A Permaculture Floating Seed
"travelling permaculture teachers"
What is a Permaculture floating Seed?
Often when we think of Permaculture, we think of people moving to the country to start growing or teaching, or planting in urban yards with their neighbours, or working towards social change in their local communities. But Permaculture encompasses so many aspects of economic, philosophical, cultural, infrastructural, and regenerative thought and practice.
Permaculture 'floating seeds' are an often overlooked group within this. We exist in many places under many names. Many of us are itinerant travelling Permaculture teachers, farmers, wwoofers, or development workers who do other jobs in science, community work or regeneration, and share and spread information worldwide. This role, like many in Permaculture, is fraught, complex and disputed. I still believe that it is needed.
As the world changes at great speed, we also need to change. Change can’t always be done at home, from behind our devices, in our gardens or with our friends, as we can’t always rely on common forms of communication. Clearly, many parts of the world have less privilege in regards to communication infrastructure, whether internet connection, telephones, shared language or high levels of literacy. Floating seeds thereby act as mobile knowledge and resource sharers.
'First do no harm'. Is it possible to move without further damaging the environment, people or cultures? Some challenges include getting from place to place, finding sustainably created food, physically and mentally carrying and imparting resources such as information, languages, seeds, books and movies. This means we may hitchhike yachts and cars, catch public transport, bike or hike and source food from permaculture farms and local organic co-ops wherever possible.
It is the role of a floating seed to try to spread information, show opportunities and possibilities, connect like-minded people cross-culturally, boost local voices, and to assist communities to get them up and running. Sometimes this means direct facilitation or teaching, often it just means the spreading of information, bringing in resources such as internet connection, funding, books, movies or seeds. It means linking groups or providing networking in isolated communities, particularly in countries where people are not accessing the internet, have diverse language groups or social linkages don't exist. For example there are a number of communities in Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania and Kenya that are working in Permaculture and are not aware of each others existence. When connected they can support each other in seed sharing, innovation, cultural change and social support.
The role of the floating seed is a culturally fraught one. It is not our job to tell anyone, particularly people of other colours, languages, ethnic groups, religious beliefs and privileges how they should live their lives. Not even that they 'should' practice permaculture. This means trying to stay away from the cultural colonialist perspective of privileged people telling other people what to do, (a major ongoing issue in ‘development'). The goal is to spread information within communities and to share ideas from the developing world to the developed world and back again. We do not want to disrespect local people’s knowledge about their farms, land, seeds, food needs, or cultural or spiritual frameworks.
There are many instances where people in the developing world, remote towns or indigenous communities have asked for assistance, so we try to start with the question of 'what does your community want?' This is complicated by questions such as; Who constitutes the community? How did they decide what was required? What opportunities are they aware of and how could that awareness be expanded? What is available? What are the possibilities? Obviously the more opportunities, resources and information communities have, the easier it is to make good decisions. If funding or resources are required, new problems present themselves. Plenty of critique exists around the tendency of Westernised cultures to champion individuals, which is often a disaster in community-based cultures. This means listening to local people about how money comes in, how resources are distributed, what exisiting power structures must not be undermined, and how to assist the cross pollination of ideas within a culture. At the same time, like everything done cross culturally, it is necessary to deal with identified cultural barriers such as poverty, and gender/ religious/ethnic discrimination.
This is especially true as the climate changes and different areas need different information and different resources. If you live somewhere where it traditionally rains a lot and it stops raining, what is the best way to evolve your practices? If there are indigenous farmers from drier regions with the same cultural or language background, knowledge exchange is much more effective. How can the two groups be linked together? In developed nations, how can we broach difficult conversations around climate change, social change and environmental innovation? (Hitchhiking is great for this as it means meeting people that you wouldn't normally mix with, and they can't get rid of you without booting you out).
So how do floating seeds try to do that work? A significant portion is the work on ourselves and our ingrained colonialism and cultural sickness that believes that what we have in the Western world is ‘progress’. We question our motivations: How much of my work is because I have been indoctrinated into the concept of the big white saviour? Would I appreciate someone from another country offering these skills, taking that angle, using that tone in my country? Am I viewing these people as helpless victims, or knowing that these are strong capable people in circumstances that they may like to change? How does that differ to how I view myself?
Lastly, we self fund. It is financially difficult. I personally persist because it is important; because I see many ‘aid’ structures and mentalities as part of the problem; because everybody has good information that needs to be shared. To protect our environment and provide sustainable livelihoods, we need to think about more than just reducing our impact, but also about assisting others who are ready for change. There are many cases (such as the failed Fremantle farm) where the work of people with great knowledge, skills and intentions is destroyed repetitively by regulation. Those same skills and knowledge could be used to greater effect in other places where people want access to the information and are ready for change.
Floating seeds also spread resources that are needed such as books, movies and seeds. Seed movement usually involves ordering requested heirloom seeds, or carrying directly in areas that allow it. The idea of carrying seeds is always problematic: Do we need more seeds from one source? Don't we need genetic diversity and locally adapted seeds? Of course we do. The problem is that there are no seeds left in many places from remote Zambia to outback Australian towns. There are no local varieties, and only genetically modified and hybridised seeds are available. From an ecosystem or genetic diversity perspective, this is viscerally awful; from a human perspective it is a tragedy that creates starvation as some of the poorest people in the world are forced to buy new seeds every year. Many times, when leaving communities I have worked in or even just visited for a day, I am followed out by an old person who gives me a handful of precious local seeds to take to another community; knowing that seeds are life.Therefore I will aim to carry heirloom seeds (sealed to protect against disease) and distribute them if people ask for them.
Look out for floating seeds! Critique us, give us better ideas, support us. Like so much in social and community work, inputs and outputs are hard to measure. Aid funders often demand hilariously nebulous targets for their buck (“Here's one million dollars. I’d like to see less mental illness”) that we would be unlikely to fit under as small change-makers. We do not have individual funding. We aren't big names although we appreciate the sharing of their expertise. We aspire to assist locals to have greater information, not necessarily to form Permaculture farms, but to access different ways to live and different ways to understand the world on both sides of the global North-South divide. We want to change ourselves to do our role better, to protect and regenerate our planet, and to make a future for us and all the creatures who live here with us.
Jen is a local Permaculture enthusiast who wanted to share her article with us this month - Thanks Jen for your inspiring contribution!
Jen
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