Greening the Desert II: Greening the Middle East from Craig Mackintosh on Vimeo.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Kafrin Site Video
I have posted a few articles on Geoff Lawton's work in Jordon. Here is a new video, updating the status of the site.
Friday, May 01, 2009
We are flooded!
My apologies the the readers of this site for missing the Species of the Month for April. It has been a hectic month. I've been finalizing a house design and prepping for a project in India. Scott Meister has had his hands full, too.Scott will be publishing a piece here in about a week's time and I will give some updates from India. Please bear with us.
Monday, March 23, 2009
2009 Sustainable Living Symposium
I will be giving a presentation on Designed Landscapes for Food, Fibre & Energy at the Sustainable Living Symposium at 10:30 am at Loyalist College in Belleville, Ontario. Click the banner below for more information.
The event is selling out fast, so click now to ensure entry!
Sustainable Living Symposium
The event is selling out fast, so click now to ensure entry!
Sustainable Living Symposium
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Remembering a great man: Masanobu Fukuoka
Sadly, natural farming innovator Masanobu Fukuoka passed away yesterday, Saturday, August 16, 2008, at his home in Iyo, Ehime Prefecture, Japan of old age. He was 95.Fukuoka authored a number of books including One Straw Revolution: The Natural Way of Farming and The Natural Way of farming: The Theory and Practice of Green Philosophy, both of which are available in English. Fukuoka taught us to observe nature and work with it rather than trying to impose our desires on the land. He also popularized the use of seed balls, which has been used in agriculture and in re-greening projects.
The father of the permaculture movement, Bill Mollison, spoke very highly of Mr. Fukuoka and said that, before hearing of Fukuoka's work, he could not see a way to produce grains sustainably, and had not thought they could be incorporated into permaculture.
Around the world, Fukuoka's work resonated with people and it continues to be adopted and applied to different conditions around the world. His work and his teachings remain a great inspiration to us and we will miss him.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Killing me softly with his investments
On Thursday, June 12, 2008, CBC's The Current did a report called Buying Farmland about the trend of financial investment firms to buy up farms worldwide (after they devastated all the other markets available to them). One of the guests was Gary Blumenthal, president and CEO of World Perspectives, an agricultural investment consulting firm. Among other things, Blumenthal claimed that large farms are more productive (any agricultural census will demonstrate that this is false) and that peasant subsistence farming was not conductive to maximising human potential (not that this is the business that World Perspectives engages in, mind you). The following is my response sent to The Current:
Listening to your report on investors buying farmland, I was deeply impressed by Gary Blumenthal's willingness to demonstrate his ignorance of both agriculture and the economy.
He tells us that "half of all production in the U.S. comes from just 34,000 farms." This says nothing about the relative efficiency of farms with respect to size, it only tells us the status quo, as though mere existence is an indicator of efficiency.
Looking at the data from the USDA census, we find that the most productive farms are small farms with production rapidly falling off as acreage increases. And any positive production on large farms is based on fudging the numbers. If you consider that on these farms it takes an average nine calories of energy to produce one calorie of food crop, you quickly realise that the energy intensive, poorly yielding large farm does not have a future.
Furthermore, traditional peasant systems, elements of which I use in the systems I design, normally require little input in terms of time and energy. Assuming there is a tradition of sustainable agriculture in the region, peasant agriculture is not arduous. What is genuinely disastrous is the repeat of England's Enclosure which is currently being played out across the Third World. It does not "maximise human potential" to force people off the land and into shanty towns to become $4-a-day sweatshop workers.
Considering that people like Gary Blumenthal are going to have increasing say over farm administration, my advice to listeners as a designer of sustainable agriculture systems is to start to forgo your flowerbeds and grow as much of your own food as possible.
Douglas Barnes
President
EcoEdge Design Ltd.
Listening to your report on investors buying farmland, I was deeply impressed by Gary Blumenthal's willingness to demonstrate his ignorance of both agriculture and the economy.
He tells us that "half of all production in the U.S. comes from just 34,000 farms." This says nothing about the relative efficiency of farms with respect to size, it only tells us the status quo, as though mere existence is an indicator of efficiency.
Looking at the data from the USDA census, we find that the most productive farms are small farms with production rapidly falling off as acreage increases. And any positive production on large farms is based on fudging the numbers. If you consider that on these farms it takes an average nine calories of energy to produce one calorie of food crop, you quickly realise that the energy intensive, poorly yielding large farm does not have a future.
Furthermore, traditional peasant systems, elements of which I use in the systems I design, normally require little input in terms of time and energy. Assuming there is a tradition of sustainable agriculture in the region, peasant agriculture is not arduous. What is genuinely disastrous is the repeat of England's Enclosure which is currently being played out across the Third World. It does not "maximise human potential" to force people off the land and into shanty towns to become $4-a-day sweatshop workers.Considering that people like Gary Blumenthal are going to have increasing say over farm administration, my advice to listeners as a designer of sustainable agriculture systems is to start to forgo your flowerbeds and grow as much of your own food as possible.
Douglas Barnes
President
EcoEdge Design Ltd.
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