4 ms·

>We know organic perma-culture is better; for our bodies, for the soil, for the water and birds and bees. It's not better. Not a thing about it makes it better

>We know organic perma-culture is better; for our bodies, for the soil, for the water and birds and bees. It's not better. Not a thing about it makes it better than conventional agriculture. Indeed one could make the argument it is worse than conventional agriculture for the items you listed because of the less effective methods used for "organic" pesticide, herbicide, and fertilizer application.

TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
I mean, have you read anything about Roundup? If so, how can you say that?
- Nicksil 5y ago
  >I mean, have you read anything about Roundup? If so, how can you say that? What specifically about Roundup are you referring to?
  - mandmandam 5y ago
    It's funny how often you show up in these threads Nicksil. Doing exactly this. For a software engineer you really seem to love defending pesticides, toxins, and mono-culture. Did an organic banana hurt you in some way?
    - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
      If I believed that synthetic pesticides were harmless, I would probably have the same reaction. It’s ok to disagree. Personally I think his data is old and needs to be refreshed, but he does not see it that way.
contingencies 5y ago
Permaculture is vague and hand-wavey but some core notions IMHO are thinking about the suitability of sites for agriculture of a given nature, whilst increasing biodiversity (including non-agricultural biodiversity) and reducing reliance on foreign inputs. These are good ideas that generally lead to higher outputs for a given land area and a stronger and more resilient ecosystem. The catch, however, is labour. You need to be OK with harvesting by hand, eating in season, weeding by hand, etc. And even if you do the full "food forest" approach (note: 5 years to get started) you are going to need a lot of land to support relatively few people. It's primarily a lifestyle thing and not practical at societal scale. That said, however, it is "better; for our bodies, for the soil, for the water and birds and bees". If you can't see this, you are perhaps insufficiently schooled in biology or being mislead through the use of a simplistic accounting approach typical of traditional agriculture, which externalises costs such as soil and water degradation and assigns no value to sustainability, freshness, local processing, genetic diversity and so-on. (Full disclosure: I am no farmer, but I operate in the food area and have an interest in related systems. I am from Australia, the origin of permaculture.)

TedDoesntTalk 5y ago

I mean, have you read anything about Roundup? If so, how can you say that?

Nicksil 5y ago
>I mean, have you read anything about Roundup? If so, how can you say that? What specifically about Roundup are you referring to?
- mandmandam 5y ago
  It's funny how often you show up in these threads Nicksil. Doing exactly this. For a software engineer you really seem to love defending pesticides, toxins, and mono-culture. Did an organic banana hurt you in some way?
  - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
    If I believed that synthetic pesticides were harmless, I would probably have the same reaction. It’s ok to disagree. Personally I think his data is old and needs to be refreshed, but he does not see it that way.

contingencies 5y ago

Permaculture is vague and hand-wavey but some core notions IMHO are thinking about the suitability of sites for agriculture of a given nature, whilst increasing biodiversity (including non-agricultural biodiversity) and reducing reliance on foreign inputs. These are good ideas that generally lead to higher outputs for a given land area and a stronger and more resilient ecosystem. The catch, however, is labour. You need to be OK with harvesting by hand, eating in season, weeding by hand, etc. And even if you do the full "food forest" approach (note: 5 years to get started) you are going to need a lot of land to support relatively few people. It's primarily a lifestyle thing and not practical at societal scale. That said, however, it is "better; for our bodies, for the soil, for the water and birds and bees". If you can't see this, you are perhaps insufficiently schooled in biology or being mislead through the use of a simplistic accounting approach typical of traditional agriculture, which externalises costs such as soil and water degradation and assigns no value to sustainability, freshness, local processing, genetic diversity and so-on. (Full disclosure: I am no farmer, but I operate in the food area and have an interest in related systems. I am from Australia, the origin of permaculture.)