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But they've been doing it for some 15 years, right? With those types of success, I'd expect the map to look like those virus-spreading maps where it starts some

But they've been doing it for some 15 years, right? With those types of success, I'd expect the map to look like those virus-spreading maps where it starts somewhere and then expands to all directions at exponential speed. That it doesn't hints at there being some issue. Do you need to tend to each plant constantly with someone who has learned some special skills and that doesn't allow for scaling? The advantage to having trees instead of desert seems so obvious, I can't see why everyone isn't jumping on it, unless there's some not-talked-about problem that limits these projects to touristy projects and YT filming locations. And with the amount of money that's going around for environmental projects in the developing world, I can't imagine that it's about lack of funding.

zeristor 4y ago
I guess the economic vested interests that have to be dealt with. From what I understand if there's a large amount of sheel and goat agriculture that eat so much vegetation there's little chance to survive, and if that is how people earn their living they'd need to be won over, or have some other way of making a living. I'm a Data Engineer in a different continent so armchair farming is no doubt insulting. But these things don't seem to be common knowledge, so much comes from studying how rain falls on the land, how to slow it down so it can penetrate into the soil, and raising the groundwater level which can take years.
carapace 4y ago
It's purely inertia. These systems work. They scale (which is not surprising when you think about it, they are made of four-billion-year-old self-improving nano-technology that optimizes for exponential reproduction at all levels simultaneously, aka "life".) If there's one systemic problem it's that Permaculture is diametrically opposed to extractive economic systems. (E.g. modern agriculture is/was more akin to mining than ecosystem design.) Monsanto (just to pick on them) has no place in a tessellation of ecological small-holdings. Another factor is that many Permies elect to charge money to teach Permaculture, and even the main textbook "Permaculture: A Designer's Manual" has been scarce on the ground and hard to get for years. I think it's a little better now? You can order it online and get it delivered. I think Permaculture et. al. would have spread faster if people taught it for free (and made money from selling the surplus they developed on their Permaculture farm, eh?) These days it has reached "critical mass" and the concepts of applied ecology are rolling out all over. You can search the Youtube for videos of massive projects in India, for example.
- luckylion 4y ago
  I'd understand completely if they were up against regular western-style industrial farming operations: I can farm this land traditionally, the soil is okay, there's money to be made, it works, that new idea is a risk, who knows what the future will bring, and oh Monsanto mailed me a coupon, how nice. But they're up competing against the desert. Who has a commercial interest in keeping the desert the way it is, besides some tourist industries around the pyramids in Egypt? Shouldn't it be trivial to convince people? "Hey, you have this land that is a desert where nothing grows, would you like to turn it into a food forest that'll feed you and offer you shade and make you loads of cash?" might induce some skepticism initially, but when you can point to their neighbor who's had a huge success with it, shouldn't everyone just jump on it? Are these desert-projects commercial and they're asking for large fees to work on them? That'd make sense to explain why they aren't spreading like wild fire, but at least from the videos most of them seem like friendly plant hippies that get a huge kick out of restoring land, so I don't know -- is that just a sales pitch?
  - carapace 4y ago
    I was reading a book about the genesis of, I want to say the Nature Conservancy. These folks had done the numbers and they realized that Pacific Gas & Electric (the company that supplies most of the electricity in California) could meet their growth targets by improving efficiency rather than opening new plants. Literally the company would make more money by building fewer power plants and everyone would have enough energy. A classic win-win situation. The PG&E execs just wouldn't listen. They had to taken to court, sued, to even begin to look at, let alone understand, the economic and technical advantages that were being presented to them. That's how strong the "building new power plants is what we do" culture was at PG&E. Frankly, you're preaching to the choir. I dream of buying a few acres of desert land in e.g. NE California or Nevada and building a Permaculture food forest from scratch. I have a couple of obligations that make it unrealistic. I have no idea what people with actual capital and ability are waiting on really.

zeristor 4y ago

I guess the economic vested interests that have to be dealt with. From what I understand if there's a large amount of sheel and goat agriculture that eat so much vegetation there's little chance to survive, and if that is how people earn their living they'd need to be won over, or have some other way of making a living. I'm a Data Engineer in a different continent so armchair farming is no doubt insulting. But these things don't seem to be common knowledge, so much comes from studying how rain falls on the land, how to slow it down so it can penetrate into the soil, and raising the groundwater level which can take years.

carapace 4y ago

It's purely inertia. These systems work. They scale (which is not surprising when you think about it, they are made of four-billion-year-old self-improving nano-technology that optimizes for exponential reproduction at all levels simultaneously, aka "life".) If there's one systemic problem it's that Permaculture is diametrically opposed to extractive economic systems. (E.g. modern agriculture is/was more akin to mining than ecosystem design.) Monsanto (just to pick on them) has no place in a tessellation of ecological small-holdings. Another factor is that many Permies elect to charge money to teach Permaculture, and even the main textbook "Permaculture: A Designer's Manual" has been scarce on the ground and hard to get for years. I think it's a little better now? You can order it online and get it delivered. I think Permaculture et. al. would have spread faster if people taught it for free (and made money from selling the surplus they developed on their Permaculture farm, eh?) These days it has reached "critical mass" and the concepts of applied ecology are rolling out all over. You can search the Youtube for videos of massive projects in India, for example.

luckylion 4y ago
I'd understand completely if they were up against regular western-style industrial farming operations: I can farm this land traditionally, the soil is okay, there's money to be made, it works, that new idea is a risk, who knows what the future will bring, and oh Monsanto mailed me a coupon, how nice. But they're up competing against the desert. Who has a commercial interest in keeping the desert the way it is, besides some tourist industries around the pyramids in Egypt? Shouldn't it be trivial to convince people? "Hey, you have this land that is a desert where nothing grows, would you like to turn it into a food forest that'll feed you and offer you shade and make you loads of cash?" might induce some skepticism initially, but when you can point to their neighbor who's had a huge success with it, shouldn't everyone just jump on it? Are these desert-projects commercial and they're asking for large fees to work on them? That'd make sense to explain why they aren't spreading like wild fire, but at least from the videos most of them seem like friendly plant hippies that get a huge kick out of restoring land, so I don't know -- is that just a sales pitch?
- carapace 4y ago
  I was reading a book about the genesis of, I want to say the Nature Conservancy. These folks had done the numbers and they realized that Pacific Gas & Electric (the company that supplies most of the electricity in California) could meet their growth targets by improving efficiency rather than opening new plants. Literally the company would make more money by building fewer power plants and everyone would have enough energy. A classic win-win situation. The PG&E execs just wouldn't listen. They had to taken to court, sued, to even begin to look at, let alone understand, the economic and technical advantages that were being presented to them. That's how strong the "building new power plants is what we do" culture was at PG&E. Frankly, you're preaching to the choir. I dream of buying a few acres of desert land in e.g. NE California or Nevada and building a Permaculture food forest from scratch. I have a couple of obligations that make it unrealistic. I have no idea what people with actual capital and ability are waiting on really.