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August 1983 

MLT Newsletter 

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Thomas Breznau 
Kenneth Dahlberg 
Albert Huntoon
Maynard Kaufman 
Sally Kaufman 
Michael Kruk 
Michael Phillips 
Jonathan Towne

For the past five years the Land Trust Homesteading Farm has been a center of agricultural activities for students learning the skills of small scale farming and family self provisioning. Through the MLT membership there have been a diversity of other community activities; workshops on cheese making, food processing, wine and beer making, organizing Bangor's Community Gardens, and last fall a workshop on land use held in Paw Paw with a grant from the Michigan Council for the Humanities.

This summer's MLT meetings have been devoted to the consideration of further educational activities. Additional workshops on welding, wind power, and on solar power and home energy use are being planned for late September.

Under consideration," also, has been a long-term change in the use of the Land Trust Homesteading Farm modeled on Permaculture principles. (See Newsletter- March 1983). To help the Trustees clarify the process MLT invited Ken Asmus, Kalamazoo, to speak at the July meeting. Ken is a plant ecologist by training whose business is landscape design using the principles of Permaculture.  I am indebted to Michael Kruk, secretary to the Board of Directors, for the following summary of Ken's presentation.

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WHAT IS PERMACULTURE AND HOW IT CAN BE APPLIED

Ken Asmus began with a bibliography: Bill Mollison's Permaculture One and Permaculture Two, Tree Crops by J. Russel Smith, and Masanobu Fukuoka's One-Straw Revolution An Introduction to Natural Farming.

As background Ken Asmus explained three forms of agriculture in use in southwest Michigan: orchards, row crops, and pastureland. Orchards are desirable but biologically unstable requiring the extensive use of pesticides. Row crops give high yields but are hard on the soil with erosion being the major problem. Pasture is diversified and conserves the soil, but is not for human consumption.

Taking the best traits of these three forms: fruits; high yields and diversity, a stable system of agriculture could be achieved by shifting from the single-use monoculture to the incorporation of a greater diversity of plant and animal species.

Ken's designs are called "edible landscapes" with an emphasis upon low maintenance, plant compatibility and appropriateness to the soil and terrain, and last but most important, they provide food for humans and wild life. In designing landscapes Ken utilizes the microclimate around the home: herbs by the kitchen door, garden crops a little further out, trees and shrubs to modify air movement, and the creation of wildlife areas. He makes abundant use of nut and minor fruit trees. Nut trees fall into two categories: for human consumption, Ken includes chestnut, English and black walnut, filbert and hickory; for animals, oak, honey locust and beech. Minor fruits include elderberry, pawpaw, serviceberry, and persimmon. Underlying his design is the concept of Permaculture which Ken defines as "...an intentionally designed system of self sustaining plants."

In answer to the question "What can be done to include livestock feed and cash crops for 10 acres of land?" Ken suggested one or two acres planted to a cash crop such as chestnuts. Pastures could be planted with rows of trees every 50 feet to allow for double cropping.

Plans incorporating Permaculture on the Land Trust Homesteading Farm should be started from the house out, working blocks of land that experiment with plantings suitable to the needs of the farm and to the soil type of each block.

                                                                                                                                Michael Kruk

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At present the Land Trust Homesteading Farm is a general farm including livestock. Cropland is planted to hay and corn. There is a large vegetable garden, an orchard of plums, pears, manchurian apricots, and scab-resistant apples. There are also plantings of blueberries and raspberries. The farm has two ponds. In addition to the 10 acres of woods,Chinese chestnuts, butternuts, black walnuts, and honey locusts have been planted into hedge rows.

At the July MLT meeting the membership voted to formulate a land use plan based on the principles of Permaculture. A committee (Maynard Kaufman, Norm Bober, Mike Phillips, Jan Filonowicz, and Thom Phillips) was appointed to give the plans a preliminary form. A report will be presented at the October annual meeting for the consideration of the Trustees present.

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The next MLT meeting will be September 11 with a potluck at 6:30 and the meeting at 7:30. On the agenda are reports on the workshop planned for September from Swan Huntoon and Thom Phillips, from the committee on Permaculture, and from Mike Kruk on property tax exemption for the Land Trust Homesteading Farm.

Another date to mark on your calendar is the annual meeting October 16. There will be a potluck at 5:30 followed by the meeting at 7 p.m. The Land Trust Homesteading Farm is 1 1/2 mile north of the blinker light on M43 in Bangor. Please join us.

Sally Kaufman, Editor

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NOTES ON THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

We wish to welcome Jonathan Towne to the Board. As you know Jon was farm manager of the Land Trust Homesteading Farm for four years. He is a student at WMU in Agriculture and Environmental Studies.

Michael Kruk has taken over the management of the Paw Paw Food Coop. Under his guidance the Coop has reopened its bakery. It's a bustling place. Stop and see Mike and support your local coop!

Tom Breznau has facilitated the migration turnaround (Newsletter March 1982). He has opened his farm to other small acreage "back-to-the-landers." Bill and Judy Kobza, former directors, were the first to move to Tom's. Former director Norm Bober and his wife, Rita, plan to build a house and move on their acreage when their children finish school in Bangor. Swan Huntoon and Michael Kruk joined the others a year ago. And Mike and Lisa Phillips are starting to build an energy-conserving house and expect to be in it before winter.

Maynard Kaufman is on Sabbatical Leave from his half-time teaching during the coming year to work on a book called Visions of a New Earth. Based partly on essays written during the past fifteen years, the book will attempt to interpret and articulate the visions of a new earth which are implied in contemporary apocalyptic and Utopian expressions.

Board member Ken Dahlberg has submitted a proposal to the National Science Foundation's program on "Ethics and Values in Science and Technology." The proposal—which appears near to approval—will give Ken a year and a half to bring together a team of twelve experts from around the country to try to build a broadened base from which to evaluate agriculture and agricultural research. The team will meet twice in Washington, D.C., the first time to work out the full range of problems and interrelationships to be addressed and the second time to hear the papers presented by each of the team members. The meetings in Washington will be hosted by the General Accounting Office and will include various agency representatives, Congressional staff members, and representatives of interested groups. After the papers are presented, they will be reviewed by a local advisory committee—which includes Maynard Kaufman—and then revised by the authors. After that. Ken will edit the papers into a book.

There are three major aspects to the project. One is an attempt to develop better concepts and data bases to evaluate the "externalities" in agriculture which economists and policy makers have tended to neglect. These real world costs (and benefits) need to be included in both agricultural research and policy making and include such things as the environmental costs, the health costs, the social costs, and the energy and resource inefficencies of modern agriculture. Several of the experts will be asked to try to develop better concepts and data bases to assess these costs. The second aspect of the project is a review of the historic goals and values associated with agriculture and rural life and how these have gradually changed until today we have essentially three "official" goals: 1) productivity, 2) cheap food for the consumer, and 3) foreign trade in commodities to help pay for our oil imports and to pursue other foreign policy goals. An agricultural historian and a rural sociologist will address these issues. Finally, there will be an examination of the various global computer models, such as Limits to Growth and the Global 2000 Report in order to examine what implications a world of expanding population, scarcer resources, and weakening ecosystems has for U.S. agriculture and agricultural research goals and priorities. 

Ken hopes to get final word from the NSF in September and will begin immediately on the project assuming that it is funded.

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Significant Books on Land Use
Selected by Ken Dahlberg and Maynard Kaufman

The following titles are listed here as resources for members of MLT as we seek to formulate a long-range policy on land use. The books reviewed in tne Spring 1983 issue of the Newsletter, especially the Permaculture books by Bill Mollison and Toward a New Land Use Ethic, are surely also of primary importance.

All of the following books are available from the Western Michigan University library. The first group of titles which follow are resources as we consider land use in the context of the new demand for land created by the migration reversal of the 1970s.

New Directions in Urban-Rural Migration, by David L. Brown and John M. Wardwell, 1980.

Population Redistribution and Public Policy, by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Science, 1980.

Use-Value Assessment of Farm and Open Space Lands. Research Report 308 from Michigan State University Agricultural Experiment Station, 1976.

Farmland or Wasteland: A Time to Choose: Overcoming the Threat to America's Farm and Food Future, by R. Niel Sampson, 1981.

The next list of titles are of books arguing for land use which is generally in accordance with our Articles of Incorporation.

New Roots for Agriculture, by Wes Jackson, 1980.

The Gift of Good Land, by Wendell Berry, 1981.

The Owner-Built Homestead, by Barbara and Ken Kern, 1977.

Forest Farming: Toward a Solution to Problmes of World Hunger and Conservation by J. Sholto Douglas and Robert A. de J. Hart, 1978.

Finally, Soil and Civilization, by Edward Hyams, 1952, is focused on the centrality of land use in the context of a long range historical perspective.


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