permaculture

[christopher nesbitt <christopher.nesbitt@mmrfbz.org>]

Hi Steve and Toby,

I am going to make some observations of land tenure from the limited  
perspective of living in proximity to indigenous communities, but am  
not emotionally attached, am not attacking anybody. This is an  
alternative view of the problems and benefits of land tenure in Maya  
communities in southern Belize:

I have lived in a piece of land in southern Belize for the last 20  
tears. When I bought it, I bought it cheap because it lacked road  
access (still lacks road access), had no grid (still has no grid  
electricity), and the land was severely damaged abandoned pasture land  
and old citrus groves. I have used my labour, my thoughts, my  
energies, income earned off the farm as well as income from the farm,  
to rehabilitate the soil, make this land a beautiful farm, and to make  
a very well established food forest, with many hundreds of species.

When I bought this land, I wanted to open it up to be a community. I  
invited local people, and international people, and.... no one was  
really interested. They all wanted to pursue their own thing, so I  
pursued my own thing, too. I now have an Eden, which I intend to pass  
on to my children, which I share through courses. Toby has taught  
here, twice, and knows that we provide scholarships for participants  
who can not afford to take the courses we offer (made possible by  
teachers like Toby who are willing to facilitate scholarships).

If this land had been community owned, it would have all been burned  
down and planted to corn years ago.

Moving on to the matter that you may not have considered: most people  
in the developing world want private property, at least the people I  
know. For the last 20 years, I have lived in San Pedro Columbia,  
Toledo, Belize. My neighbors are mostly Kekchi Maya people who did  
have community land tenure, and, as the book "the Tragedy of the  
Commons" points out, community land was not always well managed. I am  
not saying that it couldn't be, but my experience here has shown me  
that, here at least, it is not. Fallow crop rotational cycles  
appropriate for the types of soil we have here, 12-15 years, were not  
observed when that land was everybody's and nobody's. The incentive  
was, at the time, to chop it, burn it and plant it out to corn before  
someone else did, resulting in shortened fallow cycles of 7 years, 5  
years, 3 years, with the predictable decline in production and an  
increased environmental cost of erosion, siltation, and fire damage  
(we lost 50 acres of habitat to a caretaker for a privately owned  
piece of land "managed" by absentee land owners this last year, though  
the core areas of the farm were largely unaffected). Any one who  
fallowed a piece of land for more than 7 years could expect to find  
someone else clearing it for their milpa when they went out to their  
farm.

Toby has been to two of the farms in San Pedro Columbia with well  
developed agroforestry. One is Saul Garcias land, farmed for 40 years,  
worthy of a book of its own, amazing levels of biodiversity both  
between species and within species, and the other is Ignacio Ash's  
farm, a very wel developed farm that is a cacao dominant polyculture  
that has been in one family for 3 generations. He has also been to  
Burton Caliz's farm, which is another farm that is amazing. These  
farms are exceptional, and a common feature is that they are "owned",  
that the person who established them expected to have something to  
pass on to their children.

In 20 years time I have watched all the rainforest within a two hour  
walk of the village chopped and burned up for corn. Lack of delineated  
properties resulted in a land use pattern that is full of contention  
and conflict, where the land was not stewarded for the long term  
benefit of the community or for the land itself, and has kept this  
community mired in stagnation, economically marginalized by a lack of  
access to traditional avenues of credit (and this is not a debate  
about wether or not that is a good thing) and with a social  
prohibition on making long term investments in the land, like planting  
cacao, enforced by sabotage, community censure, arson and violence.  
Any attempt to plant long term crops like cacao or coffee, or timber  
trees in association with cacao or coffee was seen as a resource grab.  
Cattle pastures were not managed to avoid soil damage, because it was  
not "theirs", and the way to show intention to use that land was  
through not fallowing it.

Commonly owned land here resulted in greed, fear and division, too,  
worse, in my opinion, than where property was delineated.

The few cacao farms in this watershed of any size are held by families  
that managed to get their land titled back in the 1920s or 1950s, like  
Ignacios, whose grandfather planted out most of the cacao he has. Saul  
"stronged" his land and would probably have chopped anybody who tried  
to steal it from him into several chunks a few years ago. He owned  
that then and now by respect for his abilities and age, respectively.

Now, the land that provides the ecological services displaced by  
shifting cultivation tends to be privately owned land. I allow people  
to collect firewood from my land, for example, since their is no  
firewood close to the village anymore, except on privately owned land.

Another community near hear is San Antonio village, a Mopan Maya  
community that was established in 1840. San Antonio is very well  
developed (if you like agroforestry, there is a section in the middle  
of the village that is staggeringly productive, combining several back  
yards to make a small carbon sink and block of habitat for birds that  
is also very productive in food and cacao). The largest cacao farms in  
Toledo are all owned by farmers in this village. Average acreage of  
cacao farms in Maya communities is a bit over an acre. In this  
community, the median acreahe is 4 acres, with several farms as large  
as 12 acres. Some of the farms are being managed by the children or  
even grandchildren of the initial farmer. San Antonio village is like  
a garden, one of the prettiest villages in Toledo, and well developed.

San Antonio is a prosperous village. People invest their energies into  
their land because it belongs to them.

Looking at San Antonio Village, and San Pedro Columbia we see one  
community with property rights that has engaged in very sophisticated  
agroforestry, land that is passed securely from generation to  
generation, who can access credit to expand their farms, buy TVs,  
build new houses, have shops, that is able to send children to school,  
and another, that has also developed, but not as quickly, that is  
still dependent (though less so) on shifting cultivation, that lacks  
access to credit and has been marginalized at the boundary of the  
currency based economy. Both of these communities are engaged in  
agriculture. Both of these communities have access to the same  
markets. Both of these communities are over 100 years old. One of  
these communities is a nicer place to live (hahaha, and I don't live  
there)!

San Antonio observes better agricultural practices on commonly owned  
land, too, with 60 feet from any waterway kept forested, and the  
school and church well taken care of, a pride in ther community that  
is an extension of their pride in their farms.

There are some differences in the communities apart from property  
rights. San Antionio is Mopan Maya, a lowland Maya in the Yucatecan  
language group, and the Kekchi are a Quichean people, highland in  
origin, who arrived in Belize after 300 years of perpetual  
displacement. The Mopan came from San Luis Rey, Peten, with the  
intention to settle that valley, a single movement to establish a  
settlment, from a place very similar to San Antonio, same plants,  
soils, weather patterns. The Kekchi in Columbia arrived as the front  
end of a wave of the displaced of the displaced of the displaced, and  
have a legacy of living for a few generations in one place and then  
migrating, either by choice or external factors. They are from the  
highlands, cooler, with a pronounced wet season and dry season, and  
different plants. But, apart from that, right now, they both have  
access to the same markets, the same level of service (clinics,  
schools, extension services, hospitals). The biggest difference has  
been their relationship with the land they farm.

There are people here who speak against private property for the Maya,  
saying the communal land system is their culture (debatable, but  
certainly the model since the Conquest). Most of these proponents own  
their own land, if Maya, or are Caucasian, who own property back where  
they come from. Most Maya people would like property they can pass to  
their children, or use to access credit, and can increase the value of  
by their labour, etc.

I am not debating the merits of access to credit, or economic  
integration with the balance of the country and the global economy,  
but it is worth noting that %99.9 of the farmers I know would like to  
own their land, would like access to more money, would like all the  
things that I suspect you enjoy or have access to, Steve, a computer,  
an education for their children, a TV, a car, and they don't have  
those things because with poor land tenure, making shifting  
cultivation provide the bulk of their income (financial and caloric),  
they are always two steps from a bad crop failure and loss.

San Pedro Columbia surveyed most of the land five years back and gave  
the land to people. I wish I could say that was done transparently and  
was painlessly, but it was not. It was done in the months before a  
general election with the intention of gaining votes. I am sad to say  
it worked, and that party swept into power for a second term (though  
they lost the next election when they had no assets to give away).  
Having aid that, most people got the land they were farming, and are  
happy with this. They have also started planting out more tree crops,  
and the overall health of that land is better as people have incentive  
to manage it well, by planting long term crops, and to avoid burning  
into their neighbors lands.

There is also a movement in Belize for land owners to set aside a  
percentage of their land to be maintained as habitat and for the  
ecological services wild areas provide, which is a whole other  
subject. Their are talks about incentives for this, etc.

In closing I would say that the 30 prettiest farms I have seen (I  
worked as the head of extension for a cacao cooperative here, and have  
visited well over 400 farms in Belize, and dozens of farms in Costa  
Rica, Panama, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Venezuela) have all been farms  
where the owner had very secure land tenure, either property or long  
term leased land, and an ability to transfer ownership to their  
children. I am not saying that communal land doesn't work, or that  
private property is a panacea that will solve all of the problems  
facing farmers here (or anywhere), but that land here is better  
maintained when the stakeholders have something to pass on to their  
own children via secure property rights.

Just my .02.

I have to run, go plant some more trees.

In development,

Christopher







On Oct 30, 2008, at 1:26 AM, Steve Read wrote:

> Hello, Toby Hemenway,
>
> Interesting approach  to extrapolte from one PDC and its mug praxis  
> to principles and strategies of land tenure; It reminds me too of  
> the platitudinous arguments that Thatcher & Co. put forward to  
> justify selling off the council owned housing, frankly I rarely saw  
> a run down council house except on estates that had been designanted  
> as 'problem' estates by the local council and were then therefore  
> following some strange logic of their own refilled with more  
> 'problem' families. And then of course council blocks that fell into  
> disrepair and misuse becaus ethey were simply so badly designed.
>
> Your argument also belies the fact that for prbably millenia humane  
> societies  have enabled land tenure strategies that allowed  
> sustainable, durable use of commonly held assets. Th
> e fatuous book 'Tragedy of the commons' has been massively  
> instrumental in creating a mythology around this subject. Your  
> argument also imo seems to betray a certian myopia, looking out the  
> window do I see a world where privately owned resources are not  
> destructively exploited, a world where privately property is tended  
> and nurtured for subsequent generations? Or do I see a world where  
> the traditional class layers have gone to be replaced by one big  
> squandering propertied class in the rich countries and those that  
> are becoming fatter? For myself I only have to go to the municipal  
> dump to see where private property ends up, even when still in good  
> condition.
>
> I imagine that you personally however are tending well your private  
> patch of Earth, your private Eden.
>
> And of course there's Renting property out, what  a great way to  
> increase my income, living off the sweat and labour of others,  
> keeping the world split into have's and have nots and of course  
> expecting the people who are renting the property to look after it  
> as if it were their own, well how is it they can do that in rented  
> accomodation and yet wouldn't be able to do it in commonly held  
> accomodation?
>
> I would however agree with you Toby that there is some education to  
> be done, its not difficult, one simply transports the emotional  
> content that one has for 'mine' to 'ours'. I frankly fail to see  
> that if we can't do this and that as designers we are not promoting  
> this how we are to move along towards sustainable interconnected  
> communities.
>
> Buy the land and free it into a safe common legal entity, then help  
> people develop the capacity to nurture it, and in this I am speaking  
> too and perhaps in particular of the urban areas. This definately  
> seems to be the philosophy developing here in France.
>
>
> Steve R
>
>
>
>
>
> ======= At 2008-10-30, 04:45:47 you wrote: =======
>
> > A story I may have told before: On opening day of a PDC, the venue  
> > was
> > kind enough to put out mugs, each with a participant's name on it.  
> > They
> > asked that each person be responsible for rinsing and putting away  
> > their
> > own mug. The system worked beautifully; the classroom stayed free of
> > scattered mugs; each was back in the rack at the end of the day.  
> > Then,
> > come our mid-class day off, the mugs were put through an industrial
> > sterilizer and the labels were removed. They went back to the  
> > classroom
> > unlabeled. Within a few days, mugs were everywhere--under chairs, on
> > shelves, left outside, many full of molding tea leaves, and another
> > couple of dozen mugs had been commandeered from elsewhere since no  
> > one
> > could find a clean mug and it was easier to grab another from the  
> > stash.
> > Soon almost every mug the place had was in our classroom, dirty and
> > haphazardly stuck anywhere.
> >
> > I was pretty surprised, since the participants seemed like decent  
> > folks.
> > The lesson I took home was twofold: private ownership is one way to
> > encourage responsibility toward resources, and, a culture that is  
> > used
> > to private ownership is liable to behave irresponsibly toward  
> > resources
> > held in common.
> >
> > Toby
> > http://patternliteracy.com
> >
> >
> >
> > Nancy Frank wrote:
> > > Steve -
> > >
> > > I think it will be awhile before we get as far as we've come and
> > > return to common land.
> > >
> > > Nancy
> > _______________________________________________
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> = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
>                         
>
> Best regards.                           
> Steve Read
> steveread@free.fr
> 2008-10-30
>
>
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_____________________________
Christopher Nesbitt

Maya Mountain Research Farm
San Pedro Columbia, Toledo
PO 153 Punta Gorda Town, Toledo
BELIZE,
Central America

www.mmrfbz.org