Indigenous agro-forestry, and pastoral systems seem to be much more successful in the long term, or at least successful for longer periods of time. Everything shifts, however, and successional resetting is constant. If european agriculture is indeed like a fire sweeping through resetting the landscape, its an opportunity to reconstruct agroecological systems with even more diversity (european) than there was before.

When I was looking around for a PDC to take a few months ago, Doherty was the only active teacher who seemed to be worth the money. I’m glad you got him on record.

Some also recommend sea salt — it contains every element in the periodic table. I want to test a cheap product called Sea90. Also many report seaweed has good results.

Both of these take trace elements washed down from the land into the ocean and deposit them back into the soil, for what /should/ be 100% return of elements. I hope to find out.

When we relocate these ferel bees (found primarily in houses still vacant since Hurrican Katrina) they tend to build comb faster than their domesticated counterparts. They also build comb with more complexity of design.

This relates also to wild farming which I enjoyed hearing about this last week. Thanks again for your great work Frank!

cheers
Roby

After a season or two, the system will start to work smoothly, and the CSA can grow. Word of mouth is a powerful thing. If the consumers are committed, they can invite others over for meals and explain to friends and family the concept. Once that happens, it should go fairly smoothly, provided the farmer is ready to handle the growth. Planning is the key. And solidarity between farmers and consumers.

cheers
Roby

I was exposed to Balle while living in Nova Scotia and it was great to hear Shuman talk about his ideas in a wider context. I especially enjoyed his agnosticism regarding the best possible approach to the coming changes and am excited to hear your most recent discussion with Doug Lain. Keep up the good work, and I will contribute more thought-out discussion points in the very near future.

-Stefan

http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/43528

I intend to build a fish farm in VN. I already have all information from your fish farm on internet. Because of economic result if it is feasible, I need to know more about the following information:

- Time to raise fish from beginning to 2 pounds (or to the most profitable point to sale fish)?
- Where can I buy food for fish?
- Fish from beginning to 2 pound weigh how much food I need to feed them?

Thank you in advance.
Antoine Le

Likewise with land holdings. If you tend your land, are actually using it or have reason to hold it in preservation, I see no reason to “collectivize” it – even the Spanish collectivists allowed for individualists (who didn’t want to belong to a collective) to be alloted as much land as they themselves could tend. Any more than that is either wasting a valuable resource or allowing an individual control over the means of production and reintroducing wage-labor.

Labor in a socialist system is free, self-determined, democratic – not sold off in pieces for a wage. Goods can be bought and sold, but labor is not a commodity. In other words, if you want someone to work FOR you, you’d have to settle for someone working WITH you, with all the negotiating that partnerships entail.

And since the vast majority of production today is cooperative (social), most labor in a socialist world would also be cooperative, rather than individual. But, assuming no dire need for scarce land, I see no reason an individualist would be denied land for themselves.

You have been mislead by these faculty members. The catalyst for this project came from a different faculty member, Pernille Christensen, who was the actual Principal Investigator on this project (you can check the EPA website for confirmation of this). Through her contacts at Container-It, Inc. the project idea was developed…. she invited Doug and Martha to participate in the project. All of the work that Martha and Doug spoke to you about – the sustainable agricultural strategies, the water filtration system, implementation strategies and emergency garden were all designed by the landscape architecture team who worked on this project. Doug and Martha are a scam – they only worked on the container openings! Pernille Christense wrote the application for the EPA P3 grant application (the team won and was awarded a PHASE II grant but chose to decline funding because of the conduct of Doug and Martha). I think it is only fair that the whole team get acknowledged… I was a student in this studio so I am very familiar with it. All of this can be verified if you go to the videos on our website at seedcontainerhousing.net

Sincerely, a former student of Doug Hecker

If the containers existed as a catalyst for economic rehabilitation and food sovereignty, why wouldn’t people want to keep them around? I think this is both technically and socially feasible. The politics of it is pretty ugly, though.

Maybe instead use bamboo, thatch, tile, blocks, very light gauge corrugated steel? Sandbags, earthbags! All the metal and plastic “life-support” innards of such a SEED container would also be subject to theft, resale, and scrapping unless they could be made truly superabundant. In Detroit or New Orleans or Port-au-Prince, mostly going to scrap in under five years… maybe a few to rich art collectors. Yikes!

Saludos

I’ve just spent the afternoon listening to and mulling over your podcasts interviewing Doug Burdette about aquaculture. I’m a zoology student studying aquaculture, and found this highly useful and thought provoking, so thank you and Doug, I hope to use some of these thoughts in my exam in two days!

Regards,
Victoria (Scotland)

Just a suggestion.

Keep it up man. You are a valuable resource.

Albert

I promote BSF starter kits on my blog and they are usually available sometime in May shortly after the mating season resumes. I’m not sure if BSF are naturally occurring in Denver but I’m skeptical due to the altitude. I’ve read that BSF don’t live above 5000 ft. Cold and/or dry climate is also limiting to a degree. It’s possible that you might be able to overcome these obstacles, but I can’t estimate your chances of success.

Just downloaded loads of the podcasts. The titles look very interesting and I’m looking forward to hearing them.
Thanks for everything that you do Frank, it keeps me in touch with the real world. Agricultural and energy security are simply the most important issues in our world today and your programs are a very good promotion for all these issues and more.

I’m Probably very much behind with the times but I found this book online that I thought the AgroInovations community may be interested in called ‘Sustainable Energy — without the hot air’. Ive read the first chapter and a few write ups and it looks very good.

it can be downloaded free as a PDF from

http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sustainable/book/tex/sewtha.pdf

I’m Sure everyone knows about it now but just in case it passed over the radar I thought I would point it out.

Once again Thanks for everything you do, I’m sure you don’t get anything like enough praise.

All the Best Trevor

We’re not ready yet, but next spring, we’ll have a fish pond under the rabbit hutches in our greenhouse. We have access to essentially unlimited coffee grounds and possibly restaurant wastes. The compost is not the goal, but a highly desirable by-product, so we want to optimize the output.

http://www.grist.org/article/black-fly-magic/

I was disappointed to not hear more discussion of municipal level use of this fly for composting putrescents like dairy products, meat scraps, roadkill, whatever. I think that could divert a lot of material currently headed to landfills while creating soil amendments and protein sources for growing food for people.

Erik

Btw, I’ve never heard anyone say that worms are bothered by the presence of BSF larvae. Of course the heat and the domination of the food do put the worms at a disadvantage. My guess is that the worms you mentioned were mostly trying to avoid the heat. As I mentioned above I have communicated with a handful of people who are experimenting with combining the two species although I’m not too optimistic about the odds.

The range of BSF will be a growing body of knowledge as more people get involved. I have had reports of BSF populations throughout the southeast west to Texas and up to northern West Virginia. They are fairly common in Kentucky and I received a photo of larvae from a central Illinois compost pile. I believe all of California has them all the way up the coast into the Vancouver area.

I started a thread at the BioPod forum for the purpose of confirming BSF populations. Of course the reports will be less than perfectly reliable, but it’s a beginning. You can find that thread here: http://thebiopod.com/forum/index.php?topic=30.0

I have a pretty good handle on using the sawdust toilet, but still need to refurbish an outside storage area I have to make it a comfortable shitter. Definitely on my to-do list. Once I get that running, and once I get a biopod colony established, I’d like to experiment with giving the humanure to the BSF larva.

Also on the list is installing dual-flush toilets in the house. Still mixing water with excrement, to be sure, but the efficiency is several orders of magnitude better than old-school 6 gpf toilets, and the Municipality here will give me a $200 rebate on my water bill per toilet installed.

This may be a good time to link to:

>>> Joseph Jenkins’ “Humanure Handbook”: free to read and download online. Not a perfect book but such a fundamental topic, touched on in this episode, on how to treat your “waste”. Sawdust bucket toilet is the most simple, ridiculously underutilized manure-composting system. Slums of the world take note!
http://www.jenkinspublishing.com/humanure.html
http://humanurehandbook.com/contents.html

>>> And, my old favorite, “Waste=Food”, the best video on William McDonough and Michael Braungart of “Cradle to Cradle” fame.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3058533428492266222#

Jerry mentions that most range maps show it being common up to hardiness zone 7, but has reports from the field of BSF being found as far North as Idaho. From his description, it seems you can get these colonies anywhere, so long as you are proactive about management, especially in regards to temperature.

It’s not a closed system, so you’re going to need some adults flying around, at least during the warm season. It seems you could keep them in their larval stage for extended periods (during winter at high latitudes) by judicious temperature management.

Also, a recent podcast on Equal Time discusses worker-lead industry as well. Worth a listen:

http://equaltimeradio.com/?q=node/207

One question i didn’t hear addressed in the podcast: What is the range of soldier flies?

Thanks again for a great podcast.

Frank: Thanks for this bit of clarification. I would like to know more. I can see in the case of Bolivia and elsewhere that “buying land” like a commodity is not acceptable on many levels, especially for foreigners. However, I am not a young robber baron — I’m looking to live on and improve marginal land. I am seeking a marketplace for this type of land, and for abandoned towns, or for owners seeking this service, where I can be the resident worker, not an itinerant volunteer. Could someone like me lease/rent an eroded hillside in Tipajara for 5 or 10 years? For how much, from who?

This is an extremely complicated question. The short answer is no. In Bolivia, for example, land tenure has a long and contentious history, and the Morales government is in the process of rewriting and implementing a new system of legal land tenure. It will take years before a comprehensive system emerges. In the process, there will be winners and losers. Under current law, as a foreigner, you are not allowed to own land in Bolivia. If anything, the new system will be more stringent, considering the history and ideological leanings of the MAS party.

In the case of Tipajara/Mizque, as another example, there has been an extralegal land market functioning since at least the agrarian reform of 1952.

All that said, gaining access to land is possible. Significant investments are required on the cheapest parcels, and access to land doesn’t always mean access to an abundant supply of water. Even the best parcels require significant investments in soil fertility, infrastructure, and planning.

As I see it, we are just in the infancy of a debate about land ownership and access. If the Transition Movement is for real, then we need to reinvent our models of ownership and investment.

I’m not sure the cheap land is out there. Agricultural land has always been expensive. Elmer Kelton, an old time West Texas historical novelist, says his father was aware of this way back then, “the price of land has always been such that you’d never be able to pay it off with the money the land generates”. A lot of big landholders have gotten it through a combination of corruption, speculation, and war. But, on the flip-side of that I think there’s a lot of room for alternative tenure arrangements. Some folks are already doing this; look at Felder School Farm, or Los Poblanos CSA. These models will continue to emerge during the process of energy descent. Lots of room to be creative, I think, but it can be frustrating sometimes.

Well of course we’re not going to break our backs building terraces like fools! What do you need Jeavons for when you’ve got the lessons of Sepp Holzer and Willie Smits and Bill Mollison? Terraces and swales aren’t so hard to dig or maintain — a few weeks with an A-frame level and shovel, or a few days with backhoe and friends. And as for ten years in one spot: just show me the spot, and I’ll be there!

But there’s my problem: where’s the spot? Where’s the cheap land? It’s out there, I know it must be — please tell me how to get to it! We young people seeking a life of gardening live in cities. There may be relatively few of us, but of 300 million Americans that’s still a lot! To travel beyond our local region costs hundreds if not thousands of dollars — which should be better spent on buying land and collecting materials. Show us the way, you’ve been there! I make $3k to $5k / year. Can I move to the DR or Haiti and buy a few acres, and just do my own thing?

Here in the US, some parcels of land up to one acre in size can be had in rust belt cities for $1k or less, but the taxes are usually high (several hundred dollars per year) and there is no privacy — you cannot build a shack, house, workshops, or rainwater/greywater system, or in general live off-grid, without expensive interference from building and zoning officials, with high fees (several hundred dollars to permit new buildings), insurmountable prerequisites (architect’s approvals/stamps), high taxes (though it may cost me $200 in materials to make a little house for myself, it will be valued and taxed at upwards of $20k), and a total lack of supportive culture. Far outside the old cities, land can sometimes be had for around $1k/acre but only in bulk. The starting cost to simply have a bit of land with scrub on it is too high — at least twice my annual earnings. A mortgage is not an option. Why is this so hard?

@alisa:
Do you know where the cheap marginal land is in Indiana? Five acres for $1000, low taxes, no code officials? I’m in Pittsburgh, grew up in Detroit, lived in Kzoo. I’m trying to find an abandoned quarry or strip mine in southwest PA.

“If you don’t have any participation in this silent revolution, you’re really uh, in an impoverished place, and actually, to be really honest, that’s the position I am in. I work in a corporate job, I commute, when I’m not working I’m either working on a podcast or trying to write, or spending time with my family. I have no relationship with this silent revolution, um, so, I’m not in a great position to talk about it. But I know, that if I could be involved with those kinds of projects, that it would be profoundly rewarding and I kind of feel like I should seek this out, uh — I just need to find the time for it.”

Dude, shouldn’t that be your top priority? You’ve read and talked enough about anarchism… start doing it man!

You can make about $9000/yr in the US without paying federal taxes other than Social Security and Medicare. You can make several thousand dollars more if you have a child. Your better half can do the same. This is default tax resistance by way of “poverty”. You could be making around $20k/yr max as a family without directly supporting an obese government. That’s 3 days per week of wage slavery at minimum wage, or 2 days per week at $11/hr — 50 weeks per year. I don’t understand how you have no time for any practical work — gardening, small business, DIY building, appropriate tech innovation and manufacturing. Do you have some kind of enormous debt, medical expense, rent, or mortgage you are servicing?

There are hundreds of cities throughout the US, especially in the rust belt (Detroit, Indy, Cincy, Cleveland, Pittsburgh ~my choice~, Buffalo, Rochester, etc etc) where you can buy a house for less than $20k, or $5k really, and work a part-time wage slave job as long as you need it, with plenty of time for building your own home and garden and business, and thus removing yourself at least 50% from the cash economy, down to a level of less than $1k-$5k per year. This process is enormously easier if you have a group of people around you (within biking distance) who can motivate and collaborate. This is probably an impossible task to undertake in areas of high value real estate without squatting/inheriting your property, so just recognize this already and leave for cheaper pasture!

One look at the Argentinian factory saga is “The Take”:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8149373547373833649#
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Take_(2004_film)

A more holistic approach to co-opting capitalism to serve local people would be Mondragon. Here’s a fine old video on the subject:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7565584850785786404

An even less confrontational method is that of Paul Hawken, and a favorite case of his is the employee takeover of Springfield Remanufactouring in Missouri. The old video series including this story (”Growing a Business” on PBS) is good but hard to find, only VHS as far as I can tell. Jack Stack’s “Great Game of Business” is the first-hand account.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0671671642
http://www.amazon.com/dp/038547525X

But I much prefer the permaculture land-oriented enterprises, many described by Bill Mollison. A mind-boggling case is Willie Smit’s place in Indonesia.
http://www.barkingfrogspermaculture.org/PDC_ALL.pdf
http://www.ted.com/talks/willie_smits_restores_a_rainforest.html

also thanks for making this podcast I’ve listened to most of the past shows now. I really like what your doing here.

consuelo

Let me offer one piece of constructive feedback. Sometimes you go for long stretches using only pronouns to refer to what you’re talking about. This is confusing to listeners if they miss the first part of a conversation. For example you started talking about “anarchism” at 5:30, and then referred to “it” and “ideology” exclusively until around 7:20. I missed the initial utterance of “anarchism” so I couldn’t make sense of the discussion until I started the podcast over. That’s OK for podcast listeners, but radio broadcast listeners can’t do that.

Just something to be aware of. Thanks for your efforts.

So you are misrepresenting the “abiotic” hypothesis, even though its most common form is so retarded you don’t need to dumb it down to poke fun at it! If instead you said “it’s ridiculous to extract methane from near a mid-oceanic ridge” then at least you’d be painting the right picture.

You say: “The point isn’t whether or not they exist, but whether they can be economically extracted.” Wait, what? That’s not the question man — don’t underestimate the human will to drill. It’s whether extracting that material would be _sane_. It would not! The surface cannot handle any more carbon emissions, let alone free methane. We need an awesome sink for all that material before we exhale any more. Gotta be a timeless P2P, open-source method of carbon capture/cycling… seem to remember something about this… maybe starts with a W… formed in a being called a T… grows in a clump called an F…

I would like to listen to this podcast. When I download or listen online I only get the first 5 seconds. Have you removed your older podcasts? Can I access this one in some other way?

Crinia

http://forest.mtu.edu/pcforestry/people/1999/aragona.pdf

Also, Frank, come on. Don’t belittle the deep/abiotic fuels people by saying they want to drill into the middle of the earth for oil. It’s already proven that enormous methane deposits exist at much greater depths than from known carboniferous geology. It’s accessible to human beings, we’re still just talking about the interface between crust and mantle here. It would obviously be ridiculous to tap that energy and use it to power further luxury consumption here on the surface, but don’t dismiss its existence. You sounded like some old Vatican astrologer talking about Galileo: “Ridiculous, this guy thinks the Earth orbits the Sun! In an ellipse! Are we funding this quack?” Time to restudy your extremophile microbiology and nanogeology.

To assert that nuclear power is foolish, we don’t need to deny the existence of uranium. Don’t question the existence, because the question is still under investigation. Just attack the motivation — which is timeless in its idiocy.

Also, one very fine Bill Mollison article on this topic is Yankee Permaculture Pamphlet #10, “Forests in Permaculture”. Less annotated history than Perlin’s book but a lot more actionable intelligence. Apparently all pamphlets are public domain — 155 pages of awesome. Hard to find on the interwebs:
http://www.barkingfrogspermaculture.org/PDC_ALL.pdf

It was good to hear Jimenez speak at such length. I don’t know how complete a picture he painted of his local agriculture, economy, and infrastructure — but the photos and his short descriptions were well-done.

It was disappointing to see that his focus is heavily on mass market crops, even in rotation — onions? How much do onions pay? What are the expenses involved? Is this a sensible economy born of need or ingenuity, worth learning from — or is it a mostly senseless agriculture that exports fertility and draws capital investment away from this otherwise wonderful-looking place.

It strikes me as odd that people would migrate to Spain for a couple years in order to build up cash savings. Couldn’t the cost of the trip to a migrant worker destination be invested directly into local land instead? I suppose travel has value in its own right — get the young men out of town. I am curious to what extent lack of information and craft skill is driving this apparently annual-monoculture-oriented economy. Was there a larger base of knowledge and biological wealth in this region at some point in the past, and it is now ruined?

From my perspective agricultural small holdings is pretty much a necessary scale for any ecological, knowledge/management intensive production systems. Look at Cuba’s more recent pragmatic farmland policy. They are emphasizing smaller units of farm lands in usufruct. That tends to lead to an investment in the land as if it’s privately owned but there’s no claim of ownership of that land after the farmer’s death/retirement. Private ownership of agricultural land has not seemed to lead to less tragic farming practices than “the commons”. It’s a matter of parity not property, we need not squeeze our farmers from all sides.

I imagine a directly democratic agrarian policy would have various levels of individual and collective land management, mechanisms for inter-generational continuity (somewhat similar to farmlink programs), accountability to the larger community, and informed prior consent of original peoples.

Bottom up agrarian reform is the task of our time (successful long term land occupations, with legal recognition, and participation of community in land expropriation). http://www.monthlyreview.org/090817rosset.php “This tactic of land occupation is one of the central tactics in the contemporary struggle for land reform. The MST has set the standard for other landless people’s movements around the world. They are noted for both their success in occupying land—as measured by the amount of land occupied, the number of people settled, and a rate of abandonment of the settlements that remains well below 10 percent of new settlers—as well as for the sophisticated nature of their internal organization. The MST uses a two-step method to move people from extreme poverty into landownership and farming. They begin by reaching out to the most excluded and impoverished segments of Brazilian society, such as landless rural day laborers, urban homeless people, people with substance abuse problems, unemployed rural slum dwellers, or peasant farmers who have lost their land. Organizers give talks in community centers, churches, and other public forums, and landless families are given the opportunity to sign up for a land occupation.
Step one sees these families move into rural “camps,” where they live on the side of highways in shacks made from black plastic, until a suitable estate—typically land left unused by absentee landlords—is found. Families spend at least six months, and sometimes as long as five years, living under the harsh conditions of the camps, with little privacy, enduring heat in the summer and cold in the rainy season. As the MST discovered almost by accident, however, the camps are the key step in forging new people out of those with tremendous personal issues to overcome. Camp discipline, which is communally imposed by camp members, prohibits drug use, domestic violence, excessive drinking, and a host of other social ills. All families must help look after each other’s children—who play together—and everyone must cooperate in communal duties. People learn to live cooperatively, and they receive intensive training in literacy, public health, farming, administration of co-ops, and other key skills that can make their future farm communities successful. When people used to occupy land directly, they usually failed to stay more than few months. But when they have first been through an MST camp, more than 90 percent of them stay on their land long term.”

The aim should be to grow all their own food, own all their own land, start all their own businesses, and kick their former employers to the curb, because the business model of monocropped out-of-season fruit and veggie production for export is an invitation to slavery, and there’s no way to make it pay in the long-term economy. It would have been good to alert Reyes to Common Work, Mondragon, Willie Smits, and others who have raised money for land, and redesigned local economies to support themselves from agricultural and small-production surplusses. Slow Money to the max.

A good video to see in this dynamic is the old CBS special “Harvest of Shame” from 1960. It follows mostly black migrant workers undergoing the treatment that Reyes now describes for Latinos. And these black workers never gained anything through organizing — they just dispersed to cities and a different flavor of poverty and wlefare. The fate of the Latino workers could be much different if they follow Mondragon, Smits, et al.

On the Hurst article in particular, I don’t know why you would bring it up. It’s written by a man who knows no creative alternative to his ways, and appears to be lying outright about a few things. Maybe some of his criticisms of Pollan are correct — I’m no fan of Pollan, because he doesn’t practice what he preaches, and seems to know nothing about Mollison and gang, though they’re staring him in the face. But Hurst’s ideas about nitrogen, “feeding the world”, and monocropping are easy to pick apart. No effort needed, no podcast time needed. It’s telling that he doesn’t reveal the financial structure of his farm business: he’s probably mortgaged his land to buy equipment which requires arbitrary planting patterns and commercial seed, and makes a small profit on selling his cash crops by claiming government subsidies, and has a few side ventures based on the same extension-office mindset. This is not something to discuss with Ben Falk, who hadn’t even read the article.

Hurst says it’s absurd to think food scraps and humanure from urban areas should be trucked to the countryside. First of all, what do you think half of existing santitation authorities do right now? Exactly that — they sell the solids. And there is a lot of “countryside” within 10 miles of an urban center. It’s not far to go. Second, how does he think the food gets from his farm to the urban centers? By truck, from distibution points. Those same trucks could be fitted to return humus to the countryside, because they are otherwise driving to the countryside _empty_. The individual farmers could pick up humus from the local silo or other convenient drop spot — so they carry something back with them to their land, when they would otherwise be hauling nothing. Doh! There’s too many ways to pick apart his shallow thinking on this issue.

Hurst says his turkeys drowned in the rain. I’ve called three extension offices and searched online for this answer: all have said it’s a myth. Young turkeys of the breed Hurst is referring to will sometimes panic in a storm, and/or gaze at the sky because of a reflex, but none of the agents I spoke to, and no website, reports a single death by drowning in rain. Regardless, he’s growing an over-domesticated breed which can’t fend for itself, and apparently was trying to raise a forest-dwelling species under the open sky in a muddy yard. I can see how a normal reader might eat this shit up, but it doens’t take much to fact check. Go ask Joel Salatin how to raise a bird.

Hurst says his fields aren’t “black” like Pollan suggested. Pollan could easily have been using the word “black” loosely, as most soil would look black from an airplane against, say, snow. But he could also have been flying over a region where exposed soil actually is nearly black — chernozem, across the northern prairie. There are no major chernozem deposits in Missouri where Hurst is. How was Hurst’s soil EVER “black” due to tillage technique, past or present?

The dude’s a bum, and yet you presented this article like it was meritorius in some way.

This resulted in a vacuous discussion with Falk — where he spent most of his time speculating in a painfully vague way about the trajectory of large human systems, fossil fuel, climate. I would have much rather heard more about his personal life, business, and accomplishments as a permaculture designer. Not a dorm-room style conversation about “the world” and how it should be, trying impossibly to give due dilegence to all the multifaceted factors of the issue in 10 minutes. KMO is always leading this sort of discussion, but at least with him it has a sedative hypnotic effect and he’s got a hour to pack it all in. You just lose valuable airtime with intelligent people when you get into doomer territory!

Once you finally asked Falk directly about his own work (at the end of the show) — not about permaculture generally, or about world trends — he went off on his own for several minutes of excellent listening: dispensing useful, actionable information. That’s what I want. Creative strategies for nonviolent resistance, crafts and business skills I can replicate.

I love the permaculture “trojan horse” though, like “Food Not Lawns”. No one is shutting down Willie Smits or Mondragon or Paul Hawken, Stamets, Savory, Will Allen, or anyone else doing remotely practical work. Get over the paranoia, find a lawyer and a merchant banker and a composter, and get on with it!

But for now, all the best for everyone in the agroinnovations community in the new year.

If you Install Real Player and you enable the download option you can download the program. Once downloaded you can use the convert option to convert to MP3.

PS You do not need to pay for Real Player.

I think while Transitionists will be left to themselves for now but if they ever begin to be effective the philosophies of the movement will be seen as a political threat. Exactly how is all the money we have borrowed going to be paid back in a transition economy which effectively can only hope to support itself. You yourself have done a program on local money, just how willing will the tax man be to adopt a system of deferrable favors for instance? What kind of sanctions do you think the authorities may use if a section of society begin to achieve self-sufficiency?

Working with the same data E.W.G. uses, researches have shown that a person would have to ingest over 10,000 peaches or 15,000 strawberries in one sitting to produce a measurable mark, and thats just to get on the scale, you would have to eat even more for it is begin to be harmful. You would probably overdose on vitamin C before anything. We are working on a website to show this research right now – I will update that URL once complete

I think the conversation needs to go beyond Organic VS Conventional and more to what region has the best growing practices, best labor policies, best product standards and just who is producing the product you are buying. Retail stores are starting to put up more information about who they buy their produce from and obviously the farmers markets are the BEST way because the grower is right there.

For the case of California peaches, plums and nectarines we are working on a series called PPNTV, where we go out to the orchards and let growers talk about their practices to help solve consumer misconceptions that are out there in regards to agriculture. It’s really just a place for people to get to know their California stone fruit grower.

See the YouTube page here: http://www.youtube.com/ppntv

We are constantly in contact with the over 1,100 California peach, plum and nectarine growers and welcome feedback from viewers. If anyone has questions they want to ask a grower just send me a message at geoffj4@gmail.com. We’re going to be back out in the orchards soon!

How do we weave climate change and other environmental shifts already taking place today into a sane, successful and adaptable forestry for the long haul?

I would like to bring the following article to the attention of those interested in the theme of peak wood and natural building. The piece is from the November 4th, 2009 NYTimes and is about using whole tree lumber, including small(er) ones, for building. The article, “Building With Whole Trees” can be found here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/garden/05tree.html

David Holmgren, co-founder of permaculture, takes a visionary and wise approach to trees and an intergenerational forestry in his seminal book, “Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability”, especially for the theme of slow wood or long rotation forestry. Just as important as this is the fast-rotation, expansive, pioneer, early succesion trees, but also those that hug waterways and are flood patterned and thrive in these violent crash-rebirth environments. Also something important in his work is the consideration of the length of time required for forestry to unfold and be successful. This is a challenge given that nowadays anything that is of long term seems out of reach or not taken very seriously. Trees are important examples of Holmgren’s fifth permaculture principle which suggests using & valuing renewable resources and services. Mollison refers to this same principle as using biological resources.

Bill Mollison once wrote an article on soil, trees and CO2 in which he referred to soil as the graveyard of the forest or vice-versa. It fits in with the above discussion by realising the value of trees as biological, self-organising systems, which also build soil, sequester carbon, regulate climate, hold the watershed,… If anyone has seen this article or knows where to get it, I would appreciate hearing from them.

Some concerns I have in order for forestry to flower are:
1. access to land for forestry, without necessarily being the owner (whether through partnership, ownership or communal land).
2. tenure or security of land, considering the time scale required for forestry if it is to be truly renewable.
3. community approach where there are interested or willing people contributing/collaborating in different ways to maintain regenerative, economic and useful forestry.

“Trees are, for the earth, the ultimate translators and moderators of incoming energy. At the crown of the forest, and within its canopy, the vast energies of sunlight, wind, and precipitation are being modified for life and growth. Trees not only build but conserve soils, shielding them from the impact of raindrops and the desiccation of wind and sun. If we could only understand what a tree does for us, how benficial it is to life on earth, we would (as many tribes have done) revere all trees as brothers and sisters.”
–Bill Mollison, Permaculture Designer’s Manual. Chapter 6: “Trees and Their Energy Transactions”.

Keep up the great work Frank.

Louis Laframboise
Ottawa, Canada

Behavior, like paradigms in science and culture, changes through generations. So we certainly need to be involving young people and children in this process; they can be powerful agents to change the behavior of parents as well.

I’m organizing a show about this very topic with some of the best thinkers in the area, so hopefully that will be published soon.

Great podcast! I read the Transition Handbook by Rob Hopkins a few months back and it is a great model for “going live” with sustainable practices globally.

I wanted to follow up on the discussion that you and Rob had about Suburbia and its uncertain future. As a suburban dweller, this is a problem that I am tackling in my own life and I would have to agree with Rob’s view on their potential. I haven’t heard Kunstler expound on the death of suburbia, but as an active member of a suburban ecosystem I think that structurally they have a lot of viability for the future. The privately owned plots can become micro-farms, while driveways, streets and sidewalks can be pulled up and used as communal space, wildlife corridors or as farms, depending on the needs of the community. In my mind, the suburbs actually will become the food safety net for the cities that they surround. As you said, it is the mindset that is the greatest hinderance in the suburban landscape. The greatest challenge for suburban permaculture designers like myself, is to stack the added “style and pizzaz” function to whatever we are doing so that our neighbors and communities can see that we are saving the planet, enjoying our lives and looking awesome while doing it!

If/When we hit a state of intense collapse, the need for pizazz will greatly diminish. But right now, I think it is absolutely essential for any urban and suburban design (if you want to draw positive attention to the design). People need to know that sustainable design can be as beautiful as it is beneficial.

Also, in England there is a guy who became almost a national celebrity after an appearance on a popular house building show, Ben Law.

http://www.ben-law.co.uk/

Keep up the good work. I really do appreciate the efforts you are making at bringing these topics to a worldwide audience and I have sent the links to all my permaculture contacts.

http://transitionbermuda.ning.com/

Rob’s delineation of the 12 steps is succinct, inspiring, and far better than I have done so far. Thanks Frank.

http://c-realmpodcast.podomatic.com/entry/2009-11-04T09_07_38-08_00

Wood, Its great stuff, I’m a big fan of it.

Ok, Not much better but more on subject.

These two podcasts (#66 and #68) have opened my eyes to the the multiple roles biomass has to play in the post-oil society. It will have to feed us and warm us, be the basis of our housing and packaging, run our cars, trucks and tractors. Forests, in addition to produce useful biomass, will have to provide areas for recreation for humans and insure biodiversity and wildlife habitats, All this of course requires vast areas. And now you tell me that it’s questionable that lumber is not a renewable source… …that is very troubling news indeed.

In the end of this podcast John Perlin talks about super insulated houses, so here is a link to an article in the Guardian about the fist so called plus-house or Active house in Denmark. There is one built in Sweden as well and several in Germany I believe.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/may/21/active-house-denmark-zero-carbon

That said, I don’t think that burning logs is INSANE. Here in Sweden as koffeekommando says pellets are the big thing, but logs play an important role economically for small farmers selling it locally to friends and neigbours. A lot of house owners think it’s a good way to save money chopping the wood themselves. And remember the old saying: Wood warms you twice, when you cut it and when you burn it:-)

Using wood in construction of houses and buildings is a very good way of getting carbon out of the carbon cycle. First a tree grows for a hundred years, then the wood is used in a house for a hundred years, or even longer if the quality of the building is good. In Sweden we have a lot of houses made of wood that is more than 200 or 300 years old, rightly maintained they are as sustainable as buildings made from brick or stone. My local church for example is made of wood and was built in 1680.

I’ve listened to this interview and found it very interesting too… Weird thing is that, as a photographer, I’ve been trying to reach you and your company for the last two months in order to make a photo-reportage once in Zambia next december. Strangely, nobody never replied which made me think that something was hidden from me about your real implication over there… I hope I’m wrong cause I’m gonna go with or without your help, even though I wish we can still figure out something together! Thanx!

Esta entrevista es una estupenda iniciativa. Muchas gracias por el esfuerzo y la gentileza de compartirla en este sitio.

Me gustaria saber como podemos mantenernos en comunicacion para intercambiar informacion y algunos contactos.

Saludos.

Ness
Tecnico Consultor

Best regards from Seattle.

jms

For over a decade, I have been teaching / practicing a variety of sustainable living and community development graduate courses (including permaculture and eco-design courses) and connect my teaching/learning (and that of my students and colleagues) to real-world contexts. It is truly “nutritious learning” as I like to think of it. Readers/listeners (and Nelson) can check us out at . Thanks again for a great show! jms

Biomass pellets are the only way forward.
Sweden knows this. Germany knows this. Some Canadians know this.

The US needs to wake up.

Small pelletizing machines exist. Local production could be a reality with a snap of the fingers.

The stoves exist right now.

Thelin Stoves make a wood pellet only stove that can run off a small battery and a single solar panel:
http://www.thelinco.com/

Bixby makes stoves that burn biomass:
http://www.bixbyenergy.com/stoves/products.html

This Cornell site will give you an introduction:
http://www.grassbioenergy.org/intro/intro.asp

That site is a little out of date though.
They don’t even know about the professional grade small Italian made pelletizing machines. Small US made units also exist.

You can make heating pellets out of sawdust, cold season grasses, ornamental grasses such as Miscanthus, switchgrass etc. These grasses are renewable season after season.

Check into the German videos on youtube. They grow fields of Miscanthus and use it to heat entire villages.

Get working on it. Lots to do!

When I was young in the sixties most winters we woke up to ice on the inside of the windows and getting out of a warm bed was difficult to say the least. But we survived the process and it did no real harm. One of the problems of modern society is that we feel walking around in a thin t-shirt in the middle of a hard winter is a fundamental human right.

It has so much more to do with conserving energy by not using it in the first place but of course that does not fit with the current economic paradigm of perpetual growth. Unfortunately the we live in an insane world where people spend half of their free time running on a treadmill like demented hamsters while they leave their gardens looking like jungles. How healthy is digging and hoeing and weeding. When you think of all the fuel that could be saved and carbon emissions that could be avoided if people just got out in their gardens and grew some of their own vegetables.

Just lately our councils have given everybody green bins for residents to put garden waste in which is trundled off every two weeks by a large truck using a lot of energy then processed into compost. Its like everything these days, another inappropriate use of technology. What about supplying everybody with a few bins for making their own compost thus no energy used whatsoever and thus providing a great FREE soil improver to grow lovely vegetables fruit and flowers.

By the way I’m not a Luddite, I think technology is great but I am truly fearful that most people believe and put their trust in the notion that NEW technology will solve all the problems we are facing today and by the time that they realize this is not the case it will be too late.

Even the technological revolution in car manufacture is on the most part green washing and a misplaced venture. The point being that while hybrids may give good millage they are ridiculously over engineered. If you want to increase your millage per gallon there are many small cars on the market that will achieve the same but with much less to go wrong and much less to manufacture. An even more revolutionary idea is to leave the car at home and go by bicycle or public transport(I’m speaking from experience). I also think their is some truth to the notion that car manufactures are driving the process towards ever greater reliance on more sophisticated computerized systems not to increase efficiency by any great amount but to ensure that repairs can only be done by approved garages with equipment designed specifically for those cars. Maybe we are seeing the resurgence of the guild system. This of course is energy inefficient because customers will do the sums and will scrap manufactured items long before they need. I have owned many cars in the past that were commercially uneconomic but with some knowledge, skill and a few pounds of sheet mild steel and an arc welder were made serviceable.

Rather than getting people interested in becoming part of the local solution by encouraging people help themselves, governments such as ours seem hell bent on dumbing the nation down in favor of a more Fascist solution. Everything is becoming a specialism and ever more E.U laws are being enacted to prohibit people from doing things for themselves. Soon it will be illegal to change a fuse. Rather than making things more serviceable, manufacturers are actively doing the opposite and trip to any local dump in the western world would inform us of that fact.

The amount of energy were are using to recycle and and re manufacture is staggering and serves more the interests of money velocity than the interests of the global community. While Politicians make noises about global warming they don’t propose to outlaw shoddy manufacture or to enact laws which force manufacturers to design products to maximize their serviceability or even just to make manufactures install battery backed up CMOS systems so that people don’t have to leave recorders and such like on over night. No, what they want is to maximize production while reducing the amount carbon blown into the atmosphere. So its like turkeys voting for Xmas. Once the great and the good have established the principle, manufacturing costs will gradually rise as the new costs are factored into process. Rather than this being a solution to our current problems I think, like the current bail outs of the financial system, it will be an attempt to buy a little more time before we have to face reality. Unfortunately the longer we leave it the more likely we are to enter reality with a crash rather than a nudge.

I love the program and learn much from it.

Thanks

Trevor

http://zambiansoap.com/order.php#mid

At that population, air pollution from wood burning seems much more manageable. Of course, we still must deal with the massive legacy load of CO2 in the atmosphere. It will be complex, and not pretty if we don’t voluntarily down-size as a species.

I know nothing about your product other than I hear and read here. I can’t buy it as I live in the UK. Still, it is good to hear that you are price competitive.

So how much in percentage terms of your sale price goes to the farmer and the others involved in the process. For most commodity products, 10% is an impossibly good percentage because of all the other costs of the supply chain. Again, please don’t take it that I am attacking your work, I spent 5 years of my life working unpaid full time for a non-profit attempting to build fairer trading relationships.

Take a cup of starbucks, for example. I calculate that around 4 cents from a $3 cup of coffee actually goes to the farmer. Rather than pretending I’m being ethical by buying the coffee, it would have been much more efficient to give the farmer 4 cents every time I buy a cup of coffee.

I think you are right about making products in the sense that it is empowering (and you wont find me arguing in favour of crappy aid handouts) but I am totally unconvinced that producing cash crops for the international market is in any sense a sustainable model for development.

OK, I’ve gone way over the original discussion, so apologies for that.

Thanks for the compliment!

In response to your comment I would make two points:

1. Do you really pay more? In our case, Zambian soap is actually less expensive than nearly any other organic soap. Comparing to an American company, Pangea Organics, for example, Zambian Soap is about half the cost. This is because of dramatically lower labor costs and the fact that both companies are transporting approximately the same weight/distance, one in raw materials, the other in finished products. In this case it’s actually *more* efficient than the alternative and that translates into lower costs.

2. Rather than being inefficient, raising money via sales is far superior to living on donations. Living on donations is rarely sustainable as a income or lifestyle, becoming productive empowers you to thrive, and not merely to survive, and to plan for the future. Psychologically, producing and selling something is far more empowering than receiving a donation.

Earning money, rather than being given money, also promotes reinvestment and gives incentives to the kind of behavior which is the most beneficial to society.

Having seen the inefficient and sometimes inept way international aid agencies operate, I would almost rather see one dollar spent in trade with an African than two dollars given in a donation. (Don’t stop giving though!)

(Just my 2¢.)

Having said that, the Zambian Soap Company is clearly at the most ethical end of the fairtrade spectrum.

fancy timeline interface:
http://bit.ly/whole-systems-design-timeline

simpler interface:
http://bit.ly/whole-systems-design

Thanks!

Bryce

I will say that I intend to spread your work on my site, I’m not trolling here, I mean it! Awesome site, and I’m glad I came across it. I intend to come back here most frequently.

Just wanted to say thanks for all the awesome podcasts that I have been enjoying listening to in my mp3-players while running around in the tracks out in the woods here in Sweden.

I’ll try to spread the gospel!

All the best from Göteborg, Sweden.

There are arround 1000 members and 10000 of threads for you to read and participate in most likely
one of the biggest problems on earth!
http://www.organic-farming.org

I thought i’d utilize your “under-utilized” comments forum to say that i really enjoyed this podcast with Eric Herm. I really enjoy hearing the perspective of farmers, particularly those who’ve seen the light. It would have been interesting to hear what ways he thinks are most useful to change farmers’ perspectives, ie, the change from reliance on chemicals to self-reliance. Sounds like he’s doing some very innovative things. I’ll definitely be checking out his blog.

Once again, well done, Frank.

I might comment that no-till (or “conservation tillage”) is being increasingly accepted by producers, at least here in the SE USA. This, in contrast to the statements made around minute 17.5, where he states that agriculture necessitates tillage. If ag was invented before animal domestication (and i am not sure that it was), that would mean that most of human history’s agriculture involved reduced tillage, and therefore would not have the net carbon emission that it does today. That is not to say that ag was ever C positive, but then again, we never had to feed 7 billion people before, either.

Another interesting topic was N neutrality. Although not explicitly stated during the podcast, N-containing greenhouse gases are far less abundant than C greenhouse gases in the atm, and therefore the C gases receive more attention. But the discussion of N neutrality in this podcast was highly interesting, and i shall have to think about that one some more!

Great podcast, i shall recommend it to my agronomy and soils dept here in Auburn! Keep up the great work.

One question i have is this: After CCD, is the queen left in the hive, or does she fly away and die too? I understand that the queen only flies typically once in her life (to mate), and then ordinarily does not leave the hive again. So if the cause of CCD really is a new virus and/or pesticide load, she should remain in the hive after the rest of the colony flies off and dies. Any ideas here?

Would love to know which these are. It would be great to have detailed pages on these (in Spanish and/or English) on Appropedia.

Would love to know which cities these are – info on these cities’ programs would be great to have at Appropedia.

I think, as a soil scientist yourself, you are well aware of the fact that there is just an alarming paucity of great people doing great field work. And this is essentially what Mollison is saying: in general, the best soil managers tend to be the innovative farmers. In that light, I would view you as an exception rather than the rule. I’m sure you would agree that we are all immersed in a system fraught (sometimes crippled) with problems and inconsistencies. So for me, the question isn’t: How bad is it? But instead, what can we do about it?

On another note, I would like to add that agriculture is a major source of erosion, but construction and development is just as great a cause.

I like the idea of what Mr. Mollison proposes, but he should be more careful when laying the blame on soil scientists.

Felicitaciones, favor si mantenemos comunicaci?n para intercambiar informaci?n, estoy trabajando en mosca de la fruta con resultados que pudieran servir a otros productores.

Saludos… Vladimir.

This is why live members of the redwood family survive but the understory is not filled with new redwood trees. The parent tree can survive with its tool kit of genetic experiences, which is the fluid response but its seed, though viable can’t establish itself. Take a look at the understory!

Does the Irish potatoe famine sound familiar? It is not just about genetic diversity but it is also about the types of plants grown together. Monocultures are a sure way to reduce one’s success!

The Agroinnovations Podcast is turning to the issue of Fair Trade, focusing on fairly traded coffee to address some of the issues that the Fair Trade movement now faces. It has been almost 20 years since Fair Trade pioneers and social justice ad…