ADVERTISER INDEX LOCATED ON PAGE A10 OCTOBER 2023
Volume 41
48 Pages
PO Box 2048, Salem, OR 97308
Phone: (509) 397-2191
Number 7
RETHINKING THE WEST’S
WATER DILEMMA
PERMACULTURE ADVOCATES TAKE A DIFFERENT TACK ON CAPTURING WATER Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press
Abel Kloster, a permaculture system designer, explains how spring water collects in a small pond at the Center for Rural Livelihoods nonprofit near Cottage Grove, Ore., where he works as the restoration forestry program director.
S
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI Capital Press
ome of the old methods of managing water are overdue for change, as declining snowpacks and aquifer levels are making increasingly apparent across the West. For advocates of permaculture and other holistic approaches to agriculture, this predicament offers a chance to reshape the way farmers and ranchers think about water. “What if we saw water as an abundant resource? Flipping the script may reveal all kinds of opportunities,” Don Tipping, a permaculture expert and seed farmer near Williams, Ore. Regulators have effectively “promised out more water than actually exists” when irrigation demand is high in summer, creating an “atmosphere of scarcity,” Tipping said. However, innovative strategies for farming with scarce water have been progressing for decades — people must simply be willing to use them imaginatively, he said. See Water, Page A8
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