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]]>After a hoe or a wildfire nature grows lush. After a well is made the river dry up and after chainsaws come in to take wood to heat and renovate their "bio"homes, huge scars remain for decades. But for permaculturists, the problem is hoes and fires, while extracting wood from the real forest and extracting water for the avocado forest(in an area whit less of 500mm rainfall) are respectable practices.
There are many native woods that play an important role in the ecosystem, but there are also many cultivated "trees" that fit well into the land, olive trees, vines, fig trees, almond trees, etc. The problem arises when you want to replicate lush green "food forests" with non-native plants. Last year it didn't rain for six months, and if you create an oasis where everything is green in August and avocados grow, because of you a stream is dead. It's not necessarily that an "edible savanna" is worse than an "edible forest." Or that a perennial plant is superior to an annual, many annual plants have enormus flexibility and resilience. What is resilient about a "forest" that takes decades to bear fruit, sucks up all the water in the stream and dies at the first drought or fire? When there are "savannas" that grow lush full of blackberries, edible roots and acorns despite frequent wildfires and overgrazing? More savannas, more opuntia and more autctone plants and less tropical "food forests"!
If done carefully by taking all precautions I don't see why hoeing the soil to increase the soil's water storage capacity and reduce evapotranspiration is a problem. A bit of straw does nothing to prevent for evaporation, in summer trees go for water more than 1/2 meters deep, what prevents evaporation is 1 meter of porous and dry soil (yes it seems to make no sense) There are many domesticated plants that struggle to grow if the soil is not tilled ( fava beans, garlics, carrots), but there are also many "beautiful" wild plants for the ecosystem that after plowing have a huge advantage. Many native plants have a cycle that when the dry season comes they throw out seeds and "die" and then wait for rain to sprout.
Obviously everything is relative you have to know the ecosystem perfectly because at the wrong time hoeing can be very harmful, if you hoe a week before everything turns to dust the soil is washed away and it dries up, if you hoe during the first rains medicinal and edible plant sprouts start growing everywhere after a couple of days and the soil remains healthy and lush.
There would be other issues from an anti-colonial or anti-civ and foraggger perspective, on cultivation, domestication--but I'll stop here.
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