Permaculture - a Quiet Revolution

A nice introduction to Permaculture that's also an overview of the Permaculture Congress held in Brazil a few years ago that's also nice examples of Permaculture operations in practice.  For example a tour of collecting the feces from pigs and sheep into a pond, that goes into a biodigester, to produce natural gas, that runs a turbine to generate electricity, and the effluent from the biodigester becomes a pond in which they grow water hyacynth's, that are essentially weeds which can be used as feed for the pigs. 

It starts with a quote from Bill Mollison talking about how teaching people to grow their own food is subversive.  It teaches them independence giving them freedom from the system.  Hence it's a kind of revolution, but a quiet one because it's just people gardening.



Permaculture - A Quiet Revolution from Spread Knowledge on Vimeo.

Review: The Power Of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil

This movie is very popular among the Transition movement as it is essentially a blueprint for the Transition message. Transition wants us to recognize the twin dangers of Peak Oil and Climate Change, and take steps to increase resilience in our society. The message of the movie is that Cuba already went through this transformation. While their crisis came due to artificially imposed conditions, they did suddenly have to undergo a drastic powerdown and reshaping of their society.

The context is the Cold War struggles between the U.S. and the Soviet Union played out in a small country off the coast of Florida. Cuba was the Soviet Union's main presence on the doorstep of America, and when the Soviet Union collapsed they could no longer afford to continue funding Cuba, and they pulled out. Cuba had adopted the "Green Revolution" system of agriculture with petrochemical based fertilizers and fossil oil fueled tractors and high energy use, just like other modern countries. But when the Soviet Union left so did their access to fossil fuel. The U.S. imposed sanction after sanction in an effort to squeeze the Cuban government in a modern sort of siege warfare. This simply made Cuba's situation more dire. There were food shortages and most people lost 20 lbs or more during the period.

I suppose the powers that be expected Cuba to collapse and beg for mercy. What happened instead was a reinvention of their society, and the development of localized resources especially for food. There was a mass adoption of Permaculture and Organic agriculture, of urban farming, and much more.

The movie makes Cuba out to be an agrarian paradise and a miracle. It describes Cuba as an object lesson from which the rest of the world could learn important lessons.

Of course the powers that be in the U.S. doesn't want Cuba to be portrayed as anything but a poor land held in the grasp of an insane dictator ..blah blah blah blah.. There are travel restrictions, economic restrictions, and more which keep Americans from easily traveling to Cuba and seeing how they really live.

AASIN: 

The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil

Principles: 

Minimizing resources required to achieve desired results of our activities

References: 

Rob Hopkins' Transition Handbook

Permaculture SF

URL: 

Permaculture SF

Description: 

Organization offering Permaculture teaching and activities primarily focused on San Francisco, but may be open to the whole Bay Area.

Urban Permaculture Guild

URL: 

Urban Permaculture Guild

Description: 

Urban Permaculture Guild educates and inspires communities and individuals to creatively transform how they live and the urban places where they live. We facilitate artistic and ecologically-oriented placemaking and educational projects that honor the interconnection of human communities and the natural world.

The Urban Permaculture Guild is a project of Architects / Designers / Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR), an educational non-profit organization founded in 1982. ADPSR works for peace, environmental protection, social justice, and the development of healthy communities. The Guild operates under the direction of Katherine Steele.

Plants For A Future

URL: 

Plants For A Future

Description: 

A resource centre for rare and unusual plants, particularly those which have edible, medicinal or other uses. We practise vegan-organic permaculture with emphasis on creating an ecologically sustainable environment based largely on perennial plants. Just twenty plants provide the majority of food eaten, yet there are thousands of other useful plants which have not reached mainstream attention.

Permaculture Links - Britain

URL: 

Permaculture Links

Description: 

A links resource directory related to Permaculture, and focused on Britain.

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Permaculture Association (Britain)

URL: 

Permaculture Association (Britain)

Description: 

Permaculture is about creating sustainable human habitats by following nature's patterns. An ecological design system that inspires and empowers us to create our own solutions to local and global problems, it provides ways to design and create healthy productive places to work, rest and play.

The Association is an educational charity run by its members and helps people use permaculture in their everyday lives to improve their quality of life and the environment around them. It supports individuals, projects and groups working with permaculture in Britain

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Steward Community Woodland

URL: 

Steward Community Woodland

Description: 

a permaculture project which aims to demonstrate the value of integrating conservation woodland management techniques with organic growing, traditional skills and crafts and low-impact sustainable living. Please read our introductory leaflet for a brief introduction to the project.

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The International Institute for Ecological Agriculture

URL: 

http://permaculture.com/

Description: 

dedicated to healing the planet while providing for the human community—by education and implementation of socially just, ecological, resource-conserving forms of agriculture, the basis of all sustainable societies.

The IIEA was founded in 1993 by Farmer David Blume as a nonprofit organization focused on promoting permaculture and alternative fuels. The people who work at the International Institute for Ecological Agriculture have diverse interests and talents that help this organization thrive. See the staff page for bios and descriptions.

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