permaculture

[Michael Pilarski <friendsofthetrees@yahoo.com>]

Lawrence,  

thank you for the bit of Russian food production history. And thank you Tanya 
for pointing out the victory Gardens as our historical example. 

I'd like to respond briefly to Lawrence's idea of bringing Russian
> dacha gardeners and would be American cottage gardeners together 
> What would it take to get that ball rolling? a special permaculture or PDC
> event or events focusing on that, for starters.

For many years I have hypothecized on the idea of bringing peasant farmers 
from around the world to teach US people how to grow food.  Much of 
permaculture is drawn from peasant cultures around the world.  Low 
external-input, labor intensive, smart, 

Of course they can't afford to come here, unless we paid for it on our end.  
Us Westerners go around the world to study traditional cultures but seldom 
pay to bring them here.  

But what has been done along these lines?  Are there exchange programs? Where 
is traditional agriculture being taught to traveling Westerners?  Where are 
the best youtubes which chronicle traditional food production systems?  How 
can we learn with a lighter footprint?

Michael "Skeeter" Pilarski
Permaculture - Wildcrafting - Medicinal Herbs & Seeds


--- On Fri, 5/17/13, tanya <tanyagarden@gmail.com> wrote:

From: tanya <tanyagarden@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [permaculture] Dacha gardeners feeding the Russian nation | In 
2011 the dacha gardens of Russia produced 40% of the nation's food.
To: "permaculture" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Date: Friday, May 17, 2013, 4:00 PM

But look at the U.S. history of victory gardens! (One source is the book
The City Bountiful, which covers the history of community gardens in the
U.S.) During WW I and II, people were encouraged to aid the war effort
(with all kinds of entertaining slogans), and they grew a huge percentage
of the produce for a few years -- iirc, at peak it was something like 40%
of fresh vegs grown in the U.S. It can happen again, but it will take
another full-out concerted effort. And I think community gardens are a
great place to start.

Speaking as a community gardener with plots in 3 different gardens, I never
have enough space to grow everything I want to grow.

On the down side, food growing knowledge is probably not as prevalent now
as it was 70 or 100 years ago. And the organic growers, judging from
participants in some online gardening forums, are perhaps overly dependent
on products. (For instance, the best way to find organic gardening products
anywhere is to look for the local hydroponics store. They originally
supported growers of a famous indoor cash crop, but organic veg growers
also discovered them. And these small stores carry a fantastic array of
products!)


On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 6:53 PM, Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>wrote:

> 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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-- 
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