Categories
business food permaculture

Growing change

Jon Foote

Private property, trespassers will be given apples

Jon Foote has ten year’s banking and business development experience in Sydney. He has permaculture qualifications and busy permaculture design business ReScape. Jon is well underway with development of the Resilience Education Centre.

we are not separate from nature, whether we get it or not

Jon’s moment of realisation: you know this is what the world needs

nothing will change without action

Permaculture is not an invention, it’s a repackaging of everything done before

(Am I an activist?). I guess so, I wouldn’t paint myself with a full activist brush. I’m passionate about the belief that we have a way out of the current situation and that we need to act on it. Nothing will change without action, and action in a positive direction is great. I’m not a big protester or create…what most activists do, and chain themselves to trees…I did a bit of that in Sydney and realised, you know I’m not achieving a lot – I’d rather go out and teach everyone how to grow food. The activist part of me says ‘you know if we grew our own food, and we had organic farmers, and lots of local systems going on, that in itself will bring down the industrial food system’. So in a way I may be an activist, but I want to do it in a way that is positive so that people can work towards something that is actually beneficial – its not just grumping about things that are wrong. So let’s do the things that are right.

Categories
education food organics permaculture

Michelle Ritchie

Michelle Ritchie is an organics and permaculture edcuator with a background in resource management (she holds a Masters in Regional and Resource Planning).  Michelle is responsible for the ongoing development of Otago Polytechnic’s LivingCampus.    Michelle describes the transformation of Otago Polytechnic’s campus into an integration of community garden and focus of sustainability education.  People come to the garden, ask questions “how do I plant a bean?” but quickly move on to realising “something bigger is going on here”.  The LivingCampus then becomes a prompt for questions like “how did I get here today?”, “what is it I’m eating?” and “how do I make changes to my life?”.

Shane’s number of the week: 120 is the number of kakapo left.

Sam’s joined-up-thinking: How could we promote not-buying stuff?  Sam explores three options: trying to be impervious to marketing; removing all marketing; and recognising the value of marketing (full text here).