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I've been on a kick lately to plant a garden and studying permaculture. The argument permaculturists make is that in a diverse ecosystem, like a forest, everyt

by fnid2 17y ago

I've been on a kick lately to plant a garden and studying permaculture. The argument permaculturists make is that in a diverse ecosystem, like a forest, everything is in balance, so pests are not as big a problem. For example, a permaculture garden would have chickens on it to eat the fly larva before they can infest the crops. With permaculture, there is no need for Monsanto. In monocultures, i.e. traditional farms, the tilling exposes the worms to the sun and birds and they are killed. Without worms, there is no life in the soil and the nutrients must be replaced by petrol based fertilizers. With permaculture, there is no need for fertilizer because the plants die and are composted and returned to the soil. Anyway, point being, if we never used these companies' products to destroy the natural order of things, we'd have more productive land and no need to GMO tomatoes. I don't mean to be preachy. I just discovered permaculture within the past week or so and it really meshes with my hacker mind. The gardening world calls permaculturists "geeks" as well. If you're looking into gardening or sustainability, check out permaculture.

HeyLaughingBoy 17y ago
Rephrase that to "pests are not as big a problem for the remaining plants" because the ones that had a problem with pests are dead! I don't like monocultures either, but I can assure you that adding chickens directly to your garden won't help much: they'll eat your tender young plants in addition to the pests. But their manure is excellent fertilizer: my potatoes were huge last year. However, I do take issue with the statement that "we'd have more productive land..." We wouldn't: compare "natural" farming anywhere in the world with the US approach of modern fertilizers and soil management techniques (annual tilling is frowned upon for a number of reasons) and, yes, GM plants and the yields are incomparable. There are a lot of things to be said against Monsanto, et al, but lower crop yield isn't one of them. Farmers aren't stupid: growing food is an expensive and unpredictable business and they'll take what advantages they can get.
- sethg 17y ago
  The argument I’ve heard¹ is that industrial-scale farming is very labor-efficient and organic permaculture techniques are very acreage-efficient. The techniques I’ve read about are a little more involved than “take the existing garden and add chickens”. ¹I haven’t researched this issue thoroughly enough to form my own judgement. Given what my children do to our back yard, experimenting with permaculture there would be an act of cruelty to the plants.
- fnid2 17y ago
  The chicken example was concerning the cycle of flies in fruit trees. You're right, they will eat anything people will eat, including your lovely garden. But companion planting, like marigolds in tomatoes is also a permaculture design principle. Wormwood, the stuff in absinthe, is also good for chickens to keep away some parasites. For anyone interested, it's definitely more complicated than I'm describing here (but not by much). Go to a video search site like bing or google and search for permaculture and filter by videos longer than 20 minutes. There's a wealth of information on it. Look for stuff about about Forest Gardens. There are several videos about Sepp Holzer in Austria who grows everything you can imagine. Really spectacular stuff! As sethg said, by "more productive" I mean more food per acre. I've heard with permaculture, you can feed 10 people on an acre. The reason is because you have nut trees at the top, fruit trees below that, followed by bushes, herbaceous, root plants, then vines and climbers spread throughout. In a monoculture, you have just one layer of productivity: a field of potatoes with no trees. An apple orchard with no herbaceous plants or vines. It's like a web server at 15% capacity. Permaculture is to agriculture what virtualization is to I.T. Infrastructure.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 17y ago
    * I've heard with permaculture, you can feed 10 people on an acre* I'd be surprised it it wasn't even more than that if done carefully! You're right that by mixing plant types, you can achieve better density and get a synergistic effect (another example is planting garlic/onions next to potatoes to repel potato bugs). One problem with large commercial farms is that in order to reduce the labor needs you have to plant at a density that makes it easier for mechanized equipment to harvest and that means that you must generally separate crops. I have seen research projects that used robots to plant seedlings: typically a very labor intensive task. I'm thinking that if you could build robots/smarter machines that could harvest a wide variety of crops instead of just e.g, what a combine can process, then greater density & improved crop mix could be achieved. I've always enjoyed food gardening and more recently I've been thinking of ways to apply technology to large gardens/small farm plots to reduce the dependence on my very limited free time. The problem is that now my free time would be shifted from gardening to robotics research :-)

by fnid2 17y ago

HeyLaughingBoy 17y ago

Rephrase that to "pests are not as big a problem for the remaining plants" because the ones that had a problem with pests are dead! I don't like monocultures either, but I can assure you that adding chickens directly to your garden won't help much: they'll eat your tender young plants in addition to the pests. But their manure is excellent fertilizer: my potatoes were huge last year. However, I do take issue with the statement that "we'd have more productive land..." We wouldn't: compare "natural" farming anywhere in the world with the US approach of modern fertilizers and soil management techniques (annual tilling is frowned upon for a number of reasons) and, yes, GM plants and the yields are incomparable. There are a lot of things to be said against Monsanto, et al, but lower crop yield isn't one of them. Farmers aren't stupid: growing food is an expensive and unpredictable business and they'll take what advantages they can get.

sethg 17y ago
The argument I’ve heard¹ is that industrial-scale farming is very labor-efficient and organic permaculture techniques are very acreage-efficient. The techniques I’ve read about are a little more involved than “take the existing garden and add chickens”. ¹I haven’t researched this issue thoroughly enough to form my own judgement. Given what my children do to our back yard, experimenting with permaculture there would be an act of cruelty to the plants.
fnid2 17y ago
The chicken example was concerning the cycle of flies in fruit trees. You're right, they will eat anything people will eat, including your lovely garden. But companion planting, like marigolds in tomatoes is also a permaculture design principle. Wormwood, the stuff in absinthe, is also good for chickens to keep away some parasites. For anyone interested, it's definitely more complicated than I'm describing here (but not by much). Go to a video search site like bing or google and search for permaculture and filter by videos longer than 20 minutes. There's a wealth of information on it. Look for stuff about about Forest Gardens. There are several videos about Sepp Holzer in Austria who grows everything you can imagine. Really spectacular stuff! As sethg said, by "more productive" I mean more food per acre. I've heard with permaculture, you can feed 10 people on an acre. The reason is because you have nut trees at the top, fruit trees below that, followed by bushes, herbaceous, root plants, then vines and climbers spread throughout. In a monoculture, you have just one layer of productivity: a field of potatoes with no trees. An apple orchard with no herbaceous plants or vines. It's like a web server at 15% capacity. Permaculture is to agriculture what virtualization is to I.T. Infrastructure.
- HeyLaughingBoy 17y ago
  * I've heard with permaculture, you can feed 10 people on an acre* I'd be surprised it it wasn't even more than that if done carefully! You're right that by mixing plant types, you can achieve better density and get a synergistic effect (another example is planting garlic/onions next to potatoes to repel potato bugs). One problem with large commercial farms is that in order to reduce the labor needs you have to plant at a density that makes it easier for mechanized equipment to harvest and that means that you must generally separate crops. I have seen research projects that used robots to plant seedlings: typically a very labor intensive task. I'm thinking that if you could build robots/smarter machines that could harvest a wide variety of crops instead of just e.g, what a combine can process, then greater density & improved crop mix could be achieved. I've always enjoyed food gardening and more recently I've been thinking of ways to apply technology to large gardens/small farm plots to reduce the dependence on my very limited free time. The problem is that now my free time would be shifted from gardening to robotics research :-)