Resiliency Rising

Rak Tamachat Part 2

Thoughts On A Blog: Rak Tamachat Permaculture Farm

It was great to talk to other permaculturists last night. Not just environmentalists or renewable energy advocates, but permaculturists! It was wonderful to have so much in line philosophically with a group of people. It was also great to express our concerns with the wider permaculture movement and its day-to-day practice. I had beers with Jake and Kieran and we all expressed our frustrations with the hippie stigma that is associated with permaculture and environmentalism in general.

Being able to complete tasks and maintain productivity as a community was an issue I heard from folks at Rak Tamachat. There are tasks that individuals assign themselves but don't make a large priority, and so the task will drag on for several weeks. Wouldn't it more effective to have a leader of some kind? The farm manager, or director, or whatever-you-want-to-call-it could hold everybody accountable to complete their projects.

Mu admiring the garden

This question prompted a good discussion of a permaculture topic that is often overlooked between the raised beds: engaging the community to attain its potential. The ensuing discussion of leadership and life on the farm wasn't much more conclusive, but I didn't care-- I still learned a lot from everybody. People shared what they thought were the biggest priorities. Jake and Kieran expressed the need for productivity, vision and following through with projects. Kieran has been traveling for almost 10 years visiting different sites, and he found it absolutely dumbfounding when he visited people who had hardly done anything. “There was one site in Portugal,” he told us, “where the guy hadn't done a thing and he had been there for eight years. Eight years, man! What the fuck?!” Kieran's thought was that in order to start a successful farm, you need a group of 4-5 motivated individuals that share a vision and are able to get things done. It doesn't matter if you sleep until 11 or wake up at dawn. The most important part is continuing to be an asset to the farm by working towards what you set out to do.

Felipe, from Chile, disagreed that the utmost priority is completing projects. Instead, he stressed the importance of the community. He reminded us that a group of individuals who are working by themselves are not behaving as a community and can easily fall into disaffection with one another. Hence the farm itself fails. People must work together to get that important sense of community, and through that sense of accountability the farm will be effective and productive.

I quickly found that each person in the discussion had his or her own theory for a successful permaculture farm. Perhaps that is a good thing. Each permaculture site can be a small experiment to find what works best to resolve common problems related to leadership, completing projects, unproductive members, etc.

Mark showing us a pole bean trellis 

The only problem I can find with such a loose strategy of “each group find its own way” is that climate change and future resource scarcity will not wait for each farm to figure it out its own way. A part of me thinks permaculture communities need to have a common founding to make them effective. Being somewhat familiar with socialist movements in Asia this past century, I sometimes look to the past as a tool to learn from. After the Japanese left Vietnam, the Viet Minh sent a member of their party to nearly every village to explain the goals of their struggle: national independence and land reform. This generally strengthened resistance to France reclaiming Vietnam. The Viet Minh had a general strategy of ground roots of mobilization. To be clear, I'm certainly not advocating armed struggle, but I do think this example provides a nice outline of how to mobilize groups of people.

It would be nice if the permaculture movement operated under one universal strategy. If the permaculture movement wants to be a more effective tool for change, I think it will need to be focus on three key criteria:

1. Increased standarization/ consistency
2. Educational/ vocal outreach
3. Promoting a financial and material reward other than moral incentive

First, consistency. The movement needs to have more cohesion and consistency in its message and its means. It needs to start acting like a real political movement instead of a set of principals to garden by. With greater consistency of how permaculture projects are founded, funded, and maintained, it can get away from the fringe and enter the mainstream. Everybody in the discussion agreed that they don't want permaculture to be seen as a trendy, 'hippie' thing to do.

Second, aggressive education and promotion of the permaculture principals and strategies. If this is a movement to be taken seriously, I feel that it should organize itself into more of a vocal political force. The communist movements in the 20th century relied on COMINTERN as a sponsor for a revolutionary strategy and funding. Furthermore, it sponsored interested students to study communism in Moscow and become trained cadres to aid revolutionary action. It would be incredibly powerful if the Permaculture Research Institute offered free training and advice. To form further into a political movement, it needs to actively pursue an aggressive public relations campaign. Most people don't know what the term permaculture means. This media blitz needs to actively work on introducing permaculture to the mainstream . 

Jake explaining the future mushroom room

Third, to further reach people's hearts and minds, the permaculture movement must appeal to their wallets. The argument for turning your yard into an ecosystem is a lot more appealing to average folks when you tell them that they can completely eliminate their produce costs at the grocery store, their electricity bill, and their water bill. In almost every revolutionary and civil rights movement, there was a monetary incentive involved, whether it was the Viet Minh promising land reform or the African American civil rights movement pushing for better wages and treatment for black workers. Once they did that, they had a strong base of support from the people. In poorer countries, a great way would be to spread the idea of growing food more effectively saving them time and money or even producing income. This story of permaculture in Malawi is a good example of what I'm advocating.

The permaculture movement has the potential to make the world a better place, but it suffers from being decentralized and scattered. Although activists are well-meaning, everyone having their own approach does nothing to help permaculture move away from its hippie stigma and towards creating a cohesive movement that outsiders can understand and, more importantly, want to be a part of.

As the discussion at lunch was winding down, I frantically expressed a worry that the permaculture movement would fail to be an effective force in mitigating climate change and bringing about sustainable communities around the world before its too late. At this, Kieran said, “we will!” I admire his conviction and I believe that we are making great progress.

Here’s a great article that discusses the same challenges to permaculture that I attempted to address. I invite us all to absorb these criticisms and think about how we can overcome them together.