[Scpg] PR August 8/ Permaculture Around the World Series/Robyn Francis/Cuba
Santa Barbara Permaculture Network
sbpcnet at silcom.com
Thu Jul 16 18:50:40 PDT 2009
PRESS RELEASE
Contact: Margie Bushman
Santa Barbara Permaculture Network.
(805) 962-2571, margie at sbpermaculture.org,
Santa Barbara Permaculture Network
Permaculture Around the World Series
with Robyn Francis from Australia speaking on
Permaculture in CUBA
459ec1 1.jpg
459f0f 1.jpg
459f5d 1.jpg
459f9b 1.jpg
Saturday, August 8, 6:30 - 8:30pm 2009, Donation $5
Santa Barbara Central Library, Faulkner Gallery
Santa Barbara Permaculture Network continues its Permaculture
Around the World series, this time welcoming Robyn Francis from
Australia as she speaks about her past and future visits to Cuba
where she and other Australian permaculturists have been credited
with helping Cuba transform the islands agriculture to a more
sustainable model through perrmaculture.
Climate Change and Peak Oil are topics on the minds of many
Americans today. There is much to learn from Cuba's response to the
sudden loss of cheap and abundant oil in the early 1990's with the
fall of the Soviet Union and the continued U.S. Embargo in place
since the 1960's. Cuba's industrial model of agriculture under the
Soviets was highly mechanized with monoculture crops reliant on
petro-based pesticides and fertilizers. The era in Cuba following
the Soviet collapse is known to Cubans as the "Special Period" when
it lost more than 50 percent of it oil imports, much of its food, and
85 percent of its trade economy. Transportation halted, people went
hungry, and the average Cuban lost 30 pounds.
Dictated by reality, Cubans began to bring agriculture into
the city with urban gardens, cultivating vegetables wherever they
could. A small group of Australians assisted in this grass-roots
effort, coming to Cuba in 1993 to teach Permaculture, a system based
on sustainable agriculture that uses far less energy. With a grant
from the Cuban government they set up the first Permaculture
demonstration site, that evolved into the Foundation for Nature and
Humanity's Urban Permaculture demonstration site located in
Havana. Today 50 percent of Havana's vegetables come from inside the
city, while in other Cuban towns and cities, urban gardens produce
from 80 percent to more than 100 percent of what they need.
More recently Australians have come back to Cuba to assist
after two devastating hurricanes wrought massive destruction
throughout Cuba in September 2008. The loss of crops, soil and
organic matter from the torrential rains and flooding, challenged all
the islands agriculture, including the permaculture sites.
Robyn Francis and the Cuba-Australia Permaculture Exchange (CAPE)
toured the island to assess the damage, offer help, and take the
opportunity to learn from the disaster to design more resilient
systems for the future.
Robyn Francis has just returned from a visit to Cuba in
June 2009 as part of Cuban-Australia Permaculture Exchange (CAPE) and
will be reporting on her observation in her talk on One-Earth
Footprint - Learning from Cuba's Experience. Discover the key
factors enabling Cuba to survive collapse, live within its ecological
footprint, and how this relates to Permaculture and Transition
design. Don't miss the chance to learn from one of permaculture's
earliest pioneers.
Robyn Francis is an award-winning international permaculture
designer, educator, presenter and innovator, with over 25 years of
permaculture work throughout Australia New Zealand, USA, India,
Indonesia, Germany, Cuba, and Taiwan, and including projects ranging
from outback communities to urban development. . Robyn was founding
director of Permaculture International Ltd (PIL) in 1987, editor of
the Permaculture International Journal, designer and creator of
Djanbung Gardens (www. permaculture.com.au), one of Australia's
leading permaculture centers.
The event takes place on Saturday, Aug 8 , 6:30 pm at the
downtown Santa Barbara Public Library, 40 East Anapamu St, Santa
Barbara. Donation $5, no reservations needed. The event is presented
by Santa Barbara Permaculture Network Non-Profit. and Quailsprings
Learning Oasis and Permaculture Farm. For more information, (805)
962-2571, margie at sbpermaculture.org, www.sbpermaculture.org
-end-
Santa Barbara Permaculture Network
an educational non-profit since 2000
(805) 962-2571
P.O. Box 92156, Santa Barbara, CA 93190
margie at sbpermaculture.org
www.sbpermaculture.org
"We are like trees, we must create new leaves, in new directions, in
order to grow." - Anonymous
First Annual Southern California Permaculture Convergence August 2008
http://socalifornia.permacultureconvergence.org
No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 8.5.387 / Virus Database: 270.13.16/2241 - Release Date:
07/16/09 05:58:00
Santa Barbara Permaculture Network
an educational non-profit since 2000
(805) 962-2571
P.O. Box 92156, Santa Barbara, CA 93190
margie at sbpermaculture.org
www.sbpermaculture.org
"We are like trees, we must create new leaves, in new directions, in
order to grow." - Anonymous
First Annual Southern California Permaculture Convergence August 2008
http://socalifornia.permacultureconvergence.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.permaculture-guilds.org/pipermail/southern-california-permaculture/attachments/20090716/dbfae99d/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 11298e.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 17860 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://www.permaculture-guilds.org/pipermail/southern-california-permaculture/attachments/20090716/dbfae99d/attachment.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 11299d.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 34620 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://www.permaculture-guilds.org/pipermail/southern-california-permaculture/attachments/20090716/dbfae99d/attachment-0001.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 1129ad.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 21812 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://www.permaculture-guilds.org/pipermail/southern-california-permaculture/attachments/20090716/dbfae99d/attachment-0002.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 1129bc.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 24098 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://www.permaculture-guilds.org/pipermail/southern-california-permaculture/attachments/20090716/dbfae99d/attachment-0003.jpg>
More information about the Southern-California-Permaculture
mailing list