In this episode we talk about the scale that permaculture needs to get to get to in order to shift the planetary situation. This episode is different from previous ones, because the interview is conducted by a guest, Andrew Toth, and Andrew Millison is the one being interviewed. Andrew weaves the story of how he found himself teaching permaculture in a major state university, and how that has lead to his current work, documenting the massive scale water harvesting landscapes of India. The episode weaves through many topics, both personal and planetary.

Andrew Millison Links:

https://www.youtube.com/user/amillison

www.permaculturerising.com

https://agsci.oregonstate.edu/users/andrew-millison

https://workspace.oregonstate.edu/course/permaculture-design-certificate-online?hsLang=en

India's Water Revolution Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNdMkGYdEqOCgePyiAyBT0sh7zlr7xhz3

Andrew Toth Link:

gardenringcities.com

Andrew Millison detailed bio:

Andrew Millison has been studying, teaching and practicing Permaculture since he took his first design course in 1996. He started teaching Permaculture at the college level in 2001, and has been an instructor at OSU in the Horticulture Department since 2009.

Andrew first learned Permaculture in the drylands, where he studied at Prescott College for his undergraduate and Master's degrees.

In Arizona, his focus was on rainwater harvesting, greywater systems, and desert agriculture. He started a Permaculture landscape design and build company, and also worked in an ecologically-based Landscape Architecture firm. In recent years, Andrew's focus has been more on design for climate change resilience, broad scale water management for farm and development planning, Permaculture housing developments, and Oregon water law for obtaining water rights. Andrew brings his rich experience of designing and building his own and clients' projects for over 20 years to his teaching, and seeks to impart real world experience to his students.

Andrew has developed a successful online Permaculture program through OSU and in recent years moved into media production, traveling internationally to film and produce educational content focussed on permaculture-based food and water systems.

This episode explores ways to grow urban food security with permaculture design. Marisha Auerbach describes how she established her thriving and abundant urban permaculture food forest in Portland Oregon. We discuss methods of food production, fertility systems, economic opportunities and more in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. This episode is for those who are stuck at home and wanting to grow a raging permaculture garden!

Marisha's Links:

www.permaculturerising.com

Permaculture Food Forests Online Course:

https://workspace.oregonstate.edu/course/Permaculture-Food-Forests

Online Permaculture Design Course:

https://workspace.oregonstate.edu/course/permaculture-design-certificate-online

Marisha Auerbach full bio:

Marisha Auerbach is an internationally recognized permaculture educator, designer, and speaker based in Portland, OR. Marisha has lived and practiced permaculture in both urban and rural environments. As an avid gardener and herbalist, Marisha specializes in food production, ecology, and useful plants. Marisha believes that it is possible to respond to the current environmental challenges, lower our ecological footprint, and continue to live equally delightful lives through permaculture design. This passion is what drives Marisha's active teaching schedule throughout the year.

Permaculture Experience

Marisha Auerbach has taught over 50 permaculture design courses and numerous advanced workshops on a diversity of topics. Since 2004, she has worked in diverse environments from the humid temperate climate of her home in Oregon to the tropical rainforest in Belize to the arid landscapes of Colorado and Montana. Marisha has a BA from the Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA. She completed her permaculture design certificate with April Sampson-Kelly and Leisure Coast Permaculture Visions in Australia in 1998. Marisha holds advanced certificates in Keyline Design, Working with Cultural Diversity, and 2/3 World Permaculture Design. She has also completed an advanced permaculture course with Sepp Holzer. Marisha has offered permaculture consultancy services since 2008.

Currently, Marisha teaches permaculture at the university level at Oregon State University, and Portland Community College. Marisha developed the Certificate in Holistic Landscape Design at Bastyr University and was the lead permaculture instructor for this program from Fall 2011 - 2014. Marisha currently teaches at least two 2 week intensive permaculture design courses each year. Marisha teaches annually at the Maya Mountain Research Farm in Belize in February.

This episode examines permaculture responses to the Coronavirus Pandemic. We discuss techniques to jumpstart food production, soil fertility, and many other ways that permaculture design can assist in the process of home-based survival. We also discuss how to keep kids engaged and active while your all stuck at home during quarantine. Matt and I both teach online permaculture courses and have large quantities of free permaculture material online, which is linked to below.

Matt's link: www.thepermaculturestudent.com

Andrew Millison's permaculture courses and resources through Oregon State University:

Permaculture Design Course (starts March 30, 2020):

https://pace.oregonstate.edu/catalog/permaculture-design-certificate-online

Permaculture Food Forest Course:

https://workspace.oregonstate.edu/course/Permaculture-Food-Forests

Youtube Channel with many educational videos and playlists:

https://www.youtube.com/user/amillison

Matt Powers full bio:

Matt Powers is an author, educator, and entrepreneur focused on radically transforming the K-12 experience for children everywhere by aligning their education with current regenerative science, natural principles, and clear ethics: earth care, people care, and future care. Through Matt’s collection of online courses, teacher’s guides, textbooks, and workbooks, K-12 students can understand collegiate and graduate school concepts, learn how to ethically redesign our world, and even restore and rewild large landscapes, reversing the devastating effects of climate change. Matt’s work is found in English, Arabic, Polish, and Spanish with a dozen more translations currently in process. Matt’s bold vision is to empower children everywhere to live in regeneration where every action and decision are beneficial to the local and greater ecosystemic and social community. Matt is a former public high school english teacher with a masters in education. Matt provides daily inspirational and regenerative content online and is one of the most-followed permaculture teachers online with over 27,000 Twitter followers and tens of thousands of followers in his many Facebook groups and pages ranging in topics from permaculture education to entrepreneurship to gardening to fungi & more.

Ayana Young shares her planetary perspective on climate change, Redwood forests, and the Coronavirus pandemic. We talk about her "MIllion Redwoods" project, where she is working to preserve and propagate the biodiversity of the old growth Redwood forest. We then journey into the soul of the Coronavirus pandemic, where Ayana has some words of reality from her wide and Earth connected perspective.

Ayana's links: https://forthewild.world/

Ayana Young Full Bio:

Ayana Young is a podcast and radio personality specializing in intersectional environmental and social justice, deep ecology and land-based restoration. Graduating summa cum laude with an undergraduate degree from Loyola Marymount University including a double major in Art History and Theology and a minor in Philosophy, as well as education through Columbia University in Ecology and Eastern Religions and Restoration Ecology at the University of Victoria, Young has a strong academic background at the intersections of ecology, culture, and spirituality. She was studying at Columbia when the Occupy Wall Street movement began and amid the burgeoning resistance in Zuccotti Park, she co-created the Environmental Working Group.

Post-graduation, dividends from her early career allowed Young to conserve 500 acres of coast redwood and salmon habitat in Northern California, where she has been living for over five years. Living for the first years, in a tent with no electricity or running water while she established a homestead, and broke ground on a native species nursery and research center, including the establishment of the 1 Million Redwoods Project, which was acclaimed as the most backed farm project in Kickstarter history.

A budding filmmaker, Young is no stranger to the medium having spent her childhood as a prolific working actor, working alongside the likes of Steven Spielberg and Meryl Streep. Young’s debut film, When Old Growth Ends is an ode to the complex interweaving of the irreplaceable Tongass National Forest during its last stand as a distinctly wild place in Southeast Alaska. As Director, Producer, Narrator and Featured Cast Member of the film, Young wore many hats in midwifing this compelling and poetic story of struggle and beauty surrounding the Tongass National Forest.

Young leans into her vast experience on the other side of the camera, along with her intersectional approach to ecological restoration to guide her process as the Founder and Executive Director of millennial media organization and nonprofit For The Wild. Learning deeply from the critical dialogue she’s shared with over 100 guests on the For The Wild podcast, including Chris Hedges, Sylvia Earle, Vandana Shiva, Jill Stein, Winona La Duke, Terry Tempest Williams and other thought leaders (including some of the brightest activists, political thinkers, and scientific minds of our time) Young approaches her mission with For The Wild with critical thinking, deep reverence and artistry.

Hear what life is like for a farmer, teacher, and father practicing permaculture under military occupation. Murad Al-khuffash is the founder of Marda Permaculture Farm, which is an internationally recognized NGO, a permaculture demonstration site, and his ancestral home, located in the Palestinian West Bank town of Marda. As a permaculture teacher, Murad has travelled internationally, and has trained a cadre of permaculture practitioners within Palestine and beyond. This episode hears about his life, his projects, and the challenges that he faces living under the difficult conditions that he does.

Murad's links:

https://mardafarm.com/

https://www.facebook.com/murad.j.r.alkufash

Donate for wood chipper: https://www.facebook.com/donate/2546154715620890/10221028741167783/

Video: https://vimeo.com/174468820

Marda coordinates: 32.1142° N, 35.1959° E

In this episode we talk with Raya Cole about her work with permaculture and water harvesting in many villages of rural India. Raya has worked with Aranya Agricultural Alternatives for five years on the ground teaching, designing, and organizing community efforts to restore water tables and improve nutrition. Raya has a lot of insight into the complicated dynamics of making lasting changes in a region where water, food, and soil have all been critically degraded over the last half-century. Now at a breaking point with depleted water supplies and the failure of chemical agriculture, many rural poor are open to the possibilities for sustenance that permaculture provides.

Raya's links:

https://livingecology.org/

https://permacultureindia.org

Raya full bio:

Raya Cole has been involved with organic agriculture, permaculture, and sustainable systems and social justice since 1996. She developed two of her own farms with permaculture principles in California, and the farms were used as training centers. She has provided permaculture consultancy and implementation on farms in the United States, Costa Rica and India.

She teaches wilderness, primitive and nature awareness skills at 4 Elements Earth Education.

She is an herbalist with a medicinal herb product business, Simply Being Botanicals for which she grows and wildcrafts the herbs.

In 1995, with the One World Global Education project, Raya had her first involvement in international development. It was a transformative experience to her perspective on the world and social justice. Since then she has focused on living gently on the Earth while giving equal respect to all living beings; human, plants and animals. She contributes her knowledge of permaculture, group and community collaboration skills to the intern program at Living Ecology. Joyed to be working on a project that aids the work of an incredibly effective development organization, she provides advanced mentorship and training to permaculture students.

Raya is the contact person for volunteers and interns who wish to participate in the practical application permaculture programs in India through Living Ecology and Aranya Agriculture Alternatives.

Permaculture Instructor’s Qualifications

An extensive advanced education in permaculture makes Raya the cornerstone of Living Ecology project outcomes. Her Permaculture Design Course was completed in 2003 in the Earth Activist Training. She has worked with professionals and permaculture instructors all over the world. Educational highlights include a 10 week internship with Geoff Lawton at The Permaculture Research Institute in Australia and 8 months at The Regenerative Design Institute in the Cultural Mentoring Program where she helped train the first year students in the Regenerative Design and Nature Awareness program with Penny Livingston-Stark and Jon Young. She also completed Aquaponics Design with Max Mayers, Holistic Management with Kurt Gadzia, Holistic Orchard Management with Michael Phillips, Keyline Design and Land Management with Darren Doherty, Advanced Permaculture Design Consultancy with Robyn Francis, and Soil Food Web training with Elaine Ingham. Her work and study have been remarkable.

This episode weaves through a number of stories of rainwater harvesting from around the world. This episode focuses more on the community aspect of water harvesting and addresses the question of how large scale water harvesting projects involving multiple stakeholders and communities actually happen? Brad has initiated his own extensive projects, as well as visited many others throughout the world. Please enjoy this lesson on catalyzing community and healing hydrology.

Links referenced in the episode:

Check out Brad's newly revised, full-color editions of his "Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond" books available direct from Brad at deep discount at:

https://www.harvestingrainwater.com/shop/

Check out the Online Rainwater Harvesting Course featuring Brad's work and books:

https://pace.oregonstate.edu/catalog/permaculture-rainwater-harvesting-online-course

Roman- and Byzantine-era Cisterns of the Past Reviving Life in the Present:

https://www.harvestingrainwater.com/2011/07/08/roman-and-byzantine-era-cisterns-of-the-past-reviving-life-in-the-present/

Revolving Community Loans for “Water From Allah”:

https://www.harvestingrainwater.com/2010/08/23/revolving-community-loans-for-water-from-allah/

Cisterns of Old Jeddah, Saudi Arabia:

https://www.harvestingrainwater.com/2010/07/17/cisterns-of-old-jeddah-saudi-arabia/

Harvesting Air-Conditioning Condensate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and Beyond:

https://www.harvestingrainwater.com/2010/07/07/harvesting-air-conditioning-condensate-in-jeddah-saudi-arabia-and-beyond/

Building Bridges project where residents of adjoining neighborhoods came together to proactively identify the need for, and solutions to, enhance inter-neighborhood connections by foot, bicycle, wheelchair, skateboard, etc.

http://dunbarspring.org/documents/building-bridges-project

Desert Harvesters work to grow and utilize more native wild food plants where we live, work, and play

www.DesertHarvesters.org

Brad Lancaster full bio:

Since 1993 I’ve run a successful permaculture consulting, design, and education business focused on integrated and sustainable approaches to landscape design, planning, and living. And as I live in a dryland environment, water harvesting has long been one of my specialties and a passion. Through my business I’ve been able to share this passion and many of the fun innovations and daily adventures that come about from striving to live more sustainably and comfortably in the Sonoran Desert. At home my brother and I harvest about 100,000 gallons of rainwater a year on a 1/8-acre urban lot and adjoining right-of-way. This harvested water is then turned into living air conditioners of food-bearing shade trees, abundant gardens, and a thriving landscape incorporating wildlife habitat, beauty, edible and medicinal plants, and more. Such sheltering landscapes can cool buildings by up to 20° F (11° C), reduce water and energy bills, and require little more than rainwater to thrive. Outside the home, I have helped others do the same, enabling clients to create ephemeral springs, raise the level of water in their wells, and shade and beautify neighborhood streets by harvesting their street runoff in adjacent tree wells.

But this is just the beginning. Water is the bait to entice you to see, connect with, and help enhance more of the greater whole. In this spirit, we also passively and actively harvest the sun for free and clean heat, light, and power. We expand and design shade in sync with the sun’s seasonally changing path across the sky, so that shade cools us in summer, but not in winter. Passive ventilation and wind harvesting boosts this free summer cooling. Fun, easy, dynamic stuff that generates more life—our true community health and wealth.

In this episode we dive into the social aspects of using design to repair the fragmented social fabric of the urban landscape. The City Repair Project in Portland, Oregon has been working for a quarter century on making places within the city that help to bring together communities and establish new rituals and celebrations around community empowerment. The results are beautiful and artistic public spaces woven throughout the city, created by residents, and a change in the feel and functionality of neighborhoods towards safer and more cohesive communities. Rhidi explains how the qualities of the village are being brought back into a city grid that was designed for the extraction of capital and not the encouragement of life and health of communities.

Ridhi's links:

https://cityrepair.org/

https://oregonhumanities.org/programs/conversation-project/catalog/exploring-power-and-privilege-with-courage-creativity-and-compassion/

Ridhi full bio:

Ridhi D’Cruz is a placemaking consultant, sociocultural anthropologist, and permaculture educator living in Portland. They work to foster place-based empowerment within diverse communities, including people facing housing insecurity and governmental agencies, by drawing on diversity, equity, and inclusion, cultural sustainability, social permaculture, and placemaking and asset-based community development. They also enthusiastically participate in life affirming practices involving urban wildcrafting, plant medicine, natural building, and participatory technology. Ridhi is currently a co-executive director of City Repair Project, a grassroots placemaking nonprofit organizations in Portland.

In this episode we dive deeply into the genetic history of life on Earth, and how biodiversity can be encouraged through garden-based plant breeding. Dr. Alan 'Mushroom' Kapuler is a world renowned plant breeder and is considered one of the fathers of the organic seed movement in the USA. This episode reveals some of the background science of evolution that informs Dr. Kapuler's perceptions, philosophy, and ultimately his plant breeding practices and family seed company, Peace Seeds.

Dr. Kapuler's links:

http://www.peaceseedslive.com/

Youtube Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrjPAWUfe28&list=PLuEHG0JWKGA3miXvBki7iyPBUdoWk_4LU

Full Biography:

Alan M. Kapuler Ph.D., known as Mushroom, lives in Corvallis, OR with his wife Linda Kapuler. They have three daughters. Kapuler has a diverse seed collection of about 15,000 accessions. He also has chickens, orchids, and plants from around the world, and a passion to conserve biodiversity. Kapuler focuses on breeding high nutrition fruits and vegetables for humanity. He was the co-founder and Research Director of Seeds of Change, perhaps the first national organic seed company. He co-founded Peace Seeds with Linda Kapuler and Alan Venet in 1973.

In this episode, we dive deep into the global water cycle, and how repairing degraded landscapes and increasing water retention can help to stabilize global temperatures. We talk about Zach's work, where he has worked on projects in over twenty countries, and about the practical nuts and bolts of assessing, planning, and installing large scale permaculture water management projects.

Zach's Links:

www.elementalecosystems.com

We cover a lot of the science behind deforestation, precipitation, and atmospheric circulation. In order to back up many of the assertions in this episode, here is a list of links to scientific papers here:

How Forests Attract Rain: An Examination of a New Hypothesis. (peer-reviewed)

https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/59/4/341/346941

(abstract and access to full text)

Makarieva A.M., Gorshkov V.G., Sheil D., Nobre A.D., Bunyard P., Li B.-L. (2014) Why does air passage over forest yield more rain? Examining the coupling between rainfall, pressure, and atmospheric moisture content. Journal of Hydrometeorology, 15, 411-426. (peer-reviewed)

doi:10.1175/JHM-D-12-0190.1. (abstract and access to full text)

http://www.bioticregulation.ru/common/pdf/spr.pdf (full text)

Report: Forests may play bigger role in rainfall than estimated (non-academic)

https://forestsnews.cifor.org/22060/report-forests-may-play-bigger-role-in-rainfall-than-estimated?fnl=en (full text)

Does Anthropogenic Land Use Change Play a Role in Changes of Precipitation Frequency and Intensity over the Loess Plateau of China? (peer reviewed) https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/10/11/1818?fbclid=IwAR0MLGrCgdnixRvZadfvN_NobymkfOjBTpN84yKcFUU0hfGIeV-jEWHii1Q (full text)

Estimation of Actual Evapotranspiration in a Semiarid Region Based on GRACE Gravity Satellite Data—A Case Study in Loess Plateau (Peer reviewed) https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/10/12/2032?fbclid=IwAR2ChJttDVobRfSsjK5R9ERNjKRs6JEX6cBw66Pvrq2JuXOfwi3WXcRcbf4 (full text)

New meteorological theory argues that the world’s forests are rainmakers (non-academic)

https://news.mongabay.com/2012/02/new-meteorological-theory-argues-that-the-worlds-forests-are-rainmakers/ (full text)

Other reading mentioned in episode:

Charles Eisenstein - Climate: A New Story