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Large scale permaculture
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"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/ |
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