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  • From: venaurafarm <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] [permaculture-99] Dacha Movement: History and Effects In Russia
  • Date: Tue, 07 Aug 2012 14:28:04 -0400

On 8/7/2012 10:02 AM, Toby Hemenway wrote:
If we want to survive . . . each and every family as much as
possible needs to be able to produce it's own food for itself, and
as many other people as possible.

Right on and thumbs up, onward relentless, let nothing stand in your way.

I don't need to grow my own food.

But there are millions of others who do need to grow their own food in order to have a healthy diet, involve themselves in very worthwhile activities as practitioners and learners. Many need to do this to put food on their tables as they try to weather the poor economy, job loss, keep their homes and land, keep transportation or seek working alternatives (bus, bicycle, carpool), have adequate healthcare, etc.

I need to be part of a healthy
network that does.

Those networks, if they exist, are not necessarily available to millions of people and for a varieties or reasons. Let's hear more about your networks. Who forms them, who is part of them and who keeps them going and functionsl?

The LL plan for America includes a computer/web/internet-based product and services production, marketing and distribution network, PSPMDN.
It could be created and made to work and serve everyone participating, no matter how small, as consumer or seller, barter, trade, donate, have its own currency and be compatible and cooperative with the IRS.

While I'd love it if everyone gardened, a
coordinated community food system

Where are they and how many are there; what is the projected future for this resource?

is more resilient and allows more
diversity than individual dachas, and fits better with American
culture and land ownership patterns. The US has a very different
history from Russia.

Not so. At all. You're conception of this is too fixed and limited
and too limited to the past.

And most yards are too small to produce "all our
own food."

Straw man argument. They need to produce as much of their food needs as possible, themselves. This can be done in pots or windowsills in apartments, urban or suburban homes, rural homes and homesteads and farms. How many thousands of books have been written encouraging people to grow their own for table fare and health, and to share or sell. How many tens of thousands of videos exist on YouTube demonstrating every aspect of home food production and renewable energy, and cottage industry possibilities. We need 21st Century Victory Gardeners Practicing Permaculture. We need a nation of them. Think of the savings in energy, materials and equipment.

Its a mass movement already, a happening thing, thank providence.

This is what permaculture is really all about down to its core set of principles.

A single 18th-Century farmer could feed 50 people. Making the
household, instead of the farm, the neighborhood or even the town,
the core unit of a food system atomizes the community. Let's not
default to "go it alone." It reduces the many options for reaching a
goal--meeting our food needs--to a single tactic: grow it all
yourself. It means that this critical function is done only one way,
with all the attendant hazards (what if you get hurt?) and reduces
most people to serfs farming for a banker. It's part of the mix, but
not the solution.

The dachas are well worth looking at. But severe food and economic
disruptions tend to be brief in developed countries (see Argentina,
Iceland, Weimar Germany, Mexico, etc.), stabilizing soon at a
simplified level. So to redesign as though the unstable period will
be permanent is unwise.

While Russians were busy farming their 2.5 acre dachas all day, the
oligarchs were seizing control of everything else. They still have
it. Let's learn from that. We need to organize at a higher level than
the household.

And the oligarchs, the cabal, corporations, etc. are not doing this now? Stealing their investments, causing profound inflation and profiteering from price rises (charge what the market will bear, law of supply and demand), sending most American jobs overseas and not creating a significant number of new ones to replace those lost, largely factory and small local businesses ceasing operation in the face of competition from chain stores selling imported goods (at inflated prices). And people do not need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, reorganize their lives and livelihoods, seek self sufficiency, independence, personal sovereignty, freedom, liberty, family security and access to the basic necessities of live? Of course they do, now as much as ever, including during the Great Depression.

Toby http://patternliteracy.com

This is a good thread, keep it going.
Are you reading, Koreen and Bob Waldrop?

LL




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