[p2p-research] abundance in agriculture

[Roberto Verzola]

j.martin.pedersen wrote:
> The signal to noise ratio is probably not very conducive for this kind
> of discussion and there is a good chance that we are quite simply on
>   
I sure hope we can continue this useful exchange. To meet your concern 
about S/N ratio, I will try to keep my responses shorter. I have also 
retitled this exchange on agriculture and separated it from the exchange 
on the differences between agriculture, industrial, and information modes.

> Not quite "just banter": firstly, one of the pride fruit trees of the UK
> (which human beings and other animals carried from Kazakhstan once upon
> a time) is the apple tree. There used to be more than 6000 varieties on
>   
Ok then. I'll shift from banter to serious mode. I assure you that trees 
in the Philippines can bear fruit and reproduce without human care, and 
soils that are left alone for years will start growing initially weeds, 
subsequently bushes and shrubs, and then trees (including some fruit 
trees), in the process building up the soil and making it more fertile. 
Even in the center of Manila, abandoned walled-off construction sites 
that are left untouched soon show the start of this process of 
colonization by wild plants. This is the heart of abundance in 
agriculture: the built-in urge of every organism to reproduce itself, 
and a related tendency in ecosystems to fill every available niche.

I'll take your word that in the U.K., trees need human care/intervention 
to bear fruit and to reproduce, and soils need human care to be fertile.

Then, it seems to me that the creation of artificial scarcity and the 
suppression of natural abundance is even much worse in some countries 
(like the UK) than I thought. The UK you picture illustrates how natural 
processes that used to be sources of abundance have been so undermined 
that they are almost erased even from the people's consciousness, 
including, it seems, activists like you. The creators of artificial 
scarcity have managed to convince people that they have to *do 
something* (or more probably *buy or rent* something...) to make a tree 
bear fruit and reproduce itself, and to make the soil fertile. So 
convinced, in fact, that you now forcefully argue that it cannot be 
otherwise! (Just like mothers who insist on buying formula milk for 
their baby, convinced that their own breast milk is inadequate...)

In fact, *as long as you refuse to be seduced* by offers of "seedless" 
fruits, "better" hybrids, chemicals that induce flowering, "soil 
conditioners" and other fertilizers, "weed"-killers, pesticides, and 
similar poisoned pills from the agrochemical industry, this natural urge 
to reproduce will reassert itself, and you can look forward to a more 
abundant agriculture in the future, with much less purchased inputs, 
perhaps even none.

But this has to start with a change of mindset among activists like you. 
You need to free yourself from the grip of the artificial scarcity 
mindset, appreciate once more the abundance that nature is capable of 
providing, and relearn the conditions needed to bring this about.

> invented by the plants to carry their seeds around - essentially we give
> them a better life and they give us a better life. A feedback loop. To
> view them in isolation is bizarre to me and somewhat unfair and arrogant.
>
>   
In a debate, especially among friends, I usually avoid calling the other 
side "arrogant". If it is arrogant to think that trees can bear fruit 
and reproduce on their own, and that soils can maintain their fertility 
on their own, with no human intervention, what would you call someone 
who believes that trees cannot, and soils cannot, unless the human 
intervenes?

> For what concerns permaculture and for what it is worth, I am actually a
> certified permaculture designer, although I have never practiced it for
> real, except when I visit my friends in permaculture villages. I must
> remember to tell them that they do something wrong, since they work so
> hard to be in symbiosis with nature - instead of just reaping its
> abundant fruits that come by themselves from the blue sky. You need to
> come and teach proper permaculture in this country, for they seem to
> work so hard to make ends meet.
>   

If your permaculture friends are working harder than conventional 
farmers, they must be getting some wrong advice, because a lot of 
permaculture is about energy efficiency and conservation, particularly 
in human energy. That is why:

-- the emphasis of permaculture is on perennials rather than annuals. 
Instead of cycles of "plant, then harvest"; they will "plant once, 
harvest many times".

-- permaculture has zones, so that the farm sections which the farmer 
has to visit most often are closest to the home, while the areas they 
need to visit least are farthest from the home.

-- permaculture relies not on people but on animals (eg chicken 
'tractors') to till and fertilize the soil, and various farm components 
take on multiple functions, to relieve the farmer from those functions.

-- special attention is paid to topography, and the flow of water is 
laid out to make gravity do most of the work

-- the farmer is advised to recognize and tap natural patterns instead 
of human labor.

-- the ideal design target is a forest (ie it maintains and regenerates 
itself with a minimum if at all of human intervention) of food and cash 
crops.

These are all in permaculture manuals. I cannot imagine that UK 
permaculture practitioners are as you describe them. In fact, you sound 
like you are mocking them. If your friends visit successful UK 
permaculturists, I'm sure they will learn quickly what they are doing 
wrong. Over the years, as the permaculture farm approaches the ideal, 
farming becomes more fun than hard work.

I do not mean that humans do not/should not intervene. When we harvest, 
we already intervene. If our other interventions focus mainly on 
minimizing the destructive impact of such harvesting, watching out for 
potential threats to abundance (the concept of reliability comes in 
here), and learning how to build on existing abundance to create 
cascades of abundance, then we can look forward to harvesting natural 
"interest" in perpetuity from natural capital.

Greetings to all,

Roberto