The problem with permaculture

 I've never really seen someone elaborate like this, via a major outlet, about the problems with how permaculture is currently taught. The author has a number of valid points. His major complaints center around money and philosophy:

-Because of the base cost, permaculture design courses are usually out of the question but for a select few.
-Throw in the cost of books and even more people are unable to gain a certificate.
-Some in the industry recommend using expensive equipment and machinery, instead of low cost methods, further driving up the price of a typical project.
-Permaculture teachers view sharing their knowledge as money making tools/income generators, which runs counter to the similar, yet still very much different, agroecology movement. 
-Courses "sometimes seem like a publicity campaign for companies that market organic products". In one particular course he mentioned hundreds of plugs for popular products.

What do you think?

-A billion dollar project in Florida spent over $700,000 moving mature trees to their latest project!

-Will this ambitious wine loving, Brooklyn based duo be able to pull off the world's first rooftop vineyard? It's been a few years in the making and they are now oh so close.

GILA word of the week: Bee highway

The FAO has definitely been busy. This week it announced that Cape Verde has it's first FAO urban agriculture program. Earlier in the month the FAO released a collection of findings from scientists and economists who have taken stock of climate change impacts on food and agriculture at global and regional levels. The document investigates, among other things, how climate change will impact crop production in Africa and grain production in Russia and neighboring Ukraine and Kazakhstan.

-I hope these entrepreneurs can do it, however it will be an uphill climb. By 2017 a Brooklyn duo hopes to produce the first rooftop wine from rooftop vineyard.

-Norway is creating a bee highway. What is that you ask? Private individual, state bodies, companies, and associations post their little slice of green on the website polli.no to map out a bees’ safe route across the Oslo.

-A graduate student has published the first summary, I believe, stating the limits of community gardens in creating communities. One of her preliminary findings (in the Netherlands) is that those who garden together don't often become friends outside the garden, however they are more likely to ask for help from others. As this story hit the web, so did one which focuses on urban agriculture and measuring what it actually yields, in terms of food production and money.

-Chicago laps the fields in rooftop farms, 13 have been documented, compared to 3 in Chicago and only 2 in Toronto. I wonder how many exist outside North America?