permaculture

[Fiona Campbell <pacedge@magna.com.au>]

On Wednesday, October 22, 2003, at 05:41  PM, treaclemine@intranet.org 
wrote:
> Morning,
> > Can we hope to teach people in third world countries to successfully
> > grow enough wholesome food to feed themselves and their neighbors in
> > adverse geological environments (deserts..) without harming the
> > earth?
>
>         An equally significant question: can people acquire sufficiently
> secure access to the necessary land to grow food in the first place?
> Many people are only one or two generations away from forebears who
> were more than capable of growing their own food, and in reasonably
> sustainable ways, but have had their ancestral land access stolen.
>
>         What is the permaculture solution to human greed for more land
> than the fair shares?

I don't  think it has a solution Amanda. Individual permaculturists 
might, but the nearest that Permaculture as a body of knowledge comes 
would be to recite the third ethic of Permaculture - that of sharing 
surplus. In a situation such as you describe, where greed is the 
motivator, this breaks down because there is no desire to share by the 
holder of excess land.

Permaculture people, for the most part as far as I can see, prefer to 
take the path of individual action on questions such as you raise, 
rather than collective action. Such action in this case would be 
essentially of a political nature - land reform, redistribution and so 
on. I know that a lot of people in Permaculture would agree with taking 
such action, however the movement as a whole has no track record in 
this area. Indeed, there has been a discouragement of involvement in 
politics. This is why Permaculture is so-often missing from fora where 
organisations of a reforminst political bent, such as the environment 
movement, are present.

It is not only where land property rights are mediated through market 
or colonial systems that people in developing countries may lack access 
to it. Land that may be under customary ownership may be allocated, 
through tradition, to families. It might not always be easy to 
negotiate access to land for newcomers or families requiring more.

...Russ Grayson