Dude its so helpful to hear this. I was raised on a monoculture farm in the south and the more I learned the more ugly and upsetting my home has become (but it has extended to everywhere else). Developed nations look like Mordor to me now. The exact same landscapes that the average american thinks is the "beatiful nature" thats missing in cities. My dad loves the look of tilled red clay as far as the eye can see, its absolutely heartbreaking. I had to stop working as a landscaper because it felt so sickening to think about how insane it was to waste so much labor, money, resources, time, etc. just to prevent Nature from healing and beginning to provide more free food for all different species. The more I am drawn to spending time in Nature and wanting to travel to visit different environments and cultures from my readings, the more I find out the environments already clearcut, eroded, or dried up. Got into the various steppe nomad groups, kept hearing about the Aral sea and began dreaming of seeing it, just to hop on wikipedia and find out is dried up in the last ~30 years . Every primitive culture I look up to learn from, is already forgetting their technologies and traditions (and even language) just from the corrupting influence of having cheap mass produced goods reaching even them. Ironically, what we call progress is the greatest threat to diversity in history, whether environmental, ethnic, cultural, etc.
@cacmang42
3 ай бұрын
hope your finding your path to be part of the solution for humanity! identifying the problem is a first step in solving it :)
@wholesystems
9 ай бұрын
FYI I’m NOT talking about Polyface farm here. Some people asked me if I was.
@formidableflora5951
11 ай бұрын
Not simply a rant. As you frequently do, you've knit together a lot of pieces into a coherent whole. Actually one of the most important videos I've watched this year.
@southernpoop
11 ай бұрын
My wife has a store called Reuse Refuge here in Auburn NY. It's been a struggle bc for some ecomarket products like soap or deodorant that claim to have harmless ingredients actually do but customers still are looking for an alternative. So instead of making a sale and supplying that in her store she's explaining to each customer why she doesn't carry something they want. There's also products that are made to last a longer time so she's not making as much money as she could if she carried single use things. Other items like brushes and sponges are compostable or leisurely breakdown in your garden but people who would pay more money for something like that instead of getting your basic grocery store products don't have a lot of disposable income. So she has a balance act to think about of selling more pretty ecomarket gift shop sort of items to fund her ability to sell things that she and her customers value.
@paulmisterovich1250
11 ай бұрын
"replicated not scaled" truest thing ive heard in a long time🙏
@abzafox7777
11 ай бұрын
I remember learning french-intensive gardening years ago while I was woofing. And the owners of the farm wanted to scale up. It was one of the most insane things ever. We barely could keep up with a quarter of an acre with 4 able bodied people. The owners were adverse to the idea of permaculture cause 'you cant scale it up' but somehow they were super stoked on the MOST INTENSIVE form of gardening haha
@rivv4902
11 ай бұрын
Ha I was just re-watching the Invasive Weed "rant"on my way to work this morning. I love these they always give me something to mull over, thanks Ben!
@SeanMontague007
11 ай бұрын
White Oaks? That's disappointing. Same with the seed company not to be named from somewhere in Wolcott, VT
@wyattbottorff2473
Ай бұрын
I'm sick of it man. We're all struggling because so few people put value in what matters! I am an herbalist AND I run a garden/nursery AND I do odd jobs as a pro/layman painter, carpenter, plumbing, etc. I can find people who will put $400 on the table to paint a picnic table, but I have to struggle to find clients for $40-100 worth of herbal medicines even when I give the consultations for free. It wasn't this way only a year ago. I can offer Aronia berries for some stupid low price and because people aren't familiar and it isn't super sweet they don't even want to hear about it. They'll buy the $6/gallon blueberry u-pick out, but won't even look my direction for a quart of something unfamiliar. It's gotten to the point where I've given up on any of it as "a business" and just hope to keep enough money flowing I can keep myself going.
@Amoondar
11 ай бұрын
Imagine how much grass fertilizer goes into our water systems 😖
@meowcow1332
11 ай бұрын
"Pissagate" I Laughed. I thought this video was about to take quite a turn. I appreciate your thoughts! It's been something on my mind quite a lot. The problem is that all of us are broke! Think about it, the only thing that really matters at the end of the day as is taught us is money. Without your animals you can survive. without morals you can live. Without ENOUGH money there is an army of vultures that come marching your way. In every way and shape they will strip you of all form, property, vehicles, even putting you behind bars. There is a huge push by our global government to control all agriculture and destroy all small producers, I assume it is for some plan of depopulation so they are doing everything they can to tighten the noose around them financially. In a system like that fear is what rules. You said a while back your farm is not actually what you rely on for money, however for so many of us in agriculture it has to be. After we spend so much time and energy holding up twigs and dusty barns and morals that the rest of the world looks down upon, the thought of scaling up and getting more money seems so alluring. I live around a lot of Amish, they produce insane amounts of veggies and fruits. My thoughts as of recent is to try to grow things that they cannot. For example mushrooms, strange uncommon fruits, or even fruits that can be grown in a geothermal greenhouse. But when I started actually counting the numbers, and assuming I could get a product out the door (fresh organic figs in ohio) I realized on a small scale I would be hardly making $2,000 a year on a small scale! So I started imagining upscaling and making it larger, and even then its so difficult.. There are people in this society pulling in that much a month sitting behind a laptop telling people how to deal with their problems. When faced with such a system it forces the agricultural people to conform or die. I suppose the solution is to become a nut, and not value money. Be willing to sacrifice your life and your family's life for a right way of life. Thats what our forefathers did. When it happened on a large enough scale, the vultures could not take down the herd. They were kicked out of the air and trampled under foot. Now there are a lot more vultures and the herd is scattered around the fields.
@Crina-LudmilaCristeaAuthor
11 ай бұрын
Such an important topic. Thank you, Ben!
@markperry5075
11 ай бұрын
This is spot on! I hate to compare to politics, but it’s very similar. You see it time and again. The well intentioned activist with the small town, grass roots perspective and pitch…if they stay local they can get local things done. Move up to the national level and they either get chewed up and spit out, or they compromise and conform to the big machine. Love the reproducibility, not scalability, notion!
@js290
11 ай бұрын
"the most crucial part of social matters is scale; society is in fact neighborhoods & should be that in practice." -Karl Hess kzitem.infoUgkxrlKjj2tgso04WoCHhMa0yocJFUnsZPwy?si=xeEz42upBL-D8SkG
@berniesbend
11 ай бұрын
Then you go work at a taco place and find they toss an entire 42 oz. container of rolled oats in the taco mix.
@danam2584
10 ай бұрын
Love the video but i don't consider it a rant :). My town has a bunch of land that was taken over by the government for "flood control". There are 30 acers PLUS that are just getting mowed and are not used for anything. I have tried to track down who is responsible for the vacant land.I think we should put a community garden. It's hard to find someone who is in charge in the government.
@spentmanspath421
11 ай бұрын
Sounds like growth, outsourcing and lower product quality is the cycle of modern business.
@wholesystems
9 ай бұрын
Yep
@Foldiman
10 ай бұрын
In some ways, living in a country with plentiful land leads itself to this mowed lawn culture. A smaller, denser country couldn't afford to waste the space. There are all sorts of other problems with less land, but just my two cents.
@nevisysbryd7450
10 ай бұрын
That is a factor, although it is more complicated. Outside of dense urban areas, the USA averages something like a third or less of the population density of Western Europe (where we picked up lawns from), and America was built from the ground up on effectively nigh-infinite land in contrast to Europe which has been pretty much consistently occupied as densely as logistically possible (depopulation events aside) since the Neolithic. America is way more spread out in general.
@Amoondar
11 ай бұрын
Siskiyou seeds in Southern Oregon! Lets blow up small companies we can trust in our areas ❤
@matts_.4494
11 ай бұрын
Your comments about your experience with giardia and how you handled it were quite familiar to me. I had a case of the flu last winter. It seem to linger for a couple weeks as I got weaker and weaker. Finally, I got scared and went to the ER where a chest x-ray revealed that I had a mild case of pneumonia. I was given a prescription for a common and inexpensive antibiotic and sent on my way. By the way, I lived in Western Colorado some decades ago where infection with giardia was pretty common due to community water systems becoming overwhelmed during the runoff of snowmelt in the early summer, and also the tendency of people to drink from random water sources while out hiking in the mountains.
@darbyfarms8374
Ай бұрын
White Oak Pastures...Ill call them out. Will Harris has always been a marketing wizard.
@sams0blu
11 ай бұрын
i've lost trust of so called "organic" restaurants. most have an * on their menus, and when you look at the bottom in small print, they say *organic when possible. I always ask what exactly is organic at that moment, and they mostly cannot tell me anything definite. several have even told me (eventually) that "organic" is just in the name of their business. not sure how that's legal, but it seems many people just don't ask directly and specifically enough to bring about accountability (even though it shouldn't be on the consumers' shoulders in the first place). i appreciate your videos and genuine wisdom.
@ajg942
11 ай бұрын
Appreciate your videos!!! thanks for taking the time
@Dontpaymenomine
2 ай бұрын
Were all little kings and queens exploiting the shit out of something. So many little enterprises marketing nowadays. Ethics, honesty, business, thats a tightrope. Underneath that tight rope is everyone who fell off but yet are more successful In a business sense. Shit and bullshit are 100percent accurate descriptors of this situation. Money is often the enemy of "good". Many are living a double life in this sense.
@barnabyvonrudal1
11 ай бұрын
I think scaling up as "success" or "the place you're aiming for" applies across all industries. And I think in those industries there's probably hidden costs (I don't mean money but like in extra resources required etc) in scaling as well.
@nigellablossom
11 ай бұрын
I went through the same pepper issue with the organic New England supplier - I know exactly who/what you're referring to! It was frustrating for sure.
@CajunGreenMan
11 ай бұрын
Great warning and reminder! Keep up the great work!!
@SuperVlerik
11 ай бұрын
You hit the scale nail on the head!
@Mahaprajnaparamita
10 ай бұрын
Thank you. Do you (or anyone else) know of anywhere to get good northeast grown seed? I’ve had problems with maladapted seeds even from local companies, and now that I check I can’t find a single seed company I know of that actually says that their seeds are locally grown. Even a super local, small new-ish company that says they have locally adapted seeds didn’t respond to my question. If not then perhaps the local seed library or SSE may be an option, but those mean a more serious commitment to the crop… hopefully there’s someone!?
@wholesystems
4 ай бұрын
Fedco seems legit - but need to ask everyone where exactly their seed comes from.
@samtido6688
4 ай бұрын
Great topic!
@jeanetteschulthe1andOnly
11 ай бұрын
I really do not settle for excuses. It is the excuses as to why we are where we are at.
@bryanmilne
9 ай бұрын
There could be an entire book written to compare "scaling up" the corporate capitalism way to the permaculture way.... If only our moral compass, governance and legal regulatory systems actually functioned the way they are supposed to. I agree, ethical (honest) scaling up should be about the "reproducibility" of goods or services without changing the ethical methods and standards put into action at the smaller scale. For some reason "western" culture has just accepted that in "business" there are no ethics, there is no transparency, and there is always exploitation and deception. It is not only accepted, but pretty much expected that even so called high integrity businesses will cultivate their PR and branding to program the consumers that they are offering a premium higher quality service or good. Then when they scale up they lower the cost of production and quality, scale down what they deliver, and literally enact an action plan of full deception and fraud of their consumers while charging the same or even higher prices than before. The heart of the problem with traditional corproate law. Their bottom line is the production of capital for shareholders (legally required to do so), not the ethical production of goods and services at fair market prices and contribute to the resilience of bioregional permaculture economies/ecologies. Until we change (and or supercede) the laws, and effectively learn how to boycott or transform existing corporate models we will continue to be on a path toward self annihilation, violent fascism and destabilizing chaos. Poverty and police state dystopia are symptoms of fascism, the primary cause though, I think are the unethical and machiavellian business practices left unchecked. On that note I just discovered a new cocept word that is the opposite of machiavellianism. Check it out... Kantianism conciseencyclopedia.org/entries/ethical-theory-kantianism/#:~:text=Kantianism%20is%20the%20most%20commonly,treat%20all%20persons%20with%20respect.
@subliminal_donkey
11 ай бұрын
Would be great to get some examples of what you are talking about regarding sacrifices made when scaling up, like the actual mechanics of what is lost in e.g. dairy production
@subliminal_donkey
11 ай бұрын
@allan339 well yeah, but neither of those things should qualify for organic anyway at least not in Europe so even at scale it must be possible to avoid that.
@wholesystems
11 ай бұрын
Rotating less, confined feeding more, less per animal care more pharmaceutical intervention, less attention to impact on the land base as a whole.. i mean what is not sacrificed seems to be the question when there's less eyes per acre managing the system?
@subliminal_donkey
11 ай бұрын
@@wholesystems true but its a question of appropriate scale, some operations can be bigger if there is more land, more infrastructure, more people involved. And if such an operation started small, it would be able to scale up without major issues. The problems you suggest are from pushing things past a natural limit and not responding to feedback rather than a result of scaling up per se.
@RickLarsonPermacultureDesigner
11 ай бұрын
@@subliminal_donkey Fine line requiring extraordinary hard physical work. In my view even adding machines to the equation adds pollution in many ways. Just not doable in this system especially thinking about all the purposely unhealthy people alive today. Ha!
@subliminal_donkey
11 ай бұрын
@@RickLarsonPermacultureDesigner Yes but machinery is a necessary evil even to do the “small scale” type of thing Ben is doing. Actually even what Ben is doing is pretty big scale for the people involved, it seems, which is only feasible through mechanisation. So again its about nuance and specifics as to what quality is lost when and where in any given process.
@gtromble
11 ай бұрын
Yes, this is exactly right.
@user-gn1cl9ix7p
11 ай бұрын
Yes. Exactly. Thank you, Ben.
@wendygreenfield9631
4 ай бұрын
Fedco seeds seems to be an authentic company. Any thoughts?
@wholesystems
4 ай бұрын
they do seem to be tracking their sourcing and i still buy from them.
@SN-tx9yh
11 ай бұрын
We all know that little shop with the perfect sandwiches that a year later is crap because they started saving on the meat etc to earn more, sad
@szymonmelechita7689
11 ай бұрын
Great observation
@davidmalinowski7930
11 ай бұрын
Lol pizza gate
@owlridgehomestead-connecti8249
10 ай бұрын
Yes yes yes!
@lkhfun6575
11 ай бұрын
THANKS!
@jeanetteschulthe1andOnly
11 ай бұрын
we need to diligent gatekeepers.
@allonesame6467
11 ай бұрын
"Scale up" could be a institutional hold-over from a former Secy' of Ag Earl Butz: Get Big or Get Out. Also 'scaling up" is perhaps embedded in the "Doctrine of Christian Discovery & Manifest Destiny".
@RickLarsonPermacultureDesigner
11 ай бұрын
Read The Twelve Articles for a slightly different perspective.
@stephenschmitz9471
10 ай бұрын
💯💚
@wingking077
11 ай бұрын
Any thoughts/ rants on darling 58?
@wholesystems
4 ай бұрын
i have zero interest in a transgenic crop when we can grow a plant just as good through traditional breeding, which we already can. mad science project.
@morning...morning
11 ай бұрын
HM?
@RickLarsonPermacultureDesigner
11 ай бұрын
Ridiculousness of humans. lol
@RickLarsonPermacultureDesigner
11 ай бұрын
The investors (think of all those who have money invested) are demanding an ever higher return. Study the Peasants War to help understand how this system began.
@nevisysbryd7450
10 ай бұрын
@@RickLarsonPermacultureDesignerWhat, the 1524-25 German Peasants' War?
@RickLarsonPermacultureDesigner
10 ай бұрын
Yes, the one where peasants wanted more freedom and were thus killed off. Martin Luther seemingly approved of it. I wonder how the nobility of Germany were able to cope with less able bodied men around for the time.
@nevisysbryd7450
10 ай бұрын
@@RickLarsonPermacultureDesignerBy approved, do you mean the killing? Because if so, yes, Martin Luther absolutely condemned the peasant uprising (and most of the following Reformation). Luther wanted an internal reform of the Roman Catholic Church, not a separate church or a fundamental disruption to the hierarchy (indeed, he directly cited the legitimacy of that hierarchy in his condemnation). As far as the wellbeing of the economic elites of 16th century Germany... the major financial producers were urban centers by then, and most of those killed were not "skilled laborers" but poorly educated farmers. While I am not familiar enough with the economics of the HRE at that time to say much about how it affected them, though. Was there a similar dynamic with investors? I know that taxation and renting-practices were squeezing the peasants dry and that Luther's exposure of church corruption lit the powder keg of tension that had been building.
@RickLarsonPermacultureDesigner
10 ай бұрын
Christ was a rebel against hierarchy. He would have stood in favor of those as you termed uneducated, or rather in my view not totally indoctrinated. I have a higher opinion of the peasants, they knew how to take care of themselves and were largely forced to take care of the rest of the "Nobel Christian" hierarchy. Think and send feedback.
@frankinla91602
11 ай бұрын
So JS is BS?
@Amoondar
11 ай бұрын
100%... some of their seed is even produced across seas
@davidmalinowski7930
11 ай бұрын
@@Amoondar wrong JS
@wholesystems
11 ай бұрын
I’m not talking about JS and from people I’m close with he seems absolutely legit.
@sangha1486
11 ай бұрын
"Why is scalability the Holy Grail and not reproducibility?" Because Capitalism has never been about serving the people. Capitalism serves capital. Competition does not serve Capitalism. It makes it more difficult for any one producer to increase profits and accumulate capital by "scaling up" (which in practice is taking another producer's job by exploiting other people's labor). Therefor, Capitalism must eliminate competition. And not just competition between producers, but also competition from other systems. That's why your Giardia test costs $2k. That's not a broken system. That's Capitalism working EXACTLY as it was designed to do - funnel capital (and the power it brings) to those who have capital (ie power)
@nevisysbryd7450
10 ай бұрын
None of that is capitalism. Scaling to that degree rarely comes from anything other than corporations or states, the former of which state-privileged entities. Being predicated on state intervention in the economy, it is closer to fascism than capitalism.
@sangha1486
10 ай бұрын
@@nevisysbryd7450 if scaling up is not for corporations and government agencies, then who do you think should be doing it? Individuals who are limited to what they can produce by their own labor?
@nevisysbryd7450
10 ай бұрын
@@sangha1486 Cooperative business is not a binary between large corporations/the state and individuals. People can work together in businesses without said businesses being granted legal exemptions and privileges by a government, and the business size between a one-person market stall and Wal-Mart is a spectrum, not a discrete binary. Most businesses do not operate well at that scale; larger corporations are routinely less efficient and extremely fragile outside of governments bailing them out of their failures at everyone else's expense. While it reduces the frequency of minor system disruptions, it makes the overall system far less resilient to major disruptions. Such centralization makes hegemony an inevitability. While centralization hypothetically reduces the inefficiencies of inter-group interaction, it more than makes up for it with the routine mismanagement, red tape, and disaffected employees who then underperform. Most businesses operate best as larger than individual endeavors, though not at modern corporate scale, either. Autonomy and generally long-term economic health optimize at the minimum level of centralization necessary to operate at a social scale. Better a few moderate-sized businesses interacting than many individuals who cannot afford the fixed costs or logistics involved or the inevitable corruption of centralization.
@sangha1486
10 ай бұрын
@@nevisysbryd7450 I agree with you 100% about the inherent inefficiency and lack of resiliency of large entities. But my point wasn't about that. Maybe I wasn't clear enough about that or maybe we've just drifted away from it as we've been talking about it. In my initial post, I was addressing a claim that I have heard from many that "Capitalism is broken". But this raises the question of what those people mean by "broken"? If the wheels fall off my car, everyone will agree that the car is broken. Cars are designed to get us from place to place. Without wheels, a car can't do what it's meant/designed to do. Therefore, the car is broken. In order to determine whether or not Capitalism is broken, we must first determine what Capitalism is meant to do. When people say "Capitalism is broken", they usually mean that Capitalism doesn't serve their own interests, or the majorities interests, or the interests of society as a whole. My thesis is that Capitalism was never meant to serve those interests. Capitalism is designed to ensure that the people at the very top can maintain and increase their power over everyone else. It serves the interests of the few over the interests of the many because that is exactly what it is designed to do. Therefore, Capitalism is not broken. It's just Evil.
@FungalNetwork
11 ай бұрын
why not just cut out the animal products
@wholesystems
11 ай бұрын
Well for many reasons - starting with regenerating ecosystems and doing least harm. How would you suggest "cutting out" animal products anyway? What foods would you suggest and from what producers?
Пікірлер: 88