Environment

Permablitz: A informal gathering involving a day on which a group of at least two people come together to achieve the following:

• create or add to edible gardens where someone lives
• share skills related to permaculture and sustainable living
• build community networks
• have fun
  

Asha Bee is a community activist writing an honours thesis in food relocalisation at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia.  She coined the term 'permablitz', a contraction of permaculture backyard blitz. (Backyard Blitz is the name of popular gardening and lifestyle show in Australia involving rapid backyard makeovers).   Lou Smith of Breakdown Press interviewed Asha Bee about permablitzes & backyard food production in the face of peak oil and economic turmoil and productive ways we can rebuild community.

April 2007

On the dusty shores of Lake Sélingué, Mali, West Africa, amid mud brick huts and donkey carts, peasants, family farmers, fisherfolk, nomads, pastoralists, indigenous and forest peoples, rural workers, migrants and consumers from across the world laid down a challenge. From their many languages and regions emerged a global call for food sovereignty.