Friday, April 8, 2011

Farming the Alternative Way

My deep interest in the profession of growing plants and the obvious serenity involved in the job of cultivating made me explore some of the ‘alternate’ ways of farming. My first introduction on alternate farming came from reading Masonobu Fukuoka book ‘One Straw Revolution.’ Now I am trying to consolidate the learning in this MindMap.
 Click image to enlarge

2 comments:

  1. Two things--one from a language perspective, and one from a design balance perspective.

    First, I think you mean alternative ways of farming. While perspectives are changing to be lazy and always use alternate, generally, we use "alternate" to indicate something switching back and forth--for instance, "I eat non-veg on alternate days." We use "alternative" when we have more than one option to choose from.

    Second, from a design balance perspective, your "conservation agriculture" is missing a node: "principles". Because of this, while "mulching (dry)" should be a third-level item (as it is in your other alternatives) it is, instead, a second-level item.

    I point this out because I think that if mind mapping is to be useful, it should also allow us to organize data usefully. So, for instance, I should be able to see a list or summary all third-level entries together to be able to make comparisons across all my options, but in this case, I would miss everything from conservation agriculture.

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  2. Hi Ananda, Thank you very much for your comment. Thanks for noting that there is incongruity in 'levels' under the 'Conservation Agriculture' item compared to the others. I will take note of this while preparing the MindMaps next time. And I changed the spelling, by the way:)

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