permaculture

["Marsha Hanzi" <hanzibra@svn.com.br>]

Hello Toby!

I suspect you are referring to the material about the Kayapo Indians, who
seem to have one of the most sophisticated systems, as they work in and
across two major ecosystems (Amazon forest and savannah).   Certainly a very
interesting model, and inspiration for all.
    But I have also seen  extremely destructive cut-and-burn applications,
the most absurd being felling an Amazon forest  ( the trunks of the trees
lying down were taller than I am!) to plant a cassava monocrop... Here in
Bahia the farmers cut the forest, sell off the firewood to the brickmakers
for a ridiculous price, plant cassava monocrops, and abandon what is now a
near-desert wound in the forest, which you can see from afar.  (That's why
my major goal in Brazil is to change the agricultural model).

    Here the agroforest model, developed and inspired by the work of Ernst
Gotsch, but now being applied and refined by numerous people and groups, of
which our Permaculture Institute is one,  is being successfully applied in
the rainforest and drylands areas, integrating annual crops with  long-term
ones, including a possibility of renovation of the forests every ten years
or so, as most of the fruit crops used here respond very well to pruning.
When the forests are pruned,with the temporary entrance of light, pineapples
and bananas are once again planted ( as they were at the beginning), and
corn, beans, and vegetables are planted directly in the fields for  a year,
and cassava for two, along with elephant grass ( for mulch but also for
fodder, if the manure is returned to the field).  The trees resprout, and
the cycle takes over again.
    I returned from Ernst's fazenda last night, and he is now sure that the
success of the undertaking depends directly on biodiversity in the field,
incorporating short-middle-and longterm plants.  He will now implant
experimental fields,  eliminnating one element at a time, to study how the
lack of that element  affects the overall health of the system.
     When the rains come, I and my team will  implant a new agroforest sytem
in brachiaria grass pasture, considered one of the most difficult situations
to face.  Will give feedback on that if there is interest.
    I have seen Ernst's son's agroforest fields in Switzerland, and can
affirm that his system works perfectly well for temperate climates... There
is even a little book published by him in English about the underlying
philosophy of his strategies, which is most interesting.

    I take the advantage of this mail to inform that as of yesterday the
International Center of Permaculture opened its doors in Jatobá Fazenda,
which will offer training opportunites in these techniques.  The fazenda is
across the street from Ernst's fazenda, and will be adminisered by his wife
Renate and their colleague Ulrike Rapp, who  has long experience in
implementation of agroforests.  We will offer a course there in July
"Permaculture in the Forest"( in Portuguese).  The center is forseen to grow
into a rural community practicing all aspects of Permaculture including,
besides agroforests, constructions and alternative money...

Anyone interested can send e-mail to me, which I will forward to them (they
have no telephone, but call here regularly) Both speak English.

Marsha Hanzi
Instituto de Permacultura da Bahia
http://www.geocities.com/oliarte





----- Original Message -----
From: Lawrence F. London, Jr. <lflondon@mindspring.com>
To: permaculture <permaculture@franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2000 6:40 PM
Subject: Re: Using permaculture in market farming and homestead gardening.


On 8 Feb 2000 17:56:01 GMT, in alt.permaculture hemenway@jeffnet.org
(Toby Hemenway) wrote:

In article <__On4.20851$3b6.88289@ozemail.com.au>, "Wesley Trotman"
<trotmanw@<nospam>camtech.net.au> wrote:

>
> Ancient farmers made clearing in the forrests, burnt the felled trees and
> planted a crop for one or so years and then moved on. On return many years
> later regeneration had occurred.
>
I've been studying about slash-and-burn agriculture (technically
called
swidden and fallow) because I'd heard hints that it was actually a
good
deal more complicated, and permacultural than that. Here's how it
works,
at least in South America: To pick an arbitrary beginning point in the
cycle, people would cut down a small chunk of forest, 1-5 hectares,
often
saving the nitrogen-fixing trees and certain good construction timber.
They'd let the slash dry,then burn it and plant. The planting was
polycultural, based at first on annual staple like cassava or yam or
maize, with an N-fixer like peanuts as well. They'd also plant seeds
and
seedlings of perennial shrubs, vines, and trees: pineapple, banana,
peach
palm, guava, coca, avocado, about 20-30 species. They'd work the
annuals
for a few years, and by then the pineapples or other small perennials
were
coming on. They'd coppice the young trees for fuel and baskets (Inga
was a
common one in the Amazon, a N-fixer that coppices well and yields "ice
cream beans" for fruit). As the big trees began to bear, they'd give
up on
the annuals, which were shaded out by then, and they'd harvest fruit
and
other tree crops. In 20 years or so the whole patch would lose
productivity from shade, and get too tall to harvest, and the people
would
move on, letting it go fallow for 10-20 years. They'd usually have 2-4
of
these swiddens at different stages going at once.

Very permacultural; not at all what they teach in school as that
backward,
slash-and-burn technique that's destroying the Amazon. These guys knew
what they were doing. We just didn't understand how sophisticated and
sustainable (at least with small populations) it was until recently.
Anthropologists only saw people "farming" in the new swiddens; they
mistook the older swiddens for forest, since they were clueless about
tree
crops. In a sense, permaculture is modeled on these systems. I'd love
to
see us create our own using temperate plants.

Perhaps this is a way to do market farming: start with an annual cash
crop
that keeps you going until the trees come on.

Toby

--
Toby Hemenway
hemenway@jeffnet.org

Lawrence F. London, Jr. Venaura Farm
metalab.unc.edu/intergarden InterGarden
metalab.unc.edu/permaculture PermaSphere
metalab.unc.edu/intergarden/orgfarm AGINFO
metalab.unc.edu/market-farming Market Farming
lflondon@mindspring.com  london@metalab.unc.edu



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