Stephen Maturin

S Bengi wrote: This problem is not as hard as we are trying to make it seem.

Quite. It is actually much harder.

Broad adoption is contingient on having people with many different backgrounds find the provided information useful, AT THE SAME TIME. Taxonomy by itself is a huge problem. Any given organism with have a latin name, several common names in each of dozens of languages, and possibly brand and patent names. That is before you even consider defining relationships to other organisms.

If you want broad adoption, you will need to have some sort of standard that makes sense to to most of the disciplines that will be providing your source data. This is not just a data storage and access problem, but a linguistic one as well. Everybody has a name, and subsequently everybody thinks they understand naming systems. The truth is quite different, and if you need any proof you just need to look at the corrosive politics that sarrounds the Internet DNS.

If you were to define a spec for the database, one of your first steps is to define WHO you want to use it. Get to the end of that document, and then consider how those people approach solving problems in their discipline and you will just be starting to understand the scope of the undertaking. At this point, (if you get that far) you will, A: start beating yourself with a hammer, for even considering taking on this project. B: narrow the scope of the project to make it MUCH smaller, and thus have just another of the many incompatable databases that already exist. C: start looking at well established systems that already support _some_ of the features you want, and try to figure out how to bastardize them into doing what you do want.

I applaud the enthusiasm. I do code, and I would be willing to help (a little here and there) if any of the underlying tools you choose jive with stuff I have experience with. But you need to be aware, if your goal is to achieve broad adoption, then this project is going to be EXPENSIVE. I would say $1M wouldn't be an unreasonable funding goal. Referring back to my earlier post, in terms of gain to the national and world economies, such a system would certainly return dividends for many decades to come, and so that kind of funding might be achievable. If I was a student at a University that had a well respected AG program, I would seriously consider getting some fellows from the I.T. side of the house on board, and solicit some grants.

What your talking about really, is taking the the database that the FDA already maintains for their seedbank, and dramatically expanding it to support modern scientific research methods, some of which would related to permaculture in the form of a standardized polyculture data repository.

Just a few thoughts.

Paul Cereghino wrote:The idea of the database to end all databases has been batted around for years. It is a brutally rigorous concept given the number of relationships, so it hasn't been done. Good design documentation would be a starting point.

I've looked into the practicality of this a little bit. There is an abundance of data about specific species, but non of it is formatted in any uniform or practical way. I am sure there are thousands of beneficial relationships that are yet to be discovered. Acceleration of those discoveries would be dramatically advanced with a uniform database. There is probably a billion dollars worth of increased GDP lying under that solution, but it is a difficult one to solve because of the politics.

Everbody looks at the various problems different ways. PC people, vs. biologists, vs. environmental modelers, vs. conventional farmers etc. It is mostly the same information, but none of it works together.

Both the FDA and the EPA have grant programs, as well as the various state governments. The important thing is standardization. Your best bet would be start a dialog with a standards orginization like the ISO, and start developing a format for the database, while consulting the Agri departments of various universities. The trick to this project is getting the various institutions on board, so _they_ populate most of the data. Like I said, it is mostly a political problem, not a technical one.

There is quite a bit of logic to that.

I would presume you'd be using a lager yeast for the cool season and an ale for the warm. And the liquid will create a nice addition to the thermal mass of the greenhouse, helping to stabilize temperatures. The CO2 release would be slow and predictable. You don't have to walk back to the fridge for a beer, and the byproducts of consumption can only help the plants.

Why would you put the beer anywhere else?

Paul Cereghino wrote: If you are looking for human labor efficiency, rather than dollar per calorie, I have not see PC compete, because the dollar economy is so very good at externalizing costs. You just have to pick your units.

My Units would be: market value of yeild per acre. Initially I just want to know how the surpluses from a well managed PC system compares to a well managed corn plot (for example) given equivilant environmental and market conditions. My interests are in mechanization of management and production for complex ecological systems. In terms of labor efficiency I would agree that the current outlook is not encouraging. That is exactly what interests me about it. If the production _is_ actually higher, then I'd like to focus on making the methods cheaper. But I haven't seen anything that convinces me that the initial assumption is broadly true.

Howdy,

I've read a bit on the subject of permaculture, and I'm intrigued.

My understanding is that one of the basic claims of permaculture is: Superior yield/cost per acre, when compared to typical monoculture farming techniques over the long term. While I believe this premise to be true, available impirical data on the subject appears sparse.

Can anyone refer me to any permaculture studies that use something resembling scientific method?

Thanks in advance!