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  • From: Bob Waldrop <bob@bobwaldrop.net>
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] [permaculture-99] Dacha Movement: History and Effects In Russia
  • Date: Tue, 07 Aug 2012 16:09:30 -0500

I spent a lot of my life really poor. BUT I was lucky in that as I descended the economic ladder, I hooked up with other poor people, who had been poor for a long time, and they provided a community of support. They taught me how to grind grain to make flour and then how to make sourdough bread because I was too poor to buy yeast. They let me use their mill until I found a used one cheap at a flea market. They taught me how to dumpster dive and encouraged my gardening efforts. All along the way, the provided a community of support and encouragement that made it possible for me to live really well, imho, for 16 years, on very little actual money. It's not as though there wasn't stress, because there was, especially over utility bills. But my life would have been a lot more grim if I hadn't had those friends.

Encouraging and developing community in urban areas is more important than encouraging and developing urban agriculture. If we have the former, we'll get the latter, but we aren't going to get much urban ag without building community first.

Bob Waldrop, OKC

On 8/7/2012 3:09 PM, Toby Hemenway wrote:
Good points, Lawrence. I'm just trying to point out, and counter, the instinctive
assumption, in this individualist culture, that the only safe way to get your food is to
grow it yourself. This seems the least flexible, lowest-common-denominator response to a
complex issue, although in some cases it is the right answer. I get the sense that for many
people "I have to grow all my own" is not a solution they arrived at via good
design methods, but one that we default to out of fear, habit, and prior assumptions as
though there is no safe alternative. But I think we need to throw out that assumption and
start with the core issue. The goal is to meet our food needs in a sustainable, affordable,
healthy way, and that can be done many ways. Obviously we need millions more farmers, at
many scales. But I think it's very important, and a good stacking of functions, to create
food systems that operate mainly at the neighborhood, community, and bioregional level,
instead of a food "syst
em" (which it would not be, as system requires interconnection) consisting
of people mainly providing for themselves. 100 people taking care of each other is
far stronger than 100 people each on their own. Again, doing a critical function
like food in just one way--all by yourself--is not good permaculture.

The permaculture zone system applies well here. Zone 1 is, sure, grow as much
of your food as is appropriate given your circumstances (but see below). Zone
2 is to use community gardens and local CSAs to get the food you can't grow
yourself. Zone 3 is locally-owned stores and farmers markets for most of
what's left. Anything you can't get in those inner zones, and that shouldn't
leave much, get at bigger stores while they exist, but only rarely. Ideally
this would be paid for by a LETS or hours bank, not just with money. This
builds a resilient food network, a community rather than a bunker, and a
local economy.

Community activists that I talk to complain that while a lot of fairly privileged folks
like most of us here are growing food and gaining new skills for self-reliance, the
urban and suburban poor, in their huge numbers, are struggling at jobs that use all of
their time, taking care of their families the rest of the time, and don't have time,
skills, energy, land, or money to start a garden. These are the people for whom
"just grow your own food" is not remotely a solution. I think a coordinated
local food system that networks backyard and community gardens, CSAs, local farms and
markets, and even some commodity foods for as long as they exist (I'm not real keen on
raising all my grains) can generate a surplus that can help feed those who aren't able,
or for whom it makes no sense, like skilled workers in critical roles, to grow their
own.

This is one of my favorite topics because it shows how we default to our
assumptions, and gives us a chance to look at how we make decisions, figure
out the real goals and needs, and solve them using all the tools at our
disposal.

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com


On Aug 7, 2012, at 11:28 AM, venaurafarm wrote:

On 8/7/2012 10:02 AM, Toby Hemenway wrote:
If we want to survive . . . each and every family as much as
possible needs to be able to produce it's own food for itself, and
as many other people as possible.
Right on and thumbs up, onward relentless, let nothing stand in your way.

I don't need to grow my own food.
But there are millions of others who do need to grow their own food in
order to have a healthy diet, involve themselves in very worthwhile
activities as practitioners and learners. Many need to do this to put
food on their tables as they try to weather the poor economy, job loss,
keep their homes and land, keep transportation or seek working
alternatives (bus, bicycle, carpool), have adequate healthcare, etc.

I need to be part of a healthy
network that does.
Those networks, if they exist, are not necessarily available to millions
of people and for a varieties or reasons. Let's hear more about your
networks. Who forms them, who is part of them and who keeps them going
and functionsl?

The LL plan for America includes a computer/web/internet-based product
and services production, marketing and distribution network, PSPMDN.
It could be created and made to work and serve everyone participating,
no matter how small, as consumer or seller, barter, trade, donate, have
its own currency and be compatible and cooperative with the IRS.

While I'd love it if everyone gardened, a
coordinated community food system
Where are they and how many are there; what is the projected future for
this resource?

is more resilient and allows more
diversity than individual dachas, and fits better with American
culture and land ownership patterns. The US has a very different
history from Russia.
Not so. At all. You're conception of this is too fixed and limited
and too limited to the past.

And most yards are too small to produce "all our
own food."
Straw man argument. They need to produce as much of their food needs as
possible, themselves. This can be done in pots or windowsills in
apartments, urban or suburban homes, rural homes and homesteads and
farms. How many thousands of books have been written encouraging people
to grow their own for table fare and health, and to share or sell. How
many tens of thousands of videos exist on YouTube demonstrating every
aspect of home food production and renewable energy, and cottage
industry possibilities. We need 21st Century Victory Gardeners
Practicing Permaculture. We need a nation of them. Think of the savings
in energy, materials and equipment.

Its a mass movement already, a happening thing, thank providence.

This is what permaculture is really all about down to its core set of
principles.

A single 18th-Century farmer could feed 50 people. Making the
household, instead of the farm, the neighborhood or even the town,
the core unit of a food system atomizes the community. Let's not
default to "go it alone." It reduces the many options for reaching a
goal--meeting our food needs--to a single tactic: grow it all
yourself. It means that this critical function is done only one way,
with all the attendant hazards (what if you get hurt?) and reduces
most people to serfs farming for a banker. It's part of the mix, but
not the solution.

The dachas are well worth looking at. But severe food and economic
disruptions tend to be brief in developed countries (see Argentina,
Iceland, Weimar Germany, Mexico, etc.), stabilizing soon at a
simplified level. So to redesign as though the unstable period will
be permanent is unwise.

While Russians were busy farming their 2.5 acre dachas all day, the
oligarchs were seizing control of everything else. They still have
it. Let's learn from that. We need to organize at a higher level than
the household.
And the oligarchs, the cabal, corporations, etc. are not doing this now?
Stealing their investments, causing profound inflation and profiteering
from price rises (charge what the market will bear, law of supply and
demand), sending most American jobs overseas and not creating a
significant number of new ones to replace those lost, largely factory
and small local businesses ceasing operation in the face of competition
from chain stores selling imported goods (at inflated prices). And
people do not need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, reorganize
their lives and livelihoods, seek self sufficiency, independence,
personal sovereignty, freedom, liberty, family security and access to
the basic necessities of live? Of course they do, now as much as ever,
including during the Great Depression.

Toby http://patternliteracy.com
This is a good thread, keep it going.
Are you reading, Koreen and Bob Waldrop?

LL
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