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

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