Is commercial Aquaponic effectively illegal on most Australian farms?
Unless you've got a water licence, yes. It falls outside the 'stock & domestic' clauses as they now apply in most farms. Stock & domestic applies to both surface run off and bores unless there a specific irrigation licences. Affectivly it's classed as irrigation.
The only way you could do it is if you can establish and run the system on only the roof collection of the fish sheds & green houses? Is that possible?
Food for thought.
Cheers,
Gnoll110
Showing posts with label permaculture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label permaculture. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Fee & Dividend and the trees.
Australia economist John Quiggin recently added a post dealing with the political machination of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS).
A LOT of debate ensued. In including some denialist noise making and some discussions on the merits of Cap & Trade vs Fee & Divided (F&D). It's part of that Fee & dividend stream I want to preserve here, as it has some of my 'back of the envelope' calculations on how F&D triggers more integrated farming practices.
Carbonsink's initial post.
My first reply.
Carbonsink:
Me:
Carbonsink:
Me:
Ultimately what my 'back of the envelope' calculation show is the when you start taking energy out of a farming system, the Law of Diminishing Returns can be used to work with you.
As energy prices go up and usage falls, the more land goes to trees, all thing being equal. Don't you love that last phrase.
In the developed world, that 'all things being equal' included only 3% (or less) of the population being involved on Agriculture, Horticulture, Forestry & Fishing.
So in a really low energy system you could end up with 1ha of market garden & orchards, 9ha of grain & 490ha of mixed trees! How to boost the system? Add labour. Go to ten families, 10ha of market garden & orchards, 90ha of grain & 400ha of mixed trees.
Ten families farming 10ha of gardens & 90ha of grains. What does that tell us? It tells us that food as a percentage of earnings is not going to stay cheap. It's that standard of living thing again. If you can't have standard of living, you gotta work on quality of life. Be happy!
A LOT of debate ensued. In including some denialist noise making and some discussions on the merits of Cap & Trade vs Fee & Divided (F&D). It's part of that Fee & dividend stream I want to preserve here, as it has some of my 'back of the envelope' calculations on how F&D triggers more integrated farming practices.
Carbonsink's initial post.
How about we tax carbon at $20/tonne and repay the proceeds every quarter, split equally between all citizens?
Its simple. Its progressive. It compensates the poor, the old and the unemployed.
James Hansen is a smart cookie.
My first reply.
James Hansen doesn’t support a general carbon tax. He speciality supports a fossil fuel specific Fee & dividend system.A fee-and-dividend system imposes a fee on the initial sale of a fossil fuel which is then redistributed to the public; the rising cost of carbon-intensive products would, it is hoped, encourage families to keep their carbon footprints low.
‘James Hansen rails against cap-and-trade plan in open letter‘ from the Guardian’s environment blog on 12 Jan ‘10
Carbonsink:
James Hansen doesn’t support a general carbon tax. He speciality supports a fossil fuel specific Fee & dividend system.
I know. That’s why he’s a smart cookie.
Wouldn’t it be funny if a non-economist came up with the best way to price carbon? I’d like to hear ProfQ’s thoughts on Hansen’s fee-and-dividend idea?Governments must place a uniform rising price on carbon, collected at the fossil fuel source – the mine or port of entry. The fee should be given to the public in toto, as a uniform dividend, payroll tax deduction or both. Such a tax is progressive – the dividend exceeds added energy costs for 60% of the public.
Fee and dividend stimulates the economy, providing the public with the means to adjust lifestyles and energy infrastructure.
If global emissions trading is DOA, how about we give something else a try?
Me:
It’s not about taxing carbon, it’s about fossil fuels specially. ETSs miss the point in that carbon is not all the same. The natural carbon cycle is vast, it’s the relativity small ongoing injection of geologic carbon that’s throwing the whole biosphere/carbon cycle out of whack.
Back when the CPRS was being argured over in the press. A prosal was floated that becuase agriculture was too complex to figure out and that the ‘best approach’ was to simply include it by levying farmers on a per head (for livestock) or per acre (for crops) basis. Figures like $100/head for cattle were being banded about. That struck me as fundimentally ineffective as well as unfair, as it made no distinction between lot fed and grass fed cattle. It also had no way to take changes in farming method at the property level into account.
As a thought exercise I compare how you should treat a car, a lot fed animal & a grass fed animal to try to figure out a better way to include them. That when I realise that an ETS on carbon generally wouldn’t just work poorly, it won’t work at all!
Generally people will try to play with and bend the large natural flows of carbon to get the atmosphere CO2e figure down. Any thing but tackle the actual use of energy/fossil fuels & the problematic ‘new’ geologic carbon flows. Pushing carbon around in the biosphere is like pushing piss up hill. It ain’t going to stay where we put it long term.
The easy, knee jerk reaction is to try to ‘win’ by diverting big natural flows, rather than stopping the small problematic ones. An ETS in quantitative, a Fee & dividend is qualitative. Here is on example of how being quantitative gets it wrong. The cheap ETS reaction is to plant trees, lots of them, in large cheap monoculture forests. The qualitative and resilient approach is mixed forestry in a mosaic with other systems. An ETS here works away from a sustainable lower energy farming ecosystem that better suits local conditions.
Disclosure: I have family members involved in agriculture, including grass fed cattle production.
Carbonsink:
So how will fee-and-dividend discourage land clearing and encourage “mixed forestry in a mosaic with other systems” ?
Me:
Raising energy cost (Fee & Dividend) increases forestry & more diverse land use by a combination of product substitution and return on investment question/harvest frequency changes.
Cheap energy allows lots of product substitution. Steel and concrete for timber of every thing from houses to ships. Petrol & diesel fueled cars, trucks and trains for horses powered by hay. Synthetics for natural fibre. What this has done is remove a lot of demand to use our land surface for things other that food. In each case new fossil fuels replaced old solar based systems.
Cheap energy has also meant we’ve been able to substitute artificial fertility for natural fertility.
When the cost of energy is low, low return annual harvest systems make sense. When you dramatically raise the cost of energy, high return long rotation systems make more sense. We’ll always need a fair amount of annual harvest systems, our staple carbohydrate food stuffs are generally produced from them. If you harvest a system annually, the return is typically between 6% & 10%[1]. Plantation systems can return from 34% (over 6 years) to 310% (over 90 years). Harvest a natural system and you can get 1100% (over 300 years). If you have a cheap energy to drive an annual harvest, you can get more out of given area, over time. But the law of diminishing returns apply to the energy inputs.
Raise energy costs and some of these reverse. In construction I can easy see a time when steel and concrete are only used extensively in public building, where the engineering demands require them. Hoping we don’t have to go all the way down to riding and working horses, and building ships from oak again.
I’ve done some ‘back of the envelope’ calculations. They are based on EMERGY figures; Corn yielding at a 1.10 ratio and Radiate pine yielding at a 2.10 ratio, over 24 years. The figures also assume no cost to moving energy use between years and no yield from unused land.
Say it taken 1000 unit of energy to grow and harvest corn. The harvested corn yields 1100 units of energy. Over 24 years that’s a net gain of 2400 units of energy, for 24000 units in.
Now double the cost on energy. The farmer can now only afford 500 unit/year or 12000 in total.
If the farmer just plants corn, he can only use half the land. That 500 units of energy in and yields 550 units of energy. Over 24 years that’s a net gain of 1200 units of energy, for 12000 units in.
But if the farmer plants 47% to corn each year and plants 53% to Radiate pine in the first year, here’s what the farmer gets. 530 units are used to plant & harvest the pines plus 24 times 470 units to grow the corn each year. Total energy in is 11810 units (11280 units for corn + 530 unit for pines). The net gain over 24 years is 1711 unit (1128 from corn, 583 from pine).
By using a corn pine mix, the drop in production expected with a halving in energy usage can be reduced from a 50% drop to a 29% drop.
[1] David Holmgren, Permaculture Principles & Pathways Beyond Sustainability, p 65-7
Ultimately what my 'back of the envelope' calculation show is the when you start taking energy out of a farming system, the Law of Diminishing Returns can be used to work with you.
As energy prices go up and usage falls, the more land goes to trees, all thing being equal. Don't you love that last phrase.
In the developed world, that 'all things being equal' included only 3% (or less) of the population being involved on Agriculture, Horticulture, Forestry & Fishing.
So in a really low energy system you could end up with 1ha of market garden & orchards, 9ha of grain & 490ha of mixed trees! How to boost the system? Add labour. Go to ten families, 10ha of market garden & orchards, 90ha of grain & 400ha of mixed trees.
Ten families farming 10ha of gardens & 90ha of grains. What does that tell us? It tells us that food as a percentage of earnings is not going to stay cheap. It's that standard of living thing again. If you can't have standard of living, you gotta work on quality of life. Be happy!
Monday, December 14, 2009
Global Warming: Why 'Go Veg' and cattle miss the point!
Yesterday, Cameron Reilly (@cameronreilly) posted a 'Go Veg' link on twitter. John Johnston (@jjprojects) and I commented on it. This is a topic where 140 character just isn't enough. Here are the relevant parts of the Twitter stream and me considered ramblings about the topic.
The stream
@cameronreilly: "Eat less meat and dairy: official recipe to help health of consumers – and the planet" ( http://bit.ly/68BdWt )
Me: @cameronreilly "Eat less meat" http://bit.ly/68BdWt still misses the point. Use no fossil fuel, end of cheap fuel will fix any meat problems
@jjprojects: @cameronreilly In Tim Flannery's latest essay, Now or Never, he calls for farming practices to change dramatically, rather than going veg...
@jjprojects: @cameronreilly There seems to be a bit of a debate about what is sustainable in terms of eating meat or veg and how it's grown.
@jjprojects: @cameronreilly Great essay btw, if you haven't read. He got my attention, that's for sure.
@jjprojects: @cameronreilly That would be good. There's also a great chapter about his vision for Oz cleantech, including a new, sustainable city.
@jjprojects: @cameronreilly ...for Oz to lead cleantech on R&D and innovation and export the results. Bold vision. Well worth reading.
Me: @cameronreilly re cattle. The real issues is the source of the flow. 'Cattle carbon' is part of C cycle, in one end out the other.
Me: @cameronreilly natural flows of carbon dwarf the added fossil fuel flows, in size. But the 'new' carbon throws the whole system out of wack
Me: @cameronreilly Cattle don't eat fossil fuel and are natural. But cheap fossil fuel has lead to greatly increase number.
Me: @cameronreilly So cutting cattle numbers is treating a symptom of cheap fossil fuels, not the cause.
@cameronreilly: @gnoll110 so you're saying if we make transport more expensive, people will eat less meat?
Me: @cameronreilly There are lots of fossil fuel input in beef. Transport is one, think about input to grain used in lot feeding...
Me: @cameronreilly ... and in supermarkets, in the home. Increased energy cost ripple across the whole economy...
Me: @cameronreilly ...everyone changes their ways, that how carbon taxes work too. Expect dearer beef that grass fed and produced closer to home
My ramblings
There are so many angle to this. Think I'll try a top down one.
People are talking about 'what the atmosphere sees' in regard to greenhouse gases. I think this is way to simplistic, where a holistic system view is what is really required.
Why is this too simplistic?
Firstly, the interchange between the atmosphere and the other major components (the oceans, soil and biomass) of the bioshere is both dynamic and large, to just measure and pay attention to the atmosphere alone. Of the extra carbon added to the atmosphere by fossil fuel burning each year, about half has moved to other components within a year.
Secondly, all the carbon is being treated the same regardless of whether it's part of a natural or artificial flows.
How can we view it more holistically?
I'm going for borrow an analogue from peak-oiler Richard Heinberg: a bottle of wine. How do you make wine. You put yeast in sugary water (grape juice) and let them do what come naturally. Reproduce, consuming their wonderful abundant source of easy energy. In the process, they produce a toxic pollutant, alcohol. What you end up with is water with most of the sugar gone, lots of alcohol and the detritus of the yeast population collapse at the bottom.
Lets do some substitution.
yeast = humans
sugary water = fossil fuels (both coal & oil)
alcohol = greenhouse gases
Now lets generalise in terms of the universal ecological dilemma.
Humans are population pressure
Fossil fuels use is resource depletion
Greenhouse gases are habitat destruction
We, as a species, have used the last 250 years of fossil fuel to grow our population, both in shear size and in consumption per capita. It looks like habitat destruction is going to be an issue before resource depletion, just.
How do we undo this habitat destruction,
Remove the input of 'new' fossil fuel carbon! That by itself is likely to be enough. Just hope we haven't triggered for run away feedback in the mean time.
Why is cutting cattle number just fiddling? There is an annual photosynthesis cycle. In the spring & summer plants remove net CO2 from the atmosphere and in the autumn & winter it's released back to the atmosphere in net term. Because most land is in the northern hemisphere, this annual cycle clearly shows up in atmospheric CO2 graphs. In the graph, note how the annual peak to trough movement is considerably larger that the annual peak to peak change of the underlying trend. This shows that the natural seasonal carbon flows are larger that the 'new' artificial flow that is the result of fossil fuel burning, as I noted in my twitter update above. Cattle carbon is part of this flow of carbon from biomass back to the atmosphere.
Cut cattle number and what happens? The vegetation will be eaten by other domestic animals (and back to the atmosphere), lamb anyone? In places where there is no domestic animal, a combination of two things can happen. It will be eaten be native and feral animal or it won't be. If it's eaten, back to the atmosphere. What happens to uneaten vegetation? In temperate climate it rots in a year or two, releasing the carbon back to the atmosphere. In dry climate, in a health ecology, its gets eaten (and back to the atmosphere). If the ecology is unhealthy (near death) and thus lacks the grazers, is just sits there. Occasionally fire might burn it (again releasing carbon back to the atmosphere), but without the stomach of the grazers to fore fill the role played be temperate rains, the ecology remains near death. Imagine the great savannahs of Africa without their great herds.
So in any healthy ecology, the grazers do their thing. Remove cattle and the carbon just flows back to the atmosphere via other species (or maybe fire).
Cattle are problematic for two reasons. Their emit a higher ratio of their carbon as methane, a shorter livid, but a 'hotter' gas. Modern cattle production has become fossil fuel intense, by maximising cheap inputs (fossil fuel) & minimising expensive inputs, especially labour. I haven't read Tim Flannery's latest essay, Now or Never. I suspect his call for farming practices to change dramatically will match mine.
I'm sure big oil & coal are delighted be this simplistic push to 'go veg'. Like simplistic carbon accounting, it's a distraction from the underlying fossil fuel cause.
I've already said the real solution is cutting fossil fuel use, preferably to only non energy uses like plastics. That means the end of cheap energy, that's a fundamental change to the whole economy. Doing it would create an inflationary period like that of the 1970's. That inflationary period was partly caused by the first oil shock. This inflation would not be constant across the economy, high energy application would be worst hit. This inflation would change how business is done and what people consume.
How to cause this inflation? An emission trading system (ETS) is just shifting deck chairs. A carbon tax would have an effect, but doesn't target fossil fuel specifically. I would incrementally raise petroleum fuel (liquid & gas) excises and coal royalties based on carbon content. That is what helps bank rolls the required restructuring both domestic & internationally.
Cattle production would move back to traditional grass feed systems and shirk as people cut their consumption to meet their reduced buying power. Transport & refrigeration costs would change the way beef is consumed. More local, less big box, more eat-the-day-you-buy for most of our food stuffs. Not just 'make transport more expensive, people will eat less meat?'. A fundamental change to business as usual.
Gnoll110
The stream
@cameronreilly: "Eat less meat and dairy: official recipe to help health of consumers – and the planet" ( http://bit.ly/68BdWt )
Me: @cameronreilly "Eat less meat" http://bit.ly/68BdWt still misses the point. Use no fossil fuel, end of cheap fuel will fix any meat problems
@jjprojects: @cameronreilly In Tim Flannery's latest essay, Now or Never, he calls for farming practices to change dramatically, rather than going veg...
@jjprojects: @cameronreilly There seems to be a bit of a debate about what is sustainable in terms of eating meat or veg and how it's grown.
@jjprojects: @cameronreilly Great essay btw, if you haven't read. He got my attention, that's for sure.
@jjprojects: @cameronreilly That would be good. There's also a great chapter about his vision for Oz cleantech, including a new, sustainable city.
@jjprojects: @cameronreilly ...for Oz to lead cleantech on R&D and innovation and export the results. Bold vision. Well worth reading.
Me: @cameronreilly re cattle. The real issues is the source of the flow. 'Cattle carbon' is part of C cycle, in one end out the other.
Me: @cameronreilly natural flows of carbon dwarf the added fossil fuel flows, in size. But the 'new' carbon throws the whole system out of wack
Me: @cameronreilly Cattle don't eat fossil fuel and are natural. But cheap fossil fuel has lead to greatly increase number.
Me: @cameronreilly So cutting cattle numbers is treating a symptom of cheap fossil fuels, not the cause.
@cameronreilly: @gnoll110 so you're saying if we make transport more expensive, people will eat less meat?
Me: @cameronreilly There are lots of fossil fuel input in beef. Transport is one, think about input to grain used in lot feeding...
Me: @cameronreilly ... and in supermarkets, in the home. Increased energy cost ripple across the whole economy...
Me: @cameronreilly ...everyone changes their ways, that how carbon taxes work too. Expect dearer beef that grass fed and produced closer to home
My ramblings
There are so many angle to this. Think I'll try a top down one.
People are talking about 'what the atmosphere sees' in regard to greenhouse gases. I think this is way to simplistic, where a holistic system view is what is really required.
Why is this too simplistic?
Firstly, the interchange between the atmosphere and the other major components (the oceans, soil and biomass) of the bioshere is both dynamic and large, to just measure and pay attention to the atmosphere alone. Of the extra carbon added to the atmosphere by fossil fuel burning each year, about half has moved to other components within a year.
Secondly, all the carbon is being treated the same regardless of whether it's part of a natural or artificial flows.
How can we view it more holistically?
I'm going for borrow an analogue from peak-oiler Richard Heinberg: a bottle of wine. How do you make wine. You put yeast in sugary water (grape juice) and let them do what come naturally. Reproduce, consuming their wonderful abundant source of easy energy. In the process, they produce a toxic pollutant, alcohol. What you end up with is water with most of the sugar gone, lots of alcohol and the detritus of the yeast population collapse at the bottom.
Lets do some substitution.
yeast = humans
sugary water = fossil fuels (both coal & oil)
alcohol = greenhouse gases
Now lets generalise in terms of the universal ecological dilemma.
Humans are population pressure
Fossil fuels use is resource depletion
Greenhouse gases are habitat destruction
We, as a species, have used the last 250 years of fossil fuel to grow our population, both in shear size and in consumption per capita. It looks like habitat destruction is going to be an issue before resource depletion, just.
How do we undo this habitat destruction,
Remove the input of 'new' fossil fuel carbon! That by itself is likely to be enough. Just hope we haven't triggered for run away feedback in the mean time.
Why is cutting cattle number just fiddling? There is an annual photosynthesis cycle. In the spring & summer plants remove net CO2 from the atmosphere and in the autumn & winter it's released back to the atmosphere in net term. Because most land is in the northern hemisphere, this annual cycle clearly shows up in atmospheric CO2 graphs. In the graph, note how the annual peak to trough movement is considerably larger that the annual peak to peak change of the underlying trend. This shows that the natural seasonal carbon flows are larger that the 'new' artificial flow that is the result of fossil fuel burning, as I noted in my twitter update above. Cattle carbon is part of this flow of carbon from biomass back to the atmosphere.
Cut cattle number and what happens? The vegetation will be eaten by other domestic animals (and back to the atmosphere), lamb anyone? In places where there is no domestic animal, a combination of two things can happen. It will be eaten be native and feral animal or it won't be. If it's eaten, back to the atmosphere. What happens to uneaten vegetation? In temperate climate it rots in a year or two, releasing the carbon back to the atmosphere. In dry climate, in a health ecology, its gets eaten (and back to the atmosphere). If the ecology is unhealthy (near death) and thus lacks the grazers, is just sits there. Occasionally fire might burn it (again releasing carbon back to the atmosphere), but without the stomach of the grazers to fore fill the role played be temperate rains, the ecology remains near death. Imagine the great savannahs of Africa without their great herds.
So in any healthy ecology, the grazers do their thing. Remove cattle and the carbon just flows back to the atmosphere via other species (or maybe fire).
Cattle are problematic for two reasons. Their emit a higher ratio of their carbon as methane, a shorter livid, but a 'hotter' gas. Modern cattle production has become fossil fuel intense, by maximising cheap inputs (fossil fuel) & minimising expensive inputs, especially labour. I haven't read Tim Flannery's latest essay, Now or Never. I suspect his call for farming practices to change dramatically will match mine.
I'm sure big oil & coal are delighted be this simplistic push to 'go veg'. Like simplistic carbon accounting, it's a distraction from the underlying fossil fuel cause.
I've already said the real solution is cutting fossil fuel use, preferably to only non energy uses like plastics. That means the end of cheap energy, that's a fundamental change to the whole economy. Doing it would create an inflationary period like that of the 1970's. That inflationary period was partly caused by the first oil shock. This inflation would not be constant across the economy, high energy application would be worst hit. This inflation would change how business is done and what people consume.
How to cause this inflation? An emission trading system (ETS) is just shifting deck chairs. A carbon tax would have an effect, but doesn't target fossil fuel specifically. I would incrementally raise petroleum fuel (liquid & gas) excises and coal royalties based on carbon content. That is what helps bank rolls the required restructuring both domestic & internationally.
Cattle production would move back to traditional grass feed systems and shirk as people cut their consumption to meet their reduced buying power. Transport & refrigeration costs would change the way beef is consumed. More local, less big box, more eat-the-day-you-buy for most of our food stuffs. Not just 'make transport more expensive, people will eat less meat?'. A fundamental change to business as usual.
Gnoll110
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Why Kyoto mean nothing, personally what to do next?
During the Internet chatter about the recent Eastern Australia Dust Storm. Some overseas people quipped about Australia not being a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol. Others returned fire, saying that Australia had (two years ago). Some even then went on to figure point at the US.
Here is my thoughts about why Kyoto was always irrelevant.
Most countries that 'signed up' don't have any commitments (that was the only way to get them to sign). Most (All?) of those that did sign with commitments look like they won't meet their commitments.
The nature of the problem class (Tragedy of the Commons) means that everyone need to sign up to an agreed system of determining commitments. So they know what level of development will trigger commitments and what those commitments will be. The nature of the problem also meaning any action now (before global agreement) is only political manoeuvring and tokenism, and has no effect on the actual atmospheric carbon levels & climate. For every 'cow' you take off the commons, someone else will putting another 'cow' on (in China and India most likely).
As I've always said, there is no chance of global agreement until China & India fear civil unrest due to global warming (famine etc) more that they fear civil unrest due to poverty (staving because you're jobless). Don't think they are there yet, so I don't think anything will come from Copenhagen. Mind you the rhetoric from India in New York this last week in encouraging.
How best to spend your limited resources?
Building low carbon systems and building for resilience. What kinda low carbon systems to build now?
Resilience simply mean to do things to lessen the effect of global warning on you. Learn to grow you own food, add a rain water tank, renovate your house to be more solar passive, that kinda thing.
By all means build low carbon power sources, but remember what is important is only emissions during operations. You can emit all the carbon you want building it, you're only replacing coal fired power station carbon, in the race to get to China & India's climate pain threshold. Who know where the actual thresholds are? Guess we'll only know after we get there and everyone comes to a meaningful agreement!
Gnoll110
Here is my thoughts about why Kyoto was always irrelevant.
Most countries that 'signed up' don't have any commitments (that was the only way to get them to sign). Most (All?) of those that did sign with commitments look like they won't meet their commitments.
The nature of the problem class (Tragedy of the Commons) means that everyone need to sign up to an agreed system of determining commitments. So they know what level of development will trigger commitments and what those commitments will be. The nature of the problem also meaning any action now (before global agreement) is only political manoeuvring and tokenism, and has no effect on the actual atmospheric carbon levels & climate. For every 'cow' you take off the commons, someone else will putting another 'cow' on (in China and India most likely).
As I've always said, there is no chance of global agreement until China & India fear civil unrest due to global warming (famine etc) more that they fear civil unrest due to poverty (staving because you're jobless). Don't think they are there yet, so I don't think anything will come from Copenhagen. Mind you the rhetoric from India in New York this last week in encouraging.
How best to spend your limited resources?
Building low carbon systems and building for resilience. What kinda low carbon systems to build now?
Resilience simply mean to do things to lessen the effect of global warning on you. Learn to grow you own food, add a rain water tank, renovate your house to be more solar passive, that kinda thing.
By all means build low carbon power sources, but remember what is important is only emissions during operations. You can emit all the carbon you want building it, you're only replacing coal fired power station carbon, in the race to get to China & India's climate pain threshold. Who know where the actual thresholds are? Guess we'll only know after we get there and everyone comes to a meaningful agreement!
Gnoll110
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Permaculture: Lessons from the New England
On Sunday, 23 September 2007, ABC's Landline aired an report titled "Wool industry spreading tree message". The reporter was Pip Courtney.
The New England region of Australia has suffered some wear and tear over the last 150 or so years. This came to a head in the 1980s, with the death of large numbers of mature trees.
Research into the problem has shown that the cause of the problem was an environmental imbalance. Boosted pasture productivity lead to increased insect loads. Some of these species also used and eat tree foliage. Basically, these insect demands overwhelmed the surviving trees, killing them.
The show covered five operations from an in-detail survey of 10 leading landcare leaders from the New England.
The one the interested me the most was ‘Luna’. It’s using a cell grazing system. This system in the result of antidotal observation and research in the grazing impact of the migratory savanna herds of Africa. Basically, heavy graving for short period appeared to be a stable productive grazing pattern. The result is ‘cell grazing’.
Here is the relevant section of the transcript. There are also link to streaming video resources.
Sadly, there were no figures for the kinds of productivity change that had been produced for this site, over the years.
Cell grazing looks very like tractor grazing of chickens and pigs in permaculture.
Gnoll110
technorati tags:
permaculture chicken+tractor cell+grazing new+england landline
The New England region of Australia has suffered some wear and tear over the last 150 or so years. This came to a head in the 1980s, with the death of large numbers of mature trees.
Research into the problem has shown that the cause of the problem was an environmental imbalance. Boosted pasture productivity lead to increased insect loads. Some of these species also used and eat tree foliage. Basically, these insect demands overwhelmed the surviving trees, killing them.
The show covered five operations from an in-detail survey of 10 leading landcare leaders from the New England.
The one the interested me the most was ‘Luna’. It’s using a cell grazing system. This system in the result of antidotal observation and research in the grazing impact of the migratory savanna herds of Africa. Basically, heavy graving for short period appeared to be a stable productive grazing pattern. The result is ‘cell grazing’.
Here is the relevant section of the transcript. There are also link to streaming video resources.
TIM WRIGHT, 'LANA', URALLA, NSW: We're sort of realising that it's important to look after the whole. You know, we have more to manage than just pastures and sheep or cattle. You know, there's everything we've got to start to think about.
PIP COURTNEY: The first thing he changed were the fence lines.
TIM WRIGHT: Well, we started in 1990 and we had about 35, 40 paddocks, which was probably a fair few paddocks for that year. And now, 17 years on, we have approximately 270 paddocks.
PIP COURTNEY: Each paddock is grazed lightly four times a year.
TIM WRIGHT: So, that works out roughly eight to 10 days of a year or 95 per cent of the year a paddock is rested, which might sound pretty amazing, but we've increased our carrying capacity, the cost of production has gone down, the soil is in much better shape.
Sadly, there were no figures for the kinds of productivity change that had been produced for this site, over the years.
Cell grazing looks very like tractor grazing of chickens and pigs in permaculture.
Gnoll110
technorati tags:
permaculture chicken+tractor cell+grazing new+england landline
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Sustainable House Day
Sustainable House Day is on the 9th Sept, 2007. That’s this weekend.
House locations are on the site, grouped by state.
This Ainslie house look very interesting. The TV grab says it’s water independent and grid connected. It aims to be energy positive in the summer and have some energy drawdown in the winter.
In Canberra, the open houses are on Sunday. On Saturday, there will be open days at several schools and an office building.
Gong to go to a few, armed with a camera.
Gnoll110
Technorati tags:
global+warming peak+oil water energy carbon building+design permaculture global warming global warming
House locations are on the site, grouped by state.
This Ainslie house look very interesting. The TV grab says it’s water independent and grid connected. It aims to be energy positive in the summer and have some energy drawdown in the winter.
In Canberra, the open houses are on Sunday. On Saturday, there will be open days at several schools and an office building.
Gong to go to a few, armed with a camera.
Gnoll110
Technorati tags:
global+warming peak+oil water energy carbon building+design permaculture global warming global warming
Permaculture: Doing things with feeling
Been reading the current edition of E. F. Schumacher’s 1973 classic “Small Is Beautiful”.
In chapter 3, “Resources for Industry”, I’ve just found the provoking paragraph.
I think this is the beat argument I ever seen for doing things with/by feeling and being entrepreneurial.
It’s interesting to read a pre global warning environmental book. One of the core factors in the current debate just isn’t there. Yet the core logic and directing is as current today as it was then, during the first oil shock.
Well worth the read.
Gnoll110
schumacher small+is+beautiful entrepreneurial peak+oil carbon energy enviroment permaculture
In chapter 3, “Resources for Industry”, I’ve just found the provoking paragraph.
It is fashionable today to assume that any figures about the future are better than none. To produce figures about the unknown, the current method is to make a guess about something or other – called an “assumption” – and to derive an estimate from it by subtle calculation. The estimate is the presented as the result of scientific reasoning, something far superior to mere guesswork. This is a pernicious practice which can only lead to the most colossal planning errors, because it offers a bogus answer where, in fact, an entrepreneurial judgement is required.
I think this is the beat argument I ever seen for doing things with/by feeling and being entrepreneurial.
It’s interesting to read a pre global warning environmental book. One of the core factors in the current debate just isn’t there. Yet the core logic and directing is as current today as it was then, during the first oil shock.
Well worth the read.
Gnoll110
schumacher small+is+beautiful entrepreneurial peak+oil carbon energy enviroment permaculture
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Rammed Earth: Albury
More about the Melbourne trip (21&22 July).
Drove back from Melbourne on the Sunday afternoon.
Stopped in at Albury to check out the rammed earth building at a Thurgoona campus of the Charles Sturt University and a local church.
The C D Blake Lecture Theatre is pictured in Sticks Stones Mud Homes: Natural Living by Nigel Noyes. This is how I knew these buildings existed. A bit of googling with ‘Thurgoona’ and ‘rammed earth’ also brought the church to light.
The Lecture Theatre building also has an earth roof over the theatre end.
Arrived at the site only expecting the one rammed earth building. Was delighted to find that most of the other buildings on site where also rammed earth.
Do to lack of planning on my part; I had no replacement for the almost flat battery in my camera. So no rammed earth pics.
Gnoll110
Drove back from Melbourne on the Sunday afternoon.
Stopped in at Albury to check out the rammed earth building at a Thurgoona campus of the Charles Sturt University and a local church.
The C D Blake Lecture Theatre is pictured in Sticks Stones Mud Homes: Natural Living by Nigel Noyes. This is how I knew these buildings existed. A bit of googling with ‘Thurgoona’ and ‘rammed earth’ also brought the church to light.
The Lecture Theatre building also has an earth roof over the theatre end.
Arrived at the site only expecting the one rammed earth building. Was delighted to find that most of the other buildings on site where also rammed earth.
Do to lack of planning on my part; I had no replacement for the almost flat battery in my camera. So no rammed earth pics.
Gnoll110
Sunday, July 08, 2007
The Romans: Water engineers
There is a scene from Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’ that I really love. It’s the "what have the Romans ever given us" scene.
I want to focus on a group of the related systems: the fresh water system, irrigation, the aqueducts and sanitation.
SBS TV have just shown a 3 episode of documentary titled ‘The Roman Empire’.
The second episode includes a study/poke around the World Heritage listed ruins of the Roman city of Timgad in North Africa.
The part of the episode covers the city’s water systems.
The city had a water collection and conservation system which provided water for its 15,000 people, plus numerous public fountains and baths. This included 27 public and numerous private baths. The city also had an extensive sewerage system, of a standard only surpassed in the last 250 years.
The city’s primary supply was via aqueducts from springs 3 miles away. Rainfall within the city was captured for drinking and other uses. Storm water run off was also harvested and filtered for reuse.
Other aqueducts carried water greater distances for irrigation of wider farmland areas. Some parts of these aqueducts are still in use today.
These local water systems were integrated into the fibre of the city. The city included house site up to several hundred metres square. This means, site large enough to include permaculture zones one, two and three. Site plan from the 'House of the ship Europa'(named for the wall drawing of a ship) in Pompeii, confirm the use of grape vines, fruit trees, olives, nuts, vegetables, cisterns (water tanks), terraces and plant nurseries (presence of grafting pots & crushed lava together) within a townhouse compound[i].
In a world with cheap energy (oil & coal), the cheapest/easiest way has been to use the low material/high energy solution of building big dams and pumping the water over distances.
In a world where the labour energy cost ratio have reverted to a pre 1750 balance. Material intensive solutions like those used by the Romans make sense again.
In a post peak oil/global warming world, permaculture mean embodying large amount of labour and materials in long lived infrastructure.
Gnoll110
[i] Kevin Green, Archaeology of the Roman Economy, Batsford, London, 1986, p. 97 via G.H. Leigh, The World's Greatest Fix - A History of Nitrogen and Agriculture, Oxford UP, New York, 2004, p. 48.
Technorati tags:
global warming peak+oil permaculture roman+city+design timgad pompeii irrigation aqueduct sanitation
Reg And what have they ever given us in return?
Rebel2 The aqueduct?
Reg What?
Rebel2 The aqueduct.
Reg Oh yeah, yeah. They did give us that. That's true, yeah.
Rebel3 And sanitation.
Loretta Oh yeah, the sanitation, Reg. Remember what the city used to be like.
Reg Yeah, all right, I'll grant you the aqueduct , the sanitation are two
things the Romans have done...
Mathias And the roads.
Reg Well, yeah. Obviously the roads, I mean the roads go without saying,
don't they? But apart from the sanitation, the aqueduct, and the
roads...
Rebel4 Irrigation.
Rebel2 Medicine.
Rebel5 Education.
Reg Yeah, yeah, all right. Fair enough...
Rebel1 And the wine.
Rebels Oh, yeah
Francis Yeah. Yeah, That's something that we'd really miss, Reg, if the
Romans left, huh.
Rebel6 Public baths.
Loretta And it's safe to walk the in streets at night now Reg.
Francis Yeah, they certainly know how to keep order. Let's face it, the only
ones who could in a place like this.
PFJ Huhuhuh. Huhuhuhuhuh.
Reg All right. But apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education,
wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system, and
public health... What have the Romans ever done for us?
Rebel2 Brought peace?
Reg Oh, peace. Shaddup.
I want to focus on a group of the related systems: the fresh water system, irrigation, the aqueducts and sanitation.
SBS TV have just shown a 3 episode of documentary titled ‘The Roman Empire’.
The second episode includes a study/poke around the World Heritage listed ruins of the Roman city of Timgad in North Africa.
2: Timgad: Roman Africa – 1 July
The city of Timgad in North Africa is a perfect illustration of the Empire’s impressive system of expansion. It is testimony to the Roman method of cultural domination and assimilation. The program takes a look at this showpiece city, whose purpose was to instill in the natives of Mauritania the desire to become, and remain, Roman citizens. Every stone bears witness to an intense, exhilarating lifestyle, like the traces left by games of hopscotch or marbles, or the telling anonymous graffiti which reads: “Hunting, bathing, gaming, jesting – this is the life”.
The part of the episode covers the city’s water systems.
The city had a water collection and conservation system which provided water for its 15,000 people, plus numerous public fountains and baths. This included 27 public and numerous private baths. The city also had an extensive sewerage system, of a standard only surpassed in the last 250 years.
The city’s primary supply was via aqueducts from springs 3 miles away. Rainfall within the city was captured for drinking and other uses. Storm water run off was also harvested and filtered for reuse.
Other aqueducts carried water greater distances for irrigation of wider farmland areas. Some parts of these aqueducts are still in use today.
These local water systems were integrated into the fibre of the city. The city included house site up to several hundred metres square. This means, site large enough to include permaculture zones one, two and three. Site plan from the 'House of the ship Europa'(named for the wall drawing of a ship) in Pompeii, confirm the use of grape vines, fruit trees, olives, nuts, vegetables, cisterns (water tanks), terraces and plant nurseries (presence of grafting pots & crushed lava together) within a townhouse compound[i].
In a world with cheap energy (oil & coal), the cheapest/easiest way has been to use the low material/high energy solution of building big dams and pumping the water over distances.
In a world where the labour energy cost ratio have reverted to a pre 1750 balance. Material intensive solutions like those used by the Romans make sense again.
In a post peak oil/global warming world, permaculture mean embodying large amount of labour and materials in long lived infrastructure.
Gnoll110
[i] Kevin Green, Archaeology of the Roman Economy, Batsford, London, 1986, p. 97 via G.H. Leigh, The World's Greatest Fix - A History of Nitrogen and Agriculture, Oxford UP, New York, 2004, p. 48.
Technorati tags:
global warming peak+oil permaculture roman+city+design timgad pompeii irrigation aqueduct sanitation
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Permaculture: A Crude Awakening - peak oil
Last week, At the Movies on ABC, did a review of A Crude Awakening.
Included in the takes, was part of an interview with Dr Colin Campbell. Seeing this, especially with his accent, reminded me that I have some podcasts that include one presentation by Colin.
These were recorded at the Fuelling the Future Conference (link to podcasts) held at Kinsale, Co. Cork, Ireland on 18 & 19 June 2005.
There are a number of great podcasts from this conference, including from Richard Heinberg (peak oil author) and David Holmgren (co-originator of permaculture)
A Crude Awakening is on staggered release in Australia, so people are going to have to keep an eye on the papers/net and wait.
If they have got an interview with Colin Campbell, I expect it to be good, detailed coverage of the subject.
Gnoll110
Technorati tags:
global+warming peak+oil at+the+movies a+crude+awakening fuelling+the+future colin+campbell richard+heinberg david+holmgren permaculture
Included in the takes, was part of an interview with Dr Colin Campbell. Seeing this, especially with his accent, reminded me that I have some podcasts that include one presentation by Colin.
These were recorded at the Fuelling the Future Conference (link to podcasts) held at Kinsale, Co. Cork, Ireland on 18 & 19 June 2005.
There are a number of great podcasts from this conference, including from Richard Heinberg (peak oil author) and David Holmgren (co-originator of permaculture)
A Crude Awakening is on staggered release in Australia, so people are going to have to keep an eye on the papers/net and wait.
If they have got an interview with Colin Campbell, I expect it to be good, detailed coverage of the subject.
Gnoll110
Technorati tags:
global+warming peak+oil at+the+movies a+crude+awakening fuelling+the+future colin+campbell richard+heinberg david+holmgren permaculture
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Context: Green Roofs
Green Roofs for Healthy Australian Cities has a word press blog called Green Roofs. It’s a great source of posts and particularly photos.
A post from the start of May interested me. The Brisbane City Council (BCC) is looking at green roofs in the ‘Action Plan’ that is currently being drawn up by its Climate Change and Energy Taskforce.
For me, it’s an issue of context. Over most of the BCC’s area, green roofs would not be a good course of action.
Where are green roofs a good course of action? I think three factors need to be considered. These are:
1/ Rainfall
2/ Open space
3/ Insulation
Is local rainfall high enough that the addition high quality run off from a hard roof would not be missed?
Is the value of the additional usable open green space is greater value than the value of the addition high quality run off?
Is the value of the insulation provided by the green roof is greater value than the value of the addition high quality run off?
Background: Brisbane is a city currently in a water crisis, due to climate change and a lack of government planning (since an incoming state government cancelled a major dam in the late 1980s).
Over suburban Brisbane, the additional run off would be of great use for both as drinking and garden water.
Only in the inner city, would the value of a green roof as open green space and insulation combine to make is a good choice of action.
Gnoll110
Technorati tags:
green+roofs permaculture global warming inner+city suburbia water rainfall open+space green+space insulation brisbane australia
A post from the start of May interested me. The Brisbane City Council (BCC) is looking at green roofs in the ‘Action Plan’ that is currently being drawn up by its Climate Change and Energy Taskforce.
For me, it’s an issue of context. Over most of the BCC’s area, green roofs would not be a good course of action.
Where are green roofs a good course of action? I think three factors need to be considered. These are:
1/ Rainfall
2/ Open space
3/ Insulation
Is local rainfall high enough that the addition high quality run off from a hard roof would not be missed?
Is the value of the additional usable open green space is greater value than the value of the addition high quality run off?
Is the value of the insulation provided by the green roof is greater value than the value of the addition high quality run off?
Background: Brisbane is a city currently in a water crisis, due to climate change and a lack of government planning (since an incoming state government cancelled a major dam in the late 1980s).
Over suburban Brisbane, the additional run off would be of great use for both as drinking and garden water.
Only in the inner city, would the value of a green roof as open green space and insulation combine to make is a good choice of action.
Gnoll110
Technorati tags:
green+roofs permaculture global warming inner+city suburbia water rainfall open+space green+space insulation brisbane australia
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Permaculture niche: Dry Climate Trees
Over a month ago, there was an interesting item on Gardering Australia. It featured a visit to the Waite Arboretum in Adelaide.
It highlighted a group of plants I feel fill a permaculture niche not filled by Australian natives, large deciduous dry climate trees. I had been looking to the Med Basin, particularly North Africa.
Here is a batch of links.
Fact Sheet: Californian Oaks
the ecosystems
Wikipedia list 6 ecostytems
* Oregon Oak woodland
* Blue Oak woodland
* Coast Live Oak woodland
* Valley Oak woodland
* Island Oak woodland
* Engelmann Oak woodland
Many species of oak and other tree are listed
The three highlighted species were
* blue oak or Quercus douglasii
* valley oak or Quercus lobata.
* coast live oak or Quercus agrifolia
Imagine these Oaks, in a line north (south in the Northern Hemishere) of the House, shading it in the summer and letting the sun in during the winter. Solar passive design.
Gnoll110
Technorati:
carbon design permaculture solar
It highlighted a group of plants I feel fill a permaculture niche not filled by Australian natives, large deciduous dry climate trees. I had been looking to the Med Basin, particularly North Africa.
Here is a batch of links.
Fact Sheet: Californian Oaks
the ecosystems
Wikipedia list 6 ecostytems
* Oregon Oak woodland
* Blue Oak woodland
* Coast Live Oak woodland
* Valley Oak woodland
* Island Oak woodland
* Engelmann Oak woodland
Many species of oak and other tree are listed
The three highlighted species were
* blue oak or Quercus douglasii
* valley oak or Quercus lobata.
* coast live oak or Quercus agrifolia
Imagine these Oaks, in a line north (south in the Northern Hemishere) of the House, shading it in the summer and letting the sun in during the winter. Solar passive design.
Gnoll110
Technorati:
carbon design permaculture solar
Friday, December 29, 2006
Leo Mahon started a thread dealing with Queensland water law on the Permaculture Research Institute site.
the thread
Firstly, there is a typo in the original post, 60,000 litres per annum per cow should read 60,000 litres per cow. 20,000 litres per annum per cow is the figure used in the current version of the code.
The thread goes on to deal with using swales and the general direction of water policy changes.
I'll like to add some thoughts.
Been reading the Code for Self-assessable Development for Taking Overland Flow Water for Stock and Domestic Purposes. Even the title makes it sound like your taking government water. That the land and it's custodian have no entitlement. To me it's a natural justice issue too, the lands where the rain falls should get first bight at its water. That bight should be limited, but it should be first too.
Rumour has it that parts of the current code are not being enforced due to flawed assumptions. Too many people have run out of stock water too quickly.
That means they've been drawn up with too conservative assumptions!
The first version of the code didn't even allow for multi-year droughts, it assumed that dams would be refilled each summer. I've seen a dam built during this period, it last filled (& last overland flow) last February 06, it's getting pretty low now.
Is there a new code on the way? Third time lucky?
The 20,000 litres/annum for cattle and horses seems reasonable, not generous, but survivable. Leo, did I read somewhere that you intend to run sheep or goats? I'd use the stocking figure you expect to run when your system is mature as the basic for your total dam capacity calculations. The current code allows 4,000 litres/annum for sheep and goats.
The problem is in the Evaporation and Storage Factors. They are too conservative for pre global warming conditions. Add global warming means an extra margin is also needed (maybe 15 to 30%).
With regard to using water for raising plants for on-farm use, that's a grey area. It's not domestic (for use in the home & garden) but it's not a direct commercial use of water either. How do Landcare groups get their water? Leo, have you looked at the Code for Assessable Development for Operational Works for Taking Overland Flow Water? That seem to be the next stage after self-assessment. Not looked at it myself yet.
some of the codes
It also needs to be remembered that Australia is a common law country. That means that once a law (and its associated regulations) exist, a body of court rulings start building around it. So how the law reads may not be how it applies.
Give me back the old days, when what was important was how you caught the water, not how you used it! Darn technology.
Gnoll110
the thread
I am developing a rural property in queensland the smart state, and I have discovered that I am allowed to store in a dam 2.5 meg litres for domestic use, and 60,000 litres per annum per cow.
I cannot apply for a water license as no more are being issued in the area. While the land is being rehabilitated it is unstocked. I am planting saltbush for fodder, rainforest timber species as wind breaks etc, in all several thousand trees on a hundred acres.
If I use water from the dam to water the seedlings, I am breaking the law by stealing water that belongs to Sunwater Qld Gov, who may one day privatise and sell. By law I am only entitle to use stored water on the property for stock and domestic. It is illegal for me to establish a commercial nursery unless I buy in water or use roof water only. The land has its own watershed. The only water that flows on the property is rain that falls on the property. My only conclusion is that a change of law is urgently required.
If I change the species to free range poultry and lambs for instance, I will use a fraction of the water that cattle require.
If there are other people with an interest in this topic please contact
Leo Mahon
Director Permaculture Design Institute
janahnforest@bigpond.com
leomahon@yahoo.com.au
Firstly, there is a typo in the original post, 60,000 litres per annum per cow should read 60,000 litres per cow. 20,000 litres per annum per cow is the figure used in the current version of the code.
The thread goes on to deal with using swales and the general direction of water policy changes.
I'll like to add some thoughts.
Been reading the Code for Self-assessable Development for Taking Overland Flow Water for Stock and Domestic Purposes. Even the title makes it sound like your taking government water. That the land and it's custodian have no entitlement. To me it's a natural justice issue too, the lands where the rain falls should get first bight at its water. That bight should be limited, but it should be first too.
Rumour has it that parts of the current code are not being enforced due to flawed assumptions. Too many people have run out of stock water too quickly.
That means they've been drawn up with too conservative assumptions!
The first version of the code didn't even allow for multi-year droughts, it assumed that dams would be refilled each summer. I've seen a dam built during this period, it last filled (& last overland flow) last February 06, it's getting pretty low now.
Is there a new code on the way? Third time lucky?
The 20,000 litres/annum for cattle and horses seems reasonable, not generous, but survivable. Leo, did I read somewhere that you intend to run sheep or goats? I'd use the stocking figure you expect to run when your system is mature as the basic for your total dam capacity calculations. The current code allows 4,000 litres/annum for sheep and goats.
The problem is in the Evaporation and Storage Factors. They are too conservative for pre global warming conditions. Add global warming means an extra margin is also needed (maybe 15 to 30%).
With regard to using water for raising plants for on-farm use, that's a grey area. It's not domestic (for use in the home & garden) but it's not a direct commercial use of water either. How do Landcare groups get their water? Leo, have you looked at the Code for Assessable Development for Operational Works for Taking Overland Flow Water? That seem to be the next stage after self-assessment. Not looked at it myself yet.
some of the codes
It also needs to be remembered that Australia is a common law country. That means that once a law (and its associated regulations) exist, a body of court rulings start building around it. So how the law reads may not be how it applies.
Give me back the old days, when what was important was how you caught the water, not how you used it! Darn technology.
Gnoll110
Thursday, November 09, 2006
A Complete Food Chain and the 12 Permaculture Design Principles
There is an interesting post over on Backyard Aquaponics. It's called Complete Food Chain
In the thread Daniel wrote two posts;
and
I'd like to add two comments about Daniels posts.
Firstly, about fish growers fertilizing their dams to increase algae & intermediate organisms before adding fish. This fertilizer is effectively embodied fossil fuel energy. In the systems we are trying to build, we can do these kinda things, but the way we do them means the scale will differ. Our processes will require more labour, land/water area, time and/or capital/materiels so that we can embody solar energy. We can play with the mix, but it won't be the fast easy fix of cheap fossil fuels.
Secondly, Daniel commented about growing algae precluded growing plants aquaponically. True, but another way to think of it, is that the fish components of the system produces a certain amount of nitrogen. It's your decision as the designer/maintainer to determine how much of the nitrogen flow goes to plant production (for human/animal use) and how much goes to algae production (for internal system feed stocks).
After I made my initial post, I was looking for a better way to express additional idea threads.
Then I hit upon the idea of using David Holmgren's 12 design principles as a lens.
Is it time to draw a mind map?
Gnoll110
Technorati Tags:
permaculture design+principles carbon nitrogen food+chain david+holmgren aquaponics backyard+aquaponics fossil+fuel peak+oil
In the thread Daniel wrote two posts;
once i have quarantined my shrimp long enough to go into the tank with the fish, i could probably achieve this, but only with a very small stocking density of fish.
Farming fish in farm dams extensively rely on this, and they fertilise their ponds before adding fish to increase algae growth, which in turn supports more microorganisms, and so on
and
wait, if i did what was mentioned in my post above, i couldn't have any plants growing aquaponically with only an input of CO2 and sunlight
well i have confused myself, i have a feeling that there would need to be an input of fish food/nutrients to grow plants aquaponically as well
ah well someone else probably has some more helpful insight, and i will check this topic with eagerness to see if its possible
I'd like to add two comments about Daniels posts.
Firstly, about fish growers fertilizing their dams to increase algae & intermediate organisms before adding fish. This fertilizer is effectively embodied fossil fuel energy. In the systems we are trying to build, we can do these kinda things, but the way we do them means the scale will differ. Our processes will require more labour, land/water area, time and/or capital/materiels so that we can embody solar energy. We can play with the mix, but it won't be the fast easy fix of cheap fossil fuels.
Secondly, Daniel commented about growing algae precluded growing plants aquaponically. True, but another way to think of it, is that the fish components of the system produces a certain amount of nitrogen. It's your decision as the designer/maintainer to determine how much of the nitrogen flow goes to plant production (for human/animal use) and how much goes to algae production (for internal system feed stocks).
After I made my initial post, I was looking for a better way to express additional idea threads.
Then I hit upon the idea of using David Holmgren's 12 design principles as a lens.
- Observe and interact
Na
- Catch and store energy
Developing a system that captures and stores solar energy in usable/valuable forms
- Obtain a yield
Developing a system that captures and stores carbon, nitrogen etc as high nutrition food stuffs
- Apply self-regulation and accept feedback
Using large ponds, with caged off sub ponds and 'side' ponds to for produce feed stocks for the main fish speices. Thus using some of the nitrogen produced by the fish stocks to produce their own feed stocks. The system can also comsume excess output of Terrestial systems.
- Use and value renewable resources and services
Produce high omega-3 fish meats, with commerial value.
- Produce no waste
Using food stuffs that are in excess (roosters) as a feed stocks for a system that produces food stuffs that are in limited supply (omega-3 rich meats)
- Design from patterns to details
Na
- Integrate rather than segregate
Meshing the aquaponic system design with terrrestral systems.
- Use small and slow solutions
Use many sub pond and 'side' ponds rather than a small number of large ponds.
- Use and value diversity
Using many feed stock source to ensure more stable system dynamics.
- Use edges and value the marginal
Ulitize and manipulate pond surface & pond walls/floor to increase cumclative total production.
- Creatively use and respond to change
Na
Is it time to draw a mind map?
Gnoll110
Technorati Tags:
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Sunday, November 05, 2006
An old teachers view of the drought
I've been away during the last 10 days. Down south in Melbourne.
Yesterday I was talking to a retired school teacher. He taught in a number of country schools in his younger days.
His commented about this winter's drought was that Melbourne was getting Bendigo's weather and the Bendigo was getting Mildura's weather. That the rain in Melbourne this winter would be just about right for a wheat crop, where normally it would be too wet.
Technorati Tags:
global+warming melbourne bendigo mildura wheat drought
Yesterday I was talking to a retired school teacher. He taught in a number of country schools in his younger days.
His commented about this winter's drought was that Melbourne was getting Bendigo's weather and the Bendigo was getting Mildura's weather. That the rain in Melbourne this winter would be just about right for a wheat crop, where normally it would be too wet.
Technorati Tags:
global+warming melbourne bendigo mildura wheat drought
Saturday, October 21, 2006
'The Harmonious Wheatsmith'
I found this reference Thursday night, 'The Harmonious Wheatsmith' by Mark Moodie (ISBN 0-9517890-0-7). It's about a method of no-till farming developed by Marc Bonfils, a French ecologist/grain farmer.
Yesterday I found this abstract
Author: Mark Moodie
The only text on the Bonfils/Fukuoka no-till methods of cereal cultivation. A delightfully idiosyncratic booklet with quirky illustrations.
Book's abstract at permaculture.org.uk
This morning I found this
An e-book of 'The Harmonious Wheatsmith'
then this
Authors website with e-book versions of his works (Buy via payloadz.com/paypals.com)
Here is Marc Bonfils, the developers enter on wikipedia,
I also remembered that CSIRO was doing Clover/Lucerne research in the early 1990s. They were using Lucernes summer growth to produce a mulch layer for winter growing veggies and Clovers winter growth to produce a mulch layer for summer growing veggies.
I saw a backyard Clever Clover patch in suburban Canberra in the early 1990's. It was during an 'open garden' organized by Permaculture ACT (now defunct). An Ex-Pacters out there?
While googling I found these interesting looking links.
Australian Journal of Soil Research
Long-term effects of crop rotation, stubble management and tillage on soil phosphorus dynamics
E. K. Bünemann, D. P. Heenan, P. Marschner and A. M. McNeill
Australian Journal of Agricultural Research
The effect of boron supply on the growth and seed production of subterranean clover (Trifolium subterraneum L.)
BS Dear and J Lipsett
Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture
Survey of the productivity, composition and estimated inputs of fixed nitrogen by pastures in central-western New South Wales
A. M. Bowman, W. Smith, M. B. Peoples and J. Brockwell
Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC)
Research Update for Growers - Southern Region - September 2004
Putting the system together - Testing the value of lucerne with GRAZPLAN decision support tools
Libby Salmon, CSIRO Plant Industry
Then I hit pay dirt.
product info from the Diggers Club website and
info from a Canberra Organic Growers Society member. and
Organic Weed Management Survey results, Uni of New England research project
All the initial 'Clever Clover' stuff I found was from this decade. Then I found an early reference.
And guess where it was...
...in a article written by David Holmgren in 1991
Development of the Permaculture Concept.
There is a reference to Clever Clover in the Natural Farming section (page 4-5)
then back to the 2000's where I found a similar observation to David Holmgren's about the value of observing nature.
In a Science Show discussion panel, with the subject of the 'Serendipity in Science', Clever Clover and its originator Richard Stursacre are used to illustrate observation and serendipity.
Panel Transcript
I wonder if a 'Wetting Front Monitor' is anything like the 4 foot steel rod an old farmer I know uses? ;)
I did some searches on Richard Stursacre, both on google & CSIRO, but it lead nowhere.
I do agree about the best thinking being done when your out in nature. I walk in the mornings, it's my best thinking time.
gnoll110
the+harmonious+wheatsmith mark+moodie marc+bonfils clover lucerne csiro clever+clover permaculture+act subterranean+clover trifolium+subterraneum medicago+sativa david+holmgren natural+farming permaculture masanobu+fukuoka richard+stursacre
Yesterday I found this abstract
Author: Mark Moodie
The only text on the Bonfils/Fukuoka no-till methods of cereal cultivation. A delightfully idiosyncratic booklet with quirky illustrations.
Book's abstract at permaculture.org.uk
This morning I found this
An e-book of 'The Harmonious Wheatsmith'
then this
Authors website with e-book versions of his works (Buy via payloadz.com/paypals.com)
Here is Marc Bonfils, the developers enter on wikipedia,
I also remembered that CSIRO was doing Clover/Lucerne research in the early 1990s. They were using Lucernes summer growth to produce a mulch layer for winter growing veggies and Clovers winter growth to produce a mulch layer for summer growing veggies.
I saw a backyard Clever Clover patch in suburban Canberra in the early 1990's. It was during an 'open garden' organized by Permaculture ACT (now defunct). An Ex-Pacters out there?
While googling I found these interesting looking links.
Australian Journal of Soil Research
Long-term effects of crop rotation, stubble management and tillage on soil phosphorus dynamics
E. K. Bünemann, D. P. Heenan, P. Marschner and A. M. McNeill
Australian Journal of Agricultural Research
The effect of boron supply on the growth and seed production of subterranean clover (Trifolium subterraneum L.)
BS Dear and J Lipsett
Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture
Survey of the productivity, composition and estimated inputs of fixed nitrogen by pastures in central-western New South Wales
A. M. Bowman, W. Smith, M. B. Peoples and J. Brockwell
Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC)
Research Update for Growers - Southern Region - September 2004
Putting the system together - Testing the value of lucerne with GRAZPLAN decision support tools
Libby Salmon, CSIRO Plant Industry
Then I hit pay dirt.
product info from the Diggers Club website and
info from a Canberra Organic Growers Society member. and
Organic Weed Management Survey results, Uni of New England research project
All the initial 'Clever Clover' stuff I found was from this decade. Then I found an early reference.
And guess where it was...
...in a article written by David Holmgren in 1991
Development of the Permaculture Concept.
There is a reference to Clever Clover in the Natural Farming section (page 4-5)
Attempts to apply his [Fukuoka] methods have not necessarily been successful because any sustainable system is context and site specific. However, farmers inspired by Fukuoka or working independently have developed similar methods to produce organic and biodynamic grain. The techniques of growing grains and legumes together, over sowing of crops with no intervening cultivation or use of herbicide, and appropriate use of flooding and animals for weed control are now accepted in agriculture as at least possible. Recent research work by C.S.I.R.O. on vegetable growing using living mulches and green manure crops (including Clever Clover) without cultivation reflect as least the conceptual influence of Fukuoka's work.
Perhaps the most universal aspects of Fukuoka's work, the learning from nature, remains the most difficult for people to adopt and without that no amount of technical information on permaculture will lead to sustainable systems.
then back to the 2000's where I found a similar observation to David Holmgren's about the value of observing nature.
In a Science Show discussion panel, with the subject of the 'Serendipity in Science', Clever Clover and its originator Richard Stursacre are used to illustrate observation and serendipity.
Panel Transcript
David Salt: David Salt from ANU – just a bit of serendipity that I’m aware about, a friend of mine Richard Stursacre, he’s a young scientist at CSIRO Land and Water and he came up with this system called Clever Clover which was all about low till agriculture and he basically stumbled on this idea when he was trying to figure out how to help farmers basically till the soil without causing it any damage. And it was a system of sowing vegetables through sub-clover which would naturally die down and you basically didn’t have to cultivate it at all. He’s a really wise scientist but he says the secret of his success and it ties into so much of what you people have been saying, is that he gives himself a time of reflexion, he says that the most important part of his day, in fact the time when he does all his science is when he goes out into his field trials and he wanders through them and he doesn’t do anything but in his mind he moves the various components of the systems that he’s working on around in his head and he just asks himself questions – what if I do this, this way, or what if I do that this other way? And basically it’s that time in his experimental garden that first half hour he says that’s all the science, the rest of the day is just work, but it’s the reflexion where he actually does his science. So it would be great if you come up with a system basically where we all get half an hour in our garden each day where we just reflect upon what’s important in life.
Brad Collis: I’d very much like to follow on from that because I know Richard Stursacre and he’s developed something which I think is of far more profound importance than Clever Clover. He’s developed a little device that will tell you where the water is in the soil as it travels down through the soil, a Wetting Front Monitor it’s called. I believe that this could possibly go down in history as one of Australia’s greatest discoveries ever because three quarters of the world’s water is used to grow crops. With this device you can tell exactly how much water you need to put on the paddock and no more, you can then turn the tap off. You can make one of these devices with computer electronics and things like that and it can be expensive but you can also make it for 25 or 30 cents with a clay pot and a polystyrene rod.
This could actually fundamentally change the world from a water deficit world into a world with adequate water to do all the things we need to do. But Australia hasn’t shared this knowledge with the rest of the world. We’ve spent as far as I’m aware the last few years trying to commercialise this product with a small company and not really getting anywhere and yet this is knowledge that every country on earth desperately needs at the moment. How do we reduce the impact of the thirst of the irrigation industries that support our urban communities? This is a technology that will work on an African family farm or on a big Australian cotton spread. I think it’s a classic example, it’s very smart science, it’s good physics and good mathematics encased in some very humble and basic technology and it’s a classically Aussie solution to the problem. And I think that that’s what this country really you know is made of, clever science but very basic robust useable technology which is you know essentially one of our traditions. And I think you know Stursacre’s discover embodies what we have got to give to the world in the coming 50 years when water is going to be absolutely short, a third of the world’s countries without enough water, are severely water stress by 2030.
I wonder if a 'Wetting Front Monitor' is anything like the 4 foot steel rod an old farmer I know uses? ;)
I did some searches on Richard Stursacre, both on google & CSIRO, but it lead nowhere.
I do agree about the best thinking being done when your out in nature. I walk in the mornings, it's my best thinking time.
gnoll110
the+harmonious+wheatsmith mark+moodie marc+bonfils clover lucerne csiro clever+clover permaculture+act subterranean+clover trifolium+subterraneum medicago+sativa david+holmgren natural+farming permaculture masanobu+fukuoka richard+stursacre
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Sustainability within a Generation:A new vision for Australia
David is currently speaking on the ABC, at the National Press Club in Canberra.
David Suzuki has been talking to the ACF about an Australia version of this Canadaian document.
We need to be creating submissions for each on the following area like:
Food
Transport
Energy
Air
Water
Waste
etc
Towards the goals of
GENERATING GENUINE WEALTH: Supplementing the narrow goal of economic growth with the objective of genuine wealth
IMPROVING EFFICIENCY: Increasing the efficiency of energy and resource use by a factor of four to 10 times
SHIFTING TO CLEAN ENERGY: Replacing fossil fuels with clean, low-impact renewable sources of energy
REDUCING WASTE AND POLLUTION: Moving from a linear "throw-away" economy to a cyclical "reduce, re-use, and recycle" economy
PROTECTING AND CONSERVING WATER: Recognizing and respecting the value of water in our laws, policies, and actions
PRODUCING HEALTHY FOOD: Ensuring Australian food is healthy, and produced in ways that do not compromise our land, water, or biodiversity
CONSERVING, PROTECTING AND RESTORING AUSTRALIAN NATURE: Taking effective steps to stop the decline of biodiversity and revive the health of ecosystems
BUILDING SUSTAINABLE CITIES: Avoiding urban sprawl in order to protect agricultural land and wild places, and improve our quality of life
PROMOTING GLOBAL SUSTAINABILITY: Increasing Australia’s contribution to sustainable development in poor countries
Gnoll110
Technorati:
permaculture global+warming peak+oil food transport energy air water waste
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Of Weeds and Native Legumes
Today I found a negative comment about permies from an bush regenerator. It relates to farm/garden escapee plants.
I posted a comment in defence of permies and why I think using the equivalent natives is an issue in the current legal environment.
I will also to expand on my ecoliving centre post here.
Here is Robyn Williamson original post.
(Note for Robyn W: Tagasaste and Leucaena are different species, they fill the same niche (tree fodder) in temperate and tropical regions respectively, Leucaena is frost sensitive.)
Here is Robyn Becket comment.
Here is my reply comment.
Now I want to expend on my comments in two area.
One, what legal environment would I like to see. The problem is the the current set of laws is design to serve 3 master! 1/ Bio-diversity presivation, 2/Carbon freezing and 3/ City vote retension!
We all know what they say about serving two (or more) masters!
I outline where I think the law should be, in a post on the ABC's Four Corners forums and the "A-Team" story.
Any given piece of land would be subject to one to one Act or the other. It either being managed to preserve biodiversity OR mitigated Global Warming!
Note 'Carbon freezing' is a knee-jurk reaction, what is needed are systems that both store the large amounts of Carbon while cycling Carbon to mitigate Global Warming.
Also note in the same thread I question the Green Lobbies preoccupation with Hemp! As it's an annual crop, my knee-jerk reaction is that it should be less environmentally sustainable than wood chipping done right. See David Holmgren's "BIOMASS FUELS FROM SUSTAINABLE LAND USE: A permaculture perspective" page 2.
Someone needs to do the EMergy calculations for both.
Please note I was not the only 'Ned' on the forum that night, so only some 'Ned' posts are mine!
Two, the native legume I refered to above is Acacia harpophylla, commonly known as 'Brigalow'. The soil region where it grows is commonly called the 'Brigalow Belt'.
Technorati:
global+warming peak+oil permaculture weeds native+legumes anti-clearing+laws ecoliving+centre four+corners bill+mollison david+holmgren tipuana tagasaste leucaena brigalow acacia+ harpophylla brigalow+belt biomass biodiversity emergy
I posted a comment in defence of permies and why I think using the equivalent natives is an issue in the current legal environment.
I will also to expand on my ecoliving centre post here.
Here is Robyn Williamson original post.
We all know that seeds are the first link in the food chain and that nobody's getting anything to eat without them. We have a widely accepted definition of what permaculture is, but WHAT IS A WEED?
SEEDS, WEEDS AND PERMACULTURE
We all know that seeds are the first link in the food chain and that nobody's getting anything to eat without them. We have a widely accepted definition of what permaculture is, but WHAT IS A WEED? [For some answers to this I have relied heavily on "A Field Guide to Weeds in Australia" Rev. Ed. 1979 (Inkata Press P/L Melbourne) by Charles
Lamp and Frank Collett, who in turn have relied heavily on authors of various publications about the flora of Australia and the world.] The following is an attempt to shed light on the question and elaborate on the sound advice put forward by Russ:
On Wednesday, January 19, 2005, at 06:59 am, Russ Grayson wrote:
> Biologist Tim Low treated the Permaculture and weeds
> issue in a book published several years ago, probably
> influencing the perception of the link between weeds and
> Permaculture and taking it to people who otherwise
> would have remained ignorant of it. This, though, is what
> comes when you act in the public sphere, which is what
> Permaculture has done to a limited extent but which it
> will likely increasingly do as the accredited training
> takes it more mainstream. Permaculture organisations and
> teachers are going to have to repeatedly refute such
> assertions as those made by Low and clarify those
> made in the way that McMinn makes his. To ignore such
> allegations and to fail to publicly refute or discuss
> them does not make them go away. It merely confirms the
> criticism in the minds of readers. To adopt a policy of
> silence in today's media-saturated culture is to
> surrrender the argument to those making the allegations.
[Ignorance is the key word here]
> As always, critics should be asked for evidence - hard
> evidence, preferably, rather than circumstantial. To
> McMinn's credit, he had provided this.
As we have learned from permaculture there are no "answers" to problematic issues like "weeds", only solutions and/or useful suggestions. One way to answer a question however, is with another question, so we can begin by using words like what, where, when, who, why, how and finding out which plants are weeds.
WHAT IS A WEED?
Weeds are often defined as *plants out of place* or worse *a plant growing in the wrong place* such as an exotic in the Australian bush or grasses in a vegetable garden. To a wheat farmer, a weed could be anything growing in a wheat field that is not wheat. *A plant for which we have not yet found a use* is another description which is somewhat negative and certainly inaccurate in a permaculture sense
where every element in the design has at least 2, if not 3 or more functions. Every plant has its uses and functions even though humans may not be fully aware or choose to remain ignorant of them.
"Weeds" are most often the first plants to colonise disturbed ground, their roots bind the soil and protect it from erosion, their leaves shade and mulch the topsoil stabilising soil temperatures and preventing evaporation, they provide habitat for other organisms, their leaves transpire vapour which is part of the natural water cycle, their flowers produce nectar and pollen, etc., we can come up with a dozen or more functions for any plant before we consider what direct use they may be to humans. In practice, they are "indicators" of soil and climatic conditions and permaculturists observe them closely in order to "read" the landscape. They are also accumulators or "miners" of various minerals, e.g. chickweed accumulates copper.
WHICH PLANTS ARE WEEDS?
A Field Guide to Weeds in Australia has photos and details of around 300 species with weedy potential including both exotics and indigenous native plants. Here are some examples that may or may not surprise you:
Yarrow - Achillea millefolium
Bird rape - Brassica campestris (a parent of "Canola") a.k.a. "colza" or coleseed oil, an industrial grade lubricant used as a fuel in lamps and in the manufacture of rubber
Tagasaste - Chamaecytisus proliferus (is this now called Leucaena?)
Good King Henry - Chenopodium bonus-henricus
Chicory - Cichorium intybus
Afghan melon - Citrullus colocynthis
Paddy melon - Cucumis myriocarpus
Couch - Cynodon dactylon
Nut grass - Cyperus rotundus (a native - arguably the world's worst weed)
Wild rocket - Diplotaxis tenuifolia (the last time I bought so-called 'Baby Rocket' it was about $20 a kilo - that's for the leaves!)
Fennel - Foeniculum vulgare (a weed or a feed, depending on your taste buds)
Topped lavender - Lavandula stoechas
Nardoo - Marsilea drummondii
Lucerne/alfalfa - Medicago sativa
Evening primrose - Oenothera stricta
Kikuyu - Pennisetum clandestinum
Cane grass - Phragmites australis
Plantain/ribgrass - Plantago lanceolata
Broadleaf plantain - Plantago major
Sago weed/small plantain - Plantago varia [a native of the Cumberland
Plain and Blue Mountains (rare), probably extinct since last time I looked the Cumberland Plain was covered with unsustainable housing developments]
Tussock grass - Poa labillardieri
Self-heal - Prunella vulgaris
Bracken - Pteridium esculentum
Sorrel - Rumex acetosella
Chickweed - Stellaria media
Buffalo grass - Stenotaphrum secundatum
Broughton pea - Swainsonia procumbens
NZ spinach - Tetragonia tetragonioides (a native, despite the common name, extends to oceania)
Salsify - Tragopogon porrifolius
White clover - Trifolium repens, and 8 other species of clover, including Subterranean clover - Trifolium subterraneum Cumbungi - Typha domingensis
You will note there are many plants listed that are useful as accumulators, food, fodder and first-aid e.g. bracken, an indigenous member of forest communities and healing plant, marvellous for ant bites. I was certainly surprised to see lucerne and "sub" clover in there. Apparently lucerne is considered a weed in irrigated vineyards
and citrus orchards of the Murray River system. Due to oestrogenic activity, "sub" is apparently troublesome in potato crops where it reduces the yield and slows down harvesting.
Therefore, the answer to "what is a weed?" depends firstly on who you are, and leads to the next question:
WHO ARE YOU?
The greenkeeper or home gardener who weeds, feeds, waters, snips and mows his treasured lawn of couch, kikuyu, buffalo, or all 3 together, is often blissfully unaware that they are aggressive weeds of bushland, roadsides and other places (like community eco gardens), while they
consider anything with a broad leaf to be a weed of lawns and/or turf.
Corporate scientists, particularly geneticists, appear to consider anything that is not GE Canola, BT corn, rice, wheat, RR soya beans or cotton, needs weeding out and may even believe they can feed and clothe the world with these 6 plants. This is total nonsense of course. Of the billions of tons of biocides that are sprayed annually on these and other agricultural crops, approximately 1 per cent reaches the target organism.
Horticulturists are actively cultivating known weedy species for sale to home gardeners as "ornamentals", as we speak.
Bush regenerators think (rightly IMO) all exotics growing in bushland are weeds.
So everybody has a different interpretation of a weed, depending on where it is grown, where it originated, what plant it is, who is growing it and why. The classic case is Paterson's Curse [Echium sp.] which is called Salvation Jane by sheep farmers in arid regions of South Australia. Apparently it can sustain sheep through a drought, is
a source of great honey and the seeds have now been found to contain Omega 3 fatty acids. Another Echium sp. is a known cure for snakebite.
WHERE DO WEEDS ORIGINATE?
Evidence in the form of pollen profiles indicates that weeds are the creation of agricultural man.
It seems that only the English language has a specific word for them.
The Aborigines knew nothing of weeds until the arrival of white man.
The Chinese term for weed translates to something like "wild grass", the French say "mauvaise herbe" [bad grass/herb] and the Spanish "mala hierba" [ditto], plural [weeds] is "ropa de luto" [clothing of mourning]. Interestingly, Germans use the word "Unkraut" [the opposite
or antonym of "Kraut"] meaning anti- or non-plant. I would be interested to hear of any others.
The word "weed" is evidently derived from "woed", a corruption of Dyer's "woad", Isatis tinctoria which was used by warring medieval Britons to stain their skin blue.
WHEN DID WEEDS FIRST APPEAR?
Evidence of weeds goes back as far as Neolithic times (about 3000 BC) when the elm decline occurred and for a long time it was believed that this was due to climate change.
However, work by Iverson, Troels-Smith & Jorgenson (1949) examining pollen profiles in the mud beds of Danish lakes suggests the elm decline began when agricultural man fed elm branches to newly domesticated cattle and cleared forests in order to grow primitive cereals. Their evidence shows that the decrease in elm pollen was associated with charcoal layers. You guessed it. Neolithic man used
fire to clear the forests. Further experiments revealed that 3 men could clear 500 sq. metres in 4 hours using polished Neolithic axes.
Previously inconspicuous pollen grains began to appear above the charcoal layers, together with cereal pollens and the first weed to show up was plantain or ribgrass, Plantago lanceolata, qualifying it as the "first weed of European agriculture". The North American Indians
certainly knew where it came from and so dubbed it "white man's footprint".
WHY DO WEEDS MATTER?
Weeds are economically significant and inconvenient in agriculture yet agriculture creates them. The problem suggests the solution and we all know what that could be.
Russ wrote:
> Finally, there is the age of the guilty Permaculture book
> bearing the notorious list - it is now 30 years old,
> though I have not seen the most recent editions and it
> would be good to get feedback from others on this
> listserver as to the status of the list in these recent
> editions.
HOW CAN PERMACULTURISTS HELP?
The word "weed" itself has such a negative aura that I don't even like using it. I try not to, but it just rolls off my tongue like waves on the beach especially when faced with acres of recalcitrant couch and kikuyu.
I suggest for a start that we come up with a new and more satisfactory definition of a "weed". Maybe something like: "an adaptable, vigourously recurring, dominant, aggressive and/or tenacious plant with non-ecological and/or anti-social behaviour and the disgusting habit of
reproducing itself sexually, bisexually and/or asexually ".
We may also need to prepare our own lists of potentially weedy species, classified into bioregions.
Any more ideas?
Robyn
CONTACT DETAILS:
Robyn Williamson
PDC, Urban Horticulturist
Hon Sec, Fagan Park Community Eco Garden Committee
Local Seed Network Coordinator
NORTH WESTERN SYDNEY COMMUNITY SEED SAVERS
mobile: 0409 151 435
ph/fx: (612) 9629 3560
email: rz.williamson@optusnet.com.au
http://www.communityfoods.com.au
http://www.au.gardenweb.com/directory/fpceg
http://www.seedsavers.net/lsn/32.html
http://www.sydney.foe.org.au/water
(Note for Robyn W: Tagasaste and Leucaena are different species, they fill the same niche (tree fodder) in temperate and tropical regions respectively, Leucaena is frost sensitive.)
Here is Robyn Becket comment.
Hello Robyn,
I found your article very interesting.
I love to hate weeds. (The sort that invade bushland and my food garden) I think its interesting that for me and plenty of others weeding is a therapeutic activity. Perhaps if there were no weeds I'd just spend more time planting and watering and harvesting.
Also I am a bush regenerator, who tries to live holistically. I expect to be paid for some of my bush regeneration work, not all. My knowledge of permaculture design principles is limited, but I think I get the gist and with my knowledge of bush regen I can integrate the two. I do plan to learn more about Permaculture design, and watched the film at the Peats Ridge Festival.
I have visited Bill Mollison's place in N. NSW and didn't like it much.
Primarily there was a difference in ethics and from the people there at the time a defensive attitude about plants escaping from the farm and growing as ferals in the bush. I didn't like the attitude that it didn't matter.
My philosophy is that in providing for ourselves we shouldn't have a negative impact beyond our borders, and if we make a mistake in our experiments and plants escape we are responsible and must deal with them. We need to be aware of the plants likely to go feral and not use them.
At Bill Mollisons the tree Tipuana (I can't check proper name, I'm using a computer away from my books) used for nitrogen fixing was going feral. It is rapidly becoming a problem in bushland and has been hugely promoted by Permaculture practicioners.
I think it has been a huge mistake to promote Tipuana in Australia and the people who did should address the problems they have created. What amazes me is that the local native nitrogen fixing plants that would already exist on many properties are not acknowledged at all.
This message is getting a bit long, and I hope I'm not being too negative, but I'm glad for the opportunity. I'd be interested to see what you think about my comments.
Regards,
Robyn Becket
Here is my reply comment.
Robyn B
While using local native nitrogen fixing plants would be great, I personal could not recommend them to anybody.
The problem is legal. The use of local natives in any (permaculture or not) system, risks these elements of the system being classified a 'remnant' vegetation, and all the inflexibility/problems with current 'anti-clearing' laws. This varies so much between the states.
The devaluation of land that occurs whenisthe usage condition are made less flexible is real. The state government have drafted these law in such a way, that generally compensation is not available for the holder. So I in good faith won't use native legumes in my guilds/mass plantings etc. This is really a pit, a large region in the northern half of the eastern Australian grain belt has a leguminous native is one of it's dominant species, a farmers wont let is regrow and increase N levels for this reason.
This issue is stopping farmers from developing ultra long term crop/pasture/woodland rotation systems more suited to Australian dryland areas, than the current modified 'imported' practices.
What good are nitrogen fixing woodlands (to the farmer), if you can't clear it for rotate it back into crops. In PNG they have been doing 70+ year rotations for over 10,000 years.
Dumb politically driven law making usually generates some silly results.
With regards to permies not caring an about escapees, for me it's a matter of priorities. The centre of me attention currently (and for years to come I suspect) is Global Warming and Peak Oil.
What use is stopping directly human caused plant invasions, if the whole ecosystem disappears.
Global Warming is/will drive far more plant (and animal & diseases) invasions than invasions directly caused human plant prorogation. As climates change, the plant and animals move generally uphill and towards the poles. Greatly increase rates of invasion at most every ecosystem edge!
Now that I've finished my rant, in truth, I will use native legumes. But only in Zone 5 and parts of Zone 4 that will never be rotated into another Zone at some stage in the future. Get rid of the bad laws and I would use them in all zones.
Good leadership requires planning for change, good planning requires flexibility. Flexibility is undervalued by most.
Gnoll110
http://www.gnollsinspace.blogspot.com/
Now I want to expend on my comments in two area.
One, what legal environment would I like to see. The problem is the the current set of laws is design to serve 3 master! 1/ Bio-diversity presivation, 2/Carbon freezing and 3/ City vote retension!
We all know what they say about serving two (or more) masters!
I outline where I think the law should be, in a post on the ABC's Four Corners forums and the "A-Team" story.
Where is the science that says what is needed to really preserve biodiversity?
This is politics.
If there was real science, there would be two sets of laws.
A 'Biodiversity Preservation Act' to do what the name says.
And a 'Biomass Act', with the aim of maximizing the net reserves of carbon while maximizing Biomass production for energy production, thus reducing the burning of Oil, Gas and Coal.
The 'Biomass Act' would replace the various anti-clearing laws, with all their faults.
When Global Warming & Peak Oil meet, something must give!
Any given piece of land would be subject to one to one Act or the other. It either being managed to preserve biodiversity OR mitigated Global Warming!
Note 'Carbon freezing' is a knee-jurk reaction, what is needed are systems that both store the large amounts of Carbon while cycling Carbon to mitigate Global Warming.
Also note in the same thread I question the Green Lobbies preoccupation with Hemp! As it's an annual crop, my knee-jerk reaction is that it should be less environmentally sustainable than wood chipping done right. See David Holmgren's "BIOMASS FUELS FROM SUSTAINABLE LAND USE: A permaculture perspective" page 2.
Someone needs to do the EMergy calculations for both.
Is Hemp a solution.
Or would it just be an Oil to Paper converter.
The problem the modern intense cropping is that about as much energy (as Oil) is consumed as is produced as embodies in the paper.
To get more embodied energy out, you need to go to use perennials, and the longer the perennial grows, better the energy input:energy output ratio.
This is why permaculture use lots of food forests, timber forests etc.!
Please note I was not the only 'Ned' on the forum that night, so only some 'Ned' posts are mine!
Two, the native legume I refered to above is Acacia harpophylla, commonly known as 'Brigalow'. The soil region where it grows is commonly called the 'Brigalow Belt'.
Technorati:
global+warming peak+oil permaculture weeds native+legumes anti-clearing+laws ecoliving+centre four+corners bill+mollison david+holmgren tipuana tagasaste leucaena brigalow acacia+ harpophylla brigalow+belt biomass biodiversity emergy
Saturday, September 30, 2006
An Inconvenient Truth - Too optimistic
I saw Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" tonight.
I want to make three comment about it.
Firstly, it was very informative. Lots of new information tidbit I've not heard before, like the first Hurricane/Cyclone in the South Atlantic.
Secondly, I think it was to optimistic. Particularly about the amount of carbon emission's that can be cut (on both the supply & demand sides) while NOT having a large reduction in the standard of living/quality of life/complexity (in the developed countries) AND enabling the rest of the world to catch up.
Lastly, I think that 'we' only looked at the tail end of the problem. The (main) symptom, not the cause. We looked at three main graphs in "Truth". These being Atmospheric CO2, Global Temperature and Global Population, but these are all lagging graphs. There is a four graph, a leading graph, that most people don't think about at the same time. It comes in two closely related forms, Global Energy Use and its biggest sub component, Global Oil (and Gas) Use (Peak Oil).
Five hundred years ago, reason thinking developed, replacing symbolic thinking. This resulted in new ideas, constant change and new technologies. 250 year ago, we started accessing fossil fuels (Coal). Over the last 100 year or so, we have been accessing Oil (and Gas), we have been in top drive! This effectively removed energy as being a limiting factor in the resource mix that we have had at our disposal. All the other graphs are the result (directly or indirectly) of this fundamental change.
Ultimately we need to end up back where we were 250 years ago, operating within the Annual Solar Input Basis. The question is how much scale & complexity will we be able to maintain? Me thinks a lot less than the popular media & progressive governments think/promote. How long will the fall take?
Go see it!
Gnoll110
al+gore an+inconvenient+truth annual+solar+input+basis peak+oil
Update:
and speak of the devil, Cameron has been on the same subject
backlink (blog): Exxon funds "misleading" climate change lobby groups
backlink (blog): TPN promoting "An Inconvenient Truth"
backlink (blog): Tread Lightly... and carry a big microphone
backlink (podcast): the "Treading Lightly" podcast 3
I want to make three comment about it.
Firstly, it was very informative. Lots of new information tidbit I've not heard before, like the first Hurricane/Cyclone in the South Atlantic.
Secondly, I think it was to optimistic. Particularly about the amount of carbon emission's that can be cut (on both the supply & demand sides) while NOT having a large reduction in the standard of living/quality of life/complexity (in the developed countries) AND enabling the rest of the world to catch up.
Lastly, I think that 'we' only looked at the tail end of the problem. The (main) symptom, not the cause. We looked at three main graphs in "Truth". These being Atmospheric CO2, Global Temperature and Global Population, but these are all lagging graphs. There is a four graph, a leading graph, that most people don't think about at the same time. It comes in two closely related forms, Global Energy Use and its biggest sub component, Global Oil (and Gas) Use (Peak Oil).
Five hundred years ago, reason thinking developed, replacing symbolic thinking. This resulted in new ideas, constant change and new technologies. 250 year ago, we started accessing fossil fuels (Coal). Over the last 100 year or so, we have been accessing Oil (and Gas), we have been in top drive! This effectively removed energy as being a limiting factor in the resource mix that we have had at our disposal. All the other graphs are the result (directly or indirectly) of this fundamental change.
Ultimately we need to end up back where we were 250 years ago, operating within the Annual Solar Input Basis. The question is how much scale & complexity will we be able to maintain? Me thinks a lot less than the popular media & progressive governments think/promote. How long will the fall take?
Go see it!
Gnoll110
al+gore an+inconvenient+truth annual+solar+input+basis peak+oil
Update:
and speak of the devil, Cameron has been on the same subject
backlink (blog): Exxon funds "misleading" climate change lobby groups
backlink (blog): TPN promoting "An Inconvenient Truth"
backlink (blog): Tread Lightly... and carry a big microphone
backlink (podcast): the "Treading Lightly" podcast 3
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Peak Oil & Permaculture
Currently Authors Richard Heinberg & David Holmgren are on an Australian Tour. Last Thursday I left work early and drove up to the Kuringai Town Hall, 1186 Pacific Highway, Pymble (Sydney).
I got their a bit late.
I saw the end of Richard's talk. Very interesting, he was talking about the Oil Depletion Protocol.
David Holmgren's talk start with the history and stages of permaculture over the late 30 years. He then covered the history of energy/resource use, population and pollution and how their trends & magnitude parallel each other. He then outline 4 possible future scenarios: Techno-Explosion, Green-Tech Stability, Earth Stewardship/Creative Descent & Atlantis (Collapse). David stated why he think Creative Descent is the most likely outcome.
David listed some aspects and (permaculture) practices that Creative Descent would incorporate. Then the seven domains of permaculture action where covered.
We then, being in Sydney, look at Peak Oil and Creative Descent applied in suburbia. The example used was a 4 house street, starting in the 1950s. David followed its changes & total population (thus population density) over the late 50 years. He then outline measures that would lead to lower energy/recourse use and greater population density (the holy grail of town planners for the last 20+ years).
There was also a Q&A session. Didn't get a chance to ask my question. I asked David, privately, afterward. I'll write up the a post, and get David's ok to post it.
Then a long drive home, but I did bus it to work for most of the week.
first half slides (6.7MB PDF)
CSIRO article with figures of the model 4 house street
technorati
peak+oil david+holmgren richard+heinberg permaculture
I got their a bit late.
I saw the end of Richard's talk. Very interesting, he was talking about the Oil Depletion Protocol.
David Holmgren's talk start with the history and stages of permaculture over the late 30 years. He then covered the history of energy/resource use, population and pollution and how their trends & magnitude parallel each other. He then outline 4 possible future scenarios: Techno-Explosion, Green-Tech Stability, Earth Stewardship/Creative Descent & Atlantis (Collapse). David stated why he think Creative Descent is the most likely outcome.
David listed some aspects and (permaculture) practices that Creative Descent would incorporate. Then the seven domains of permaculture action where covered.
We then, being in Sydney, look at Peak Oil and Creative Descent applied in suburbia. The example used was a 4 house street, starting in the 1950s. David followed its changes & total population (thus population density) over the late 50 years. He then outline measures that would lead to lower energy/recourse use and greater population density (the holy grail of town planners for the last 20+ years).
There was also a Q&A session. Didn't get a chance to ask my question. I asked David, privately, afterward. I'll write up the a post, and get David's ok to post it.
Then a long drive home, but I did bus it to work for most of the week.
first half slides (6.7MB PDF)
CSIRO article with figures of the model 4 house street
technorati
peak+oil david+holmgren richard+heinberg permaculture
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