Forest Hills farm catches rain for irrigation
Long before they heard the word “permaculture,” Forest Hills residents Terry Jo and Dave Bichell had embraced the tenets of organic gardening to create sustainable spaces on their Old Hickory Boulevard farm. Permaculture gave them the tools to overcome drought and flooding.
“Permaculture is a way of growing that uses the land to soak up and store water,” Terry Jo explained. “You use the natural features of the land and plant trees in such a way to hold water, and use plants to help nourish each other without fertilizers.”
The farm is a remnant of a historic plantation, she said, and the land had been used for pasture by previous owners. She was committed to avoiding pesticides or fertilizers, so she set out to see what could be grown on pasture land without alteration. “We grew a crop of hay for a couple of years, because at that time that was about all we could grow without using irrigation and pesticides.”
Mining
conflicts are increasingly surfacing globally due to complains over
mines and pollution of water, soil and land occupied as well as over
transport and waste disposal. The Skouries forest in Halkidiki has been
at the center of a hot dispute between the mining company, Hellas Gold, a
subsidiary of the Canadian mining giant Eldorado Gold and local
communities. The company claims that an ambitious plan for mining of
gold and copper in the area- including deforestation and open pit mining
with excavation and everyday use of explosives- will benefit the region
through the creation of some 5,000 direct and indirect jobs, while
local residents argue that the planned investment will cause
considerable damage to the environment and livelihoods, resulting to
many more jobs losses in the existing sectors of the local economy
(farming, pasture land, fisheries, beekeeping, food processing and
tourism). The residents’ claims are supported by research conducted by
various independent scientific institutions including the Aristotle
University of Thessaloniki and the Technical Chamber of Macedonia. In
addition to legitimacy questions underpinning the transfer of mining
rights from the Greek state to the aforementioned company [1],
the Environmental Impact Assessment produced by El Dorado has been
found to contain gross methodological discrepancies and whilst the
public consultation process could be at best described as cosmetic [2].
