Permaculture

[JasonMckerra]

I am intrigued by the potential of permaculture, a long held dream of mine (I have a lot of dreams) was to buy a piece of run down farm land and attempt to "restore" it.

Here's a promo video from Bill Molison, the Australian founder of the permaculture movement,

Permaculture in Action - Greening The Desert

In it, Molison and others work to try and restore a piece of salted farmland near the dead sea, using organic permaculture techniques.

[Zachary Klaas]

This was very interesting - I think I might actually be able to make use of this sort of thing for my Intro to Geography class.  I'm always looking for examples of "working with rather than against nature" in solving natural problems (e.g., like the flood control experts who spend time trying to figure out "where the water naturally wants to go" and using that in their civil engineering designs instead of viewing water as something to be 100% controlled by flood walls and locks and dams and levees and the like.

Permaculture seems to me to be much the same thing - instead of controlling the landscape, you make a few changes and otherwise let nature do what it does.  Finding important places to intervene and change nature, while otherwise defering to the planet's "wisdom" I suppose, is what makes this strategy work (presuming the claims of Molison et al. are correct.)

Very interesting video.

[JasonMckerra]

Some of the details of the permaculture approach are what I would crudely term "hippy shit", but the essential idea of caring for land and working within and learning natural systems has obvious merit.

Here's a much more detailed video on some of the ideas of permaculture, it's an idea I would love to be able to explore in practice:

Dryland Permaculture Strategies - Part 1

(this episode is chopped into three parts, there are eps on temperate and tropical climate ideas)

[JasonMckerra]

Another idea that is relevant to micronationalism is the idea of reclaiming truely ruined landscape. Think the post-cotton dustbowl or saline affected areas in Australia, if they are pretty much abandoned by the state, are they really owned?

In a legal sense, yes of course they are, but a micronation seeking a moral claim to independence could do worse.