permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

How To Decolonize The Permaculture Movement | The Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tobias-roberts/how-to-decolonize-the-per_b_14501784.html

THE BLOG
01/31/2017 02:04 pm ET
How To Decolonize The Permaculture Movement
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/tobias-roberts>
By Tobias Roberts <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/tobias-roberts>

   -

About a year ago, I posted an article in the Huffington Post
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tobias-roberts/permaculture-as-a-gringo-_b_9753212.html>
detailing some of the reasons why I thought permaculture had become a
“gringo” movement irrelevant to the majority of small farmers around the
world.

There were a number of reactions, both positive and negative, but I was
frustrated that very few people actually offered some sort of solution or
proposal for how to “un-gringo” a movement and ideology that we find hope
in.

After a good deal of reflection, I want to focus now on how to rescue the
permaculture movement; how to save it from some of its most disturbing and
troubling tendencies. I believe that permaculture does have a lot to offer
to peasant and agrarian communities around the world, so I humbly offer
these ideas and suggestions not as a judgement; but rather in the hopes
that permaculture can become relevant and practically applicable to the
majority of small farmers around the world.

*Stop Buying Land in Shangri-La Areas Around the World*

We need to understand the effects of our privilege. As a foreigner (most
likely white and male, because that is the predominant demographic of the
permaculture movement) we are inevitably going to change the dynamics of
small, rural communities where we take up residence.

While there can be positive effects through bringing new knowledge and
ideas into a community, there can (and often are) unseen and ignored
negative effects. When wealthy foreigners buy up land in rural, agrarian
areas, this inevitably leads to gentrification. The spike in land prices
forces young people off of the land and causes migration.

I don´t excuse myself from this reality. As a white, North American male,
my family and I bought a farm in the mountains of El Salvador that was the
inheritance of a young man who was no longer interested in farming. With
the money we paid him, he paid a human trafficker to try and make it to the
United States and has failed twice. If he tries to go again, he´ll have to
deal with a ridiculous wall, increased border militarization, and a racist
president.

My only excuse is that I fell in love with a Salvadoran woman who invited
me to be a part of her reality. If you do end up purchasing land in some
hidden, agrarian community, make an effort to truly belong there. If you´re
just buying a piece of land to have it as a vacation home and a place to
host a couple permaculture workshops during the year, you´re probably
causing much more harm than good.

Also, if you are interested in permaculture and are looking for land to
create a vision of your own, why not look at land in rural Kentucky instead
of Costa Rica? Not only is land in many rural areas of the U.S. cheaper,
but there is also an urgent need to repopulate rural areas and increase the
“eyes-to-acre” ratio that is necessary for proper land management and
ecological care.

*Don’t Make Permaculture Courses Your Primary Source of Income*

I understand that a number of people in the developed world have the extra
income to spend on a $2,000-dollar permaculture course. If they’ve got the
money, why shouldn´t they pay?

The problem is that if you derive the majority of your income from offering
permaculture courses, you´re automatically divorcing yourself from the
reality of your neighbors who make their living from the land. You can´t
claim to offer a viable economic alternative (no matter how ecological it
may be) to your under privileged neighbors who see that your income comes
from hosting wealthy North Americans.

What if we were to use that money to re-distribute economic opportunities
to our neighbors? We need to be honest and admit that establishing an
economically viable permaculture system takes time and money. I´m not
saying that we should stop offering courses all together, but rather
reconsider how to invest that money into the dreams and visions of neighbor
farmers who don’t have the same economic potential as do we.

After all, isn´t that what the third ethic of permaculture is all about:
redistributing surplus so that others can enjoy the long-term abundance
that comes from ecological design?

*Stop Appropriating Knowledge*

There is nothing that angers me more than watching permaculture videos on
YouTube where some permaculture expert claims to have “developed” or
“invented” some revolutionary technique to help preserve soil, store water,
or save the environment.

For example, recently I watched a video of a permaculture farmer who claims
to have developed a technique to slow erosion through making banana leaf
boomerang barriers on the slope beneath where he planted some fruit trees.
The idea is no doubt a good one; but it´s far from a unique development. I
personally have seen dozens of small farmers throughout Central America do
the exact same thing. Of course, they don’t have access to a camera and the
internet to show the world their invention.

To put it bluntly, this is appropriation of knowledge, and it´s the same
thing that mega- pharmaceutical companies and agricultural corporations
have been doing for years through the patenting of medicines and seeds that
have been stolen from the shared ecological wisdom of indigenous and
peasant cultures throughout the world.

Be humble, and recognize that while permaculture may very well have a
number of unique skills to offer, many of these skills and techniques have
been around for hundreds of years.

*Stop Demonizing Small Peasants*

There are a number of very serious problems with how many small farmers in
Central America and other parts of the world farm their lands. The effects
of the Green Revolution on small farmers around the world have led to an
almost complete loss of traditional farming knowledge in some rural
communities

The excessive use of pesticides and herbicides, burning crop residues,
tilling hillsides, and other examples of ecologically damaging farming
practices are obviously unsustainable, unhealthy, and damaging to the
environment. The solution, however, is not to criticize these farmers, but
rather to humbly seek to understand their situation.

If you had an acre of land and 6 children to feed, would you prioritize
permaculture farming solutions that might offer abundance a decade from now
or would you continue to follow the well-trodden path that while
unsustainable, does offer subsistence and income?

Instead of criticizing small farmers who adopt unsustainable farming
practices, it would be much more valuable to look at the sociological and
systemic factors that lead to this adoption. Permaculture has not had much
of a voice for advocacy, but it would be heartening to see permaculture
“experts” around the world offer their voices to fight against unfair
distribution of land instead of simply blaming small farmers for their
“ignorance.”

*Start Farming Grains*

I understand that annual grain farming does come with a number of
difficulties. The annual tillage of the land and the monocultures of one
crop obviously present an ecological challenge. But you know what, agrarian
communities around the world subsist on the farming of annual grains and
that is not going to change. Even if you stoutly believe in developing a
“food forest” or “stacked polycultures” of tree and perennial crops,
dedicate at least a portion of your land to developing more ecological
solutions for annual grain crops.

It takes years for a perennial food system to develop enough to offer any
sort of subsistence or income, and almost no small farmer around the world
has enough savings or alternative sources of income to wait around for
their system to develop into the marvelous and awe-inspiring productive
systems that you see on a 20-year-old permaculture farm

I´m not saying that we should throw out the idea of food forests or
perennial crops, but avoid the tendency to offer those systems as the
“only” way to grow food in an ecological and sustainable manner. When you
show off your acres and acres of food forest to a small farmer in Central
America, chances are that he or she might find it interesting but have
little incentive to try and reproduce what you have created.

If, however, you had a diversified landscape with an acre of food forest,
an acre of pasture, and an acre of annual crops, there is a far better
chance that your neighbors will find interest in what you´re developing.

Despite the challenges, it is possible to grow grains in a sustainable,
ecological fashion. Susana Lein of Salamander Springs Farm
<http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/salamander-springs-farm-zbcz1405>
in rural Kentucky lived and worked in Guatemala for close to a decade. When
she moved to her own farm in Kentucky, she started a no-till Fukuoka method
of annual grain production that was adapted to the traditional corn and
bean diet of Central American farmers. If she can do that in Kentucky, why
aren´t more permaculturists doing the same in Central America, or
experimenting with no-till rice harvests in Asia.

*Be Aware of Alternative Epistemologies*

The bread and butter of the permaculture movement is the PDC, or
permaculture design course. The two-week curriculum has been offered by
thousands of teachers in every part of the world and has been adapted to
the specific and particular contexts of small farmers everywhere.

Many of the folks who critiqued my first article argued that they offered
free PDC´s to their neighbor farmers. While I find that commendable, I
think it´s also important to recognize that many rural, peasant and
indigenous communities don’t learn the same us westerners do.

The pedagogy of a course with Power Point presentations, lectures and
“visits” to the field might actually be so foreign to a small Guatemalan
farmer that he or she might get nothing out of it. The Brazilian
professor Boaventura
Sousa Santos talks of the idea of epistemicide
<http://C:/Users/Tobias/Desktop/jwsr.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/jwsr/article/view/540>,
the elimination of alternative forms of knowing through the colonization
that comes through western academia and forms of learning.

An NGO that I worked with in Guatemala found that the best way to “teach”
small Guatemalan farmers had nothing to do with courses, workshops,
agricultural schools, or the like. Rather, they simply brought small
farmers from neighboring communities together to tour the farms and lands
that each one worked.

While one corn field may appear just like every other corn field to the
untrained eye, these visits allowed for small farmers to learn of small
variations in growing techniques, in seed saving, in the combination of
companion plants, in soil preservation that many “experts” might never have
noticed. At the same time, it allowed for small farmers to take pride in
what* they* were doing which is so often criticized or ignored

Perhaps the famous PDC needs to be laid to rest and other, more appropriate
pedagogies developed if permaculture is going to find relevance with small
farmers around the world

*Conclusion*

I truly hope that this article doesn’t come across as a futile and derisive
attack on permaculture practitioners around the world. I do honestly
believe (and hope) that permaculture has a lot to offer the world. We need
to recognize, however, that what´s most important isn´t the content or
subject in itself, but rather how it is presented with respect for the
local autonomy of the placed agrarian communities around the world.
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/tobias-roberts>
Tobias Roberts <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/tobias-roberts>
International Development Worker