[minerjoe]

References? As far as I understand it, by personally visiting sucessfull alternative farms that are using management intensive grazing (holistic grazing, mob grazing, etc.), they really do have a paradigm changing method that could and should be adapted by almost all meat producers. The current practices are archaic and destructive and are completely missing the more recent (last 20 years) scientific advancement in understanding how to build soil, maximize forage use, and raise healty animals without the current massive use of pesticides, herbicides, and large expensive machines. The economics is there, the change is slow, but proceeding. Check out the research work at the University of Missouri by Jim Garrish, the Stockman Grass Farmer publication and the farms of Greg Judy and Gabe Brown, to start.

[quixoticelixer-]

I guess it depends on your definition of permaculture, I was thinking more like an integrated orchard system. You are quite right about your 'alternative grazing methods', they are productive and much much better for the soil than Corn + Feedlots that you get in the US. I do work on a farm that does a fair bit of that sort of stuff.

[minerjoe]

Yea, we're arguing symantics. My apoligies. The word "permaculture", nowadays, is, in my circles, a big umbrella word for many different systems. Many of those systems would not necessarily call themselves "permaculture". A big umbrella - "permanent agriculture", or agricultural practices that do not degrade the land, but rather can run on for millenia, there are many systems we are now discovering, some ancient, some newly synthesized, that have that potential to feed the world, while, at the same time, healing past damage .