[permaculture] 2030
Robert Waldrop
bwaldrop at cox.net
Sat Jun 23 23:55:26 EDT 2007
Food is fundamental to life. Without food, we
die. I think that growing your own food is the
most powerful political action one can do this
year. It is accessible to nearly everyone.
That's why my motto is, [INSERT monocle in left
eye] "Virst, ve start vith ze FOOD.
Bwahahahahahahahaha."
Thus, "gardening discussion," is in fact a very
powerful political discussion. Exchanging ideas
and etc about food production is essential to
"clarification of thought".
Food production is also universal. It cuts across
all dividing barriers of race, class, religion,
and ordinary partisan politics. For example, in
the Oklahoma Food Cooperative, we have
fundamentalist Baptists and lesbian Wiccans. Not
to mention the Catholics and Unitarians and
atheists and Buddhists and the occasional lawyer
or two (actually we have several). We even have a
state senator.
If we decided there was a partisan politically
correct requirement to our membership, we would
probably only have two members and he and I
wouldn't be talking together. Instead, we leave
all of our baggage at the door and come together
around a table of fellowship that is loaded with
locally produced foods. The table was even made
in the neighborhood. That, I think, is a very
powerful political statement. most of these
people wouldn't even be talking with each other,
much less working together so effectively, if this
hadn't come along. It is a testimony to the power
of food to unite, to weave new connections, and to
challenge the powers that be at a place where the
have no defense whatsoever. And if you've read
your Sun Tzu, you know that his advice is to
"hasten quickly and attack where you are not
expected."
We don't lack for issues to divide us these days.
We're finding in Oklahoma that food can be a tie
that binds us together in bonds of community that
are almost lost in the partisan divisiveness of
modern life.
We haven't set a date for our next workshop, but
it will probably be in May 2008. It will be in
conjunction with one of the delivery dates of the
food coop. Those who attended the 2007 workshop
were unanimous in their opinion that being there
for Delivery Day was one of the most powerful
aspects of the presentation. It really has to be
seen to be believed.
One of the things that I have learned in 3 years
is something of the extent of the challenge of
creating a local food system. we are 3-1/2 years
into this, and our monthly gross sales are at
$40,000, which is a lot, but that is just for
about 400 households. And the state of Oklahoma
has a million plus households. That's a lot of
scaling up. We constantly run out of items as it
is now. Locally produced vegetables are in
constant short supply. That's why I've started
another cooperative organizing effort to organize
worker owned cooperatives to grow vegetables on
urban plots for direct sale to the public and also
through the coop.
Bob Waldrop, OKC
www.oklahomafood.coop
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tommy Tolson" <healinghawk at earthlink.net>
To: "permaculture"
<permaculture at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Saturday, June 23, 2007 4:43 PM
Subject: Re: [permaculture] 2030
> Robert Waldrop wrote:
>>
>> I think that it is highly unlikely that you are
>> aware of everything that permaculturists are
>> doing
>> in the world, so this statement seems more like
>> "I
>> am More Green Than Thou" rhetoric" than
>> rational,
>> informed discussion. It is personally
>> satisfying,
>> no doubt, but does nothing to build community.
>>
>>
> Thanks for your response. I'm running a race
> with ignorance and death,
> not with you or anyone else on this list. I
> know what I know and it's
> just one very small part of the collective
> knowledge.
> I'm responding to posts on this list that say,
> outright or not, that
> politics is off-topic on-list, rather than to
> the sum total of all the
> work permaculturalists do in the world. This
> seems to me a gardening list.
> I don't find "Greener than thou" in any way
> satisfying. I read about
> your class in starting a food co-op too late to
> attend but think that's
> the sort of thing that needs to be done on a
> large scale now to have the
> infrastructure in place when the oil spigot
> turns off and industrial
> agriculture collapses. When are you doing it
> again? Earth, and
> probably nature, will survive humans, but
> extinction is so needless, if
> we apply Permaculture principles to liberate
> ourselves and the remains
> of planetary life from the dark forces of
> dominion.
>
> Smiles.
> Tommy Tolson
> Austin, TX
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