Video Source: Rx for the Biosphere

Darren J. Doherty, an Australian, has extensive experience across the world in Permaculture project design, development and management and is a leading pioneer in “broadacre” agricultural systems. A registered teacher of The Permaculture Institute as well as a certified whole farm planner, Keyline™ designer, and accredited permaculture trainer (APT™), Darren has been involved in the design, development and management of over 1200 projects across 5 continents, ranging from ±110,000-acre ranches in Australia and the Americas to “eco-villages” in Tasmania, to R&D agro-forestry & education projects in Viet Nam.

Source: Bioneers

Australia Felix Permaculture

We’re based in Bendigo, Central Victoria, Australia. Since 1993 we have been involved with the design & development of over 1100 properties including apartment balconies to 110 000 acre ranches using permaculture design. Through imagery this web site increases the profile of permaculture-based development & the people & enterprises that make it all happen.

Our mission has always been to raise the profile of permaculture design to the point where it becomes an unconscious practice as opposed to a marginal methodology.

In business we deliver cost effective best practice permaculture-based sustainable property design, education, and consulting services to people, businesses & communities around the world.

Over the last 15 years we have amassed a significant array of photographic data & computer generated plans documenting our work, and are pleased to make this work in progress available to the internet community, permaculture dilettante & professional alike. We intend on continuing to add to this “diorama” through our travels & work.

Source: Felix Permaculture

Push for maverick techniques to restore landscape By PAUL MYERS

IN WHAT he says is the biggest challenge of his career and potentially the most important project in the nation’s history, the former governor-general Michael Jeffery is launching a national campaign to restore Australia’s degraded landscape.

The campaign is based largely on the philosophies of the Hunter Valley farmer Peter Andrews whose three appearances on Australian Story on the ABC have produced a legion of advocates for his natural sequence farming techniques.

Major-General Jeffery is taking the first steps this weekend to convince 120,000 farmers to change their practices.

He has brought together 80 farmers and rural practitioners at Batemans Bay, including Mr Andrews, to lay the groundwork for Outcomes Australia – Restoring Our Landscape. General Jeffery hopes that within a decade a third of Australia’s farmers – and eventually all – will have stopped using artificial fertilisers, dramatically boosted vegetation species, substantially reduced or ceased irrigation and adopted a more holistic, natural approach to farm management.

He also wants water to be recognised as the nation’s most valuable asset, and managed by Federal Parliament.

“It’s not impossible,” he says. “The obstacles are considerable, but the benefits will be massive. ”About 350 million hectares of the 500 million hectares used for agriculture – 70 per cent – are degraded. Notwithstanding the work of many scientists and the innovation of farmers, we are losing the battle and something has to be done.

“This program could generate thousands of jobs in land regeneration, help tackle the world food shortage, enable renewal of rural communities and set a sustainable agricultural example for other countries that are sliding down the same slippery path of land degradation.”

General Jeffery’s endorsement of Mr Andrews’s farming philosophies is the culmination of the maverick farmer’s 30-year struggle to achieve acceptance. Along the way he has battled bureaucracy, financial ruin, the loss of his daughter by suicide and the break-up of his marriage.

“I read Peter’s [first] book and thought it was really good stuff,” General Jeffery says.

He later visited Tony Coote’s property at Bungendore in southern NSW. “He, with Peter Andrews, explained the principles of natural sequence farming and I thought it … really has got something going for it.”

In July, General Jeffery appeared on Australian Story with Mr Andrews and another high-profile supporter, the retailer Gerry Harvey, for whom Mr Andrews has spent six years successfully restoring the landscape on Baramul thoroughbred stud in the Widden Valley.

By then the seeds of the program had been sown. The retired governor-general is the chairman of the volunteer group Outcomes Australia and he added water management and land degradation to the group’s activities. “My job will be to bring people and organisations together in a spirit of co-operation to try to do something positive about the dire situation we face …” he says. “We’re not saying we have the total answer to all the problems in regenerating the landscape, but we have a pretty good indication of what needs to be done.”

General Jeffery says he will be approaching business and community leaders to provide their own and their organisations’ skills at no cost.

One of the first tasks will be identifying key stakeholders in landscape management, then working with them to develop a plan that will include simplifying federal, state and local government land care regulations.

Acknowledging that water will be the most difficult issue, General Jeffery says it must be viewed as a national asset. “Our water has to be … controlled at the national level, with a value attached to it that equates to its importance.”

Source: Sydney Morning Herald, Natural Sequence Farming