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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, the

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.

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.