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Re: [permaculture] Trends in America

From: christopher nesbitt <christopher.nesbitt@mmrfbz.org>
To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [permaculture] Trends in America
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2008 21:29:27 -0600

Hi Steve,

I didn't assume anything about you. I know nothing about you. I just find that the idea that property is an inherent wrong is uninformed, but seems to be popular amongst people in the developed world who have access to property. I am pretty sure the only part I mentioned about you is that many people here do not have the things you subsequently agreed that you have, and that perhaps yo had not considered that they would like to, and that commonly held land and the problems associated with it were barriers to their accessing those things they wanted. All I discussed was my experiences regarding what I see as problems related to commonly owned property and benefits of private land ownership for both the people who own it and for the land itself, but looking at it on a very local scale. This is not a universal view, applicable to all situations, but it is something I have observed during my life of protracted observation of the place where I live. I am not advocating anything. I am pointing out that the desire to own a piece of land is near universal in the rural agrarian Maya communities I have worked in.

As an aside, Kekchi and Mopan people are still on the periphery of the currency based economy, especially the back villages, and still engage in currency free trade, firewood for corn, corn for a pig, a days labour for a days labour. There are many cultural traits that they have retained that are under threat. One is that a very high percentage of the children do not want to be farmers like their parents.

As far as the Maya holding all things in common, that is plain wrong. That never happened. That is mere Caucasian mythology about indigenous people that just never happened.

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.

No worries about me romanticizing Maya people. They are just people.

I would be interested to see you fill in that gap where communally owned property has allowed people to access TVs etc. With the exception of Cuba, which has not allowed access to TVs (but has very good health care and education), I am not thinking of any, but, again, my experience is limited. I agree that things like Ecovillages are a way forward, but even those are a form of ownership, albeit more cooperative and egalitarian.

While I would say that, in my opinion, commonly owned land has not worked well here, I had a consultancy in Venezuela in 2006, looking at cacao, which was very interesting. I had previously been to Venezuela to look at coffee, but cacao is my thing. One part of my time there was in a place called Cata, one valley over from the famous El Chuao. The community an abandoned cacao grove the community took over. The cacao grove was 400 acres or so, managed by the community, divided into sections, owned by the community, but individual families had access to and responsibilities for set plots, delineated, clearly. All of it was centrally fermented and marketed through the cooperative at Ocumare. There were a few other communities that provided cacao to the coop, too. It was a wonderful example of community managed agriculture, well organized, only a few unhappy people (all cooperatives have their unhappy members), and I was struck by how market savvy they were. World market prices for cacao was swinging between USD1200-1600 a tonne. Fairtrade/organic was USD1950 a tonne, and they were getting USD4500 a tonne. That is a place where a form of collective ownership worked, but with clearly delineated boundaries and responsibilities. Any earnings were directly tied to their management practices. That is a nuanced private land ownership/ commonly held land model that I really admired.

As far as scholarships, we host courses, attracting great teachers from all over the world, like Toby. One course we have done the last three years is a permaculture design course. We are able to provide or find funding to allow local students to take the course free of cost. This is subsidized by students who are paying, and by the teachers, like Toby, who are willing to facilitate training for free (hat off to Toby Hemenway, Penny Livingston, Larry Santoyo, Albert Bates and Andrew Goodheart Brown, who have done that in tha past, and to Albert, Goodheart, Andrew Leslie Phillips and Maria Ros who are doing that this year). 23 Belizeans have taken a PDC here, including extension officers from Ministry of Agriculture, extension officers from NGOs as well as Peace Corps volunteers, and hundreds of farmers have been given training in agroforestry.

Anyway, I am not on an opposite side to you, I just see that universal platitudes about the evils of ownership are not wholistic in scope.

Best wishes,

Christopher

On Oct 30, 2008, at 3:51 PM, Steve Read wrote:

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 star
ted 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

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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

Re: [permaculture] Trends in America , (continued)