[Pil-pc-oceania] Russia's "Private Garden-plot Act" (July 2003)

[RussGrayson]

On 7/9/07 7:30 AM, "Linda Shewan" <linda.shewan at bryn.com.au> wrote:
 
> And as wah wah as Anastasia is, the effect on the Russian population has been
> that millions of people are creating eco-communities and growing trees, fruit
> and vegetables - and everyone in permaculture must applaud that. Official
> statistics - in 2004 Russian gardening families grew 33 million tonnes of
> potatoes (93% of Russia's total output), 11.5 million tonnes of vegetables
> (80%) and 3.2 million tonnes of fruit and berries (81%).

These are substantial quantities Linda. Do you know the actual source of the
estimates?
 
> It has had Vladimir Putin sign into federal law (in July 2003) the "Private
> Garden-plot Act" which gives rights to all families free of charge a plot of
> land in private inheritable ownership.
> 
> THIS IS IMPORTANT - imagine what we could achieve with these rights! It's a
> permies dream come true and imagine the services required of permaculture
> designers, finally recognised as vital to society!

The quantity of land is a little large for my needs. It is most likely that
size so people can participate in small scale market gardening, something
along the lines of a microenterprise. It brings to mind the failed
experiment of the Permaculture Institute in setting up Commonworks on its
Tualgum property. I would be hapy with a largish allotment and a shared
orchard. 

In regard to this, the UK already has a legal requirement on local
government, so I understand, to supply an area of land for allotment
gardening where there is sufficient demand. In my research for the food
growing policy directions document I am currently working on, I have come
across city governments in Canada that are very supportive in assisting
community food gardens. There is nothing on the scale of the Russsian
example you mention.
 
> Another thread talks about what we do in urban situations. These urban
> Russians, on their dachas,

Dachas are the country houses of the wealthy, as I understand it. They were
privileges of senior party officials during the Soviet days.

> in their spare time, are creating self-reliance and communities - stuff we
> talk about but seem to be able to make little real movement on.

Community: Margaret Thatcher once said that there is no 'society' (read:
community), only individuals. She was suffering, of course, from an overdose
of the bedtime reading of Adam Smith and his idea of 'enlightened self
interest' benefiting the common good through a free market system. Yet we
see Margaret disproved where people collaborate on common goals and share
common outlooks and purposes, irrespective of whether they live in
geographic proximity or are geographically scattered and electronically
linked. 

Ideally, this latter example should be what we in permaculture could be
because we share, more or less, common ethics and principles of living, and
because we are electronically linked through this listserver, our means of
passing along information, discussing ideas and contentious issues and
keeping in touch.

In another respect, community is one of those overused words that have been
adopted by politicians to create a sense of belonging around whatever idea
it is they are pushing at the time. They talk of the 'Australian community',
the 'Aboriginal community'... even the 'intelligence community'.

None of these really are communities, of course. The latter is
organisationally-linked people much as you would find in any corporation.
Australia is a nation state composed of numerous commonality groups.
Aboriginies do not form a single community because they identify as tribal
associations around geographical areas, and sometimes even these
associations are fractious. These assemblages are sometimes are described as
'nations', as is the nation state, because they comprise an aggregate of
people united by common descent, history, culture or language and that
inhabit a particular territory.

So, what I am getting at, is that when people use the word 'community' we
need to ask why they are using the term and whether it has any validity. We
cannot take its use at face value.

> Others are giving up the cities altogether and re-creating oasis in the way of
> eco-communities in the countryside.

I wonder if they are deliberately setting up ecohamlets within the meaning
we would give to the term? In the Solomon Islands, where I have done some
work, people could be regarded as living in ecohamlets or ecovillages
because much of their food, building materials, social structure and so on
is derived from the immediate area and because the buildings are generally
suited to climate.

I recall at the Perth permaculture convergence, when someone was addressing
the gathering on the development of ecovillages, an overseas development
worker in the audience muttering sentiments along the lines of the above
paragraph - that the people he works among already live in ecovillages and
have done so for quite some time.

> These types of laws and rights for gardeners could change the world.  This is
> what we need to be aiming for. Land for everyone, so no-one is reliant on the
> state. 

I agree that land for all - who want it - could bring substantial benefit in
making our towns and cities more resiliant to change and in nutrition,
however I don't think it would change the world. The world is too complex a
place for a single change, on the scale mentioned, to cascade through the
system - societies, economies and ecologies - to force it through some
threshold after which it emerges in a changed state.

If you want to change the world then working at the level of international
treaties and agreements would be a good start as these set the big picture
boundaries to what goes on within nation states and what people can do in
those states, such as what they can farm. This can be done in ways other
than advocacy, although that remains a necessary and critical element. In
permaculture work, for instance, when training people in food production, we
can deliver messages about the ownership of seeds and make the link with
international treaties covering intellectual property rights. We can link
gardening education to human nutrition, which really is what it is about,
and to global, national and local food systems, the dominance of the two big
supermarket chains on the food industry in Australia and how their stocking
policies determine what is sold as food and what requirements are put on the
farmers that supply them. That is a message about power and iits deployment.

> If we could get enough people stirred by Anastasia's vision for the
> world then we could change our country the way the Russians have (ok - we
> don't want the military dictatorship and brutality that is going on in Russia
> as well - but you know what I mean).

Your last point about the reemergence of dictatorial and authoritarian
government in Russia is important, I believe. Its seems that Russia is
setting itself up as a great power once again, perhaps to relive the glory
days of the Soviet empire.

This time, they won't do it by occupying Eastern Europe but through their
dominance as a major oil and gas producer. Russia now supplies much of
Western Europe's gas and the extent of the power that gives them was
demonstrated when they turned off the spigot a couple years ago. Whether
that was due to malfiunction, the official line, or to awaken the West to
their power is debatable.

For Western Europe, reliance on Russia, a reemerging political, economic and
military power, is about as wise as the United States relying for most of
its oil from Saudi Arabia, a country with growing social discontent,
declining incomes and an already substantial and growing cadre of Islamic,
Wahabi fundamentalism. Such reliance does little to increase the resiliency
of societies and economies, which I think is what we should aim for in the
present global circumstances.

It is unlikely that permaculture can achieve much outside the
socio-political structure of liberal democracy. Why? Because it, at basics,
is about change and the change it advocates would be quite unpalatable to
authoritarian regimes and the vested interests that support them and in
whose interest they often act and form policy. Unless permaculture is dumbed
down to become merely a system of growing food, it could be given short
shrift in some places. This is why I say to people that deliberative
democracy should, parhaps, become the design systems preferred operating
system... and maybe even enshrined as a permaculture principle?

Thanks for you views and information about the Russian moves Linda.

...Russ