Owen's talk here is quite fascinating. While most in permaculture will recognise the importance of mainframe design, Owen's talk goes a step further, and dips headlong into mainframe concepts as well. If you're one of those right-side brain type people who just loves thinking a little above and beyond and immersing yourself into a bit of theory, you'll find this talk from Owen hard to pause. If it doesn't sound like your cup of tea, don't panic, as Owen brings the theoretical aspects back onto the ground throughout, to show how it plays out (and boy does it play out) on a tangible property he's been working on in the U.S. of A. -- in this case the large broad acre Whirlwind Farm. In essence, Owen's talk is about restorative, resilience farming: how we can think about it, and achieve it.
This is a short post to provide a central repository for people to download presentations I was given after the Tenth International Permaculture Conference (IPC10) in Jordan, which ran over September 2011.
Note: If there are presenters who haven't passed their files to me, but would still like to see them on this page, I would ask you to send them to me on editor (at) permaculture.org.au and I'll happily add them.
I've been a fan of Maarten Stapper's work for a while now. In fact, further below you'll find an article I wrote, way back in 2007, about his experiences at the hands of his former employer -- Australia's publicly funded CSIRO agricultural research body. I'd recommend you read the article before watching Maarten's IPC10 Convergence presentation, as it'll give you a good backgrounder on his valuable work and his commendable ethics. I say ethics because instead of compromising his principles so as to retain favour with those putting bread on his table, he stood his ground... and got sacked instead.
While too many scientists will simply turn a blind eye to retain their paychecks, often with disastrous consequences for society, Maarten persevered in speaking the truth about the root causes of, and the solutions for, Australia's agricultural and environmental problems, whilst speaking out against the Big Biotech multi-nationals and their 'science' that ignored both. The article below is an infuriating read, but I think sometimes it's good to get infuriated about critical issues....
I consider it a privilege to be a friend of Warren Brush, and it's been a pleasure to see his rapid development in all things Permaculture. In his presentation at the IPC10 (Amman, Jordan, September 2011) Warren took on the topic of peacemaking -- in his trademark style of very interesting storytelling, using examples from nature to teach us lessons and including examples from his experiences with indigenous peoples, and from conflict zones in Africa.
All in all you should find this a very worthy watch. Please click play below (and stay tuned for the message below the video!):
