• Post Reply Bookmark Topic Watch Topic
  • New Topic
permaculture forums growies critters building homesteading energy monies kitchen purity ungarbage community wilderness fiber arts art permaculture artisans regional education skip experiences global resources cider press projects digital market permies.com pie forums private forums all forums
this forum made possible by our volunteer staff, including ...
master stewards:
  • r ranson
  • Carla Burke
  • Nancy Reading
  • John F Dean
  • Jay Angler
  • paul wheaton
stewards:
  • Pearl Sutton
  • Burra Maluca
  • Joseph Lofthouse
master gardeners:
  • Timothy Norton
  • Christopher Weeks
gardeners:
  • Jeremy VanGelder
  • Maieshe Ljin
  • Nina Surya

Permie/Regen Ag Veterinarians?

 
Posts: 33
Location: Pullman, WA
29
4
books food preservation fiber arts
  • Likes 2
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
Are there any permaculture or regenerative ag focused veterinarians out there? Preferably people actively furthering the movement or writing papers. My partner is starting her senior year of veterinary school and writing a final paper on a topic of her choosing. She chose the Veterinarian's Role in Regenerative Agriculture (hooray, my crazy ideas are rubbing off on her). Then she went to the ag vets at her school, and they all said "Huh. We don't do that weird stuff here. You'll have to find some other vet to supervise you".

So far I've come up with Dr. Talia Fletcher, who was on The Permaculture Podcast in 2016, and Colorado State University has some vets in the sustainable ag space. I also saw a post on the forums here about Dr. Patrick Jones. Anyone I'm missing or other ideas? She needs a licensed DVM to supervise the paper, but also has 9 weeks of vacation in between various rotations to explore her options.

P.S. I wasn't certain of the correct forum to post this in but hopefully I landed in the right place.
 
steward
Posts: 16737
Location: USDA Zone 8a
4356
dog hunting food preservation cooking bee greening the desert
  • Likes 2
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
I feel it is great that your partner is going into the field of veterinary medicine.

She had a great idea for that final paper.

I hope she will learn more about permaculture and apply the principles in her practice.

To me, permaculture is so much more than Regenerative Agriculture.

It covers the basis of permaculture, the philosophy, the ethics, and the design concepts.

I feel permaculture is so much more than this.

It is also how we live our lives. Living within nature.

What I know about permaculture I have learned from this forum and the wonderful people who share their knowledge of all kinds of different things from permaculture, animals, plants, cooking, health, etc.

I also believe that there may be some permaculture veterinary medicine practitioners out there though they will just be hard to find.

Here are a couple of articles you and your partner might find interesting:

https://www.freepermaculture.com/animals/

https://www.permaculturenews.org/2016/02/22/the-issue-of-sustainability-how-veterinary-medicine-comes-into-play/

Is your partner going to specialize in large or small animals?
 
gardener
Posts: 828
Location: Central Indiana, zone 6a, clay loam
592
forest garden fungi foraging trees urban chicken medical herbs ungarbage
  • Likes 1
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
I had never even considered the possibility of a permie vet existing! Maybe cause I've been searching high and low for a vet who is works in line with my permie values and having not much luck. Glad to hear some do exist though and that your partner is exploring how that could be a good and valuable thing for them to be more widespread!
In my search for a permie vet, it seemed the the closest I could find was holistic veterinarians. I wonder if that might be another option so your partner can find a vet to supervise her paper? If you aren't able to get in touch with someone from a more specifically permie perspective, that is. Hopefully she finds someone who is already familiar with that and willing to help!

I really like what Anne said about permaculture being about how we live our lives and working with nature. Current medical systems seem to see us as separate from nature or even above it. I think a vital part of a meaningful transition to permaculture veterinary practices would be shifting that attitude dramatically. Hopefully to one that sees nature as a powerful ally, teacher and presence worthy of respect. Not just "resources",  "ecosystem services" or some other means to an end, but rather an end in itself.  
 
Jori Love
Posts: 33
Location: Pullman, WA
29
4
books food preservation fiber arts
  • Likes 1
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator

Anne Miller wrote:I hope she will learn more about permaculture and apply the principles in her practice.

To me, permaculture is so much more than Regenerative Agriculture.



Oh yes, she's pretty familiar with permaculture although perhaps it doesn't feel as integral for her yet. We were just starting to date when I took a PDC 7.5 years ago and she's been my biggest supporter in permie projects ever since. She's just trying to rectify the vast amounts of traditional medical information with a different approach. Her focus on Regenerative Agriculture for this paper is because she's hoping it will start a conversation on the way they teach animal medicine for commercial agriculture at her school. Right now it focuses so much on the needs of conventional dairy and beef operations, and yet they never talk about the land the animals are on or how they interact with it. That blows my mind.


Anne Miller wrote: Here are a couple of articles you and your partner might find interesting:

https://www.freepermaculture.com/animals/

https://www.permaculturenews.org/2016/02/22/the-issue-of-sustainability-how-veterinary-medicine-comes-into-play/

Is your partner going to specialize in large or small animals?



Thank you for these! I will pass them along and also read them myself. She is hoping to be a mixed practice vet with a focus on small ruminants. So that she could provide care to any animal on a small farm or homestead. I know mentorship will be important for her in the beginning though, and that middle ground between pets and agriculture can be hard to find. So I'm hopeful that the resources we turn up for this paper will be helpful going forward as well.

Heather Sharpe wrote: In my search for a permie vet, it seemed the the closest I could find was holistic veterinarians.



I think searching for holistic veterinarians is the right way to go at this point. Dr. Jones and Dr. Fletcher, who I mentioned in the first post, are described this way. We'd probably find more leads there, as the term seems to be better known.

In the future she wants to survey permies to ask what they want from a veterinarian and what is currently lacking in their care. Everyone I have talked to in person has mentioned how hard it is to find veterinarians who understand the needs of a small farm or homestead, let alone a permaculture focused one. I'm sure it could be a really insightful discussion!
 
this tiny ad cannot hear you because of the banana
Building a Homestead Root Cellar eBook by Brian Thomas & Teri Page
https://permies.com/wiki/207445/ebooks/Building-Homestead-Root-Cellar-eBook
reply
    Bookmark Topic Watch Topic
  • New Topic