posted 10 years ago
Call to Action! Hey everybody - I just read an article in the LA Times profiling a few small farmers who are "at the end of their well" so to speak. I cried and gnashed my teeth and pulled my hair - wondering how in the world some of us in the world know how to solve this problem and some people in the world are still ignorant and some are just plain in stubborn denial. As Americans we've been so spoiled, always finding an abundance of a great variety of food in our grocery stores, that we only pay lip service to the need for change and it's always "they should do something about that". Well, in the spirit of Paul Wheaton's passion for mending the errors in of ways, I'd like to challenge every single member of permies.com to DO SOMETHING at least once a week to spread the word about permaculture and currently, water management. Unfortunately I hardly get any information about the drought other than soundbites on network news. So I've expanded my news gathering to online newspapers around the country. Not trying to preach to the choir here and I don't mean to insult those of you already teaching and communicating with your local "authorities". But this isn't just a California problem. I read a comment to Geoff Lawton from a California resident that he wished Geoff would come to California and teach everyone how to get out of the crisis. Well sure that would be wonderful - but it occurs to me that when a "sea change" in thinking and behavior is required, we need to tackle it at the grassroots level. And we can't be lazy and wait for someone else to do it for us. Let's not wait for a county board to ration water or decide to build an aqueduct. Let's not wait for the agriculture extension service to let go of their advocacy of chemicals and irrigation to embrace permaculture. Let's not wait until our friends and co-workers can't get lettuce or potatoes in the grocery store anymore !!! How about we all start sharing what we know with INDIVIDUALS who are trying to farm their dry land, and INDIVIDUALS who are working in any business related to agriculture and INDIVIDUALS who buy food.
I'm not a brilliant community activist or scientist or public policy wonk. I'm just a sometimes crabby old lady struggling to make ends meet and trying to grow my own food here in central NC, USA. My social anxieties keep me from leading a movement. But I care about our earth, am well-read and a critical thinker and strongly believe that farming methods and consumer habits won't change until most consumers demand it from the producers and in public policy. Look how many decades it's taken for organic produce to find it's way into big chain grocery stores and the debate and deceptions continue about it's value. I have more personal influence on my friends and neighbors by educating them about the health concerns from chemical fertilizers and pesticides and sharing my success with water catchment in my garden, than any news story. Anyway, MOST PEOPLE DON'T READ NEWSPAPERS or WATCH ANY NEWS other than the Today Show! So it's up to us all to share more of what we know about water management and monocultures vs permacultue with every single person we meet.
As soon as I read that article today I sent an email to the author (a reporter at the LA Times) with links to permies.com and to Geoff Lawton's video website, specifically the one on greening the desert. I asked her to share it with the farmers who are about to lose their farms and anyone else she could think of. My personal challenge is going to be to do that with every congress person in my state, every reporter and newspaper I run across who are publishing anything about the topic.. my state's extension services, every farmer at my farmer's markets who is not growing organic ...and just keeping my eyes open for other opportunities.
I also would like to request that a thread be set up here - for us all to continue a dialogue, with ideas for reaching out to people who would not otherwise be reading articles on gardening and water catchment, and figure out a way to condense everything we are learning from each other and the brilliant people before us. If we could condense Paul Wheaton's talks and writing into "sound bites" (haha!) and quotes from the gurus/writers before us - in order to have a simple way to communicate these concepts to the world to draw attention to the wealth of info available .......... I've seen great videos on Youtube and here, interviews with permaculture farmers that are quite impressive but I have trouble finding them again. We could all contribute links to persuasive articles or videos to share with others
I hope, whether or not this becomes a team effort, that each of you will just consciously attempt to spread the word. Thank you for reading.
