Mas Rival. Salam dari Selangor Malaysia. Sy berbesar hati kerana Mas mengambil berat saran sy. Next go to agroforestry academy channel Dan tgk bagaimana cara mereka tumpang sari tanaman mereka. Klu Ernst Gotsch beliau transform barren land into food forest.
Hi Geoff!! I live in Brazil!! Permaculture is my life! I am a Neuroscientist and I know how much the poisons they use in agriculture make us sick and even kill us! I'm really loving watching you!
Rita I am wondering if you can recommend any Authors or books relating to Autism and the food system or possibly focusing on natural foods as a "cure" for autism. I would be grateful for any help.
@@yetithruhiker9230 Hi Yeti!I know of some scientific articles and researches, but these works are not published because the big corporations that manufacture these "poisons" pay the Universities to archive the researches. I know this because I have participated in many surveys.
So cool, I also know about this from my own experience with leaky gut, digestive issues and eventually some chronic illness. The effects of glyphosate herbicide are devastating and if they were properly divulged to the public, we would have an organic revolution.
Sir, I am from suburban Calcutta in eastern part if India. I am grateful to your holistic advice. During pandemic period we started and reaped a great harvest of vegetables in a small piece of land.
“Should be illegal” I’ve thought the same for a long time, even before discovering Jeff Lawton and taken a deeper dive into permaculture.. it just makes sense. Thank you Jeff, for speaking up and for your continued efforts in teaching us these principles
Lol, actually I would prefer to see the change come from inspiration without legislation dictating… inspired actions are far more powerful than legislated mandates are.
Certain people don't want mankind to be self sufficient and peaceful. But I believe change is coming,thanks Geoff for enlighening us .I'd love to see a paradise earth.
Geoff this may be one of the best Permaculture videos I've ever seen on UA-cam, everything perfectly articulated. I really hope it gets millions of views..
As an organic farmer with food forests, I take a deep breath and wonder if they’ll ever get it 😞 great words Geoff but I think the system is so corrupt we just need to do it for ourselves 🐝🌈😎
how do i convince people that organic or permaculture is the best way for humans to grow food? ive talked to a few conventional farmers and they simply will not budge in their beliefs. i hear these claims from Geoff about organic producing higher yields, but we really need numbers to back up those claims. im not saying he is wrong, but i just dont know. every farmer i talk to says they make more money doing it the normal ways of spraying herbicides, synthetic fertilizer etc, and that its much simpler. i saw a story of one Nebraska farmer who grows sunflowers and he was literally growing 10 different companion crops underneath them at the same time. im no farmer, but id have to assume that trying to harvest those 11 different crops cant be done simply with one harvesting machine. so added complexity means added cost. if these organic regenerative methods were easier and higher profit then everyone would be doing it right? if its better for the environment but lower profit, thats a very hard selling point especially for the average farmer that is drowning in debt. ive read a few studies about corn production with and without synthetic weed killer and the organic methods produce a yield of less 30-50% less. apparently organic corn prices are doubled though, so that clearly seems more economically viable. PS. i did a little more research and one university study found that when growing soy the organic had a 368% higher ROI compared to non organic and a 227% higher ROI for organic corn compared to non organic. big agriculture is of course driven by profit and nothing else, so if organic can give nearly a 400% higher return then it boggles the mind why they wouldn't switch over. there would be zero incentive to continue doing the conventional methods with less profit. the more i learn the more questions i have lol
Day by day wave by wave we will make a better world as a collective unified consciousness just give it time and don’t burn yourself out keep on fuelling those good vibrations and keep up the creation cultivation and expression.
Continue to feed the soil and share your harvest results with us. Connect to each other. Share your work. We can grow nutritious food across each country and continent.
@@Big-Government-Is-The-Problem what I’m doing with my nonprofit in Bay Area, california, is bypass all the farmers and go straight to the people. Here’s what we’re doing. First, to take the stance that industrial ag, is bright good or bad. It’s just not what we’re doing, and it’s not sustainable. So instead of fighting them, we just ignore them. So when they’re not on our radar, we get creative and focus on the consumers. We are transforming an entire city into an integrated permaculture edible landscape. We are starting with harvesting old growth trees that exist and planting 50 more trees. Then we are transitioning into setting up full fledge permaculture micro-farms on people’s home landscapes. Then we wil move into public land such as city parks. It really is build it and they will come. Just reinvent the economy, the farming structure, the way we buy amd consume food. Then the other stuff will become obsolete. Netflix killed blockbuster because it was out of date. Same with Macy’s and Sears. In our case it’s a reversal into nature and not technology, but same death of old and replacement of new will occur. In a way it’s just like nature.
Thank you for that deep breath of awe and peace in knowing I made the right decision. Now I need to make it happen. Keep talking Geoff. Please keep talking.
I just posted this video to my face book page. It will be lovely to have a lot more hands on understanding of permaculture implementation in schools and communities across the globe. The ideal would be to have one permaculture garden/landscape designed in every fifty mile area of the globe where humans live. The shift in thinking as well as the garnering of the skills and understanding would begin to tilt the norm. I love the permaculture idea and am watching as many videos about it as I can take in. Slowly I am beginning to get a sense of how things work, yet each area requires seeing and understanding the elements that creat the dynamics which will dictate the permaculture designs, so it is something that has to be understood on a much deeper level than a blue print could show. It is happening and will become more and more the norm.
Oh- and the water! I live above California's Central Valley, and every time I drive through it I see miles of huge fields with sprinklers everywhere spraying water into the air to (evaporate and) drop on the crops. Even in the last couple of years with severe drought, they're sucking the water up to make huge crops of low nutritional density food for people hundreds of miles away.
The sacrifice is we need to change the economic and logistics system that's already based on commercial monoculture from the past century. That's the sacrifice. How many big conglomerates are ready to change their whole production line from "farm" to supermarkets? I only hope we can make this a trend in the people, so that the laws can start to change and then the "giants" will have no excuse to not make the transition.
This was so encouraging and gave me so much hope. I also feel that the little bit I'm doing in my micro permeculture backyard garden here in Los Angeles is good for something. I'm helping to collapse a dangerous, costly, and toxic system while feeding my family better, less expensive food. Win Win!
Will definitely be looking more into Deep Green Permaculture, Path to Freedom in Pasadena CA, and Happy Earth. I love learning about these dense & urban food production sites!
My grandpa is a farmer with knowledge from past, he recycle and use any organic, waste thing he found, he pee in a bottle, and let it with air few days and use it, and he even use human waste for plant, and the weed he cut or he pluck out he let or make it become compost and use that, and 21th century come, everyone look at him like he is a weird, from past, but his soil after he used these technique after many years is just.. Completely Amazing, it's most living thing, soft, aerobic, and the water come through it right away easy than any agriculture field with mass plow, fertilizer in my town. Now he has gone far away.. but the weed just keep make the soil better every year.
Dr. Elaine Ingham, and many others are working with farmers to regenerate the land, improve the nutritive values of the crops. It's a start. What those farmers are doing is moving entirely away from all chemical inputs, restoring the biology of the soils, and end up with higher yields of quality crops, higher income levels, and INCREASED production for foods as well as animals.
I am n new to the word permaculture, but not new to the concepts. Thank you grandpa! Just wanted to say that after spending last 24hrs watching all your last 5 year's videos here, i have learned alot and found some great solutions to flooding issues and poor soil fertility here! I have alot to learn, but lucky to have permaculture neighbors to consult! Thanks for all your hard work!
What changes would go along with it: 1) change in what we eat (more plants, more species and saisonally). 2) get rid of all conveniece and highly processed foods that are popular today - consume more freshly prepared foods 3) change in food logistics (local instead of global) 4) more people working in agriculture with more hand labour 5) higher prices to be paid for food as today. However: The prices we pay today are no realistic prices as the environmental and health damages are not includet today.
Growing up in the Central Valley, CA, the intense ag spraying was unbearable. Then, moving to Texas panhandle I realized what Big Ag was really about. Completely unsustainable, suffocating and enslaving contracts with seed and chemical companies, constant tilling that absolutely obliterates any top soil, disgusting CAFOs that contaminate ground water and local atmosphere, mono-cropping that ignores the need for diversification, and the unintended consequences of us having to travel 5 hours one way to locate unsprayed hay for our small herd of pastured cattle, our pastured hens' nesting boxes, then finally our deep mulch garden beds.
Hello Geoff, very clear!!! first, change our mind, discover what we can do, and try to begin with no chemicals on soil. Greetings from the south of Chile
I liked the questioner's word of "Sacrifice" because the issue here is not much the system of growing food, but entire Humanity and its psychology. We are in a transition mode into something new, from agriculture to finance to new cultural values(belief systems) metamorphosing into something new and synchronistically on a global scale. Truthfully there are too many weak people in physical health and in mind,attached to old belief systems and to habits and compulsions, that I cannot see how they'll be want to accept what's coming, in this case the abandonment of cheap industrial food and the return of hand labour in gardens. Once these people realize their box of Cheerios is not on Walmart's shelves, they'll be preferring to die rather than change their habits
Maybe they can change their minds when a one liter bottle of drinking water (no organochlorines, no organophosphates, no nitrates, no glyphosate, no dioxins, etc.) already costs 100 times more than a pack of cheerios!
The biggest obstacle is that people don't value food. Food in first world nations is relatively inexpensive. The vast majority of people don't want to be responsible for growing their own food and don't particularly care where it came from, who grew it, or how nutritious it actually is. Another major obstacle is that this sort of change would require major dietary changes. Furthermore, though I enjoy this sort of lifestyle others may not and I don't believe in coerced collectivism of any kind. I don't want the government to tell me how I must live and I don't want them to tell others that they must live as I do.
Refreshing to see people rejecting coerced collectivist action. I’m hopeful permaculture won’t turn into a fascist / authoritarian communist movement, but I think that risk does exist.
Yes indeed, it would not do ifwe were all the same, I have owned houses in the past but always had itchy feet. Most of my life I have rented country properties and planted trees in all of them, I would not like to have to compete for these houses with the wealthy, otherwise a tent beckons. From where I stand there has been a huge explosion of permaculure gardens and farms in the last 50 years, it is growing, whether that is fast enough to save our species, who knows, but we who can do, and hope for the best, and enjoy our fresh food and lifestyle, bit it would not suit everyone, I used to worry about damaging my guitar hands n nails, now the guitars are dusty and forlorn.
@@briangable08 The Earth is a very large place. People have really wild ideas about how powerful people are. Every person in the world could live in the State of Texas and have over an acre of land. Let's not try that out but we are nowhere near the carrying capacity of our planet and affect it far less than we are led to believe. Many large populations, like China, are about to collapse. They figured out that their one child policy worked a little too well. I'm far more worried about being exterminated by psychopaths like Mao or Bill Gates than gasping to death for oxygen. Either good food and good farming practices are their own reward which will eventually win out or they aren't. I'm not trying to save the world. That just isn't realistic. It isn't even necessary. People have very little effect on climate. It is cycling of solar intensity and the orbital eccentricity of the Earth that are the primary drivers of climate. The elites have known this for over 10,000 years and they have exploited our fear and ignorance of these facts to control us. There is nothing new under the Sun. The psychos who are running the world today don't want permaculture either. They want us to eat compressed bars of algae and bugs. They don't want us living in a beautiful natural world where we interact with nature. They want us sealed into giant plastic domes where we sleep in giant cigar tubes. That's the thing that really peeves me. Permaculture people normally buy in whole hog with all of the UN communist climate crap because they believe that everyone will be forced to dig swales and plant jujubes when the truth is that the people pulling the strings at and behind the UN want about 90% of us to just die.
Well said Mr Lawton! This reminds of one time I saw a glass jar of garlic, made in China. It came over to the States on those ships, 4 football fields long, which measures gas usage by tones per second, not miles per gallon. And I thought that’s a crime on so many levels.
No ship uses tons of fuel per second, unless its a rocket-ship. At worst 250 tonnes of fuel per day to move 250,000 tonnes of cargo. Compare this to a citizen using 1kg of petrol to drive to the shops for 1kg of milk to determine the really obnoxious part of the supply chain.
Theres No Such Thing as FOSSILFUELS. It does not exist, its a fairytale. Oil, gas, water all keeps on welling up, its made as we speak. Once a well is used "up" they close the well, and after some time they simply reopen the well, and its FULL again. It has always been this way.
@@GalaxyJ-vm2rn Ah, "alternative" "science". Let me guess you also have religious books that shows dinosaurs living in harmony with humans. - The desire to not change and give up things that seem to be very convenient even tops any rational thought.
@@GalaxyJ-vm2rn fossil means it stems from biomass that died long, long ago. Can be 200 million years in the case of old coal. You are welcome. The oil and methane in cavitities or encapsulated in rock is younger but it still takes millions of years AND these were completely different climate conditions where such an abundance of plant matter grew (and was sequestered away and slowly, under a lot of pressure oil formed - over millions of years.)
I stand with working in the environment you have and creating an ecology that is alive and thriving. People in poverty and extreme poverty arent in food safety. It is a shame to see farmers on their knees, dependent on large corporations, and big fertilizer producers. However, something can still be done. Cultivate your land with agroforestry principles. Don’t let message stop here, take it to the field. Literally.
I'm so glad you mentioned the very little employment, industrial ag and mechanized agriculture does not employ the amount of people that even a small market garden employes. I grew up in a wheat producing area the average farm was 3000 acres and employed maybe five people full time, eight or ten during harvest.
How does all that extra labour cost factor into the price of food? Will people expect their grocery bills to double or even triple in a world of permaculture? Genuine question, I'm not familiar with the math of industrial agriculture vs permaculture.
@@edukid1984 the machines used are stupid expensive. A wheat combine $350,000, headers, grain trucks, gov subsidizes. Id say it wouldn't change prices as much as you'd think.
Everything said by Geoff is true. Big industries make big dollars in agriculture, they have brainwashed majority of farmers that they have to have chemicals, more machinery, massive destruction of the land, soil. Straight after big business, come the mass of ppl who eat cheap junk food, who couldn't careless what they ate or where it came from, they are just as difficult to convince otherwise. We have to join forces right around our planet, be more vocal, challenge directly the handful of ppl that have conscientiously led ppl down the wrong path, soley for their gain, or submit that each of us tend to our own gardens/farms. Thx Geoff for never giving up
This is the most intelligent UA-cam channel I watch ..same goes for the comments section.. and it goes beyond intelligence' we have a net supply of real meaning: within our grasp.. more than words can express
Do you ever run into situations where people down hill or down stream are complaining that you or one of your projects is stealing water and/or blaming you for their crops not doing so well?
The results of this type of project include increased infiltration of ground water. If anything the people downhill benefit from projects like this. Check out Peter Andrews and the projects he’s done in Australia. The Mulloon Creek project started with one property but the neighbors recognized the benefits and hopped on board. Even when no water is flowing to the properties from upstream, water flows out downstream of the project as a result.
I agree with your argument mostly. What about grains? Legumes? Corn? In the States many organic farms rely heavily on interns during the growing season. Interns get a small stipend and housing....not not a living wage. Once again I agree especially for fruits and veg.
The main problem is that with growing urbanization, people live far from the farms where the food is produced. We would need some sort of "back to the land" approach, to get people back to the land which provides food. The main benefit of industrial agriculture is that it requires little hand-power and can be done by a few people, so others can just treat food as a commodity that magically appears in the supermarket
Question…. Instead of changing Agriculture in one motion, how do we help solve some of their problems…. Like focusing on their rows, where the soil needs to be covered, fields need more carbon (carbon credits $$$), nitrogen (which they pay for $$$$), etc…. I wonder if a grower would allow a permaculture program experiment on a small plot and show what covering the soil can do for the land.. trucks are coming to their properties anyway to pick up produce, how do we use a permaculture solution to yard waste, cardboard, landfill fodder (kitchen waste, etc) to circulate “excess nutrients”.. hmm
We’re in a grand solar minimum now with solar cycle 25. Much easier to adapt to weird and extreme weather in the backyard than with massive mono crops.
good point tim. good science is truthful, and when the truth is to generally transition to this way of permaculture, having the perfectly reasonable scientific requirement of solid, credible evidence is a great (& obvious) idea
I wish every industrial farming corporation could hear this video.... But they'd rather have machine slaves than hiring people to do the work. Money is the ultimate blindfold for morals.
Thank you so much for sharing these thoughts. It is very enlightening and powerful words!!! As a next step to get deeper into this topic of shifting agriculture to this new way, would you suggest any other videos?
highly unorganized, and many, but i have been compiling a playlist here - ua-cam.com/play/PLwKoppvahTGEqa2abhCHQ1i_iRLGGsc4f.html also the (3)rd playlist about "how it would sorta be like" has some too (also, if UA-cam automatically doesn't do a good job in its suggestions)
Hi Geoff, I’d be interested to discuss this topic more with you. I’m a believer in your ideologies although I also am an agronomist for a big ag company. I’d be extremely keen to discuss all points on this with you if I’m able to. Thanks
If it is 10x more productive per acre, you could produce the same amount on 10% of the land. I think he mentioned 13x for one of the examples he mentioned. How much more productive different kinds of polyculture are to monoculture is hard to quantify but lots of studies have tried, its controversial.
It could be a percentage of current agricultural land needed if we permacultured all underutilised space in cities and suburbs (like parks and backyards and nature strips) as well as surrounding areas
Hi Geoff, I'm looking for ways permaculture can "industrialized". Because the part of the equation you don't mention is the labor needed, which increase with permaculture. I agree that when it's local, it should just be part of our lives, something done collectively, urbanized. But as therapeutic as it is, in our current commodified Capitalist hellscape, labor time = money = more expensive products. There's farms that do crop rotation, pack rows of different plants together, bio, etc., and there is industrialized tools, but that's not really the full deal, and it's still more labor intensive. I also understand how fucked up it is that the conversation has to steep down to the most exploitative common denominator, which as you said simply mechanized a process dependent on slavery (and the threat of deportation for immigrant workers especially in the USA). But here we are. And given that you have a wealth of expertise in this field, I wonder if you know about mechanized tools that reduce labor time in a Permaculture setting. I struggle to imagine some, given that mechanization for monocultures is also a quest for standardisation of crops, to be more easily harvested and processed, and permaculture is adaptative to local contexts. Apart from a backhoe to dig swales or ponds... I don't know. Maybe something where you feed in wood, compost, and seeds, and it form hugelcütur mounds and seed a pattern of interlocking complementary crops, and based on the computerized planting, the harvestor knows how to separate the crops.... I don't know. Just writing it down, I see how in permaculture, you want to avoid harvesting everything all at once, keep things growing.... At least, would you know if there's studies, or figures I could throw at people to evaluate the added manpower needed, per unit of calorie or nutrition? That would be very locally different, but if these figures have been tabulated in specific places, it would be really useful.
Tell people to: Petition for ballot initiative and tell their representatives and canidates to: End farm subsidies. Let everyone use an acre of free tax free good land to grow a food forest and live on.
"1%" I know what you mean on the elite-class money/power tip, and that's great +ve attitude you bring in, don't mean to be a downer, but (for realistic balance rather) unfortunately, being the change is hard (especially in human-built environments that don't really enable us to be the change) as MANY of us have become very familiar, spoiled, and weakened with dependency on an unsustainable Economy that is fueled by artificial, industrial levels of energy, ya know?.. (like Dominic's descriptive comment here)
Unless you separate out land for agriculture from development land, it will never be cost-effective to farm 'just outside London' or on green spaces within London, simply because the cost of acquiring the land would be purgatorial. If you take 2000sqm in outer London, you can build a £10m house on it and buying the land would be well over £1m with planning permission. Given that the cost of agricultural land, without Planning Permission, is £25-50k for 10,000sqm, you can see the challenge inherent in your suggestion.
I was watching a video of corn harvesting in Virginia. The harvester was harvesting up to 190 bushels of corn (dent corn) per acre. The numbers sound staggering but were not unusual. Then considering the cost of chemicals, machinery, personnel, legal, and business issues, and the sizable subsidies is pretty staggering as well. 90% of the harvest would be used to feed animals on feed lots. Unfortunately for the permaculturist the industrial ag-business controls the conversation and claims that they have to only solution to feed the world.
Dear Goeff, while I'm eager to believe your argumentation, I want to believer, my inner sceptic asks this question: how did you come up with the 4% equivalent mentioned at 4:47? How is that possible? How is that number calculated? Are there examples of a transition like this to follow up and look into? What are we comparing in this particular case? Veggies or grains?
I was thinking about this and I think it might be including urban environments like backyards, balconies and maybe even parks and such, as well as semi-urban (which there's a lot more space in). If all the unproductive land like lawns and other underutilised space were filled with permaculture, the 4% would be a percentage of the land currently used for agriculture today. So we would need in total all the underutilised space in cities, towns and suburbs plus 4% of the currently used agricultural land. That's my guess anyway
@@joshmason179 nice guess. But it’s not viable to convert every recreational green area into a veg/forest garden. Anyways, this is such a bold statement with no argument given, which leaves me confused as to how and if this is possible at all.
@@cyrylski Yeah I agree, it would have to be a massive cultural shift. Though I was walking through my city today (Melbourne) and there are a lot of parks and community green space where I think a portion could be turned into a communal food forest, so it's not impossible to think we could get at least some of our fresh food to grow in built up regions. Additionally further out from the city where I grew up there's a lot of empy and unused paddocks that could be effectively converted. I agree that it's a very bold statement to make without much to back it up, but I think it may possibly be true (or false). Even so, I think it's probably a statistic used more as shock value than anything else - assuming it's true its probably still unfeasible, yet even then, how much land could we save by using permaculture and other closed circuit farming systems? A significant percentage, I would guess.
@@cyrylski "But it’s not viable to convert every recreational green area into a veg/forest garden. " Just wait. If we don't, it still will. The Q is if we want to help which I see may be a bridge too far.
@@joshmason179 Four years ago I took over a rented house with a 30 x 10 metre lawned back yard with one Bramley apple tree, I planted six apple trees inc a crab apple, one pear tree, two apricot trees, one Damson plumb, four hazel/french filbert, two fig trees three grape vines, one asparagus bed one raspberry bed, one rhubarb bed ( all quite small for single person) three berberis, four gooseberry, four blackcurrant, a gogi, a couple of josta berries, herbs everywhere squeezed in two small raised metal beds one with strawberries, one with perpetual kale (daubentons i think?). Four 2x1 metre raisec beds for anual, salad, onions, leeks, early broad beans etc rotated. Most of the fruit will peak when I am dead and gone, I also rent 2.5 acres of orchard and paddock with hens for eggs, I did start a permaculture food forest in those acres, with larger no dig beds for more fruit n veg, plus two small poly tunnels for tomato and peppers, but at 77 how long I will be able to keep going and fall back to the yard area I don't know. Plant for future, bless old men that plant trees, they may not see their fruit.
Took your course over a year ago and still haven't finished the final because the closer I got to actually being able to make these inputs into my landscape, the more I realized everything is illegal to do. If you read the Federal, State, and Local fire codes for my area alone, guilds are illegal. Vegetation from one plant that touches another plant is illegal. It's illegal for me to dig a hole without calling 811 in advance (that could take up to 4 days before getting approval to dig a hole). I've been so frustrated from the application side of things, I don't even want to finish the final. Watching this video makes me want to find a way to actually gather the global masses to incorporate this now. I'm tired of waiting. But how? It's protected by cartels, drug lords, governments, and generational wealth hoarders. You make a stink with these Feds and your on a barge somewhere getting waterboarded for nothing.
@@ayatollahvladimirputin3844 I prefer own the land and the pad, retrofit it for sustainability, care for the earth, eat EVERYTHING that can grow in my microclimate, share the abundance, teach others in my area what works, dance, enjoy life, exercise, meditate on the positive outcomes.
Brasil needs to watch this video. Bolsonaro is allowing the destruction of the Amazon and just passed a new bill allowing all types of chemicals and poison, even proven cancerous ones. It's so infuriating! I am so thankful for all the work you do and awareness you bring to people like me who just a few years ago was blinded by the "that's how it's supposed to be. If you want production you need chemicals" mentality. Discovering permaculture has been truly an enlightening experience.
I'm afraid the future for humanity doesn't look very bright. Between short term politics, powerful businesses only intrested in dollars or euros, and our youth staring at their phones all day, l don't see how things will change fot the better. I hope to be proven wrong.
Channels like this, Happen Films and Undecided give me a lot of hope - the rate of tech innovation as well as permaculture spreading is massive - it doesn't all happen straight away buyt even still the growth is happening really fast in a lot of areas, it depends what you focus on.
In the U.S. we need to break up those "farms" and repopulate the deserted towns with refugees. Teach them all permaculture and anarchism theory and give them seeds and trees. We should do this now to stop the latest dustbowl sweeping the west. Tame the hurricanes with green. Make earth green again. Give people purpose and tools. We are ready. We will love 🌎🌍🌏and ourselves. We are stewards of this special rock💐
Tell people to: Petition for ballot initiative and tell their representatives and canidates to: End farm subsidies. Let everyone use an acre of free tax free good land to grow a food forest and live on.
There needs to be a holistic research regarding this (economically, logistically, socially etc.) to make this work. We need to educate and normalise eating "ugly" produce where produce don't look all the same. Produce grading needs to be upgraded/updated to reflect this. I hope we can make this a reality soon. What would be the stepping stone to start this?
yeah Thairin, there's too much emphasis on aesthetic value, i think because many people have the luxury to, mainly from unsustainable, artificial, industrial levels of (mainly fossil fuel) energy. we should give high respect to our bodies as they are like temples of god imo, and we should reflect this in what we consume too, but the less superficial & less short-lasting QUALITY (which mainly includes the nutritional content and the holistic environmental impacts) of the produce is really much more important, right
I am buying coastal property in Tanzania. I will be converting from strictly banana monoculture to a more diversified food forest and livestock. I am thinking on moringa as a primary crop but what other crops can I raise for both human and animal consumption?
hello geoff, thanks for sharing your knowledge, these viedeos are amazing. we are planning on building a place to try out different ways of sustainable excistence. as we were trying to figure out what criterias we have for the land we are looking for i realised i dont have any clue about the following: how much space for permaculture we would need in average to feed 80-120 people while producing an abundance that we could share with the community? (annual rainfall is about 900mm (35in), with mediterranean climate, long dry summers, i guess it will might hilly, but i can`t say, also i don`t know about the soil..) i would be very happy for any kind of answer. best regards, p.
The most absurd thing at list here in Brazil is that to be a organic farmer has no incentive and you need to prove and be supervised and the conventional way does not need any of it. It is all upside down but I don't mind as I now my path. Thank
@@rogeriolisto no I mean just a the brand name 'Pure-ganic' with a cool logo... Start sticking labels on all your stuff.. Get your organic pals to do the same.... And voila! You no longer need certification.. And you are not making any claims about your product. You let the consumer make their own minds up.
@@Shambala_G thank you very much, I've been on that mind set for years but now that I'm growing I feel like I need some sort of authentication and people here are hard believers of organic as not one around me or people that grow for them selves are doing the organic way. Quemicals from morning to evening especially this time of the year. 😏 I won't surrender💐
Hi. What's your knowledge about vertisols? I live in a vertisol area, the soil is very hard and compacted, and my plants don't grow much due to poor root development (it's basically clay with stones). Which crops and plants in general perform better in this kind of soil, apart from cotton, rice and sorghum? What solutions have been proven to be efficient and to have a noticeable effect on the plants, from small crops and herbs to fruit trees?
You should search up videos on Paul Gauchi. A YT page called L2survive has some good video tours of Paul Gauchi's garden. His ground was heavy clay with lots of rocks. He built soil on top of that very quickly with wood chips. He has an orchard that is very plentiful and grows annuals under the fruit trees in a symbiotic relationship. He is a bit preachy on the religious side, but the growing methods are harmonic with science.
i remember reading about energy efficiency of forest and carbon capture vs traditional farming in flat lands there is certainly no contest, prairies and foraging was practiced in dry climates bc of lack of water and rain in the middle east but that agricultural system got copy pasted into other places with different climate, it's a crime then you find modern news asking the wrong questions and giving even wrong answers by saying "we need new bio/tech innovation to feed the world", no you don't!!, you need to study what is already known and published the fiasco of biofuels showed how the governement just want to keep the dying industrial agriculture alive by injecting money that only served to destroy more forest and release more soil carbon to the atmosphere
Hi there, I have a question - I live in a small apartment in Melbourne and I'd love to start doing some permaculture, but I don't have any land to do it on, nor even a balcony. Is there any way around this? how can I reduce my dependence on industrialised agriculture if I don't have the land or money it costs to get land to do it on? I like living in the city, but don't really like living with other people, so I don't think a share-house or moving out to the suburbs is an option for me. Is there a solution to this predicament? Thanks.
First thing to do is to assess your "climate" within your apartment. Where does the light come in, how many hours a day, what is your regular temperature within the apartment, could you use space within the apartment that receives light etc in such a way to allow container gardening. Use these type things as your first steps. Have a think about what you actually consume, could you potentially grow one of these things given the above parameters? Don't try to do everything at once, just do one thing well, then expand on the idea.
Hey Geoff, How would permaculture look as a replacement from the current indiustrial farming method? Here in California, we have a lot of droughts and we grow a lot of Almonds commercially, could high water crops like these be replaced with permaculture systems (figs with crops underneath, cacti, etc.) and what could that look like? Are there any current pushes for deindustrializing commercial agriculture business or at least pushes for less water usage? Thank you so much!
What permaculture design focuses on, is replacing monoculture crops to favour diverse growing systems of succession. So it wouldn't be a simple matter of removing all almonds to reduce water requirements. Good design will reduce evaporation, increase composting of soils and utilise pre-existing crops and infrastructure, to inter-plant new crops in succession. These in turn, will shelter the growing systems and accumulate resources, while reducing waste. If it's a monoculture almond crop, in traditional rows, then it will certainly need more water. Rather than get rid of the almond entirely, it's better to remove half, and inter-plant other crops like figs, agave, pomegranates and even grapes growing-up some of the almonds, to be removed. Let the grapes use them as a trellis, and get another food crop. What almonds remain to be harvested, will benefit from the diversity of foliage, to reduce evaporation. Where commercial growers tend to shirk these kinds of growing systems, is they're not very forgiving to machine harvesting. Human interaction is best for management of these crops. I will share a large agricultural farm in our region (Lockyer Valley, Queensland, Australia) that has adopted a kind of hybrid system for their annual crops though. They've planted windbreaks on contonour, with all native lillypillies. These are extremely long (as long as their fields) windbreaks. Not only do they protect their crops from wind, but also offer protection for small birds, that eat the pests that would attack their crops. When in full flower, they benefit the pollinators, who also pollinate their food crops. So even planting strategic windbreaks, can reduce evaporation, for traditional agricultural practices and crops. I would be inclined to plan succession of existing almond growing systems, rather than eliminating them entirely. They will just look and behave differently, to a traditional monoculture crop.
@@Christodophilus Thanks so much for your response! I look forward to getting some more info about this farm in Queensland! I haven't seen any commercial permaculture farms so far and I am really interested to see some ways how permaculture design can be incorporated into a commercial farm, as I think it could be a huge help worldwide as we have less and less water, droughts, crazy weather, etc.
@@cyruswatersplants I'm guessing quite a few. I think things like this usually get framed as being "environmental" but they're really just corruption. To my understanding, California has pumped a lot of its water into river deltas to "save some fish" while cutting back on the water it gives to farms. Now, family farms are dry and hedgefunds are buying their land off of them. Makes me wonder if it was all some shady deal.
Slavery has been in existence for most of oral and written human history. Monoculture has been with us at least as long as Noah (Genesis 9:20). And, we see that Abraham and Lot were already over-grazing livestock on the land in Genesis 13:7. I believe there are responsible ways to conduct industrial agriculture that minimize erosion and soil destruction. Unfortunately farmers are the slowest to change because their knowledge is largely acquired generationally. Additionally, Big AG funds the agriculture colleges and teaches chemicals, GMO farming, and genetics of livestock. Always follow the $$ and power. Just returning to leaving/creating hedges and trees between fields as the Bible instructs does so much to protect soil, clean the water run-off, and provide for biodiversity in plants and animals alike. The UK biodiversity has suffered greatly since removing their hedgerows to get a few more feet out of every field. The 7th year Sabbath for the land (Leviticus 25:4-7) is reported to be a blessing for cyclical productivity for those who practice it. Responsible mob grazing does wonders for pasture health and their biodiversity Shabbat Shalom
How can those of us who are on board with this philosophy begin to join forces in a community? Not something temporary or just for skilled or wealthy people.
Why not go into the community? Give presentations in edible landscaping, water catchment, non-chemical fertilization, at homeowner association meetings. This could be done as volunteer hours for maintaining a Master Gardener certification. Approach the schools and school boards about installing a mini food forest at local schools and using it for the basis of some classroom instruction (Permaculture classroom). Approach VA hospitals and assisted living centers about planting gardens for healthier food for patients and residents. Get involved in the fight for backyard poultry in cities that have outlawed it. What Geoff is talking about in using the perimeter of urban areas speaks directly to zoning codes. There are so many ways to act. Use your imagination.
@@BonnieBlue2A I am doing that as a volunteer with Xerces, a board member of a local Bee City USA initiative, a candidate Master Naturalist and in many other ways. But I have come to the same conclusion as Dahr Jamail at the conclusion of his book The End of Ice. But honestly, people like you make me feel that life as a hermit might be more pleasant.
Actually, I don't believe your story. Many of those food forest projects run on donations and volunteers. If this is really the way to feed the world and is commercially viable, it would develop on its own. It's like organic farming, it doesn't get to a higher level because humanity has no money left for food.
It's very hard to convince agronomists who were thought to plant a million of the same crop in one area when they did it all their life. And the decision is majorly influenced by them, it will mean the end of their careers.
![How to Make a Chicken Tractor on Steroids [FULL VIDEO]](/img/n.gif)
High quality speech
We need to feed the soil not the crops
Worms, worms, worms I adore my worms, I have a wormfarm on my balcony.
.
Thanks for inspiring us. Im from indonesia and learn from this channel how to apply permaculture in my land . so glad to find this channel :)
Mas Rival. Salam dari Selangor Malaysia. Sy berbesar hati kerana Mas mengambil berat saran sy. Next go to agroforestry academy channel Dan tgk bagaimana cara mereka tumpang sari tanaman mereka. Klu Ernst Gotsch beliau transform barren land into food forest.
Extremely genuine comment from Geoff. Great man.
Hi Geoff!! I live in Brazil!! Permaculture is my life! I am a Neuroscientist and I know how much the poisons they use in agriculture make us sick and even kill us! I'm really loving watching you!
Rita I am wondering if you can recommend any Authors or books relating to Autism and the food system or possibly focusing on natural foods as a "cure" for autism. I would be grateful for any help.
@@yetithruhiker9230 Hi Yeti!I know of some scientific articles and researches, but these works are not published because the big corporations that manufacture these "poisons" pay the Universities to archive the researches. I know this because I have participated in many surveys.
@@yetithruhiker9230 hello Yeti, I will recommend this podcast to answer your question.
ua-cam.com/video/X3aOQ0N74PI/v-deo.html
I'm sorry if I intrude.
@ Rita Rocha Topmind. Hi, there, Rita! I live in Curitiba. Where are you? I'd love to meet people with the same vision to change things in Brazil.
So cool, I also know about this from my own experience with leaky gut, digestive issues and eventually some chronic illness. The effects of glyphosate herbicide are devastating and if they were properly divulged to the public, we would have an organic revolution.
"The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently." - David Graeber.
R.I.P. David Graeber
Bullshit Jobs indeed.
Sir, I am from suburban Calcutta in eastern part if India. I am grateful to your holistic advice. During pandemic period we started and reaped a great harvest of vegetables in a small piece of land.
“Should be illegal” I’ve thought the same for a long time, even before discovering Jeff Lawton and taken a deeper dive into permaculture.. it just makes sense. Thank you Jeff, for speaking up and for your continued efforts in teaching us these principles
Lol, actually I would prefer to see the change come from inspiration without legislation dictating… inspired actions are far more powerful than legislated mandates are.
Be the change you want to see in the world!
Certain people don't want mankind to be self sufficient and peaceful.
But I believe change is coming,thanks Geoff for enlighening us .I'd love to see a paradise earth.
Geoff this may be one of the best Permaculture videos I've ever seen on UA-cam, everything perfectly articulated. I really hope it gets millions of views..
Share share share, as I just did.
As an organic farmer with food forests, I take a deep breath and wonder if they’ll ever get it 😞 great words Geoff but I think the system is so corrupt we just need to do it for ourselves 🐝🌈😎
we can save the world one farm at a time
how do i convince people that organic or permaculture is the best way for humans to grow food? ive talked to a few conventional farmers and they simply will not budge in their beliefs.
i hear these claims from Geoff about organic producing higher yields, but we really need numbers to back up those claims. im not saying he is wrong, but i just dont know.
every farmer i talk to says they make more money doing it the normal ways of spraying herbicides, synthetic fertilizer etc, and that its much simpler.
i saw a story of one Nebraska farmer who grows sunflowers and he was literally growing 10 different companion crops underneath them at the same time.
im no farmer, but id have to assume that trying to harvest those 11 different crops cant be done simply with one harvesting machine.
so added complexity means added cost.
if these organic regenerative methods were easier and higher profit then everyone would be doing it right?
if its better for the environment but lower profit, thats a very hard selling point especially for the average farmer that is drowning in debt.
ive read a few studies about corn production with and without synthetic weed killer and the organic methods produce a yield of less 30-50% less.
apparently organic corn prices are doubled though, so that clearly seems more economically viable.
PS. i did a little more research and one university study found that when growing soy the organic had a 368% higher ROI compared to non organic and a 227% higher ROI for organic corn compared to non organic.
big agriculture is of course driven by profit and nothing else, so if organic can give nearly a 400% higher return then it boggles the mind why they wouldn't switch over.
there would be zero incentive to continue doing the conventional methods with less profit.
the more i learn the more questions i have lol
Day by day wave by wave we will make a better world as a collective unified consciousness just give it time and don’t burn yourself out keep on fuelling those good vibrations and keep up the creation cultivation and expression.
Continue to feed the soil and share your harvest results with us. Connect to each other. Share your work. We can grow nutritious food across each country and continent.
@@Big-Government-Is-The-Problem what I’m doing with my nonprofit in Bay Area, california, is bypass all the farmers and go straight to the people. Here’s what we’re doing.
First, to take the stance that industrial ag, is bright good or bad. It’s just not what we’re doing, and it’s not sustainable. So instead of fighting them, we just ignore them.
So when they’re not on our radar, we get creative and focus on the consumers.
We are transforming an entire city into an integrated permaculture edible landscape. We are starting with harvesting old growth trees that exist and planting 50 more trees.
Then we are transitioning into setting up full fledge permaculture micro-farms on people’s home landscapes. Then we wil move into public land such as city parks.
It really is build it and they will come. Just reinvent the economy, the farming structure, the way we buy amd consume food. Then the other stuff will become obsolete.
Netflix killed blockbuster because it was out of date. Same with Macy’s and Sears.
In our case it’s a reversal into nature and not technology, but same death of old and replacement of new will occur. In a way it’s just like nature.
Thank you for that deep breath of awe and peace in knowing I made the right decision. Now I need to make it happen. Keep talking Geoff. Please keep talking.
I just posted this video to my face book page. It will be lovely to have a lot more hands on understanding of permaculture implementation in schools and communities across the globe. The ideal would be to have one permaculture garden/landscape designed in every fifty mile area of the globe where humans live. The shift in thinking as well as the garnering of the skills and understanding would begin to tilt the norm.
I love the permaculture idea and am watching as many videos about it as I can take in. Slowly I am beginning to get a sense of how things work, yet each area requires seeing and understanding the elements that creat the dynamics which will dictate the permaculture designs, so it is something that has to be understood on a much deeper level than a blue print could show.
It is happening and will become more and more the norm.
Thank you for shining so bright. Maybe one day people will realise how special you are
Oh- and the water! I live above California's Central Valley, and every time I drive through it I see miles of huge fields with sprinklers everywhere spraying water into the air to (evaporate and) drop on the crops. Even in the last couple of years with severe drought, they're sucking the water up to make huge crops of low nutritional density food for people hundreds of miles away.
The sacrifice is we need to change the economic and logistics system that's already based on commercial monoculture from the past century. That's the sacrifice. How many big conglomerates are ready to change their whole production line from "farm" to supermarkets? I only hope we can make this a trend in the people, so that the laws can start to change and then the "giants" will have no excuse to not make the transition.
This was so encouraging and gave me so much hope. I also feel that the little bit I'm doing in my micro permeculture backyard garden here in Los Angeles is good for something. I'm helping to collapse a dangerous, costly, and toxic system while feeding my family better, less expensive food. Win Win!
I I would say rather, that you are inspiring a Permaculture revolution.
Will definitely be looking more into Deep Green Permaculture, Path to Freedom in Pasadena CA, and Happy Earth. I love learning about these dense & urban food production sites!
My grandpa is a farmer with knowledge from past, he recycle and use any organic, waste thing he found, he pee in a bottle, and let it with air few days and use it, and he even use human waste for plant, and the weed he cut or he pluck out he let or make it become compost and use that, and 21th century come, everyone look at him like he is a weird, from past, but his soil after he used these technique after many years is just.. Completely Amazing, it's most living thing, soft, aerobic, and the water come through it right away easy than any agriculture field with mass plow, fertilizer in my town. Now he has gone far away.. but the weed just keep make the soil better every year.
Thank you for sharing his story!
Dr. Elaine Ingham, and many others are working with farmers to regenerate the land, improve the nutritive values of the crops. It's a start.
What those farmers are doing is moving entirely away from all chemical inputs, restoring the biology of the soils, and end up with higher yields of quality crops, higher income levels, and INCREASED production for foods as well as animals.
I am n new to the word permaculture, but not new to the concepts. Thank you grandpa! Just wanted to say that after spending last 24hrs watching all your last 5 year's videos here, i have learned alot and found some great solutions to flooding issues and poor soil fertility here! I have alot to learn, but lucky to have permaculture neighbors to consult! Thanks for all your hard work!
❤
Love his attitude. Glad I found this channel.
What changes would go along with it: 1) change in what we eat (more plants, more species and saisonally). 2) get rid of all conveniece and highly processed foods that are popular today - consume more freshly prepared foods 3) change in food logistics (local instead of global)
4) more people working in agriculture with more hand labour 5) higher prices to be paid for food as today. However: The prices we pay today are no realistic prices as the environmental and health damages are not includet today.
Growing up in the Central Valley, CA, the intense ag spraying was unbearable. Then, moving to Texas panhandle I realized what Big Ag was really about. Completely unsustainable, suffocating and enslaving contracts with seed and chemical companies, constant tilling that absolutely obliterates any top soil, disgusting CAFOs that contaminate ground water and local atmosphere, mono-cropping that ignores the need for diversification, and the unintended consequences of us having to travel 5 hours one way to locate unsprayed hay for our small herd of pastured cattle, our pastured hens' nesting boxes, then finally our deep mulch garden beds.
Hello Geoff, very clear!!! first, change our mind, discover what we can do, and try to begin with no chemicals on soil. Greetings from the south of Chile
Well said and beautifully explained.
I liked the questioner's word of "Sacrifice" because the issue here is not much the system of growing food, but entire Humanity and its psychology. We are in a transition mode into something new, from agriculture to finance to new cultural values(belief systems) metamorphosing into something new and synchronistically on a global scale. Truthfully there are too many weak people in physical health and in mind,attached to old belief systems and to habits and compulsions, that I cannot see how they'll be want to accept what's coming, in this case the abandonment of cheap industrial food and the return of hand labour in gardens. Once these people realize their box of Cheerios is not on Walmart's shelves, they'll be preferring to die rather than change their habits
Maybe they can change their minds when a one liter bottle of drinking water (no organochlorines, no organophosphates, no nitrates, no glyphosate, no dioxins, etc.) already costs 100 times more than a pack of cheerios!
The biggest obstacle is that people don't value food. Food in first world nations is relatively inexpensive. The vast majority of people don't want to be responsible for growing their own food and don't particularly care where it came from, who grew it, or how nutritious it actually is. Another major obstacle is that this sort of change would require major dietary changes. Furthermore, though I enjoy this sort of lifestyle others may not and I don't believe in coerced collectivism of any kind. I don't want the government to tell me how I must live and I don't want them to tell others that they must live as I do.
Refreshing to see people rejecting coerced collectivist action. I’m hopeful permaculture won’t turn into a fascist / authoritarian communist movement, but I think that risk does exist.
Yes indeed, it would not do ifwe were all the same, I have owned houses in the past but always had itchy feet.
Most of my life I have rented country properties and planted trees in all of them, I would not like to have to compete for these houses with the wealthy, otherwise a tent beckons.
From where I stand there has been a huge explosion of permaculure gardens and farms in the last 50 years, it is growing, whether that is fast enough to save our species, who knows, but we who can do, and hope for the best, and enjoy our fresh food and lifestyle, bit it would not suit everyone, I used to worry about damaging my guitar hands n nails, now the guitars are dusty and forlorn.
@@briangable08 The Earth is a very large place. People have really wild ideas about how powerful people are. Every person in the world could live in the State of Texas and have over an acre of land. Let's not try that out but we are nowhere near the carrying capacity of our planet and affect it far less than we are led to believe. Many large populations, like China, are about to collapse. They figured out that their one child policy worked a little too well. I'm far more worried about being exterminated by psychopaths like Mao or Bill Gates than gasping to death for oxygen.
Either good food and good farming practices are their own reward which will eventually win out or they aren't. I'm not trying to save the world. That just isn't realistic. It isn't even necessary. People have very little effect on climate. It is cycling of solar intensity and the orbital eccentricity of the Earth that are the primary drivers of climate. The elites have known this for over 10,000 years and they have exploited our fear and ignorance of these facts to control us. There is nothing new under the Sun.
The psychos who are running the world today don't want permaculture either. They want us to eat compressed bars of algae and bugs. They don't want us living in a beautiful natural world where we interact with nature. They want us sealed into giant plastic domes where we sleep in giant cigar tubes. That's the thing that really peeves me. Permaculture people normally buy in whole hog with all of the UN communist climate crap because they believe that everyone will be forced to dig swales and plant jujubes when the truth is that the people pulling the strings at and behind the UN want about 90% of us to just die.
Well said Mr Lawton! This reminds of one time I saw a glass jar of garlic, made in China. It came over to the States on those ships, 4 football fields long, which measures gas usage by tones per second, not miles per gallon. And I thought that’s a crime on so many levels.
No ship uses tons of fuel per second, unless its a rocket-ship. At worst 250 tonnes of fuel per day to move 250,000 tonnes of cargo. Compare this to a citizen using 1kg of petrol to drive to the shops for 1kg of milk to determine the really obnoxious part of the supply chain.
@@dampdoily I heard it on a yt vid, so.. But may have been the first seconds as it accelerates from zero.
Theres No Such Thing as FOSSILFUELS. It does not exist, its a fairytale.
Oil, gas, water all keeps on welling up, its made as we speak. Once a well is used "up" they close the well, and after some time they simply reopen the well, and its FULL again. It has always been this way.
@@GalaxyJ-vm2rn Ah, "alternative" "science". Let me guess you also have religious books that shows dinosaurs living in harmony with humans. - The desire to not change and give up things that seem to be very convenient even tops any rational thought.
@@GalaxyJ-vm2rn fossil means it stems from biomass that died long, long ago. Can be 200 million years in the case of old coal. You are welcome. The oil and methane in cavitities or encapsulated in rock is younger but it still takes millions of years AND these were completely different climate conditions where such an abundance of plant matter grew (and was sequestered away and slowly, under a lot of pressure oil formed - over millions of years.)
I support this work!
geoff where you at
Hope he’s ok!
I stand with working in the environment you have and creating an ecology that is alive and thriving. People in poverty and extreme poverty arent in food safety. It is a shame to see farmers on their knees, dependent on large corporations, and big fertilizer producers. However, something can still be done. Cultivate your land with agroforestry principles. Don’t let message stop here, take it to the field. Literally.
Keep it up Geoff love and light
Geoff is a Hero!
Geoff, I love you!
May you be forever blessed.
💖🤗🌞🙏🌴
I'm so glad you mentioned the very little employment, industrial ag and mechanized agriculture does not employ the amount of people that even a small market garden employes. I grew up in a wheat producing area the average farm was 3000 acres and employed maybe five people full time, eight or ten during harvest.
How does all that extra labour cost factor into the price of food? Will people expect their grocery bills to double or even triple in a world of permaculture? Genuine question, I'm not familiar with the math of industrial agriculture vs permaculture.
@@edukid1984 the machines used are stupid expensive. A wheat combine $350,000, headers, grain trucks, gov subsidizes. Id say it wouldn't change prices as much as you'd think.
This is major and highly important.
Everything said by Geoff is true. Big industries make big dollars in agriculture, they have brainwashed majority of farmers that they have to have chemicals, more machinery, massive destruction of the land, soil.
Straight after big business, come the mass of ppl who eat cheap junk food, who couldn't careless what they ate or where it came from, they are just as difficult to convince otherwise.
We have to join forces right around our planet, be more vocal, challenge directly the handful of ppl that have conscientiously led ppl down the wrong path, soley for their gain, or submit that each of us tend to our own gardens/farms.
Thx Geoff for never giving up
exceptional content
This is the most intelligent UA-cam channel I watch ..same goes for the comments section.. and it goes beyond intelligence' we have a net supply of real meaning: within our grasp.. more than words can express
Its time for another farm tour my friend. Please and thank you very much.
well said
Do you ever run into situations where people down hill or down stream are complaining that you or one of your projects is stealing water and/or blaming you for their crops not doing so well?
The results of this type of project include increased infiltration of ground water. If anything the people downhill benefit from projects like this. Check out Peter Andrews and the projects he’s done in Australia. The Mulloon Creek project started with one property but the neighbors recognized the benefits and hopped on board. Even when no water is flowing to the properties from upstream, water flows out downstream of the project as a result.
I agree with your argument mostly.
What about grains? Legumes? Corn?
In the States many organic farms rely heavily on interns during the growing season. Interns get a small stipend and housing....not not a living wage.
Once again I agree especially for fruits and veg.
The main problem is that with growing urbanization, people live far from the farms where the food is produced. We would need some sort of "back to the land" approach, to get people back to the land which provides food.
The main benefit of industrial agriculture is that it requires little hand-power and can be done by a few people, so others can just treat food as a commodity that magically appears in the supermarket
Eric's book is called Paradise Lot, but it is about permaculture.
Question…. Instead of changing Agriculture in one motion, how do we help solve some of their problems…. Like focusing on their rows, where the soil needs to be covered, fields need more carbon (carbon credits $$$), nitrogen (which they pay for $$$$), etc…. I wonder if a grower would allow a permaculture program experiment on a small plot and show what covering the soil can do for the land.. trucks are coming to their properties anyway to pick up produce, how do we use a permaculture solution to yard waste, cardboard, landfill fodder (kitchen waste, etc) to circulate “excess nutrients”.. hmm
We’re in a grand solar minimum now with solar cycle 25. Much easier to adapt to weird and extreme weather in the backyard than with massive mono crops.
Great video!
Please someone add sources for these numbers so we can use them in debates more effectively!
good point tim. good science is truthful, and when the truth is to generally transition to this way of permaculture, having the perfectly reasonable scientific requirement of solid, credible evidence is a great (& obvious) idea
Can we use rice Hull as mulch? It's the only thing free at my place.
Howdy Geoff! How do we begin this process? How do we convince people to give up their semi-green lawns for food forests?
I'm switching
Brilliant!
Watched several times to cure my depression.
I can't agree more! I can't agree more. We're in total harmony.
So much sense - nature is inherently abundant
I wish every industrial farming corporation could hear this video.... But they'd rather have machine slaves than hiring people to do the work. Money is the ultimate blindfold for morals.
Thank you so much for sharing these thoughts. It is very enlightening and powerful words!!!
As a next step to get deeper into this topic of shifting agriculture to this new way, would you suggest any other videos?
highly unorganized, and many, but i have been compiling a playlist here - ua-cam.com/play/PLwKoppvahTGEqa2abhCHQ1i_iRLGGsc4f.html
also the (3)rd playlist about "how it would sorta be like" has some too (also, if UA-cam automatically doesn't do a good job in its suggestions)
Hi Geoff, I’d be interested to discuss this topic more with you. I’m a believer in your ideologies although I also am an agronomist for a big ag company. I’d be extremely keen to discuss all points on this with you if I’m able to. Thanks
Great video,thanks a lot
Anyone know where the "4-6% of land" stat is from?
If it is 10x more productive per acre, you could produce the same amount on 10% of the land.
I think he mentioned 13x for one of the examples he mentioned.
How much more productive different kinds of polyculture are to monoculture is hard to quantify but lots of studies have tried, its controversial.
It could be a percentage of current agricultural land needed if we permacultured all underutilised space in cities and suburbs (like parks and backyards and nature strips) as well as surrounding areas
Imagination.
Hi Geoff, I'm looking for ways permaculture can "industrialized". Because the part of the equation you don't mention is the labor needed, which increase with permaculture. I agree that when it's local, it should just be part of our lives, something done collectively, urbanized. But as therapeutic as it is, in our current commodified Capitalist hellscape, labor time = money = more expensive products. There's farms that do crop rotation, pack rows of different plants together, bio, etc., and there is industrialized tools, but that's not really the full deal, and it's still more labor intensive. I also understand how fucked up it is that the conversation has to steep down to the most exploitative common denominator, which as you said simply mechanized a process dependent on slavery (and the threat of deportation for immigrant workers especially in the USA). But here we are. And given that you have a wealth of expertise in this field, I wonder if you know about mechanized tools that reduce labor time in a Permaculture setting. I struggle to imagine some, given that mechanization for monocultures is also a quest for standardisation of crops, to be more easily harvested and processed, and permaculture is adaptative to local contexts. Apart from a backhoe to dig swales or ponds... I don't know. Maybe something where you feed in wood, compost, and seeds, and it form hugelcütur mounds and seed a pattern of interlocking complementary crops, and based on the computerized planting, the harvestor knows how to separate the crops.... I don't know. Just writing it down, I see how in permaculture, you want to avoid harvesting everything all at once, keep things growing....
At least, would you know if there's studies, or figures I could throw at people to evaluate the added manpower needed, per unit of calorie or nutrition? That would be very locally different, but if these figures have been tabulated in specific places, it would be really useful.
Tell people to: Petition for ballot initiative and tell their representatives and canidates to: End farm subsidies. Let everyone use an acre of free tax free good land to grow a food forest and live on.
Truth that is inconvenient to the 1%. As for the rest of us... Keep being the change 👍😁💚🌻
"1%" I know what you mean on the elite-class money/power tip, and that's great +ve attitude you bring in, don't mean to be a downer, but (for realistic balance rather) unfortunately, being the change is hard (especially in human-built environments that don't really enable us to be the change) as MANY of us have become very familiar, spoiled, and weakened with dependency on an unsustainable Economy that is fueled by artificial, industrial levels of energy, ya know?.. (like Dominic's descriptive comment here)
This was quite "ranty" haha loved it! :-) Naturally, I agree 100% with the handsome granpa!
it’s time 🙏🏾
Unless you separate out land for agriculture from development land, it will never be cost-effective to farm 'just outside London' or on green spaces within London, simply because the cost of acquiring the land would be purgatorial. If you take 2000sqm in outer London, you can build a £10m house on it and buying the land would be well over £1m with planning permission. Given that the cost of agricultural land, without Planning Permission, is £25-50k for 10,000sqm, you can see the challenge inherent in your suggestion.
I was watching a video of corn harvesting in Virginia. The harvester was harvesting up to 190 bushels of corn (dent corn) per acre. The numbers sound staggering but were not unusual. Then considering the cost of chemicals, machinery, personnel, legal, and business issues, and the sizable subsidies is pretty staggering as well. 90% of the harvest would be used to feed animals on feed lots. Unfortunately for the permaculturist the industrial ag-business controls the conversation and claims that they have to only solution to feed the world.
Dear Goeff, while I'm eager to believe your argumentation, I want to believer, my inner sceptic asks this question: how did you come up with the 4% equivalent mentioned at 4:47? How is that possible? How is that number calculated? Are there examples of a transition like this to follow up and look into? What are we comparing in this particular case? Veggies or grains?
I was thinking about this and I think it might be including urban environments like backyards, balconies and maybe even parks and such, as well as semi-urban (which there's a lot more space in). If all the unproductive land like lawns and other underutilised space were filled with permaculture, the 4% would be a percentage of the land currently used for agriculture today. So we would need in total all the underutilised space in cities, towns and suburbs plus 4% of the currently used agricultural land. That's my guess anyway
@@joshmason179 nice guess. But it’s not viable to convert every recreational green area into a veg/forest garden.
Anyways, this is such a bold statement with no argument given, which leaves me confused as to how and if this is possible at all.
@@cyrylski Yeah I agree, it would have to be a massive cultural shift. Though I was walking through my city today (Melbourne) and there are a lot of parks and community green space where I think a portion could be turned into a communal food forest, so it's not impossible to think we could get at least some of our fresh food to grow in built up regions. Additionally further out from the city where I grew up there's a lot of empy and unused paddocks that could be effectively converted.
I agree that it's a very bold statement to make without much to back it up, but I think it may possibly be true (or false). Even so, I think it's probably a statistic used more as shock value than anything else - assuming it's true its probably still unfeasible, yet even then, how much land could we save by using permaculture and other closed circuit farming systems? A significant percentage, I would guess.
@@cyrylski "But it’s not viable to convert every recreational green area into a veg/forest garden. "
Just wait. If we don't, it still will. The Q is if we want to help which I see may be a bridge too far.
@@joshmason179 Four years ago I took over a rented house with a 30 x 10 metre lawned back yard with one Bramley apple tree, I planted six apple trees inc a crab apple, one pear tree, two apricot trees, one Damson plumb, four hazel/french filbert, two fig trees three grape vines, one asparagus bed one raspberry bed, one rhubarb bed ( all quite small for single person) three berberis, four gooseberry, four blackcurrant, a gogi, a couple of josta berries, herbs everywhere squeezed in two small raised metal beds one with strawberries, one with perpetual kale (daubentons i think?).
Four 2x1 metre raisec beds for anual, salad, onions, leeks, early broad beans etc rotated.
Most of the fruit will peak when I am dead and gone, I also rent 2.5 acres of orchard and paddock with hens for eggs, I did start a permaculture food forest in those acres, with larger no dig beds for more fruit n veg, plus two small poly tunnels for tomato and peppers, but at 77 how long I will be able to keep going and fall back to the yard area I don't know.
Plant for future, bless old men that plant trees, they may not see their fruit.
Thank you so much 🔥🔥🔥
This what i want to do Throughout whole world
Start on your homeland, then you can travel.
Maybe start with a home garden 🌿
SCOMO out, Geoff in, Great intelligent caring man.
Yes. All yes here.
Took your course over a year ago and still haven't finished the final because the closer I got to actually being able to make these inputs into my landscape, the more I realized everything is illegal to do. If you read the Federal, State, and Local fire codes for my area alone, guilds are illegal. Vegetation from one plant that touches another plant is illegal. It's illegal for me to dig a hole without calling 811 in advance (that could take up to 4 days before getting approval to dig a hole). I've been so frustrated from the application side of things, I don't even want to finish the final. Watching this video makes me want to find a way to actually gather the global masses to incorporate this now. I'm tired of waiting. But how? It's protected by cartels, drug lords, governments, and generational wealth hoarders. You make a stink with these Feds and your on a barge somewhere getting waterboarded for nothing.
Get the jab, eat the bugs and live in your nice pod. You own nothing and you're happy right?
@@ayatollahvladimirputin3844 I prefer own the land and the pad, retrofit it for sustainability, care for the earth, eat EVERYTHING that can grow in my microclimate, share the abundance, teach others in my area what works, dance, enjoy life, exercise, meditate on the positive outcomes.
@@1rstjames good f the government
Brasil needs to watch this video. Bolsonaro is allowing the destruction of the Amazon and just passed a new bill allowing all types of chemicals and poison, even proven cancerous ones. It's so infuriating!
I am so thankful for all the work you do and awareness you bring to people like me who just a few years ago was blinded by the "that's how it's supposed to be. If you want production you need chemicals" mentality. Discovering permaculture has been truly an enlightening experience.
Excellent ! 🙏
Do you have any information for industrial farmers that might want to switch their farms to better farming methods?
Hi Geoff Lawton
How do I keep snakes away from my Farm, are there plants or animals I can use to keep them away?
I'm afraid the future for humanity doesn't look very bright. Between short term politics, powerful businesses only intrested in dollars or euros, and our youth staring at their phones all day, l don't see how things will change fot the better.
I hope to be proven wrong.
Channels like this, Happen Films and Undecided give me a lot of hope - the rate of tech innovation as well as permaculture spreading is massive - it doesn't all happen straight away buyt even still the growth is happening really fast in a lot of areas, it depends what you focus on.
In the U.S. we need to break up those "farms" and repopulate the deserted towns with refugees. Teach them all permaculture and anarchism theory and give them seeds and trees. We should do this now to stop the latest dustbowl sweeping the west. Tame the hurricanes with green. Make earth green again. Give people purpose and tools. We are ready. We will love 🌎🌍🌏and ourselves. We are stewards of this special rock💐
Tell people to: Petition for ballot initiative and tell their representatives and canidates to: End farm subsidies. Let everyone use an acre of free tax free good land to grow a food forest and live on.
There needs to be a holistic research regarding this (economically, logistically, socially etc.) to make this work. We need to educate and normalise eating "ugly" produce where produce don't look all the same. Produce grading needs to be upgraded/updated to reflect this. I hope we can make this a reality soon. What would be the stepping stone to start this?
yeah Thairin, there's too much emphasis on aesthetic value, i think because many people have the luxury to, mainly from unsustainable, artificial, industrial levels of (mainly fossil fuel) energy. we should give high respect to our bodies as they are like temples of god imo, and we should reflect this in what we consume too, but the less superficial & less short-lasting QUALITY (which mainly includes the nutritional content and the holistic environmental impacts) of the produce is really much more important, right
I am buying coastal property in Tanzania. I will be converting from strictly banana monoculture to a more diversified food forest and livestock. I am thinking on moringa as a primary crop but what other crops can I raise for both human and animal consumption?
Agricultural ,, yay
Nice topic videos,thanks you for share
The biggest problem is seed and tree, bush production for start up. Once you are up and running your good.
hello geoff,
thanks for sharing your knowledge, these viedeos are amazing.
we are planning on building a place to try out different ways of sustainable excistence.
as we were trying to figure out what criterias we have for the land we are looking for i realised i dont have any clue about the following:
how much space for permaculture we would need in average to feed 80-120 people while producing an abundance that we could share with the community? (annual rainfall is about 900mm (35in), with mediterranean climate, long dry summers, i guess it will might hilly, but i can`t say, also i don`t know about the soil..)
i would be very happy for any kind of answer.
best regards,
p.
Such a transition needs a practical plan and this is just an insubstantial promo
I heard that Parkinsons disease spreading rapidly due to industrial agricultural practice. Can you explain the relation between these two?
Great documentary on your question
ua-cam.com/video/6i2sJwxw5Uc/v-deo.html
The most absurd thing at list here in Brazil is that to be a organic farmer has no incentive and you need to prove and be supervised and the conventional way does not need any of it.
It is all upside down but I don't mind as I now my path.
Thank
Asi es en Chile tambien.
Parabenes Rogerio
Create a new organic brand 'pureganic'... Needs no paperwork but everyone knows the source... Time for all of us to operate outside their box 👏👍🌻
@@Shambala_G you mean like a company?
@@rogeriolisto no I mean just a the brand name 'Pure-ganic' with a cool logo... Start sticking labels on all your stuff.. Get your organic pals to do the same.... And voila! You no longer need certification.. And you are not making any claims about your product. You let the consumer make their own minds up.
@@Shambala_G thank you very much, I've been on that mind set for years but now that I'm growing I feel like I need some sort of authentication and people here are hard believers of organic as not one around me or people that grow for them selves are doing the organic way.
Quemicals from morning to evening especially this time of the year. 😏
I won't surrender💐
Thank you
Hi. What's your knowledge about vertisols? I live in a vertisol area, the soil is very hard and compacted, and my plants don't grow much due to poor root development (it's basically clay with stones). Which crops and plants in general perform better in this kind of soil, apart from cotton, rice and sorghum? What solutions have been proven to be efficient and to have a noticeable effect on the plants, from small crops and herbs to fruit trees?
You should search up videos on Paul Gauchi. A YT page called L2survive has some good video tours of Paul Gauchi's garden. His ground was heavy clay with lots of rocks. He built soil on top of that very quickly with wood chips. He has an orchard that is very plentiful and grows annuals under the fruit trees in a symbiotic relationship. He is a bit preachy on the religious side, but the growing methods are harmonic with science.
What are your thoughts on hydro seeding? How can it be done ethically?
Does Mother Nature get a say on what "ethically" means?.
Me too!
i remember reading about energy efficiency of forest and carbon capture vs traditional farming in flat lands
there is certainly no contest, prairies and foraging was practiced in dry climates bc of lack of water and rain in the middle east
but that agricultural system got copy pasted into other places with different climate, it's a crime
then you find modern news asking the wrong questions and giving even wrong answers by saying "we need new bio/tech innovation to feed the world", no you don't!!, you need to study what is already known and published
the fiasco of biofuels showed how the governement just want to keep the dying industrial agriculture alive by injecting money that only served to destroy more forest and release more soil carbon to the atmosphere
Amazing idea.. ☺️
How do you get rid of nutgrass
Hello, when you buy an oignon you but an oignon not the nutrition inside it that can't be quantified when you buy it.
Hi there, I have a question - I live in a small apartment in Melbourne and I'd love to start doing some permaculture, but I don't have any land to do it on, nor even a balcony. Is there any way around this? how can I reduce my dependence on industrialised agriculture if I don't have the land or money it costs to get land to do it on? I like living in the city, but don't really like living with other people, so I don't think a share-house or moving out to the suburbs is an option for me. Is there a solution to this predicament? Thanks.
First thing to do is to assess your "climate" within your apartment. Where does the light come in, how many hours a day, what is your regular temperature within the apartment, could you use space within the apartment that receives light etc in such a way to allow container gardening. Use these type things as your first steps. Have a think about what you actually consume, could you potentially grow one of these things given the above parameters? Don't try to do everything at once, just do one thing well, then expand on the idea.
Do they have local allotments in Melborne you could rent on a long term lease as in the UK?
@@briangable08 Not sure, but I've found a way out of my predicament:)
I use a neighbors yard, and share some with them
Plant in pots on another persons land
Hey Geoff, How would permaculture look as a replacement from the current indiustrial farming method? Here in California, we have a lot of droughts and we grow a lot of Almonds commercially, could high water crops like these be replaced with permaculture systems (figs with crops underneath, cacti, etc.) and what could that look like? Are there any current pushes for deindustrializing commercial agriculture business or at least pushes for less water usage? Thank you so much!
What permaculture design focuses on, is replacing monoculture crops to favour diverse growing systems of succession. So it wouldn't be a simple matter of removing all almonds to reduce water requirements. Good design will reduce evaporation, increase composting of soils and utilise pre-existing crops and infrastructure, to inter-plant new crops in succession. These in turn, will shelter the growing systems and accumulate resources, while reducing waste.
If it's a monoculture almond crop, in traditional rows, then it will certainly need more water. Rather than get rid of the almond entirely, it's better to remove half, and inter-plant other crops like figs, agave, pomegranates and even grapes growing-up some of the almonds, to be removed. Let the grapes use them as a trellis, and get another food crop. What almonds remain to be harvested, will benefit from the diversity of foliage, to reduce evaporation.
Where commercial growers tend to shirk these kinds of growing systems, is they're not very forgiving to machine harvesting. Human interaction is best for management of these crops. I will share a large agricultural farm in our region (Lockyer Valley, Queensland, Australia) that has adopted a kind of hybrid system for their annual crops though. They've planted windbreaks on contonour, with all native lillypillies. These are extremely long (as long as their fields) windbreaks. Not only do they protect their crops from wind, but also offer protection for small birds, that eat the pests that would attack their crops. When in full flower, they benefit the pollinators, who also pollinate their food crops.
So even planting strategic windbreaks, can reduce evaporation, for traditional agricultural practices and crops. I would be inclined to plan succession of existing almond growing systems, rather than eliminating them entirely. They will just look and behave differently, to a traditional monoculture crop.
@@Christodophilus Thanks so much for your response! I look forward to getting some more info about this farm in Queensland! I haven't seen any commercial permaculture farms so far and I am really interested to see some ways how permaculture design can be incorporated into a commercial farm, as I think it could be a huge help worldwide as we have less and less water, droughts, crazy weather, etc.
Watch the movie China Town if you've never seen it.
@@williamhad such an intense movie!! I wonder how many sketchy deals like that have
actually went down in real life
@@cyruswatersplants I'm guessing quite a few. I think things like this usually get framed as being "environmental" but they're really just corruption. To my understanding, California has pumped a lot of its water into river deltas to "save some fish" while cutting back on the water it gives to farms. Now, family farms are dry and hedgefunds are buying their land off of them. Makes me wonder if it was all some shady deal.
Slavery has been in existence for most of oral and written human history.
Monoculture has been with us at least as long as Noah (Genesis 9:20). And, we see that Abraham and Lot were already over-grazing livestock on the land in Genesis 13:7.
I believe there are responsible ways to conduct industrial agriculture that minimize erosion and soil destruction. Unfortunately farmers are the slowest to change because their knowledge is largely acquired generationally. Additionally, Big AG funds the agriculture colleges and teaches chemicals, GMO farming, and genetics of livestock. Always follow the $$ and power.
Just returning to leaving/creating hedges and trees between fields as the Bible instructs does so much to protect soil, clean the water run-off, and provide for biodiversity in plants and animals alike. The UK biodiversity has suffered greatly since removing their hedgerows to get a few more feet out of every field.
The 7th year Sabbath for the land (Leviticus 25:4-7) is reported to be a blessing for cyclical productivity for those who practice it.
Responsible mob grazing does wonders for pasture health and their biodiversity
Shabbat Shalom
How can those of us who are on board with this philosophy begin to join forces in a community? Not something temporary or just for skilled or wealthy people.
Why not go into the community? Give presentations in edible landscaping, water catchment, non-chemical fertilization, at homeowner association meetings. This could be done as volunteer hours for maintaining a Master Gardener certification.
Approach the schools and school boards about installing a mini food forest at local schools and using it for the basis of some classroom instruction (Permaculture classroom).
Approach VA hospitals and assisted living centers about planting gardens for healthier food for patients and residents.
Get involved in the fight for backyard poultry in cities that have outlawed it.
What Geoff is talking about in using the perimeter of urban areas speaks directly to zoning codes.
There are so many ways to act. Use your imagination.
@@BonnieBlue2A I am doing that as a volunteer with Xerces, a board member of a local Bee City USA initiative, a candidate Master Naturalist and in many other ways. But I have come to the same conclusion as Dahr Jamail at the conclusion of his book The End of Ice. But honestly, people like you make me feel that life as a hermit might be more pleasant.
In urban areas the community gardens must be the next push. Not everybody has land or decent backyards…
@@audreycermak what is that you feel is wrong with what he said? He was just making suggestions based on a question that you asked.
@@audreycermak haha, cheers to honesty, and the diversity of approaches needed :)
Actually, I don't believe your story. Many of those food forest projects run on donations and volunteers. If this is really the way to feed the world and is commercially viable, it would develop on its own. It's like organic farming, it doesn't get to a higher level because humanity has no money left for food.
It's very hard to convince agronomists who were thought to plant a million of the same crop in one area when they did it all their life.
And the decision is majorly influenced by them, it will mean the end of their careers.