permaculture

[Claudia Joseph <permie@earthlink.net>]

Some good points here. It does seem that continual teaching and making a 
living from teaching produces a specific type of academic permaculture. I 
stopped teaching the PDC and the shorter Accelerated course I had been 
offering in favor of Field Training this season. It seemed what people needed 
most in NYC and it is moving our public model forward very nicely. I am not 
making as much income - there will be a balance point somewhere along the 
way, I am sure. Offering barter and scholarships for low income participants 
feels just right. And one woman said her husband’s employer would double 
match her tuition; redistributing overabundance happened without my even 
asking. Looking at our timeline, the more direct action we can foster, the 
better. - Claudia



> On Apr 26, 2017, at 12:51 PM, Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 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
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