A Farm for the Future

[WhichDoctor]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00hs8zp/Natural_World_20082009_A_Farm_for_the_Future/

We've just watched this and found it fascinating and somewhat worrying for the future. We only saw it because of a recommendation from another forum so thought I'd share it as well.

Quite bushcrafty and woodcrafty in outlook I found, I hope you guys find it interesting.

 

[drewdunnrespect]

is that video saying bushcrafts rules or what? and its so going to lead the way in the future

 

[BorderReiver]

A good one, cheers for the link.

Only one thing; that "slow motion" stuff really gets on my wick.

 

[CBJ]

very interesting
I always have had a drive to learn the practical and theoretical ways of the old crafts and the message in this doc bolsters that feeling of needing to have a sustainable way of living to fall back on ,wich 9 times out of 10 is found in traditional methods.

I certainly think it would be much harder but it at least it would last untill a sustainable way of living could be found.


just my thoughts

CBJ

 

[locum76]

its good to see peak oil and permaculture getting a mention on telly. i find it hard to believe that one acre of forest garden could keep 10 people fed though.

nice outdoorsy stuff. I'd hesitate to call it bushcraft but I agree that deferring to the skills of our ancestors would be a good idea when planning for sustainability.

 

[Cobweb]

What an insightful and non-romantic film, thanks for sharing. It has given me a lot to think about and I reckon I'll be giving my veg plot another go
Cheers Doc

 

[Wayland]

Interesting stuff and what a few voices have been saying for a while too.

As an aside, did anyone else notice Mears' book on the book shelf?

 

[ANDYRAF]

Very thought provoking stuff, should I sell up and buy some land and start again.

Andy

 

[WhichDoctor]

its good to see peak oil and permaculture getting a mention on telly. i find it hard to believe that one acre of forest garden could keep 10 people fed though.

It always amazes me when I see pro GM or anti organics people interviewed on TV saying that modern industrial farming is the only way to feed the world. When its been known for years that the oil will run out, and with industrial farming being so reliant on oil it's seemed obvious to me that its simply not an option.

I must say though that my Dad, who works in organics, raised his eyebrows at the 10 people per acre comment, but you never know. He did say there was a report published by the Soil Association recently showing that third world farmers who use mostly hand tools could produce four times more calories per acre than intensive mechanized farms.

nice outdoorsy stuff. I'd hesitate to call it bushcraft but I agree that deferring to the skills of our ancestors would be a good idea when planning for sustainability.

I thought the permaculture looked like bushcraft inspired gardening to me. Its seems just like living off the land while giving the land some help.

I reckon my veg plot mite look a little different in a couple of years time after watching this

Very thought provoking stuff, should I sell up and buy some land and start again.

Well if you could feed yourself and family for two days work a week like the guy on the program said then it mite be worth a try

 

[korvin karbon]

He did say there was a report published by the Soil Association recently showing that third world farmers who use mostly hand tools could produce four times more calories per acre than intensive mechanized farms.

do you have a link to this report?

 

[locum76]

It always amazes me when I see pro GM or anti organics people interviewed on TV saying that modern industrial farming is the only way to feed the world. When its been known for years that the oil will run out, and with industrial farming being so reliant on oil it's seemed obvious to me that its simply not an option.

seriously, you're preaching to the converted with me.

I thought the permaculture looked like bushcraft inspired gardening to me. Its seems just like living off the land while giving the land some help.

permaculture was a well established technique long before Ray Mears popularised the term 'bushcraft' to describe playing in the woods. its not as easy as it looks either, it takes a long time to establish a good permaculture. The planning and observation stages, alone, can take years. Especially if you want to establish a forest garden. its bound to be well worth it though.

 

[TallMikeM]

that the one that was on last night? Thought it was very interesting, lots of good ideas on that. I'm just getting into concepts of permaculture, but a lot of what I'm reading makes a whole lot of sense.

 

[xylaria]

When links to 45 mins films are posted I never watch them. I watched this one and I am now seriously reconsidering how I plant my allotment.

I spend quite a bit of time looking for food in natural environments, ransoms for instance grow in thick patches with no visable soil, yet when I grow onions, leeks, and garlic I place them in neat lines and painstakingly weed the what grows in the gaps. There is more food in metre squared of natural ransoms than any allium row on my alotty. The same is true for a dense understory of wild raspberries than well tended canes staying neatly in thier place.
Nature can provide a denser productivity than conventional veg planting.

I have problems with some aspects of conventenal planting. I have cluster of sorrel, I was given by friend. She was pulling up her old stock to re-seed and plant fresh. WHY?, sorrel grows perfectly fine left to is own devices in a hedgerow verge. Wild sorrel if anything tastes a bit better than cultivated. I have a patch of perpetual spinach, which I seeded some five years ago and haven't touched except to harvest since. I have let one plant self seed every year, and now have an established patch, that in season provides food once a week. It tastes more like wild beet leaves now than soft perpetual spinach, a more robust stronger flavour. Alot of what we do in gardens is because of convention not common sense.

 

[gregorach]

Yeah, good show, and like Rob said, it's great to see permaculture getting a bit of exposure. I wished they'd done a bit more on "shallow" permaculture though... Don't get me wrong, the whole "deep" permaculture forest-garden type stuff is great, but it's often very hard for people to see how to apply it.

If anyone's interested in learning more about permaculture, with a focus on the UK, Patrick Whitefield's Earth Care Manual is both fascinating and authoritative. It's also worth keeping your eyes open for anybody running "Introduction to Permaculture" courses in your area - permaculture trainers are always looking to run more courses.

For the allotment, I'm planning on drawing heavily on Charles Dowding's Organic Gardening: The Natural No-dig Way - it's not really permaculture, but he does use similar soil, weed and pest management techniques, but in a way suited to fairly conventional allotmenteering or market gardening. He's been making a living at it for over 25 years, so he must be doing something right...

The thing I love most about all these ideas is very simple: all that hard work digging and ploughing is not just a waste of time, but actively counter-productive (except in certain limited circumstances). As a lazy, lazy man, that makes me very happy indeed.

 

[Toadflax]

I watched this, after seeing the posts in this thread, and it did indeed provide very interesting viewing: the first time I had heard of permaculture. It's certainly an area that I now want to read more about and possibly experiment with, within the limitations of a suburban garden.

However, I did wonder about a comment from one of the permaculture people. He said that the only three options we had were fossil fuelled farming, drudgery in farming by hand and horse, or permaculture, and implied that the former two were not a viable option.

Apart from the obvious argument (we farmed by hand in the past, so why can't we do it again) and seeing some of the innovative horse drawn machines that we saw in The Victorian Farm, and the development of modern materials and manufacturing techniques, I wonder whether farming by hand and horse would not be quite the drudge that it was in times gone by: an example being the horse drawn mowing machine that reaped an acre of corn in an hour or so (I think), compared to scything by hand taking a week.

(These thoughts come from someone who knows nothing about farming!)


Geoff

 

[WhichDoctor]

If anyone's interested in learning more about permaculture, with a focus on the UK, Patrick Whitefield's Earth Care Manual is both fascinating and authoritative. It's also worth keeping your eyes open for anybody running "Introduction to Permaculture" courses in your area - permaculture trainers are always looking to run more courses.

I'm really getting into this stuff. We've been gardening organically since before I was born, this just seems like the logical next step. I've been looking at getting a good book on the subject so thanks for the recommendations.

I've actually just found a Introduction to Permaculture course in a couple of weeks not to far from me. Here's there website if anyone ells is interested http://www.sector39.co.uk/more_info.htm

The thing I love most about all these ideas is very simple: all that hard work digging and ploughing is not just a waste of time, but actively counter-productive (except in certain limited circumstances). As a lazy, lazy man, that makes me very happy indeed.

I'm with you there mate . Why work when you don't have to, more time to sit back and enjoy things is never a bad idea. And if it makes things grow better then its my idea of gardening haven.

 

[gregorach]

Apart from the obvious argument (we farmed by hand in the past, so why can't we do it again) and seeing some of the innovative horse drawn machines that we saw in The Victorian Farm, and the development of modern materials and manufacturing techniques, I wonder whether farming by hand and horse would not be quite the drudge that it was in times gone by: an example being the horse drawn mowing machine that reaped an acre of corn in an hour or so (I think), compared to scything by hand taking a week.

Well, the last time we farmed purely by human and animal labour, we were feeding a much smaller population.

I don't think the choices are exclusive though - you can trade-off labour and design in lots of different ways. The basic principle that less work is better seems like a sound one to me - I'm no fan of hard labour for its own sake. However, I certainly believe that there will always be some place for large-scale field crops... I've never heard of a permaculture way of growing malting barley, and a world without beer is not one I'd want to live in.

There are other problems with "conventional" agriculture though (by which I mean heavy tillage, whether "organic" or not) - the worst being soil erosion and the oxidation of organic matter in the soil. And for those, it doesn't really make much difference whether you're doing your ploughing by tractor or by horse - it's the ploughing itself that's the problem.

Another thing to consider is that there just aren't that many working horses left out there, nor are there many people who know how to work with them. If we wanted to go back to using horses, we'd need to start breeding the right breeds again on a large scale - and that's not something you can do quickly.

If there's one solid conclusion I've come to, it's that there is no "one size fits all" solution for all circumstances.

 

[locum76]

Toadflax:

ther is clearly no doubt that we have to find alternatives to farming with fossil fuels and we need to do it soon. However, the drudge that farm labourers had to put up with, in the style of farming practiced before fossil fuel mania, is not to be underestimated.

ask any current farm labourer that is old enough to remember it and they will tell you that there is no way they want to go back to that. Not to mention the fact that ploughing with a horse can wreck soil as much as ploughing with a tractor does. Then there are the other tasks that need to be done such as 'rouging' another back breaking task which involves pulling out stray grasses froma cereal crop by hand, just before harvest.

I would say that there needs to be a comprimise between the old ways and permaculture with a combined aim of increasing yeilds and reducing work.

The victorian farm series massively glamourised farming by horse.

 

[Tye Possum]

Darn I can't watch it... Only in the UK and I live in Canada... Oh well.

 

[TallMikeM]

However, I did wonder about a comment from one of the permaculture people. He said that the only three options we had were fossil fuelled farming, drudgery in farming by hand and horse, or permaculture, and implied that the former two were not a viable option.

Apart from the obvious argument (we farmed by hand in the past, so why can't we do it again) and seeing some of the innovative horse drawn machines that we saw in The Victorian Farm, and the development of modern materials and manufacturing techniques, I wonder whether farming by hand and horse would not be quite the drudge that it was in times gone by: an example being the horse drawn mowing machine that reaped an acre of corn in an hour or so (I think), compared to scything by hand taking a week.

(These thoughts come from someone who knows nothing about farming!)


Geoff

something else to bear in mind that, by the time of the Victoian Farm, a lot of the machines they used were being made in factories that were powered by fossil fuels. There is still a fossil fuel imput, even if the thing is pulled by a horse later on.