Hope in a World of Crisis - Water Cycle Restoration

Jo Peralta wrote:Thank you Zack for the wealth of information. I was born and raised in the northern part of the Philippines where Virginia tobacco is grown. Years of cutting trees from our mountains to cure tobacco had caused deforestation and now we are experiencing a damage hydrological cycle. ...

I tried helping set up school gardens, conduct workshops and created a food forest at my parents backyard but it seems to me i am not making any dent. It's kinda frustrating  Any suggestions?

Jo

Mark Kissinger wrote:

Jo Peralta wrote:Thank you Zack for the wealth of information. I was born and raised in the northern part of the Philippines where Virginia tobacco is grown. Years of cutting trees from our mountains to cure tobacco had caused deforestation and now we are experiencing a damage hydrological cycle. ...

I tried helping set up school gardens, conduct workshops and created a food forest at my parents backyard but it seems to me i am not making any dent. It's kinda frustrating  Any suggestions?

Jo

Keep observing and understanding what you DO have control over, and make those things work better, so your neighbors will come to YOU with questions. You have a backyard. turn it into a noticeable oasis. Keep conducting workshops, keep setting up school gardens. These things take time, so don't spread yourself too thin. Get one project up and running. Keep a journal to record all those inspired future projects. Train your successors to manage while you begin a new project.

Understand:

Sepp Holtzer
https://www.unquotebooks.com/download/sepp-holzer-s-permaculture/Sepp Holtzer  (Watch out for the join free membership ad.)

Thanks Mark. The first school garden I helped was my village school. Since there's no funding, we (PTA) including the 5th and 6th graders pretty much use whatever materials we found around and I tell you these are abundant such as   bamboo for edgings,  rice hulls for paths, rice  straws, moringa leaves and branches, ipll and kakawati(leguminous shrubs), cardboard boxes, kitchen waste, etc etc. We used my favorite Sheet mulching as a quick way to build a garden and to show that these biodegrables are important sources of improving degraded soil, as a way of recycling them into usable form instead of burning it adding to the greenhouse gases. I shouldered some of the cost then later on some alumnis pitched in. Remember, this is a poor community but top heavy bureaucratic school system. The garden went on to win the Provincial school garden contest and the Principal was given recognition and awards at a 5 star Hotel. Sounds like I am bitter eh? I am fine but a couple months after the contest, I went to visit and  was dismayed at the lack of efforts to maintain it.  There were issues of some parents working abroad not wanting their children to work in the garden for the reason that they are working hard abroad to make life better for them. Hint: working the soil for many here is for the poor and most people wants their children to become professionals so they can work abroad. Some parents helped some just don't care and that created resentment  then the issue that the teachers are benefiting from the produce. There are guidelines set up but it seems like its not being followed. To them the enthusiasm of creating one for learning and to supplement the diet of the number of malnourished children is just not there. I learned a lot of lessons from that project. I don't live in the area but visited every now and then my elderly father and siblings.

I created a low maintenance Food forest at my elderly parents degraded backyard in 2016. The challenge was how to maintain the fruit trees I planted for lack of water, long dry season  and lack of worker to maintain it. I set up swales around the perimeter that catches runoffs from the mountain nearby and planted bananas  and moringa trees along side the fruit trees and mulched heavily. I planted lots of perennials and vegetables that reseed by itself. Today, the bananas( from tissue cultured) supply the whole clan with ripe fruits every now and then and a source of planting materials for others as bananas were wiped out due to viral disease.  The trees are thriving and the bananas and moringa trees are excellent for chop and drop. Another problem here in the Philippines is the median age of small farmers is 58 and their children are either working abroad or working odd jobs in the city.The youth has no interest and I was hoping to at least spark their interest for food security and to create green spaces.

The government officials here has no idea about conservation strategies. Education education education is what is direly needed here and to be able to do this it requires collaboration of all the stakeholders involved. But unless I am the President's daughter to be able to influence policies or I am rolling with money to create model farms for people to learn from, my hands are tied---for now. As an individual, yes, I do things I enjoy doing in this regard and have control over. I dream tho of setting up an Eco-House complete with water harvesting system, solar panels, living fence, nursery, chicken tractor, a permaculture demo farm similar to Sepp Holtzer as a gathering place. Lastly, I am comforted by a friend's message saying....not to stress at the challenges thrown my way, that there's time for everything and to just let it unfold according to God's plan. Thanks for unloading the frustrations lol.

Brad Landcaster' 2-volume handbook on Rain-water harvesting (Volume 2 is especially relevant for desert settings).

https://www.harvestingrainwater.com/


https://youtu.be/2iQ-FBAmvBw

Apparently you can get cash money from doing water conservation!

Blaine Clark wrote: Water tables all over the earth are dropping drastically.

David Wieland wrote:

Blaine Clark wrote: Water tables all over the earth are dropping drastically.

Our favoured way (permaculture) of food production may be too labour intensive to scale up enough to feed the world, but we can still develop useful skills in small scale application and share what we learn.
Keep growing, permies!

Jo Peralta wrote:Thank you Zack for the wealth of information. I was born and raised in the northern part of the Philippines where Virginia tobacco is grown. Years of cutting trees from our mountains to cure tobacco had caused deforestation and now we are experiencing a damage hydrological cycle. Household hamd pump wells  are getting dry, boreholes in the fields that farmers use to irrigate their crops are getting dry. Most unfortunate is that the river that used to supplement the villagers diet all year round is now temporary and had become shallower due to siltation or soil erosion. The use of dangerous agrochemicals on crops is also a concern. And yet, the people here seem not to understand the connection or the gravity of the problem. The government officals doesn't seem to mind either and so are the tobacco manufacturing industry is deafeningly silent on the environmental impact of tobacco growing and use.

I tried helping set up school gardens, conduct workshops and created a food forest at my parents backyard but it seems to me i am not making any dent. It's kinda frustrating  Any suggestions?

Jo