Dan Boone wrote:If this unit has solved the hard problem (getting a machine to distinguish and successfully handle the ripe berry) there will soon be other units that do it better, faster, cheaper, and under more complicated circumstances. Including -- this would be the permaculture dream -- in a polyculture. Imagine a solar-powered quadcopter that docks on your porch. It's no bigger than your hand. It tirelessly roams out into your garden. During raspberry season, it brings back one perfect raspberry at a time, depositing them in a little solid-state chiller in its docking station to await your collection at your convenience. When it runs low on battery it sits on the charging station. When it runs low on perfect berries, it senses ones with bugs or worms and snips them, taking them straight to your hot compost pile or your chicken run or other designated destination. .
Bryant RedHawk wrote:The members of Archaea can feed on many different items that are considered pollutants, most operate in stagnant waters in nature but many members can be found in places like oil saturated soils, they are aerobic in nature.
Most of the ones we read about are cultured in vitro where conditions can be monitored and controlled because they are being raised to take care of things like oil spills.
In the soil they can remediate many of the pollutants found in farm fields (pesticide and herbicide residues, fertilizers as well as the drips from farm equipment.
In the soil world, they are one of many organisms that work interdependently with most of the other organisms, they will be found in large numbers in places of high food sources (for them) and low fungal concentrations.
Some of the members of this genus feed on beneficial bacteria that take care of making minerals available to fungi and then to plant roots. There are quite a few studies out there but take note of the specific organism each study is written about, they all don't act the same.
Some of Steiner's formulas stimulate growth of some of the species of Archaea we want to be living in our soil. Many of his interaction ideas have been proven recently and others are still under scrutiny by researchers.
Redhawk
Levente Andras wrote:Isn't this a case of shooting the messenger? Facing up to reality and talking about problems equals "perpetuating" them?
The alternative would be to pretend those problems don't exist, but still keep blaming mainstream culture / society for their lack of acceptance for what permaculture is trying to do.
You are saying that permaculture is a design system etc. (your quote of Mollison), and I agree that that's what it SHOULD be, but in reality isn't, because some people have taken it down a myriad of paths leading to nowhere meaningful. That's what I meant to say with the example of shamanic drumming. I'm not claiming permaculture is that, but some people throw in plenty of such ingredients into the mix that THEY call permaculture.
How can you "correct misapprehensions" if you advise against even mentioning those misapprehensions?
Evan Nilla wrote:i forgot to say, the OP did a good job of pretty much rounding up said issues, even more or less the entire possible things in this thread. "said it all" basically. think it more or less standardized what was beaten to death in https://permies.com/forums/posts/list/40/55689#466588