Shifting Food Cultures

Modern cultural pressures are acting upon even remote communities, shifting values away from traditional values of natural resource stewardship and living from the land.  Imported goods are replacing traditional foods & materials, creating new challenges ranging from how to properly dispose of plastics, scrap metals and batteries. 

Photo: Inorganic waste is buried at Dixson's Reef on Malekula Island.

Dixson's Reef community currently separates & buries their inorganic waste, while on Araki & Ifira Islands piles of leaf litter & other organic matter mixed with plastic & other inorganic wastes are regularly burnt. 

The diversity of island cultures throughout Vanuatu is perhaps most apparent in the diversity of languages spoken here, where even neighboring villages will often have their own distinct dialect.  Languages hold information & nuances that are very specific to people & place - even down to neighboring valleys.  On Araki Island, only 4 speakers of their native language remain.

Imported & processed foods which are cheaply & abundantly available (especially white rice & packaged noodles), present a seductive option to cook & prepare because there is much less time & physical effort expended to purchase from the store & cook a meal with these items - especially compared to the time & physical effort required to grow, harvest, clean, prepare
and cook traditional root crops & vegetables.

Photo: White rice is even featured on the signature Flying Fox dish at the L'Houstalet, a high-end French restaurant in Port Villa.

On Ifira Island, this has led to a shift of focus towards away from crop cultivation and towards income generation as the primary means to feed oneself.

This shift away from traditional food culture is already contributing to an increase in Non-Communicable Diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure, and is particularly tricky to address since it requires an understanding of the opposite tensions between traditional & modern culture in order to effectively re-frame simple daily choices (such as choosing to eat white rice) in such a way to affect better decision making at a household level. 

Photo: Without innovation, traditional culture stagnates & dies.  Without respect for traditional culture, traditional culture stagnates & dies.  Culture can flourish when the balance between tradition and innovation is maintained.

A facilitated class discussion was held in an attempt to re-connect traditional foods with traditional culture, so that simple acts of growing & eating foods appropriate to place & culture can regain their significance.

What is culture?

• How has your landscape impacted your culture?  Your diet?
      [Explore cultural foods, mythologies, ceremonies, processing & preservation techniques, and so on]
• How has your culture impacted your landscape?
      [Explore cultivation techniques & philosophy, village design, relationship w/ land, and so on]
• How does modern culture impact your landscape?  Your diet?
      [Share stories]
• Why save seeds?  Why grow cultural foods?

 

Photo: 'Seedsaving = No Thank you Monsanto', on Oahu, Hawaii (photo credit: Michael Broady Jr.).

Back home in Hawaii and Australia, this conversation begins by exploring the modern food system & agricultural practices (and its impacts upon planet & people), and narrows down to the simple practices of seed saving, water harvesting & stewardship, and gardening. 

As a part of this exploration, we can re-frame the political significance of these simple & peaceful acts - while understanding that in the modern consumerist society, harvesting our own water, saving our own seeds, and growing our own food are in many ways among the most radical & revolutionary acts we can do.

As one student in Hawaii (whose #1 agricultural export commodity is GMO seed) said:  

''It's like gently, but firmly saying 'F&^k You to the multinational corporations who seek to control our food and water supply."   - Student in Hawaii -

 

Here in Vanuatu, the situation in many ways is perhaps not quite so dire (subsistence farming is still widely practiced, and local food production still very much valued), though the conditions are ripening for such cancerous attitudes to fester. 

The government building on the main street of Villa boasts a large electronic notice board which flashes monthly reports of agriculture commodity exports by tonnage and dollar amount - not a bad thing in and of itself, though perhaps indicative of a broader shifting of focus away from agriculture as 'subsistence farming' and towards 'export commodity production'.

Photo: Breakfast meal served for us on Araki Island, featuring fried doughballs, imported crackers, local cooked sweet banana, and local eggs fried w/ Nalalas (Polyscias fruticosa).  We were treated later with something we dubbed 'Yambu', a delicious pudding of grated yam & coconut milk stuffed into a bamboo node and cooked in the earthen oven.

How much sense does it make to grow enough food to export & sell, to make enough money, to be able to afford your own food, which has been processed, imported & sold back to you?  A pound of harvested, fermented, & dried cacao beans sells for 200-250VT /kg(1); a couple of chocolate bars imported from Australia will cost you 200VT.

We find ourselves in a 'mitigation' situation on the ground here, where the

In order to build locally resilient communities, we must instead focus first upon growing enough to feed ourselves, then our community, and then look for opportunities to trade your surplus to in exchange for items outside of our bioregion.

 

"In Cuba, agriculture means growing food for our people to eat." 

- Roberto Perez, Permaculture Activist featured in 'The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil' documentary -

 

See the full gallery on Posterous

Photo: Learning about lactobaccilic ferment by making kimchee.

 

_________________________________________

(1) http://www.nuipacific.org/home/vanuatu-development

Banana leaf sheet mulch!

Photo: Banana leaf sheet mulch deployed in raised bed garden.  Hana, Maui.

Banana leaves have many uses in the Islands (and in all traditional cultures where banana plants grow), though here's one you may not yet have considered:  a natural, locally & readily available, biodegradable weed barrier for sheet mulching.

In urban and suburban Honolulu, cardboard is a readily available waste product that can easily be upcycled as a biodegradable weed barrier for sheet mulch gardenbeds and paths, though in remote Hana there is nowhere near the amount of waste cardboard available for us permaculturists!

There is, however, and abundance of banana plants (which love the chocolatey-volcanic soils and moisture), and therefore an abundance of banana leaves...

...which brings us to the point of this post:

Appropriate Design.
(an excerpt from Rick Coleman's essay 'The Role of Permaculture in Sustainable Aid')

If you are going to introduce a new technology / technique / tool, these are some things to consider:

• Can you use materials that are inexpnsive or free, that are easily accessible and safe?
• Will it have a tangible positive effect on the community (as well as the aid organization)?
• Most importantly is it able to be repeated (if you build a grand-darble-dooble-funky and leave it, can anyone build a new one?)..
• How can the technology be integrated to solve other problems or be connected to other elements (in the system) and therefore become more productive?

... which, of course, now leaves us with the question:

• What else could we use banana leaves for?

While we ponder that one, here's another example of a locally appropriate material being deployed for use in a sheet mulch garden being built in the drylands of Mexico:

 

 

Banana leaf sheet mulch!

Photo: Banana leaf sheet mulch deployed in raised bed garden.  Hana, Maui.

Banana leaves have many uses in the Islands (and in all traditional cultures where banana plants grow), though here's one you may not yet have considered:  a natural, locally & readily available, biodegradable weed barrier for sheet mulching.

In urban and suburban Honolulu, cardboard is a readily available waste product that can easily be upcycled as a biodegradable weed barrier for sheet mulch gardenbeds and paths, though in remote Hana there is nowhere near the amount of waste cardboard available for us permaculturists!

There is, however, and abundance of banana plants (which love the chocolatey-volcanic soils and moisture), and therefore an abundance of banana leaves...

...which brings us to the point of this post:

Appropriate Design.
(an excerpt from Rick Coleman's essay 'The Role of Permaculture in Sustainable Aid')

If you are going to introduce a new technology / technique / tool, these are some things to consider:

• Can you use materials that are inexpnsive or free, that are easily accessible and safe?
• Will it have a tangible positive effect on the community (as well as the aid organization)?
• Most importantly is it able to be repeated (if you build a grand-darble-dooble-funky and leave it, can anyone build a new one?)..
• How can the technology be integrated to solve other problems or be connected to other elements (in the system) and therefore become more productive?

... which, of course, now leaves us with the question:

• What else could we use banana leaves for?

While we ponder that one, here's another example of a locally appropriate material being deployed for use in a sheet mulch garden being built in the drylands of Mexico:

 

 

Food Security and Food Culture

Photo: Mongolians work new potato fields in Zavkhan Province (2010), and are learning to grow vegetables because changing weather patterns are rendering ancient grazing patterns obsolete.

 

“Food security has been defined as ...access by all people at all times to sufficient food for an active and healthy life.

  Food security includes at a minimum: the ready availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, and an assured ability to acquire food in socially acceptable ways (without resorting to emergency food supplies, scavenging, stealing and other coping strategies for example).”

  [(Online), Dieticians Association of Australia, www.daa.asn.au (2006.)]

 

Food Culture refers to how we experience our food – from field to plate – and how it impacts our health, happiness, and sense of community. 

Perhaps the best way to explain the impact of food culture upon our wellness is to think of the way you feel, hear, smell, taste, and see another culture when you experience it through their cooking; so much of our cultural values are expressed in the way we grow, prepare, and share food.  Indeed, most of our major holidays and celebrations are centered around the experience of sharing a meal.

Food culture and food security are closely linked: threats to one affect, and are affected by the other.

A society which marginalizes the importance of celebrating and enjoying its food, also marginalizes the importance and richness of the living systems which support and create food.

The ‘fast food culture’ of modern society has distanced most of us from this richness of experience, with sobering results.  The Slow Food movement was spawned out of a response to the globalization of food production, and promotes sustainable food production by small local businesses to preserve and celebrate local and traditional food cultures.

A society which celebrates the importance and richness of its food culture, creates resilient, happy communities: there is much data to indicate that average reported happiness is consistently lower in countries with a pervasive fast food culture [such as the USA] than in countries such as Cuba, which embrace and celebrate a locally produced, organic food system.

When a community is unable to provide for its own food needs, individuals are disempowered, despair sets in, and food aid must be imported.  The community must be rebuilt with the knowledge and practical skills to produce enough of their own food to meet their needs, or a cycle of dependence can develop.

Agricultural yields are arguably at higher levels than ever in recorded history, yet in our world today, 1 out of 7 people will fall sleep tonight without access to enough food to lead an active and healthy life.

A solid understanding of food culture and food security issues are important to a wellness practitioner because it will equip you with a foundation to act on a local scale, and know that you are improving the wellness of humanity on a global scale with your contribution.

"Stupidity is an attempt to iron out all differences, and not to use them or value them creatively."

- Bill Mollison -

The long-term impacts of the modern conventional food system, which has only been in existence for the last 40 years or so, are only now starting to become more apparent.  Obesity levels and diet-related disease are at epidemic levels in the developed world, regional economies are being drained of their livelihoods by big agribusiness, while social and environmental impacts are being reported on by filmmakers, journalists, bloggers and other activists all over the world.

Once we understand the limitations and challenges created by the conventional food system, we can begin to identify opportunities to flourish within, while operating from outside the system: first, by producing enough of our own food to meet our survival needs, then to generate sufficient surplus to share in our local communities. 

It is here than we can access markets most efficiently, here that we can develop our most loyal customers, and it is here that the economic activities of our enterprise will make the most difference, because money will be cycled around local suppliers, distributors, and sellers to ehance and strengthen our community.

Photo: PermablitzHI, a vibrant community of people who share common needs and goals.

‘Market’ does not mean ‘places where we can sell crap’ to a permaculturist.  Instead, we view ‘markets’ as a vibrant community of people [think of your local farmer’s market], who share common needs that we can help to meet.

When we can identify and meet these needs responsibly, ethically, and sustainably then we are rewarded with surplus cashflows to reinvest into our people, our enterprises, and our community. 

For example, we can look for local heritage varieties of crops that have adapted to growing conditions in the area, and develop a niche demand for varieties that are unavailable on supermarket shelves because they may not be suitable for long-term transportation or storage. 

Or, we can look for high-value crops that can be integrated into our polycultures, increasing the biodiversity and resilience of our system, while increasing the diversity and resilience of our economic yield.

Photo: Hana Farms, an example of a Regenerative Enterprise, cycles economic energy back into the community it serves.

 

Only when when our enterprise is able to competently serve the needs of our local community, should we look to developing our system to generate further surplus.  We expand our operations and systems organically, by careful observation, continuous improvement, and constant adaptation to changing long-term trends; and always, always conduct ourselves with respect to the ethics of permaculture, which underpin all of our work.

It is vitally important that we look at what our land offers us, rather than impose our will upon the land.  For example, deciding arbitrarily that ‘I want to grow chamomile’ because there may be a market for it would not be in alignment with the permaculture ethic of Earth Care, while paying our employees less than a living wage would violate our ethical principle of People Care. 

Finally, hoarding all of our profits and not re-investing surplus back into our local communities not only serves to isolate ourselves from our basic need to connect meaningfully with other human beings around us, it would not honour the third ethical principal of permaculture: Resource Share.

 

______________________________________
by Matthew Lynch
'Essays on Permaculture and Wellness'

Permablitz comes to Hawaii: parking lot is transformed into edible landscape

PermablitzHI#1:

PermablitzHI is a grassroots movement restoring Hawaii's food security one backyard at a time.

Before.

Photo: Backyard paring lot behind Sweet Home Waimanalo Cafe.

After.

Photo: In one day, the parking lot is transformed into an edible landscape.

 Hawaii's first Permablitz transformed the parking lot behind Sweet Home Waimanalo cafe into an edible landscape featuring a mandala kitchen garden, banana circle, living fence, worm farm, and an experimental sweet potato stack (for starters):

See the full gallery on Posterous

Plans for a mini-fruit-orchard, shipping-pallet-seating-area, and other goodies are in the works.

Permablitzes are entirely volunteer-based, and are based on permaculture design principles, reciprocity (the more you give the more you gain), and sharing resources. 

Stay tuned to the PermablitzHI website for PermablitzHI #s 2, 3, and 4, coming soon.

To keep informed of upcoming blitzes and workshops, join in the Join Hawaii's Edible Garden Revolution by clicking here.

Special thanks to:

Island Foodscaping, Sweet Home Waimanalo, Sustain Hawaii, Yogarden, Kaleo, Mikey and da Mililani Crew, Chop Chop Media, and our team of volunteer blitzers for your creativity, collaboration, and contributions.  Let the Edible Garden Revolution begin!

PERMABLITZ comes to Hawaii on 09.17.11

Permablitz (noun):  “Blitz”, from the german for lightening, means a focused application of energy. A permablitz is when that energy is focused on installing part of a permaculture system. “Perma” is short for permaculture, which is a design system for sustainable living and land use. As a comprehensive design system, permaculture includes much more than organic food gardening. Growing at least some of our food where we live, however, has always been a central emphasis within the broader picture of permaculture. 

Technically, a Permablitz is an informal gathering involving a day on which a group of people come together to achieve the following:

• Create or add to edible gardens where someone lives.
• Share skills related to permaculture and sustainable living.
• Build community networks.
• Have fun!

As an example, if you come along to someone’s house, plant a lettuce, learn about worm farming, meet some people, and have a few laughs, it may be accurate for you to say you’ve been at a permablitz. You may have already been to some in the past without knowing it!

 

The Permablitz story

Permablitzes began in 2006, when  a collaboration between Permaculture designer 'Sourdough' Dan Palmer & friends, and a South American community group in Melbourne, Australia's, became a revolution of edible garden landscapes quietly appearing in backyards all over the suburbs.  Check out Asha Bee's article and Katherine Kizilos' excellent article for The Age newspaper for the full story.

As of mid-2011, over 100 permablitzes have been held in and around Melbourne and throughout Australia, and have even spread overseas to California, Calgary, Montreal, Istanbul, Uganda, and now Hawaii.

PERMABLITZ-HI #1 is scheduled for Saturday September 17th, at Sweet Home Waimanalo (SHW) cafe. Matt will be teaching a hands-on weekend 'Introduction to Permaculture' class September 10-11, and PERMABLITZ-HI #1 will give participants a chance to utilize and share their new skills & knowledge by transforming the parking lot behind SHW into a functional, productive, and beautiful edible landscape.  Drop us a line if you'd like to participate!

Stay tuned, and subscribe to the PERMABLITZ-HI mailing list for more details.

Step 1.  Before.

Photo: The back of Sweet Home Waimanalo (SHW)cafe today.  Bo-ring.

Step 2. Design. 

Photo: Permaculture design for SHWcafe, featuring mandala kitchen gardens, functional banana circle, mini-orchard, worm farm and chicken-dome-tractors.

Step 3. Blitz! 

Photo: Permaculture design for SHWcafe, featuring mandala kitchen gardens, functional banana circle, mini-orchard, worm farm and chicken-dome-tractors.

Join Hawaii's Edible Garden Revolution today by clicking here, and help us restore Hawaii's food security - one backyard at a time.

PERMABLITZ comes to Hawaii on 09.17.11

Permablitz (noun):  “Blitz”, from the german for lightening, means a focused application of energy. A permablitz is when that energy is focused on installing part of a permaculture system. “Perma” is short for permaculture, which is a design system for sustainable living and land use. As a comprehensive design system, permaculture includes much more than organic food gardening. Growing at least some of our food where we live, however, has always been a central emphasis within the broader picture of permaculture. 

Technically, a Permablitz is an informal gathering involving a day on which a group of people come together to achieve the following:

• Create or add to edible gardens where someone lives.
• Share skills related to permaculture and sustainable living.
• Build community networks.
• Have fun!

As an example, if you come along to someone’s house, plant a lettuce, learn about worm farming, meet some people, and have a few laughs, it may be accurate for you to say you’ve been at a permablitz. You may have already been to some in the past without knowing it!

 

The Permablitz story

Permablitzes began in 2006, when  a collaboration between Permaculture designer 'Sourdough' Dan Palmer & friends, and a South American community group in Melbourne, Australia's, became a revolution of edible garden landscapes quietly appearing in backyards all over the suburbs.  Check out Asha Bee's article and Katherine Kizilos' excellent article for The Age newspaper for the full story.

As of mid-2011, over 100 permablitzes have been held in and around Melbourne and throughout Australia, and have even spread overseas to California, Calgary, Montreal, Istanbul, Uganda, and now Hawaii.

PERMABLITZ-HI #1 is scheduled for Saturday September 17th, at Sweet Home Waimanalo (SHW) cafe. Matt will be teaching a hands-on weekend 'Introduction to Permaculture' class September 10-11, and PERMABLITZ-HI #1 will give participants a chance to utilize and share their new skills & knowledge by transforming the parking lot behind SHW into a functional, productive, and beautiful edible landscape.  Drop us a line if you'd like to participate!

Stay tuned, and subscribe to the PERMABLITZ-HI mailing list for more details.

Step 1.  Before.

Photo: The back of Sweet Home Waimanalo (SHW)cafe today.  Bo-ring.

Step 2. Design. 

Photo: Permaculture design for SHWcafe, featuring mandala kitchen gardens, functional banana circle, mini-orchard, worm farm and chicken-dome-tractors.

Step 3. Blitz!

Photo: Permaculture design for SHWcafe, featuring mandala kitchen gardens, functional banana circle, mini-orchard, worm farm and chicken-dome-tractors.

Join Hawaii's Edible Garden Revolution today by clicking here, and help us restore Hawaii's food security - one backyard at a time.

Banana Circles on Maui

http://posterous.com/posts/edit/66266779#settings

Photo: Banana circle: functional and beautiful.

We stumbled across these simple banana circles at Laulima Farm in Kipahulu, on the road past Hana in the shadow of Haleakala (which I highly recommend checking out if you should ever find yourself wandering the magical road to Hana...).

It's a very simple design which can increase the tidiness, production & functionality of banana plants; by planting in a circle around a shallow pit filled with mulch, you can 'march' the bananas around the perimeter of the circle as the root corms send up new baby shoots.  Sweet potato and other moisture-loving species like comfrey and mint can also be planted around the rim to increase yield and diversity in a concentrated area.  Cacao was observed here, growing in the shade created between two banana circles.

Bananas are a very hungry plant, and will benefit from the extra concentration of nutrients the central mulch pit provides.  Kitchen scraps from Laulima Farm's roadside stand were being dumped into this circle, and as you can see the plants were only too happy to take up all that excess nutrient and turn it into copious quantities of bananas.

The system can also work well for harvesting & processing greywater - turning greywater into bananas - so long as you are careful to esure that harsh chemical cleaning agents are avoided. 

Rick Coleman of Southern Cross Permaculture Institute used banana pits in Central America, where subsistence farmers who were walking 2 hours each way to access their mountain grow plots had no toilet system, resulting in unhealthy (nasty!) runoff to the villages below. 

Banana circles were dug upslope of their mountainside plots and filled with rocks & organic waste matter.  These shallow versions of a pit latrine systems were an effective alternative to the practice of just going where and whenever the need arose, since typically only one or two people per day were using each banana pit. 

In this simple example of Cycling Energy [Mollison] / Produce No Waste [Holmgren],  a potentially toxic waste product is converted into a valuable nutrient source for an additional crop by asking the simple question:

• How can the waste products of one element in your system become an input for another?

Back to Laulima Farms, and there are 0 food miles here, because bananas are planted in such abundance throughout the property that they practically give them away.  (As an aside, their banana bread is OFF-THE-HOOK (amazing), spelt flour is used more to bind the banana mash that is used to make the 'bread'.  We muched on a couple slices while we waited for the customers ahead of us in line to blend their own smoothies...)

Photo: Human-powered smoothies!

Photo: Nitrogen-fixing Peanut grass and hardy Mint used as a wonderfully attractive groundcover.

Photo: Food planted everywhere, as far as the eye can see at Laulima Farms.

Photo: Bamboo circle used to great effect as private seating area..

Photo: Bamboo construction used in Laulima's roadside stand.

theGreenBackpack in Hawaii

Photo: Oahu, 'The Gathering Place'.

Its been a long & winding road, spanning from a small cluster of islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, to the island-continent with one coast in the Pacific and the other in the Indian Ocean (Australia), across 'The Ditch' (Tasman Sea) to our Polynesian neighbors in Aoteroa (New Zealand), then to the European hinterlands of the North Sea (Hamburg, Germany), and finally back again to our island home: Oahu.

Also known as 'The Gathering Place', Oahu is home to Honolulu (capital city of the Islands), plus some 800,000-odd residents (out of the total state population of around 1.3 million)… Hawaii plays host to some 8 million or so visitors from North America alone each year, and while it really is as good as you have imagined it to be here (sun, sand, surf ….and so much Aloha spirit), just like your community, we face some serious issues which must be dealt with:

• 
  Photo (by Seattle Times): Empty shelves in a Hawaii supermarket during a recent tsunami warning.
  Food Insecure.  Hawaii imports between 80 - 95% of its food, which is actually quite ridiculous when you think of the fertile soils and ideal, year-round growing conditions we have.  If the shipping lanes were blocked for any reason, best estimates project that there would be only around two weeks' worth of food here to sustain the population.  Anytime there is a hurricane warning, what do you think is the first thing to disappear off supermarket shelves?  You guessed it: Toilet paper.  On a bright note, you can now find farmer's markets selling fresh local produce somewhere on every day of the week.
• 
  Photo (by mtnbiker808): An oil tanker delivers its payload off the shores of Kapolei, Oahu.
  Energy Dependent.  The numbers for energy security are similar to the numbers for food security: as much as 95% of our energy is produced from imported coal or oil… if you've ever sailed off the Ewa coastal plains when the oil tankers are offloading (twice weekly), you know how fragile those hoses which pipe our fuel to the refineries in Campbell Industrial Park (draped precariously off the side of massive tankers bobbing up & down in choppy seas) are.  The State of Hawaii is working towards reversing those numbers, with a goal of powering the islands by 80% renewable energy by 2050.

While those are two issues tGB will be directly involved in addressing during the coming years, they are definitely not the only ones.. there are also issues of Homelessness, Elder Care Crisis,  Growth vs. Sanity (a.k.a. Honolulu's Mass Transit System), Watershed Management, Invasive Species and Ecosystem Conservation challenges to be reckoned with.

Hawaii is a paradise precariously balancing conflicting pressures on our natural resources - just like our planet.

My wife have spent the last few months relocating our lives to this tropical island paradise, reconnecting with family and friends, and working through the myriad of details which come with starting over from scratch in a new place to build a life together (like getting married on the summer solstice!).

Along the way, we've stumbled into some pretty amazing projects that we'll be sharing about with you in the coming months.  There are rumors that theGreenBackpack crew may be off again later this year to work in Vanuatu, and perhaps other areas of the Asia-Pacific region...

…and of course, we can't wait to get back to Mongolia to continue our work there (and maybe even plant some seeds for more regenerative projects) - though not until next summer please (an Island Boy can only take so much -30C temperatures!!).

Meanwhile, I look forward to enjoying the rest of the summer here getting my hands dirty in some new projects, and then spending the winter in a place where anything below 15C is a two-blanket night…

In so many ways, Hawaii is like a miniature R&D testing lab for Planet Earth, a microcosm for many of the common challenges and issues faced by communities around the globe.  We look forward to diving into working towards solutions that can be shared, adapted & applied; perhaps to your local region.

Stay tuned for more permacultural adventures in moving beyond sustainability, and make sure you subscribe by clicking here if you want to make sure you don't miss any of it.  We'll be posting consistently rather than frequently, because 1) we can't even keep up with all the stuff that crowds our InBox either, 2) there's just too much awesome to be done out in the real world, and 3) we don't want to make anyone too jealous about living in Hawaii.  ...I jest! (sort of..)

Regeneratively,
-Matt Lynch & friends-
aka 'theGreenBackpack'

Mongolian Permaculture: What's next? (Day 22)

Theme song of the day: 'Just Breathe' by Eddie Vedder.  His lyrics just couldn't say this any better.

Photo: graduating class of Dec 2009 PDC at SCPI

It's been about 15 months since I stumbled across permaculture at Rick and Naomi Coleman's Permaculture Design Course at the Southern Cross Permaculture Institute in Leongatha (Victoria, Australia).

I had run out of money, moved back home with my parents in Melbourne, and, in search of what was next for me in the adventure that is my life, I had applied for a position studying Landscape Architecture at RMIT University in Melbourne.  There was no way of knowing on day one of my PDC that in just over a year, I would have been to Mongolia twice, covering an area from the Gobi Desert in the south to Zavkhan province in the northwest, to the Kazakh stronghold of Bayan Ulgii in the far west; and working on projects making a positive contribution to Mongolian communities all along the way... life is strange, and unpredictable, and beautiful.
 

Photo: Bek 'The Mongolian Maniac' wrestles with Dave 'The Ghost' Gibb at Wilson's Prom during our PDC rest day.

The new humble Monoglian friend I made on that course turned out to be the Food Security Director of an international NGO, and the small pact we made over the campfire one evening (to visit each other's homelands) is growing into an international collaboration of knowledge & resources that could help vastly different cultures connect, and learn from each other.

It's Bek's turn to visit my homeland since I am 2-0 in the visit tally right now, but first he has his work cut out for him with establishing a strong foundational year for the SEAL Project, and the other permaculture-based projects he is implementing throughout Mongolia (permaculture has been integrated into all of ADRA-Mongolia's Food Security initiatives).

600 integrated root cellars, and 600 passive solar greenhouses equipped with 600 drip-irrigation systems will be built for carefully selected beneficiaries throughout Bayan Ulgii province in the next year, as part of a 4-year plan to strengthen local food security and stimulate the local economy (with microenterprises and Self-Help microfinance groups) by seeding the community with these permaculture demonstration sites and future permaculture teachers.

Photo: 'Bolhadt', Project beneficiary living in Sagsay soum.  He is married, has 2 young children, has an existing root cellar installed under his house, is already farming his own worms, and has some experience growing potatoes and turnips.

Beneficiaries are screened not for their level of needs (this would be applicable to an 'aid' or 'relief' effort), but rather for their character, motivation, and potential to become future community leaders once equipped with the tools, knowledge, and opportunity to create positive, regenerative change in their own lives.  Checks and balances (such as monitoring gender-ratios and potential conflicts-of-interest) are designed into the selection process to maximize the project's potential for success.

Like all projects and organizations, the quality of results created is entirely dependent upon the quality and character of the people driving it, and based on my experience of the eleven ADRA staff devoted to this project, and the leadership & vision of Bek, Doc, and Michelle Abel (Programs Director) from ADRA-Mongolia's head offices in UB, integrity levels are high and the project is off to a very good start. 

One heartfelt conversation I had with project staff in the closing days of the course revolved around my personal experience of how many friends came forward to support me emotionally, practically, and even financially while I watched the small fortune I made during my twenties be taken away; when the money was gone, all that was left was the people I had touched - and I was humbled to find out how many that is, and how rich I truly am.

The SEAL Project staff have a similar opportunity, in that the work they are being paid to do over the next four years will touch many lives and forge many relationships that would be challenging to create outside of this context; if project staff focus on taking care of their people the best way they know how, than each one of them will be richer than they can imagine by the time the project ends - and we are talking about true wealth: the wealth of rich and supportive relationships, not the transient & deceptive wealth of money.

Photo: Bastama School Gardens project.

Dr. Beket's Bastama School Gardens project has the potential to impact an additional 500 students and families, while Guliya's large-scale fruit & vegetable production plot could also impact countless more.  In this way, we plant the seeds of permaculture design with 13 students, and watch it grow to help over 1,100 families move towards a sustainable & regenerative future.

As for me?  Well, I couldn't have done any of this work if not for the foundation laid by the many permaculturists who have gone before me, especially the work done by Rick Coleman and Kat Lavers during the 2010 Mongolian Permaculture project; had it not been for that experience and learning curve, I would not have a strong enough baseline of knowledge & experience to be effective here, and in fact it would have been irresponsible to send me in lieu of a more experienced instructor.

Photo: Rick and Kat, Mongolian Permaculture 2010

I was able to be effective in Mongolian conditions, and adapt the lessons I learned last year to Mongol-Kazakh culture, only because of the time, money and effort dedicated towards skilling up, and learning from others who were so willing to share with & teach me.  Now I have a stronger baseline to operate from when working in Sustainable Aid and Overseas Development, but there are knowledge & experience gaps (especially in creating and cultivating my own productive & functional crop systems) that I need to fill.

Bill Mollison said it best in the Global Gardener series:

'Once you've set up your home, so that you can leave it for 2 or 3 months and it just gets better, so that you are free to travel, then you can go and teach other people.' 

- Bill Mollison -

So that's what is next for me:  return to Hawaii, marry the woman I love, put some roots down, and start growing some veggies. 

Come visit if you are in the area.

Photo: Wind & Light ride in Hawaii.

Photo: HOME.