Low Impact Development Making a Positive Contribution

This is the information on the project in Wales that I first came upon in a youtube about the Lamis ecovillage project.  I am proposing that little ecosettlments could be proposed in otherwise protected land such as riparian and other important watershed areas in this county that are the current responsibility of various water and conservation agencies and that by putting people in the landscape in this way we can advance sustainability goals, hasten regeneration while providing protection for habitat.

My proposal would additionally provide livelihood, shelter and food.  While the structures and infrastructure constructed would be un-permitted and low impact the overall project would nonetheless be self-monitored using science based tools and reviewed by agencies to insure that the plan is working to provide a positive contribution, extremely low inputs and substantially according to plan.

The following excerp from transcript of that video

Welsh Assembly is one of the few governments in the world to have made a legal commitment to sustainability.  As a result of this commitment Pembrokeshire County Council adopted something called policy fifty-two in 2006 which was intended to provide for eco small holdings in previously protected open countryside on the basis that they make a positive environmental social and economic contribution.

Paul initially formulated his proposals for the land mass project in direct response to this policy but still the council didn't make his life easy. Three years two rejections and thousands of planning application papers later the lamis project was given the green light in the summer of 2009.  The opportunity that we are celebrating here at lamis is now available across the whole of Wales because the the Welsh Assembly government see that actually the way forwards in terms of sustainability to get people back onto the landscape working the land in that way the landscape becomes more productive the landscape becomes more diverse and we can take more carbon out of the atmosphere

This is a PDF guide from the Pembrokeshire County Council that helps applicants apply for this.  This is a very useful 19 page read that covers many of the questions that may come up in discussions with policy makers.  It is true that Wales is a much more rural culture than California and to some degree issues like defining livelihood and economic contribution my be incongruent with levels accepted in Wales owing largely to our absurd economy and lifestyles.  This will no doubt have to be addressed.


This is a link to a planning software that Pembrokeshire recommends and could be integrated into the reporting of restoration efforts that agencies would like to see. With a  tools like this our project would be putting a low tech low impact farmers in the riparian landscape but providing a very sophistocated tech to report out that could provide substancial proof of concept in just 4 or 5 years.

Workers Fear Injury as Administration Clears Way for Faster Chicken Slaughter

Factory farming baaaaaaaad. Speeding up the slaughter machine worse for everybody but the profiteers.

by Claire Kelloway

Late last month, the Trump administration cleared the way for chicken plants to increase their processing line speeds from 140 birds per minute to 175 birds per minute. The change deals a blow to workers and reverses the efforts of labor and animal welfare advocates, who fought to halt poultry line speed increases in 2014. It also indicates the administration will likely soon remove line speed limits in hog slaughter and lower workplace injury reporting requirements throughout all sectors of the economy.

“This decision and the ones we expect are coming up is the pattern of the Trump administration to be cutting back on protections for workers and making decisions in favor of corporations rather than working people,” says Joann Lo, Co-Director of the Food Chain Workers Alliance.

The change comes in response to a 2017 petition to the Food Safety and Inspection Service by the National Chicken Council, the lobbying group representing poultry corporations. While FSIS denied the NCC’s request to lift all poultry line speeds, the USDA agency announced in January that they would set criteria by which poultry processors could apply for waivers to increase their line speeds to 175 birds per minute. FSIS released those criteria in February and published their final guidelines and public response to comments on September 28th. The agency is accepting applications for waivers.

Working conditions in poultry processing are already extremely hazardous. According to the Department of Labor, workers in meat processing plants are injured five times more frequently than all other private workers and are nearly twenty times more likely to develop carpal tunnel syndrome. But true injury rates are likely even higher, as studies by the Government Accountability Office suggest that federal data does not capture all meat processing injuries. One reason is that an estimated 28 percent of meat processing workers are foreign-born, and these workers are less likely to report injury or workplace misconduct due to fear of retaliation or deportation.

Surveys by the Southern Poverty Law Center and Food Chain Workers Alliance found that at least two-thirds of poultry workers suffered significant work-related injuries, dwarfing officially reported injury rates.

http://www.foodandpower.net/2018/10/25/workers-fear-injury-as-administration-clears-way-for-faster-chicken-slaughter/

Mexico’s Native Corn Varieties Threatened by New NAFTA

The original NAFTA was very bad for Mexican corn farmers, putting millions out of business and losing land by the forced import of cheap, subsidized corn from big ag in the United States.  Trumps new version of the trade agreement is the next step in the corporate plunder of Mexico and is even worse.

“It makes it easier for the United States to challenge any rule or regulation or process governing biotech crops that it contends are illegal trade barriers,” says Woodall. “It is designed to provide a brand new avenue of attack against regulations … and enshrine Trump’s deregulatory purge into a trade deal that will outlast this administration.”

Over 8,000 years ago farmers in present-day Mexico first domesticated corn from a wild grass, teosinte. Corn holds incredible cultural, economic, and ecological significance in Mexico to this day. Mexico has maintained a vast array of diverse corn species, with 64 recognized strains, called landraces, and over 21,000 regionally adapted varieties. Over two-thirds of Mexican corn farmers still save their own seeds and plant native strains. 

This diverse genetic trove is “absolutely critical to modern crop breeding,” says Tim Wise, the Director of Policy Research at the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University. “It’s a critical natural resource for the modern world,” he says. When researchers look for drought-resistant strains or corn that can requires less fertilizer, they turn to Mexico’s native corn gene pool.

Yep, it's all about deregulation.  This article posted is by Claire Kelloway from Food & Power who I have featured here many times and is very authoritative.  She runs a DC institute started by LEAH DOUGLAS who is also a journalist with an amazing body of work in the area of food, farming and policy.  I recommend reading the entire short article and also perusing other topics in there archives at the above links.

http://www.foodandpower.net/2018/10/10/mexicos-native-corn-varieties-threatened-by-new-nafta/#bookmark/0/