theGreenBackpack

WTF is Permaculture??

2013-02-09T22:07:00.001-10:00

This is a question (although not always so colorfully phrased) comes up to practicing permaculturists often enough as to be a running gag; that awkward moment at any given dinner party when the permies look at each other with raised eyebrow to silently ask: who's gonna answer that question this time?

Googling (yes that's a word) 'what is permaculture' at the time of this writing yielded 5,222,000 or so results - you may have even heard of permaculture, described as anything from an idealist-hippie-lifestyle, to a survivalist-response-to-peak-oil-and-the-impending-collapse-of-industrial-civilization-as-we-know-it, to "Revolution Disguised as Gardening".

Photo: from 'The Lexicon of Sustainability' PBS series & traveling art show.

Permaculturists themselves have described permaculture varyingly as:

an international social movement (and its regional extensions),
a worldview and theory of human-environment relations,
a design framework,
and/or a bundle of practices.

So.... WTF IS PERMACULTURE??

Very simply put: Permaculture is a framework for sustainable design.

Bill Mollison, who coined the word permaculture, defines it on page one of 'Permaculture: A Designer's Manual' (his 576-page treatsie on the subject) thus:

Permaculture (permanent agriculture) is the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems.

Permaculture design is a system of assembling conceptual, material and strategic components in a pettern which functions to benefit life in all its forms.

Because permaculture offers a framework for the this type of design, may I suggest that this framework can be adapted and applied towards designing resilient human systems of any kind.

While permaculture was initially conceived of as a tool to design & redesign our agricultural & food production systems, permaculture practicioners quickly realized that you cannot address food systems without addressesing waste management, water, energy prodction, social & economic systems, conservation, cultural diversity, and many other areas affecting human & ecological well-being.

We discovered that permaculture design can be a useful tool to help us design solutions for the challenges we face in sorts of different contexts, whether we be building tools or working to create healthy, resilient communities.

In over 30 years of putting permaculture design principles into action & practice - in practically every possible bioregional & cultural context around the world - at some point in their practice, permaculturists everywhere stumble into the same blinding flash of the obvious: that everything in the natural world is interconnected.

The calling card of permaculture is good design - aka 'Uncommon common sense'. Placing elements where they will create mutually beneficial relationships with other elements in your system, backing up your major functions, and patterning after natural systems are some of the design principles the permaculture designer will utilise to create a robust & effective design.

However, it is the ethical foundation which underpins the permaculture design approach that makes it so powerful as a design science. In crafting a permaculture design, decisions are made through the ethical filter of: Care of Earth, Care of People, and Fair Share of Resources.

Every design decision made through a permacultural lens must pass through this filter : how does this decision take care of earth / people / steward our resources? Utilizing this ethical filter acknowledges that the resources we have access to are nested within the biophysical limits of the ecosystems we live within, and that without respecting this fact, there are no people to care for, nor are there resources available to share.

It is perhaps this ethical filter which is the cause of so much confusion when it comes to defining permaculture; the power of these 3 simple ethical principles to frame & shape our decision-making (and therefore our worldview) can be deeply personal.

But that, my friends, is a topic for another post at another time.

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Matthew Lynch
Essays on permaculture
Honolulu, Hawaii
February 2013

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PS For further reading, Toby Hemmenway (Field Director of the Permaculture Institute (USA) and best-selling author of Gaia's Garden) has posted a very well articulated essay exploring what exactly permaculture is, by starting with the question: 'What permaculture isn't'.

The Lost Language of Araki Island

2012-12-23T15:14:00.001-10:00

Although this community is dealing with the implications of the impending extinction of their native language, Araki Island appears to be doing many things right from a food security & community resilience standpoint. While many people have moved to the nearest urban center of Luganville in search of work, much of the villages’ food is still grown on the island. In addition to white rice, canned fish appears to be a staple here - perhaps as a response to the seasonal fishing that is available on Araki.

While an integrated coconut/cacao understory cash crop plantation on the island has the potential to generate more local income through value-added processes (such as pressing their own coconut oil and creating artisan products such as soap & chocolate), care must be taken that any development projects geared towards increasing economic gain do not compromise food security.

This is one illustration of the opposing tensions of traditional vs. modern culture discussed in the previous section; it is unclear if people have left the island because of a lack of food security, or in pursuit of the perceived affluence offered by prospects of life in the city.

- excerpt from 'Kaikai fo Laef Project Report 2012' -

A recent lecture by Anthropologist & Enthnobotanist Wade Davis at The University of Hawaii @ Manoa has me reflecting back to our time spent on Araki Island in Vanuatu.

Photo: Field notes, data source: 'Sea level change', by National Research Council (U.S.). Geophysics Study Committee. National Academies, 1990.

Araki Island is noteworthy for its 3 distinct terraces rising from the sea, each level remnants of a coral reef bed thrust upwards in 3 distinct geographical ages.

We arrive by banana boat about an hour or so before nightfall, cautiously timing our leap from bobbing boat to rocky ledge that would be impossible in rough seas. Then, in what has to be the quickest tour of the island ever given, we are whisked away to explore the slash-and-burn sustenance gardens perched on the second terrace above the village while there was still light.

We march uphill through the densely forested slopes which smell heavily of earthy fungi, to emerge blinking into a freshly burnt garden plot, its scorched earth jarring to all our senses. Mountain taro (cocoyam), cassava, yams, varieties of Island cabbage (Abelmoschus manihot), and sweet potatoes were planted throughout, while sapprophytic fungi quickly colonized the dead & dying trees within the newly cleared plot.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Photos: Freshly cleared garden plot on second terrace; Sapprophytic mushrooms colonizing dead wood; Newly planted cocoyams; newly planted cassava.

As the golden hour of sunset intensified, we decide to ascend to the upper terrace against all precautionary logic, risking being caught in the rapidly encroaching darkness of nightfall - but are told (with a sly wink) that the bioluminescent mushrooms will help light our way home if needed, and I am tempted to linger long enough to see what a forest full of glow-in-the-dark mushrooms looks like in the tropical night of a half moon.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Photos: Garden on Araki's upper terrace; Wild chicken trap made from vines; Bioluminescent mushroom.

Later that evening, while waiting for the community to gather for a gardening Q&A session in the longhouse, we learn that the Araki language is only spoken by the Chief, his 2 brothers, and their sister. In a village of only 200 people, the children attend school until the 6th grade on Araki, then commute to nearby Santo Island for their higher grade levels, until finally the majority of Araki youth head to the urban center of Luganville in search of more opportunity.

The leadership is strong here, the vibrant sense of community palpable in the longhouse that night, and the people of Araki a proud, resourceful & resilient bunch. Yet despite this their living language is perched precariously on the edge of extinction, primarily as a result of the relentlessly irrestible pull of modern culture: What good to the market is a dying language spoken on a tiny island by less than 200 people?

To help answer this question I offer three quotes from Wade Davis:

"Together the myriad of cultures makes up an intellectual and spritual web of life that envelops the planet and is every bit as important to the well being of the planet as is the biological web of life that we know as the 'biosphere'. You might think of this social web of life as an "ethnosphere", a term best defined as the sum total of all thoughts and intuitions, myths and beliefs, ideas and inspirations brought into being by the human imagination since the dawn of consciousness"

"What could be more lonley than to be enveloped in silence, to be the last of your people to speak your native tongue, to have no way to pass on the wisdom of your ancestors or anticipate the promise of your descendants."

"Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind, a watershed of thought, an ecosystem of spiritual possibilities."

- Wade Davis, author of 'The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World -

For further exploration of the enthosphere, see: http://www.ted.com/talks/wade_davis_on_endangered_cultures.html

Horticultural Selection & Biodiversity on Araki Island

2012-10-10T01:30:00.001-10:00

Photo: Different varieties of Island Cabbage (Abelmoschus manihot) observed during site visits around Vanuatu.

The topography of this small island is unique in that it is comprised of 3 distinct terraces, made up of ancient reef beds that have been thrust up above sea level over time. This means that a wide variety of microclimates are available in a very small space - walking around cultivation areas on all three terraces felt akin to what it must be like to walk around a giant-sized herb spiral.

By selecting for desirable traits (such as flavor, hardiness, time to harvest, etc) and saving seeds / propagules from the best plants, varieties specifically adapted to microclimates on Araki can be developed over time. In this way, the remote location of this community can be leveraged to their advantage, providing a refuge of sorts to develop & protect the horticultural selection of biodiversity for the region.

- excerpt from 'Kaikai fo Laef Project Report 2012' -

The Village Economy

2012-09-19T11:28:00.001-10:00

"How can we be
Self-reliant with our needs
So that we can become
Interdependent with our wants?"
-Hunter Heaivilin-

Photo: Hunter Heaivilin teaches Village Design on Ifira Island, Vanuatu.

The Village Economy Game was played in order to demonstrate and give a practical experience of how to connect the products & functions of one local enterprise to the needs of another.

Students are asked to create an enterprise that could meet a currently un-met need that they would be interested in pursuing.
A functional analysis is performed to determine the needs, characteristics, functions and products of each enterprise.
Students are asked to find car many connections as they can with other students enterprises (this typically results in much laughter and shenanigans), and then report back to the class about the connections they managed to make.

Here's a summary of the enterpises Vanuatu Villagers came up with, and the beginnings of the many connections that were made between enterprises (see if you can make connections of your own):

Photo: Village Economy Mindmap, 2012 Vanuatu PDC

A simple shift in focus towards making these localized connections, can reduce our reliance upon external inputs while we are contributing to the vibrancy of our community. We can reduce our waste and cycle energy (in its many forms) within our community many times before it leaves.

Once we have met our needs as a community we find ourselves with a new challenge: what to do with the surplus? Now we can look to neighboring communities to establish trades with our surplus, enriching our quality of life and that of our neighbors.

If we are smart, we can live within the ecological limits of our lands, creating products & developing skills shaped by our landscape - these will have enormous value in other communities but will be obsolete in others - we can seek to match these community products with communities where these are in need, and the web grows stronger.

In times of scarcity, we can meet most of our needs within our communities (and reach out to the relationships we have made with other communities if needed), while in times of plenty our collective joy can be multiplied by sharing & trading our surplus: self-reliant, and interdependent.

Photo: 2012 Oahu PDC Village Economy Mindmap Timelapse

Your Culture or Your Money

2012-09-13T17:37:00.001-10:00

When students were asked, "How has your community changed over the last 10 years?", students came up with the following list:

Photo: Class brainstorm on shifting culture in their communities.

This exchange framed a class discussion around the definition of an 'asset'. Robert Kiyosaki, author of the Rich Dad Poor Dad series of books, has said that the difference between the rich & poor is that the poor spend their lives buying assets which are really liabilities because they do not understand the difference, while the rich spend their lives acquiring things which are truly assets.

This is certainly true for the middle class in developing nations. For example, if your income were to stop, most people would not be able to continue making they mortgage payments (and so would likely lose the house), whilst a positively cash flowing rental unit would keep putting money into your pocket.

Therefore your primary residence, which the bank tells you is your greatest asset, is actually potentially your biggest liability.

According to Kiyosaki, properly defined: an asset feeds you, a liability eats you.

This simple definition of assets vs. liabilities can be a powerful tool for the consumerist middle class single-mindedly striving towards accumulating enough income and assets to elevate their standards of living, and could also be a powerful tool in helping families, organizations and communities manage their finances better.

However, it is too narrow a definition to be useful in the context of working towards ending poverty.

This definition of assets is framed by and perpetuates the prevailing capitalistic view of the world - one in which gross income (or GDP) is the primary indicator of a person's (or country's) overall well-being, and people are reduced to hedonistic accumulators & consumer. It does not allow for any other paradigm.

If we limit ourselves to this definition then we deny ourselves the opportunity to account for the many other factors which contribute to healthy, thriving communities. We deny ourselves the opportunity fully embrace the richness of reciprocal experience that is human culture, where people flourish most when given opportunities to create, contribute, collaborate, and celebrate.

Photo: Ifira Island keiki. Are we born into this world focused on 'accumulation' and 'consumption'?

Instead, we can take this a step further and expand upon this definition to allow room for culture to evolve (adapted from Rosemary Morrow's 'Earth User's Guide to Permaculture'):

Photo: Reclassify your assets.

Degenerative Assets.
The more I use these, the less I have of it / the more I need of it. Worse yet, the more I use this, the more it harms me / my community / my ennvironment. Most items ('stuff') prized by consumerist culture falls into this category.

Generative Assets.
I can use these to make / create / modify / enhance me / my community / my environment. Some of the things which fall into the first category could instead become 'generative' if used differently (ie using fossil-fuel powered equipment to create earthworks which pasively harvest water and rebuld soils).

Regenerative Assets.
I can use these, and they will multiply over time if properly cared for. Biological resources, and many of our natural resources fall into this category. If we were to focus on creating / developing / accumulating this type of asset, we take care of future generations while taking care of our own needs.

Knowledge-based Assets.
Ethical knowledge leading to self-reliance is the only asset class which can offer an unlimited yield; we are limited only by our creativity, our imagination, and our ability to apply knowledge. When knowledge is framed by an ethical structure which values care of the earth, care of people,and stewardship of resources, it can result in actions & practices which are beneficial to all.

Rainbow Botanical Gardens: Designing for engagement

2012-09-11T11:42:00.001-10:00

Cornelia Wylie, a New Zealander living in Vanuatu for the last two decades has created one of the most beautiful patches of paradise within the beautiful patch of paradise that is Efate Island - and she is less than 10 minutes from Port Villa airport.

Photo: Rainbow Botanical Gardens' dam is a productive & beautiful fishpond.

Amazingly enough, most of what we toured through was only planted 18 months ago - which gives you an idea of how quickly things can grow here.

Designing for aesthetics leads many landscape designers to create an unsustainable ecosystem which requires large inputs of chemical fertilizer and pest control to maintain the aesthetics of their design.

Cornelia, however, has a passion for sustainable agriculture - her other 100+ acre site if focused on organic food production, and integrates animals & utilizes intercropping to create a cultivated ecosystem which can provide for most of its needs (we wish we could have toured that site; you'll have to check it out for us).

See the full gallery on Posterous

Photos: Beautiful bananas; Fern shoot; Ginger & orchid; Ivory palm; Beautiful bamboo; Tropical cherry

Rainbow Botanical Gardens offers an interesting study in designing for a specific use pattern - in this case, she has designed for maximum human engagement to educate & inspire visitors to take action - namely, to make a purchase.

In doing so, she has created a human-sized-venus-fly-trap for her landscape design & cut flower customers; when you visit, you can't help but want to take a little piece of the place with you.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Photo: Students examine the different textures of a 'Teddy-bear Palm', and a 'Pokey Palm' - visitors to Rainbow Botanical are encouraged to touch, smell, feel, the exhibits.

Our tour group left with tomato seedlings bred for the tropics, gleaned fruit, cuttings, and the purchase of a dwarf banana variety yielding a fruit she promised us would taste like vanilla ice cream (not to mention a yearning to return home to potter in our gardens).

Paths meander through zones themed by species, each one carefully stacked with other plants to fill each niche.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Photo: Bixa orellana seed pod; Hendon having fun with the oily red dye from the seedpods.

We wound through twisting path of palms with countless varieties of orchids underneath, passed through an avenue of exotic red bananas, stumbled across the always-engaging Bixa orellana (red lipstick tree), peeked down an alley to a collection of bamboo varieties, then looped back to where we started in a thatched roundhouse (made from mahogany posts that were harvested on-site), and ended up next to a tropical cheery tree (favorite of the birds) on the banks of large dam filled with freshwater eels, tilapia, water lilies and hyacinth.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Photo: Using lots of edge to create the illusion of space.

Different (& beautiful) ground covers were splashed throughout, purple textures with white flowers dancing like popcorn, and nooks planted out with ginger & heleconia varieties (92 varieties in all) beckoned from the sides - her collection is the largest in the Southern Hemisphere.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Photo: Just 3 of the 92 varieites of heleconia at Rainbow Botanical Gardens in Port Villa.

By creating so much edge in her layout, she has not only managed to stack in an enormous amount of diversity very intensively, she has also created the illusion & feeling of wandering around in a much larger space.

Our group stumbled about like excited schoolchildren, laughing and pointing and (at Cornelia's insistence) touching all the new plants we were being introduced and re-introduced to, while our gracious & knowledgable hostess smiled, told stories & answered questions throughout.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Photos: Touring Rainbow Botanical Gardens.

The education focus of her enterprise is significant; over the years Cornelia has helped many Ni-Van (local Vanuatu peoples) start their own nursery business, and procures many of her plants from them when she is wearing her Landscape Designer hat. She's also worked with the government to create what is now the only agricultural quarantine station in the Islands since the government lost their facility to fire years ago, and continues to work with Non-Governmental Organizations such as World Vision (and now ADRA) to support ongoing trainings & workshops in horticulture & micro enterprise development.

Thank you Cornelia.

White rice: Scourge of the Pacific

2012-09-08T19:15:00.001-10:00

Photo: Sticky white rice growing in a streamside taro patch on Oahu, photo courtesy Hunter Heaivilin.

After years working overseas in the Solomon Islands, Fiji, and now Vanuatu, ADRA Country Director David Cram refers to white rice as 'the scourge of the Pacific', and for good reason.

Polynesian cultures brought many of their sustenance plants with them as they migrated - the so-called canoe plants - and their cultivation practices both evolved with and shaped their lands.

Photo: Taro under wet cultivation at Reppu's Farm in Waiahole Valley, Oahu (Hawaii) [photo credit: Pete Hodgson].

Taro, yams, and sweet potatoes were the staple crops of these peoples, supplemented by animal proteins from fish, fowl & pigs.

White rice, although popular with modern polynesian cultures, was never a part of the traditional polynesian diet.

After generations of co-evolving with extensive taro cultivation (cultivating a relationship with a staple food that Hawaiians regard as their 'older brother') in recent generations Hawaiian food culture has shifted to include a mishmash of cultural influences which manifest itself in the local favorite of the 'plate lunch':

Photo: Courtesy of cougareats.blogspot.com.au.

Two scoops white rice, one scoop mac salad, a bed of shredded cabbage (if you are lucky), and then whatever local-style meat dish: chicken cutlet smothered in brown grazy, teri-beef drowning in sugary teriyaki sauce, fried fish glob bed with mayonaise-based tartare sauce… and almost anything else you could imagine.

The results of this change in diet & lifestyle have been dire: Polynesians rank significantly above other ethnic groups in Non Communicable Disease (NCD) categories such as diabetes, obesity, and other related 'lifestyle diseases'.

In fact, Polynesians that have maintained traditional diets have maintained obesity rates lower than those of Western Populations. (1)

Photo: Harvesting taro at Reppu's Farm in Waiahole Valley, Oahu (Hawaii) [photo credit: Pete Hodgson].

Once you've spent some time working in a lo'i (wet cultivation taro patch) it's not hard to imagine how this seemingly simple shift in diet has contributed to such dis-ease:

First, the amount of calories you would burn in the daily course of planting, tending, harvesting & processing your family lo'i would have been significantly higher than the amount of calories burnt by the average modern person purchasing a package of white rice and boiling it up at home.

Second, if we understand how white rice is created, we may decide to change our relationship with that food. Rice is harvested as a grain crop - much in the same way as wheat, rye or barley - it goes as a tall grass, and its seed heads are threshed and winnowed to separate the grains from the rest of the plant.

Photo: White rice grains.

Simply put, each grain of rice is held inside an outer protective hull, and the inner layer(s) of the pericarp adds more protective layers - this is the rice bran.

Most of the nutrients available in rice are stored here; the grain itself acts as an energy store for the plant embryo inside and is designed to give it it's initial burst of energy to sprout forth its roots & shoots, to then absorb & create its own nutrients from the soil & sun.

White rice is created by removing this protective skin, and polishing the grains so that they are more attractive, and become soft & fluffy when cooked.

Third, because white rice is mostly made of carbohydrates, it is converted by the body into sugars (click here for a more detailed explanation, which will cause havoc if they are not used up by the body through physical exercise… not exactly a good combination for the average, modern, sedentary lifestyle.

A facilitated class discussion was held in an attempt to give students a deeper understanding of this food, so that we could understand the impacts of white rice overconsumption:

What is white rice?
How many of you eat white rice? How many of you grow white rice?
How does it grow? Where does it come from?
How does it get here?
How does it affect your health?

Next, we brainstormed alternatives to this locally popular imported food:

Reduce portion size
Balance servings with traditional foods
Create new white rice dishes using local ingredients:
    white rice cooked in coconut milk
    white rice mixed w/ grated coconut
    white rice mixed w/ ginger & onion
    white rice mixed w/ seasalt/seaweed
    white rice mixed w/ grated yellow ginger (turmeric) & canarium nut...

....this list is limited only by our imagination, and taps into the creative energy of human innovation, a much more effective strategy to affect behavioural change than dire health warnings and finger-wagging public lectures. Who doesn't like to hear about a great new recipie?

If it tastes good - we humans love it - so a permacultural approach looks as this as an energy flow we design with, rather than work against.

Overconsumption of white rice is not a good thing - especially in these communities - but it is already there, so we work to redirect & deflect this energy rather than put all our effort into fighting against it, and focus our design efforts towards long-term systemic improvement rather than knee-jerk symptomatic reponses.

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(1) 'The Obesity Epidemic in the Pacific Islands', Michael Curtis (United States Department of Army); Journal of Development and Social Transformation

Improved cookstove design

2012-09-03T15:38:00.001-10:00

Because so much time is spent in the cook-house, stove designs are a leverage point we can focus on improving to create multiple benefits:

Better air quality means better health
Faster cook times
Less fuel required
More time to spend on other activities

By controlling only two factors - airflow and thermal mass - we can improve stove design to optimize heat efficiency and transfer.

How a Rocket Stove works:

A rocket stove achieves efficient combustion of the fuel at a high temperature by ensuring a good air draft into the fire, controlled use of fuel, complete combustion of volatiles, and efficient use of the resultant heat.

As the fuel burns within the combustion chamber, convection draws new air into the combustion chamber from below, ensuring that any smoke from smoldering wood near the fire is also drawn into the fire and up the chimney. The chimney can be insulated to maximize the temperature and improve combustion; according to studies this will increase efficiency by up to two percent more.

For cooking purposes, the design keeps the cooking vessel in contact with the fire over the largest possible surface area. A pot skirt can be used to create a narrow channel that forces hot air and gas to flow along the bottom and sides of the cooking vessel.

Optional baffles guide hot air and flame up the sides of the pot. For space heating purposes, the heat is transferred to a heat store which can, in some cases, be part of the structure of the house itself. The exhaust gasses then pass out of the building via the chimney.

The design of the rocket stove allows it to operate on about half as much fuel as a traditional open fire and can use smaller diameter wood. If the stove is insulated and raised from the floor, the danger of children burning themselves is reduced. Some more recently designed rocket stoves are self-feeding, using gravity to add fuel to the fire as required.

- Wikipedia, 09/04/12 -

Existing stoves observed in all 3 communities look like this:

Photos: Typical cookstove in Vanuatu, built on the ground with little or no insulation or airflow control, resulting in a smokey fire (indicating an incomplete & inefficient burn); Soot on the ceiling of cookhouse indicates how much particulate matter is released into the air with an inefficient burn

Our favorite Village Crazyman had already come up with improvements to his stove design:

Photo: Sawi's improved stove design.

A class brainstorm was conducted to explore ways we could improve Sawi's design:

Photo: Class brainstorm on improved stove design.

Not surprisingly, Sawi had created another improved stove design:

Photo: Although this design focused primarily on improving the thermal mass, it still halved the typical cooking time for a suckling pig to just an hour; it was left to the class to further improve the design by harnessing airflow.

Here are some other variations on rocket stove from our friends at Permies.com:

A_whole_lot_of_rocket_cook_stoves_(wood_burning_stoves_forum_at_permies).pdf Download this file

Traditional Food Culture in Vanuatu

2012-09-02T20:16:00.001-10:00

Sawi treated us to a Sunday feast of traditional foods called laplap, which are wrapped in banana leaves and cooked in the traditional umu earthen oven (similar to the Maori hangi or Hawaiian imu):

Photo: The women prepare laplap dishes for our feast.

Photo: Chicken slaughtered yesterday.

Photo: Grated yam & coconut milk, tastes like a fluffy kulolo.

Photo: Fresh fish in coconut milk.

Photo: Nalalas, pig tripe & coconut milk.

I think we ate enough in one sitting to last us two days!

Shifting Food Cultures

2012-09-02T17:48:00.001-10:00

Modern cultural pressures are acting upon even remote communities, shifting values away from traditional values of natural resource stewardship and living from the land. Imported goods are replacing traditional foods & materials, creating new challenges ranging from how to properly dispose of plastics, scrap metals and batteries.

Photo: Inorganic waste is buried at Dixson's Reef on Malekula Island.

Dixson's Reef community currently separates & buries their inorganic waste, while on Araki & Ifira Islands piles of leaf litter & other organic matter mixed with plastic & other inorganic wastes are regularly burnt.

The diversity of island cultures throughout Vanuatu is perhaps most apparent in the diversity of languages spoken here, where even neighboring villages will often have their own distinct dialect. Languages hold information & nuances that are very specific to people & place - even down to neighboring valleys. On Araki Island, only 4 speakers of their native language remain.

Imported & processed foods which are cheaply & abundantly available (especially white rice & packaged noodles), present a seductive option to cook & prepare because there is much less time & physical effort expended to purchase from the store & cook a meal with these items - especially compared to the time & physical effort required to grow, harvest, clean, prepare
and cook traditional root crops & vegetables.

Photo: White rice is even featured on the signature Flying Fox dish at the L'Houstalet, a high-end French restaurant in Port Villa.

On Ifira Island, this has led to a shift of focus towards away from crop cultivation and towards income generation as the primary means to feed oneself.

This shift away from traditional food culture is already contributing to an increase in Non-Communicable Diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure, and is particularly tricky to address since it requires an understanding of the opposite tensions between traditional & modern culture in order to effectively re-frame simple daily choices (such as choosing to eat white rice) in such a way to affect better decision making at a household level.

Photo: Without innovation, traditional culture stagnates & dies. Without respect for traditional culture, traditional culture stagnates & dies. Culture can flourish when the balance between tradition and innovation is maintained.

A facilitated class discussion was held in an attempt to re-connect traditional foods with traditional culture, so that simple acts of growing & eating foods appropriate to place & culture can regain their significance.

What is culture?

How has your landscape impacted your culture? Your diet?
[Explore cultural foods, mythologies, ceremonies, processing & preservation techniques, and so on]
How has your culture impacted your landscape?
[Explore cultivation techniques & philosophy, village design, relationship w/ land, and so on]
How does modern culture impact your landscape? Your diet?
[Share stories]
Why save seeds? Why grow cultural foods?

Photo: 'Seedsaving = No Thank you Monsanto', on Oahu, Hawaii (photo credit: Michael Broady Jr.).

Back home in Hawaii and Australia, this conversation begins by exploring the modern food system & agricultural practices (and its impacts upon planet & people), and narrows down to the simple practices of seed saving, water harvesting & stewardship, and gardening.

As a part of this exploration, we can re-frame the political significance of these simple & peaceful acts - while understanding that in the modern consumerist society, harvesting our own water, saving our own seeds, and growing our own food are in many ways among the most radical & revolutionary acts we can do.

As one student in Hawaii (whose #1 agricultural export commodity is GMO seed) said:

''It's like gently, but firmly saying 'F&^k You to the multinational corporations who seek to control our food and water supply." - Student in Hawaii -

Here in Vanuatu, the situation in many ways is perhaps not quite so dire (subsistence farming is still widely practiced, and local food production still very much valued), though the conditions are ripening for such cancerous attitudes to fester.

The government building on the main street of Villa boasts a large electronic notice board which flashes monthly reports of agriculture commodity exports by tonnage and dollar amount - not a bad thing in and of itself, though perhaps indicative of a broader shifting of focus away from agriculture as 'subsistence farming' and towards 'export commodity production'.

Photo: Breakfast meal served for us on Araki Island, featuring fried doughballs, imported crackers, local cooked sweet banana, and local eggs fried w/ Nalalas (Polyscias fruticosa). We were treated later with something we dubbed 'Yambu', a delicious pudding of grated yam & coconut milk stuffed into a bamboo node and cooked in the earthen oven.

How much sense does it make to grow enough food to export & sell, to make enough money, to be able to afford your own food, which has been processed, imported & sold back to you? A pound of harvested, fermented, & dried cacao beans sells for 200-250VT /kg(1); a couple of chocolate bars imported from Australia will cost you 200VT.

We find ourselves in a 'mitigation' situation on the ground here, where the

In order to build locally resilient communities, we must instead focus first upon growing enough to feed ourselves, then our community, and then look for opportunities to trade your surplus to in exchange for items outside of our bioregion.

"In Cuba, agriculture means growing food for our people to eat."

- Roberto Perez, Permaculture Activist featured in 'The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil' documentary -

See the full gallery on Posterous

Photo: Learning about lactobaccilic ferment by making kimchee.

_________________________________________

(1) http://www.nuipacific.org/home/vanuatu-development

Plant guilds in Vanuatu

2012-09-01T15:09:00.001-10:00

"There is an enormous difference in the way we make a design in permaculture and the way an agriculturist would make it. Really what we are up to is trying to let things function in a natural way."

- Bill Mollison, Wilton, NH (USA) PDC 1981 -

Companion planting, or planting two or more plants who help each other, with each other, is one tool we can use to increase the resilience of our cropping systems.

For example, planting dill and alliums (onion family) between mounds of potatoes can help attract beneficial insects to the umbrelliferous flowers of the dill, while the allium roots exude antibacterial & antifungal compounds which can protect potato tubers from fungal infection, and give us total yield of three crops from the same space.

Photo: Fruit & nut trees occupy the understory of this coconut plantation on Malekula Island, while swamp taro & cattle occupy the ground level.

In permaculture design we refer to this as 'guilding'. We can use it to mimic the diversity found in natural systems and assemble our planting guilds by selecting plants occupying different niches; for example, selecting deep rooted plants to row next to shallow rooted plants, or identifying understory trees which can be planted under our canopy.

We can take this a step further by designing for maximum functional diversity; in other words, seeking to connect elements in our system so that the needs (or 'inputs') of one element are met by the products or behaviors ('outputs') of another element in our system.

Photo: Needs / Products / Functions = Functional Analysis.

By using the 'Functional Analysis' tool to map the needs, products & characteristics of our species palette, we can begin to make these connections to create gropings of plants which are mutually beneficial when grown together. For example, we can grow vines up a taller crop, select an edible ground cover to ramble in an understory, and intercrop nitrogen-fixing species to provide for our soil fertility needs.

Photo: A guild is a family of plants who work together. At the Department of Agriculture's demonstration plot on Efate, Piper nigrum (back pepper) grows up nitrogen-fixing 'Erythrina varigata' (Indian Coral Tree).

Students were tasked with designing their own localized guilds using these patterns, starting with grouping plant species they are already familiar with in the different niches they occupy, and then looking to re-assemble them by looking for functional relationships between the plants:

See the full gallery on Posterous

Photo: Amsen Wille from the Vanuatu Department of Agriculture presents his group's plant guild designs.

Photo: 1) Banana, cacao & Island cabbage (Abelmoschus manihot) grow in the understory of a coconut plantation, with Sweet potato (known locally as 'Kumala') as a ground cover. Glyricidia provides fertility to the system, banana & Island cabbage provide a shorter term crop while cacao is maturing, and sweet potato lends productivity at ground level while serving as a living mulch to protect topsoils.

2) 'Whitewood' (Endospermum medullosum), a locally prized timber crop, creates a closed canopy which few plants can tolerate. Swamp taro (Alocasia macrorrhiza) can fill this niche and turn it into a productive space - this guild was expanded further as an alley crop between Glyricidia to provide fertility to the system.

3) Citrus is placed with nitrogen-fixing Pigeon pea (Cajanus cajun) as a nurse crop to protect & feed it in its early stages (and yield an edible crop), while pawpaw (papaya), Island Cabbage, and Chinese cabbage (known locally as 'Whitebone') give additional yields in space & time.

Bill Mollison said, "If you do something right, it will do a lot more right itself," and we experienced this phenomenon with this practical exercise.

Students were asked first to group plants according to niche, and then to create guilds by looking for functional relationships between these plants - and in doing so they also managed to stack crops in space, stack yields in time, and increase diversity & fertility.

"Our job is to put things in the right place and then let them rip."

- Bill Mollison, Wilton, NH (USA) PDC 1981 -

No Dig Gardenbeds & The Village Crazyman

2012-08-31T17:26:00.001-10:00

A social pattern that Rick Coleman has observed in his work overseas is that of the 'Village Crazyman':

Everywhere he has worked, Rick has encountered this person - typically slightly overweight (ie well-fed), and the only person in his village who is growing anything with any success - often with raging success, while everyone around has written him off as 'crazy'; simply because of the lack of social proof:

If that guy was doing things so right, then why isn't everyone else doing it?

Africa, Peru, Mexico, Palestine, Mongolia; wherever he went, sooner or later he would eventually run into this person, and when he did… it would be time to ask lots of questions & take furious notes… and ironically enough, when Rick returns home to his productive permacultural bio-dome smack-bang in the middle of the declining pastures in Gippsland (considered prime dairy country in that neck of the woods), guess who the neighbors consider to be the crazyman?

Photo: Our new friend Sawi is Da Man!

When we first met Sawi during our tour of Ifira Island on Day 1 of this consultancy, it was clear that he was doing some very good things - but it wasn't until we had conducted our site visits to Araki Island & Dixson's Reef that it started to become clear that we had found our 'Crazyman'.

One consequence of the relative material affluence of this small community is a preference for buying cheap, processed & imported foods, and Sawi is one of the few residents of Ifira Island still growing his own food: trained chickens, free-range-non-foraging pigs, cyclone yams (not a typo), fruit & nut trees, hessian-crete walls (hessian bags dipped in concrete and used as a sort of plaster), thermal-efficient roasting oven, handmade fishtraps, compost heaps, nursery operations - he's got a lot going on.

Check out these no-dig garden beds, made from treestumps, compost, & leaf litter, growing 'cyclone yams' (wild yams which can store in the ground for many seasons and can act as a backup food supply in case of cyclones), at least 3 different varieties of Island Cabbage (Abelmoschus manihot, aka Edible Hibiscus), an unidentified shrubby edible, and interplanted with colorful varieties of Coleus to attract beneficial insects:

Photo: No-dig Gardenbeds on Ifira Island in Vanuatu.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Photo: Three different varieties of Island Cabbage (Abelmoschus manihot, aka Edible Hibiscus).

Photo: Mushrooms thriving on the decomposing log borders.

Appropriate Design & Knowledge Transfer

2012-08-30T00:21:00.001-10:00

Appropriate Design.
Google 'Appropriate Design' and the first few results you get are a handful of Green Design Firms Self-Sufficiently Sustaining their Sustainability through 'appropriate design'.

As a kid growing up, the word 'inappropriate' was often used to describe my behavior - so what exactly is appropriate design, and who or what exactly are we being 'appropriate' to or for?

"Local relevance and local needs are often considered key to appropriateness. A technology or practice is considered "appropriate" if its costs and benefits are appropriate to the locality in which it is used. " - Appropedia.org wiki -

Local relevance.
Traditional Cultures have co-evolved closely with the place a peoples have descended from, shaping both people and place.

For example, the extensive taro cultivation of Ancient Hawaiians evolved to as a response to the peoples' efforts first to survive, and then to thrive within the ecological limits of the islands; in turn, the terraced lo'i (taro paddies) and kauhale (family housing clusters) in the ahapua'a of Ancient Hawaii forever altered the wild tropical rainforests that Ancestral Hawaiians would have encountered upon their first arrival by voyaging canoe.

Similarly (though in a radically different part of the world), the nomadic herding culture of the Mongols evolved as their people's response to first survive, and then to thrive in the extreme conditions of their place.

Animal herds are the peoples' primary energy storage (food supply) which can survive -40C winters; animal dungs provide fuel for fires, and provide fertility for the grasslands in the delicate balance that is life on the steppe. Over the millennia, the Mongolian landscape has co-evolved with the movement of animals & people across its rambling, arid highland plains.

The notion that 'lands belong to people' is a symptom of disconnect between people and land in modern culture - all traditional cultures that are still intact today have a shared notion of 'belonging to their land' - in other words, a universal recognition that their ability to thrive as people is nested within the ability of the landscape around them to thrive:

We take care of the land, and the land takes care of us.

'Local relevance' takes us back to this idea of designing solutions which utilize locally available resources to solve the specific challenges presented by a locale's landscape, and the culture which has co-evolved within it; in other words, solutions which are appropriate to place and culture.

Knowledge Transfer.
Gardening techniques & tricks that have been developed for a seasonal agriculture may not be appropriate for a culture that has developed a perennial agricultural system in response to its landscape.

At first glance in Vanuatu, it may appear that there are no garden beds (that we may recognize) within the village, a shift in our perception reveals a complex & diverse agroforestry system of edible & useful species planted within the village and extending into the surrounding lands.

The fastest-growing traditional crop here is likely sweet potato, which is ready for first harvest in around 3 months; compare that to the Mongolian growing season of 90 days.

So, when working in foreign lands & cultures, we must work to match our design solutions to place & people.

Photo: Knowledge replicating out into community as one of our student's next door neighboor is now feeding her banana patches w/ organic matter instead of burning it.

For example, in the shallow topsoils of the tropics much of the nutrient is held in the biomass of the plants growing there. The practice of burning any & all organic matter (in the interests of maintaining tidiness) breaks this cycle, turning valuable nutrients into char & smoke.

Once a foundational understanding of permaculture principles is established (in this case, the principle of 'cycling energy'), students can begin to relate these into locally appropriate action & practice.

Island Water & Watersheds

2012-08-27T20:36:00.001-10:00

Photo: High Island [photo credit: http://tropicalparadise.net].

Photo: Low Island (Ifira Island).

When we understand the importance of water and the watersheds which catch, store, filter & deliver our fresh water to us, we gain a deeper understanding of where we fit in to the ecology of a place.

Permaculture Publications managed to record, transcribe, and publish to the public domain a series of lectures from a PDC given by Bill Mollison in 1981 (New Hapshire, USA). The treatise he gives on High Islands & Low Islands are excellent (and highly entertaining, if you can manage to read them in a lazy aussie drawl to fully capture the dry ironic undertone in his delivery).

There are both High & Low Islands on Vanuatu, so it is important to understand the way each is formed if we are to understand the differences in managing & protecting their watersheds.

Permaculture_on_Islands.pdf Download this file

Download: 'Permaculture on Islands', by Bill Mollison (1981)

For a detailed description of these differences, download the above Mollison transcript (well worth the read), for the cliff notes, see below:

High Islands:

    •    Air is funneled up the mountains of the windward side.
    •    Clouds form as condensation occurs at upper levels.
    •    Most rain is dropped on windward side.
    •    Rain shadow is created on leeward side.
    •    Upland forests seeds clouds with transpiration, which increases precipitation.
    •    Over time, forests can descend from the upper slopes of the leeward side.
    •    Clouds follow the forest into rain shadow.
    •    Watersheds filter water through sedimentation, solarization, oxygenation & filtration.
    •    Trees protect the watershed.

Low Islands:

    •    Bird droppings (phosphates) & sand (calcium) form basis of soil.
    •    Pioneer plan species must break through 'platen' layer of phosphate + calcareous sands.
    •    Once platen layer is penetrated by pioneers, groundwater table can form.
    •    Organic matter from vegetation creates humus for succession species.
    •    Groundwater table only 3-5 feet deep.
    •    If groundwater is overdrawn, salt water can get in.
    •    This groundwater is shallow & must be protected!
    •    Surface water catchment strategies help protect groundwater.
    •    Low islands must be protected w/ trees or wind & waves will quickly erode.
    •    Trees protect the island & watershed.

Mapping a Site: Sectors & Zones

2012-08-25T13:42:00.001-10:00

Mapping a site is a basic skill that is essential to permaculture design; it is the 'Point A' from which the design process starts.

Photo: Students map the homesite in the ground.

Students split up into teams and walked the teaching site (we are being hosted in the home of Talek, one of Ifira's best rugby players) to pace the boundaries, and gain a hands-on experience of drawing a site map to scale.

After everyone had sketched rough maps in their notebooks, we gathered again as a group and consolidated the information gathered to create a 3-D map on the ground.

In this way participants could share & discuss the information each had gathered, and discover each other's different perceptions of the same site. This interactive group process also serves to engage multiple learning styles and cross language barriers, creating opportunities for teams to start learning from each other instead of relying upon a translator to convey the entire lesson - not everyone can learn effectively in a lecture format in their own language (let alone having to sit through a translated 90-minute lecture).

Photo: Class discussion to map external energies acting upon the site.

Once the class had transferred the information gathered to create the larger-scale map on the ground, we could map the external energies which impacted the site - what we refer to as 'Sectors' in permaculture design.

As the group discussed prevailing winds, solar aspect, foot traffic, water flow across the site, and hurricane risk, it became apparent that it would just make sense to place certain elements in certain places (for example bananas in the lee of a structure to give it protection from hurricane winds).

Photo: Student map.

Next we explored how use patterns will affect design decisions made for the site - what we refer to as 'Zones' in permaculture design. Since the bathroom, kitchen & pigpen are all areas which are visited daily, we can take advantage of these energy flows to place what we need most often along these paths.

If we plant fruit trees along these flows, we can monitor them daily on our way to where we need to go anyways. Or back at home in Hawaii, we may choose to site our herb garden outside the kitchen door (or even inside the kitchen if we are especially creative!).

Making Connections: The Story of Design

2012-08-24T00:32:00.001-10:00

The Functional Analysis is a tool which is used in permaculture design to map the needs, products and characteristics of resources we have available so that we can start to use them as elements within our system by seeking out functional relationships between each element.

Simply put, it is a tool we use to help answer the question: How can we use what we have to create what we need?

Students split into small teams and begin by listing the Needs (Inputs) / Characteristics / Products (Outputs/Functions) of an available resource - in this (somewhat infamous) example, a chicken:

Photo: Multifunctional-Permaculture-Superchicken.

Once the functional analysis for this resource is completed, another resource is selected and the functional analysis is conducted again. This is repeated again and again, until students have a list of elements which can be connected to each other to create functional relationships.

By asking, 'How can the needs of one element in our system be met by the products/functions of another element within our system?', we can begin to tell the story of how these elements can work together to create a functioning system: the story of design.

In other words, we are creating the beginning of a fully functional permaculture design.

Photo: Students from Vanuatu 2012 PDC present a simple 'story of design' integrating Coconuts, Cattle, Pigs, a Dog, and Taro.

Ethics (on Island Time)

2012-08-23T18:07:00.001-10:00

Photo: 9am at the classroom... but where are the students?

Day 1 of the Vanuatu PDC started promptly on island time (2pm vs the scheduled 9am), and we had a beautiful class discussion and exchange of cultural ethics & values to kick things off.

Photo: English on the left, Bislama on the right.

English: Earth Care
Hawaiian: Malama A'ina
Bislama: Lukaotem Gud Kraon ('Look out 'em good ground')
Local Example: The traditional practice of slash-n-burn agriculture (where a garden plot is cleared from the forest by a controlled burn) has evolved from a cultural practice of working with what the landscape has to offer. Once food crops were grown & harvested, a family would move on to clear & farm another plot, leaving the old one to fallow so that the jungle could reclaim it and replenish the nutrients taken from the land to grow those crops. Only after the land had a chance to regenerate itself would it be farmed again, a practice which makes sense given the low populations supported by the land.

Photo: Child on Dixson's Reef; wanting to create a better world for our children is fundamental human value which transcends all boundaries.

English: People Care
Hawaiian: Aloha
Bislama: Lukaotem Gud Pipol ('Look out 'em good people')
Local Example: The islands' communities are interdependent with each other, and rely upon people looking after each other - each producing its own specialty matched to its lands (good fishing, or special varieties of yam, taro, banana, kava, etc) and trading its surplus with neighboring communities. In this way a diverse, resilient network of community has been created which can adapt dynamically and respond creatively to challenges; especially useful in a land of seasonal cyclones and volcanic activity.

Photo: Community bamboo woodlot outside of village at Dixson's Reef.

English: Resource Share
Hawaiian: Kapu
Bislama: Sherem Ol Samting / Tabu ('Share 'em all something / Taboo')
Local Example: Sharing of resources also means stewarding of the resources entrusted to you; this is done most effectively by setting limits to consumption, population & growth. Tabu is one system used to to limit consumption by forbidding the use of an overtaxed resource to allow it to recover (e.g a reef ecosystem or wild harvest area); the practice of requiring marrying daughters to move to the communities of their spouses was used traditionally as a way to limit population growth within island communities.

Photo: The balance between tradition & innovation / culture & change must be maintained if healthy culture is to keep evolving. Without one or the other, culture (tradition) will become extinct.

Vanuatu 2012: 'Kaekae fo Laef' (Food For Life)

2012-08-22T14:27:00.001-10:00

Photo: The view from the plane on the way to Malekula Island.

“Food security has been defined as ...access by all people at all times to sufficient food for an active and healthy life.
- (Online), Dieticians Association of Australia, www.daa.asn.au (2006.) -

Photo: The open market in Port Villa is filled with a diverse variety of local produce & goods

Food Insecurity
Food insecurity in Vanuatu is not primarily a case of inadequate volumes of food to feed people.

[TGB: In fact, our site visits to two remote island communities (one accessible only by a 60-minute banana boat ride) revealed a richness in diversified perennial cropping systems and a deep knowledge of local plants & their uses. We also discovered a fondness for consuming large amounts of cheap imported white rice.]

(Food insecurity in Vanuatu) is more related to what can be termed “hidden hunger”, or deficiencies of vital micronutrients in people’s diets. In rural areas, it is related to people eating unbalanced diets, and a building dependence on imported convenience foods (rice, noodles and tinned fish).

Photo: Typical household on Ifiri Island, a small island community located a short 10-minute boat ride from Port Villa.

In urban areas, it is related to people’s access to land, the ability to earn sufficient income to purchase food, and changes in people’s eating habits, shifting away from nutritionally rich traditional staples to imported, less nutritious food items.

In both rural and urban Vanuatu, there is physical evidence of some malnutrition amongst infants, pregnant and lactating women, low-income earners and the unemployed. Not all people are able to get access to enough food.

Findings from the 1983 National Nutrition Survey (no other recent work of this kind has taken place since) indicate that malnutrition is noticeable amongst children between 1 and 2 years of age in rural Vanuatu. In urban areas the problem is more prominent amongst low-income earners, who cannot earn sufficient income to meet the full food needs of their households.

Increasing Soil Infertility
Shifting cultivation is still widely practised in the rural areas of Vanuatu, where land is cleared, cultivated for a number of years, and left fallow while families move to a new piece of land to repeat the process.

Photo: Slash-and-burn garden plot ready for planting, Araki Island.

After each cultivation period, the soil is drained of almost all available nutrients. Therefore, a long fallow period is required to let the soil recover. It has been estimated that it can take as long as 15 to 20 years for land to recover fully in the tropics.

In the past, when population pressure was low this fallow period was feasible. However, in more recent years, the fallow period has been shortened to as short as two years or even less, particularly on the more populated islands.

Most rural families in Vanuatu are semi-subsistence farmers. These families are reporting differences between yields of crops harvested each time a piece of land is re-cultivated.

Photo: Slash-and-burn garden plot planted 3 months ago, Dixson's Reef.

Declining food crop yields are most likely directly related to declining soil fertility, which is an outcome of shorter fallow periods, which in turn are a consequence of land pressure that is linked to increased monoculture of cash crops and rapid population growth.

In the search for fertile soils for new gardens families are clearing forests a long way from their homes, often up to a full day walking distance.

This is creating pressures on women and children as they must travel long distances for the cultivation and harvest of food, which is contributing to preferences for nutritionally poor, imported non-perishable foods such as rice, noodles, etc (TGB: it is far easier to go to the local convenience store or bulk-buy processed foods from the supermarket than to walk a full day to-and-from your sustenance plot every day).

Brief Description of the Proposed Project
This project will improve food security through the introduction of innovative agriculture practices and training based on the permaculture approach that will allow intensive vegetable cultivation in gardens within the village, using organic methods that retain soil fertility year round.

The innovative gardening approaches will build on the gardening skills of rural families, and allow them to trial new ways of growing, processing and preserving their traditional crops. The project will work directly with families in two rural communities on Malekula and Santo Islands, and one poor urban settlement community in Port Vila.

Photo: At least 3 different varieties of Island Cabbage (Hibiscus manihot) grow as a planting guild in raised beds with Yams, Coleus, and an unidentified edible leafy green shrub (in front of logs). [Ifira Island]

Permaculture is based on creating closed ecosystems for growing food that are as natural as possible and meet all their own needs internally, such as supplying pest management, nutrients for all species, temperature control, soil building and maintenance, wind control, pollination, germination and pruning.

Key aspects of permaculture are intercropping for pest management and creation of microclimates that support the differing cultivation needs of the vegetables grown. A development opportunity that this project will be built upon is that some of the key practices of permaculture are already part of traditional Vanuatu gardening practice.

Currently the constraint is that the food gardens in Vanuatu are placed a long distance from the village, and the practice of slash/burn agriculture is depleting soil fertility to zero. Mono-cropping is another farming system practised primarily for cash crops such as coconut, cocoa, coffee and kava.

Photo: Coconut plantation on Malekula.

Permanent cash crops tie up land for long periods of time, resulting in shortages of suitable land for food crop production. Due to the value of the cash crops these are often located on the fertile soils closest to the village, another reason why food gardens are located so far away.

This project will use permaculture approaches to allow families to build on the integrated planting methods they are familiar with in order to cultivate complimentary food crops within their cash crops.

Rural families in Vanuatu also keep animals as sources of food or income, such as chickens, ducks, goats, pigs and some beef cattle. Usually this livestock ranges freely throughout the village, making establishing vegetable gardens impossible – especially if the villagers keep pigs.

Photo: Pigpens in Dixson's Reef Community.

A key aspect of the permaculture approach is the integration of livestock into the gardening system, as livestock both consume garden waste (fodder for goats or cows, or rotting vegetables for pigs), manage insect pests (chickens and ducks) and produce very fertile manure.

This project will work with the rural villagers so that they are able to integrate their livestock into their gardening practice, which will result in greater soil fertility and improved pest management. Sustainable vegetable production training will focus on seed saving, soil fertility, natural pest management, and water conservation for coastal communities with a long dry season.

Photo: Solar dryer in Araki Island. These Beach Almonds are harvested by the local children and sold at market for 400VT /kg ($4USD).

Food processing and preservation techniques will also be introduced to the communities. Currently there is a high demand for this type of knowledge. This project will have a high potential for replication across Vanuatu.

In order to facilitate this the project will work with the Vanuatu Department of Agriculture and possibly a rural vocational training provider to develop curriculum materials based on the lessons learned and the approaches developed through the project activities.

These training materials will then be used to replicate the knowledge and skills so that agriculture extension workers can provide the knowledge to communities in other parts of Vanuatu, and young people at vocational training centres can obtain certificates in the permaculture approach.

- Excerpts from ADRA Australia 'Kaikai fo Laef' ['Food for Life'] Concept Note written by Michelle Abel & Tileuybyek Ye, September 2011 -

Vanuatu 2012

2012-08-18T12:05:00.001-10:00

Not only does Vanuatu has the dubious honor of being home to the world's first community to be forced to move from their land because of rising sea levels (see 'Vanuatu village relocated due to rising sea level' on ABC Australia), this chain of 83 or so islands and islets also happens to sit on the edge of the Paficic Tectonic plate:

From this article published in Der Spiegel:

Klaus Töpfer, a German politician with Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right Christian Democratic Party (CDU) and the UNEP's executive director at the time, bleakly noted: "The melting and receding of sea ice and the rising of sea levels, storms surges and the like are the first manifestations of big changes underway which eventually will touch everyone on the planet."

A climate-change report to be published next year will present evidence that the world's oceans will rise between 0.5 and 1.2 meters (1.5 and four feet) by 2100, with global warming already increasing sea levels by 1.8 millimeters (0.07 inches) a year. However, that amount is not much when compared to the natural fluctuations at work here. Like most inhabitants of the South Pacific, those of Vanikoro must contend with sea-level fluctuations of some 20 centimeters (eight inches) caused by currents in the Pacific, such as the climate phenomenon called El Niño.

Earthquakes and tsunamis strike Vanikoro regularly, but people here are at the mercy of the forces of nature in a longer-term way, as well: On its slowly sinking course, the Australian Plate is dragging Vanikoro along into the depths.

That the UN had been premature in declaring the villagers on Tegua to be climate change refugees became clear when a large earthquake caused the island to shoot back out of the water in 2009. "The coconut plantation has been on dry land since then," Ballu [Valérie Ballu, 44, a geodesist from Paris] says.

However, she points out that, for the people there, it doesn't much matter which specific physical phenomena forced them to abandon their village. What frustrates Ballu is that a climate-change adaptation fund helped them resettle in a new village, but in a location hardly better than the original one. "It's at a lower elevation," Ballu says. "Spring tides or tsunamis can still reach it."

Which brings up an interesting point: no matter how one may quibble at the details, the fact of the matter is that changing weather patterns are impacting communities around the world, perhaps none moreso than the island nation of Vanuatu.

Although the archipelago "luxuriates in a tropical maritime climate with characteristic uniform temperature, high humidity and variable rainfall"(1), its island communities must deal with intensifying tropical storms, shifting rainfall distribution patterns, and alternating drought & floods as the El Nino and La Nina cycles also intensify.

Photo: Vanuatu from the air (photo courtesy tourist-destinations.com)

Freshwater is becoming increasingly scarce and many upland watersheds are being deforested and degraded. Proper waste disposal and water and air pollution are also increasingly troublesome issues around urban areas and large villages.

Additionally, the influence of consumer culture which western development has brought to the islands is shifting traditional cultural behavior patterns & values, sowing the seeds of disconnecting peoples from the land they have lived so closely with for millennia.

On the bright side, in 2006 the Happy Planet Index published by the New Economics Foundation and Friends of the Earth environmentalist group estimated Vanuatu to be the most ecologically efficient country in the world to achieve high well-being.

Despite the challenges faced by these island communities, we take it as a good sign that the WELCOME sign on the airport wall reads: THE WORLD'S HAPPIEST COUNTRY.

(1) http://www.meteo.gov.vu/VanuatuClimate/tabid/196/Default.aspx

Ifira Island

2012-08-18T03:08:00.001-10:00

Photo: Arriving to Ifira Island.

The campfire smell of a firepit outside our window wafts through with each flurry of breeze, the bells of the gospel singing practice that has been belting out hymns next door for the last 90 minutes stll ringing in the air.

It's 9.30 at night, and the village of Ifiri Island is slowly winding down for the night.

Although it's supposedly the dry season, we descended from the clouds into a grey, humid & wet world - it has been raining off and on for the last couple weeks.

"Mother Nature is changing", says Noel, Project Manager for the Kaikai fo Laef project and our guide for this evening.

Tomorrow we meet Eddie, youngest member of the Chief's Council, who will guide us on a tour of this small island on foot (he tells us it will take only an hour or so to walk all the way around).

Meanwhile, a soft bed and pillow await aching travelbones...

Chop-n-Drop Raised Gardenbeds

2012-07-25T22:26:00.001-10:00

Here's a simple technique we discovered being used effectively on Oahu's North Shore, which is choked with tall-growing California grass in many areas...

Image: California grass covered almost the entire property - you can see where it has been harvested for the gardenbeds in foreground.

...if you've ever had to clear a patch of this stuff to make way for growing edibles, you know what hard work it is to hack it back, and then dig up its tough root clump to ensure it does not just spring back even more vigourously.

You may have also noticed the soil life thriving in the root zones of these clumps, especially when compared to bare soil immediately adjacent - this 'weed' is performing a valuable function, building soil & creating a habitat for soil biology, and mining nutrients in its biomass... which makes it a potentially valuable resource.

Here's how the Chop-n-Drop Raised Bed technique works:

After cutting back an area of California grass
The compost heap is topped with a thick layer of mature compost & mulch, which can then be planted directly into:
4 months later, the raised beds will have shrunk by about 2/3 or so, and the plant roots can extend into all that goodness below (check out the size of this raddish!):

Simple, and highly effective. Makes wonderful use of existing resources, and beautifully demonstrates the Permaculture Principle:

"The Problem is The Solution."

Banana leaf sheet mulch!

2011-12-16T21:39:00.001-10:00

Photo: Banana leaf sheet mulch deployed in raised bed garden. Hana, Maui.

Banana leaves have many uses in the Islands (and in all traditional cultures where banana plants grow), though here's one you may not yet have considered: a natural, locally & readily available, biodegradable weed barrier for sheet mulching.

In urban and suburban Honolulu, cardboard is a readily available waste product that can easily be upcycled as a biodegradable weed barrier for sheet mulch gardenbeds and paths, though in remote Hana there is nowhere near the amount of waste cardboard available for us permaculturists!

There is, however, and abundance of banana plants (which love the chocolatey-volcanic soils and moisture), and therefore an abundance of banana leaves...

...which brings us to the point of this post:

Appropriate Design.
(an excerpt from Rick Coleman's essay 'The Role of Permaculture in Sustainable Aid')

If you are going to introduce a new technology / technique / tool, these are some things to consider:

Can you use materials that are inexpnsive or free, that are easily accessible and safe?

Will it have a tangible positive effect on the community (as well as the aid organization)?

Most importantly is it able to be repeated (if you build a grand-darble-dooble-funky and leave it, can anyone build a new one?)..

How can the technology be integrated to solve other problems or be connected to other elements (in the system) and therefore become more productive?

... which, of course, now leaves us with the question:

What else could we use banana leaves for?

While we ponder that one, here's another example of a locally appropriate material being deployed for use in a sheet mulch garden being built in the drylands of Mexico:

Banana leaf sheet mulch!

2011-12-16T21:36:00.001-10:00

Photo: Banana leaf sheet mulch deployed in raised bed garden. Hana, Maui.

There is, however, and abundance of banana plants (which love the chocolatey-volcanic soils and moisture), and therefore an abundance of banana leaves...

...which brings us to the point of this post:

Appropriate Design.
(an excerpt from Rick Coleman's essay 'The Role of Permaculture in Sustainable Aid')

If you are going to introduce a new technology / technique / tool, these are some things to consider:

Can you use materials that are inexpnsive or free, that are easily accessible and safe?

Will it have a tangible positive effect on the community (as well as the aid organization)?

Most importantly is it able to be repeated (if you build a grand-darble-dooble-funky and leave it, can anyone build a new one?)..

How can the technology be integrated to solve other problems or be connected to other elements (in the system) and therefore become more productive?

... which, of course, now leaves us with the question:

What else could we use banana leaves for?

While we ponder that one, here's another example of a locally appropriate material being deployed for use in a sheet mulch garden being built in the drylands of Mexico:

Solar Dryer extends harvest and creates microenterprise opportunity

2011-12-13T17:18:00.001-10:00

Elyse Peterson is an experienced food scientist in the dairy, seafood, meat, and soft drink industries, Elyse served two terms in the Peace Corps helping promote sustainable food security solutions. As part of her work in the Peace Corps, she helped to develop a Solar Food Dryer which became the catalyst for a community-based food security and economic development project in in Antigua.

We talked to Elyse about this technology, which is highly appropriate for many tropical areas, and may have application into other climate zones:

Photo: Mangoes drying in the sun.

TBG: How does Solar Food Drying work?
Solar drying is a low cost method of drying food. It is important to understand moisture in food and the properties of the air around us.

All food contains moisture which comes in three forms: liquid, solid & gas. This moisture is what microorganisms need to live and thrive, so in order to stop microorganism growth you may reduce this moisture to a safe level to preserve and extend the shelf-life of your harvest.

The design of the Solar Dryer harnesses the power of the sun's rays to raise temperatures within the unit to between 110 - 130 degrees Farenheit.

This heat lowers relative humidity while increasing absolute humidity, so that the air inside the unit attempts to reach the absolute humidity of the climate outside the unit by taking moisture from the food.

Coupled with proper air circulation, this is what makes the solar dryer work.

Photo: Solar dryer built with locally available materials in Antigua, 2007.

TGB: What kind of Solar Dryer Designs have you developed?

There are three basic designs of solar dryers that you may follow when building your own solar dryer: direct absorption, indirect heating, and mixed mode. In this project a direct absorption solar dryer was designed because it was found to be the most sustainable for Hawaii’s needs.

In these designs the food is placed inside a cabinet or “hot box” which allows the rays of the sun to heat up food and air around it. A compartment with a transparent roof and insulated walls is used, but if designed properly all the walls can be transparent. These may also use reflectors at the bottom of the compartment to increase light (metal or foil).

Ventilation holes are required to promote proper air circulation. Indirect heating dryers dry the food with heated air collected by a “solar panel”. The food is placed in an insulated heating chamber with proper air circulation.

These models are effective but cost a lot of money. Mixed Mode dryers are a combination of the other two designs. Food is heated directly by the sun but additional heat is collected with the “solar panel”. These can cost about $1300EC to build, effective but expensive.

Businesses attempting to expand and produce higher quality products should look into building one of these models (for the purposes of this project and the situation in Hawaii the direct absorption model is the best fit). When constructing your dryer be sure to follow the design carefully, because the angles achieved are vital for efficient processing.

Photo: Mangoes selected for drying are peeled and cut.

TGB: How do we select produce to dry?
When selecting food to process in the solar dryer it is important to remember that drying will not improve the quality of the produce. Only produce that you would consume fresh should be dried.

Produce with cuts, bruises, or other evidence of contamination should not be used. Select fruit that is ripe yet firm. Using over-ripe fruit can cause the final product to come out brown and sticky. Ripeness is about 2/3 ripe.

Photo: Mango is prepared for dehydration in the Solar Dryer.

TGB: How do we prepare produce for drying?
Produce shall be soaked in a bleach solution to remove microbial contamination (1 tsp bleach in 1 gallon water). Peel fruits and cut into appropriate sized pieces. The smaller the size piece the faster the drying time. As the size of the piece increases the time for drying grows exponentially.

Example: A slice or piece two times larger with take four times longer to dry. Experiment with your dryer to see what size piece is the best.

TGB: Doesn't that mean we will be eating bleach?

There are alternative methods for sanitation, but bleach is the most available and inexpensive. One must remember that bleach is highly volatile. It evaporates into the air, so there is essentially no bleach on the product by the time we eat it. This is a standard practice in the food industry that many of us don't know about but owe our safety to.

Photo: Uncle Clay's House of Pure Aloha utilizes the Solar Dryer.

TGB: Does it work in the rain? How long does it take?
No. The dryer should only be used on days with consistent powerful sun as to reduce the time required for drying. Depending on the results you may find it necessary to rotate the trays throughout the day so every tray gets equal amounts of direct sun exposure.

Drying should take about 12 hours of full sun power (possibly one day with good sun). Optimal temperature for solid drying is 110-120°F but 130°F will be the most effective temperature. Putting a thermometer in the dryer during processing is a safe way of monitoring the efficiency of your dryer.

Keep a close eye on the produce towards the end of drying because drying happens at a faster rate just before it’s reached 10% moisture. To test for doneness you should see that vegetables at about 10% moisture will be brittle and easily can be broken apart.

Fruits should be soft and chewy, but test the moisture content to verify 5-8% moisture (refer to Principles of Solar Drying). There are a few quality issues that need to be considered when solar drying produce.

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For more information and detailed instructions on how to build your own Solar Food Dryerin Hawaii, download the Solar Dryer Manual here:

solar-dryer-manual-hawaii.pdf Download this file

Food Security and Food Culture

2011-12-06T01:00:00.001-10:00

Photo: Mongolians work new potato fields in Zavkhan Province (2010), and are learning to grow vegetables because changing weather patterns are rendering ancient grazing patterns obsolete.

“Food security has been defined as ...access by all people at all times to sufficient food for an active and healthy life.

Food security includes at a minimum: the ready availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, and an assured ability to acquire food in socially acceptable ways (without resorting to emergency food supplies, scavenging, stealing and other coping strategies for example).”

[(Online), Dieticians Association of Australia, www.daa.asn.au (2006.)]

Food Culture refers to how we experience our food – from field to plate – and how it impacts our health, happiness, and sense of community.

Perhaps the best way to explain the impact of food culture upon our wellness is to think of the way you feel, hear, smell, taste, and see another culture when you experience it through their cooking; so much of our cultural values are expressed in the way we grow, prepare, and share food. Indeed, most of our major holidays and celebrations are centered around the experience of sharing a meal.

Food culture and food security are closely linked: threats to one affect, and are affected by the other.

A society which marginalizes the importance of celebrating and enjoying its food, also marginalizes the importance and richness of the living systems which support and create food.

The ‘fast food culture’ of modern society has distanced most of us from this richness of experience, with sobering results. The Slow Food movement was spawned out of a response to the globalization of food production, and promotes sustainable food production by small local businesses to preserve and celebrate local and traditional food cultures.

A society which celebrates the importance and richness of its food culture, creates resilient, happy communities: there is much data to indicate that average reported happiness is consistently lower in countries with a pervasive fast food culture [such as the USA] than in countries such as Cuba, which embrace and celebrate a locally produced, organic food system.

When a community is unable to provide for its own food needs, individuals are disempowered, despair sets in, and food aid must be imported. The community must be rebuilt with the knowledge and practical skills to produce enough of their own food to meet their needs, or a cycle of dependence can develop.

Agricultural yields are arguably at higher levels than ever in recorded history, yet in our world today, 1 out of 7 people will fall sleep tonight without access to enough food to lead an active and healthy life.

A solid understanding of food culture and food security issues are important to a wellness practitioner because it will equip you with a foundation to act on a local scale, and know that you are improving the wellness of humanity on a global scale with your contribution.

"Stupidity is an attempt to iron out all differences, and not to use them or value them creatively."

- Bill Mollison -

The long-term impacts of the modern conventional food system, which has only been in existence for the last 40 years or so, are only now starting to become more apparent. Obesity levels and diet-related disease are at epidemic levels in the developed world, regional economies are being drained of their livelihoods by big agribusiness, while social and environmental impacts are being reported on by filmmakers, journalists, bloggers and other activists all over the world.

Once we understand the limitations and challenges created by the conventional food system, we can begin to identify opportunities to flourish within, while operating from outside the system: first, by producing enough of our own food to meet our survival needs, then to generate sufficient surplus to share in our local communities.

It is here than we can access markets most efficiently, here that we can develop our most loyal customers, and it is here that the economic activities of our enterprise will make the most difference, because money will be cycled around local suppliers, distributors, and sellers to ehance and strengthen our community.

Photo: PermablitzHI, a vibrant community of people who share common needs and goals.

‘Market’ does not mean ‘places where we can sell crap’ to a permaculturist. Instead, we view ‘markets’ as a vibrant community of people [think of your local farmer’s market], who share common needs that we can help to meet.

When we can identify and meet these needs responsibly, ethically, and sustainably then we are rewarded with surplus cashflows to reinvest into our people, our enterprises, and our community.

For example, we can look for local heritage varieties of crops that have adapted to growing conditions in the area, and develop a niche demand for varieties that are unavailable on supermarket shelves because they may not be suitable for long-term transportation or storage.

Or, we can look for high-value crops that can be integrated into our polycultures, increasing the biodiversity and resilience of our system, while increasing the diversity and resilience of our economic yield.

Photo: Hana Farms, an example of a Regenerative Enterprise, cycles economic energy back into the community it serves.

Only when when our enterprise is able to competently serve the needs of our local community, should we look to developing our system to generate further surplus. We expand our operations and systems organically, by careful observation, continuous improvement, and constant adaptation to changing long-term trends; and always, always conduct ourselves with respect to the ethics of permaculture, which underpin all of our work.

It is vitally important that we look at what our land offers us, rather than impose our will upon the land. For example, deciding arbitrarily that ‘I want to grow chamomile’ because there may be a market for it would not be in alignment with the permaculture ethic of Earth Care, while paying our employees less than a living wage would violate our ethical principle of People Care.

Finally, hoarding all of our profits and not re-investing surplus back into our local communities not only serves to isolate ourselves from our basic need to connect meaningfully with other human beings around us, it would not honour the third ethical principal of permaculture: Resource Share.

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by Matthew Lynch
'Essays on Permaculture and Wellness'