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This is awesome! See also "Greening the Desert" [1] about integrated systems ("Permaculture" is a school of applied ecology.) These systems, properly designed

This is awesome! See also "Greening the Desert" [1] about integrated systems ("Permaculture" is a school of applied ecology.) These systems, properly designed, create the materials needed to build new copies of themselves. They're (potentially) self-replicating. A bit of labor and a lot of intelligence and we can convert deserts into gardens and food forests. And, given time, they will alter the (micro- then macro-) climate. (I feel like we have all the technology we need to solve our problems now, but we are distracted and incoherent.) [1] https://greeningthedesertproject.org/about-us/ https://greeningthedesertproject.org/about-us/ https://greeningthedesertproject.org/celebrating-10-years-at-the-greening-the-desert-project-jordan/ https://greeningthedesertproject.org/celebrating-10-years-at... > The Greening the Desert Project started with the purchase of land about ten years ago, and it expanded slowly until that mounted into exponential growth. Things started at the top, literally, with a large water tank that feeds a shower/toilet block just downhill. The toilets are dry composting, supplying fertilizer for plants on site, and the greywater from the showers and sinks goes to a nearby reed bed. The reed bed, still high in the landscape, is then able to send gravity-fed irrigation to many trees throughout the site. It’s all used onsite for beneficial biological cleaning. > The food forest with stone walls and earth-backed swales moves through the landscape to rabbit and chicken houses, which combine manures in a system that creates a cubic meter of compost every five weeks. That goes to the main crop garden, a shade-covered kitchen garden. The surplus fertilizer (compost) goes to food forest trees and the nursery. The runoff from the nursery goes through to the kitchen garden. The accommodation building has an office, a classroom, and eight bedrooms. It’s two stories high and made with earth brick and straw bale. The roof has a beautiful garden made up of wicking beds.

ph0rque 7y ago
Yes! I am hoping and planning to get my PDC (Permaculture Design Certificate) this year.
- carapace 7y ago
  Hey, you're the AutoMicroFarm guy? There was a company years ago that remodeled/landscaped people's yards into permie gardens and then harvested the crops and distributed them like a CSA. You could integrate a market function into your offering, eh?
  - ph0rque 7y ago
    Yes, there are lots of possibilities... but figuring out the business side of things has proven harder than I expected.
    - carapace 7y ago
      I'd be interested to hear more. As I said in a sib comment, permaculture et. al. obviously works and (in many ways) is more desirable than conventional agriculture† yet integrating it with the existing economy seems challenging. The existing systems really do provide tremendous amounts of food at very low prices, and it's hard to compete. It seems like you have to work with the kitchen budget that would be saved by growing one's own veggies in the backyard. †Farms turn forest into desert, while permaculture turns desert into forest!
      - ph0rque 7y ago
        That's great to hear! My ambitions for https://edible.estate/ https://edible.estate/ are to use the climate, weather, and plant data available to help guide the user and eventually provide auto-generated permaculture designs for a given plot of land (essentially, permaculture in an app). I realize that the app might get you only 50% (maybe eventually 90%) there, but a lot of the design principles and rules of thumb I've learned are amenable to being captured in code logic. If you would like to continue the dialog, please email me (andrew at automicrofarm.com) or set up a time to video chat (https://automicrofarm.com/book-an-appointment.html https://automicrofarm.com/book-an-appointment.html). Thanks, looking forward to it!
dylanz 7y ago
It's amazing what they accomplished in such an arid location with minimal input. I worked on Geoff's farm in Australia and it's also a very impressive project!
- carapace 7y ago
  To me Geoff Lawton (and others) have shown the undeniable viability of Permaculture, and the big question is how to replicate it at scale, faster? If giant techno-farms are more economically efficient they will win out over more ecologically efficient forms, despite being fundamentally less desirable, unless there's some other countervailing "force" or "pressure" (I don't mean physical force). (Ideally economic and ecologic efficiency would be unified, but we're not quite there yet. Remember that life is four-billion-year-old self-improving nanotechnology, eh?)

ph0rque 7y ago

Yes! I am hoping and planning to get my PDC (Permaculture Design Certificate) this year.

carapace 7y ago
Hey, you're the AutoMicroFarm guy? There was a company years ago that remodeled/landscaped people's yards into permie gardens and then harvested the crops and distributed them like a CSA. You could integrate a market function into your offering, eh?
- ph0rque 7y ago
  Yes, there are lots of possibilities... but figuring out the business side of things has proven harder than I expected.
  - carapace 7y ago
    I'd be interested to hear more. As I said in a sib comment, permaculture et. al. obviously works and (in many ways) is more desirable than conventional agriculture† yet integrating it with the existing economy seems challenging. The existing systems really do provide tremendous amounts of food at very low prices, and it's hard to compete. It seems like you have to work with the kitchen budget that would be saved by growing one's own veggies in the backyard. †Farms turn forest into desert, while permaculture turns desert into forest!
    - ph0rque 7y ago
      That's great to hear! My ambitions for https://edible.estate/ https://edible.estate/ are to use the climate, weather, and plant data available to help guide the user and eventually provide auto-generated permaculture designs for a given plot of land (essentially, permaculture in an app). I realize that the app might get you only 50% (maybe eventually 90%) there, but a lot of the design principles and rules of thumb I've learned are amenable to being captured in code logic. If you would like to continue the dialog, please email me (andrew at automicrofarm.com) or set up a time to video chat (https://automicrofarm.com/book-an-appointment.html https://automicrofarm.com/book-an-appointment.html). Thanks, looking forward to it!

dylanz 7y ago

It's amazing what they accomplished in such an arid location with minimal input. I worked on Geoff's farm in Australia and it's also a very impressive project!

carapace 7y ago
To me Geoff Lawton (and others) have shown the undeniable viability of Permaculture, and the big question is how to replicate it at scale, faster? If giant techno-farms are more economically efficient they will win out over more ecologically efficient forms, despite being fundamentally less desirable, unless there's some other countervailing "force" or "pressure" (I don't mean physical force). (Ideally economic and ecologic efficiency would be unified, but we're not quite there yet. Remember that life is four-billion-year-old self-improving nanotechnology, eh?)