THE FOUNDATIONS OF A GOOD CULTURE OF PLANTS

[izentrop]

One of the initial goals in permaculture is to have a system of very productive crops. And some they are doing very well.

With training, free labor and basket sales to a conquered and relatively affluent clientele.
This is not to criticize, but it is clear that it is difficult to fight the laws of the global market that requires optimizing production costs.
Working without a machine today is difficult to achieve, except exceptional niche.

[Ahmed]

Izentrop, you write:

Working without a machine today is difficult to achieve, except exceptional niche.

Absolutely! The amount of work that is produced by doing without a machine is only paid on the part of the work that would have been necessary with the machine, the rest is provided without remuneration. Admittedly, another source that labor exists, it is the rent and there is a small rent resulting from the preference of consumers for organic products, but this rent is today captured by bigger players than supermarkets and exotic "organic" (oxymoron!) producers, the latter often having a very minimalist conception of organic.
Another rent would be a very specialized culture of niche that would not be measured against other forms of production, with the risk of launching a market to be dispossessed as soon as it is functional ...
Another form of retribution, as already mentioned, is the “uberized” exploitation of free or reverse retribution work, of trainees: a new manifestation of absolute surplus value.

[Did67]

Or except "way of doing" considerably reducing the work. In short: built from the idea of ​​doing as little as possible, while seeking high returns.

What does not allow the permaculture form based beforehand on the idea of ​​mounds! So on a priori a big job to provide.

[Ahmed]

Yes, the reasoning was "at constant work". The fact of eliminating a number of interventions allows a transfer to other incompressible items, without the mechanization factor being decisive. In phenoculture, an important post is mechanized externally, it is the harvest and transport of hay.

[izentrop]

Not sure that a professional wants to sacrifice 300% of his land to the fertilizing mulch of the cultivated part. Especially since the export of biomass requires compensation to perpetuate it http://www.agriculture-durable.org/wp-c ... iesBAT.pdf

[Ahmed]

That's what I say: hay is an externality; from then on, everything depends if one reasons locally (at the level of the garden), or globally. In cultural terms, this is not necessarily a stalemate if you reduce the consumption of meat.

[izentrop]

In cultural terms, this is not necessarily a stalemate if you reduce the consumption of meat.

The rich countries are reducing their consumption while the emerging countries are consuming more and more.

Agroforestry is one of the solutions of BRF intake of young branches whose roots have gone for deep nutrients, not to mention the improvement of the recycling of all organic waste not contaminated by heavy metals.

Notwithstanding fears and refusals, another way is the consumption of insects, algae, cyanobacteria (spirulina that is distributed to malnourished children)
There is still a great potential to feed the growing humanity.

[Ahmed]

On the meat issue, consumption is declining well in the central countries, but it is already a very high consumption, that which grows in the countries of the periphery starts from very low. There is no reason to say that these two scissor developments will offset each other.
I do not doubt the overall agricultural potential ...

[izentrop]

The potential of emerging countries is very high.

[Gébé]

I am very wary of this type of projection and I do not have the habit of making them mine but it is the current evolution.

the very Western debate "Should we eat less meat or not?" will have relatively little impact on the development of production and consumption at world level ”

http://www.web-agri.fr/observatoire_marches/article/la-chine-acteur-de-poids-du-marche-de-la-viande-au-coeur-des-debats-1929-130170.html