as his policies are
>>>> concerned, but, damn, the boy has charisma and is fast on his feet.
>>
>> The trouble with 'charismatic' leaders is that the instant people see
>> through the 'charisma', they drop like a ton of lead. I'm not yet
>> convinced that Obama has anything of substance. Hillary does, but she
>> certainly has baggage.
>
> all i can really say on this subject (like i even CARE!) is that neither
> of them (none of them!) could be worse than the incumbent.

Tut tut. I'm sure you do care as I can't imagine that you could possibly
approve of the invasion of Iraq based on falsified information.

As allies and the richest most powerful nation on earth, when dumb decisions
are made there by a very thick President, it impacts way beyond their
borders. Look at all the shit we were fed so we too would happily (choke)
send troops to Iraq too. The one thing I will give Howard is that although
he looked like he was always supporting Bush, he was very careful about his
commitment to Iraq in terms of troop location adn numbers, not that we could
send too many anyway given our other international commitments.

>
>>>> *If* things were to go as he portarys, perhaps you all would love us
>>>> again. But one must always ask, who really controls the show?
>>
>>> i also think yanks have an over-inflated idea of how much they were ever
>>> loved in the first instance <g>
>>
>> :-)) It does tend to come as a surprise to many Americans that they
>> aren't universally loved, but I do think that Charlie might be an
>> exception to that grouping as he seems to have made an effort to look
>> beyond his borders.
>
> charlie is noice. :-)

Shhhhh. Don't let him hear you say that or he'll get a swelled head!

> having said that, any country probably has a majority of nice (in their
> way) individuals. it's how they act collectively that matters, in many
> ways.

Yes. I still have not forgiven most of our compatriots about the Tampa.
The majority seem to be a bunch of idiots given how often I heard the line
about 'queue jumping'.

that
> seems to be the problem with the farcical olympic torch business - most
> chinese people are lovely, but the govt there is appalling.

Yep, but so was ours till the end of last year :-))

i think some
> chinese are feeling rather oppressed in a personal way by the protests
> when it's actually a governmental thing that shouldn't be taken
> personally.
>
>> It's not so difficult to understand such a mind set if you think of us
>> having 300 million people on our continent - imagine trying to keep up
>> with current affairs within the nation in that circumstance, let alone
>> trying to know what is going on in the rest of the world. Add to that
>> being the most powerful nation on earth and it must be a bit of a heady
>> mix.
>>
>> I've always thought that we were extraordinarily lucky to be where we are
>> and what we are. We're a piddling little, unimportant nation stuck at
>> what other nations see as being the bottom of the world, but that works
>> to our benefit. We take in news and media from all sorts of nations and
>> because we all feel that we are isolated, we travel, and for our size, we
>> travel a lot.
>
> i think obscurity is great. not to mention, necessary.

Yup! Long may we continue to have it (says she with a sore arm - I got my
Chloera and Typhoid shots today for our impending trip :-((()

[0tterbot]

"FarmI" <ask@itshall be given> wrote in message
...

>> well no, but what can you do in just 4 weeks? :-)
>
> Sweet Fester Arbuckle, but they really have to do something PDQ when they
> do sit again because it's now stretching out a bit too long.

hm, i tend to think that they are, somewhat. i don't know. everything
happens at a glacial pace anyway! i'm not sure how quickly things CAN
happen, never mind "should".

>> i do, however, think that symbolic actions are important (in terms of
>> getting us all moving on to where we are going) & there's been a lot of
>> that. actual sitting time isn't set by govts,
>
> It is actually. I think it's the Gov't Whip who sets it but if not, then
> at least someone in the Government.

but is there not a common sitting length over the year? & it's not 52 weeks,
we all know that!! they just don't sit that much - they're often just not
there, because (i assume) it's not practical to do so anyway. i don't know
the ins & outs of it, but i'd be frankly concerned if some new govt decided
to sit 40 weeks a year. while they're sitting, they're not thinking of what
they need to do & talking to people about it, they're debating (& whatnot)
stuff which has been decided while they _weren't_ sitting.

that's what i meant.

>> also, i am secretly shallow so keep that in mind when i say: i hate his
>> ties. he never wears a tie i like. his taste in ties is absolutely foul.
>> something should be done..!
>
> :-)) and Therese needs a bit of fashion advice too :-))

well she does, but she's not the prime minister so i'm not about to start
criticising her. :-)

>> all i can really say on this subject (like i even CARE!) is that neither
>> of them (none of them!) could be worse than the incumbent.
>
> Tut tut. I'm sure you do care as I can't imagine that you could possibly
> approve of the invasion of Iraq based on falsified information.

i didn't, i don't.

but i don't give a flying **** who the president of the usa is, & that's the
truth!! :-D whether i care or not i can't do anything about it, so i
therefore don't invest any energy in caring about any of them.

honestly, all we are seeing is the bush effect - nobody in the world wants
to see anyone like that in power again, EVER. however, since none of us can
do anything about it, it's a mystery to me that anyone need pay attention
until it happens. truly, they WILL let us know once there's been an
election, i'm sure :-) no amount of fussing about it now is going to change
anything, even though such a person will always do their overweening best to
make it the problem of the rest of the world, kwim? bush is a problem for
all 6 billion people on earth, & nobody wants that to happen again. but
since the next one will be another american, s/he is still going to be our
problem (just hopefully a much lesser problem). :-)

> As allies and the richest most powerful nation on earth, when dumb
> decisions are made there by a very thick President, it impacts way beyond
> their borders. Look at all the shit we were fed so we too would happily
> (choke) send troops to Iraq too. The one thing I will give Howard is that
> although he looked like he was always supporting Bush, he was very careful
> about his commitment to Iraq in terms of troop location adn numbers, not
> that we could send too many anyway given our other international
> commitments.

i think even rabid ideologues like howard were (grudgingly) aware of how his
incessant arse-licking of such an unworthy person reflected badly upon
himself. so he's doomed to be always associated with words like mean,
tricky, and cunning. nobody ever said he was stupid - he's not. but that
doesn't mean he was not the sole instrument of his own downfall - he was.
the creepy little control freak. you get that when you're one-eyed.

>> charlie is noice. :-)
>
> Shhhhh. Don't let him hear you say that or he'll get a swelled head!

he may not be able to fit his gardening hat on!!

>> having said that, any country probably has a majority of nice (in their
>> way) individuals. it's how they act collectively that matters, in many
>> ways.
>
> Yes. I still have not forgiven most of our compatriots about the Tampa.
> The majority seem to be a bunch of idiots given how often I heard the line
> about 'queue jumping'.

oh dear. i think the truth is that most people worldwide are "a bunch of
idiots". truly. the modern world is ridiculously complicated & lots of
people simply can't keep up. that doesn't make them unlikeable, unkind or
unworthy - it's just something you need to keep in mind. i don't know that
there's any place left for people who just aren't smart or who are
unprepared to think. they're being left behind. tbh i'm not sure what (if
anything) could or should be done about it.

in the olden days, most people were chattel, peasants or serfs. these days,
they have the same rights as the ruling class & expect that things are
equal, but things aren't equal & won't ever be, because people aren't equal.
an un-thought-out opinion is not equal to a well-thought-out opinion, is it?
but modern democratic types expect everyone to have a say, based on the
assumption (i suppose) that if a person is required to make a decision,
they'll probably put some thought into it, since it is going to affect them.
thus we try to drag each other up through the primordial slime :-) it kind
of works, doesn't it?

> that
>> seems to be the problem with the farcical olympic torch business - most
>> chinese people are lovely, but the govt there is appalling.
>
> Yep, but so was ours till the end of last year :-))

to be fair to them, they weren't executing their own populace in droves, &
stuff like that.
>> i think obscurity is great. not to mention, necessary.

> Yup! Long may we continue to have it (says she with a sore arm - I got my
> Chloera and Typhoid shots today for our impending trip :-((()

ow!

but see, i'm a pretty smart person (mostly ;-) yet i find it inconceivable
that things like typhoid still exist!! it's hard for us to move outside our
own brain & own experience, isn't it?
kylie

[0tterbot]

<Charlie> wrote in message
...
> On Mon, 28 Apr 2008 23:25:19 GMT, "0tterbot" > wrote:
>
>
>>charlie is noice. :-)
>
> Well now, that was a noice thing to say! ;-) Thank you......wait a
> minute....unless this is some aussie slang thing that has a different
> meaning than I took! ;-)

well, not really!

>having said that, any country probably has a majority of nice (in their
>way)
>>individuals. it's how they act collectively that matters, in many ways.
>>that
>>seems to be the problem with the farcical olympic torch business - most
>>chinese people are lovely, but the govt there is appalling. i think some
>>chinese are feeling rather oppressed in a personal way by the protests
>>when
>>it's actually a governmental thing that shouldn't be taken personally.
>
> Herd mentality is bad, bad I'm tellin' ya! It leads to stampede and
> the *******s could sweep us all over the cliff, though this may not be
> an entirely bad thing, given the condition of the planet and our
> contribution to the.....situations. I am thinking that the herd is
> starting to awake here...the "news" is reflecting this today, and the
> bleating has started....."gov't must helppp, gov't must helpppp".
>
> **** me, bush is again pushing to open the anwr to drilling. The only
> solution to the oil situation is to retool our society and QUIT DRIVING
> SO DAMN MUCH!
>
> I fear it going to get ugly. It is for sure going to
> become...different.

probably. but really, i think that's not a bad thing (overall!). the
disaster that forces one's hand to better things isn't really so bad. you
have to take the broad view. everyone has to suffer sometimes, it's
inevitable.

>>i think obscurity is great. not to mention, necessary.
>>kylie
>>
>
> I think you have that right and should count your blessing....I've got
> 300 million members of the herd to worry about!

i'd be worried too if i were you <g>
kylie

[FarmI]

"0tterbot" > wrote in message
> "FarmI" <ask@itshall be given> wrote in message

>>> i do, however, think that symbolic actions are important (in terms of
>>> getting us all moving on to where we are going) & there's been a lot of
>>> that. actual sitting time isn't set by govts,
>>
>> It is actually. I think it's the Gov't Whip who sets it but if not, then
>> at least someone in the Government.
>
> but is there not a common sitting length over the year?

No. It used to be 21 or 22 weeks of the year (can't remember which) but
under Howard, they reduced it to 18 weeks because they could guillotine
discussion and ram legislation through. Large majorities make it easy for a
Government to get its own way.

& it's not 52 weeks,
> we all know that!! they just don't sit that much - they're often just not
> there, because (i assume) it's not practical to do so anyway. i don't know
> the ins & outs of it, but i'd be frankly concerned if some new govt
> decided to sit 40 weeks a year. while they're sitting, they're not
> thinking of what they need to do & talking to people about it, they're
> debating (& whatnot) stuff which has been decided while they _weren't_
> sitting.

The trouble is that when the poor *******s aren't in the House, they're in
their electorates dealing with all sorts of drongos. Sure, they get the
genuine cases that need help, but they also seem to get an enormous amount
of the knuckle draggers just taking up time and resources because they
haven't a clue who to turn to for 'help' (or to whinge to). They spend
thier life being exhausted from what I've seen of them.

It's job that no-one should seek to do IMHO.

> that's what i meant.

Fair nuff.

>>> also, i am secretly shallow so keep that in mind when i say: i hate his
>>> ties. he never wears a tie i like. his taste in ties is absolutely foul.
>>> something should be done..!
>>
>> :-)) and Therese needs a bit of fashion advice too :-))
>
> well she does, but she's not the prime minister so i'm not about to start
> criticising her. :-)

And really, if he can do the job (still waiting to see) who cares what his
ties look like?

>>> all i can really say on this subject (like i even CARE!) is that neither
>>> of them (none of them!) could be worse than the incumbent.
>>
>> Tut tut. I'm sure you do care as I can't imagine that you could possibly
>> approve of the invasion of Iraq based on falsified information.
>
> i didn't, i don't.

:-)) Thought not.

> but i don't give a flying **** who the president of the usa is, & that's
> the truth!! :-D whether i care or not i can't do anything about it, so i
> therefore don't invest any energy in caring about any of them.

Well there is that. Given how sick I am of the coverage of the Democratic
contest, by the time the real contest comes round to elect the new
President, I don't think I'll give a flyer either.

> honestly, all we are seeing is the bush effect - nobody in the world wants
> to see anyone like that in power again, EVER.

Hmmm. I'm not so sure that he doesn't still have a lot of supporters. I'd
like to think not but.....

however, since none of us can
> do anything about it, it's a mystery to me that anyone need pay attention
> until it happens. truly, they WILL let us know once there's been an
> election, i'm sure :-) no amount of fussing about it now is going to
> change anything, even though such a person will always do their
> overweening best to make it the problem of the rest of the world, kwim?
> bush is a problem for all 6 billion people on earth, & nobody wants that
> to happen again. but since the next one will be another american, s/he is
> still going to be our problem (just hopefully a much lesser problem). :-)

Well hopefully whoever it is will have a better grasp on Foreign policy and
Trade than the current Administration appears to have.

>> As allies and the richest most powerful nation on earth, when dumb
>> decisions are made there by a very thick President, it impacts way beyond
>> their borders. Look at all the shit we were fed so we too would happily
>> (choke) send troops to Iraq too. The one thing I will give Howard is
>> that although he looked like he was always supporting Bush, he was very
>> careful >> about his commitment to Iraq in terms of troop location adn
>> numbers, not that we could send too many anyway given our other
>> international commitments.
>
> i think even rabid ideologues like howard were (grudgingly) aware of how
> his incessant arse-licking of such an unworthy person reflected badly upon
> himself. so he's doomed to be always associated with words like mean,
> tricky, and cunning. nobody ever said he was stupid - he's not. but that
> doesn't mean he was not the sole instrument of his own downfall - he was.
> the creepy little control freak. you get that when you're one-eyed.

LOL. Gotta hand it to you Otter, you do have a way with words!

>>> having said that, any country probably has a majority of nice (in their
>>> way) individuals. it's how they act collectively that matters, in many
>>> ways.
>>
>> Yes. I still have not forgiven most of our compatriots about the Tampa.
>> The majority seem to be a bunch of idiots given how often I heard the
>> line about 'queue jumping'.
>
> oh dear. i think the truth is that most people worldwide are "a bunch of
> idiots". truly. the modern world is ridiculously complicated & lots of
> people simply can't keep up.

Can't or don't want to. I can cope with those who can't, it's the one's who
don't want to who give me the irrits.

that doesn't make them unlikeable, unkind or
> unworthy - it's just something you need to keep in mind. i don't know that
> there's any place left for people who just aren't smart or who are
> unprepared to think. they're being left behind. tbh i'm not sure what (if
> anything) could or should be done about it.
>
> in the olden days, most people were chattel, peasants or serfs. these
> days, they have the same rights as the ruling class & expect that things
> are equal, but things aren't equal & won't ever be, because people aren't
> equal. an un-thought-out opinion is not equal to a well-thought-out
> opinion, is it?

Sadly it is. The coverage of the un-thought-out idiocy opinions that aren't
really news, but noise, is all too frequent. These days, it's like the
Enlightenment never, ever happened.

> but modern democratic types expect everyone to have a say, based on the
> assumption (i suppose) that if a person is required to make a decision,
> they'll probably put some thought into it, since it is going to affect
> them. thus we try to drag each other up through the primordial slime :-)
> it kind of works, doesn't it?

I have doubts about that and the Tampa is a good example of that. Foment it
into a "they're coming to get us" issue and dumb old Joe Public goobles it
up and screams "keep 'em out". Those who actually knew something about
illegal immigration and refugee issues were screaming that these people were
genuine refugees while stupid Joe Public was wittering on about "queue
jumpers".

In the case of the Tampa and much else in the past 11 years it was a case of
sinking backwards into the primordial ooze, not furthering the cause of
rational thinking or high human ideals.

>
>> that
>>> seems to be the problem with the farcical olympic torch business - most
>>> chinese people are lovely, but the govt there is appalling.
>>
>> Yep, but so was ours till the end of last year :-))
>
> to be fair to them, they weren't executing their own populace in droves, &
> stuff like that.

No, they didn't execute people, but I'm not convinced that they wouldn't
have tried it if they thought they could get away with it given the tricks
they used right across the board. I should lend you a book called
"Silencing Dissent". The chapter in that about what they did to the Public
Service is tame because only the top of the iceberg gets a mention. I know
they did a lot more. Intimidation, threats, bullying and punishment - you
name it, they did it and not just in one area of influence.

>>> i think obscurity is great. not to mention, necessary.
>
>> Yup! Long may we continue to have it (says she with a sore arm - I got
>> my Chloera and Typhoid shots today for our impending trip :-((()
>
> ow!
>
> but see, i'm a pretty smart person (mostly ;-) yet i find it inconceivable
> that things like typhoid still exist!! it's hard for us to move outside
> our own brain & own experience, isn't it?

:-)) Take up genealogy/family history and you start to read about illnesses
that are still out there in other parts of the world and in places we think
of as first world countries. TB being just one of those diseases. Just for
info, we chose not to be vaccinated for Japanese encephalitis and won't be
taking the malaria treatment. If I suddenly stop posting, some tropical
nasty got me (either that or my ISP is giving me probs as it has more than
once).

[Chookie]

In article >,
"FarmI" <ask@itshall be given> wrote:

> > but i don't give a flying **** who the president of the usa is, & that's
> > the truth!! :-D whether i care or not i can't do anything about it, so i
> > therefore don't invest any energy in caring about any of them.
>
> Well there is that. Given how sick I am of the coverage of the Democratic
> contest, by the time the real contest comes round to elect the new
> President, I don't think I'll give a flyer either.

To my mind, the entire electoral system there seems hell-bent on making sure
everyone is so sick to death of the whole thing that they don't vote.

> Well hopefully whoever it is will have a better grasp on Foreign policy and
> Trade than the current Administration appears to have.

Um, Hillary said that if Iran bombs the crap out of Israel, that the USA will
bomb the crap out of them. That's sophistication for you.

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

http://chookiesbackyard.blogspot.com/

[Billy[_4_]]

In article
>,
"FarmI" <ask@itshall be given> wrote:

> "0tterbot" > wrote in message
> > "FarmI" <ask@itshall be given> wrote in message
>
> >>
> >> Tut tut. I'm sure you do care as I can't imagine that you could possibly
> >> approve of the invasion of Iraq based on falsified information.
> >
> > i didn't, i don't.
>
> :-)) Thought not.
>
> > but i don't give a flying **** who the president of the usa is, & that's
> > the truth!! :-D whether i care or not i can't do anything about it, so i
> > therefore don't invest any energy in caring about any of them.
>
> Well there is that. Given how sick I am of the coverage of the Democratic
> contest, by the time the real contest comes round to elect the new
> President, I don't think I'll give a flyer either.
>
> > honestly, all we are seeing is the bush effect - nobody in the world wants
> > to see anyone like that in power again, EVER.
Sorry to say but Bush isn't the problem. Bush is just the sock puppet
of the tidy rich in this country (World actually, what with
"globalization") who don't want to dirty their hands, so they buy
politicians (we call $$$ free speech) to pass their self serving laws
(bankruptcy laws were tightened 2 years ago, to make it harder to file,
coincidence?) and their press gives us infortainment which is short of
information but guaranteed to titillate (and act as if the past never
happened). And after irritating everyone (by sending jobs over seas,
diverting colossal amounts of money (which is sorely needed for social
programs: roads, schools, health care) to the military industrial
complex, sending pre-approved credit cards by mail to everyone,
exhorting us to buy houses, and diverting food crops into bio-fuels)
they point at the 12,000,000 illegal immigrants (who we can't do without
because they subsidize our dwindling life style) and say, "It's their
fault". No, Bush is just the hired help.
And now we get to choose from the lesser of three evils (eternal war, 5
more years of war with unwavering commitment to the ethnic cleansing of
Palestine, or health care that only an insurance agent could love (when
most doctors and citizens want single payer).
If the new government doesn't go after the malfeasance of this
administration, then we are all in deep doo.

(See first URL in signature to understand "Who Owns America". The second
URL is of our most supported ally and a template for America's future:-(

>
> Hmmm. I'm not so sure that he doesn't still have a lot of supporters. I'd
> like to think not but.....
>
(snip, chop, whack)
> >
> > i think even rabid ideologues like howard were (grudgingly) aware of how
> > his incessant arse-licking of such an unworthy person reflected badly upon
> > himself. so he's doomed to be always associated with words like mean,
> > tricky, and cunning.

(snippety, snippety, snip)

> >>
> >> Yes. I still have not forgiven most of our compatriots about the Tampa.
> >> The majority seem to be a bunch of idiots given how often I heard the
> >> line about 'queue jumping'.
> >
> > oh dear. i think the truth is that most people worldwide are "a bunch of
> > idiots". truly. the modern world is ridiculously complicated & lots of
> > people simply can't keep up.
Especially when their governments and the media present them with bald
faced lies or information that is so freakin' skewed, that reality is
imperceptible. If you're a democratically elected leader of a country
that opposes American foreign policy, you're a militant. If you're a
ruthless dictator who supports American foreign policy, you're our ally
for peace.
>
(snip)
>
> > but modern democratic types expect everyone to have a say, based on the
> > assumption (i suppose) that if a person is required to make a decision,
> > they'll probably put some thought into it, since it is going to affect
> > them. thus we try to drag each other up through the primordial slime :-)
> > it kind of works, doesn't it?
>
> I have doubts about that and the Tampa is a good example of that. Foment it
> into a "they're coming to get us" issue and dumb old Joe Public goobles it
> up and screams "keep 'em out". Those who actually knew something about
> illegal immigration and refugee issues were screaming that these people were
> genuine refugees while stupid Joe Public was wittering on about "queue
> jumpers".
>
> In the case of the Tampa and much else in the past 11 years it was a case of
> sinking backwards into the primordial ooze, not furthering the cause of
> rational thinking or high human ideals.
>
Speaking of rational thinking, it was good to hear one of your
countrym . ., hehem, citizens, Helen Caldicott, on the radio last
thursday, http://www.flashpoints.net/ . She is supposed to be starting a
new radio programm soon on KPFT, Huston http://www.kpft.org/index.php .
Always refreshing to be exposed to reality.
--

Billy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KVTfcAyYGg&ref=patrick.net
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=7WBB0svwMdY&feature=related

[Billy[_4_]]

In article
>,
"FarmI" <ask@itshall be given> wrote:

> a book called
> "Silencing Dissent". The chapter in that about what they did to the Public
> Service is tame because only the top of the iceberg gets a mention. I know
> they did a lot more. Intimidation, threats, bullying and punishment - you
> name it, they did it and not just in one area of influence.

Editorial Reviews
Product Description
A frightening analysis of the tactics used by the Howard government to
silence independent experts and commentators as well as public servants
and organisations which criticise its policies.
http://www.amazon.com/Silencing-Dissent-Australian-government-controlling
/dp/1741751012/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209750564&sr=1-2
--

Billy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KVTfcAyYGg&ref=patrick.net
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=7WBB0svwMdY&feature=related

[FarmI]

"Billy" > wrote in message news:wildbilly-
> "FarmI" <ask@itshall be given> wrote:
>> "0tterbot" > wrote in message
>> > "FarmI" <ask@itshall be given> wrote in message
>>
>> >>
>> >> Tut tut. I'm sure you do care as I can't imagine that you could
>> >> possibly
>> >> approve of the invasion of Iraq based on falsified information.
>> >
>> > i didn't, i don't.
>>
>> :-)) Thought not.
>>
>> > but i don't give a flying **** who the president of the usa is, &
>> > that's
>> > the truth!! :-D whether i care or not i can't do anything about it, so
>> > i
>> > therefore don't invest any energy in caring about any of them.
>>
>> Well there is that. Given how sick I am of the coverage of the
>> Democratic
>> contest, by the time the real contest comes round to elect the new
>> President, I don't think I'll give a flyer either.
>>
>> > honestly, all we are seeing is the bush effect - nobody in the world
>> > wants
>> > to see anyone like that in power again, EVER.

> Sorry to say but Bush isn't the problem.

Well he certainly isn't part of the solution either, but he and anyone in
his position should be.

> If the new government doesn't go after the malfeasance of this
> administration, then we are all in deep doo.

Welcome to our world Billy. We had the a similar situation here for the
past 11 years. I have voted for both sides of the political spectrum in
this country but I am very pleased that not once did I vote for anyone in
the last Government. By the time they got the axe, they too had become a
weeping sore just as Bush seems to have done for you. You get your chance
next year but I have to say that so far I'm underwhelmed with your choices.

>> > oh dear. i think the truth is that most people worldwide are "a bunch
>> > of
>> > idiots". truly. the modern world is ridiculously complicated & lots of
>> > people simply can't keep up.

> Especially when their governments and the media present them with bald
> faced lies or information that is so freakin' skewed, that reality is
> imperceptible. If you're a democratically elected leader of a country
> that opposes American foreign policy, you're a militant. If you're a
> ruthless dictator who supports American foreign policy, you're our ally
> for peace.

But I see that as the fault of a lazy public as all politicians will try to
use that sort of idiotic brain washing. It's designed to manipulate those
within the populace who are gullible and/or stupid. Anyone capable of any
degree of clear thinking should only be caught by it once. How many times
does Joe Public have to be bludgeoned over the head about whatever the
current political issue is, get all excited and whipped up because of the
patriotic (usually) rubbish he's being spoon fed before he finally starts to
think for himself and realises that the last time he was sucked in and
believed the lies, he felt like a total fool when it all came unstuck?

It seems that Joe Public either doesn't care or is too stupid to know that
he's being manipualted.

With access to the internet, there is no way that anyone should accept
unquestioningly anything they are fed by the media. The world is a big
place and access to all sorts of differing of views is only a few clicks
away (or should be).

>> In the case of the Tampa and much else in the past 11 years it was a case
>> of
>> sinking backwards into the primordial ooze, not furthering the cause of
>> rational thinking or high human ideals.
>>
> Speaking of rational thinking, it was good to hear one of your
> countrym . ., hehem, citizens, Helen Caldicott, on the radio last
> thursday, http://www.flashpoints.net/ . She is supposed to be starting a
> new radio programm soon on KPFT, Huston http://www.kpft.org/index.php .
> Always refreshing to be exposed to reality.

I've only ever read a few of the things she has written and heard her a few
times as she has mostly lived in the US. What I have seen of her is
impressive, as at least she seems to be able to use her loaf. Sadly there
don't seem to be enough of such people around.

[Billy[_4_]]

In article
>,
"FarmI" <ask@itshall be given> wrote:

> "Billy" > wrote in message news:wildbilly-
> > "FarmI" <ask@itshall be given> wrote:
> >> "0tterbot" > wrote in message
> >> > "FarmI" <ask@itshall be given> wrote in message
> >>
> >> >>
> >> >> Tut tut. I'm sure you do care as I can't imagine that you could
> >> >> possibly
> >> >> approve of the invasion of Iraq based on falsified information.
> >> >
> >> > i didn't, i don't.
> >>
> >> :-)) Thought not.
> >>
> >> > but i don't give a flying **** who the president of the usa is, &
> >> > that's
> >> > the truth!! :-D whether i care or not i can't do anything about it, so
> >> > i
> >> > therefore don't invest any energy in caring about any of them.
> >>
> >> Well there is that. Given how sick I am of the coverage of the
> >> Democratic
> >> contest, by the time the real contest comes round to elect the new
> >> President, I don't think I'll give a flyer either.
> >>
> >> > honestly, all we are seeing is the bush effect - nobody in the world
> >> > wants
> >> > to see anyone like that in power again, EVER.
>
> > Sorry to say but Bush isn't the problem.
>
> Well he certainly isn't part of the solution either, but he and anyone in
> his position should be.
Is it just me? I'm feeling a whole lot of 'tude here. Are you reacting t
what I said or what you think I said? If this is to be a conversation,
then let's keep it in response to what is written.

Bush is guilty but he isn't the puppeteer who orchestrates the show. He
is a political hack representing his moneyed backers over the interests
of the electorate.
>
> > If the new government doesn't go after the malfeasance of this
> > administration, then we are all in deep doo.
>
> Welcome to our world Billy. We had the a similar situation here for the
> past 11 years. I have voted for both sides of the political spectrum in
> this country but I am very pleased that not once did I vote for anyone in
> the last Government. By the time they got the axe, they too had become a
> weeping sore just as Bush seems to have done for you. You get your chance
> next year but I have to say that so far I'm underwhelmed with your choices.
You ain't the only one sister.
>
> >> > oh dear. i think the truth is that most people worldwide are "a bunch
> >> > of
> >> > idiots". truly. the modern world is ridiculously complicated & lots of
> >> > people simply can't keep up.
>
> > Especially when their governments and the media present them with bald
> > faced lies or information that is so freakin' skewed, that reality is
> > imperceptible. If you're a democratically elected leader of a country
> > that opposes American foreign policy, you're a militant. If you're a
> > ruthless dictator who supports American foreign policy, you're our ally
> > for peace.
>
> But I see that as the fault of a lazy public as all politicians will try to
> use that sort of idiotic brain washing. It's designed to manipulate those
> within the populace who are gullible and/or stupid. Anyone capable of any
> degree of clear thinking should only be caught by it once. How many times
> does Joe Public have to be bludgeoned over the head about whatever the
> current political issue is, get all excited and whipped up because of the
> patriotic (usually) rubbish he's being spoon fed before he finally starts to
> think for himself and realises that the last time he was sucked in and
> believed the lies, he felt like a total fool when it all came unstuck?
>
> It seems that Joe Public either doesn't care or is too stupid to know that
> he's being manipualted.
>
> With access to the internet, there is no way that anyone should accept
> unquestioningly anything they are fed by the media. The world is a big
> place and access to all sorts of differing of views is only a few clicks
> away (or should be).
I don't know how Ruppert Murdock plays in Australia, but he is the most
egregious example of media incompetence in America, but still, only the
most egregious. Studies have shown that views of Fox News are worse
informed than people who don't watch anything. Viewers of Fox News are
still likely to think that Saddam Hussein had WMDs. The rest of the
media here is similar. The hysteria from the "corporate press" and the
"reputable" N.Y. Times, and Judith Miller, helped convince the country
that intervention was necessary. They were aided and abetted by
Gen.Colin Powell, who most of us thought was a good guy.

Nearly all of our the media depends on advertising (except for
free-speach radio like Pacifica and some college stations), advertising
that would disappear for an un-American media that didn't support the
government's declared intent of protecting the American people.
>
> >> In the case of the Tampa and much else in the past 11 years it was a case
> >> of
> >> sinking backwards into the primordial ooze, not furthering the cause of
> >> rational thinking or high human ideals.
I must have been asleep when this happened, thanks for bringing it to
our attention. We do the same thing to Haitians all the time:-(
> >>
> > Speaking of rational thinking, it was good to hear one of your
> > countrym . ., hehem, citizens, Helen Caldicott, on the radio last
> > thursday, http://www.flashpoints.net/ . She is supposed to be starting a
> > new radio programm soon on KPFT, Huston http://www.kpft.org/index.php .
> > Always refreshing to be exposed to reality.
>
> I've only ever read a few of the things she has written and heard her a few
> times as she has mostly lived in the US. What I have seen of her is
> impressive, as at least she seems to be able to use her loaf. Sadly there
> don't seem to be enough of such people around.

Loaf? Typo or Aussi argot?
She seems to tour a lot. My understanding was that she was live from
Australia and her guest David Lockebaum (sp?) could have been anywhere.
If You Love This Planet, hosted by Dr. Helen Caldicott
http://www.kpfa.org/archives/index.php?arch=26076
--

Billy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KVTfcAyYGg&ref=patrick.net
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=7WBB0svwMdY&feature=related

[FarmI]

"Billy" > wrote in message
> "FarmI" <ask@itshall be given> wrote:
>> "Billy" > wrote in message news:wildbilly-
>> > "FarmI" <ask@itshall be given> wrote:
>> >> "0tterbot" > wrote in message
>> >> > "FarmI" <ask@itshall be given> wrote in message
>> >>
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Tut tut. I'm sure you do care as I can't imagine that you could
>> >> >> possibly
>> >> >> approve of the invasion of Iraq based on falsified information.
>> >> >
>> >> > i didn't, i don't.
>> >>
>> >> :-)) Thought not.
>> >>
>> >> > but i don't give a flying **** who the president of the usa is, &
>> >> > that's
>> >> > the truth!! :-D whether i care or not i can't do anything about it,
>> >> > so
>> >> > i
>> >> > therefore don't invest any energy in caring about any of them.
>> >>
>> >> Well there is that. Given how sick I am of the coverage of the
>> >> Democratic
>> >> contest, by the time the real contest comes round to elect the new
>> >> President, I don't think I'll give a flyer either.
>> >>
>> >> > honestly, all we are seeing is the bush effect - nobody in the world
>> >> > wants
>> >> > to see anyone like that in power again, EVER.
>>
>> > Sorry to say but Bush isn't the problem.
>>
>> Well he certainly isn't part of the solution either, but he and anyone in
>> his position should be.

> Is it just me? I'm feeling a whole lot of 'tude here. Are you reacting t
> what I said or what you think I said? If this is to be a conversation,
> then let's keep it in response to what is written.

It's must be just you because I DID respond to what you wrote. You wrote
"Bush isn't the problem". There is absolutely no way to misinterprete that
sentence as he is either the problem or he's not the problem. I think he's
certainly a huge part of the problem as he's complicit and that is what I
wrote.

> Bush is guilty but he isn't the puppeteer who orchestrates the show. He
> is a political hack representing his moneyed backers over the interests
> of the electorate.

And nothing I wrote in the sentence which you think has ""tude", disagrees
with what you've NOW written. You are now saying he's guilty, whereas
before you said he wasn't the problem. He is the problem just as there are
also many other problem individuals and corporations and vested interests
etc.

>> > If the new government doesn't go after the malfeasance of this
>> > administration, then we are all in deep doo.
>>
>> Welcome to our world Billy. We had the a similar situation here for the
>> past 11 years. I have voted for both sides of the political spectrum in
>> this country but I am very pleased that not once did I vote for anyone in
>> the last Government. By the time they got the axe, they too had become a
>> weeping sore just as Bush seems to have done for you. You get your
>> chance
>> next year but I have to say that so far I'm underwhelmed with your
>> choices.
> You ain't the only one sister.

No. Despite all the hoopla, I've picked up from my reading that there are a
lot of people around who aren't convinced by any of the candidates.

>> >> > oh dear. i think the truth is that most people worldwide are "a
>> >> > bunch
>> >> > of
>> >> > idiots". truly. the modern world is ridiculously complicated & lots
>> >> > of
>> >> > people simply can't keep up.
>>
>> > Especially when their governments and the media present them with bald
>> > faced lies or information that is so freakin' skewed, that reality is
>> > imperceptible. If you're a democratically elected leader of a country
>> > that opposes American foreign policy, you're a militant. If you're a
>> > ruthless dictator who supports American foreign policy, you're our ally
>> > for peace.
>>
>> But I see that as the fault of a lazy public as all politicians will try
>> to
>> use that sort of idiotic brain washing. It's designed to manipulate
>> those
>> within the populace who are gullible and/or stupid. Anyone capable of
>> any
>> degree of clear thinking should only be caught by it once. How many
>> times
>> does Joe Public have to be bludgeoned over the head about whatever the
>> current political issue is, get all excited and whipped up because of the
>> patriotic (usually) rubbish he's being spoon fed before he finally starts
>> to
>> think for himself and realises that the last time he was sucked in and
>> believed the lies, he felt like a total fool when it all came unstuck?
>>
>> It seems that Joe Public either doesn't care or is too stupid to know
>> that
>> he's being manipualted.
>>
>> With access to the internet, there is no way that anyone should accept
>> unquestioningly anything they are fed by the media. The world is a big
>> place and access to all sorts of differing of views is only a few clicks
>> away (or should be).
> I don't know how Ruppert Murdock plays in Australia, but he is the most
> egregious example of media incompetence in America, but still, only the
> most egregious.

He pops over here now and again to see his mother and he owns a lot of media
here but there is still good competition for all of his media including good
free to air media, so he isn't seen as too much of a problem. We were all
delighted though when he took out American citerzenship as we could claim
that he no longer belonged to us.

Studies have shown that views of Fox News are worse
> informed than people who don't watch anything. Viewers of Fox News are
> still likely to think that Saddam Hussein had WMDs.

Yeah. Sad that.

The rest of the
> media here is similar. The hysteria from the "corporate press" and the
> "reputable" N.Y. Times, and Judith Miller, helped convince the country
> that intervention was necessary. They were aided and abetted by
> Gen.Colin Powell, who most of us thought was a good guy.

I've always wondered how much of an orchestrated campaign it was in the US
to whip up support for the invasion of Iraq whatever the cost. IIRC, the
statistics supporting the war were about two thirds against and one third
for in the rest of the world and the reverse in the US. I've always thought
it was a deliberate and well planned con job and I've also thought that
Colin Powell was conned too and that is why he slunk off into the night when
it al came unstuck. How embarrassing for him.

> Nearly all of our the media depends on advertising (except for
> free-speach radio like Pacifica and some college stations), advertising
> that would disappear for an un-American media that didn't support the
> government's declared intent of protecting the American people.

Indeed. And given that any one of us is far, far, far more likely to die as
a result of a car crash or even the flu, the hype over terrorism was rather
over the top given the circumstances as terrorism wasn't new and had been
building up since the Munich Olympics.

I've always thought that only 3,000 people dying in the WTC collapse was an
alsolute miracle. It's appalling for the families and it was a huge tragedy
but on the other hand, a quarter of a million people a day entered that
complex yet only 3,000 were lost. It could have been so much worse so the
survival of so many really is a triumph of American building skills,
emergency procedures, heroism etc.

>> >> In the case of the Tampa and much else in the past 11 years it was a
>> >> case
>> >> of
>> >> sinking backwards into the primordial ooze, not furthering the cause
>> >> of
>> >> rational thinking or high human ideals.
> I must have been asleep when this happened, thanks for bringing it to
> our attention. We do the same thing to Haitians all the time:-(

It was a shameful incident and until that happened, I had never felt ashamed
to be an Australian.
>> >>
>> > Speaking of rational thinking, it was good to hear one of your
>> > countrym . ., hehem, citizens, Helen Caldicott, on the radio last
>> > thursday, http://www.flashpoints.net/ . She is supposed to be starting
>> > a
>> > new radio programm soon on KPFT, Huston http://www.kpft.org/index.php .
>> > Always refreshing to be exposed to reality.
>>
>> I've only ever read a few of the things she has written and heard her a
>> few
>> times as she has mostly lived in the US. What I have seen of her is
>> impressive, as at least she seems to be able to use her loaf. Sadly
>> there
>> don't seem to be enough of such people around.
>
> Loaf? Typo or Aussi argot?

Use her loaf = use her head.

> She seems to tour a lot. My understanding was that she was live from
> Australia and her guest David Lockebaum (sp?) could have been anywhere.
> If You Love This Planet, hosted by Dr. Helen Caldicott
> http://www.kpfa.org/archives/index.php?arch=26076

I think she lives here now and has a place in a forest somewhere in either
south eastern NSW of north eastern Victoria. I've seen her on a few panel
interviews etc and she is a very good analyst of the issues

I'll check out your cites, but can't do them from this ISP that I use to
read newsgroups.

[0tterbot]

"FarmI" <ask@itshall be given> wrote in message
...

>> but is there not a common sitting length over the year?
>
> No. It used to be 21 or 22 weeks of the year (can't remember which) but
> under Howard, they reduced it to 18 weeks because they could guillotine
> discussion and ram legislation through.

to me, the difference between 18 & 22 is not much :-)

> The trouble is that when the poor *******s aren't in the House, they're in
> their electorates dealing with all sorts of drongos. Sure, they get the
> genuine cases that need help, but they also seem to get an enormous amount
> of the knuckle draggers just taking up time and resources because they
> haven't a clue who to turn to for 'help' (or to whinge to). They spend
> thier life being exhausted from what I've seen of them.

yes, well. somebody has to do it :-)

i tend to feel sorry for them re workload, but then again, they get their
perks & that was their choice. ( & i'm glad SOMEBODY does it!)

> And really, if he can do the job (still waiting to see) who cares what his
> ties look like?

well, clearly, i do. <g>

but i knew about the tie problem before the election, so i can manage.

i loved paul keating (he's hilarious) and something else was that you always
knew that when he was on the news, he would NOT be wearing an aqua tie!!

truthfully though, i don't care as long as the right thing (or soemthing
similar) is done. i just HAD to have a whinge about that man's ties!!!!!!!!!
bomber beazley had a makeover in the 80s (ex- brown safari suits -
remember?) and look what it did for him! oh... hang on...

> Well there is that. Given how sick I am of the coverage of the Democratic
> contest, by the time the real contest comes round to elect the new
> President, I don't think I'll give a flyer either.

it is an unbelievable waste of resources & time that could be better spent
on something worthwhile. that in itself makes it immoral imo.

>> oh dear. i think the truth is that most people worldwide are "a bunch of
>> idiots". truly. the modern world is ridiculously complicated & lots of
>> people simply can't keep up.
>
> Can't or don't want to. I can cope with those who can't, it's the one's
> who
> don't want to who give me the irrits.

admittedly, i have more patience with those who simply can't - it's not
their fault.

but the thing is, if i get the shits with people who won't, then that just
doesn't help, it would only make me angry, it wouldn't achieve anything! you
get further working away gently on people (if it is something important - if
it's not, then just walking away unconcerned is also viable.) like i said,
it doesn't mean people don't have some value or things to contribute.

> Sadly it is. The coverage of the un-thought-out idiocy opinions that
> aren't
> really news, but noise, is all too frequent. These days, it's like the
> Enlightenment never, ever happened.

well, all forward steps involve some going backwards temporarily. you have
to take the longer view! and, as nomad said on "gladiators", the bridge to
enlightenment is full of obstacles. tee hee hee hahahaha. it's true, though.
(dh & i had a long conversation concerning whether it is right to touch
shallowly on philosophical or religious matters in a low-brain show like
"gladiators" & he thinks it is a good thing really. i disagreed. if you've
run out of things to discuss today, try that one!)

>> but modern democratic types expect everyone to have a say, based on the
>> assumption (i suppose) that if a person is required to make a decision,
>> they'll probably put some thought into it, since it is going to affect
>> them. thus we try to drag each other up through the primordial slime :-)
>> it kind of works, doesn't it?
>
> I have doubts about that and the Tampa is a good example of that. Foment
> it
> into a "they're coming to get us" issue and dumb old Joe Public goobles it
> up and screams "keep 'em out". Those who actually knew something about
> illegal immigration and refugee issues were screaming that these people
> were
> genuine refugees while stupid Joe Public was wittering on about "queue
> jumpers".

firstly, some people don't want to be saved from themselves.
secondly, concerning that & iraq many people came to regret what they
thought at the time. everyone's learning curve is different. it's just the
way it is! if you don't make mistakes, you can't learn - that's just the
truth of things.

> In the case of the Tampa and much else in the past 11 years it was a case
> of
> sinking backwards into the primordial ooze, not furthering the cause of
> rational thinking or high human ideals.

that's true. i suppose i would say it was certainly a learning experience
for some!

>> to be fair to them, they weren't executing their own populace in droves,
>> &
>> stuff like that.
>
> No, they didn't execute people, but I'm not convinced that they wouldn't
> have tried it if they thought they could get away with it given the tricks
> they used right across the board. I should lend you a book called
> "Silencing Dissent". The chapter in that about what they did to the
> Public
> Service is tame because only the top of the iceberg gets a mention. I
> know
> they did a lot more. Intimidation, threats, bullying and punishment - you
> name it, they did it and not just in one area of influence.

i absolutely agree. i don't think most of us really took seriously just how
dreadful they had become (not to mention, anti-democratic) & now it's over
perhaps we have moved on too quickly.

however, at the end of the day, i don't & would never believe they compared
to china or places with similarly appalling human rights problems. the point
is mainly that we need to be better & be good role models (if we're so
thrilled by democracy, we need to live it daily, not just when it suits. in
the end they weren't doing that. in fact, i doubt they were in the
beginning, either ;-)

> :-)) Take up genealogy/family history and you start to read about
> illnesses
> that are still out there in other parts of the world and in places we
> think
> of as first world countries. TB being just one of those diseases. Just
> for
> info, we chose not to be vaccinated for Japanese encephalitis and won't be
> taking the malaria treatment. If I suddenly stop posting, some tropical
> nasty got me (either that or my ISP is giving me probs as it has more than
> once).

well, don't die horribly, then! :-)
kylie