Production of food without destroying the environment: Permaculture

Do you know anything about that?
People, be sure that is gonna be the only way for us to make life on earth possible in the next milenia...that is if our species last more than the next 50 years.
It is a way of growing crops with the concern of the interaction among the plants themselves...its nutrients and plagues...it's amazing people.
I really want you all that believe in mother earth as the only home we all have to go search for more information on this website:
www.permaculture.com
These are the best news of environment for me nowadays.
Making the production of food something self-suficient and it's even better for me 'cuz I realized a couple other things...as for instance, my life is gonna be on a farm, definately.

 

Listen you seem like a nice guy, so no offense, but these people look like freaking scam artists.

Agro-enviormentalism is very complicated and you shouldn't be paying for certification for a two week lecture. Its a topic that requires years of formal study and trying to do any sort of land cultivation without that knowlege will do more harm then good. What these people promise is overzealous, and there arguments for why such methods of agriculture are better for the enviorment are fallacious.

I'd be wary of anyone who criticizes 'market driven ethic' and then tries to sell certification after a two week course to have people ready to handle serious ecological concerns.

If your really interested in this, go to school and study agriculture, or better yet genetics, and then work for an agriculture company and influence its policys from there. Those 'cost benifit anylasis' they seem so critical of have allowed us to produce enough food to prevent massive starvation epedimics in the 20th century. The green revolution has saved billions of lives, and its all thanks to modernizations in agriculture, which it seems these people want to undermine.

For more info on the Green Revolution, and a discusision on how to feed a world with a population of 10 billion by the founder of the green revolution, Nobel Prize winning agronomist Norman Borlaug:

http://www.agbioworld.org/biotech_info/topics/borlaug/billions.html
http://www.agbioworld.org/biotech_info/topics/borlaug/borlaug-articles.html

 

Farm life is tough now, its all about science. Mayby you should just get a garden.

 

I shouldn't have post the website.
I visited this thing without any concerns of price or anything alike.
The fact, without websites or anything alike consists in eliminating transgenic vegetables from our food and making the prodution of organic vegetables easier to maintain and a little more simple than it is nowadays.
I'm not that naive when I say I believe it...and I don't only read the websites I have visited some institutes and I have already started this kind of cultivation with a friend of mine. We built his house with the help of bith an architect and an engineer using nothing but the non hazardous principles of permaculture bio-building in all the steps.
The websites I visited for more information were all from Brazil and in Portuguese, this are permaculture.org.br and there I searched for the institutes I went to.
It does not mean living without technology, it means measuring each step to see what we are doing and if we could do something less harming to the environment.
I don't agree with prices either but I do agree to keep spreading the idea.
Once again I say...if you don't agree with the website, go see it for yourself, search for the subject a little more.
And thatnks for the other web address you sent me...I'll sure be researching this too.
About studies...I'm studying Geography at the University now and my friend is graduated at Forest Engineering.
I'm sorry for my English, it's been a long time I don't practice it.

 

Why would you want to eliminate the genictly altered veggies
if the can be made to be resietant to bad weather or harsher gorwing condiotns and yeild bigger crops why would you want to not do that?
Now jsut to make a seperation i see a big diffrance from using Checmicals and stuff to aid the crops and kill the bugs, thats why i think genectily altering them is the way to go so we can keep all the pestacieds out of the enviorment.

And btw your english is good i have no problems reading it

 

Jay,

I see problems in genetic modifyed food 'cuz we are never sure of how it's gonna interact with the other non modifyed plants. If we start growing extra strong green beans..how are they going to interact among the other kinds of plants, with the soil and then with their plagues. Insects change a lot from one generation to the other so I imagine what kind of bugs we are gonna have after ten years stimulating them like this. Thus I can't agree with such technique that doesn't let the seeds...I mean youy buy the seeds once, they germinate once and then the crops are dead, you'll have to buy it over and over again.
The soil is the only thing we have for sure under our feet...we've been mistreating it in every way but introducing a total strange plant enriched and modifyed...that means a new species...created and the worst...always ready to be sell by us is too much inconseuqence to be considered.
That' why I don't...I can't agree with such thing.

Die Monsanto!

That's all.

 

Cauan, your english is very good. There are many advantages to GM crops and as of yet only speculative disadvanteges.

In the next 50 years the Earths population is going to increase to 10 billion and meeting the needs will be a major challenge. GM crops promise to meet these needs in a number of ways. There are also many enviormental advantages to GM crops.

For exaple Herbacide tolerance. It is very costly and enviormentally hazardous to spray large areas of fiels with herbicides. Crop plants genetically-engineered to be resistant to one very powerful herbicide could help prevent environmental damage by reducing the amount of herbicides needed. For example, Monsanto has created a strain of soybeans genetically modified to be not affected by their herbicide product.

Malnutrition is a major problem in the third world. Rice is a staple of many countries with malnurished populations, rice does not contain adequate amounts of all necessary nutrients to prevent malnutrition. A strain of rice with an unusually high amount of Vitamin a was created, after being funded by the not for profit rockefeller foundation, and was being offered for free to countries who's populations requested it. plans were also underway to make this 'golden rice' have more iron content, However, the grant that funded the creation of these two rice strains was not renewed, perhaps because of the vigorous anti-GM food protesting in Europe, and so this nutritionally-enhanced rice may not come to market at all.

Polution reduction is also possible through GM, Soil and groundwater pollution continues to be a problem in all parts of the world. Plants such as poplar trees have been genetically engineered to clean up heavy metal pollution from contaminated soil.

I could list many more benifits, but I'll leave it there for now. But keep in mind that any dissadvantages of GM have been purely specualtive, and anything that is marketed by US firms has to be approved by the USDA, the FDA, and the EPA and these are the most widely tested crops in existance. Since GM crops can be made to be resistant to pests, the problems of pests changing is less then that of normal plants. Through all that rigerous testing of BT corn, no mutagen has been found, so its naive to think that any changes in insects would happen due to the introduction of GM crops.Keep in mind that since GM crops germinate so effeciently, less land needs be cut down to make room for farming, another enviormental advantage. GM crops can are also being made to photosynthesize more effectivly, thus requiring taking less nutrients from the soil, and leaving the soil more fertile then typical agriculture.

You should keep in mind that all plant have been altered genetically, plants have been crossbreed by man for thousands of years and its been mostly advantageous. A tomato is a cross breed, and so is an apple. Also keep in mind that in traditional plant breeding, you take about 50,000 genes from one plant, and mix them with 50,000 from another plant, so what you get is kind of luck. In GM the plants are typically altered with between 10-15 genes of a new plant. Really GM is just a more advanced, scientific way to look at cross-pollination of plants that can promise to feed the world.

That site I linked you to about Nobel Laureate Norman Borlaug has a lot of info about GM. *note that Dr. Borlaugs great work has had nothing to do with GMO, but rather classical agriculture, but he's one of its staunchest supporters* You should check it out, there are a lot of missconceptions about GM food, and its really tragic, considering how many benifits there are.

http://www.agbioworld.org/index.html

 

does it not seem strange that most GMs are sterile - and just what does this do when mixed into the "soup", especially in larger and larger portions - seems a logical conclusion that eventually those "natural" will be tainted and mayhap cease reproduction as well - ah well, as we sow so shall we reap.

 

I dunno where your getting your 'facts' from oldwolf, but they are incorrect. There are very few (3 or 4) crops of GM aviailable to the public, most are still in testing and design phases. Of these approved GM crops, both Golden Rice and BT corn germinate more effeciently. I dunno what 'most' your talking about, but I'm sure if a crop was designed to be sterile, it would probably be to quiet down anti-GM riots that have plauged Europe and forced Golden Rice to be locked away in silos, far from the populations who need it. These people are denying this food to themselfs, but the people who really need it in the third world. These Anti GM protesters aren't even asking for more testing which while overzealous *considering the massive amount of testing GR has already been done* might be reasonable. But rather they have some caveman like objections to something thats new, screechingly call it 'frankenfood' and want it abolished without any proof of any negative consequence. To deny starving people food without any proof of dire consequences or even some consequences while they sit fat and happy protesting is the most ignorant and disgusting thing I've ever heard. These people revolt me to the very core of my being. Its easy to take the moral highroad when your not starving.

Once again, all the arguments aginst GM are theoretical and simplistic. If a GM crop was designed to be sterile, it would be very unlikely to crossbreed with non GM food, considering the massive distances and barriers set up between GM and non GM crops. If that were to happen, sterility is a passive genetic trait, and wouldn't pass on to future generations of plants.

http://www.biotech-info.net/GR_tale.html

 

i think mother nature did a great job

 

Mother nature did a great job providing the tools for usa to improve agriculture, but that doesn't mean it does not need to be improved. It is thanks to the Green Revolution that adequate amounts of sustainence have been able to be produced. Using traditional agriculture, it would have only been possible to produce enough food to feed about 2 billion people on current farm land. I don't see 2/3 of the population raising their hands to starve to death, and what megar changes to stave off hunger, would require massive deforestation. Thanks to the Green Revolution, we have much more adequate amounts of food. By the year 2050 the population of Earth will reach about ten billion and then start to level off. GMO is the best solution to produce adequate amounts of food for the growing population, without destroying billions of acres of forests. Living in the southwestern US you already enjoy the 'fruits' of 'unnatural' agriculture. Don't let blind love of whats natural let you turn your back on the advanteges to both people and nature presented through genetic modification.

 

lodui

-WTF corn has been genetically modified for decades. Buckwheat - just try to find unGM, have to go to Amish - and the list goes on and on. Guess you think genetically modified means just when they directly fool with the DNA in and of itself which is a fairly new mwthod of genetic modification. Man has been modifying foods for not just decades but for melleniums back to the pharohs and such, but I guess that don't count huh ? Hybrids, breeding and such are just another form of genetic modification - for those not so narrow minded.

 

Oldwolf, your kinda proving my point.

When I said this...

I was reffering to GMO, which is the direct scientific manipulation of Nucleic Acid in a laboratory.

But refering to cross pollination I said

Of course we've been responsible for cross breeding plants for thousand of years, and this has been very advantageous. Plants cross-breed on there own to, but in the 20th century miracuolous advanteges have been reaped from cross-breeding. In the 1960's after 20 years of research a team of agricultural scientists spearheaded by a scientist named Norman Borlaug, a strain of high yeild dwarf wheat was developed that forstalled mass starvation in Mexico predicted by most experts at the time, saving millions. But he didn't stop there, he spent years in India and pakistan brining his high yeild crops and teaching more advanced, more enviormental methods of agriculture, saving millions more. He moved on to china sharing these methods of farming saving millions more. By the time Dr. Borlaug won the nobel prize in 1970, the UN's WHO estimated that he was responsible for saving a billion lives. Thats Biliion with a 'b' and hes still continuing his great work today. Norman Borlaug is the greatest man who has ever lived.

This is an amazing time in our evoltution and GM food promises to end hunger and malnutrition this century. It is really just a more advanced way to look at cross breeding plants, and it has unbelivable potential.

 

World population has more than doubled in the last 50 years, and food production for acre doubled as well. That was done by using new technology, not by using past technology. Permaculture would be a step backwards.

 

Haha, good to see you round again eurpancreas. We can show 'em the light of science.

 

This thread seems to be well informed..and I'm not, but there are a few points that need to be looked at.

Firstly, is there not enough land to feed the whole world ?

Secondly, the "hungry" people seem to be from the third world, where it's not so much a question of lack of suitable growing land, but of money, peace, stability and yes, technology...

Thirdly, We (here in Europe) have surplus "Mountains" of food, and much of our land here has been forcibly farmed with little thought to the environment....Do we use those mountains of food to help the third world, or hinder it by our subsidies and over production..?

No, I do not think the world has a need for GMC, but I do think it it has a need for people to love and respect it. There's nothing wrong with nature, and everything is right with it.
GMC to me is like breaking the backs of healthy humans so they can be given the lastest design of a supertech wheelchair...

I'd rather walk on real earth on my own two feet thanks...

PS: The last few days out walking, I have seen hazlenuts no squirel or human will ever eat (The squirels have gone forever in that area, and the humans there do not even know it is edible) Blackberries, large juicy, and amazingly perfect, waiting to rot on the briar....And here is where there is a food problem, people on severely low incomes think food is frozen pizza, fish and chips, cheap burgers/sausages/cream cakes/biscuits/sweets for the kids to fill them up, and yes, more sweets for the kids to fill them up...And this is reality.

Is it me or has something gone dreadfully wrong somewhere..?

Permaculture gets my vote:

 

Science isn't a democratic process.

In agriculture you find ways to do things to produce more sustainence with less enviormental problems, GMO solves these problems in a number of ways.

Its a question of all these problems. And GMO can solve them all, by producing more food on less land, it reduces costs and reduces the amount of land to be cut down for farming, just one of the many enviormental benifits. Permaculture requires much more land, and can never be farmed to near the effeciency of GM. GMO can also leave the soil more nutrious then tradational croping methods.

Its 2 here, I'll post more on this later. take it easy strawpuppy.

 

(How do you do that Quote thing on here..?)

Quote:
Science isn't a democratic process.

Oh yes it is, is certainly is.
Who funds the scientists and the schools ? Why ?....are you going to tell me that it is all in the name of humanity ? a couple of words come to mind here MONEY/POWER...
Do you know of any people funding humanitarian scientific projects out of thier own pocket?
.........................

Quote:
Originally Posted by strawpuppy
the "hungry" people seem to be from the third world, where it's not so much a question of lack of suitable growing land, but of money, peace, stability and yes, technology...

Its a question of all these problems. And GMO can solve them all, by producing more food on less land, it reduces costs and reduces the amount of land to be cut down for farming, just one of the many enviormental benifits.

Hang on.....The cutting down of forests so that low income folks can get cheap burgers, is to be changed to super GM meat so they can get cheap burgers (and yes, once GMC has started then so will GMM M=meat).....Is that not compounding the problem ?......
By it's essence permaculture would not cut down the forests....As already stated, there is enough land, and there is nothing wrong with it...the problem is people made.......
Quote again:.......
Originally Posted by strawpuppy
the "hungry" people seem to be from the third world, where it's not so much a question of lack of suitable growing land, but of money, peace, stability and yes, technology...

 

Well I said I'd post more on this later, and I dont want to mess up my argument cause I'm a little drunk...

Anyway how you quote is type /QUOTE=*name* surronded by [] or you can just click the quote thing by who you wanna quote, and delete whatever you dont want.

Like I said, drunk, late, Talk about this more tommorow.

but no, science is not a democratic process, If it were, the world would still be flat, and evolution would be a myth. Scinence is not decided by a bunch of people gethering around and deciding how they 'feel' about something, its a cost/benefit analyasis of looking at facts and picking the most likely conclusion. Money given to scientific institutions should be scaled on where the most benifit lies, not how most people feel about a situation. Feeling should be abstract from learning.

 

Go to bed......We can catch this up later.....

Enjoying the thread,
Now go to bed,

Love you too

strawpuppy