Saturday 6 April 2013

An Evening With Ron Berezan, The Urban Farmer

Thursday night, it was my absolute pleasure to be in the company of Ron Berezan.   The Edmonton Permaculture Group hosted Ron as the guest speaker for the April meeting and I enjoyed every minute of his informal chat.  It was great to meet him in person and hear about his permaculture work both here in Canada and abroad.

Ron is off to Cuba  soon where he will continue his work on various food security projects.  He's been working for years on projects there and has been joined by many permaculture students.   Do take a minute to read about it on his site - it's truly inspiring!

Meanwhile, here in the Edmonton area, we are dealing with Spring Rain (aka: snow).  Boo hoo!  This happens every April....  just when we get excited about Spring's arrival and all the melting snow, we get hit again with more.  *sigh*



















8 comments:

  1. Is that a mat frozen to the porch railing? :O

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    1. Well, not exactly frozen TO the railing, but it IS certainly FROZEN! :) LOL!

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  2. BTW, thanks for putting me on to the TED talks, an amazing resource.

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    1. You're so welcome. TED talks are fantastic! One could easily watch lectures on topics of interest all day :)

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  3. I have seen a documentary about the Cuban agri response to the difficulties sufffered by the embargo. Its truly amazing and makes you wonder could we, would we do the same without the need too? There are certainly alot of people talking about it and in a small way doing something in their own little world but it needs a cooperative response from councils, state governments and eventually federal government. Sometimes i think this lucky country of ours needs a little hardship to wake it up. Food for thought as i sit here typing with a thumb i just deep fried - OUCH! Hey, dont listen to me, im obviously incapable of undertaking the most basic task of frying a chip.

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    1. Sorry about your thumb! ouch.

      Yes, the Cuban people are very, very resilient. The permaculture movement grew rapidly there out of sheer necessity. When imports stopped, so did the food. Imagine having to grow EVERYTHING you ate or find it from someone else locally?

      We (generally speaking) live in a global food society and are very dependent on many other countries/regions for our food. I think that's very dangerous. The food system is (in my opinion) fragile. The more we can do to encourage eating LOCAL food, the healthier WE will be, AND the healthier our local food system will be.

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  4. The situation in Cuba illustrates how dependent on oil we are for food. In conventional farming, oil is used at every step from seed to table.

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