JOIN a group of Michigan folks in ongoing discussions: Food security/Food Sovereignty and Nutrient Dense Food
penny krebiehl
Willing to work towards implementing a plan to go deeper with our many passions/learning/skills/other group experiences regarding food production (including consumers, retailers, wholesalers, public and private policymakers and investors)?
Interested as a home-grower/farmer or citizen scientist to learn how to initiate steps towards and beyond organic, to read soil tests and to become a buying club to purchase soil minerals and amendments cost effectively?
Would you be interested in being part of a group/community that extends the work of our local and regional permaculture organizations with functional reference points like natural capital, carrying capacity, resilience, analog/eco-systems/bio-mimicry and long-term biological thinking rather than short-term/mechanistic and linear thinking?
The Bionutrient Food Association is a national association of voting members who agree to uphold the mission of the organization and advocate for vital soils, nourishing food and healthy people. BFA partners with Grower Members to develop and implement practices that will improve food quality while making their operations more lucrative and sustainable. BFA helps consumers identify, advocate for and locate bionutrient food. BFA advocates to retailers and wholesalers for the preferential placement and promotion of bionutrient food. Finally, BFA empowers public and private policymakers and investors to support the shift from the century-long paradigm of factory farming to one in which quality food is profitable, ecologically sustainable, tastier, and equally available to all.
This series of talks was sponsored by the MI BFA Collective, with the local support in Traverse City of Little Artshram and O'k CSA Cooperative. Last winter our newly forming Michigan collective held a BFA High Crop Production Soils course at Bakers' Green Acres farm in Marion, Michigan, with 25 farmers and growers in attendance, in a two-day course with BFA founder, Dan Kitteridge. Plans are underway for at least two more offerings of the High Crop Production Soils course in 2016 in Michigan.
penny krebiehl
The first PDC in the NW region of Michigan was held in 2010-11, certifying, and we feel it's just right to offer another in the coming year. We have gathered a stellar teaching staff, w. four certified permaculture teachers, and amazing people from the Great Lakes region, as well as, bringing in national author Toby Hemenway and farmer/founder of Bionutrient Food Association, Dan Kitteridge. This will be an epic learning and community building experience for all who participate, and for those who are involved in the planning/sponsoring/organizing. It takes a village to build a Permaculture City, and to fully occupy it!
The first of on-going gatherings to accomplish this will begin this week, and continue every two weeks, skipping a few Winter holiday weeks, and breaking into committee work as well.
Monday, December 7th,
at 6:00 pm
Held at:510 1/2 Second St., TC, MI,
I'll have pot of soup and bread/beverages to share.
In the planning meetings, which will be scheduled every couple of weeks until the course begins, we'll be looking at ways in which to keep the positivity-energy of building a permaculture learning community on center stage w. the sharing of this design course(It's our second in the NW Region!); Develop plans to create even more diverse community wide involvement and participation in the course itself; And, also lay out plans for a late January/early February fundraising/social event to kick off the course.
"I have come to believe we have many more permaculture interested people, than permaculture practitioners on this site, and around the country generally. In PC we learn that through collective design and collective action, we could literally create a new economy, a new landuse ethic, and reduce all of our bills and commitments to the global capitalist system.
That's a really good move, right? How is it then, that we do not?
I suspect more people on this site. In this community. NEED TO GET THEIR PDC (Permaculture Design Certificate)
For realz.
Why? It catalyzes things along very nicely, and without it, one might often have partial information, a partial picture of what makes PC so useful/special. Partial is not enough in this day and age. Getting your Permaculture Design Certificate is like taking the Blue pill from the Matrix. It changes everything. It's like putting on the glasses from the movie 'They Live'. Only then, do you *see*.
I personally do not care who you take it from, I suggest the Geoff Lawton online PDC's or ones from local teachers. Or from people who's work you really admire. But for gosh sakes, get it and get it soon. We need more soldiers geared up for the fight against global hegemony.
BUT THE COST, JESSE!?!?!?! THE COST!!!!!!!!
The cost of a PDC will range from $500-$2000. That's 72 hours. People often complain about how elitist the pricing is for a PDC, or how exorbitant the cost is, but please put this cost into relation with a college degree program. Even one 3 credit university course may cost more money than the most expensive PDC.
And the PDC is WAY better than any single college course you've ever had. Take one and prove me wrong! If for no other reason than it engenders doing something, getting active, and not just passing the course and taking the next one.
The PDC is only the beginning, but there is no better beginning.
The 1% that consumes the Earth and the Earth's people are both growing stronger and weaker everyday. Everything is for sale! At the Paris climate talks the 'commodification of everything' continues into carbon, the atmosphere, and land sovereignty.
We need to learn both the vocabulary to fight this madness, but also to embody the directive to become a practitioner embedded in ones community to demonstrate and build THEE alternative to the Global Capital Machine.
In other words, we must all make ourselves useful and active members of the new economy, the new ethic, and the new global citizen. We are literally at the point of do or die.
Please take no offense if you are already active, already have your PDC, etc. I love you all. I love our community and our city and our state. But we can all admit that we need to become more powerful a collective force for life, for justice. Much work needs to be done on both the ecological fronts and the social fronts. We can all agree, no?
Join me. Join us very active soldiers in the fight for a better world, a world that grows better with each year, a world that supports our species and doesn't kick us off, a world of just economic practices, a world for everybody.
I want to see everybody here planting trees. Everybody here painting their streets and cities with murals. Everybody here ending homelessness and hunger. Everybody here to create new currencies. Everybody here pioneer something in sustainable energy systems.
There is SO MUCH that can be tried that no one is trying in our community. So fucking much. There is room for you. For YOU! For everybody.
Let's get moving folks, no time to spare.
In Harmony,"