Dan Halsey & Feeding the People with Earth Repair
On August 5, I had a fruitful phone conversation with Dan Halsey, a permaculture designer, and principal of SouthWoods Ecosystems in Minneapolis. Dan is on the board of Permaculture Resources Institute, USA and initiator of United Designers, an international consortium of permaculture designers. Halsey has been traveling, teaching and consulting in various parts of the world and our conversation helped clarify the GERC vision.
Crucial to the success of worldwide restoration are all the rural people of the world especially those who farm, own land, manage land, wild forage or share communal lands. Small-scale subsistence farmers and small commercial farmers. If Earth Repair is done on their land that will improve their economic situation, their nutrition situation and their quality of life and at the same time serve desired ecosystem functions such as carbon sequestration, rainfall generation, flood control, oxygen production, biodiversity and so forth. In other words, earth repair is part of farming, grazing, and wildcrafting production systems. The farmer gets more production, nutrient density in food goes up, a wider range of fruits, nuts and perennial crops are grown, water situation is improved, and local climate amelioration. Permaculture is one of the leading design strategies to develop such earth repair production systems. Dan commented “It is important to remember that subsistence communities need to get their needs met first, before restoration or creative problem solving can begin. This has been seen in Haiti with excellent results.”
Halsey pointed out that soil erosion and water is a key factor he is coming across in many places he is working including Senegal, Spain, South Africa, and Molokai, Hawaii. It is difficult to get success with plants without first addressing the erosion. In many places this involves earth works by machine or by human labor. Moving logs, stones, and earth. Fixing the erosion and infiltrating the rainwater into the soil provides people and communities with more secure water resources. Tamera in Portugal is one example and there are many examples in India, Australia and pretty much anywhere in the world that water is a problem. Fixing the erosion and infiltrating rainfall can lead to increased plant cover, increased production, and better economics.
Agricultural lands are a big part of Earth Repair and where we might get some of our fastest payback. If just 30% of the subsistence and small-scale farmers in the world did an earth repair job on their land that would be huge! Then start working on the other 70%.
Dan Halsey’s website:
http://www.southwoodscenter.com/
