permaculture

["Steve Read" <steveread@free.fr>]

Hello, christopher nesbitt,

Thank you for the examples which are all very interesting, although i'm not 
sure why you imagine that my experience is exclusively 'developed world' it 
most  certainly isn't I have lived and worked in a number of different 
countries, cultures and environements, 'nuff said

You are discussing driven societies/people, the socio-environmental pressures 
that have driven cultures that by tradition held all in common to reject that 
way and adopt private property as a way of dealing with the developmental 
pressures most cultures are undergoing go unmmentioned in your list of 
successful projects, as do the millenia many of these cultures have lived and 
thrived with their old communal way. 

" 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"  I'm sure 
they would and I'm not going to apologise for currently being in a culture 
where 2nd hand computers/cars trickle down to me, on the contrary I am lucky 
to have lived in such cultures and seen/see at first hand the pitiful state 
to which so many people are reduced. When people start bandying comparisons 
between rich and poor countries I often suggest they dig out some of the 
social and health statistics, despite all these 'golden years' of capitalism, 
private ownership and development these so called developed countries carry 
hidden in their dark underbelly millions of dispossesed, come and live in a 
cardboard box under a bridge in the winter in London, to be woken at 5am to 
be doused with disinfectant, Cold, the Cold.   The shifting cultivators 
around you don't have these 'luxuries' simply because the areas they live in 
have started down this Oh So Wonderful developmental path later than here, so 
what?   Bruno in Brazil who did a PDC with me pointed out that many people 
were 'dispossesed' becaus ethe Govet had a lwa that stated that any labourer 
who worked for 'you' for more than 90 days (I think) became eligible for 
pensions and stuff so your wonderful private property owners simply kick them 
off at the end of that period and get new ones,  no chance to develop a veg 
patch or anything.



the gap above can be filled in with examples from developing countries where  
communally held land etc has enabled then to improve their standards of 
living, have a TV etc.

Its important to not fall into the trap of mistaking indiginous peoples for 
ones who have some sort of cultural purity and are in some way unaffected by 
the marketing and straight forward socio-economic pressures driving this 
'modern' world, the Macdonaldisation of the planet continues apace.

There would be too nuances of private ownership, where a land is owned by an 
extended family and lived and worked by them through generations, this 
resembles in many ways a tribal communal tenure, the legal status giving the 
extended family security of tenure similar to when tribal lands are decreed 
as being "owned" by such or such tribe. Before current modern pressures 
undermined tribal areas they too had security of tenure, although they may 
often have had to fight to keep it. If we do as I keep suggesting and buy the 
land to put it into a safe common holding, educate people to use it wisely 
then where is the difficulty?


What do you mean 'scholarships'?    I am glad Toby has had the opportunity to 
see and experience these areas, I'm sure it has enriched the quality he 
brings to his designs.

SteveR
======= At 2008-10-30, 19:00:47 you wrote: =======

>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
>
>
>
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= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
                        

Best regards.                            
Steve Read
steveread@free.fr
2008-10-30