permaculture

[gavinraders@gmail.com]

In a word, WORD. Thank you Patrick for this insightful and thorough research. 
Its a darn good thing that young and blossoming leaders in the permaculture 
movement, such as you and Rafter,  remind us of the intellectual and ethical 
rigor we need to prevent our efforts from being coopted in the name of 
cultural, ecological, and militaristic imperialism. I'm honored to be working 
with you. 

While certain design techniques associated with permaculture (the "how") 
would obviously be useful to white seperatist groups and the like, the 
ethical principles (the root and the "why") of permaculture are so clearly 
the antithesis of white-supremacy, patriarchy, racism, and imperialism (the 
backbone of US military empire), that I am shocked that the keeper of this 
list as well as some of the "big names" in permaculture would argue so 
forcefully for associating permaculture with them. Some may take the money 
and teach permaculture to whomever wants to use it to pusue their own agenda, 
even if this knowledge will be used to further entrench hegemonic and 
structural violence, but I for one object and think such practices are 
abhorent and dangerous. 
As Grace Lee Boggs says, we must change ourselves before we can change the 
world. Let us love our country enough to change it.    
-Gavin Raders
Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone, powered by CREDO Mobile.

-----Original Message-----
From: Patrick <forgeadams@yahoo.com>
Sender: permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2010 16:52:36 
To: permaculture listserve<permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Reply-To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: [permaculture]  on an ethics of Mr Pittman (and the US military)















Scott said-“Were any seeds being imported into
Afghanistan thereby threatening the genetic integrity of thousands of years of
plant breeding?” 

 

There are simultaneously occurring, somewhat synergistic
tactics of military incursion into food production of occupied countries.
Imposition of corporate seeds as you mentioned is a huge huge issue, but the
unfortunately less publicized tactic used in the war on traditional farmers is
the bio-piracy of local agricultural genetics by governments, NGOs, 
agribusiness,
and particularly those fuckers CGIAR and USAID. They intentionally target 
areas
that are the epicenter of genetic diversity for a particular crop. Wheat in
Iraq is emblematic of this phenomenon, also maize in meso-america, and more
recently eggplant in India. http://www.fpif.org/reports/iraqs_new_patent_law

 

My perspective is that the longer western forces are there,
the worse off the Afghanis and their neighbors are. Successful agricultural
development projects will most likely result in the military & para-militaries
contractors being further entrenched because it allows them to become more
embedded, which enables their 
“intelligence” gathering activities. Similarly social sciences,
especially anthropology and geography are now being used for 
counter-insurgency
purposes. The US government has no intention of pulling out until they are
militarily defeated. Anyone who applies protracted and thoughtful observation
to this geo-political situation will come to a similar conclusion. The west's
military prerogative is to stifle the ascension and integration of the BRIC
countries, in large part through permanent military bases in Central Asia. The
article pasted below does a good job of contextualizing the military’s
involvement in agriculture, which certainly provides multiple functions to the
occupiers.

 

I’ll slander anyone who speaks as though permaculture is
politically neutral &/or compatible with imperialism. Honesty and
self-criticism in our communities is essential. 

 

Scott, USAID funds are unequivocally dirty money, they are
largely a tool for the CIA’s attempts to destabilize the economies and food
systems of various countries, most recently in ALBA nations. If permaculturist
are to be involved in international development in any way we can’t put on
blinders to how war and aid are merging, and more importantly we must not
participate even if our particular project is not directly involved. 

 

Last night I went to this event which was a a report back
from a PDC put on specifically for people involved in social justice work.
http://oaklandlocal.com/blogs/2010/08/permaculture-people-community-report-back-august-17


It was the first time I heard a permaculturist speak
candidly about decolonization, both internal and global. If our work is to 
have
any relevance to the future generations we must as a movement explicitly
embrace this process. The original peoples must lead our movement. The
permaculture process is beginning to be used in political organizing. We need
not create a conceptual dualism to understand permaculture’s dialectic role in
social change. Folks, keep your eyes on the prize, indigenous hegemony in the
twenty second century…

 

Patrick O’Connor 

http://oaklandsol.org/wp/

 

http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=590

 

In recent decades humanitarian aid has regularly been
made conditional on the adoption of neoliberal economic policies. Recently,
however, there has been a troubling tendency in war-ridden countries to
interweave this aid, classified as “reconstruction”, closely with the military
machinery of the invading powers. Afghanistan and Iraq have been the testing
grounds for this militarised aid. In both countries the distinction between 
the
US’s civilian and military activities has been completely, and deliberately,
blurred.

 

 

 

The soils of war

 

 

 

The real agenda of agricultural reconstruction*

 

 

 

Asia has seen its fair share of disasters in recent
years, both man-made and natural – floods, cyclones, tsunamis, earthquakes,
war. After each calamity, - outside agencies have provided “aid” to put the
pieces back together. For many years this aid has come with the unpublicised
agenda of promoting neoliberal economic policies and facilitating the entry of
multinational corporations. This remains true today. What is new in 
Afghanistan
and Iraq is that US development assistance has also become an intrinsic part 
of
the US military campaign. This is an alarming development. Aghanistan and Iraq
are not unique cases born from unusual circumstances, but constitute a likely
template for US activities overseas, as it continues to expand its “war on
terror” and to pursue US corporate interests.

 

 

 

Afghanistan: food and bombs

 

 

 

When the US began bombing Afghanistan in 2001, one of its
first targets was the Soviet-built Shindand airfield in the west of the 
country,
near the border with Iran. A year later, the US took control of the airfield,
one of the country’s largest, amid accusations that it intended to use the 
site
as a possible base for operations against Iran. Today the area around Shindand
remains a scene of intense warfare between US/NATO and Taliban forces, with
civilians caught in the middle.

 

 

 

On 21 August 2008, US planes taking off from the Shindand
airfield bombarded a village in Shindand district, killing at least 88
civilians. When protesters later took to the streets of the regional city of
Azizabad, the Afghan National Army opened fire on the crowd, leaving several
people wounded. The protest had erupted after officials from the central
government came with food aid for the affected families. “They destroyed our
houses, killed dozens of people and they still send us wheat?” said 
Hamidullah,
a local resident who took part in the protests. [1]

 

 

 

In the war in Afghanistan, bombs and food are a package
deal. At the very airfield from which the US planes launched their deadly
attack, US forces had established an agricultural training centre just months
before. “The agricultural centre … allows us to build a rapport with the
villagers through education and employment,” says a leader with the US 
Special Forces
civil affairs team. “They are given a reason to think twice about allowing the
anti-Afghan forces to step in and influence their lives in a negative way. The
presence of this agricultural centre is a security measure in and of itself.”
[2] The US officials say that the centre will eventually build up agricultural
production for export in the area and wean local farmers away from producing
poppies – a crop that still provides more security and income to farmers than
the millions of dollars in foreign aid, so little of which trickles down to
them. The centre is equipped with laboratories, classrooms, several fish ponds
with hatcheries, vineyards and orchards. A weather station and drip irrigation
system are planned. All of it is run by the US military.

 

 

 

To the south-east, USAID contracted the US firm Chemonics
Inc. to build an agriculture centre outside Lashkar Gah, a city in the 
province
of Helmand, another area of intense conflict with the Taliban. Chemonics is an
international firm that specialises in private sector development and
agriculture. It was founded in Washington in 1975, and since then USAID has
been its major client. [3] According to its president, Richard Dreiman: “We at
Chemonics are proud to be part of Afghanistan’s agricultural and agribusiness
renaissance.” [4] Chemonics says that the location originally chosen for the
agriculture centre, in a farming area, was rejected; they were instead
“instructed” for “strategic military and security considerations” to establish
it at the Lashkar Gah airfield, which is under the control of the UK military.
[5] It is clear that the line between the military and aid objectives has been
blurred – and purposely so.

 

 

 

Thirty years ago, when Afghanistan was a net exporter of
food, Helmand was the country’s breadbasket. The US proclaimed after the
invasion that by 2007 it would once again make the country self-sufficient in
food. Today that goal is as distant as ever, with Afghans still dependent on
food imports and foreign assistance. This is largely because the war has
continued, devastating the country’s agriculture. Rather than genuinely 
helping
Afghans to recover their old farming skills, the agriculture centres provide a
veneer of agricultural reconstruction to a military mission that is destroying
Afghanistan’s food systems. They are an attempt to legitimise the military
bases of an occupying power.

 

 

 

The Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) that the UK
and US deploy in the Afghan countryside with increasing frequency serve a
similar purpose to the agriculture centres. Some of the PRTs are called
Agricultural Development Teams, and they have a specific agricultural mission.
Apart from the questionable intent to teach Afghan farmers about how they do
things in Iowa or Texas, these teams, composed mainly of soldiers from the
National Guard, also make critical contributions to military operations. “It
helps in the military kinetic part because it involves cooperation of the 
local
population, and intelligence resources can be brought to bear”, explains Army
Major-General King E. Sidwell. “It makes friends when you might not otherwise
be able to make friends.” [6]

 

 

 

Agribusiness grows on the battlefield

 

 

 

The support between the military and agricultural work
runs both ways. While agricultural reconstruction facilitates US/NATO military
operations, the military operations push forward the agenda of US and other
foreign-based agribusiness corporations by creating a context where they can
easily put pressure on the government to adopt neoliberal policies. The war
provides these corporations with both a lucrative short-term market in the
blossoming “reconstruction” industry and an opportunity to integrate
Afghanistan into their global production networks and markets in the long 
term.

 

 

 

Seeds are at the centre of these processes. In 2002, 34
organisations were brought together, under the banner of the Consultative 
Group
on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and with US and Australian
funding, to form the Future Harvest Consortium to Rebuild Agriculture in
Afghanistan (FHCRAA). The Consortium completely bypassed the rich heritage of
farmers’ varieties, which would have provided the basis for genuine
agricultural reconstruction. Instead, it distributed seed from Pakistan and 
set
up seed multiplication programmes for varieties of other crops brought in from
the International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) 
in
Syria. [7] According to an ICARDA survey conducted in 2002, Afghan wheat
farmers are “on their own when it comes to replicating and reselecting local
variety seed”. [8]

 

 

 

The US and EU have been keen to create a seed industry in
Afghanistan. Essentially this means building up a few local seed companies 
that
can initially serve as a conduit for seed aid, and later, if the US wins the
war, open the door to foreign seed companies and agribusiness. As in the rest
of the world, a private seed industry in Afghanistan requires a legislative
framework that creates a commercial seed market. This is done through laws 
that
make proprietary seed sale the norm, forcing farmers to buy rather than save 
or
share such seeds, with little protection for farmers’ own local varieties and
seed practices. [9]

 

 

 

With this legal framework in place, an Afghanistan
National Seed Association (ANSA) was created in Kabul with FAO support in
October 2008. [10] ANSA is not the only game in town. The Taliban runs its own
seed supply networks, with a similar strategy of winning the loyalty of local
farmers. Either way – Taliban seed or US Army seed – the seed is certainly not
“free”. Both come with heavy political agendas – backed by armed forces – that
have little to do with the interests of Afghanistan’s small farmers. Getting
their own seeds back into the hands of these farmers is the only real way that
they will find their freedom.

 

 

 

Rebuilding Iraq

 

 

 

Iraq is widely known as the “cradle of civilisation”,
with its farming systems dating back thousands of years. But what is important
today to most US government officials is that Iraq is the number one
destination for its hard red winter wheat exports and a top destination for 
its
rice. [11] It is a US$1.5bn market that wasn’t accessible to US companies
before the invasion, because of the sanctions. [12] Indeed, controlling the
development of Iraq’s agriculture and food systems was so important to the US
that in the early years of its occupation it brought in Dan Amstutz, an
ex-Cargill executive and a veteran insider with US trade delegations, to be in
charge of this sector. [13]

 

 

 

The US came into Iraq with a heavy agenda for reforming
all sectors of its economy, including agriculture. There it implemented a
blueprint similar to the one in Afghanistan, albeit on a larger scale and with
more flagrant profiteering by US companies. In one of its orders, the CPA
abolished agricultural subsidies and opened up the agricultural market. Not
surprisingly, the country was flooded with cheap imports, and local food
production collapsed. Just as in Afghanistan, changes in seed laws were seen 
as
crucial. However, whereas in Afghanistan it was at least the central 
government
that enacted the new laws, in Iraq farmers’ rights to save seeds were struck
down by the infamous Order 81 during the last days of the US’s Coalition
Provisional Authority’s rule. [14]

 

 

 

Dan Amstutz was put in charge of the USAID’s Agriculture
Reconstruction and Development Program for Iraq (ARDI). At the top of ARDI’s
list was wheat, Iraq’s most important food crop. Amstutz facilitated the
import, multiplication and distribution of certified wheat seed [15] and set
about liberalising and privatising Iraq’s wheat sector, and its Public
Distribution System in particular. [16] While the chaos following the US
invasion made an immediate sell-off or dismantling of Iraq’s wheat sector
impossible (and illegal under the Geneva Convention), ARDI tried to push the
Iraqis down the alternative path of neoliberal reforms that could arrive at 
the
same ends while sidestepping political sensitivities and immediate practical
problems. [17] Whatever the eventual outcome, the combined devastation of
Iraq’s wheat production and the opening of its wheat markets to US imports,
both brought about by the US invasion, has yielded billions of dollars for US
grain companies.

 

 

 

When ARDI came to a close in 2006, USAID launched two new
programmes – a US$343 million Inma Agribusiness Program [18] and Iraq Private
Sector Growth and Employment Generation (Izdihar). [19] Both programmes are
being carried out by the Louis Berger Group Inc., one of the world’s largest
infrastructure and development consultancies, and they are designed to prepare
the way for agribusiness investment in the food industry.

 

 

 

Yet, like similar programmes in Afghanistan, these
agriculture reconstruction programmes also serve a military function and are
immersed in military operations. The US has so far earmarked US$250 million of
“reconstruction” funds for 581 agricultural projects, more than 97 per cent of
which have been paid for with funds from the Commanders’ Emergency Response
Program (CERP). Funding for agriculture reconstruction in Afghanistan is also
dominated by a similar CERP, meaning that, in both cases, it is the military
that ultimately decides which projects are carried out.

 

 

 

The USAID and other so-called civilian programmes in Iraq
work with Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) – modelled on the PRTs that
were first set up in Afghanistan. It now seems likely that, under President
Obama, the PRTs’ importance to the US mission will greatly expand. According 
to
a report in the New York Times on 3 December 2008, “Pentagon planners” are
proposing “relabeling some units, so that those currently counted as combat
troops could be ‘re-missioned’, their efforts redefined as training and 
support
for the Iraqis”. [20] As a result of this ploy, the Pentagon intends to keeps
as many as 70,000 troops in Iraq beyond 2011, which is the date established in
the US–Iraqi Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) for the complete withdrawal of
all combat troops. This will mean that the distinction between the military 
and
aid workers will be erased. Moreover, by agreeing to this subversion of SOFA,
US President Obama has, in practice, given up on his electoral pledge to
withdraw US combat troops from Iraq within 16 months. [21]

 

 

 

Conclusion

 

 

 

It would be dangerous to see what is going on in
Afghanistan and Iraq as an aberration. The same merging of “hard” and “soft”
power is happening with US overseas programmes in other parts of the world.
Today the United States spends approximately 30 times more on military 
operations
globally than it does on diplomacy and development under the State Department
and USAID. Moreover, the Pentagon now controls more than 20 per cent of US
Official Development Assistance. [22] According to Betty McCollum in the US
House of Representatives, the fact that USAID has to have an office of 
military
affairs to communicate with the Pentagon “means that something has gone
horribly awry”. [23]

 

 

 

It is essential for people around the world to prevent
aid being hijacked in this way. Aid policies and practices need to be
rethought. Some people are calling for an International Agreement on Aid to
make aid real and accountable. [24] This has to go hand in hand with demanding
demilitarisation and an end to the war in Afghanistan and the occupation of
Iraq. No matter how good aid work is, it will not contribute towards genuine
reconstruction if it is also being used to reinforce the military interests of
the principal donor country and to maintain its hegemonic dominance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 





      
_______________________________________________
permaculture mailing list
permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
Subscribe or unsubscribe here:
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture
Google command to search archives:
site:http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/permaculture searchstring