making the big bucks with permaculture

I recorded my most recent presentation and it is available as a podcast.

making the big bucks with permaculture part 1 of 3

Paul - you mentioned a big black book?  What book were you referencing?  Thank you for doing these podcast.

COGreg wrote:
Paul - you mentioned a big black book?  What book were you referencing?  Thank you for doing these podcast.

I believe he was talking about    "Permaculture -  A designers Manual" by Bill Mollison
http://www.amazon.com/Permaculture-Designers-Manual-Bill-Mollison/dp/0908228015

but Paul,

I'm a lot more interested in making the small bucks it seems like for the foreseeable future the ideal lifestyle will be making just a little more than getting by money with as little stress as posible

But, if 40 acre wheat farmers can become enticed by bigger bucks to consider permaculture practices then that's good too.

Success seems like the best way to spread permaculture.

crap when did this podcast start? must catch up....

Travis Halverson wrote:
But, if 40 acre wheat farmers can become enticed by bigger bucks to consider permaculture practices then that's good too.

Success seems like the best way to spread permaculture.

thats exactly what Im thinking to. And if such folks had on site methods of preserving fertility, or lowering or eliminating irrigation and other costs... even if they dont do it 100 percent we will be that much closer. and such farmers CAN do that, so we just need more examples to show more folks... Its only a matter of time imo, but hopefully sooner rather then later.

Good work paul!!! Your inspiring so many folks.

SILVERSEEDS wrote:

Good work paul!!! Your inspiring so many folks.

Especially if more people can be encouraged to go into farming.  In the US, the farming population is mostly of retirement age and only about 2% of the population (or less).  For farming to be sustainable, we probably need more and younger farmers! 

Technically, over half of the farms in the US could be classified as "Hobby farms", since approximately 80% of them have at least one person working off of the farm for income.  Few 'conventional' farms under 1,000 acres can clear a profit of over $20,000/year.  For the most part, the kids do not want to farm, and as the parents die off, the farms go up for sale.

Where else in the world can a farmer raising a bumper crop in a hungry world go broke?
President Eisenhower saw the future of US farming when he stated:
"Farming is easy when a pencil is your plow, and your desk is a 1,000 miles from the corn field."

H Ludi Tyler wrote:
Especially if more people can be encouraged to go into farming.  In the US, the farming population is mostly of retirement age and only about 2% of the population (or less).  For farming to be sustainable, we probably need more and younger farmers! 

We do without a doubt. More of those kids would be willing to stay in farming if they didnt watch their parents live in debt. Also more folks would seek it, in addition to the growing calls for more localized food. Permaculture offers the potential to widen those profit margins, so we do have a solid path to make this happen imo.

H Ludi Tyler wrote:
Especially if more people can be encouraged to go into farming.  In the US, the farming population is mostly of retirement age and only about 2% of the population (or less).  For farming to be sustainable, we probably need more and younger farmers! 

I see an answer to unemployment. It's too bad many have the misconception that "dirty work" is "stupid work", best reserved for ethnic minorities and the uneducated (there's a good book that explores these themes in depth - "Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work", by Matthew Crawford). Offering an alternative to young people who don't thrive in traditional academic environments (internships, apprenticeships, etc.) I think is a great way to bring fresh blood into the fold. I certainly would've jumped on it had I been presented with the option back in my school days.

Parts 2 and 3 of 3:

http://www.richsoil.com/permaculture/133-making-the-big-bucks-with-permaculture-podcast-23/

http://www.richsoil.com/permaculture/138-making-the-big-bucks-with-permaculture-podcast-33/

big black book: thanks Caleb, for answering that

brice:  there are lots of easy ways to make a trickle of money.  If nothing else, do the big money stuff a hundred times smaller.  Not sure what sort of thing you are asking.

I found a few things to be a bit objectionable.

Numbered list:
1)I worry that some of your business ideas would be a pyramid scheme. If you are making a good chunk of money training people to make a good hunk of money (training people) you end up with an unsustainable pattern of growth, so at some point it stops being training to make money and starts being just an experience. At that point you are using permaculture to be a tourist attraction, and that is dependent on there being little supply of such attractions.
2)I think you are possibly a little overconfident in your view of marketing power. An $800 ham is feasible, a $5000 ham is a lot harder. There is a very small market for these products at tis price.
3)The Omnivores Dilemma was not a moral dilemma about how to avoid the death of animals, it was a logistical dilemma about how to meet our diverse omnivorian dietary needs. I think Pollan's shortest formulation of the dilemma was "What's for dinner?"
4)I think that nature does not intend anything to be anyway, any sort of thing that designed the ecosystem has an intention would be supernatural.
5) Since evolution is my academic bread and butter I'm going to complain about saying that one diet is "more evolved", more morally acceptable, a higher moral standard, but not "more evolved" evolution is a change, often towards a 'purpose', but a human isn't more evolved than an E. coli or a beagle or a cow, just differently evolved.
6) I was very uncomfortable with the idea of selling cancer cures with a wink and a nudge, and think that it would be a very good idea to think very carefully and talk to an ethicist (or priest if that's your thing) before starting down that path.
7)Bees!

  I know this may go against the grain of some people. If you look into forming a farmers market with your neighbors it is possible to accept food stamps at the market. In WV the amount of eggs that can be sold at a farmers market by each individual farmer without being inspected is a 160 dozen per week. Also here it is legal to sell preserves from high acid fruits such as berries made in a non-commercial kitchen.
The reality is poor people collecting food stamps as a rule wants the best. If you can provide them with the best then you have a market for your products. So ironically the poorer the area you have then the higher your level of marketability.
  A new CSA could be made to work. I am investigating if I could use the EBT card on a cell phone based system and then I could do deliveries in the projects using an old school bus converted to WVO. A cool-bot could be used with an inverter for refrigerated space for certain items such as eggs.
The options are endless if we learn to work the system the same as the box stores.

Emerson White wrote:
a human isn't more evolved than an E. coli or a beagle or a cow, just differently evolved.

It is so refreshing to read that! 

But is use of the word 'evolution' restricted only to evolution of organisms?  Can't it also be applied to ideas?  Or other things? 

I'm pretty sure my ideas are constantly 'evolving', but it has nothing to do with my genes. 

Burra Maluca wrote:
But is use of the word 'evolution' restricted only to evolution of organisms?  Can't it also be applied to ideas?  Or other things?   

I'm pretty sure my ideas are constantly 'evolving', but it has nothing to do with my genes. 

I guess it depends on how we want to use the word.  It helps to define how you're using it, to avoid confusion.   

Burra Maluca wrote:
But is use of the word 'evolution' restricted only to evolution of organisms?  Can't it also be applied to ideas?  Or other things?   

I'm pretty sure my ideas are constantly 'evolving', but it has nothing to do with my genes. 

Even if it's not restricted to organisms 'more evolved' meaning better still doesn't make sense.

Emerson,

1) then don't do it.

2) then don't do it.

3) it would seem your interpretation is different than mine.

4) Okay.

5) There is more than one use of the word. 

6) then don't do it.

7)  Yes, bees are cool.

Don't do it is an answer that makes sense for number 2. For 1 and 6 it makes no sense as an answer.

3)When was the last time you read the book? Here is Michael Pollan's interpretation of his own work.

5) I realize that, but I worry because more evolved is exactly identical to something that commonly fools people in a view of evolution.

Here is a Michael Pollan video that talks a little bit of a look at the issues in both three and five.

I think academia is a pyramid scheme.

Robert Ray wrote:
I think academia is a pyramid scheme.

I agree with some branches. Some of Academia is high skill vocational training, but a lot of it is training about how to be an academic.

Ahhh. so just like PDC courses teaching some how to do and some how to teach?
Maybe it's just me I just don't see that as a pyramid scheme.
But I have had professors that push their views/agenda, that end up being a detriment to a course.

Emerson White wrote:
I agree with some branches. Some of Academia is high skill vocational training, but a lot of it is training about how to be an academic.

A lot of the training about how to be an academic relates to proper form for presenting ideas and conducting arguments so that they are productive. I'm sure all here are well-acquainted with the joys of the unproductive argument. This sort of training may seem as masturbation or empty posturing to some, but its value is made obvious in public forums like these where anyone can chip in their two cents, phrased however they think fit.

Ah, just remembered what I had to say about bees. Presumably the people who aren't doing much for mites aren't being pressed very hard by the mites, where as people who have lots of mites (lot of other bees around, or something that's damaging bee health) have to do more to get any honey. In this case you would expect to see a connection between mite treatment and CCD with out mite treatment being at all a factor.

We're getting a bit off topic here wih pyramid schemes and colony collapse disorder.
I'm not sure mites are identified as the only aspect/causation of colony colapse disorder so we might have to expand that to get a true picture.
Both probably deserve another thread.

The topic was the podcast, and those are replies to the content.

I like the idea that permaculture could be a venue for big bucks (title of the thread).
People pay for experiences every day, for example playing on golf courses every day and travel to different areas to play on different courses, same thing could be applied to making the big bucks with permie tours in different areas/zones. My property is scheduled for being on the local chicken coop tour, there will be interest generated in my permie gardens/greenhouse. 
There is so much material  roughly 2 hours covered in the podcasts other than  "making the big bucks" yet  connected to the concept some of them (CCD, Omnivores Dilemma) deserve seperate threads for effective discourse.
Let's talk about making bucks whether a bunch of small sales or large big buck sales (thread title).
 

Emerson White wrote:

5) Since evolution is my academic bread and butter I'm going to complain about saying that one diet is "more evolved", more morally acceptable, a higher moral standard, but not "more evolved" evolution is a change, often towards a 'purpose', but a human isn't more evolved than an E. coli or a beagle or a cow, just differently evolved.

I think this is semantics more than evolution. but ill take you up on that one. i dont really believe humans are so special, but i would use the term more evolved. certain things are more complex and therefore i would say they are 'more evolved.'

i believe the same for using that term in the sociologists dileman of an 'evolved diet'

common people tend to look upon human sacrificing aztecs as a  less evolved culture. whereas sociologists try not to make that kind of a subjective distinction. i fall somewhere in between, and i would argue that living in a society without human sacrifice (we do have death penalty) is a higher ethically evolved way of life. I think the same holds true for how we treat our animals. do we pet them and feed them and live amongst them and then one day break their neck? because we are hungry, and crave?

i argue that while we all do things of a higher or lower order, without getting to spiritual or nitpicky certain behaviors are more evolved ethically, as well as physically.

That 'more evolved' rigmarole is a huge problem when it comes to science education, nearly everyone in the community believes it, but holding that concept in your mind leaves no room for actual knowledge about how natural selection really works, it also leads to bizarre conclusions when people try to apply evolution to the social sciences. Such as the Homo economicus notion that held back economics for 30 years. 

Emerson White wrote:
That 'more evolved' rigmarole is a huge problem when it comes to science education, nearly everyone in the community believes it, but holding that concept in your mind leaves no room for actual knowledge about how natural selection really works, it also leads to bizarre conclusions when people try to apply evolution to the social sciences. Such as the Homo economicus notion that held back economics for 30 years.   

yea but thats just the nature of knowledge. Like fukuoka talks about we can analyze anything down to its component parts and eventually nothing has meaning. but if we take words at their surface for the meaning intended and that we use to structure our universe and communicate, then evolution is something that there can be more or less of. speaking temporally there are things that continued to evolved and others that usually came before these other things, that remain largely unchanged. so one has evolved more.

you are saying i think that this notion could get in the way of further learning, and that very well might be true, i dont know much about that. but that doesn't change the meanings of the words. nor is it different from most kinds of learning where previous information and ideas get in the way of further progression. i remember this in chess when i used to study it a lot, eventually all sorts of begininer lessons must be forgotten

Emerson White wrote:
That 'more evolved' rigmarole is a huge problem when it comes to science education

Yep.  There's a lot of confusion about evolution.  Confusion of language and concepts makes thinking and communicating more difficult. 

When thinking of the evolution of plants and animals I see where a plant or animal evolves into a better functioning organism for its area a change for the better for that particular animal in some cases it either evolves or dies.
When looking at evolving human sociological changes I personally can't say that all those changes are good.  Eastern-Western, Christian-Muslim, which more evolved and by what standard?
I guess the same could be said for evolving science just because we can doesn't mean we should.
So natural evolving/adaptations will continue to occur hopefully fast enough to compensate for rapid man made interference.
So using the word evolved to designate better isn't black and white.

Robert Ray wrote:

So using the word evolved to designate better isn't black and white.

I think it's extremely problematic! 

It's only problematic because of uses like this. If people could just walk away from the medieval notion of a ladder of life and viewing something evolved as necessarily better then we would stop having these problems.

The problem is that all of these "unevolved" (doubleplusungood) traits that people are fighting against are driven entirely by evolution (natural selection). It's kind of like how "organic" and "green" have been taken away and run with for ideological reasons. Only evolution as it relates to organisms is not ideological but scientific jargon, and it keeps getting muddied because people use it in ways that are incongruous.

Paul brought it up in part of a discussion about Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma, I just did a word search on the book (which you can do with a Kindle) and he used the word right 32 times, and once on page 314 he used it in a way I would consider wrong, but he wasn't taking credit for it, he said:

Even if the vegetarian is a more highly evolved human being, it seems to me...

  Look at sharks for reference. Or certain beetles or turtles... unchanged for millions of years.... arguably they are both less AND more evolved depending on how you use the jargon.... Truth is they fit their niche and it still works, its as simple as that...

    We humans are a funny animal... we take ourselves oh so seriously.

arguably they are both less AND more evolved depending on how you use the jargon

Disagree, If you are using the jargon you know that both are always wrong. It's just a sloppy way to talk about it.

Sloppy is right. I'm discontinuing conversations in other threads left and right for the same reason. There's any amount of flawed logic and loquacious garbage you can pile on top of a careless statement to try and cover your ass, but it kills the flow of the conversation and oftentimes renders the thread unreadable.

Emerson White wrote:
Disagree, If you are using the jargon you know that both are always wrong. It's just a sloppy way to talk about it.

yet Ive seen "official" sources use it both ways....  i reiterate, we humans are a funny lot...... we think so very much of ourselves. i do realize your right, but it hardly matters. Often peoples true meaning ishiding between the words anyway. we arent all walking dictionaries. we each relate to words a bit differently. someone may jump in and say this word means EXACTLY this!!! But in practice this just isnt true. No amount of disagreeing on the subject will ever change it.

I say the word love... we all related it it differently, based on our relationship to it.

heck the word permaculture... the phrase "bad weather"... on and on....

when your talking about such a word as the one in question it is arguably more set in stone, but again obviously not in practice. Im sure those who used it this way here, meant nothing negative or derogatory in any way, or ignorant for that matter, they had the right idea, but used the wrong word for the context....

again... we humans are a funny lot, we take ourselves oh so seriously.