Ever since my roomate Neshura took me to the Permaculture Institute nestled in the hills outside of Marin, I've been innundated with a steady trickle of projects and ideas on rethinking the farm and designing ecologies. The most recent of this involves Neshura's a kitchen experiment in an attempt to recreate some of the conditions of Terra Preta.
Over the span of several breakfast conversations, nesh decided the appropriate first step to tackle the complexity of permaculture and associated hacks is what any good hacker would do: Start a website
I've contributed my first stab at the the financials of permaculture.
Also on the topic of agriculture, I've been reading The Conquest of Bread, 150 years of agribusiness in California. Recall that agriculture, not technology or hollywood, forms the largest industry in Cali. While anyone who is familiar with modern agribusiness will find lots of redundant info and a bit of a reptitive anti-capitalist ranting, I'd still consider it a must read for anyone who has lived in California or who is interested on the economic and social dynamics of North America's most fertile and dynamic croplands.
Though I've only gotten halfway through it so far, one thing I've found interesting has been the accounts of labor importation and contract labor in California agriculture. The importation of Mexicans, Chinese, Japanese, and even Indians has not just been a recent phenomena used by modern aggies and the software industry, but rather a california tradition used time in again in farms, railroads, and high tech.
Posted by Da Mystik Homeboy at March 18, 2005 06:02 PM