I have enrolled to study Environmental Management and Technology at Merritt College in Oakland in San Francisco Bay Area. Am looking forward greatly to learning from the landscape horticulture (permaculture) and environmental management schools within Merritt itself. I was at the campus earlier in the year and its a great site and facility.

Arrive August the 2nd and start on August 23rd.

Big ups to Chris at the Peralta international education office for his help in navigating the application process.

www.ecomerritt.org and /www.merrittlandhort.com

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Hogan Gleeson, principal of EcoCityFarm and Rivendell Organics gives a presentation on the Soil Food Web at Djangbung Gardens, the Permaculture College Australia in Nimbin

Soil Food Web Presentation (partial) by Hogan Gleeson from Jack Heimsoth on Vimeo.

Source: Jack Heimsoth

Costa from the popular SBS television series ‘Costa’s Garden Odyssey‘ recently attended two RegenAG workshops at Taranaki Farm in Central Victoria.

costa
Image Source: SBS

In this video he talks about the rewarding, practical experience he enjoyed. To book your place in the upcoming RegenAG Workshop Series, visit www.RegenAG.com

Costa’s Garden Odyssey

Costa is a man of the people. A man who can connect with all. His infectious character and passion for his subject puts people at ease and makes them shine.

A Landscape Architect with an all-consuming passion for plants and people – Costa knows how to find the best in both of them, and takes great pleasure in bringing them together.

Costa’s Garden Odyssey is a groundbreaking magazine style series that allows this unique Greek Garden Guru an opportunity to do what he does best – spread his green wisdom while communicating with people and celebrating cultures and community in a way never seen before on Australian television.

Costa’s Garden Odyssey shows us how to tread lightly – embracing nature’s cycles and seasons, investigating and championing our local produce from it’s source, and illustrating that in gardens, plants aren’t the only things that grow… people do to.

Costa will take you to the joyous, harmonious heart of the garden. It’s about gardening the soil and the soul.

Source: SBS

June Agriculture Walkthrough at Factor e Farm by Sean

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The bottom line is that resilience in food is not difficult to come by, but it presently requires more energy than we have with 2 full time people – engaged fully in open source equipment development. We are prioritizing technical development, such that appropriate-technology mechanized agriculture makes food provision effective. Our next priorities in terms of the type of generalists we’d like to have at Factor e Farm is 2 more flexible fabricators and the open source agroecologist. The flexible fabricators should generalize in power electronics and CNC controls, and the agroecologics should generalize in agricultural and processing equipment development.

Source: Open Farm Tech

Permaculture co-founder David Holmgren gives a definition of permaculture

Source: The Food Forest

Please give yourself 6 minutes to sit back and marvel at the simplicity of the idea behind The Kindness Offensive.

Source: Positive TV



Google Tech Talks

September 2, 2008

ABSTRACT

We have been brought up to believe that the mind is located inside the head. But there are good reasons for thinking that this view is too limited. Recent experimental results show that people can influence others at a distance just by looking at them, even if they look from behind and if all sensory clues are eliminated. And people’s intentions can be detected by animals from miles away. The commonest kind of non-local interaction mental influence occurs in connection with telephone calls, where most people have had the experience of thinking of someone shortly before they ring. Controlled, randomized tests on telephone telepathy have given highly significant positive results. Research techniques have now been automated and experiments on telepathy are now being conducted through the internet and cell phones, enabling widespread participation.

Speaker: Rupert Sheldrake
Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D. is a biologist and author of more than 75 technical papers and ten books, the most recent being The Sense of Being Stared At. He studied at Cambridge and Harvard Universities, was a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge and a Research Fellow of the Royal Society. He is currently Director of the Perrott-Warrick project, funded from Trinity College Cambridge.

Industrial Symbiosis Kalundborg, Denmark
symbiosis

Pathways to Sustainable Self-Governance: Democratic Open-Source Food and Manufacturing Networks

Short Description

Worker Cooperative Networks for Sovereignty of Food, Commerce, & Community: Panel/Breakouts/Discussion to Envision & Chart Implementation Framework of Industrial Permaculture Ecology

Full Workshop Proposal

Pathways to Sustainable Self-Governance: Democratic Open-Source Food and Manufacturing Networks

Workshop Information
Event Date: Fri, 06/25/2010 – 3:30pm – 5:30pm
Event Location: Wayne County Community College: 23A

Full Description:

This workshop outlines a vision for a democratic, worker-owned, advanced industrial ecology society. We seek pathways to provide the burgeoning food education/justice movement with the tools to become economically sustainable, and to link the emerging green industrial worker cooperatives with them into sovereign networks. Once active, such networks can become the basis for sustainable, socially just communities that revitalize locales via open source sustainable agriculture and manufacturing methods. Our panel — with academic, commercial, and school of hard knocks experience — will frame the demonstrated solutions, numerous pieces of the puzzle that we as a society need to put together.

Pathways to Sustainable Self-Governance: Democratic Open-Source Food and Manufacturing Networks

Short Description

Worker Cooperative Networks for Sovereignty of Food, Commerce, & Community: Panel/Breakouts/Discussion to Envision & Chart Implementation Framework of Industrial Permaculture Ecology

Full Workshop Proposal

Pathways to Sustainable Self-Governance: Democratic Open-Source Food and Manufacturing Networks

Collaborating Organizations

Arizmendi Association of Cooperatives (2543) | Mandela Marketplace (2339) | Planting Justice (1407) | Mandela Foods Cooperative (2340) | Abolish Human Rentals (1460) | Permaculture Cooperative (1720)


Photo: Oakland Sol: Oakland Sustaining Ourselves Locally who generously provided accommodation, workspace and knowledge during incubation of this workshop

Collaborating Organizations

Arizmendi Association of Cooperatives (2543)

The Arizmendi Association of Cooperatives is itself a cooperative made up of five member businesses: four cooperative bakeries and a development and support collective. Members share a common mission, share ongoing accounting, legal, educational and other support services, and support the development of new member cooperatives by the Association. http://arizmendi.coop


Mandela Marketplace (2339)

Mandela Market Place is a pioneer in development, application and assessment of community food systems. The organization evolved since 2001, first as a project of the Environmental Justice Institute – Tides Center, until incorporating in 2005 as a stand-alone 501c3 organization with a goal to strengthen community health, integrity and indentity by providing economic opportunity and empowerment for inner-city Oakland residents and businesses, and local family farms. Mandela MarketPlace works directly with community residents, local, state and federal agencies, non-profits, small business owners, and farmers to support strategies to meet food needs, expand economic opportunity and increase self-reliance of low-income and disenfranchised people. http://mandelamarketplace.org


Planting Justice (1407)

Planting Justice is a non-profit organization based in Oakland, CA dedicated to food justice, economic justice, and sustainable local food systems. We are the first organization of our kind to combine ecological training and urban food production with a grassroots door-to-door organizing model that will vastly increase our educational community outreach, help us to recruit volunteers, decentralize our fundraising sources, and provide local jobs that also train young community organizers. http://www.plantingjustice.org


Mandela Foods Cooperative (2340)

Mandela Foods Cooperative is a locally-owned and operated full-service grocery store and nutrition education center located in West Oakland, a community long underserved in grocery retail. The present undersupply of food retail in West Oakland represents an opportunity to leverage untapped local buying power into new business and employment opportunities and healthy eating options for West Oakland residents. The Cooperative will offer local goods, wholesome, fresh and affordable foods grown on family farms, nutrition education classes and a cooperative economic investment program that provides multi-level investment for community residents. http://www.mandelafoods.com


Abolish Human Rentals (1460)

Abolish Human Rentals is dedicated to bringing an old idea into the public conscience, that the standard employment relationship, a contract for the rental of people, is invalid due to the inalienable rights of humans. It is based on the already widely held principle of the non-transferability of responsibility for one’s actions. That principle, taken to its logical conclusion, means the rental of humans have no more legitimacy than their sale. http://www.abolishhumanrentals.org


Collaborating Organizations:
Arizmendi Assn. of Cooperatives (2543) — http://arizmendi.coop — and
Mandela Marketplace (2339) — http://mandelamarketplace.org — and
Planting Justice (1407) — http://www.plantingjustice.org — and
Mandela Foods Cooperative (2340) — http://www.mandelafoods.com — and
Abolish Human Rentals (1460) — http://www.abolishhumanrentals.org

Language(s): English
Tracks:
Climate Justice: sustainability, resources and land
Democracy and Governance

Important pieces that will be presented here include the successful strategies employed in the worker cooperative networks/alliances of Mondragon, Ohio, and the San Francisco Bay Area, Permaculture design strategies implemented even in harsh climate zones, Denmark’s national industrial symbiosis program, non-parasitic capitalization of non-hierarchical enterprises, and regenerative urban food justice paradigms.

Participants will self-organize into groups to construct models that put some of the pieces together. Workshop participants will then seek to bolster viability of the proposed models, emphasizing possible pilot programs in Detroit, Oakland and in Brooklyn.

Panel members include Quinton Sankofa of Mandela Marketplace and James Berk of Mandela Foods Cooperative, Mike Leung of the embryonic Worker Cooperative Credit Union, and Gavin Raiders of Planting Justice. Facilitator: Kirstie Stramler of Permaculture Cooperative.

For updates leading up to USSF 2010, see the panel and workshop group pages on http://organize.ussf2010.org and videos on http://permaculture.tv/tag/ussf2010/ .

Organizer Name: Kirstie Stramler
Organizer Email: kirstie@permaculture.tv
First Sponsoring Organization Name: Permaculture Cooperative

Alemany Farm is a 4 acre, fully functioning urban farm nestled between a major highway intersection, a newly gentrified neighborhood on a hill and a housing project- the perfect place to grow some food! We got a tour (and some amazing fruit) from Antonio Roman-Alcalá, Volunteer Coordinator and soon to be videoblogger/documentarian extraordinaire. The work being done at Alemany Farm proves the point that urban farming and local food production is totally possible and necessary for the health and well being of a city and its inhabitants. Local farming and gardening are great motivators for people to get acquainted, eat more healthily and become more connected with where their food comes from and what it actually is (olives grow on trees? broccoli is a flower?). If you live in the SF Bay area, you can visit or volunteer at Alemany Farm on the weekends- check out AlemanyFarm.org.

Source: RyanIsHungry

Quinton Sankofa explains how Mandela Marketplace, West Oakland accepted the community call for ownership of problem and solutions

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Sustainable Self-Governance – Fri 25th, 3.30-5.30 pm USSF2010 – Detroit – Wayne County Community College http://permaculture.coop/ussf2010

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planting justice

mandela food, mandela marketplace
http://permaculture.coop/ussf2010

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