"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