From: krogers@javelin.sim.es.com (K. Rogers)
Subject: Re: PROPOSAL: alt.sustainable.agriculture
Reply-To: krogers@javelin.sim.es.com
Organization: Evans & Sutherland Computer Corp., Salt Lake City, Utah
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 17:55:28 GMT

Lawrence.London@bbs.oit.unc.edu (Lawrence London) writes:

>In article <1992Sep28.141626.55587@qut.edu.au> rees@qut.edu.au writes:
>>I have been thinking along the same lines but you beat me to it! I was
>
>That's great! I'd like to have been exchanging ideas with you over the
>past year.

OK, time for the guy with the wet towel. :-)

I should make two disclaimers up front so you can know a little what
my personal preferences are: 1) I'm all for sustainable agriculture in
how that term is usually used; 2) I'm all against the exponential
growth of new, low volume groups on the Net.

So, keeping the above in mind:

>>thinking of a group alt.permaculture ("agriculture" to me sounds to me
>>a bit like you have to be professional farmer to post to the group!) and
>
> not at all; it should be considered open to anyone interested in growing
>plants or animals for fun, sustenance or profit or involved in any other
>endeavor related to that.

My first point is that the audience you'd *really* like to target,
i.e. people who actually try to make a living at farming, are not on
the Net.  The people on the Net are overwhelmingly techno-nerds of
various sorts who live in apartments or suburbs of large metropolitan
areas.  We (I'm in this category) just play at this gardening stuff -
some play reasonably seriously at it, to be sure, but it's play all
the same.  If gypsy moths eat your garden to the ground, no real harm
is done, you just grit your teeth and buy those supermarket apples,
pesticides, herbicides, coloring agents and all and complain about the
state of current farming practices and government policies that sells
us such junk.

Perhaps I should include one more personal point of relevence here: I
used to spend my summers as a farm grunt.  That has a lot to do with
why I'm an engineer now instead of a farmer - getting up at 5 am every
morning, 7 days a week, fair or foul weather, to go move irrigation
pipe over 5000 acers, work on some greasy hulking monster machine,
getting covered with herbicides and pesticides, etc, etc, was not my
idea of a satisfying life.

OK, so sustainable agriculutre would reduce if not eliminate the
herbicide and pesticide exposure, it wouldn't change anything thing
else about farm life, and I'd *still* rather be an engineer...

>>deal specifically with topics like
>>	organic gardening, permaculture, biodynamics, bio-diversity,
>>	seed-saving, heritage breeds, composting, etc...
>Those topics are of great interest to me too and I would hope they would be
>discussed in depth in the newsgroup.

All of the above belong here (and have been discussed many times over
the 5 years I've been a r.g follower) except perhaps the two bio
topics which could be put in sci.environment as well.

>>Yes I know most of this is covered in the charter for rec.gardening, but
>>it is a very general group. Often a the existence of a more specialist
>>group (such as we are talking about) will attract a greater amount of
>>discussion from people with that specific interest (I also thought
>>alt.herbalism was a good idea, but...).

Which again brings me to the point that rec.gardening *is* the forum
for this topic at the level we'd be discussing it at.  Is there any
reason we can't use this group?  It's not as if this is a
screen-busting volume group.  It's not as if people are forbidden to
discuss it here or are shouted down for trying.  I'm all for using the
group in the hand to see what kind of volume the topics generate.  If
sufficient postings show up over the long haul (which is about 4
months on the Net) then perhaps a dedicated group would be called for.

>I would hope that discussion of a broad range of topics could occur in
>alt.s.a. without diluting traffic by forming a number of specialized
>subgroups.
>Maybe someone will want to make it into a sci. group at some future date,
>at which time fragmentation might be appropriate.

The appropriate place would be under the bionet heading - but then
they don't like to proliferate groups and have ways to prevent it,
unlike Usenet.  You'd have to present a good case to get them to carry
it - like a sufficient number of high-quality postings over a 6 month
period.  However, they are the crew that might actually contain some
people who deal with the topic professionally, either as researchers,
Gov Ag stations, etc.  It would be nice to have professionals in to
lend their expertise and sheer depth of resources and knowledge on the
topics rather than mostly just amateurs where 2 acers constitutes a
huge plot to farm.  Don't get me wrong, amateurs can make fine
contributions, but why not include the professionals, such few as
there are electronically wired in.

>Herbalism should be discussed there as well, at least until someone decides
>that a separate group is needed (I'd be glad to help get it started).

I don't see the connection between sustainable agriculture and
herbalism other than the trivial one of trying to raise plants in a
"sustainable" fasion which has come to mean "organically" to many
people, and all plants could fit under this moniker.

The feeling I get from this proposal is that some people would like an
explicit demonstration of their ecological stance in the name of their
news group.  IMO, rec.gardens is already a fine forum to discuss the
proposed content of alt.sustainable.agriculture and related topics;
even herbalism... ;^)

Since in all reality we are recreational gardeners, sustainable ag,
unlike real-life farmers who can or can't pay their mortgage based on
crop yield, would be relegated to the realm of theoretical discussion,
citing case examples, micro-plot trials in our own gardens, etc, and
rec.gardening is the appropriate place.  We don't need another
low-volume, special intrest group like several I already subscribe to.

Yeah, as a taxonomist I'm a lumper, not a splitter, too...
-- 
Keith Rogers
krogers@javelin.sim.es.com
Newsgroups: rec.gardens