tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1575603731696062553.post5363641866638162694..comments2024-03-27T16:08:30.313-05:00Comments on The Great Change: Rescuing Los AngelesAlbert Bateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17627996921976501534noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1575603731696062553.post-34209492884824418512017-04-02T03:20:38.305-05:002017-04-02T03:20:38.305-05:00Los Angeles is low on my list of places worth savi...Los Angeles is low on my list of places worth saving.Reverse Engineerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07062239687986775433noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1575603731696062553.post-44320749591666434302017-03-27T20:37:33.199-05:002017-03-27T20:37:33.199-05:00Albert
I submitted a comment about forest fires pr...Albert<br />I submitted a comment about forest fires previously. I don't know if you read it, but you didn't comment.<br /><br />My Spring Nature Conservancy magazine just arrived, and the article is dedicated to restoring southern Blue Ridge forests through the use of fire. To set the stage, we know that Gatlinburg, TN burned this last fall, and Chuck Marsh told me that Earthhaven came within an hour of burning. You have held up The Farm and Earthhaven as models of forestry. But my question is 'Is the forestry they are practicing really fire adapted?' The Nature Conservancy says that fires occurred every 5 to 7 years. Radiocarbon dating of charcoal indicates that fire became more prevalent a thousand years ago when humans moved into the southeastern forests. With the suppression of fires in the last century, the oaks and hickories have begun to die out, replaced by maples and other less valuable trees. The denser growth also reduces the availability of wildlife in the forest for humans.<br /><br />So...besides the basic question of increasing forests and producing biochar and fostering ecovillages, it seems that we must confront the likelihood of more fires and a reduced capacity to control the fires. In short, we need to steer the forests back to where they were 500 years ago: producers of abundant game and nuts and easily traversed by humans and resistant to catastrophic fires.<br /><br />As I read the Nature Conservancy magazine about their efforts, it occurs to me that it will be very hard to do enough, fast enough.<br /><br />Don StewartDon Stewarthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05449201744675390686noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1575603731696062553.post-89476014297789529092017-03-26T15:21:19.840-05:002017-03-26T15:21:19.840-05:00Albert
I am all in favor of doing whatever it is o...Albert<br />I am all in favor of doing whatever it is one can do. Including small things such as stopping the generation of greenhouse gases with one’s suburban gardening practices. However, if we are talking about ‘saving’ Los Angeles or even ‘feeding America’ or ‘feeding the world’, then perhaps a sober assessment is in order.<br /><br />It turns out there are two recently published books which I believe give us plenty of food for thought. The first is Prosperous Homesteading by Greg Jeffers:<br />'Some elements initially surprise, especially those that haven’t received much thought. These include the motto “No farming!”: farming is a business that feeds strangers in exchange for money; a homestead is a family that feeds itself; these concerns are orthogonal. Another element that may be hard to grasp is the entire financial scheme that allows homesteaders to prosper: no debt; no monthly bills; no insurance; only the bare essentials as far as unproductive assets such as a house or a car; few assets at risk.’<br /><br />The second book is The Unsettlers: In Search of the Good Life in Today’s America, by Mark Sundeen. Sundeen’s book explores the facets of living a simple life in Montana, Missouri, and Detroit, along with a glimpse into The Farm in Tennessee. The families that Sundeen spends time with all have their own approach and definition of ‘the good life’, ranging from rural farmers to homesteaders to urban farmers. The homesteaders are living in a very rural (and, therefore, cheap) part of Missouri, do not use electricity, do not own or ordinarily use a car, and are largely self-sufficient. Sundeen explores the tension between true off-grid living and ‘living in a village with an internet connection’. Because they are living in such extreme poverty, they have little social life. When the husband is asked what he would do if he found that ‘the hammer is already down’, and the world cannot be saved, he responds that he would go get a cabin by the sea in Maine and just watch the world sink. In other words, the hard work and isolation are not worth it if they can’t change the course of the world. <br /><br />In Detroit we meet a young black woman horticulturist and a young white man urban farmer who eventually marry and begin a reverse commute to a farm in rural Michigan. The woman wants her children to be able to walk without fear and sleep with open windows at night. The woman had worked at Greenfield Village, a restoration funded by the Fords and the Firestones. But she learns quickly that ‘Greenfield Village is not even fake’. It is a theme park whose theme is work. ‘After the initial thrill of media acclaim, the couple became irritated by film crews arriving unannounced and demanding interviews. They were exhausted by young dreamers bending their ear about some pie in the sky that would revitalize Detroit, a scheme that generally involved more social networking and fundraising than crouching over crops like a peasant. A lot of people like the social element of being in the city, being able to go to the art gallery or museum, Olivia said, But that’s kind of some bull, because if you’re farming, you don’t have time to go to the art gallery or the museum.'<br /><br />In Montana we learn about the trials and tribulations of trying to produce food to feed the world which is not toxic and does not take more energy to produce it than the calories it provides. ‘The off-grid commuter was just a suburbanite with a longer driveway.’ And it turns out that the very industrial processes of distribution and marketing are the keys to making money.<br /><br /> I will offer that the homesteads of Jeffers and Sarah and Ethan in Missouri demand less work than the farms in Detroit and Montana. It’s one thing to grow your own food…it’s something else to be able to afford the investment and expenses and work required to distribute and market what you have grown. Don Stewarthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05449201744675390686noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1575603731696062553.post-57827066339167138542017-03-26T12:10:48.617-05:002017-03-26T12:10:48.617-05:00Joe - there are no shortage of proofs. Consider, f...Joe - there are no shortage of proofs. Consider, for instance, how many Chinese cities fed themselves before the Second World War, including from plants and animals raised on junks in the harbors. Consider Havana and Santiago during the Special Period. Or see a more modern approach in Australia: http://www.nationofchange.org/2016/10/13/australian-farm-grows-17000-tonnes-vegetables-using-sun-seawater/Albert Bateshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17627996921976501534noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1575603731696062553.post-33117175459693683072017-03-26T11:47:29.538-05:002017-03-26T11:47:29.538-05:00LAEV does not plan to produce all its own food, wa...<i> LAEV does not plan to produce all its own food, water, power and other needs from within its two-block area, but it could...Los Angeles, even now, at 5000 persons per square mile, could do this.</i><br /><br />Oh no! An otherwise sensible person who has imbibed the "urban farming" kool-aid.<br /><br />As Carl Sagan once noted, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". I am skeptical that anyone can provide all their needs from 5,576 square feet anywhere, much less in a place where rainfall is 15 inches per year. Please provide links to your "extraordinary evidence", especially how LAEV is going to produce its own "neighborhood solar PV" modules.<br /><br />I know that a time is soon coming when people will need to secure almost all of their needs from within their own community, but even if you somehow show that it is possible at 5,000 people per square mile in a near desert, wouldn't it be far easier to abandon the LA concrete jungle and move all those city folk to a rural region with adequate rainfall and far more space per person? Joehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01251330546889158364noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1575603731696062553.post-44058875957625558162017-03-26T11:02:38.738-05:002017-03-26T11:02:38.738-05:00Free-agent entrepreneurs, social activists, permac...Free-agent entrepreneurs, social activists, permaculture emergency technicians: all flavours of what I see and hear among permaculture design course grads, like recently at Belize. But they aren't empowered to be effective, in fact probably fair to say the cultured numbs and disempowers them. For good reason, TPTB don't want an uprising to get too well established, witness how Occupy! was taken down across the US.<br />Check out Wade Hunter, an entrepreneur training personal empowerment in the tradition of Napoleon Hill, Marshall Thurber, Bucky Fuller, who I met on my way home from Punta Gordo. His training company, The New Game, is just about this. It should be incorporated in all permaculture design course curricula.Ian Grahamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02975374352244687491noreply@blogger.com