Time spent outside – digging in the soil, nurturing life, feeling the warmth of the sun, and contemplating permaculture and its role as a solution to many of the world’s ills – with Blake’s poetry resonating all the more. Spring certainly is an awakening.
Where can you find your heaven, your infinity?
Don’t ask me why, but I used to always get permaculture and permafrost confused. Still, often when I think of permaculture my mind immediately goes to that consistently frosty ground, and increasingly lack thereof, which is indicative of why many subscribe to the principles of permaculture.
The core tenets of permaculture, permanent agriculture, are:
1. Earth care—care for the earth and all of its living systems.
2. People care—care for yourself and others (individuals, families, and communities).
3. Fair share—take, have, and use only what you need, and when there is surplus, give to others and recycle resources back into the system.
Permaculture seeks to care for both people and environment by relying on certain design tools that follow the above principles. When permaculture began in the 1970s it was in reaction to an oil crisis and increasing food insecurity. The idea was that people can, and should, design their lives to be more sustainable, self-sufficient, community-driven, and simply easier on the planet’s ecosystems. Do any of those scenarios sound familiar now?
We have unparalleled crises of the environment: fossil fuels and their extraction at all cost, extreme poverty and global hunger, climate change, and a loss of old-fashioned self-sufficiency. Is permaculture an answer?
Most of us will not uproot to take part in permaculture on a larger scale. Luckily the principles of permaculture can be put into practice in your own home and garden with a little time and thought.
1. Animals. Incorporate animals into your backyard garden. Chickens are great for eating bugs, providing eggs, and even fertilizer. Goats are great for weed control, converting inedible vegetation into milk, and more fertilizer. Mosquito eating fish are another interesting option if you have a backyard pond. Vegan permaculturalists may still incorporate animals as companions and for their non-edible contributions.
2. Green Building. When building, adding, or remodeling a home, or even just want to make a few green changes, an emphasis on sustainability works to keep the home more efficient while reducing waste. A major benefit to people is better indoor air quality specifically and a better living environment generally speaking. Green building is an area that could potentially add a lot of expense, but if done well could actually save money, especially in the long-term.
3. Rainwater Harvesting. Rain nurtures life, yet we do not actively work to capture the inherent use of rainwater. There are two schools of thought here: (1) Direct the rainwater to the areas of your garden that need the water and (2) Catch and store rainwater or gray water that would otherwise go into the storm drains to use as needed.
4. Thoughtful Gardening. Thoughtful gardening is a means of using what you have available in an efficient way to produce food for people and habitat for wildlife. Take care to plan your landscaping and home garden carefully to be attuned to natural patterns, needs of the land, and how it can be achieved through natural methods: sheet mulch, composting, sprout gardening, seed saving, observation, and education.
5. Waste Management. ”Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.” It starts with bringing less into your home in the first place. It ends with using something until there is no more, reusing what is left, or finding someone who can and will. We should make the most of our resources and not let any go to waste.
Permaculture is an interesting and controversial subject. I agree we need to be more thoughtful about how we connect with one another and the natural world. I believe that many of the human and environmental issues we have could be alleviated if we were more observant of how our ecosystems interact and rely on one another.
Which of the permaculture principles do you already follow? Which would you like to include more of in your life and home?
Be sure to join in and follow the discussion on permaculture here and over at the headquarters for Change The World Wednesdays.
Is it wake-up time, Mama? A little voice in my doorway wonders. She is so rarely the first one up. Blueberry bagel, real blueberries, not the blueberry-flavored corn syrup bits, for breakfast in the early morning quiet. Sun pours in the window telling us it is going to be another nice day.
We snuggle for a few as she explores my face with her small fingers. I awake when a sweet boy proudly announces there is something on the table for me. He has made me my own bagel breakfast, just the way he likes it–dripping with butter and warm from the toaster. There are notes and pictures on the table and two excited little boys waiting to show me all they had done.
Sunday morning acoustic music, coffee, sun, quiet, resting my lovely bones, gardening, rhododendrons?, and always, always a content mama to be able to have such a life.
To all the mamas, to Mother Earth and Mother Nature, to those with a mother’s spirit, to all. Up for a little reading this morning?
Mother’s Day, This Time With More Meaning… My post over at SocialMoms explores how to add meaning to Mother’s Day by working to improve the lives of mothers around the world.
Groovy Green Livin has a great roundup for Mother’s Day reading!
There is still time to honor mama. Try one of these eco-friendly, fun and frugal ways to make the mother in your life feel special!
Production Not Reproduction has a short, but thought-provoking post with a link to a Mother’s Day adoption roundtable that is worth a read no matter how, or if, you have children.
Amber at Strocle.com is questioning the idea that motherhood and selflessness must always go together. Definitely read this one!
Have you finished your morning beverage and reading? Now go outside and play! :) How do you hope to spend Mother’s Day?
Simply put, GMOs are genetically modified organisms that have been genetically engineered in a laboratory by inserting DNA of different species, including plants, animals, bacteria, and viruses. Genetically engineered food is just one subset of this.
Contrary to some opinion, agriculture has NOT been using genetically engineered foods for long. American farmers first planted genetically engineered crops in the mid-1990s. Between 1999 and 2000, genetically engineered soy, cotton, corn, and canola became the norm and now include large percentages of these crops grown in the U.S., as well as Argentina, Brazil, Canada, and India.
There is a huge difference between common sustainable agricultural practices likegrafting, plant breeding, crop rotation, cover crops, soil enrichment, natural pest predators, and biointensive integrated pest management, all of which have proven benefits to yield and soil fertility and the biotech industry’s methods.
We may not have to worry about fish genes in our strawberries, but there are plenty of other reasons to be concerned, namely adverse consequences for soil, human and environmental health, with little effect on global food issues.
Understandably we are continually looking for more efficient methods to feed the world’s hungry. Experts expect the world will add another 2 million people in the next 40 years or so. Nine billion people is a lot of people, but the argument that genetically engineered food will provide food security, particularly in the developing world, is unfortunately not likely to be the solution.
“I am particularly alarmed by those who seek to deny small-scale farmers of the Third World — and especially those in sub-Saharan Africa — access to the improved seeds, fertilizers and crop protection chemicals that have allowed the affluent nations the luxury of plentiful and inexpensive foodstuffs….While the affluent nations can certainly afford to pay more for food produced by the so-called organic methods, the one billion chronically undernourished people of the low-income, food-deficit nations cannot.”
–Dr. Norman Borlaug, Nobel-Prize-winning agriculturalist and father of the Green Revolution
The myth that we must encourage a second Green Revolution is naive. The first Green Revolution certainly increased production, but managed to do little to curb world hunger, and instead has led to soil degradation, greater pest and weed problems, and ill health effects. Even now we are growing and raising enough food to feed the world, and 30% of food produced worldwide is wasted, yet a billion live in chronic hunger.
“Some researchers have shown that none of the genetically engineered seeds significantly increase the yield of crops. Indeed, in more than 8,200 field trials, the [genetically altered] Roundup seeds produced fewer bushels of soybeans than similar natural varieties, according to a study by Dr. Charles Benbrook, the former director of the Board of Agriculture at the National Academy of Sciences. Far from being a solution to the world’s hunger problem, the rapid introduction of genetically engineered crops may actually threaten agriculture and food security.”
–Dr. Peter Rosset, director of the Institute for Food and Development Policy and co-author of World Hunger: Twelve Myths (Grove Press, 1998)
Prevailing wisdom indicates that developing nations who succumb to genetically engineered crops will only lead to further food insecurity through a dependence on monoculture and the biotech corporations, besides the evidence of decreased soil life and devastating health effects for humans and wildlife we are already seeing from glyphosphate (Roundup).
Scientists are now seeing the herbicide in GE food in the bloodstream of pregnant women and in umbilical cord blood. In many parts of the world, there have been enoughdocumented cases of infertility, miscarriage, and birth defects from the glyphosphate that accompanies genetically engineered crops that strongly suggest we should be concerned.
Furthermore, leading scientists agree that we don’t know enough about more long-term effects of eating and growing genetically engineered foods, which is exactly why the thought of deregulation of certain GMOs is so scary. We just don’t know what we don’t know. Science has not yet been able to produce a large enough body of peer-reviewed study into the health and environmental effects of genetically engineered foods.
All of this is not to say that there may be some benefit to GM technology, but the issues surrounding glyphosphate, Monsanto, and scientific determination of risk are too great to ignore completely. Once we unleash GM seeds, it is highly unlikely that we can turn back and run the great risk of losing our small, organic family farms due to cross-contamination. We should then proceed with caution when approving any new unlabeled GM crops such as 2,4-D corn.
Whether you feel we should continue to develop genetically engineered technology for food crops or not, the majority of Americans, an estimated 92%, think we should be able to decide whether or not to eat them.
I believe we all have a right to make the choice whether we feed our families genetically engineered foods or not. I also believe that the U.S., like Japan, Australia, and the European Union, should require labels on the 80% of packaged foods that contain genetically engineered ingredients and are already on shelves.
“Today the vast majority of foods in supermarkets contain genetically modified substances whose effects on our health are unknown. As a medical doctor, I can assure you that no one in the medical profession would attempt to perform experiments on human subjects without their consent. Such conduct is illegal and unethical. Yet manufacturers of genetically altered foods are exposing us to one of the largest uncontrolled experiments in modern history.”
–Dr. Martha R. Herbert, pediatric neurologist
Donate your voice. Tell the FDA we have a right to know and to require a label on genetically engineered (GE) foods. Call, e-mail, or mail U.S. state and federal elected officials and government agencies.
Vote with your wallet. Avoid the packaged, processed foods that are likely to contain GE ingredients. Look for a certified organic label, the Non-GMO Project Verified label, and/or avoid the top GE food crops: corn, soy, canola, and beet sugar. Some say, if you have to ask, avoid it.
Occupy your food supply. Take the ultimate control of some of your food supply by growing a food garden, joining a CSA, or buying directly from a local farmer you can trust.
Learn more. Educate yourself, your family, your friends on this issue.
What are your thoughts about where genetically engineered foods are headed and the campaign to label them?
Note: All quotes were from a look at both sides of the GE foods issue from PBS’s Frontline.
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