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  • From: "keller" <ak.and.ak@on-line.de>
  • To: "permaculture" <permaculture@franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Pc slammed in Whole Earth Review
  • Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2002 22:32:38 +0100


> consumption than generating money or bushels of food to store. In school
the
> word "subsistence" was always said with contempt: those poor subsistence
> farmers in Africa scratching for a bare exisitence. Now I've come to think
> of subsistence living as an immensely honorable thing, a way of
reconnecting
> to cycles that really matter, and to notice quality rather than quantity:
> all those unmeasurables that people have mentioned.

Thanks for the remark.

These "poor subsistence farmers scratching..."-formulation is a terrible
cliche. I have read it in several places with exactly those words. The poor
subsistence farmers I have seen in Africa are not so poor. The trouble
starts when they give up subsistence farming. A lot of development aid work
is giong into a terribly wrong direction. I have never eaten so much so
excellent food as on my visit to my in laws home. They have a nice tropical
home garden and produce a large part of their food themselves. There are
problems, of course (e.g. lack of health insurance), but they do not come
from the subsistence farming.

A nice place to live, that village Njinikom. We have just bought a peace of
land there, guess for what? Subsistence farming (initially for some
relatives, later, I hope, for ourselves, at least part time).

There is a "charity" in the UK that has written in it's mission statement
the aim of replacing subsistence farming by comercial farming in tropical
countries (I think searching in google for "mission statement" and
"subsistence" turns them up). If they succeed, that will be a desaster.
Subsistence farming is the backbone of the African economies. I have
recently seen something on the web that 40 % or so of the people in Ghana
are subsistence farmers. Unfortunately, their products don't show up in the
statistics as financial income. So if you replace subsistence farming by
comercial farming, (financial) income goes up, and GNP goes up (so do costs,
and profits of Monsanto type companies, and dependency), but quality of life
often goes down. In my view, subsistence farming should be the basis, and
then a comercial component can be added on top.

Andreas





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