permaculture

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

Hi Kelda,

The link you provided is dead.

I am not copping to him calling me on "my stuff". I do good things because
I can. I built a useful knowledge base and skill set, and apply that to
help my neighbors because I live here. I listed some of the reasons I did
not feel it applied to me, in part because some of it was personally
directed at my work.

To whit:
"*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. *"
The target he picked on was vague enough. "white male practicing
permaculture in the developing world" is a HUGE target. So,I would not have
replied, having already discussed this with him, in the past. If he feels
the need to rephrase the same thing he wrote, before, fine. He found his
writing niche: picking at white men who practice permaculture in the
developing world. Good for him. Not much f a solution, but, hey, throwing
rocks at other peoples work is always good fun. However, it was personal,
to me, because the video he referenced was something made by a student of
mine, here, of me talking, where I shared a technique another student made.
I the video, I identified it as someone elses idea. I never said it may not
be done elsewhere because I did not think I needed to. And I am sure it is.
If he had watched the video without thinking how he might squeeze it,
awkwardly, into his paradigm of "decolonizing" permaculture, he would know
I credited a student with making it, Kevin Mascarenhas. Tobias called it
cultural appropriation and it wasn't. I had never seen it before Kevin was
doing it.

I also felt he totally ignored the many people of colour working in
permaculture, a few I listed, in part because he did not do even the most
basic research on the subject. He chose, instead, to throw rocks at
permaculture, itself, without much thought, other than to craft a well
worded, but ultimately low substance article. Picking on white males?
Bravo, how bold, how NEW!, but, hey, its the low hanging fruit.

His highlighted "Stop demonizing small peasants", ("Small *Peasants*"? What
about BIG peasants? Can we demonize BIG peasants?) showed a good deal of
empathy, but little understanding, at least expressed, of the ongoing
cultural and genetic erosion of agricultural practices in rural communities
in the developing world. I admit, my thoughts of this are focused on my
neighborhood, the Southern Maya Lowlands of Belize and Guatemala, as well
as Honduras, watching a lense of watching 32 years of cultural and genetic
erosion, but I know the same thing is ongoing in El Salvador and through
out the lowland humid tropics, the systemic dismantling of indigenous
knowledge of agriculture in favor of a the simplistic, seductive
reductionist model of the green revolution. He mentions the problem, makes
vague accusations that people do not "understand their plight", and offers
no solutions. I have spent most of the last 29 years living in a Maya
community. I think I understand some of these issues in a more nuanced way
than he seems to. Permaculture offers solutions to many of these problems,
and the lens of the principles and ethics really do help to address these
issues.

He says:
*"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"*

And, no. Thats, again, wrong. We get a yield from Year One. I started this
when I was very, very poor. We have a system we have worked on that
specifically mimics the growth pattern of succession of "wamil" or
regenerative forest. You can read about that, here.
<https://www.permaculture.co.uk/articles/apply-permaculture-exhausted-farmland-diverse-food-forest>
I am getting banana, cassava, maize, beans, pumpkin, papaya, yams,
pineapple, from year one. I am also setting the stage for what is coming,
the future food forest.

His assertion that permaculture practitioners do not grow grains is also
wrong. We are working on inga alley cropping specifically to work with
farmers who grow corn, and we grow a local open pollinated blue corn which
was threatened by the arrival of and displacement by "High yielding (really
"high responding" and dependent on NPK inputs) corn. We have been growing
this blue corn for 20 years. What a yopic understanding of permaculture to
say grains are not a part of our collective practice.

He sought to make one point, and cherry picked broadly to do so. As I said,
i think he has some things right, but much of it seems to be right despite
the rest of the article being all about justifying his paradigm.

For all his talk about "decolonizing", did not anyone else find it curious
that there was not one mention of women, other than his Salvadoran wife? I
saw not one thought expressed on gender equity, at all. Where is the place
of women in his thoughts on "decolonizing"? does he seek to decolonize
permaculture only for men? Hmmm.
On that front I will expand a little on how we work on that specific issue.

All of our PDCs have had scholarships for Belizeans.We have provided 170
scholarships for Belizeans at our PDCs. Over %50 of those scholarships have
been female. Our teachers have been %50 female, as well. it would be easy
to build a teaching team of men. I know lots of men teachers who are
excellent teachers, many are my friends. But we work to make women teaching
happen. We have had Penny Livingston,Maria Ros, Maurisha Auerback and
Anandi Premlall teach here. And all of these women are fantastic teachers.
This is not charity, this is simply making space for that to happen.

It would be easy to fill our PDC scholarships with men, too. Men are more
likely to leave their communities,to take trainings, especially from
indigenous communities. How do we make sure we have women in our courses?
By seeking it. By meeting with women in the communities. By working with
other NGOs in communities they target. By usig our long history of working
in  indigeous communities on other projects.

The key is to make space for women. He does not bother to mention women in
his article except as his wife.

So, his decolonization process does not include women. I find that absence
noteworthy. Perhaps it is because he is a Mennonite and they have rigid
gender roles and expectations, imposing limitations on what women can do
because of their understanding of the Bible. (......and before anyone
contradicts this, I will mention that my daughter goes to a Mennonite High
School here in Belize and they refuse to let her take wood working classes,
even though her father has been planting timber trees for the last 29 years
and she will inherit hundreds of thousands of board feet of mahogany, cedar
psalmwood, mayflower, teak, barbajalote, etc, that I have planted to enable
them to go to university. It is part of the whole Christian "thing' to
disempower and marginalize women through bullshit gender roles and then
justify it based on scripture. I was told that "women need to take home
economcs classes and learn to cook" when I confronted the principal teacher
abut this stupidness. Do I feel the need to write repetitive articles about
fascists womyn hating pacifist Biblical zealouts who marginalize women? No.
Because I see the good they do despite being sexist oppressors of women in
general and my daughter, in particular).

I am okay on being called out on my shit. But what he wrote did not apply
to me, except where he misunderstood the video we made. Thats not calling
people on their shit, its just sloppy thinking. Rather than to reiterate
all the work I have done for my whole adult life in the indigenous
communities that are my neighbors, in detail, much of it leveraging the
privilege and subsequent access to education that comes being a middle
class white male, since I already touched on it, above, I am just going to
steal Jasons eloquent words, here, because they are better than anything
that I might come up with:


*If that looks like I'm saying I'm not that kind of gringo, that might be
because I've been working for most of my life to not be that kind of
gringo.*
Best wishes,

Christopher

_____________________________

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 Fri, Apr 28, 2017 at 8:55 PM, Jason Gerhardt <jasongerhardt@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi Kelda,
> I think you misunderstood my comments. I'm simply asking for greater depth
> than boilerplate anti-racism lingo. At some point we have to go deeper than
> political correctness and anti-racism training, of which I've been part of
> many, and even hosted during my PDC's, and for the record not a whole lot
> of social justice activists I meet these days, myself included, think that
> anti-racism training is the be all end all to ending oppression. I'm simply
> looking for results, not more talk. I find white people that go out of
> their way to constantly criticize other white people they deem less
> enlightened are actually not doing much other than talking themselves. I
> can criticize their criticisms without it being because I was
> uncomfortable, but rather because I find their statements to be lacking a
> certain intelligence.
>
> I do find myself uncomfortable all the time, the life I live and the
> situations I find myself in demands such. I am white (actually Austrian,
> Irish, and Swedish since "white" is a term created to reinforce division),
> male, heterosexual, and recognize the privileges my characteristics
> unfairly afford me, as well as the inherent levels of racism that come with
> these privileges, which is why I've actively striven to make my life about
> the third ethic. I won't be admitting to things that I don't do, and found
> Tobias' article to be a criticism I don't find to be so generally true in
> the permaculture field. If that looks like I'm saying I'm not that kind of
> gringo, that might be because I've been working for most of my life to not
> be that kind of gringo.
>
> Best,
> Jason
>
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 28, 2017 at 6:23 PM, Kelda Lorax <kelda@riseup.net> wrote:
>
> > I love that he wrote this article, and the last one. I put a link to it
> on
> > my (permaculture design) website along with the positionality
> perspectives
> > I wish other permaculture practitioners can articulate.
> > http://divinearthgp.com/positionality.
> >
> > Getting called out on our stuff sucks, but feels good, because we become
> > better people and it makes our movement better. Both Jason and Chris
> sound
> > like you're listing to us all the reasons you're not that kind of gringo.
> > Okay, but I'm happy to say I AM the kind of gringo that thought all of
> his
> > complaints were okay until I was called out for not having a better
> social
> > justice lens, and now I think they're not okay. (One of the first steps
> in
> > anti-racism trainings is to realize that all white people are racist
> > because we've been trained to be that way. To deny our training is just
> to
> > delay our inner work that could actually help to fix the problem).
> >
> > About cultural appropriation specifically, I think PDCs (which do
> > admittedly work well for certain parts of the world and people) need very
> > much an acknowledgement of where our techniques come from. Additionally
> we
> > need a fundraising 'pass the hat' with each module (or as a percentage of
> > the course) to help those communities that developed awesome techniques
> > self-actualize with whatever negative impacts they're currently facing
> > under colonization. I want my students to be just as well-versed with the
> > struggles of those communities now as they are with how the technique can
> > work in their garden. And because I'm white, I go through every module
> > thinking of who in my community, that has experience of being a person of
> > color, could teach the module better than me, and I 'step back' as much
> as
> > possible.
> >
> > We white permies need to be okay getting called out, and I daresay, like
> > it, if we want other white communities/regions/political parties to be
> able
> > to do it too. Otherwise it's just an irrelevant garden and another white
> > person causing trauma to brown people.
> >
> > Kelda Lorax
> >
> >
> >
> > On 2017-04-27 13:57, Jason Gerhardt wrote:
> >
> >> Christopher, thank you for responding to this. I thought of your work
> >> immediately, though I was unaware of your history with the author. He
> has
> >> done zero research, as you point out, other than surface scans of
> things.
> >> He seems more trying to act out the popular social justice angst of the
> >> times so he could get whatever little fee Huff Po paid him for this
> >> article. His title is also extremely broad and his article extremely
> >> limited, and the whole thing does damage to permaculture, which does an
> >> incredible amount of good on the earth.
> >>
> >> Things I question from this article:
> >>
> >> On Cultural Appropriation. Where do we draw the line between cultural
> >> appropriation and cultural exchange? I was once criticized by a white
> >> woman
> >> for using clay ollas in my university greenhouse as cultural
> >> appropriation.
> >> She said it was an indigenous  technique and I shouldn't use them
> without
> >> crediting the Hopi with a sign (why she settled on Hopi people I don't
> >> know). When I asked her if I shouldn't also credit North African's and
> the
> >> Spanish, who brought the technique to the US Southwest, she had no
> answer.
> >> People live on the surface, especially nowadays with social media and
> >> character limits/attention span limits. It's disappointing.
> >> Permaculturists
> >> probably haven't given enough credit to traditional peoples for some of
> >> the
> >> techniques we recommend, or for the paradigm, but even that credit seems
> >> like a general form at best. This is a tricky subject when applied with
> a
> >> deep look.
> >>
> >> Permaculture Demographics. Are we sure it's predominately white male?
> >> Permaculture authors, it seems that's true, and surely it's true for
> >> youtube permaculture, but that's not the claim he made, nor
> representative
> >> of the global demographic of practitioners. Personally speaking, I've
> had
> >> the same amount of female permaculture mentors, teachers, and
> co-teachers
> >> in my nearly 15 years in the field as I've had male, and while that may
> >> not
> >> be representative, it's my experience nonetheless. I can also say I've
> had
> >> far more female students than men. The white part of this claim is
> >> probably
> >> true, but globally I'd be curious to see data before making that claim,
> >> and
> >> regardless, his article does absolutely nothing to address the real
> >> injustices that exist.
> >>
> >> On making a living as a teacher. Well, I'm glad I don't, but not for the
> >> reasons he suggests. I don't see how I could be a teacher only without
> >> also
> >> being a designer and agriculturist, and for that matter a social
> activist.
> >> However, his claim is that courses cost too much, the PDC should be
> >> abandoned (I'm not even gonna address this), and only white people take
> >> them. The last claim is just rubbish, and demeaning to many of my
> students
> >> of color. That said, I took exception to the cost issue because judging
> by
> >> the date of the article a course I taught in Costa Rica was probably in
> >> his
> >> sample size. I think he should go to the campesino refugee camp of
> >> Salvadorans and Nicaraguans this course was taught in, at their request,
> >> and tell them that the nearly $15k we left in the community shouldn't
> have
> >> happened, and that the international students who brought in that money
> >> should feel bad about their privilege.
> >>
> >> On pedagogy. He claims traditional people can't learn from power point
> and
> >> lecture. LMFAO. He should keep telling people what they can and can't
> do,
> >> it looks excellent.
> >>
> >> In short, popular culture is lost. Don't trust everything you read and
> >> hear. Dig deeper than the surface.
> >>
> >> Two recommendations for decolonizing your mind (which is actually the
> >> culprit here, not permaculture): Raoul Peck's film I Am Not Your Negro
> >> based upon James Baldwin's work, and Wendell Berry's book The Art of the
> >> Commonplace.
> >>
> >> Please, please, please dig deep in this life,
> >> Jason
> >> permaculture mailing list
> >> permaculture@mailman1.ibiblio.org
> >> subscribe/unsubscribe|user config|list info:
> >> http://mailman1.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture
> >>
> >
> > permaculture mailing list
> > permaculture@mailman1.ibiblio.org
> > subscribe/unsubscribe|user config|list info:
> > http://mailman1.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture
> >
>
>
>
> --
>
>
> www.realearthdesign.com
>
> 720-496-9744
> permaculture mailing list
> permaculture@mailman1.ibiblio.org
> subscribe/unsubscribe|user config|list info:
> http://mailman1.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture
>