making the big bucks with permaculture

The word "evolution" conotates change over time.  It does not imply improvement, merely change.  Most people associate improvement with evolution, which is merely our hope that change will be for the better.  Mankind's diet evolved from grubs and roots to cereals about the time civilization moved into agrarian societies.  Was that an improvement?  Many think not, but the evolution happened regardless.  Vegetarians evolved to a plant based diet.  Is that an improvement?  Some say yes, some say no, but at least for them, it is an evolution.

SILVERSEEDS wrote:
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.

What do you mean? I read probably 5-20 scientific papers a day, and I've never seen any of them use it in such a muddy and confusing manner.

Emerson White wrote:
What do you mean? I read probably 5-20 scientific papers a day, and I've never seen any of them use it in such a muddy and confusing manner.

i said official, not scientific. I even used quotation marks. I meant articles in newspaper talking about scientific things they dont fully understand, and the like. lots of those types of "official" sources use it that way...

Ah, my bad.

Paul and Jocelyn go over some listener questions in this podcast. They talk about gardening, greenhouses, and starting from scratch doing something you love. podcast

This may be off topic as it was actually the Professionalism podcast I was looking to respond to, yet I ended up here and some of what is being discussed is relative. What I wish to express has been formulated over some time and I feel that now is the time to do so.

My awareness of permaculture came via an important relationship in my life which, although it itself lasted a relatively short time before there was a split, bore both fruit and seed in the form of children, permaculture, and playing guitar. Over many years of not a huge amount of contact, the relationship I referred to budded into a different type of love and kinship over distance.

So, in the late 70's the seed of permaculture blew into my existence, attached itself and got carried along wherever I went, growing slowly throughout the years as well as at times not growing at all, at least not evidently. The path it took was a grassroots one. I don't hold any claims to having done anything huge with it, though there is the saying about the butterfly fluttering its wings causing a tsunami or whatever. Yet when I look back there are some bigger things which flowed from smaller ones, such as a member of the little permie group I started in a suburb of Melbourne in Australia going on to teach permaculture and start a permie group nearby to where the group I had was.

At the time of the little permie group I mentioned, I lived in a suburban rented house with a small backyard. My intentions included learning more about and promoting permaculture, growing more of my own food, helping others, and living in a satisfying non-greedy way, and hoping this flowed onto something which was good for the planet. With a low budget, I simply extended personal intentions to being ones which benefitted not only myself but others. I provided the place, found the teacher, supplied some of the materials such as plants, refreshments etc. There was a very low, affordable cost per workshop and this paid the teacher, and folk got education and networked with other folk as well as had the seeds of ideas planted, and I got further educated, met others, and also got peoplepower help building a hot compost heap which in turn was used to build a no-dig garden which not only fed me and mine but then flowed on to being seed etc given to others. And on it goes.

Looking back now, I see that even when I think I have failed (like a group folding) I have continued wherever I have gone to do something however small in a permaculture direction, striving to increase my know-how and what I am doing, as well as help promote something I very much believe in and having small impacts along the way. Even recently, before coming again to the UK, an opportunity arose in the form of a friend of mine, who did some her permaculture with Bill Mollison himself and wished to get experience in teaching by running a couple of free PDCs first. I quickly put my hand up for this but then it was realized that, as I would be leaving for the UK before the course finished, I wouldn't be able to finish it and she wasn't totally happy about this. So then I offered to be her assistant instead and this worked well. I got a little bit more know-how and experience at the same time as supporting her. Who knows what will develop from this small thing.

For it is not so much what I in particular did or have done which I am really talking about here, but more about small things and how they can grow and bear fruit and seed which can go on to being something bigger. And in my experience it has been the cost of learning permaculture and the control flowing from this (or vice versa) which has prevented it going mainstream and has held things back in a lot of ways. It is not that I disagree or agree with what I am hearing about folk having more respect for stuff they pay more for than what they pay less for etc, but that all this is part and parcel and within a certain system and I think awareness of this is of necessity, even if one cannot perceive other ways as yet. This system is our experience and we are acting from that experience - until we learn something different. Nor do I think tearing down a system or reinventing the wheel are good uses of energy which flow on to better things. Or that Paul or anyone else, including ourselves, are necessarily the 'bad guy'... or the 'good guy' for that matter. They are what they are, from what they have experienced and know. And this colours. I feel the core of it is how to build positively without trampling on others and ourselves, as well as how to take what we have experienced and then build something better - which I myself define as planet and lifeforms living more harmoniously having realized how each affects the other. And I feel we are on that path.

Diane

I wouldn't say sharks are less evolved because they haven't changed much. Evolution is not measured by the number of changes but the adaptation of the organism to its circumstances. This is the science meaning of the word.

The word evolution is clearly problematic. As a linguist I am loath to prescribe usage. If people use a word to mean something, that is what it means. Trying to stop change in language (evolution? hahaha) is a useless fight.

The colloquial usage of "evolution" meaning change in versions of something moving toward better quality does confuse people about the science, but what can we do about that? Better education maybe.

On the topic of Permaculture making the big bucks- making adequate bucks is my goal. I am of the mind that zero percent growth in an economy is beneficial to everyone involved, like Fukokua. Still, if people could see that there is money in less labor intensive, fewer input farming that builds fertility, it will seem more viable as a career alternative. We are human, but our greed has boundaries. The huge corporate interests will drive farmer after farmer to see this, as their greed knows no bounds.

On young people in farming- I am not an old person yet, I am 34, and I am committed to growing food in a food forest for life. I am home here on my farm, I had weeds for breakfast and lunch and I love it. I am approached by numerous young people who hunger for the same. We are tired of the consumer culture and love being outdoors and observing the food webs around us. We feel strongly that less is more. Our local high school and university are fostering these ideas and the enthusiasm of the students turns into a feedback loop. A neighbor and childhood friend of my equally not-elderly husband started a small aquaculture operation a few years ago which has grown in a boom adding a fantastically popular restaurant and farm.

If anyone is feeling glum about "kids these days" come visit us at Fieldsong Farm in southern Rhode Island, you won't be disappointed.

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

Hmm... Really? Since I like number let's count it up. How many mutations, how many evolutionary adaptations, how much complexity. E. coli is quite simple compared to a human, or any animal or plant. E. coli is not as evolved. E. coli has merely found a very good niche and thrives in it. It is well adapted. But it is far less complex and far less evolved.

Walter Jeffries wrote:

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

Hmm... Really? Since I like number let's count it up. How many mutations, how many evolutionary adaptations, how much complexity. E. coli is quite simple compared to a human, or any animal or plant. E. coli is not as evolved. E. coli has merely found a very good niche and thrives in it. It is well adapted. But it is far less complex and far less evolved.

I think I understand your intent, but in terms of mutation rate and evolutionary adaptations, bacteria (and most micro-organisms with a fast division rate) are constantly required to test their "fit" with their environment. animals evolve much more slowly by this measure. Complexity is also a context dependent issue. do you mean a larger genome? Rather than existing in single species petri dishes, as is commonly visualized, micro-organisms have the tools to socialize (communicate and interact) in a large network of diverse organisms.

Humans do what we do quite well, but I think we are still quite early on the "evolutionary path"