permaculture

[christopher nesbitt <christopher.nesbitt@mmrfbz.org>]

A lot of it was very specifically directed at me. He and I had this
discussion already. He wrote another "piece"
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tobias-roberts/permaculture-as-a-gringo-_b_9753212.html>.
I responded directly to him, then, and some of the language he uses in this
latest article is from that conversation. I have responded, directly, to
him, again, after reading this article. He wrote back admitting he had done
no research.

First, he is spot on in many regards. I agree that a lot of permaculturists
who move to the developing world benefit from an uneven power dynamic from
coming from richer nations. I, myself, was born and raised in NYC, and when
I arrived in Belize at age 19, in 1985, I was a young, clueless and largely
helpless person. I was helped by the kindness of many people.

In 1988 I bought an old abandoned citrus and cattle farm, two miles from
the nearest road. Belize had a population density of 16.9 people per square
mile when I arrived in Belize in 1985. If I had not bought it, it would
likely still be for sale. Very few people are as stupid as I was, or as
stubborn as I am.

I also agree that many aspiring permaculturists visiting the lowland humid
tropics tend to not understand the wisdom in indigenous knowledge, and can
be condescending and dismissive of indigenous people and their practices. I
have heard on multiple occasions from some 20 something year olds that they
are coming to Belize to “teach the Mayans (sic) permaculture”. Some of them
have only taken that free online course which is not a permaculture design
course. They do not know the soils, weather cycles, the plants or the
people. That unintentional white supremacist attitude is repellent, but
very common. As I explained to him, it is not my attitude. I have worked
with farmers for the last 28 years in various capacities, and still learn
new things. I practiced permaculture for 15 years before I felt I had
anything to offer. Because I am a farmer, i can frame that conversation
with local references of soil, plant species, weather and pests because my
understanding of farming mirrors their experience.

I discussed his mention of the the video about the Mascarenhas Mulching
Method <https://vimeo.com/165602243> with him. His assertion that I claim
to have invented it is not supported by the video, itself. I suggested he
needed to rewatch the video. Kevin Mascarenhas introduced that to the farm
while studying agroforestry here. He is from India, via UK. I did not
“appropriate” it, and Kevin is not “white”, but we have replicated the
technique he made, here, and we honor Kevin, from India, every time we
mention it by calling it the Mascarenhas Mulching Method. But to Tobias, it
was appropriation.

I never said this mulching method is not being done, elsewhere. It may well
be. He says so, and I believe it. It is fairly sensible. But we have
introduced it to cacao farmers through Toledo Cacao Growers Association,
where I worked for 7 years on organic and fairtrade certification, and it
was new to the Kekchi and Mopan farmers we have trained, here. We are
seeing very good results in cacao.

We made the video to share with people who may not know if it, and with
most young farmers in Belize having smart phones and watching videos, we
felt it was a good way to transmit information. In fact we get feedback
from farmers who learned of it through this medium. Yet all he saw was
appropriation. I am not seeing sharing this and attributing it to the guy
who introduced it to me, here, as appropriation. I am not seeing a problem
in putting it on line to share with the young farmers of Belize and the
Caribbean who speak English and have internet access.

On line is a good way to reach Belizeans youth.

We hosted a “Climate Change Mitigation Through Permaculture” workshop, in
Kekchi, funded by UNDP working with former refugees fleeing the shit awful
mess that is Guatemala for indigenous people. Out of that, we published a
manual in print, a few hundred copies,
<http://www.yaaxche.org/files/Agromanual2014.pdf> in conjunction with a
Maya led NGO called Ya’axche Conservation Trust (YCT). We have a very long
history with them, having trained their extension officers and people from
their target communities in cacao dominated agroforestry and also full 72
hour PDCs. We made the manual available, also on line, and it has been
downloaded 27,000 times, with much of that going to other countries in the
lowland humid tropics.

Working with YCT we have installed photovoltaic lighting systems in three
of the 15 schools we have done, and they assisted us with wire and pipe for
a community photovoltaic system in Medina Bank, a Kekchi Maya community
founded in 1990 by UNHCR. That system has provided 300-425 people
(community expanded) with clean drinking water since 2009. We designed it,
installed it and trained a water board. When the pump was not working, they
had enough money saved up to buy another pump.

Most permaculturists I know do not demonize small farmers. Some do, but
many of us work with small farmers regularly. Here in Belize, my wife and I
work with indigenous Kekchi and Mopan Maya farmers, refugees from
Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, and farmers from other countries. My
wife is East Indian/Yucatec Maya, and has farmers in her family. What we do
is to talk about the insidious erosion of indigenous knowledge in favor of
the seductive reductionist logic inherent in the “green revolution”. What
we do is create trainings that identify issues tied to climate change and
how to mitigate it and make their farming systems less brittle, and we do
those trainings in Kekchi and Mopan Maya languages.

Permaculture seeks to retain knowledge that is disappearing under the
triple onslaught of introduced “green revolution” stupidity, which has
erased traditional knowledge in a short amount of time, the arrival of
evangelicals, who demonize traditional belief systems, and the
out-migration of rural people to the cities and tourism hotspots in search
of income..

He is totally unaware of great people working in permaculture in the
developing world who are not, like me, white and male, people like Linda
Kaibira of Zimbabwe and Rita Therese Khawand of Lebanon, Paulina Chaverri
of Costa Rica, John Nzira of South Africa, Murad Al Khuffash of Palestine,
Beatriz Arjona of Colombia, Rev Fr Eston and Joyce Pembamoyo of Malawi,
Mugove Walter Nyika, also of Malawi, Aaron Kalala Karumba of DR Congo,
Ayouba m kamara of Liberia, Tierra Martinez of Argentina, Narsanna Kopula
of India and Prabhina Shrestha of Nepal, among many, many others. We know
them, and they are part of a growing movement in permaculture in the
developing world. He would know that if he did more research. I think much
of what he write was trying to confirm things he felt.

He seems to feel the only work being done in permaculture in the developing
world is on stacked polycultures. While much of the work we, personally, do
is on climate change mitigation and land repair through permaculture, I
have lived in a Maya community for 29 years, I have god children, I know
maize is an integral part of identity. Maize is also the leading cause of
deforestation in the foothills of the Maya Mountains where we live and work
and all  of Mesoamerica. So, of course we work on ways to improve that. The
inga alley cropping system from Honduras (Mike Hands/Inga Foundation) was
introduced to Belize by us, and our Maya friends and coworkers at Ya’axche
Conservation Trust are running with it, doing massive extension work in
communities we do not have time or funds to meet with. They use us as a
venue for that training.

We also designed a composting latrine that has been replicated in the
villages, in schools and ranger stations. We are wrapping up a project
right now where we built five prototypes in San Benito Poite, up on the
border. The village has grown from 12 households in 1992 ,when I first
walked up there, to over 100 houses, now. Intestinal parasites are the
norm, there. %90 of the visits to the rural polycinics that are not
prenatal, neonatal and postnatal care are tied to avoidable ass to mouth
diseases. The lens tha created that was permaculture.

There is permaculture work ongoing in many countries of the world being led
by locals. Much of it is agriculture, land use, some is social, community
waterboards and creation of buffer ones. Some of it, like Ritas work in
Lebanon, is about how to deal with the accumulated garbage and shit in a
failed country. She is a hero, to me. And I do what I do because, like
Rita, I love my country, and want good for my neighbors.

Lastly, yes, in 1988 I bought a piece of land, an old degraded citrus and
cattle farm that was for sale cheap because it had no road, no piped water,
no electricity, the soil was depleted, noone wanted to live here, and, to
this day, my closest neighbors are a mile down river. I was too stupid, at
the time, to understand how damaged the land was. There is still no road. I
learned how to do photovoltaic systems, and now train Belizeans in it,
through funding from UNDP/GEF. I came up with a way to repair damaged land
and get yields out of it every year from year 1.

In the interim, I was given nationality. My kids were born here. While the
demographic he demonize is “white males”, I fit that, being white and male,
I am also a full Belizean, and a full time farmer. I do one PDC a year, and
after the course is done, when all the teachers are paid, and the
scholarships are sent home on busses, we may have made USD2,000 from it.
This year we made $1,500. My wife and I make more money doing rapid species
assessments and environmental impact assessments in a week of work than we
do during a PDC. The pedagogy of our courses reach all of the students who
are here, because we take time to frame it in a context that references
indigenous experience in language they understand. We also work for the
government of Belize doing training in photovoltaics, agroforestry, inga
alley cropping. We have sent food, weekly, to an elderly feeding program in
Punta Gorda that works with 22-25 clients every week for the last 10 years.
I belong here. I vote. I participate. I build. I teach. This is MY country.
I am Belizean.

Maybe his relationship with El Salvador or Guatemala is different. I often
feel missionaries coming with their foreign ideas are unaware of the damage
they do, the displacement of identity, the erosion of traditional values
and belief systems, the “demonizing” of traditional values, the creation of
a culture of dependence. I know missionaries who live like pashas, big
houses, fancy trucks (and they do not pick up hitchhikers). I have known
missionaries who were also drug smugglers, or gun runners, or sellers of
looted Maya artifacts. I have known missionaries who ended up being
pedophiles, using their position to gain access to children. I could easily
paint all the missionaries with that brush, ignoring the good that some
missionaries do, the free clinics, the access to medical care,  the
childrens homes they provide for orphans and for kids whose family
situation is either permanently or temporarily fucked, the reduction of
alcoholism and domestic abuse i communities targeted by active and present
missionaries. Having read something he wrote on the topic, I have similar
jaundiced feelings about most “Christians” in the neighborhood. We probably
have much we agree on in this regard. His work to promote ecotourism to
reduce out-migration from El Salvador is worthy. So is many peoples work in
permaculture.

Permaculture has a place in the list of solutions. Some of the people
practicing it are going to be white men. Life is nuanced. Not everything is
black and white, especially in permaculture.

I wish he would not assign values to other peoples work on the metric of
his own efforts. What he wrote missed so much good being done by
permaculturists in the developing world, and sought only to support the
simplistic narrative that permaculture is for and by "white men".

_____________________________

Christopher Nesbitt


Maya Mountain Research Farm

San Pedro Columbia, Toledo

PO 153 Punta Gorda Town, Toledo

BELIZE,

Central America


www.mmrfbz.org
www.facebook.com/MayaMountainResearchFarm

On Wed, Apr 26, 2017 at 9:12 PM, Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 26, 2017 at 9:04 PM, Claudia Joseph <permie@earthlink.net>
> wrote:
>
> > 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.
> >
>
> Congratulations on your success. You are making waves, which it super
> important.
>
> Maybe we can get a farmers coop started here in NC.......you never know
> what might be possible.
>
>
> > Looking at our timeline, the more direct action we can foster, the
> better.
> > - Claudia
> >
>
> That is the biggest message, direct action.
>
> Hope you and yours have a great Summer in NYC (I assume you are in
> Brooklyn).
>
>
>
>
> --
> Lawrence F. London, Jr.
> lfljvenaura@gmail.com
> https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared
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