1. The Global Development of Permaculture
by Bill Mollison
© Bill Mollison 3rd February, 2004
Older personal friends such as Masanobu Fukuoka in Japan
(The One-Straw Revolution) and the late
P.A. Yeomans in Australia (Water for Every
Farm) developed excellent models of both sustainable
"do-nothing" agriculture in Japan, and integrated water / soil
treatment / farm irrigation in Australia. Both these men were themselves
successful farmers, authors and innovative or inventive thinkers. Both
lack an active, well-informed body of students, or a world-wide
following.
Yet Permaculture, with a curriculum text,
PERMACULTURE: A Designers'
Manual, has a body of many thousands of
teachers, and millions of practitioners world-wide. Texts are available
in about 20 languages, more each year, teachers are itinerant (not static
or in institutions), and their students are encouraged to teach wherever
they feel they have the courage to teach.
Why does Permaculture attract activists / practitioners / teachers, and
some other good systems lack them? The short answer depends on a few
essentials:
1. A well-developed, practical curriculum, now of global agreement and
well tested.
2. A body of itinerant teachers,
resulting in local teachers of both sexes, at home in their own culture
and language.
3. An emphasis on reaching local farmers (women in Africa, India) and not
directing teaching solely to men, by men. In this way we differ too, from
all "aid" agencies who send in male "experts" for
teaching, but who do not inspire local teaching. We teach
the poor for free, incur no local debt.
4. We teach only Permaculture; we do not teach repression of local
skills, beliefs, religion or folkways. All sexes, races, beliefs and
cultures are thus welcome in the world bodies, at global conferences; we
are not culture-changing, just culture-enhancing.
All these simple and folk-friendly ways give us admission to all but the
most arrogant or militaristic cultures ruffling no feathers and selling
no uniforms, flags or badges. Thus, we are essentially uncountable, and
invisible, not an easily identifiable group, and we never carry
arms.
A more recent friend, Takao Furuno and his wife Komiko, travel globally
to rice-growing areas, carrying The Power of
Duck as their text for small farmers in Tanzania, the
Philippines, Taiwan, Korea, China, Indonesia, Vietnam, South-east Asia
and India. They travel in their own time, pay their way, teach for free.
Furuno tells me that his only crusade is to help small
family farmers. He is very well regarded by a loyal
corps of farmers in Japan, and every area he has visited. He is also a
Permaculture practitioner, and has a well-equipped battery of
solutions!
Ali Sharif, one of our Registered Teachers, runs an eponymous university
in Brazil *, and is accepting students and graduates at tertiary level.
This trend may well continue, but never at the expense of local or
itinerant teachers. After all, in a world in crisis, why
take 4 years and thousands of dollars to produce a usually-inactive
graduate (96% of all university-trained graduates) when
two intensive weeks can turn out 90% to 100% active, land-based farmers
of both sexes? The latter have the good of their families and villages at
heart, as does Furuno.
Thus Permaculture is democratic, training manual workers and
the illiterate, as well as the over-educated, training
"outcaste" women in India as well as nabobs developing friends
in low, but essential places. Seeing solutions, not problems. Available
to all.
Graduates develop their own financial systems (women's banks in India)
and teaching centres. The U.S.A. has its Permaculture Credit Union (in
Santa Fe); Japan, Korea, U.S.A. and Australasia are developing farmer
markets and subscription-only farms to supply families. And in all these
initiatives, you may find Permaculture graduates, being useful and
applied. They love their work.
How did we develop globally? By going to people, not asking them to come
to us. By giving them well-tried solutions, not airy-fairy beliefs - we
never ask for belief. By teaching the poor for free, and charging only
the affluent (the Robin Hood approach to costing). By staying "below
the horizon", not threatening any body. We do not define the
"infidel". All are welcome in our classes.
Granted, some of us display a selfless regard for our lives, but as we
have to spend them anyhow, why not be useful? Already many graduates have
dropped dead in harness; the Ralph Long Brigade of extinct, selfless
people! As I urge my students "the way is clear; the path is
open; don't wait for orders!" All you have that you own is your
life, and your work. Both are worthy gifts to those less well informed.
We have the debt of privilege, and it will never be paid. Go for
it.
Best regards
Bill and Lisa Mollison
The Permaculture Institute
(The original and the constant)
* The Bill Mollison University of Sustainable Systems
References:
YEOMANS, P.A., 1981
Water for Every Farm
FUKUOKA, Masanobu, 1978
The One Straw Revolution
FURUNO, Takao (wife Komiko)
The Power of Duck
Tagari Publications
MOLLISON, Bill
PERMACULTURE: A Designers' Manual
(and course curriculum)
Tagari Publications
Margie
Margie Bushman
(805) 682-4726
ext.101
mbushman@sbbg.org
Santa Barbara Permaculture Network
(805) 962-2571
sbpcnet@silcom.com