On Quakers and Permaculture: Making a Living, Not a Killing | Neighbour Grow
Why am I trying to start a permaculture business? →
On Quakers and Permaculture: Making a Living, Not a Killing
Posted on April 9, 2014 | 1 Comment
When I read about climate change, oil spills, toxic tailings ponds, and accelerating species extinction, I find it tempting to view my fellow humans as something that the rest of creation would be better off without. It’s not much of a stretch to say that we industrialized humans are collectively behaving like a cancer upon the body of the earth. And yet, as a Quaker, I believe that there is that of God in every human being, as S/He is in every part of creation. My experience of worship, confirmed by our corporate Testimonies, tells me that it is not the fundamental nature of God to be alienated from, and at war with, Her/Himself. There must therefore be some way for us humans to live on this earth peaceably, without destroying and degrading it. In the words of the late folksinger Utah Phillips, we should be able “to make a living, not make a killing”.
As innocuous as the foregoing premise may sound, note that mainstream discussion of environmental issues denies this. The goal of protecting the environment is typically framed as inherently conflicting with the goal of promoting economic prosperity for humans. And who among us is willing to protect polar bears if it means our families must go hungry and cold? (My own Monthly Meeting’s response to a KAIROS tar sands delegation report got caught on the horns of this dilemma: we were all concerned about the environmental devastation of tar sands development, but we had to acknowledge our economic dependence on this energy source.) Environmental goals are thus perpetually subordinated to economic growth. The mainstream debate is over how much environmental protection (if any) we can afford without hurting the economy. But this line of thinking is dangerously shortsighted: obviously, the economy won’t survive if humans don’t survive; and humans can’t survive for long if we continue to heat up the atmosphere, deplete nonrenewable resources, and otherwise degrade the ecosystems that we depend upon.
Since I started working on this article, the emerging crisis of the global financial system, and the light shed on this system by the Occupy Movement, have conspired to make it increasingly clear that this economic system cannot and should not be saved. Rather, Naomi Klein (‘Capitalism vs. the Climate’, The Nation,Nov.9,2011)argues that the solution to our environmental problems is in fact the solution to our economic problems. We just have to move beyond the framework of this current economic system, designed as it is to allow the wealthiest one percent to make a killing, and focus instead on how one hundred percent of us might make a living.
So, I return to the premise: that there must be some way for humans to live without harming the rest of creation. How then? I believe I have found some answers to this question in my exploration of Permaculture. Specifically, I had the opportunity to work with a Permaculture designer in developing a community garden for my neighbourhood; and this experience led me to take a two-week intensive Permaculture Design Course last July. Here’s some of what I learned.
The fundamental ethical principles of Permaculture are: (a) Care for the earth, (b) Care for people, and (c) Sharing the surplus. The movement was founded by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in the 1970’s. Permaculturists seek to design and implement systems that allow humans to meet their basic needs (food, shelter, clothing, etc.) in an ecologically sustainable manner. Because food is one of the most basic human needs, Permaculture ideas have been principally applied to the problem of food production, and it is perhaps best known as a method of organic gardening. Typically, Permaculture gardenersemphasize edible perennial plants, including fruit trees and bushes, to create a self-sustaining “food forest”. I might add that it was a Quaker, Ruth Stout, who pioneered the no-till, mulch-intensive organic gardening techniques which became central to Permaculture.
More broadly, Mollison characterizes Permaculture as “a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labour; and of looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single project system.”Holmgren further identifies the following design principles:
Observe and interact: By taking time to engage with nature we can design solutions that suit our particular situation.
Catch and store energy: By developing systems that collect resources at peak abundance, we can use them in times of need.
Obtain a yield: Ensure that you are getting truly useful rewards as part of the work that you are doing.
Apply self-regulation and accept feedback: We need to discourage inappropriate activity to ensure that systems can continue to function well.
Use and value renewable resources and services: Make the best use of nature’s abundance to reduce our consumptive behaviour and dependence on non-renewable resources.
Produce no waste: By valuing and making use of all the resources that are available to us, nothing goes to waste.
Design from patterns to details: By stepping back, we can observe patterns in nature and society. These can form the backbone of our designs, with the details filled in as we go.
Integrate rather than segregate: By putting the right things in the right place, relationships develop between those things and they work together to support each other.
Use small and slow solutions: Small and slow systems are easier to maintain than big ones, making better use of local resources and producing more sustainable outcomes.
Use and value diversity: Diversity reduces vulnerability to a variety of threats and takes advantage of the unique nature of the environment in which it resides.
Use edges and value the marginal: The interface between things is where the most interesting events take place. These are often the most valuable, diverse and productive elements in the system.
Creatively use and respond to change: We can have a positive impact on inevitable change by carefully observing, and then intervening at the right time.
Far from degrading ecosystems, these principles can be applied to increasebiodiversity and ecological resiliency, while still obtaining yields to provide for human needs.
As an example of these design principles in action, I was particularly inspired by an aquaponics system (i.e. aquaculture + hydroponics, the raising of fish coupled with the growing of vegetables) developed by Will Allen of Growing Power, Milwaukee. Water from a large fish tank is pumped into overhead vegetable beds. The dirty water fertilizes and irrigates the plants, while the plants filter and oxygenate the water, which then flows back into the fish tanks. Instead of the fish manure being discarded as a waste, it is used as a resource. As this example shows, Permaculture is not anti-technology: it is about development and utilization of appropriate technologies, that don’t require huge inputs of energy and non-renewable resources, and that don’t generate large amounts of waste. In many cases, the technologies that best meet these design constraints are simple technologies widely utilized a few generations ago, before consumerism took over our culture, like water-bath canning of vegetables, and coppicing of trees for firewood.
In the Permaculture Design Course, we considered how these principles can be applied on a variety of scales, from tiny window-gardens to commercial farming operations. As a capping exercise, our team came up with a design for a small city park (including lots of edible plants and a community gathering space) on a particular patch of public space now covered with quackgrass. I’m hoping to take this learning and put it use helping other communities around Edmonton develop Permaculture-style community gardens (as well as increasing the food yield from my own yard).
It’s not immediately obvious how to get from small-scale gardening projects to the kind of massive green social transformation we so urgently require. But see principle 9 above: a small-scale solution, if tried and shown to be successful, can then be quickly and widely replicated (bearing in mind that any attempted replication must be adapted to the particularities of each local situation). Naomi Klein explicitly acknowledges the role of Permaculturists and the allied local food and Transition Towns movements in this hoped-for transformation. Ten years ago, she observes, anti-globalization activists were met with the objection that there simply is no conceivable alternative to the corporate-controlled industrial production and distribution system for meeting people’s needs and providing gainful employment. But in the past decade, the Permaculture and local food movements have been giving the lie to this objection, by developing the nucleus of a just and sustainable local food system. And Permaculturists are already working on extending these ideas to home construction, clothing, transportation, health care, and other basic needs.
What does this have to do with Quakers (aside from Ruth Stout’s involvement)? Well, there was once a Friend who had an opportunity to make a killing by getting in on the beginnings of the industrial consumer goods distribution system in North America. But he saw the spiritual dangers of that path, and he stepped back from it, choosing instead to make a modest living from tending his fruit orchard, with a bit of handicraft income (from tailoring) on the side. This is exactly the sort of career choice many Permaculturists are making today. I can therefore say, with tongue only slightly in cheek, that the esteemed eighteenth-century Quaker prophet John Woolman was recognizably a Permie – over two centuries before Mollison and Holmgren! Nor is this resemblance coincidental: Woolman’s writings include a thorough and incisive economic analysis of these issues. The following remark is characteristic:
So great is the hurry in the spirit of this world, that in aiming to do business quickly and to gain wealth, the creation at this day doth loudly groan.
— Journal, ch. XII
Woolman faced, and answered, the same sort of objection Permaculturists are facing and answering today: concern for the creation is all very well and good, but our economic system simply can’t function without X (X = slavery in Woolman’s day; cheap energy and resulting greenhouse gas emissions, in ours).
More generally, I hope it is obvious from my description above that Permaculture principles are deeply consonant with our Testimonies. The anti-consumerist, anti-waste theme of Permaculture accords with Simplicity. Permaculture’s insistence on living within our environmental limits speaks to Integrity. The concern for economic justice accords with Equality. And the principles of integration, of valuing diversity, and of putting elements of a system in right relation to one another, suggests the building of healthy human communities as well as gardens, in accord with our Testimony of Community. But I particularly want to focus here on Permaculture’s application to the Peace Testimony. I submit that the corporate-controlled industrial production and distribution system of modern Capitalism, with its demand for ever-increasing inputs, is in a state of constant war against the people of the developing world for control of those resources, and against the other species of this planet as it devastates the ecosystems they are part of. We can choose, actively or passively, to remain reliant on this system, and thus complicit in its violence. Or we can begin to transition, as the Permies are doing, to mitigate our dependence on this system, while developing sustainable alternatives. Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy speaks of this work as “The Great Turning”, a spiritual quest that puts us humans back on the same side as the polar bears and all our other brothers and sisters in the natural world. And I suggest that the Permaculture movement can furnish us with a wealth of practical ideas on how to do this.
Moreover, this is work that doesn’t have to wait for the passage of laws, ratification of treaties, or other permission from political leaders. This is good ol’ Woolman-style direct action. We can exercise our power, here and now, to live, individually and collectively, in accordance with the promptings of love and truth in our hearts. We can learn to make a living, not a killing.
A good introductory text, for those who wish to learn more, is Gaia’s Garden: a Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, by Toby Hemenway.
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Why am I trying to start a permaculture business?
Several years ago I began thinking about peak oil and the likelihood of imminent social collapse. Faced with the prospect of frightening change, a society may respond by (a) cooperating creatively to adapt to new circumstances, or (b) lashing out violently at convenient scapegoats. A key factor affecting the outcome may be the presence of grass-roots leadership, specifically, individuals and communities that exemplify the creative/adaptive response, who can say to the larger society: we’ve been working on this problem for several years now and we’ve found that this approach works for us: let’s try scaling it up and extending it to related problems. Around this time, I also became a convinced Friend. Quakers, with our experience of non-violent conflict resolution, with valuing diversity, with living adventurously, have much to say to the broader community about these issues.
Through involvement in the Transition Towns movement (communities planning for a post-fossil-fuel future), I learned about Permaculture. In my Making a Living article, I explained how, it seems to me, Permaculture principles provide a set of practical, nuts-and-bolts ideas for implementing our Quaker testimonies in the economic-social realm. I further want to express the sense of sacred awe – heart-pounding, lump-in-the-throat joy – that I feel when I encounter examples of well-designed Permaculture projects – using simple materials thoughtfully and harmoniously to obtain a yield (food, shelter, warmth, clothing, etc.) while increasing the ecological resilience and beauty of a place (cf. Peter Brown & Geoffrey Garver, Right Relationship: Building a Whole Earth Economy, Berret-Koehler, 2009).
This is movement towards what Quakers have traditionally called Gospel Order. I WANT, WITH ALL MY HEART, TO BE ENGAGED IN THIS ENDEAVOUR! I want to minimize my dependence on the corrupt, unjust, violent economic/political system that is currently trashing our planet. I want to help model the development of a grass-roots local economy exemplifying Right Relationship and Right Livelihood. If I’m doing this, and getting some kind of yield out of it (in cash, kind, or local currency (if and when established)), and I’m otherwise able to live within my means, I will count this business a success,
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