permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 1:05 AM, Michael Pilarski <
friendsofthetrees@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Lawrence,
>
> You hypothecized


Looks like this old PC forum will earn its keep one way or another. Thanks
for the feedback, Michael.

I did not write that article I forwarded to the list.


> that if the Dacha gardeners grew 41% of Russia's food, that 49% is grown
> by Russia's state agriculture.  What you missed in this equation is that
> Russia is one of the world's largest food importing countries.  Russia
> imports a lot of its food.  This means that it's agricultural sector isn't
> doing very good.
>

And there is no excuse for that.

Russia has some of the best farmland in the world.
Russia HAD some of the best farmers in the world and they knew how to work
that prime farmland. Soviet Stalinism changed the face of traditional
Russian farming.
They converted all farming operations to collective farms generating food
to ship to the party elite well away from where that food was grown,
leaving farmers, their families and relatives,
communities and villlages living and working in a state of near poverty or
thereabouts, otherwise not fairly compensated for their labors. The Russian
farmers of old, called Kulaks (as far as I know) were the experts carrying
forward the best traditions of Russian agriculture. The Kulaks were not
happy with the changeover. Their displeasure did not go unnoticed in the
ceners of political control so they were either exiled to Siberia or
exterminated. Russia was left with no new generation who know how to work
those magnificent lands (Black Earth Region stretching from Ukraine to
Siberia). That's what you have now so no new national agricultural
infrastructure serving the Russian people at large. Just oligarchs and
their schemes one of which is to sell or lease some of that Black Earth
region.  But you have the Dacha Gardeners and community and village gardens
as well most probably with larger farms distributing food throughout their
regions. You will like this: I met a Krishna follower in Whole Foods one
evening years ago and struck up a conversation asking him about organic
agriculture there. He replied that after the Soviets left their traditional
farming resumed without missing a beat. Most of their farms were small
family units with some medium large with all food sold locally or
distributed within the immediate region if they were one of the few larger
commercial operations. It was an assumed fact that the food sold at markets
was organically grown. If a grower tried to sell food
produced using methods involving pesticides, it became known rapidly and
that vendor was shut out of the marketplace.

>
> This should be a fact that should sober up the USA and other western
> countries who rely on agribusiness agriculture to feed people.
> Agribusiness and agriculture suffer mightily when empires crash.


People in the US need to wake up to the fact that they need clean
nutritious food in order to live a normal healthy life and that food needs
to be grown using natural methods and materials and produced within a
reasonable proximity to consumers.


> The US does not have a counterpart to Russia's dacha food production.  In
> case of a collapse, the US will be in a tough spot for food.
>

They can begin now to create one. It would be really fine if we had Russian
dacha gardeners and would be American cottage gardeners here together in
this mailing list.
What would it take to get that ball rolling? a special permaculture or PDC
event or events focusing on that, for starters.

LL

>
>
>
> Michael "Skeeter" Pilarski
> Permaculture - Wildcrafting - Medicinal Herbs & Seeds
>
>
>
> ________________________________
>  From: Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>
> To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Sent: Monday, May 13, 2013 6:49 PM
> Subject: [permaculture] Dacha gardeners feeding the Russian nation | In
> 2011 the dacha gardens of Russia produced 40% of the nation's food.
>
>
> Dacha gardeners feeding the Russian nation
> http://naturalhomes.org/naturalliving/russian-dacha.htm
> In 2011 the dacha gardens of Russia produced 40% of the nation's food.
>
>
> 40% of Russia's Food is from Dacha Gardens
>
> In 2011, 51% of Russia's food was grown either by dacha communities (40%),
> like those pictured left in Sisto-Palkino, or peasant farmers (11%) leaving
> the rest (49%) of production to the large agricultural enterprises. But
> when you dig down into the earthy data from the Russian Statistics
> Service<
> http://www.gks.ru/wps/wcm/connect/rosstat_main/rosstat/en/figures/agriculture/
> >you
> discover some impressive details. Again in 2011, dacha gardens
> produced
> over 80% of the countries fruit and berries, over 66% of the vegetables,
> almost 80% of the potatoes and nearly 50% of the nations milk, much of it
> consumed raw.
>
> While many European governments make living on a small-holding very
> difficult, in Russia the opposite is the case. In the UK one
> councillor<
> http://www.lowimpact.org/blog/2012/Sep/smallholding_is_like_prison.htm>'s
> opinion regarding living of the land was, "*Nobody would subject themselves
> to that way of life. You might as well be in prison*"; tell that to a
> nation of gardeners living off the land.
>
>
> During the communist period school children were obliged to visit their
> local farms to get hands-on experience harvesting food (below left) at a
> time when about 90% of the nation's food came from dacha gardens. During
> the same period every child would be expected to play their part in growing
> the family's food from their small patch of Russia.
>
> While the percentage of food grown by Russia's dacha has fallen since then
> it is still a massive contribution to the nation's food and forms an
> important part of their rural heritage. Take a walk through the street's of
> Russia's cities, like St. Petersburg, and you will find people selling
> herbs, fruit, berries and vegetables from their dacha gardens. Unlike many
> cities in Europe and the USA, Russian cities are peppered with small corner
> shops (below right) selling locally grown food in all shapes, colours and
> sizes still carrying their native Russian soil.
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