Tag Archives | Permaculture

Sustainable Community Goes Up Against WalMart : sustainability

By LukeRudkowski on February 22, 2014 in News 2

In this video Luke Rudkowski of WeAreChange.org visits the Eastern Light project in Rockland County, New York and documents a community of people who are trying to make difference in their local area. The goal of the Eastern Light project is to inspire people to engage in a more sustainable and connected way of life. They are currently fighting a battle with the local county and Wal Mart over the land.

To find out more about the Eastern Light Project check out easternlightproject.com… Read the rest

Send in the Cows (or, How to Reverse Desertification, Build Soils, and Sequester Carbon)

By drokhole on October 18, 2013 in News 19

In light of last week’s post highlighting our death march towards Peak Soil, it seems appropriate to look at how we can go about building (i.e. adding organic matter to) the damn thing. Various permacultural methods exist that help build soil and heal the land, but the organic apple of this article’s eye is a technique known as “managed grazing.” In the words of Joel Salatin, “Nothing builds soil like intensively managed grazing on grasslands.”

As noted, left to its own devices, it takes nature roughly 500 years to build just 2 centimeters (cm) of living soil. When done properly, grazing – or, more specifically, management-intensive grazing - can more than double that rate in 50 years time. Meanwhile, Salatin’s farm has been building one inch of topsoil annually (along with increasing their organic matter from 1.5 percent to 8 percent of soil content over the past 50 years).

“The critical thing to understand is that grazing can be done in a way that builds soil and heals the land, or it can be done in a way that destroys the land.

… Read the rest

Holistic Farming Hero Joel Salatin Gives Helluva Talk at TEDMED 2012

By drokhole on August 31, 2013 in News 10

You’ll love it, unless you’re caught up in our culture’s mechanistic, Greco-Roman, Western, reductionist, linear, fragmented, compartmentalized, disconnected, systematized, individualized, parts-oriented kind of thinking…

… Read the rest

In Defense of Human Dignity: GMO Versus Permaculture

By Ted Heistman on July 25, 2013 in News 2

steve-cran In response to Saul of Heart’s recent article in which I quote:

By all means, let’s March Against Monsanto. But then let’s put genetic engineering into the hands of forward-thinking, progressive scientists so we can start a real agricultural revolution.

I ask the question: Can some genetically modified foods such as so called “golden rice” be completely divorced by the Monopolistic Agenda of Monsanto?

Not so easily, I’m afraid. Not When the biggest supporter of the golden rice project, named in the article is The Gates Foundation, which recently bought 23 million dollars of shares in Monsanto and appoints former Cargil and Monsanto executives to head its development programs:

The Gates Foundation has admittedly given at least $264.5 million in grant commitments to AGRA, and also reportedly hired Dr. Robert Horsch, a former Monsanto executive for 25 years who developed Roundup, to head up AGRA back in 2006. According to a report published in La Via Campesina back in 2010, 70 percent of AGRA’s grantees in Kenya work directly with Monsanto, and nearly 80 percent of the Gates Foundation funding is devoted to biotechnology.

… Read the rest

From Food Forests to Healthy Soil: Five Incredible Permaculture Videos

By Good German on July 4, 2013 in News 3

800px-Soil-test-ball Sami Grover writes at TreeHugger:

When I posted 7 no-cost ways to grow more food from your veggie garden, one commenter argued that mulching was not a good strategy—suggesting that gardeners should plant polycultures instead, following the principles of permaculture.

While I’d dispute the idea that there is one “right” way of gardening, or that mulching and polycultures, or mulching and permaculture for that matter, are mutually exclusive, I do agree on one matter. Understanding permaculture design—which can loosely be described as a design discipline informed by principles observed in nature—can definitely make you a better gardener.

We’ve posted a fair few videos on permaculture and permaculture-inspired gardening over the years. I thought I’d round up a few of our favorites.

Campus lawn becomes permaculture food forest.

Lawns are rubbish. Lawns are great, for picnics, for a game of football, or perhaps just lounging around with a lover. But we don’t need so damn many of them.

… Read the rest

Back To Eden

By deprogramming on June 21, 2012 in News 10

After years of back-breaking toil in ground ravaged by the effects of man-made growing systems, Paul Gautschi has discovered a taste of what God intended for mankind in the garden of Eden. Some of the vital issues facing agriculture today include soil preparation, fertilization, irrigation, weed control, pest control, crop rotation, and PH issues. None of these issues exist in the unaltered state of nature or in Paul’s gardens and orchards.

“Back to Eden” invites you to take a walk with Paul as he teaches you sustainable organic growing methods that are capable of being implemented in diverse climates around the world.

5,000 Years of Sustainability

By Jin_TheNinja on September 22, 2011 in News 78

While we currently venerate technology as the panacea for our catastrophic environmental ills, what if we could contextually approach and learn from sustainable civilizations that thrived in the distant reaches of North America’s past? Jude Isabella writes on Archeology:

A re-evaluation of evidence along North America’s western coast shows how its earliest inhabitants managed the sea’s resources stone walls serve as evidence that early peoples cultivated the intertidal zones to build clam gardens and fish traps

When the tide is out, the table is set. —Tlingit proverb

The tide is going out at Gibsons Beach, in the Strait of Georgia on Canada’s west coast. When the tide is low, it’s easy to spot rock walls in the intertidal zone, the area of shore land that’s exposed during low tide and hidden when the tide is in. A person can look at this beach for years and never understand that apparently random scatterings of piled rocks were actually carefully constructed to catch food from the sea.

… Read the rest

Evolver the Podcast: Wake Up with Jonas Elrod, Gardening with Starhawk

By Chris Hopkins on February 6, 2011 in News, Podcasts 2

Evolver the Podcast: Wake Up with Jonas Elrod, Gardening with Starhawk

Website • Direct Download • RSS

Dream-State

Recently there has been an explosion of new films spreading alternative ideas. More and more films are trying to open peoples eyes to new ways of living out lives, new paradigms. In this episode of Evolver the Podcast we have a couple of these eye-opening filmmakers.

First we have an interview by Jonathan Talat Phillips with Jonas Elrod. Jonas has been in the film industry for a number of years working with many big names. He had an experience where he “woke up” to how amazing and unknown the universe, and life really is. He recently released a film titled “Wake Up”. You can learn more about it at his website: wakeupthefilm.com.

Then I interviewed Virginia Paris, from Evolver Asheville. Virginia has her own radio show called Systemic Effect, you can find it streaming on www.mainfmm.org.… Read the rest