Tag Archives: John Seymour

Episode 283. Organic, Biodynamic or Permaculture?

This is The ChangeUnderground for the 20th of December 2021.

I’m your host, Jon Moore

Decarbonise the Air, Recarbonise the Soil!

Bit of a back to first principles episode this week. I think we can take as read that if you’re listening to this podcast the chemical route to food production is a no go. This can leave a bewildering mass of other choices.

From the generic “Organic” to the semi propriety biodynamic and permaculture. We can, of course, toss in regenerative agriculture too.

So, as I say, let’s go back to first principles.

What are we attempting to do? Why are we doing it? Then finally, how?  Continue reading →

Episode 268. Living the Life of Reilly

This is The ChangeUnderground for the 23rd of August 2021.

I’m your host, Jon Moore

Decarbonise the Air, Recarbonise the Soil!

I’ve been at this caper for 46 odd years and still feel like I’m beginning so I thought this week I’d dig around the web and find some people who are starting out on their smallholding adventures.

The Good Life

Let’s jump in and see if I can tease out some themes that might be of value.

From the Guardian comes this piece entitled: ‘Six chickens somehow turned into 60!’ Meet the families trying to live the Good Life in the pandemic Continue reading →

Episode 261. Seymour, Fukuoka, Mollison and MacKenzie

This is The ChangeUnderground for the 21st of June 2021.

I’m your host, Jon Moore

Decarbonise the Air, Recarbonise the Soil!

This week I’m taking a look back at my literary mentors in the smallholding/horticulture field. 

John Seymour

It turned out I finally managed to get to the library to ask about self sufficiency books the day after “The Good Life” first aired on Australian TV back in 1977. I hadn’t heard of it, let alone watched it but the librarian alerted me to it. A romanticised version of backyard self sufficiency but with some useful ideas. Continue reading →

Episode 219. Unintended Consequences of the Wrong Target

This is the World Organic News for the week ending 22nd of  June 2020.

Jon Moore reporting!

Decarbonise the air, recarbonise the soil!

The trouble with “knowing” is it leads to certainty, certainty leads to errors and these errors usually come from the unintended consequences of “knowing”. It may well be part of the human condition, it is certainly part of the current industrial agricultural paradigm.

From Dr Christine Jones’s last episode came the following:

Quote:

No amount of NPK fertiliser can compensate for compacted, lifeless soil with low wettability and low water-holding capacity. Indeed, adding more chemical fertiliser often makes things worse. This is particularly so for inorganic nitrogen (N) and inorganic phosphorus (P). An often overlooked consequence of the application of high rates of N and P is that plants no longer need to channel liquid carbon to soil microbial communities in order to obtain these essential elements. Reduced carbon flow has a negative impact on soil aggregation – as well as limiting the energy available to the microbes involved in the acquisition of important minerals and trace elements. Lack of trace elements increases the susceptibility of plants and animals to pests and diseases.  

End Quote Continue reading →

Episode 217. Chaos Gardening

This is the World Organic News for the week ending 8th of June 2020.

Jon Moore reporting!

Decarbonise the air, recarbonise the soil!

The great philosophical battles over time were reduced to two teams in the seminal spy show of the 1960s: Get Smart. Control and Kaos were the two options. Much industrial farming and chemically based gardening can be thought of as part of the Control team. After all, we have several millennia of holy books declaring humanity’s need to bring order and structure to chaotic Nature. That these books arose in the cultural context of West Asia, known nowadays as the Middle East, it should not be a surprise that this approach should be at the bedrock of “Western” farming. Nature is considered corrupt in some way, less than perfect.  Continue reading →

Episode 170. Hunter Gathers, Organic Workloads and a Change Worth Making

This is the World Organic News for the week ending the 27th of May 2019.

Jon Moore reporting!

Decarbonise the air, recarbonise the soil!

The project I spoke about last week is coming along nicely and I’ll have lots more to tell you soon.

Today I need to dive back into my personal history. Fear not, I won’t be over sharing. 

Hunter Gatherers

Whilst at university I studied archaeology. This discipline only deals with humans so no dinosaurs just humans. The greater part of human existence was spent by us in the gentle arts of the fisher-hunter-gatherer. Now this was sold to me as lifestyle not worth the effort during my school days. You know the story. Civilisation arose in the Fertile Crescent, China and Mesoamerica and slowly at first but then with increasing rapidity, the bright lights of civilisation were brought to the whole world. What caused me to question this assumption, apart from the Mongols but that’s another podcast, was the interface of two opposing food systems.  Continue reading →

Episode 158. Cows aren’t the enemy & let’s reward those doing the job!

This is the World Organic News for the week ending the 4th of March 2019.

Jon Moore reporting!

Decarbonise the air, recarbonise the soil!

We begin this week with a piece from Business Insider entitled: Cows are getting a bad rap and it’s time to set the record straight: Giving up meat won’t save the planet by Frank M. Mitloehner.

Quote:

As the scale and impacts of climate change become increasingly alarming, meat is a popular target for action. Advocates urge the public to eat less meat to save the environment. Some activists have called for taxing meat to reduce consumption of it.

A key claim underlying these arguments holds that globally, meat production generates more greenhouse gases than the entire transportation sector. However, this claim is demonstrably wrong, as I will show. And its persistence has led to false assumptions about the linkage between meat and climate change.

End Quote. Continue reading →

Episode 154. Agroecology in Senegal and New Hope From Old Ideas.

This is the World Organic News for the week ending the 4th of February 2019.

Jon Moore reporting!

Decarbonise the air, recarbonise the soil!

We begin this week with some good news out of Senegal. From the site News Ghana comes the piece entitled: President Sall announces that Senegal will adopt agroecology.

Quote:

The chairman of Enda Tiers-Monde’s international network, Marième Sow, is delighted. The call that civil society organizations have made since the 1970s has finally been heard. The appropriation of the principles of the agro-ecological transition had been their workhorse for decades. This emblematic figure of clean agriculture salutes the awareness of the authorities to move towards a model of agricultural production that does not degrade our forests or our soil, and that does not pollute our groundwater and surface water. Indeed, in his message to the nation of December 31, 2018, President Macky Sall announced a preparation of Senegal, Sahelian country, to the ecological transition through the “Pse Vert”.

End Quote Continue reading →