Abstract
Alternative farming systems have developed since the beginning of industrial agriculture. Organic, biodynamic, conservation farming, agroecology and permaculture, all share a grounding in ...ecological concepts and a belief that farmers should work with nature rather than damage it. As ecology-based agricultures rely greatly on soil organisms to perform the functions necessary for agricultural production, it is thus important to evaluate the performance of these systems through the lens of soil organisms, especially soil microbes. They provide numerous services to plants, including growth promotion, nutrient supply, tolerance to environmental stresses and protection against pathogens. An overwhelming majority of studies confirm that ecology-based agricultures are beneficial for soil microorganisms. However, three practices were identified as posing potential ecotoxicological risks: the recycling of organic waste products, plastic mulching, and pest and disease management with biopesticides. The first two because they can be a source of contaminants; the third because of potential impacts on non-target microorganisms. Consequently, developing strategies to allow a safe recycling of the increasingly growing organic matter stocks produced in cities and factories, and the assessment of the ecotoxicological impact of biopesticides on non-target soil microorganisms, represent two challenges that ecology-based agricultural systems will have to face in the future.
Impact of ecology-based farming practices on soil microbial ecotoxicology.
The extant literature on traditional and sustainable business models lacks insights into how strong sustainability—that is, constraining economic and social activities within the limitations of ...natural resources—can shape business models. Thus, the purpose of this article is to propose a business model framework based on the principles of strong sustainability (SSBM). The proposed framework is developed combining available literature and empirical insights from a qualitative abductive study of 12 permaculture business ventures in Sweden. The results identify nature as the primary stakeholder and recommend strong local anchorage, the creation of diversified income sources, deliberate limitations on economic growth, the infusion of the business model with a systemic and ecosystem perspective, and the design of value flows beyond financial aspects. The discussion reflects on the most important results, provides practical implications and managerial guidelines, and suggests future research in the SSBM.
What would a world without money look like? This book is a lively thought experiment that deepens our understanding of how money is the driver of political power, environmental destruction and social ...inequality today, arguing that it has to be abolished rather than repurposed to achieve a postcapitalist future. Grounded in historical debates about money, Anitra Nelson draws on a spectrum of political and economic thought and activism, including feminism, ecoanarchism, degrowth, permaculture, autonomism, Marxism and ecosocialism. Looking to Indigenous rights activism and the defence of commons, an international network of activists engaged in a fight for a money-free society emerges. Beyond Money shows that, by organising around post-money versions of the future, activists have a hope of creating a world that embodies their radical values and visions.
Food, the source of Nutrition Nordin, Stacia Marie; Nordin, Kristof J
World nutrition,
08/2017, Letnik:
8, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Food is the source of Nutrition. When taken at face value, this wouldn’t appear to be a very controversial statement, especially when espoused within a journal dedicated to food and nutrition. ...However, when we take a closer look at current efforts being made in the fields of agriculture and nutrition, one often gets the impression that many food, nutrition, and agriculture experts have become convinced that food can no longer provide all of the nutrients which are essential to the optimal growth and development of the human body. Highly nutritious foods, entirely capable of fulfilling human nutritional requirements, still exist. However, due to an over-reliance on monocropped and industrialized agricultural systems, nutritional diversity is increasingly being marginalized. Instead of asking ‘What happened to our food,’ a more pertinent question would be ‘What happened to our food system’? Throughout the world, governments are now spending billions of dollars to subsidize monocropped agriculture, but as agriculture is failing nutritionally, these same governments are forced into spending billions of dollars to subsidize nutritional treatments (through fortification, supplementation, and medicinal programs). Many assessments of industrialized agriculture fail to take into consideration the negative effects on humans and the environment as a result of depleted nutrition, exposure to toxic chemicals such as pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides, the mismanagement of soil and water resources, and the depletion of biodiversity to make room for expanded monocropping. When we begin to learn how to embrace the nature-enhancing models of sustainable agriculture such as agroecology, we begin to realize that all the questions soon merge into one resounding answer: Yes, we can use every single available square inch of land and/or space to produce enough highly-nutritious food to feed the world, as well as to elevate the health, growth, and development of all people in all countries to their maximum potential. This can, should, and already is being implemented in people’s yards, gardens, farms, businesses, schools, churches, hospitals, public green spaces, urban areas, road sides, roof spaces, communities, and nations.
Annual row crops dominate agriculture around the world and have considerable negative environmental impacts, including significant greenhouse gas emissions. Transformative land‐use solutions are ...necessary to mitigate climate change and restore critical ecosystem services. Alley cropping (AC)—the integration of trees with crops—is an agroforestry practice that has been studied as a transformative, multifunctional land‐use solution. In the temperate zone, AC has strong potential for climate change mitigation through direct emissions reductions and increases in land‐use efficiency via overyielding compared to trees and crops grown separately. In addition, AC provides climate change adaptation potential and ecological benefits by buffering alley crops to weather extremes, diversifying income to hedge financial risk, increasing biodiversity, reducing soil erosion, and improving nutrient‐ and water‐use efficiency. The scope of temperate AC research and application has been largely limited to simple systems that combine one timber tree species with an annual grain. We propose two frontiers in temperate AC that expand this scope and could transform its climate‐related benefits: (i) diversification via woody polyculture and (ii) expanded use of tree crops for food and fodder. While AC is ready now for implementation on marginal lands, we discuss key considerations that could enhance the scalability of the two proposed frontiers and catalyze widespread adoption.
Alley cropping (AC)—the integration of trees with crops—is an agroforestry practice that has been studied as a transformative, multifunctional land‐use solution. In the temperate zone, AC has strong potential for climate change mitigation through direct emissions reductions and increases in land‐use efficiency via overyielding compared to trees and crops grown separately. In addition, AC provides climate change adaptation potential and ecological benefits by buffering alley crops to weather extremes, diversifying income to hedge financial risk, increasing biodiversity, reducing soil erosion, and improving nutrient‐ and water‐use efficiency.
Local-scale opportunities to address challenges of the water–food nexus in the developing world need to be embraced. Borehole-garden permaculture is advocated as one such opportunity that involves ...the sustainable use of groundwater spilt at hand-pump operated borehole supplies that is otherwise wasted. Spilt water may also pose health risks when accumulating as a stagnant pond. Rural village community use of this grey-water in permaculture projects to irrigate borehole gardens is proposed to primarily provide economic benefit whereby garden-produce revenue helps fund borehole water-point maintenance. Water-supply sustainability, increased food/nutrition security, health protection from malaria, and business opportunity benefits may also arise. Our goal has been to develop an, experience-based, framework for delivery of sustainable borehole-garden permaculture and associated benefits. This is based upon data collection and permaculture implementation across the rural Chikwawa District of Malawi during 2009–17. We use, stakeholder interviews to identify issues influencing uptake, gathering of stagnant pond occurrence data to estimate amelioration opportunity, quantification of permaculture profitability to validate economic potential, and critical assessment of recent permaculture uptake to identify continuing problems. Permaculture was implemented at 123 sites representing 6% of District water points, rising to 26% local area coverage. Most implementations were at, or near, newly drilled community-supply boreholes; hence, amelioration of prevalent stagnant ponds elsewhere remains a concern. The envisaged benefits of permaculture were manifest and early data affirm projected garden profitability and spin-off benefits of water-point banking and community micro-loan access. However, a diversity of technical, economic, social and governance issues were found to influence uptake and performance. Example issues include greater need for improved bespoke garden design input, on-going project performance assessment, and coordinated involvement of multi-sector governmental-development bodies to underpin the integrated natural-resource management required. The developed framework aims to manage the identified issues and requires the concerted action of all stakeholders. Based on the probable ubiquity of underlying issues, the framework is expected to be generalizable to the wider developing world. However, this particular application of permaculture represents a fraction of its greater potential opportunity for rural communities that should be explored.
Display omitted
•Borehole-garden permaculture: spilt groundwater use for water-food-health security.•Technical/socioeconomic issues to address for successful permaculture identified.•Framework for borehole-garden permaculture implementation developed.•Economic benefit: water-point maintenance, micro-loan access, spin-out business.•A fraction of permaculture's greater potential for rural communities to be explored.
Permaculture, short-hand for "permanent agriculture," is an ethical system and set of engineering and design principles, aimed at growing food locally while building community. Many adherents believe ...that it carries the potential to transform and re-localize our economic system. To explore these views, we interviewed 56 permaculturists in the western Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia. Findings demonstrate that participants view the non-hierarchical, self-reliance, and exchange-based aspects of permaculture as potentially liberating. At the same time, they feel stuck and embedded within existing capitalist market relations, exemplified by land ownership, costs of implementing permaculture landscapes, and the need for employment-based income. Many tensions likewise emerge from their own class positions and the privileges associated with, and benefits accruing from, current capitalist modes of exchange and ongoing settler colonialism. We conclude by discussing implications for theory and empirical research in environmental sociology and cognate areas.
As we reflect and learn from the lessons lived during the COVID-19 pandemic that severely disrupted our ways of being in the world, in this article we call for restorative pedagogies which can ...reconnect us to each other and to the places we live in. We present the language learning needs and experiences of four newly arrived refugee women in Scotland. A language learning study was designed using ecological methodological approaches, an iterative spiral of critical participatory action research (CPAR), and the emergent framework of permaculture design of “earth share; fair share; people share.” The 5-month study included fourteen 2-h learning sessions starting with an initial pilot spanning across four 2-h learning sessions. The innovative restorative pedagogy, as we propose it here, connects language learning to translanguaging practices, processes of acclimatizing into a new environment, into new rituals and embodied experiences, moving inside and outside of the “classroom” and with the understanding of “layered simultaneity” of languages brought from and lived in multiple places. We conclude this article with reflections on the impact of these language experiences not only on designing language programmes for the integration of refugees in new communities, but also as an ethical practice for all of us in moments of crisis, when our most profound relations and habits are threatened or broken. A restorative pedagogy builds on language that respects human dignity, acknowledges the importance of place and land we walk on, and cultivates sustainable human connections in a vulnerable and unstable world.
Creative communities are grassroots, bottom-up initiatives of people who through their diffuse design capacity propose new, desirable service futures that address the problems of everyday life. These ...creative communities exist within a transition from modernity towards sustainment, their adversarial character embodies alternative values such as conviviality, solidarity, openness and shift the focus from growth to flourishing. The sociotechnical system that is a creative community creating social innovation faces constant threats due to the collapse of traditional support structures and their disruptive, adversarial character and so, identifying strategies to increase its resilience is necessary. We turn to nature for inspiration and mentoring. Biomimisis is a framework that designs solutions inspired by biological systems. We argue that permaculture, provides an interesting direction for the development and research in the context of social innovation.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
This paper traces the origins of the concept of permaculture and discusses the sustainability of permaculture itself as a form of alternative agriculture. The principles of permaculture are shown to ...have many views and perspectives in common with Taoism and with Buddhist ecology and economics. The amalgamation of these Oriental traditions can be translated into the Kaya equation and beyond. It is argued that future permaculture movements should focus on revitalising the communitarian spirit of traditional farming villages instead of building intentional communal communities. The paper also calls for more aggressive environmental-policy measures that support permaculture and internalise the non-market value of reduced fossil-fuel energy consumption and waste recycling.
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