I run a not for profit native tree nursery on Rakino Island. I have no illusions that it's going to change anything to any measurable degree. I just want Gaia to see me not giving up on her as we relentlessly murder her in broad daylight.
"People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material portion of their privilege." John Kenneth Galbraith courtesy of GuyMcPherson.com
Actually what we have been saying is that every small step matters. Growing your herbs can save you money and reduce plastic, as they are usually heavy in that. Instead of throwing out the ends put them in water and grow them on your balcony. In Australia, 24% of online shopping was gardening supplies, worm farms and vertical gardens and roof top gardens are thriving here.
This dude from MakeSoil shows you how to make a community garden starting with making a compost bin from waste.
This is the key, diverting food waste from landfill = methane reduction another step people who live in inner cities can do. There is an avid gardener within a stones throw of anyone now I would guess.
I am working with a permaculture/syntropic farmer teacher and he has a pilot under way where a new property development will include a Market Garden, where you take all your food waste, and there is a kickback for that down the track. Other features are included for lower income families. This is city development ideas, bringing the country in.
I do agree that living off the land seems like an arduous task if done alone but I think as we come together more about this and come up with solutions that are collective then I think there is a better way to do our small steps especially as there is a gap in the over 50's of having enough $$ to retire on. Or younger people who don't want to be part of the grind. Off grid communities etc. will always have a place because if time and effort is as good as money, a lot of people who slipped through the cracks of society can land on their feet with dignity through these ideas. Sociocracy has peaked my interest but can't discuss it in detail yet.
Last thing, I found ShareWaste, it's an app that connects gardeners to people who don't garden to take their food waste for their chickens and compost bins. I have my first donation coming and it's from someone who is road tripping up the east coast of Australia. I have two bins out the front that I check in on on the days people say they are dropping stuff by. It's cool as.
I think there are solutions coming that are going to be opportunities for both solutions; inner city gardening and to live off the land for those who have other skills to be part of a community; cook, healer, mechanic, sparky, etc. COVid has some really cool side effects around this kind of thing.
Things are changing for the better for how to do a little to make a big difference. Exciting times ahead for sure.
Thanks for your comment. I have been writing material around 'small steps' in industrialised economies and about the subjects you touch on here for more than 20 years. The post, and the rest of the blog stem from deep concerns I have about the limitations of that approach. Mostly that it might be one of the major distractions from more radical, useful and systemic changes. "Syntropic" is a neologism that is even too new for me, but I've now looked it up. A key point is that "Living off the land" comes with severe risks/limitations for the majority of people, especially for those trying to raise a family and especially for those who do not own the land. That, I think, will remain the case until there is a very radical reshaping of property ownership, and probably monetary exchange. I know of quite a few small projects, and plenty of people dabbling with it who have the time and money to do so. While there are definitely positive aspects to many of them, as you and I have both pointed out, none of them meet the kind of inferred or overt claims of being "the way to the future" etc, that I see so very, very often.
We are working with a behavioural scientist and he advised small steps is how people change. But the next 10 years of transition will be insanely fast as I am seeing signals in the right parts of government and education that will see 2030 to be an exciting time to be alive. Actually all the years between now and then. Especially if Gerd Leonhard prediction of how much disruption we will see in the next 8 years is right, 100 years worth of innovation in 10.
If you would like to see the extent to which I disagree with your behavioral scientist you might like to read: https://sustainabile.substack.com/p/testing-positive. There is extensive research to suggest that people do not "change" in the kind of ways required by these "small steps" - they tend to do a few of them, and then stop. The evidence of this is all around us, with very many of us doing a few "small steps" while the juggernaut keeps rolling and all the indicators get exponentially worse. In my opinion, we are WAY past the point of small, incremental steps changing the trajectory, and most of them won't last for very long at all as the pressure comes on. It's rather like Romans believing they are reforming the Roman Empire by holding a weekly Visigoths party wearing spiky hats. I too think 2030 will be an exciting time to be alive (for those of us that make it...) but not for the kind of reasons you seem to be suggesting. It's already an "exciting" time to be alive in Ukraine, Sudan, Yemen...Gerd Leonard is not alone among people who seem to think technology or something trumps physics, although he doesn't look to be the best qualified. I also think he is wrong for all the reasons stated all over this blog.
Funny. Grain of truth. A bit of a straw man argument (for comic and rhetorical effect) to be sure, but the broader point is a valid one.
I think that the idea that one is either 100% pure or a hypocrite doesn’t stand up, and so (as always) the devil is in the detail - or maybe more appropriately- the nuance.
In essence the system we have makes hipocrites of us all. It’s nigh on impossible to be a pure example of an alternative without it essentially being (as pointed out above) a lifeboat that excludes others.
That being said, the fight to demand (or create) meaningful options and change may well be one we lose, so “doing what you can” within the limit of your resources may well be a reasonable response after all.
So many of us are not powerful forces for ecological or systemIc good because that’s not what is incentivised or (largely) even an option.
Sometimes there aren’t any good choices. Hopefully we keep learning and striving to do better ‘despite’ not ‘because’ of the system we exist within.
Even if the battle is lost, someone needs to fight the rearguard action and prevent an even worse routing that would happen otherwise.
In doing so we might just also find an opportunity. Who knows.
..I would add that there is a difference between a 'solution' and a 'response'. Sure, Permaculture / gardening / RegenAg etc isn't a "solution" to all that ails the world, not least because what we have is largely environmental symptoms to an economic problem... but I think you can argue that to varying degrees they are valid and valuable responses. I would go so far as to say that perhaps the single most valuable thing any of us can do is strengthen our relationship to the landscape which nourishes and nurtures us. That can be beneficial from a variety of perspectives: emotional, philosophical, spiritual, physical, environmental and not least practical as if things continue as they do, being able to grow food etc may well be a survival skill. In the meantime, it might foster a greater concern for the living world. To paraphrase David Attenborough: we only protect what we care for, and we only care for what we understand.. so getting one's hands dirty (aside from all the psychological benefits that have been demonstrated) can be a radical act of reconnection in a world built on atomisation. For all it's imperfections, one thing that Permaculture has done well is inspire a lot of people to consider their lives in relation to the larger system we inhabit and prompt a examination of choice through design thinking.
From the perspective of RegenAg / Agroecology I would say that a permanent ecological-based agriculture it's a necessary condition for any kind of society, so again.. is that a solution? No but alongside stopping the destruction it's certainly part of it.. and still very important.
Been doing all of it for a long time. right now giving away excess veges daily, to the few people I know who can cook, and to a side of the road pataka. i hate religion and churches, the most useless organisations on earth, but may have to resort to giving to them to share so the food goes to people with children. (there are a lot of churches here, yuk) Meanwhile, two children max is a good idea or one home grown and adopt, which is just as joyful! Avoid buying new except for real necessities, like chargeable tools and treddle sewing machines. At least you won't need to go naked. PS communes are half full of nice atheists and half or more full of lunatics.
I will note that Bill Mollison, the teacher of Geoff Lawton (if you commentators don't recognize either of those names I don't know why you are on this blog), agreed with you. From the beginning Bill said that if you can't make communities that can both nurture the soul and resist government jackboots there's no point. However he was, as far as I can tell, irreligious and couldn't execute on his own advice because of it. I say that last part because a religious community facing persecution is one of the most tight knit cooperative groups around, as opposed to bohemian roleplayers who are expecting pats on the head because they wear apple watches.
It was like the last 1/4th of his book and yet people have ignored it. Permaculture as a design doesn't stop at the garden, the design philosophy is supposed to continue upstream into community design.
Well said, and I would definitely support the idea of supporting the exploration of "religious/spiritual" approaches to our predicament, for their ability to motivate and connect us beyond rationality (and, perhaps, to wider/larger forms of reality. I think that was very well touched on here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6V0qmDZ2gg&t=4s and often The Emerald Podcast, but of course is also discussed all over.
I tried permaculture and its a nice idea which is impossible to implement without extreme hard work and multiple skills. Tools have changed though and vegetable production is on its way to being robotised at least for sowing, weeding and some pest control. The crops will need shade if recent summers are anything to go by, so rows of trees every few metres ?
Given that we are going to get warmer and wetter in the UK I think there are ways to grow a mix of fruit trees interspersed with solar panels at canopy height . The panels can produce shelter from the worst of the rain and sun and be linked by anti bird and squirrel nets. Those creatures usually destroy the fruit and nuts before they are even ripe (in my experience) .
I am going to try that in 2023 but we will not know if it has worked for a few more years.
In the silvo pastoral systems protecting the trees from debarking by the grazing animals is the big problem. There are too many idealistic folk out there pontificating about food production without any or limited experience.
Thanks Toby! I don't really go in for statements like "vegetable production is on its way to being robotised " if I can help it - where? with who? how long will that last in the face of where we're heading? I'm more of the opinion that lots of things are going to be de-mechanised, but people aren't going to like it very much, so probably won't do it by choice. I'm actually also thinking of a follow-up to this piece along the lines of "...but it might be inevitable anyway"...Given that a lot of people in a lot of places won't have nearly as much access to power and clever gadgets I am also dubious about the idea of solar panels in forests. But who knows? It may happen or is probably happening somewhere for a time. I have personal experience of the grazing animals problem, spending many happy hours in frosty English woodlands building scrub fences to try to keep out roe deer and muntjac. Idealists will probably need a chainsaw in one hand and a rifle in the other to make the best of those resources, but I have many friends giving various things a try. Here in NZ it's mainly possums, which are not such a great food source...
This is total bollocks. Written by someone who doesn't give a shit and only wants to run things down. Go plant a garden, care for it, and then run it down. At least you will then speak from experince.
I'd be surprised if I ever managed to write "total" bollocks, even if I were trying. I've been a gardener of one sort or another since the age of 12, 36 years ago, culminating as head gardener of the 42 acre Brickendonbury Manor in Hertfordshire. I've also been a traditional woodsman/coppicer and managed my own small woodland in the UK, as well as working with my "Tribe" a 70 acre woodland in Essex and another, East End Wood at the end of the Stansted Airport runway. I have my own garden on a 1,200 m section in New Zealand, which includes fruit trees, herbs, compost etc. I also hold a permaculture design certificate and have worked internationally on a variety of permaculture projects. You may be confusing my take on what 'most' people think, with what I think. As pointed out in the article I LIKE gardening, I'm just offering up the possibility of different perspectives than our own. But thanks for your comments (sincerely) the arrival of "trolls" to this site is the herald that I might not just be speaking to the choir, for which I am truly thankful.
I think you have some valid points here but miss the fact that we are at a new point in history because we have access to the knowledge, information and plant species from the WHOLE world and the whole of history now. That has not happened before and offers new opportunities for the way us as a species can live. Pesonally, thats what I see these centres, communities, small farms doing - experimenting now (with the benefits and tools of an industrialised society) to see if there is a better way for humans to live in small self-sustaining communities than the way we did 200 years ago. I would argue that the diversity of plants we now have already makes that simpler. I also take issue with you perception of woman in all this - as fringe and only there when accompanying a male! I have been involved with permaculture, gardening, forestry, sustainable development and simple living for the last 20 years and know many women who are.
Thanks! I think that's a really useful broader perspective, and one that I am heartened to here from many angles in response to this. I also get your gender point. I too would say that actually the majority of the real movers and shakers I have met in this area are women, and for many good and deep reasons. It just so happened that the tales I wanted to tell (and the jokes) and the points I were making this time were based on memories of male friends, related more closely to my experience and motivations. And being the man I am, I'm a bit blinkered on that!
Thanks! And nah, not necessarily (any more than we are always doomed, in the "nobody gets out of this alive" sense). But I do think things are going to get pretty gnarly, and I reckon we should be talking about that!
Andy I think you are turning it into an all-or-nothing situation: if we can’t have it all then we have nothing. But those people trying to make a meaningful life on the land don’t have any illusions about the scale of the problem. They are not doing it to try and make everyone do it to save humanity. They are saying, fuck it, I am out of here: you guys can sail on aboard your doomed ship which was designed without a steering wheel. We might just hang on longer if we live a more resilient life style. It is not the grand solution that you seem to be seeking: they are doing it for themselves, not all of us! Good on them.
Thanks for the comment David! I would say that the situation remains the same whatever I, or we, say about it. My intention is to challenge some of our illusions (including mine) in order to get as clear a view as possible of that, so we can start talking real responses from there. I do think there are a lot of illusions around this area. The group you identify as "those trying to make a meaningful life on the land" is (unfortunately) very, very small, and often struggling. That said, I doubt we know their full motivations. I would imagine they are as mixed as most people's, which is kind of my point. What I do know is there is no "out of here" - nowhere to run to, even in Aotearoa, unless as Hunter S Thompson used to say "you're willing to go all the way". I yearn to, and who knows I may yet at some point. But I also recognise that if I'm not planning on doing something that can take a lot of less privileged people with me, then the positive impact is going to be limited, and might feel a bit like simply retreating.
I am not sure to understand where you are going with this. I think that those exact people that you seems to be targeting here, are probably amongst the most informed of the fact that nothing is going to save all of us or the planet or whatever you want to call it. They are the people who are willing to disconnect from a society that managed to bring humanity to its extinction in less than 200 years. To say fuck to it. The way they do this is by going back to the most essential things humans needs : food shelter water and social interactions. Cause, yes, most of the time those people are also the ones trying to bring the less fortunate with them. You should know permaculture is about the earth the people and fair share.
They don't hope to have the good life, they don't think it's going to be great when they are old and their back is broken. They do it because it minimises every day the impact they have on the planet, even though they might need a sit on a plane sometimes. They do it because regenerative agriculture for instance could capture a third to a fourth of the world's co2 emissions. They don't think it's going to happen but they still do it. Ukrainians don't think they are going to eliminate the Russian army, but they still fight. If being human and living a full life is not living by our values and fighting for what we think is right, even though we know we won't reach those ideals, then what is it?
Also, i would like to remind you that permaculture was created using ancient and indigenous knowledge and even if it might not have been said enough, it is not created from nothing but sits on millennia of knowledge accumulation. Which is actually not the case of conventional agriculture which was built denying things we had learnt in the past. This lead us now to some of the struggling you talk about here, but only because we have been disconnected from our roots and our ancestors, not because this pre industrial system could not have been perpetuated. And yes, being a farmer is not for everyone but pre industrial societies weren't 100% farmers, and evolving past modern capitalistic societies should not be neither. So many skills and trades have been brought to near extinction so that we could supposedly replace them by machines which would give us free time and better lifes! Wanna talk about burn out rates? Bore out? Divorce? Depression ? Suicide ? Drug addictions? Unemployment? Individualism? Materialism ? How is our society so much better now? We have replaced meaningful aspects of human life with meaning less ones.
I am a victim of that and I blame the so called evolution to have disconnected myself from my roots, I do not think that I'll ever be able to reconnect with them, nor that "I'll save the world" in the process, yet I still do it because I feel it is what I am here for. Not to live my life enjoying some fake holidays once a year to walk in a forest or on a beach, but to work hard with people and nature all year long instead.
Where I am going, at this stage at least, is simply clearing the decks of some of the illusions I see in myself and others. An example is the idea that anyone can "disconnect from society". I also see very little of "taking the less fortunate with them", hence my challenge, which is as much to myself as anyone else. How do we do much, much more of that? I recently visited a fantastic project run by a local iwi here in Aotearoa New Zealand. I think that shows real promise in that direction.
Another point is that "minimising impact on the planet" is extremely partial in many of these instances - there are very few genuinely doing that and many more (like me) enjoying the trappings of it, while also continuing to enjoy all the benefits of industrialised society.
I don't think much of what you are saying is "fighting" that system, in fact it's mostly just trying to hide away from it, as you say. Part of my point is to establish whether "fighting" or "running" are really effective responses, and if so exactly how do we make them most effective?
When I hear people saying "Gardening is my resistance" etc, I'm concerned that isn't really enough.
If I knew exactly what being human and living a full life was I wouldn't be writing an obscure blog! But I'm not sure it's fighting, or necessarily gardening, although it might include both among its many aspects. That's what I'm hoping to explore.
I also don't think it's necessarily wise setting ourselves up with "ideals" that we know we won't reach. My point is I'm wondering if we might be better setting more realistic goals and targets that actually can be reached.
I would argue that permaculture was not "created using ancient and indigenous knowledge" in all but a very superficial sense. (I currently refer to Josh Schrei's podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-emerald/id1465445746 for my very blinkered glimpse on what we might be missing) It was invented by two white blokes in an Australian university. This doesn't make it wrong, but it also doesn't necessarily make it indigenous knowledge. And as I said could even start to feel like cultural appropriation if claims like that are pushed too far.
Conventional agriculture, along with everything in our world, was also based on history, and ultimately also on ancient and indigenous knowledge. Yes, it's denied some things and pursued others. I am not saying conventional agriculture is right and permaculture is wrong, Bipolar arguments are something I am trying hard to avoid. I'm not even denying that is better in some important respects, hence my personal interest in it. I'm merely pointing out that its importance is being wildly overstated in some quarters.
Another point I am making is that I can't see a way in which we will "evolve past modern capitalist societies" without some major breakdowns, and I think growing food is only one of many skillsets we will need to traverse that.
I have a degree and interest in English history. I originally tried to build a life around traditional woodcrafts in England, so I'm acutely aware of the death of skills and trades.
If you read the rest of the blog, I don't argue that life is better now than it was in the past, but I also don't seek to romanticise the past. I think life has always been messy, and it's about to get much messier for many of us in the industrialised world. I challenge these "solutions" not because I think everything is fine, I challenge them because the solutions have been around a while and everything is very far from fine, hence they may not be the responses we need.
I share your concern about reconnection. My feeling is that it is simultaneously distant in some respects (due to our upbringing, culture etc) and instantly available. Finding the depth and complexity of that is probably the most important path we can travel.
If you genuinely feel you are doing everything you are here for then I (seriously) salute you. I too experienced something very close to that feeling while working woodlands with friends in my early 20s. But my life got more complex, as I see many others getting. This blog, for me, is something too that I am here for, and I hope it is useful or at least stimulating for many, as it seems to have been for you.
If I can give you an example of this, I went to get a permaculture design course at Koanga 2 years ago. We didn't talk much about permaculture actually, maybe less than 40% of the time. We talked about keyline design, holistic management, grazing management, nutrition, biodynamie, Biointensive gardening, we listened to the local iwi members who joined the course and to their view on their questions, and we criticized all of those concepts. We built onto them. All those concepts have been invented or captured by different people who didn't call themselves permaculture practitioners. Though we recognised them as being good additions to the movement that were making its ecosystem work more efficiently. Permaculture is not the work of D Holmgren and B Molisson it is the work of those who use it work with it and improve it. Today syntropic gardening the end of crop rotation, the question of cultural appropriation are things that are slowly added to the movement and try to improve it. Waiting for the ideal solution that will solve all our problems is vain. It will never exist. We can only work constantly on where we want to go by improving a movement lead by a whole community.
I did my permaculture design course at Rainbow Valley Farm under Robyn Francis and Geoff Lawton. I went on to work with Geoff and others in projects in Vietnam and wrote for them for a while. I also trained fundraisers for the allied Social Policy and Ecological Research Institute in Vietnam, and developed fundraising materials for them. I know the subject matter. I know it's not just gardening. But I would still argue that nearly everything in it is largely elaborations of things that our ancestors already knew. It's great that we're learning and systemising that now, capturing it and training the next generation for some semblance of resilience. But we are not in the world of our ancestors, and not everybody gets this stuff, or wants to. We are in massive overshoot in the beginnings of the breakdown of industrialised society. I am not saying we can't use these ideas. I am saying we should be clear that they are not a remedy for our predicament, nor even necessarily our best response.
I’m curious whether two more years have shifted your thinking in this at all?
The way I see it, permaculture is a philosophy for people who agree that there are wiser ways to do almost anything we want to do, and especially the act of generating food. The intent to apply system design thinking to the act of growing food, and to pull as much applicable wisdom from any and all available sources, but especially the natural world—that’s a good impulse for people and the world.
We are creators, being the children of a Creator, and we’re better off when we think and act like creators.
However, I have also seen a lot of silliness in permaculture. One big silly idea is that any amount of gardening can change human nature. Put simply, nothing short of the divine intervention of God can do that. So the people who put Environment and Planet above or in place of religion and salvation through Christ have missed the mark.
But as the reality of captivity closes down on people, and they necessarily turn to God for relief, the ideas of permaculture have a lot of value for how to sustain life even under adverse conditions by applying wisdom and building self-supporting systems.
In other words, by itself, permaculture won’t save the world, but it is a very useful tool for the people who will, as they rebuild the world following its inevitable destruction.
Hi Dennis! Thanks for your comment! Good to circle back to this. To clarify I wasn't saying permaculture is a bad thing (nor for that matter is professional sustainability etc) just that it wasn't going to "Save the World". A bit of a straw man, I admit, but prompted by the sense I had of many in the permaculture community promoting it in those kind of terms, or at the very least wildly overstating its possible impact (I'm thinking particularly of Holmgren's book of around that time...). But yes, I definitely agree with your insight on how gardening doesn't really solve the human nature problem, or at least how human nature expresses itself in industrialised economies. I don't really hold with the big C (singular) creator thing, or the big G God thing, but you can believe what you like. It's self evident to me that agriculture will play a core role in everyone's lives in any post-collapse, post-global industrial future, as it will be either that or starve. I remain skeptical that it will necessarily follow the ideas of a few, mainly white middle aged men from the late 20th century any more than it will the 20,000 years of "sustainable" farming that proceeded it, let alone the 80,000+ years of sustainable living (so-called "hunter gathering") of our forbears and wiser indigenous people. Cheers!
Good post and I like the attack on the trust fund kids who jet around lecturing the poor. Europe is covered in the ruins of peasant holdings abandoned because relentless manual work is degrading and exhausting. Modern robotics can replace labour and provide some high status jobs. Rotational cropping systems are the only way we can sustain food production long term. Don't worry, integrated silvocultural systems with robotics will supply what is needed. But those high energy lifestyles will probably have to go.
Thanks for the comment! I think "integrated silvocultural systems", if I understand them right as forms of forestry agriculture, are a definite pathway for a lot of places, including here in Aotearoa New Zealand. I'm a former traditional English woodsman and do a lot of work on reforestry etc, so I'm wildly biased in every sense. As for the robotics, my guess is some might get them, and many won't, like most things. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by supplying what is needed. I guess that depends on whose needs we're talking about, when, and a whole lot of other variables. My take is that nobody and nothing will be supplying what is needed for a very significant period as the climate breaks down. I'll probably be too old to wield an axe properly by then, but will certainly be giving it a go and teaching what I can. Those high energy lifestyles will definitely go for a lot of people (some may cling on for a long while) sometimes quite dramatically!
I found this incredibly powerful and weirdly energising - you've hit some truth here I think. Not exactly sure what it is, but I'll be pondering it for a while. I don't think I've ever heard the dilemma of being human at this time - and carrying/worrying about our collective future - expressed in quite this way. What really hit a nerve for me were your comments on how people in the regenerative agriculture space often still have, and make use of, the products of the culture at large (overseas trips etc.) and how property ladders and the like may well be around for a while. I don't know what will bring about change - I don't think anyone does - change is inherently unpredictable - but I think the-foot-in-both- camps way of life is how many of us (sort of) manage. And I think we lie about it to ourselves and others too - lots of personal stuff for me that I don't won't to go into here. Thanks for this Andy, I will share it with my students.
Thanks so much Niki. It's incredibly heartening when it seems someone of your calibre gets the serious points I am trying to make here beneath all the hyperbole and dark humour! I also love being joined on what I see as the "we don't know" naughty step. And thanks for sharing with your students - I would love to know what they think about all this!
No thanks. But i have a good idea for an interesting article you could write titled, "How i became a 48 year old Doomer". The title pretty much sums it up.
I run a not for profit native tree nursery on Rakino Island. I have no illusions that it's going to change anything to any measurable degree. I just want Gaia to see me not giving up on her as we relentlessly murder her in broad daylight.
"People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material portion of their privilege." John Kenneth Galbraith courtesy of GuyMcPherson.com
Stick with this soul work as long as you can Andy
Actually what we have been saying is that every small step matters. Growing your herbs can save you money and reduce plastic, as they are usually heavy in that. Instead of throwing out the ends put them in water and grow them on your balcony. In Australia, 24% of online shopping was gardening supplies, worm farms and vertical gardens and roof top gardens are thriving here.
This dude from MakeSoil shows you how to make a community garden starting with making a compost bin from waste.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAPM5X37tu0&list=LL&index=14
This is the key, diverting food waste from landfill = methane reduction another step people who live in inner cities can do. There is an avid gardener within a stones throw of anyone now I would guess.
I am working with a permaculture/syntropic farmer teacher and he has a pilot under way where a new property development will include a Market Garden, where you take all your food waste, and there is a kickback for that down the track. Other features are included for lower income families. This is city development ideas, bringing the country in.
I do agree that living off the land seems like an arduous task if done alone but I think as we come together more about this and come up with solutions that are collective then I think there is a better way to do our small steps especially as there is a gap in the over 50's of having enough $$ to retire on. Or younger people who don't want to be part of the grind. Off grid communities etc. will always have a place because if time and effort is as good as money, a lot of people who slipped through the cracks of society can land on their feet with dignity through these ideas. Sociocracy has peaked my interest but can't discuss it in detail yet.
Last thing, I found ShareWaste, it's an app that connects gardeners to people who don't garden to take their food waste for their chickens and compost bins. I have my first donation coming and it's from someone who is road tripping up the east coast of Australia. I have two bins out the front that I check in on on the days people say they are dropping stuff by. It's cool as.
I think there are solutions coming that are going to be opportunities for both solutions; inner city gardening and to live off the land for those who have other skills to be part of a community; cook, healer, mechanic, sparky, etc. COVid has some really cool side effects around this kind of thing.
Things are changing for the better for how to do a little to make a big difference. Exciting times ahead for sure.
Thanks for your comment. I have been writing material around 'small steps' in industrialised economies and about the subjects you touch on here for more than 20 years. The post, and the rest of the blog stem from deep concerns I have about the limitations of that approach. Mostly that it might be one of the major distractions from more radical, useful and systemic changes. "Syntropic" is a neologism that is even too new for me, but I've now looked it up. A key point is that "Living off the land" comes with severe risks/limitations for the majority of people, especially for those trying to raise a family and especially for those who do not own the land. That, I think, will remain the case until there is a very radical reshaping of property ownership, and probably monetary exchange. I know of quite a few small projects, and plenty of people dabbling with it who have the time and money to do so. While there are definitely positive aspects to many of them, as you and I have both pointed out, none of them meet the kind of inferred or overt claims of being "the way to the future" etc, that I see so very, very often.
We are working with a behavioural scientist and he advised small steps is how people change. But the next 10 years of transition will be insanely fast as I am seeing signals in the right parts of government and education that will see 2030 to be an exciting time to be alive. Actually all the years between now and then. Especially if Gerd Leonhard prediction of how much disruption we will see in the next 8 years is right, 100 years worth of innovation in 10.
It all feels very exciting time in history.
If you would like to see the extent to which I disagree with your behavioral scientist you might like to read: https://sustainabile.substack.com/p/testing-positive. There is extensive research to suggest that people do not "change" in the kind of ways required by these "small steps" - they tend to do a few of them, and then stop. The evidence of this is all around us, with very many of us doing a few "small steps" while the juggernaut keeps rolling and all the indicators get exponentially worse. In my opinion, we are WAY past the point of small, incremental steps changing the trajectory, and most of them won't last for very long at all as the pressure comes on. It's rather like Romans believing they are reforming the Roman Empire by holding a weekly Visigoths party wearing spiky hats. I too think 2030 will be an exciting time to be alive (for those of us that make it...) but not for the kind of reasons you seem to be suggesting. It's already an "exciting" time to be alive in Ukraine, Sudan, Yemen...Gerd Leonard is not alone among people who seem to think technology or something trumps physics, although he doesn't look to be the best qualified. I also think he is wrong for all the reasons stated all over this blog.
Funny. Grain of truth. A bit of a straw man argument (for comic and rhetorical effect) to be sure, but the broader point is a valid one.
I think that the idea that one is either 100% pure or a hypocrite doesn’t stand up, and so (as always) the devil is in the detail - or maybe more appropriately- the nuance.
In essence the system we have makes hipocrites of us all. It’s nigh on impossible to be a pure example of an alternative without it essentially being (as pointed out above) a lifeboat that excludes others.
That being said, the fight to demand (or create) meaningful options and change may well be one we lose, so “doing what you can” within the limit of your resources may well be a reasonable response after all.
So many of us are not powerful forces for ecological or systemIc good because that’s not what is incentivised or (largely) even an option.
Sometimes there aren’t any good choices. Hopefully we keep learning and striving to do better ‘despite’ not ‘because’ of the system we exist within.
Even if the battle is lost, someone needs to fight the rearguard action and prevent an even worse routing that would happen otherwise.
In doing so we might just also find an opportunity. Who knows.
..I would add that there is a difference between a 'solution' and a 'response'. Sure, Permaculture / gardening / RegenAg etc isn't a "solution" to all that ails the world, not least because what we have is largely environmental symptoms to an economic problem... but I think you can argue that to varying degrees they are valid and valuable responses. I would go so far as to say that perhaps the single most valuable thing any of us can do is strengthen our relationship to the landscape which nourishes and nurtures us. That can be beneficial from a variety of perspectives: emotional, philosophical, spiritual, physical, environmental and not least practical as if things continue as they do, being able to grow food etc may well be a survival skill. In the meantime, it might foster a greater concern for the living world. To paraphrase David Attenborough: we only protect what we care for, and we only care for what we understand.. so getting one's hands dirty (aside from all the psychological benefits that have been demonstrated) can be a radical act of reconnection in a world built on atomisation. For all it's imperfections, one thing that Permaculture has done well is inspire a lot of people to consider their lives in relation to the larger system we inhabit and prompt a examination of choice through design thinking.
From the perspective of RegenAg / Agroecology I would say that a permanent ecological-based agriculture it's a necessary condition for any kind of society, so again.. is that a solution? No but alongside stopping the destruction it's certainly part of it.. and still very important.
Agree!
Been doing all of it for a long time. right now giving away excess veges daily, to the few people I know who can cook, and to a side of the road pataka. i hate religion and churches, the most useless organisations on earth, but may have to resort to giving to them to share so the food goes to people with children. (there are a lot of churches here, yuk) Meanwhile, two children max is a good idea or one home grown and adopt, which is just as joyful! Avoid buying new except for real necessities, like chargeable tools and treddle sewing machines. At least you won't need to go naked. PS communes are half full of nice atheists and half or more full of lunatics.
I will note that Bill Mollison, the teacher of Geoff Lawton (if you commentators don't recognize either of those names I don't know why you are on this blog), agreed with you. From the beginning Bill said that if you can't make communities that can both nurture the soul and resist government jackboots there's no point. However he was, as far as I can tell, irreligious and couldn't execute on his own advice because of it. I say that last part because a religious community facing persecution is one of the most tight knit cooperative groups around, as opposed to bohemian roleplayers who are expecting pats on the head because they wear apple watches.
It was like the last 1/4th of his book and yet people have ignored it. Permaculture as a design doesn't stop at the garden, the design philosophy is supposed to continue upstream into community design.
Well said, and I would definitely support the idea of supporting the exploration of "religious/spiritual" approaches to our predicament, for their ability to motivate and connect us beyond rationality (and, perhaps, to wider/larger forms of reality. I think that was very well touched on here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6V0qmDZ2gg&t=4s and often The Emerald Podcast, but of course is also discussed all over.
Hi Andy,
I tried permaculture and its a nice idea which is impossible to implement without extreme hard work and multiple skills. Tools have changed though and vegetable production is on its way to being robotised at least for sowing, weeding and some pest control. The crops will need shade if recent summers are anything to go by, so rows of trees every few metres ?
Given that we are going to get warmer and wetter in the UK I think there are ways to grow a mix of fruit trees interspersed with solar panels at canopy height . The panels can produce shelter from the worst of the rain and sun and be linked by anti bird and squirrel nets. Those creatures usually destroy the fruit and nuts before they are even ripe (in my experience) .
I am going to try that in 2023 but we will not know if it has worked for a few more years.
In the silvo pastoral systems protecting the trees from debarking by the grazing animals is the big problem. There are too many idealistic folk out there pontificating about food production without any or limited experience.
Toby
Thanks Toby! I don't really go in for statements like "vegetable production is on its way to being robotised " if I can help it - where? with who? how long will that last in the face of where we're heading? I'm more of the opinion that lots of things are going to be de-mechanised, but people aren't going to like it very much, so probably won't do it by choice. I'm actually also thinking of a follow-up to this piece along the lines of "...but it might be inevitable anyway"...Given that a lot of people in a lot of places won't have nearly as much access to power and clever gadgets I am also dubious about the idea of solar panels in forests. But who knows? It may happen or is probably happening somewhere for a time. I have personal experience of the grazing animals problem, spending many happy hours in frosty English woodlands building scrub fences to try to keep out roe deer and muntjac. Idealists will probably need a chainsaw in one hand and a rifle in the other to make the best of those resources, but I have many friends giving various things a try. Here in NZ it's mainly possums, which are not such a great food source...
This is total bollocks. Written by someone who doesn't give a shit and only wants to run things down. Go plant a garden, care for it, and then run it down. At least you will then speak from experince.
I'd be surprised if I ever managed to write "total" bollocks, even if I were trying. I've been a gardener of one sort or another since the age of 12, 36 years ago, culminating as head gardener of the 42 acre Brickendonbury Manor in Hertfordshire. I've also been a traditional woodsman/coppicer and managed my own small woodland in the UK, as well as working with my "Tribe" a 70 acre woodland in Essex and another, East End Wood at the end of the Stansted Airport runway. I have my own garden on a 1,200 m section in New Zealand, which includes fruit trees, herbs, compost etc. I also hold a permaculture design certificate and have worked internationally on a variety of permaculture projects. You may be confusing my take on what 'most' people think, with what I think. As pointed out in the article I LIKE gardening, I'm just offering up the possibility of different perspectives than our own. But thanks for your comments (sincerely) the arrival of "trolls" to this site is the herald that I might not just be speaking to the choir, for which I am truly thankful.
I think you have some valid points here but miss the fact that we are at a new point in history because we have access to the knowledge, information and plant species from the WHOLE world and the whole of history now. That has not happened before and offers new opportunities for the way us as a species can live. Pesonally, thats what I see these centres, communities, small farms doing - experimenting now (with the benefits and tools of an industrialised society) to see if there is a better way for humans to live in small self-sustaining communities than the way we did 200 years ago. I would argue that the diversity of plants we now have already makes that simpler. I also take issue with you perception of woman in all this - as fringe and only there when accompanying a male! I have been involved with permaculture, gardening, forestry, sustainable development and simple living for the last 20 years and know many women who are.
Thanks! I think that's a really useful broader perspective, and one that I am heartened to here from many angles in response to this. I also get your gender point. I too would say that actually the majority of the real movers and shakers I have met in this area are women, and for many good and deep reasons. It just so happened that the tales I wanted to tell (and the jokes) and the points I were making this time were based on memories of male friends, related more closely to my experience and motivations. And being the man I am, I'm a bit blinkered on that!
totally get it. thank you
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=5169590566411507&set=pb.100000818444438.-2207520000..&type=3
Wow - that's an amazing insight. Well written and compelling. But, saying that, are we all doomed?
Thanks! And nah, not necessarily (any more than we are always doomed, in the "nobody gets out of this alive" sense). But I do think things are going to get pretty gnarly, and I reckon we should be talking about that!
Andy I think you are turning it into an all-or-nothing situation: if we can’t have it all then we have nothing. But those people trying to make a meaningful life on the land don’t have any illusions about the scale of the problem. They are not doing it to try and make everyone do it to save humanity. They are saying, fuck it, I am out of here: you guys can sail on aboard your doomed ship which was designed without a steering wheel. We might just hang on longer if we live a more resilient life style. It is not the grand solution that you seem to be seeking: they are doing it for themselves, not all of us! Good on them.
Thanks for the comment David! I would say that the situation remains the same whatever I, or we, say about it. My intention is to challenge some of our illusions (including mine) in order to get as clear a view as possible of that, so we can start talking real responses from there. I do think there are a lot of illusions around this area. The group you identify as "those trying to make a meaningful life on the land" is (unfortunately) very, very small, and often struggling. That said, I doubt we know their full motivations. I would imagine they are as mixed as most people's, which is kind of my point. What I do know is there is no "out of here" - nowhere to run to, even in Aotearoa, unless as Hunter S Thompson used to say "you're willing to go all the way". I yearn to, and who knows I may yet at some point. But I also recognise that if I'm not planning on doing something that can take a lot of less privileged people with me, then the positive impact is going to be limited, and might feel a bit like simply retreating.
Hey Andy.
I am not sure to understand where you are going with this. I think that those exact people that you seems to be targeting here, are probably amongst the most informed of the fact that nothing is going to save all of us or the planet or whatever you want to call it. They are the people who are willing to disconnect from a society that managed to bring humanity to its extinction in less than 200 years. To say fuck to it. The way they do this is by going back to the most essential things humans needs : food shelter water and social interactions. Cause, yes, most of the time those people are also the ones trying to bring the less fortunate with them. You should know permaculture is about the earth the people and fair share.
They don't hope to have the good life, they don't think it's going to be great when they are old and their back is broken. They do it because it minimises every day the impact they have on the planet, even though they might need a sit on a plane sometimes. They do it because regenerative agriculture for instance could capture a third to a fourth of the world's co2 emissions. They don't think it's going to happen but they still do it. Ukrainians don't think they are going to eliminate the Russian army, but they still fight. If being human and living a full life is not living by our values and fighting for what we think is right, even though we know we won't reach those ideals, then what is it?
Also, i would like to remind you that permaculture was created using ancient and indigenous knowledge and even if it might not have been said enough, it is not created from nothing but sits on millennia of knowledge accumulation. Which is actually not the case of conventional agriculture which was built denying things we had learnt in the past. This lead us now to some of the struggling you talk about here, but only because we have been disconnected from our roots and our ancestors, not because this pre industrial system could not have been perpetuated. And yes, being a farmer is not for everyone but pre industrial societies weren't 100% farmers, and evolving past modern capitalistic societies should not be neither. So many skills and trades have been brought to near extinction so that we could supposedly replace them by machines which would give us free time and better lifes! Wanna talk about burn out rates? Bore out? Divorce? Depression ? Suicide ? Drug addictions? Unemployment? Individualism? Materialism ? How is our society so much better now? We have replaced meaningful aspects of human life with meaning less ones.
I am a victim of that and I blame the so called evolution to have disconnected myself from my roots, I do not think that I'll ever be able to reconnect with them, nor that "I'll save the world" in the process, yet I still do it because I feel it is what I am here for. Not to live my life enjoying some fake holidays once a year to walk in a forest or on a beach, but to work hard with people and nature all year long instead.
Hi Tom, thanks for your comment.
Where I am going, at this stage at least, is simply clearing the decks of some of the illusions I see in myself and others. An example is the idea that anyone can "disconnect from society". I also see very little of "taking the less fortunate with them", hence my challenge, which is as much to myself as anyone else. How do we do much, much more of that? I recently visited a fantastic project run by a local iwi here in Aotearoa New Zealand. I think that shows real promise in that direction.
Another point is that "minimising impact on the planet" is extremely partial in many of these instances - there are very few genuinely doing that and many more (like me) enjoying the trappings of it, while also continuing to enjoy all the benefits of industrialised society.
I don't think much of what you are saying is "fighting" that system, in fact it's mostly just trying to hide away from it, as you say. Part of my point is to establish whether "fighting" or "running" are really effective responses, and if so exactly how do we make them most effective?
When I hear people saying "Gardening is my resistance" etc, I'm concerned that isn't really enough.
If I knew exactly what being human and living a full life was I wouldn't be writing an obscure blog! But I'm not sure it's fighting, or necessarily gardening, although it might include both among its many aspects. That's what I'm hoping to explore.
I also don't think it's necessarily wise setting ourselves up with "ideals" that we know we won't reach. My point is I'm wondering if we might be better setting more realistic goals and targets that actually can be reached.
I would argue that permaculture was not "created using ancient and indigenous knowledge" in all but a very superficial sense. (I currently refer to Josh Schrei's podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-emerald/id1465445746 for my very blinkered glimpse on what we might be missing) It was invented by two white blokes in an Australian university. This doesn't make it wrong, but it also doesn't necessarily make it indigenous knowledge. And as I said could even start to feel like cultural appropriation if claims like that are pushed too far.
Conventional agriculture, along with everything in our world, was also based on history, and ultimately also on ancient and indigenous knowledge. Yes, it's denied some things and pursued others. I am not saying conventional agriculture is right and permaculture is wrong, Bipolar arguments are something I am trying hard to avoid. I'm not even denying that is better in some important respects, hence my personal interest in it. I'm merely pointing out that its importance is being wildly overstated in some quarters.
Another point I am making is that I can't see a way in which we will "evolve past modern capitalist societies" without some major breakdowns, and I think growing food is only one of many skillsets we will need to traverse that.
I have a degree and interest in English history. I originally tried to build a life around traditional woodcrafts in England, so I'm acutely aware of the death of skills and trades.
If you read the rest of the blog, I don't argue that life is better now than it was in the past, but I also don't seek to romanticise the past. I think life has always been messy, and it's about to get much messier for many of us in the industrialised world. I challenge these "solutions" not because I think everything is fine, I challenge them because the solutions have been around a while and everything is very far from fine, hence they may not be the responses we need.
I share your concern about reconnection. My feeling is that it is simultaneously distant in some respects (due to our upbringing, culture etc) and instantly available. Finding the depth and complexity of that is probably the most important path we can travel.
If you genuinely feel you are doing everything you are here for then I (seriously) salute you. I too experienced something very close to that feeling while working woodlands with friends in my early 20s. But my life got more complex, as I see many others getting. This blog, for me, is something too that I am here for, and I hope it is useful or at least stimulating for many, as it seems to have been for you.
Thanks again for your thoughts.
If I can give you an example of this, I went to get a permaculture design course at Koanga 2 years ago. We didn't talk much about permaculture actually, maybe less than 40% of the time. We talked about keyline design, holistic management, grazing management, nutrition, biodynamie, Biointensive gardening, we listened to the local iwi members who joined the course and to their view on their questions, and we criticized all of those concepts. We built onto them. All those concepts have been invented or captured by different people who didn't call themselves permaculture practitioners. Though we recognised them as being good additions to the movement that were making its ecosystem work more efficiently. Permaculture is not the work of D Holmgren and B Molisson it is the work of those who use it work with it and improve it. Today syntropic gardening the end of crop rotation, the question of cultural appropriation are things that are slowly added to the movement and try to improve it. Waiting for the ideal solution that will solve all our problems is vain. It will never exist. We can only work constantly on where we want to go by improving a movement lead by a whole community.
I did my permaculture design course at Rainbow Valley Farm under Robyn Francis and Geoff Lawton. I went on to work with Geoff and others in projects in Vietnam and wrote for them for a while. I also trained fundraisers for the allied Social Policy and Ecological Research Institute in Vietnam, and developed fundraising materials for them. I know the subject matter. I know it's not just gardening. But I would still argue that nearly everything in it is largely elaborations of things that our ancestors already knew. It's great that we're learning and systemising that now, capturing it and training the next generation for some semblance of resilience. But we are not in the world of our ancestors, and not everybody gets this stuff, or wants to. We are in massive overshoot in the beginnings of the breakdown of industrialised society. I am not saying we can't use these ideas. I am saying we should be clear that they are not a remedy for our predicament, nor even necessarily our best response.
I’m curious whether two more years have shifted your thinking in this at all?
The way I see it, permaculture is a philosophy for people who agree that there are wiser ways to do almost anything we want to do, and especially the act of generating food. The intent to apply system design thinking to the act of growing food, and to pull as much applicable wisdom from any and all available sources, but especially the natural world—that’s a good impulse for people and the world.
We are creators, being the children of a Creator, and we’re better off when we think and act like creators.
However, I have also seen a lot of silliness in permaculture. One big silly idea is that any amount of gardening can change human nature. Put simply, nothing short of the divine intervention of God can do that. So the people who put Environment and Planet above or in place of religion and salvation through Christ have missed the mark.
But as the reality of captivity closes down on people, and they necessarily turn to God for relief, the ideas of permaculture have a lot of value for how to sustain life even under adverse conditions by applying wisdom and building self-supporting systems.
In other words, by itself, permaculture won’t save the world, but it is a very useful tool for the people who will, as they rebuild the world following its inevitable destruction.
Hi Dennis! Thanks for your comment! Good to circle back to this. To clarify I wasn't saying permaculture is a bad thing (nor for that matter is professional sustainability etc) just that it wasn't going to "Save the World". A bit of a straw man, I admit, but prompted by the sense I had of many in the permaculture community promoting it in those kind of terms, or at the very least wildly overstating its possible impact (I'm thinking particularly of Holmgren's book of around that time...). But yes, I definitely agree with your insight on how gardening doesn't really solve the human nature problem, or at least how human nature expresses itself in industrialised economies. I don't really hold with the big C (singular) creator thing, or the big G God thing, but you can believe what you like. It's self evident to me that agriculture will play a core role in everyone's lives in any post-collapse, post-global industrial future, as it will be either that or starve. I remain skeptical that it will necessarily follow the ideas of a few, mainly white middle aged men from the late 20th century any more than it will the 20,000 years of "sustainable" farming that proceeded it, let alone the 80,000+ years of sustainable living (so-called "hunter gathering") of our forbears and wiser indigenous people. Cheers!
Good post and I like the attack on the trust fund kids who jet around lecturing the poor. Europe is covered in the ruins of peasant holdings abandoned because relentless manual work is degrading and exhausting. Modern robotics can replace labour and provide some high status jobs. Rotational cropping systems are the only way we can sustain food production long term. Don't worry, integrated silvocultural systems with robotics will supply what is needed. But those high energy lifestyles will probably have to go.
Thanks for the comment! I think "integrated silvocultural systems", if I understand them right as forms of forestry agriculture, are a definite pathway for a lot of places, including here in Aotearoa New Zealand. I'm a former traditional English woodsman and do a lot of work on reforestry etc, so I'm wildly biased in every sense. As for the robotics, my guess is some might get them, and many won't, like most things. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by supplying what is needed. I guess that depends on whose needs we're talking about, when, and a whole lot of other variables. My take is that nobody and nothing will be supplying what is needed for a very significant period as the climate breaks down. I'll probably be too old to wield an axe properly by then, but will certainly be giving it a go and teaching what I can. Those high energy lifestyles will definitely go for a lot of people (some may cling on for a long while) sometimes quite dramatically!
I found this incredibly powerful and weirdly energising - you've hit some truth here I think. Not exactly sure what it is, but I'll be pondering it for a while. I don't think I've ever heard the dilemma of being human at this time - and carrying/worrying about our collective future - expressed in quite this way. What really hit a nerve for me were your comments on how people in the regenerative agriculture space often still have, and make use of, the products of the culture at large (overseas trips etc.) and how property ladders and the like may well be around for a while. I don't know what will bring about change - I don't think anyone does - change is inherently unpredictable - but I think the-foot-in-both- camps way of life is how many of us (sort of) manage. And I think we lie about it to ourselves and others too - lots of personal stuff for me that I don't won't to go into here. Thanks for this Andy, I will share it with my students.
Thanks so much Niki. It's incredibly heartening when it seems someone of your calibre gets the serious points I am trying to make here beneath all the hyperbole and dark humour! I also love being joined on what I see as the "we don't know" naughty step. And thanks for sharing with your students - I would love to know what they think about all this!
The life glass is half full for this Author! Hes not even a realist more like a 80 year old grump in a 40 year old body.
If you feel like that now, try: https://sustainabile.substack.com/p/testing-positive and my body is 48. I have aspirations of being an 80 year old grump, but we'll see how it goes.
No thanks. But i have a good idea for an interesting article you could write titled, "How i became a 48 year old Doomer". The title pretty much sums it up.
You know, that could actually work. Thanks for reading and commenting. 😄