permaculture

[Daniel Jager <dfjager@yahoo.com>]

Your complex systems adaptation-idea is interesting, but not very realistic 
in my view. You seem to put a lot of faith in the technological / mechanical 
interconnectedness of things. But it is precisely the interconnectedness of 
PEOPLE that is lacking, and this, in the end, will always break apart 
whatever 'systems' we have created together.

And fit seems to me we can't make a new 'system' that will *teach* us to be 
nice and good with Nature and good to our fellow man. Spiritual giants, far 
far above our present state, have tried. And the resulting systems have 
utterly failed. Just look at the world what Christians, Muslims, Jews, 
Buddhists, Hindus, etc are doing to themselves, to others and to Nature. Most 
societies are just a thin veneer of 'respectability', painted over an utterly 
confused and violent collection of creatures. Put a little added stress on 
him, and uhhmm... New Orleans, Katrina, anyone?

Hence I have no faith in 'systems', if the people in that system will not 
change. And personal change, I think, cannot be 'taught', for many have 
tried, and we are still here, in the same predicament as before.

And can we truly predict which systems will fail and which succeed? In this I 
do agree with you; people and systems will have to adapt. If they can't, they 
will collapse or simply fade away with time. If they can, then the change 
will likely be a positive one.

About food actually increasing in the system this year. This viewpoint is 
very USA-centric. Where did this imported food come from? How do the people 
in those export-countries live? Perhaps we should look into the very 
unilaterally beneficial *fixed export quota* that the USA has with many 
developing nations like Honduras, Costa Rica, the Philippines, to name but a 
few. The richness that the US has is mostly stolen; through coercion, 
bribery, or through outright acts of theft and violence.
I can say these things, since I come from the Netherlands, which, with their 
merchants, have scoured the Earth for wealth and were very successful at it; 
especially considering how tiny a country we are. Doesn't change the fact 
that it is theft, though. I personally had the benefits and the nice 
education (mostly free), etc, but I never saw the true cost until I came to 
Southeast Asia.

I am not so sure if an 'adaptation' of these systems is a positive thing in 
the eyes of the peoples in other parts of the world.

>From my point of view, growing you own food is an excellent survival and 
>teaching strategy.
First of all, we reconnect ourselves directly with Nature. This should be 
step 1 for everyone. "Stop yepping, start getting mud on your hands".

Second: By being even partly self-reliable, you get faith restored in your 
own abilities: faith in the strength of one's limbs, faith in one's 
common-sense (without the need for 'degrees'), faith in the people one works 
with...

Third: I find that most people around me have NO concept of Nature, about 
planting, and have NO sensitivity to trees, plants, animals, vegetables, 
fruits and seeds anymore. It doesn't even occur to them why, how, when or 
where to start 'growing food' or 'connect with Nature', even though they wear 
T-shirts of 'Save the Planet' and "Stop climate-change'. Doing step 1, 
without talk, automatically draws in other people. Makes them curious, makes 
them wonder, makes some of them start small for themselves perhaps. This is 
an remarkably powerful and positive thing that one can do, purely by 
'individually growing one's own food', but doing so publicly.

Going at it alone, I agree, is not very helpful in the long run, but it is 
powerful in its own right, and necessary for quite a few people to get some 
of the Natural senses back, before they can work with others again.

Daniel

> Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2012 17:02:09 -0700
> From: Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>
> Subject: Re: [permaculture] The US is no longer food
> self-reliant?
> 
> On Aug 17, 2012, at 4:19 PM, John D'hondt wrote:
> 
> > 
> > What is the draught doing in your calculations Tony.
> 
> I'm glad you asked--it makes my point! The USDA harvest
> projections show how complex and unpredictable the food
> systems are. Harvests of all grains are down 12-15% in the
> US--which means the worst harvest in 8-10 years; far less of
> a catastrophe than one might think, given that the drought
> is the worst in 56 years. But get ready for this: The
> projections are for greater total stocks of corn than last
> year by 10% or more, because the decline in the global
> economy means less exported corn, less being made into
> ethanol, and, for reasons I haven't learned, we are
> importing more this year. 
> http://www.agweb.com/blog/Farmland_Forecast_148/
> 
> This--more food, not less--shows how unsuited linear
> thinking is (like, less oil means less food; bad weather
> means less food, and so on) in a complex adaptive system
> like food, the economy, and most of everything else we live
> in. That's why I'm not a doomer. Systems adapt in utterly
> unpredictable ways, and they often adapt well.
> 
> Much of the reason we default to "it's gonna get real bad,"
> besides being hard-wired for the scarcity thinking that is
> habitual, is that the systems we depend on are more complex
> that we can grasp without a lot of study, both of the system
> and of systems thinking in general. That's hard work, and
> it's much easier to think "It can't possibly hang together,
> it's so complex," when in fact it is the complexity that
> allows it to hang together, adapt, and survive even
> extremely severe shocks. And it's why "grow all your own
> food" is the least resilient, least adaptive response to
> food issues: it's totally un-networked, vulnerable, and
> simple in the worst sense of the word. That kind of
> self-reliance is not a permaculture principle; it's a
> default scarcity response and if I can achieve one (more)
> thing in life, it would be to root that out.
> 
> Toby
> http://patternliteracy.com
>