Permaculture Farming

Archive for July, 2009

Ingenious self watering potplants at Cecilias Melbourne balcony garden

Question: Can Permaculture create feasible employment?

The traditional agriculture of some countries, like Cuba, is done in such a way that laborers live off what they produce. Hence, the wealth accumulated is not exchanged for other services as much, as which typifies modern economies. Does this kind of self-sufficiency necessarily lead to stagnation?

Answer: Can Permaculture create feasible employment?

It is doing, look at the number of people who are employed teaching Permaculture even in the UK. Look at the number of courses that are run, look at the UK Permaculture Association staffing, look at the income from speeches, books and other literature.

Worldwide, (not UK) I know several people who make a living physically drawing the designs, then DOING and maintaining the designs and getting paid for it by other people.

There are some people who live in other countries (Not UK) that have designed and work their own Permaculture plots to meet their own needs only.

Labourers do not live off what they produce in Cuba at all, they produce it for sale now and use the money to buy resources. Cuba was not self sufficient in fuel, food, pesticides etc. The growth of Organopónicos (system of urban organic gardens) was as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the loss trading of oil, food, fertilizers etc.

The Government HAD to react in response to this because the population was starving, they arranged for unused land to be made available to the people, they supported transport, health and education and training in Organopónicos. CUBA IS NOT Permaculture it is Organopónicos. Cuba’s self sufficiency was not a choice, it was the response to a crisis and they are now trading again with other countries and increasingly becoming more and more consumerist.

It IS an example of what could be possible in similar circumstances but it is not a Permaculture model, nor is it a model that will,necessarily translate to other countries and cultures even in a crisis.

In most countries the ownership of good land to grow on is not freely available to all. In the UK Most people live in towns and cities. Most people do not want to grow their own food, fuel, materials and shelter. Even traditional mechanized farming is in rapid decline in the UK. Many people in each population are too old, ill, disabled, young etc to do so even if they wished to. We do not live in extended family units as we once did with shared resources, labour and support.

People don’t want to eat only foods they can grow, in season. We have lost the skills through generations of relying on commercial agriculture. We don’t have the variety of foods we had, the number of varieties within in each group (such as apples, nuts, grains) or the palates to eat what we used to. We don’t have access to collecting wild meats and foods as we did. Nor the legislation to support this to supplement our diets. We also has legislation that prevents a lot of the fundamental elements within Permaculture, such as having livestock or growing trees for coppicing for fuel and materials within towns or planning laws.

The reality is, that we have a much higher standard of living, few people in the UK are food rationed through winter because their crops failed, Society would now think starving to near death or premature deaths through lack of consistent crop production was not acceptable.

Even if you had the resources and skills to raise your own animals to produce leather, to make the shoes that you wear, would you also have all the other skills you needed in order to do that from blacksmithing to building the animal housing and the time to do it all in? So then there is a suggestion to widen it from ‘self’ sufficiency to more self reliance and community sufficiency. Where do you get the cash and/or time to do this?

What about the charges we can’t avoid, such as the Community Charge in the UK? And what about the infrastructure, if you are not contributing money to the roads, hospitals, police, education system etc etc should you MORALLY have access to them when everybody else is paying for them? If you agree that morally you shouldn’t how are you, your partner and kids going to provide this?

And the employment itself? What opportunities will a two week Permaculture Design Course actually provide you with? It is not even an agricultural course, nor is it a ecology course. You could design other people’s plots to provide yourself with an income, however, the price of the course and time involved means that they would be better served doing their own designs. They have to make them work for the rest of their time on that plot and DESIGN is an ongoing process, which needs continual updating, slow and small improvements over a lifetime.

Your use of the word stagnation is an interesting one. It would not be SELF sufficiency, not in the UK anyway, to work it would have to be community sufficiency to work. Would you, because of a moral ideal, really chose to pay a price substantially more for a local product than one you could buy very cheaply elsewhere? If this meant spending half a week working week in paid employment to buy a locally produced shirt, or months trying to be self sufficient to grow the fibre to spin the cloth to then make your own clothes? OR would you take the option of nipping down to

Cuba Permaculture Power 1of5