Categories
agriculture

Land ethic on the ground

Murray Harris

You can’t always spot a good farm from the over the fence – a tidy farm is not always a good farm – sustainable farming is more about decision making, about seeing the benefits of a triple bottom line approach

Murray Harris joined the Otago Catchment Board as a soil conservator in 1973, eventually becoming Land Manager for the Otago Regional Council.  Since then he has run Land and Forest specialising in land and forest environmental matters.  In 2002, he co-authored the Soil Conservation Technical Manual.    In 2012 he was made a honorary member of the NZ Association of Resource Management.  We talk about how approaches to sustainable land use have developed since the 1970s, and current challenges of  land and water quality including riparian management and  farm effluent.

Environmental management is not a cost issue, it’s a part of farming business – get on with it.

 

Shane’s number of the week: 60.  Sixty percent of China’s ground water resource is polluted leading to tensions between unbridled industrialisation and environmental concerns (Xinhua).

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).