Environment

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Natural Farming and Permaculture-an essay introduction

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At Caretaker Farm since the beginning of my time there in 1989 I have tried to follow the natural farming recommended and practiced by Masanobu Fukuoka-his book the One Straw Revolution which I read in the early 1980s  had a huge impact on the way I thought about and interacted with nature.  Later I discovered Permaculture with its design planning system using zones and organic methods. As a result I  use a combination of both methods in what I am trying to create on Caretaker Farm in NZ. In this essay I will describe and explain permaculture as I understand it after having attended a two week Permaculture Design course in the north of New Zealand back in 2005 and have implemented on Caretaker Farm, Whangateau, Aotearoa(NZ).  Permaculture was developed by two Australians, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, as a response to pollution of the soil, water and air; the increasing reduction of non-renewable resources; the continued loss of animal and plant species and;...
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A Woman's Lot in 2017!

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I am proud that NZ was the first country in the world to give women the vote in November 1893, but here we are today in June 2017 hearing on our news that a young girl at primary school can not attend her school because she is menstruating, and that the school is unable to provide her with a suitable receptacle to place in her used pads/tampons etc. The same school also suggested that she go on the pill (at age 10) to control her menstruation. Only by her parents funding a receptacle  is their daughter able to attend. What is wrong with our leaders-is it male stupidity and ignorance still dominating our systems. The inability of this school in the 21st century to adequately deal with one of their students developing into womanhood just beggars belief. Women have been menstruating at various ages-younger and older-since our species evolved. And then there is the third world problem that is also affecting many NZ young women-the astronomical cost of sanitary products mak...
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Natural Farming-the wisdom of Masanobu Fukuoka

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Masanobu Fukuoka (1913-2008) was a Japanese philosopher and farmer from the Island of Shikoku. He used what can be called natural farming techniques which went against the usual ploughing, tillage and scientific agricultural methods used so much today Natural farming requires no machinery or fossil fuels, no chemicals, no prepared compost and very little weeding. Even though his methods were controversial-i.e he did not plough the soil or hold water in his fields of rice as other farmers-he managed on his farm to achieve yields either comparable to or higher than the most productive Japanese farms at the time. Natural farming creates no pollution and actually improves the fertility of the soil every season which of course poses a threat to scientific and business in agriculture where they push fertilisers and pesticides and of course machinery to till the land or irrigate. On Caretaker farm I have tried to follow some of the principles expressed by Fukuoka in his book "The O...
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