[Pil-pc-oceania] taking Ronnies comments further

[RussGrayson]

Good questions Sue.

On 9/3/08 11:18 AM, "mossmans" <mossmans at internode.on.net> wrote:

> In defence of Ronnie, I think they are suggesting that some of these items
> are for our communities, eg Solar electricity that do cost money, and I
> don't think they are necessarily suggesting this for those who are
> permaculturists, but lets face it...
>  
> How many people practicing and espousing permaculture have everything .

Very few that I know, some because they are renters, not owners (consider
for a minute Sydney's very high housing prices) or owners who cannot afford
solar photovoltaics, solar hot water systems, composting toilets etc. This
is why we need realistic government incentives to install these items, and
tax advantages too.

> how many even can eat from their own gardens (thank God the supermarket is a
> close backup!!)  

Ditto above. That's why, probably, Bill Mollison some years ago said you do
not need to have a garden, you do not have to be a gardener, to practice
permaculture (if you did, permaculture would be irrelavent to most of the
population), He followed that statement with another saying that you should
get your food from sources that produce it ethically. Such is the basis for
a sustainable food economy at the regional/local level.

Yes,at present we cannot do away with the supermarket because in some areas
that is the only source of food. Like community gardens, food coops, CSAs
and box schemes are rather thin on the suburban ground.
>  
> And ok, so we P people may have many of the elements,  but what about the
> rest of the population??

What about the rest of the population even knowning about them? We are
immersed in knowledge of these technologies and design ideas but people
elsewhere are not. In the sustainable gardening courses we teach, we
continually encounter people - and these are educated Sydney Eastern Suburbs
people - who cannot manage a compost of wormery and who have no idea how to
plant a seed. The simplest skills, the basic knowledge, has to be repeated
again and again to get to people. Same for information about these
technologies.

Knowledge doesn't find people. People seek out knowledge.
 
> In todays (March 9) Sunday Telegraph, with the heading "One in five girls
> are fat"  it goes on to say, "cash strapped parents are denying their
> children vegetables, with almost one in three saying they simply cannot
> afford fresh produce due to lack of time and cost of sports etc".

This is old news to those in the Sydney Food Fairness Alliance
(www.sydenyfoodfairness.org.au). The nutritionists, health and community
workers who make up the bulk of the membership deal with this on a daily
basis.

Yet, otherwise knowledgable people say to me that it is the fault of these
people, that they spend their money on beer and ciggies, or that they cannot
manage a household budget or do not know how to cook, that is the problem.
This is the old, well-used by politicians 'blame the victim' put down. It
has an element of truth but is far from the whole truth.

Sue is right... mortgages and rising interest rates, the cost of transport
(in Sydney, that certainly includes the cost of public transport), schooling
costs and the rest frequently mean that cost cuts have to be made somewhere,
and that is all too often in family food expenditure.

Interestingly, Sue mentions time poverty, certainly a reality for a great
many due to hours of work and time spent in transit. We have found that time
povety is a real issue, especially for families, but that people will often
manage their time, where possible, to do something they decide they want to
do.

> Probably paying off a McMansion mortgage and a tiny backyard makes it
> difficult to grow a lot of food. But not impossible.

We might criticise the town planning, and justifiably so, but to criticise
the people who buy McMansions, many because this is affordable housing to
them, is to alienate potential permaculture adopters.
 
> In a small 6 metre x 4 metre no dig garden patch we workshopped at Illabunda
> EcoVillage in Winston Hills Sydney, the produce has been incredible from
> that plot, as long as it is quickly replanted (succession).

And it's this rapid successional planting, and the associated need to
maintain soil fertility, that is the key to garden productivity in small,
urban gardens. In my opinion, this is the type of garden permaculture would
best focus on in its education because it is the reality for many in the
cities, and in the cities is where most people live.
 
> This does kind of take me to the fact that I think we need to get our act
> together if we don't want to fade into insignificance, while councils and
> other organizations impact thinking.

It is true that councils now offer the types of workshops that permaculture
associations once offered. In part, this is the outcome of the mainstreaming
of the issues they are set up to address.

A pertinent point about council education is that it is usually offered
free, so as to reach the greatest number. Charging for workshops and courses
is often seen as a barrier to participation and it is easy to understand
that this could be the case. Yet, some organisations such as Macarthur
Centre for Sustainable Living do charge for their educational program yet
manage to attract participants. Clearly, the issue of charging remains an
open question and may have much to do with participants' level of interest
in what is being offered.

Some councils have an environmental levy on rates and it is this that funds
their educational programs. It also perhaps makes necessary that courses and
workshops remain free.

To get back to Sue's comment about permaculture fading into insignificance,
well, it's a good question... but what would make permaculture fade away? I
guess there's the instance of some - far from all - local government
offereing the eduational courses that permaculture traditionally has.Then
there's the move into permaculture territory by ACF and FOE (the latter runs
permablitzes in Sydney).

Both those organisations are something that Sue hints at - they are highly
organised and, on a regional level at least - they are centralised. Most
permaculture associations, I hazard the guess, are not as well organised as
Permacultuure North and may thus find it a challenge to mount substantial
education programs. This potentially places them at a disadvantaage to any
future moves into 'permaculture territory' by formal, centrally organised
groups.

Centralisation might not quite fit the permaculture value of autonomous
groups organising locally, but it does resource groups to plan and implement
a program.

> So no matter how our 21st century permaculture thinking may direct us as
> individuals we have no impact at any other level.  So it is time we develop
> into the organization that we can be -  to make a change so that in the future
> we can demand a place on 2020 discussions about where our nation goes, rather
> than just as individuals applying and hoping to be chosen for this.  I suppose
> it is interesting that an actress has more clout than some of the esteemed
> people in permaculture. So lets stop hiding light under a bushel and get out
> there.

This is a thinly veiled call to permaculture arms (hammer and shovel rather
than hammer and sickle; computer and network; knowledge and ideas; design
approach and imagination) and, of course, cooperation so that P-people can
organise into groups, teams, alliances and coalitions and take action.

You know, it's interesting that neither the 2020 conference nor GetUp rate
food issues - a core permaculture focus - as having prominence. May I
suggest that what this shows is that we, immersed in these issues,
mistakenly imagine that others are well aware of them, and that socially
savvy organisations like GetUp must also be. Obviously, that's not true and
it's time for us to stop making the assumption that it is.

This evidence suggests that food issues, especially in relation to global
warming and peak oil, remain fringe and that much work remains to propel
them along the ideas diffusion curve into the social mainstream.

I hope this is remembered at APC9 and that the event does not sink into an
orgy of self-condgratulation. Much might have been accomplished but there
remains a great more yet to do.

...Russ Grayson