6 results for tag: permaculture

Peter Jackson on Natural Farming, Ecological Resilience, and the Magic of Minerals and Microbes

Over a span of nearly two decades, self-taught natural farmer Peter Jackson has transformed a plot of rural Washington land into a thriving, bountiful forest garden.  When his family first arrived on the land nearly twenty years ago, it contained only a few food-bearing plants: old heirloom apple trees, sickly pear trees, and Chinese plum trees with cherry-sized fruits. Today, the property is home to approximately three hundred fruit and nut trees, as well as assorted berry bushes, and Jackson isn’t finished yet. “I’m trying to get up to about 500 trees on the four and a half acres,” he says. In addition to his farming work, Jackson is the ...

Documenting Reasons for Optimism: Mitigating Climate Change through Soil Restoration

It is important to document reasons for optimism, focusing on the future we want to achieve. Several trends, in particular trends regarding soil regeneration, support optimism about the environment. We need to build upon these positive trends, while resisting the negative ones. For years while I was in Geneva, Switzerland, I published and edited the Worldwatch Institute’s World Watch magazine and annual State of the World report. Worldwatch was founded by Lester Brown, who also founded the Earth Policy Institute, and it has done a remarkable job monitoring the environmental crisis and promoting solutions to it. It promoted ...

RTE coordinator Daniel Giraldo promotes the use of rock dust in Colombia

The Western Andes Range has one of the richest mineral deposits of volcanic origin in the Andes Mountains. This is where Daniel Giraldo, coordinator for Remineralize the Earth (RTE) in Colombia and owner of Agrempacados E.U., obtains the raw material for the rock dust that he offers to local farmers for soil remineralization. (more…)

Transforming Barren Land Into Fertile Ground

If you were to choose a place to plant your dream vegetable garden, it would probably not be in the foothills of the Grampian Mountains in Strathardle, Perthshire, Scotland. The upland site is infertile, acidic and exposed to severe weather. Around 85 percent of Scotland is classified by the European Union as a “less-favoured area” for farming, and this region, plagued by lifeless, silty soil and boulders, falls right into that category. Yet it was exactly here that Cameron and Moira Thomson settled and decided to become self-sufficient by creating their own garden, growing their very own fruits and vegetables. “Our dream was to grow and use ...

Restoring Our Earth to Vibrant Health

by Don Weaver While many socio-ecological problems have worsened over these 30 years, it appears that an ever higher percentage of our 6.6 billion population is waking up to the need to transform our ways of living, to truly go “green,” to make peace with the Earth and ourselves, to end the “war on Terra.” This Terra, the beautiful living Earth of which we are an essential part, needs each of us to become conscious contributors to personal/planetary healing. You are needed and invited and welcomed! Here are some views from my perspective as a health-oriented ecologist and organic grower. (more…)

Restoring Our Earth to Vibrant Health

by Don Weaver “Healing the damage of industrial civilization is the task of our generation.” —Leonardo DiCaprio “Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and esthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” —Aldo Leopold “Our life on Earth is a fellowship of being, and there can be neither prosperity nor survival for those whose practices continually violate the laws of interdependent life.” —Henry Geiger You may have already consciously embraced your part in ...