Permaculture and our economic crisis

Recorded down by the river, this is me trying to pull some thoughts together on the theme of what permaculture has to offer in helping us understand the situation we find ourselves in. As we face economic contraction and turnmoil how can we can better support our selves and our communities, with long term mutual ends in mind?

I am really keen to find ways to have this can we have wider conversation about the times we are in and how we best respond with problem solvers, creative minds, especially of those with values rooted in rooted in ecology and co-operation. #permaculture

Thoughts on how permaculture can inform change

Permaculture latest for 2022

The focus for S39 work in the last 12 months has been East Africa we are however running weekly sessions at treflach farm in Shrophire. This is an ideal opportunity to find out about permaculture, food growing, animal rearing and som much more. We have some low impact building projects in the pipeline potentially as well as some formal training according to demand.

The Treflach Thursday sessions run every week, and start from 10.00 am, there is a brig and share farm lunch most weeks and increasingly we will be enjoying the produce from the garden. it is informal so just come along, contact me @Misterjones2u on Twitter or find Sector39 on Facebook. There is acontact form on thei site as well.

Economics is a force which shapes our world, time for an update

What might a permaculture economic model look like?

In resonse to a request about ethical invesntment I have dusted down my economics lecture from the PDC, something I have been thinking about and working on for several years and presented these ideas in a slightly different context. As much as we are all caught up on the chase for money and livelihood we rarely stop and think about this strange thing called economics that seems to shape everything in the world around us.

It can be argued that climate change is the greatest market failure, the tendency to externalise the costs of production by both driving down or eliminating labour costs and dumping waste into the environment is the feature within capitalism which has bought us to the brink of our own destruction. We need an economic rationale which values natural resources above all else, one which build cohesive community, one which binds us together in common cause, not that pits us against each other in a never ending fierce competition for dwindling resources.

The economics of regeneration should be a central idea of our 21st century journey, leaving the neo-liberal nighmare of the late 20th century far behind us.

Economics and ecology lecture by Steven Jones

Capitalism in crisis

“Capitalism is a system that creates its own crises” says Yanis Veroufakis

In the short video above you can hear a summary of the ideas underpinning that statement. He gets much deeper into his analysis of the failure of capitalism below. One thing I think we must all realise is that at this point it is no longer about right or wrong, it is about recognising that the train which bought us all to this point, is no longer fit for purpose. Capitalism gave us the iPhone but it also gave us refugees, it created wealth like never seen before but it also created inequalities so extreme the whole system is set to topple. It has clearly failed to innovate on the ecological concerns despite having decades in which to bring about the necessary transformation.

Marx, in the labour theory of value explored what might happen when productive systems become fully automated, what is the value of a good if it is 100% intellectual property but created no meaningful work? Innovation in many ways is creating poverty. Rather than freeing workers from meaningless toil it has destroyed once productive and meaningful ways of living, replacing it with nothing.

Einstein feared that wealth disparity would lead to the ownership of media and communications by tiny elites who then would present only a distorted half truth, one convenient to those in power. This is clearly playing out today where dissenting voices are excluded from the conversation and the window of acceptable debate constantly narrows.

The greatest failing of capitalism is climate change, the notion of market externalities, competitive, unrestrained capitalism leads to the externalization of the costs of production onto environment and society – instead of reflecting the true cost of production unintended outcomes such as pollution and social damage is hidden, masked or simply ignored. The market rewards the lowest cost producer and this is the mechanism which has bought to this place of unfolding catastrophe.

James Hansen has consistently made an unswerving case for the urgent need for climate action

Those days are upon us already, so what must we do? Firstly I would argue it is time to recognise that this is where we are, say thank you for whatever trinkets and ball-balls the system allowed us and be ready to move on to what must come next, the transformation to a regenerative economy.

As the world stares the climate emergency in the face, ecological destruction on a scale hitherto un-imagined we must move into overdrive to head off the worst of the damage or the likeliest or soonest of the irreversible tipping points. Varoufakis touches on the need to address the crushing poverty affecting so many of us by socialising the benefits of quantitative easing and banking trickery and by diverting 25% of GDP into a widespread and effective green new deal and finally by reversing the limits on freedom of movement for people while putting much stricter limits on the movement of capital.

Permaculture is regenerative development. By that I mean it includes a specific objective of re-building soils, of harmonising with ecology and society, investing in social capital and targeting social outcomes above cold hard numbers. Those numbers forgot to include the fragile interconnected nature of the environment, the source of clean air water and the resources which sustain us. We each must tackle this multi-headed crisis from where we are, but it will require co-ordinated actions and consistency over time.

Permaculture Economics

I started out as an economics teacher. A rather turgid, dry and uninspiring subject at school, I switched to ecology and then did a degree in sustainable development. It was only years later that I realised permaculture sits at the intersection of those two fields of study. Our ecological salvation lies in the re-understanding of the economic rationale that underpins all of our decision making.

A breaking away from the study of wealth and money might allow us to study instead more human forms of wealth and capital. The economic question has to be along the lines of how do we combine different forms of capital in a way that meets both human and ecological needs as a specific objective. The idea that one may come at the price of the other should always have been an anathema for us.

Sector39 – as a training organisation is ready to lead. Rebuilding community, food security and habitat is central to our experience and skill base. We offer a deep understanding of both economic and ecological theory and can bring a great many years’ of experience to bare in these area. We are keen to hear from anyone ready to work with us.

invest in co-operation, Dragons co-op in Wales seeks investment to complete the renovation of our 400 year old home, shop and offices
http://dragons.cymru A chance to invest in community and sidestep the banks at the same time.

Radio Mfangano

Permaculture in Central Africa

(this is an early announcement of a course we are currently developing and seeking funding for, if you are interested to hear more please contact us after May 1st 2019)

As a design system for food security, sustainable livelihood and land regeneration permaculture directly addresses many of the challenges faced by farmers, urban communities as well as displaced people throughout Africa. Permaculture theory is easy to learn and to apply, draws heavily on local experience and resources, and is spreading like wildfire in East Africa. Permaculture is also a process of developing social cohesion whilst combining design skills with a consensus approach to problem solving.

Over the last 3 years Sector39, PRI-Uganda and PermoAfrica Centre in Kenya have been working closely to build a team of permaculture trainers, practitioners and teachers as well as demonstration plots and training hubs. With its young and vibrant population permaculture is being readily adopted and adapted by its enthusiasts. There are already many models and case studies to offer as building blocks to achieve much greater ambitions.

maaji permaculture group
Sector39 team with project members at Maaji refugee settlement Uganda

We are proposing two, 2-week courses in November/ December 2019, the first in Kumi, Eastern Uganda and the other on Mfangano Island, Homa Bay, Kenya.

kenya-map3

Kumi – 12 day full PDC in English language. Permaculture for teachers, community leaders and pioneers.

Mfangano – 12 day full PDC in Luo, Swahili and English. Permaculture for community transformation and teacher development.

This second course is especially aimed at Homa Bay area aspiring permaculture teachers and practitioners and especially Mfangano islanders who are farmers, teachers and community leaders.

Partnership

  • Sector39:

S39 is UK based and a leading permaculture training enterprise with over 2 decades of experience and with 3 years experience working Uganda. We are involved in teaching permaculture for schools, teachers and community leaders in UK and Uganda and also for refugees and displaced people. We have recently completed a 6 month contract for the Norwegian Refugee Council delivering training to refugee and host community members in the Western Nile region.

  • PRI-UG:

PRI-Uganda is a non-profit organisation whose major objective is to empower individuals and communities to undertake sustainable agriculture and culture using the Permaculture Approach. We work in close partnership developing appropriate training experience and outcomes. See more at Permaculture Research Institute Uganda.

  • PermoAfrica Centre:

Founded by Paul Ogola who was a graduate from the first Uganda PDC with Sector39 in 2016. PermoAfrica Centre are a training organisation based in Homa Bay, Kenya. They reach out across their local farming community to train, support and develop capacity for permaculture farming and demonstration.

Paul has developed his own training centre, PermoAfrica Centre as well as a strong local network of farmers he has trained with his team

Homa bay permaculture group

PermoAfrica centre

  • EK-FM:

EK-FM is a community radio broadcaster based on Mfangano Island. Their core listener-ship covers the island and reaches the lake shore communities in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. They broadcast daily in Luo and Swahili reaching up to 300,000 listeners.

  • Dolen Ffermio:

Wales/ Uganda farmers support link. Dolen have been a supportive partner to our interests in permaculture in East Africa since 2011 and are based in the same rural area of Mid Wales as Sector39.

Dolen Ffermio

End of Empire

Chris Hedges is one of the foremost ‘public intellectuals’ in the USA. One of the clearest voices on the left and a harsh critic of US imperialism. Hedges takes a clear, uncompromising view of the reality that is confronting us.

He advises us to abandon hope, as that leads to disappointment and desolation, and to focus on what we can practically achieve and through that process find deep personal meaning in our engagement.

He references many key texts, and draws on his deep experience of 20 years as foreign correspondent for the New York Times before quitting his influential position as head of the middle east office over the NYT’s refusal to accurately convey the disaster that was the Iraq war. The interview is deeply revealing of how the state controls the narrative and also how journalism has been eroded to ‘court gossip’.

Keiser Report

Ex Wall Street bond trader, turned financial journalist presents a fresh perspective on economics and social change. This episode fits perfectly into the theme of climate emergency and collapse. It’s a good watch and on topic, witty, acerbic, insightful and informed.

  • Are we living in an era of soft totalitarianism?
  • Will there be a Davos 2020?
  • ‘Bitcoin is the guillotine of the 21st century’

Thinking about the fragility and beauty of the natural world

We need to cultivate a culture of deep reverence for nature and be prepared to accept the lessons of our own observations. I added this as a counter balance to the other two videos.

However, we see the times we are living through. It seems to me it is this interaction between our economic world and the real ecology we are embedded in, that we need to concentrate on fully as we are clearly getting this very wrong currently. The issue both of the first two videos addresses is the mechanism by which we can overthrow the status quo. The overthrow of Wall Street, of the Imperialism and the empowerment of all people to face our collective challenges together seems to be a common theme.

permaculture, climate change and community transition event in Llanfyllin
Join us on Thursday evening to explore how these key issues impact on us at a community level

South Sudan refugee project: Using Permaculture design to rebuild lives

maaji permaculture group
s39 team permaculture uganda
S39 Team Bidibidi

June to November have been a momentous time for our training teams here in Western Nile. In just 6 months we have been tasked with the challenge of introducing permaculture methods in this untamed region where refugees greatly outnumber the indigenous population.

In partnership with Norwegian Refugee Agency Sector39 has led a 6 month training program for refugees and host community members. Many of the trainees are not experienced farmers or gardeners, more typically cattle herders and grazers. Here in Western Nile they have been given a plot of land and challenged to supplement their basic food aid with what they can grow in kitchen gardens, using organic and permaculture approaches

This is a 15 minute narrated slideshow with thoughts about the final phase of the project with thoughts on how it can be best continued. (below)

Interviews and testimonies

This first interview is with NRC translator and host community member Julius, he has fully involved himself in the project although he wasn’t present at the initial training. He makes some very perceptive observations about the impact of the project and has taken on many of the ideas and insights himself as he can observe them working effectively.

Audio testimony from a Maaji 3 team member

Zone 4 BidiBidi have the aspiration of securing a 2 acre plot to develop a permaculture enterprise and demonstration center. The map below is the product of group discussion and consultation over several days. We have already worked together to create a small training plot right next to the church we have been using as a classroom.

We would hope very much to have the opportunity to support these pioneers over the establishment phases of this project.

Community liaison link and permaculture team member Rashida outlines the plan for a demonstration plot for Zone 4 Bidibidi

 

s39 permaculture
Sector39 training and action support team, Maaji, October 2018
Much elation on completing the training, hopefully just the beginning of much bigger things to come.

 

Food forest, perfect tropical permaculture

 

The permaculture team members Maaji settlement

Slides of the Maaji team design presentation

permaculture s39
A creative vision, Permaculture Training Centre Maaji, Uganda

Permaculture Training Centre Maaji

This audio track is a presentation from the members design team which focused on building and the carpentry skills as an enterprise within training centre sketched above.

Fuel Efficient Stove project

This slideshow and narration explores progress developing and promoting fuel efficient stoves with the community  members.

Next steps

Proposal: This  project would benefit from support for a minimum of two years.

– ambition is to establish a permaculture training centre which will transition into a stakeholder owned and managed fully independent enterprise.

exploring a training and Enterprise development model that can be self replicating and able to generate much of the resource need to sustain from within its own internal economy.

The vision is to work closely with the members from the training to create a new and wholly refugee (stakeholder) owned enterprise that will serve as a permaculture training and demonstration hub for the region. It would incubate several related enterprises that initially would be the service providers for the training centre.

Building livelihood, enterprise and food security is the aim and to create a thriving learning hub at the centre of this new emerging community. We envisage the centre acting as a hub for training and outreach across the Western Nile region, developing many of the resources and skills needed to create a shift in the prevailing methodology for food and livelihood security.

Project proposal summary document below

NRC S39 permaculture project outline

 

Final preparations for the Permaculture Design Course!

The Permaculture Design Certificate course is starting this week, and it doesn’t feel real. Even though the work we have been doing has been in preparation for the course and convergence it still feels like we are just going to keep on doing what we are doing. This week has been about preparations out of the garden; sorting beds for 50 people, cleaning the school and the site, washing everything in the rooms, ensuring there is enough water, fruit and other foods for the UK teams arrival and then welcoming the UK team onto site.

With Jagwe’s help we replaced the nursery bed shade, replacing the heavier more useful papyrus with reed matting which will provide a more even coverage over the nursery. We climbed up the rickety ladder that gets smaller and smaller as it goes up, and is balanced precariously against the nursery structure. Grace and I finished the job when Jagwe had left Sabina, fighting against ants that had moved into the reeds while they were being stored.

With some help from the students Grace has been working on removing the lemon growth from the orange trees in the food forest. The roots of the lemon tree is stronger than the orange and so the two are grafted together but without proper management the stronger lemon growth fights through the oranges. Jagwe observed that the trees were diseased which made us aware of how important it was for us to work on the trees.

The UK team have arrived with energy, ideas and projects of their own which is making everything seem so much busier around the site. Richie is working on 407 projects all at once, building a beehive is his own personal project which he is doing around all the other woodwork that has been needed doing for weeks. The library has been painted, creating a brilliant white wall to be projected onto during the course for the big presentations. Han and I are working on making signs to put up around the site helping the participants navigate the grounds as well as making the site seem like an event space rather than just a school site. Helen and Charles have been able to work together to make plans for the Convergence, it has been great to get the team together so people are no longer just familiar names and email addresses.

Dan has been working on making an estoufa finca (with Luigi’s help) which is a wood pyrolysis stove that burns from the top and cooks the wood below releasing the wood gasses and water vapour, little or no smoke is produced once it’s got going. When fully going it burns at 800 degrees C. Most people in Uganda live by cooking on wood, the population is set to double in the next couple of decades and in the last couple of decades the forests have halved. Burning wood on the ground is at best 25% efficient and so there is a huge potential in exploring fuel efficient stoves.

A few days after the first load of UK team members, the rest of the team arrived. Now as a complete team we can focus on the course in more detail, everyone is helping each other prepare lesson plans and presentations. If there’s anything that someone on the teaching team is unsure about with everyone who’s here, there will be someone who they can ask.

With more mouths to feed, we have had to change what we eat in order to be able to cater for so many people all at once. Aunty Agnes taught us how to make chapattis which have been a staple ever since Richie perfected the art. Thankfully we collected enough avocados before the team arrived and so we aren’t missing our daily 3 avocado intake. It’s nice to share each meal with so many people, going from just the three of us who would eat together daily to more than five times that number now that the team has expanded. It’s a bigger affair with more people to get to know and more inspiring minds with a bigger range of conversations to be had.

With participants arriving today and the course starting tomorrow everyone is working hard in the hot African sun trying to get themselves and the site ready. It’s very exciting how massive the course and convergence are to permaculture in East Africa. Hopefully this is just the beginning of something bigger than any of us can imagine.

Not long to go!

As we are getting closer and closer to the permaculture design course there seems to be more and more work to be done. This week Charles has been in Kampala sourcing beds, bedding and basins for the course, Grace has been talking to him daily trying to sort out the logistics and prices for everything we need to make this course a success.

Here at Sabina we have been transplanting everywhere, but there are still so many beds to fill! The rains have been forcing us to halt our work again, the rainy season is coming to an end and so we have to be thankful for the growth the rain has helped us to achieve in such a short space of time. We have been heavily mulching the beds before we transplant into them in order to keep the weeds under control. It has made the task longer as we plant but in the long term it has meant that we are not worried about weeding every other day. Yesterday, we bought 1kg of ginger from Sanje market which we will be planting today in the hopes of having an example that we can replicate during the course.

With the rest of the UK team joining us in the coming week we are super excited for everyone to see what an incredible place Uganda, and especially Sabina school, is. We are preparing the site for them and are looking forward to having those extra hands ready to help in the days leading up to the course in order to make the site extra ready.

As the UK team arrive, the pupils of Sabina school are heading home for the holidays. Today the majority of the children we have gotten so used to seeing everywhere are heading home to their families. Some of the older students will be returning in a week or so to study over the holidays but I’m imagining the school site will be feeling very empty without them for a few days.

It’s been great having all the children around while we have been here, as it’s their school and I’m amazed by their willingness and desire to work, getting involved in every project we are doing. Not only in their permaculture lessons but in their free time too. Maria has been an especially consistent shadow to Grace, cheekily following her around as she works, chattering away in Lugandan patiently repeating herself until she is satisfied that Grace has understood what she is saying.

Over the weekend Grace, Luigi and I left the site for two nights to celebrate Grace’s birthday on the Saturday. We were deciding between two lakes, Lake Mbara and Nabugabo sand beach and in the end we decided to visit the closer of the two as we didn’t like spending all day on a Matatu. We definitely made the right decision, we had the run of a campsite right on the lakes edge where monkeys were the only other guests. We woke up on the Saturday morning to the most incredible sunrise and the whole day we were blessed by glorious weather. We swam in the lake and when we got tired we could dry off reading in the sun. On the Sunday the weather was a contrast, it rained really heavily and we were forced to seek refuge in the restaurant playing cards and learning how to play pool. It was nice to be able to relax together, so we don’t just have a work relationship and we were able to chat about things other than weeding, plants and the permaculture design course.

Jagwe has returned to Sabina for a few days and he is working on upright sack planting, a type of vertical planting used in urban permaculture to save on space. The idea is to keep the sacks strong and in place using a stone tower as a central pillar which also helps with water filtration throughout the sacks. He has been planting into the sides and top of the sack. In the sides he is planting light, leafy vegetables such as kale, pak choi, spinach and into the top the fruiting, heavier vegetables like broccoli, tomatoes or passions running from the sack to a post. He is using compost and has balanced soil in order to secure adequate nutrients for the plants.