There is a difference in kind between complex, integrated, low input, free range systems of land, soil, organic matter, fungi & macroinvertebrates, plants & animals, and …. ….. industrial high energy input feedlot systems which abuse each of those – … Continue reading
Our current framing of nature in within modern thought is to, first, objectify based on Cartesian ideas of thinking in either-or dualisms; and second, to focus on the material, as if meaning and ethics only resides within the material. These views are being challenged more and more by indigenous and eco-feminine philosophers.
Here’s one of them; N. Scott Nomaday. Continue reading
Our land use ‘strategies’ are often no more than a dedication to financial tactics. It creates fragility and blinds us to potential futures. Is forestry quietly waiting in front of the spreadsheets without bothering to look outside? Continue reading
The British Columbian forestry sector imploded through 2018-2020. There are lessons here for New Zealand and elsewhere. Continue reading
The declining state of the rural lands – and their communities – is a growing concern for policy makers and researchers globally. The concerns are real, more especially relating to the trends to high energy input intensification and industrialism, and … Continue reading
The Foresters’ Forum – Further notes on what it is to be a forester …. rather than a tree agronomist. 2020 hasn’t just been about Covid-19. The stories online that should most concern us as foresters are the significance of … Continue reading
Forestry is not about trees, it is about people. And it is about trees only insofar as trees can serve the needs of people. (Jack Westoby, 1990) A fellow forester and I were having coffee – which he complained about … Continue reading
This is a follow-up blog to my previous, where I examined the false assumptions agribusiness analysts continue to make, and continue to be taught. Those assumptions and world views actively discourage any imagination of other elements such as woodlands, wetlands … Continue reading
New Zealand industrial agribusiness uses a variety of false assumptions about the economics of space that works against the integration of trees, wetlands and other diversification elements into our farmed landscapes. It conceptualises complex and multifunctional landscapes as simplified factories; a … Continue reading
“The fox knows many things; the hedgehog one big thing.” Archilochus The Parliamentary Commission for the Environment (PCE) report Farms, Forests and Fossil Fuels: The next Great Landscape Transformation was released 26th March 2019. Amidst all the calls for clarity … Continue reading
Preamble: Dr Mike Joy brought a team of people together to consider the question of how we can help solve New Zealand’s freshwater crisis. The contributions were published by Bridget Williams Books as Mike Joy (Ed) 2018 Mountain to Sea: Solving … Continue reading
There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a … Continue reading
William Ophuls has written some very thoughtful books about our political age. Plato’s Revenge: Politics in the Age of Ecology is one of them. He challenges our world, not just at the level of tinkering with deck chairs (e.g. biofuels … Continue reading
I watched, last night, the animated film of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince. And I stopped the recording with this quote … and replayed it. Because it is the truth that we have, perhaps, forgotten in our increasingly technocratic … Continue reading
The Saturday morning ponderings after reading with coffee amongst the finches in the basil seeds. Yesterday I read a quite beautiful Guardian article – a summary of a Neil Gaiman lecture – about reading and the necessity to dream and … Continue reading
The issue of local council culture and the failures of the Treasury-inspired corporatisation of organisational structures is reentering the policy dialogue. This new government has obviously helped. The public sector is in trouble and something needs to be done. More … Continue reading
Years ago I drove up the Hume highway through the aftermath of the Victorian fires of 2009. All the epicormic shoots had burst forth, empty branches with bottle brush stems. At least, here, the eucalypts could demonstrate their resilience and … Continue reading
A flower gifted is like a poem written on a paper scrap, recited, then torn to tiny shreds, cast to the wind and the worlds beyond where it will live forever for someone else to, some day, call it forth.
Now we have a new government, perhaps they might consider that all those well-dressed corporate executives that come calling might not have the answers to regional development, our community wellbeing, or our environmental health. Let’s start talking around the smoko … Continue reading
We have had debacle after debacle within our councils. Hawke’s Bay is only the start of it. We keep promoting the most pedantic and amoral train schedulers who have no idea about where those cattle wagons filled with people are … Continue reading
Given that the CTPPA is once again in the news, I thought this was worth reblogging. I think we need to make a very clear differentiation between small & medium enterprise commerce – the local variety – and large C … Continue reading
Ran out of coffee this morning. I know. Disaster. Heading for a café – Hawthorne’s – the best. Pondering our PM Jacinda’s desire to help solve problems of incarceration and educational non-achievement. Admirable intentions. But …… Sigh. I can just … Continue reading
“Once again, the principal villains across Greece, Southern Italy, Southern France, and Spain, were fires, goats, and timber felling. … Able to thrive anywhere, goats often create an environment in which little but goats will survive.” Ronald Wright. A Short … Continue reading
It is hard to remember during the sunny days of summer that we had some freak snow storms back in August, and a few wintry blasts in early October. The television news ran lamb death stories, as they did the … Continue reading
Is it extreme to suggest that corporates of a certain size and motivation (demonstrated by behaviour) should not be tolerated anymore? I’m curious. What do people think. Seriously. No knee jerk hate. Reflect on the feudal lords of the past, … Continue reading
There is goodness in our world. Never let those who seek a measured ‘objective truth’ tell you otherwise. You can recognise it – and its opposite – when you feel it in your soul. The better artists can emphasise that … Continue reading
Rosamund Young’s The Secret Life of Cows gives far more than a simple description of animal personality, behaviour and communication. It speaks also to and of humanity. What animals eat impacts on their health and the quality and taste of their … Continue reading
Aldous Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy emphasises the point that the Golden Rule transcends cultures. This is deep wisdom. Do unto others. The thinkers of the Ages have come to the same conclusions. Living with hubris and selfish ego has no future. … Continue reading
Reading Thich Nhat Hanh and watching the test cricket. It’s a Zen thing. Have always loved the beauty, the quiet and changing pace of cricket. You can listen to the birds, marvel at the grace, determination or skill of a … Continue reading
If the speech summary of Federated Farmers President Katie Milne is anything to go by, the farming lobby group needs a bit of radical thinking. Ms Milne effectively laid down a challenge to the government to allow land use to … Continue reading
I’m trying to be zen about yet more reveals of what is a deeply corrupt world dominated by large corporates. Those who can pay to place their lackeys into political power, all the better to erode our democracy. All the … Continue reading
I am a sucker for murmurations, that greatest and most beautiful metaphor on life. They are so representative of the new (and old) way of seeing the world, of the fundamental metaphysics underlying life. Watch this amazing two minute excerpt … Continue reading
A few years ago, a couple of local politicians made an extraordinary offer. Come to Hawke’s Bay and invest, they said, for we have low wages and conditions. This thinking imagines that economic success comes, not from the creative dynamism … Continue reading
Random thoughts you need to write down. A discussion on three things. First, Leibniz’s concept of Monads – a single view of a complex whole, say London looking West from the Tower of London. Leibniz’s Monad concept is about seeing … Continue reading
Morning rant after listening to Steven Joyce et al. on Morning Report (25th October 2017) claim to be the friend of business. Tosh. Increasing wages are linked to building economies through building *both* social capital and demand. Yet we’re already … Continue reading
Jacinda, can we please have the Goodnight Kiwi back. And while you’re at it, can we have our once superb, public service, independent questioning broadcaster back. Load it again with bags of satire and documentaries where the face of the … Continue reading
Reblogging with edits away from the previous focus on just the Ruataniwha Dam. ———— Rethinking, reimagining land, community & economy. Unless we fundamentally change away from the dominant ideas expressed by Treasury, the current public service model, the right wing … Continue reading
I want to write about how we cannot afford poverty, how stupid it is, how it degrades our economy and our spirit. I want to write about the trends in our New Zealand economy to a power-crazed, corporatist, extractive, one-dollar-one-vote … Continue reading
How would you structure the justice in our society today? One method is to look at a blank canvass of what might become a moral society from an “original position” behind what John Rawls described as “A veil of ignorance” … Continue reading
I need to say something. We all need strength at times, and it’s nature and people that give us that. They feed the soul. They provide meaning. Our world seems strangely to treat these blessings – people and nature – … Continue reading
More on the theme of Neoliberalism, and what enormous damage it has done to the very culture of New Zealand society and our organisations. We are far less encouraging of talent, wisdom and thought. Our country is less a meritocracy … Continue reading
The housing crisis – Crisis? What crisis? – is still with us after years of denial by the National Government. I wrote this a year ago when they were claiming there was no crisis – denial being the mantra de … Continue reading
The National Party’s latest bullying of the poor and the punitive threats to those without hope needs more than just our outrage for their ignorance and immorality. It also deserves a critique of what the hell is going on in their … Continue reading
The UN Declaration of Human Rights was ratified in 1948. It is a measure of any government. Just how well are our people doing? It is a measure for any commercial behaviour as well. Are you a contributor to this … Continue reading
This gallery contains 12 photos.
Beneath all the politics, increasingly shrouded in the mist that hide both truth and meaning, there lies the bedrock upon which our landscapes, our peoples, and our economy depend. They are philosophical. Everything depends on a philosophical base – yes, … Continue reading
I keep hearing the repeated emptiness that New Zealand has a ‘strong economy’. It has become a cliché, a soundbite that has become unthinkingly repeated, a lie that is now absorbed into the national psyche. I was writing something on … Continue reading
I’ve always been interested in the distinction between short-term expedience and long-term governance – between the technocratic narrowness that focuses on the quantitative and the broader strategic wisdom of knowing that culture and nature cannot be known through numbers alone. … Continue reading
Reblogged because we need this debate. We are mining our legacies to make the numbers look good. “Real economic development requires first a rethink of these underlying conceptual metaphors they frame our debates. We need a deeper discussion about the … Continue reading
The commoditisation of life – humans as ‘work units’, as mere ‘things’, land as capital, produce as lifeless ‘pork units’ etc. All the meaning reduced to the most basic measure; weight or volume or cost, at its worst undifferentiated by … Continue reading
Why can’t we have the good old days back of honest corruption. You know, brown paper envelopes filled with cash shifted between suspicious looking guys in trench coats, wearing sunnies. Clever slights of hand in the kid’s playground at the … Continue reading
