In Transition The Movie

http://permaculturenews.org/2009/12/15/in-transition-the-movie/

Permaculture Media & Advertising

Using Permaculture Media & Advertising to Incite the Good in People | Permaculture Magazine

Jerry Mander is right: images from television, and particularly advertising, do dominate our minds to a dangerous degree. But banning or otherwise suppressing this form of expression isn't a true solution, any more than pouring herbicide on your yard to get rid of weeds is a true solution. Whether the landscape is your yard or your mind, we permaculture designers would say that the solution lies in introducing beneficial relationships.
How to address the dominance of TV in our mental landscape:
1. Fortify our own critical thinking (and that of our kids). Permaculture education is good for this. Just plain talking to kids, giving them our full attention, is good for this.
2.  Find better things to do than watch TV. Yes, this requires effort. And yes, WE everyday folks — parents and citizens — are the ones responsible for making this effort. We can't blame the advertisers for hijacking our retinas if we willingly lend them our eyeballs several hours a day.
3. Make more use of widely available, powerful tools for spreading the ideas WE want to spread.

 
Television advertising may be hijacking our retinas but we have the ability to spread something better - What do you want to put out there? (Richard Register, Ecocities)

Prof Haikai Tane: China's Ancient Dao Farming System [Water Farming]

Lessons to be learnt from ancient chinese farming

Prof Haikai Tane on Dao [Water Farming]: '...our [Western & 'westernised'] farming system is very poorly performing...'

By Richard Hudson

Wednesday, 16/09/2009

A professor of sustainability believes Australian farmers can learn so much from China, especially when it comes to growing soils and farming water.

Some farmers in China might laugh when they hear people talking about sustainable food production systems in Australia.

Since colonisation, we've only been farming here for a few hundred years.

But on some blocks of land in China, they've been producing massive quantities of things like rice, fruit , vegetables, fish and pigs for thousands of years.

Often without chemicals, fertilisers and modern equipment.

Haikai Tane was brought up in Australia, currently lives in New Zealand but for the last decade has been working in China for three months a year, carefully studying the Dao natural farming system.

He says that in those regions of China that still use the Dao natural farming system, they can produce 30 to 50 tonnes of food per hectare.

He says farmers in New Zealand think they are doing well if they can produce seven tonnes per hectare.

Mr Tane is a professor of sustainable development and he is also director of the Watershed Research Station in the high country of New Zealand.

If you want to hear more about the Dao farming system or Mr Tane's thoughts on the way we are currently farming in Australia click on the link below.

In this report: Haikai Tane, professor of sustainable development and director, Watershed Research Station in the high country of New Zealand.

Listen: Click here to listen to an extended interview (RealAudio).

More resources click here: http://terraquaculture.net/resources.html