The big problem is the insane dominant culture, in which we all swim, are captive, enmeshed, indoctrinated, inculcated. It tends to pull us back in the instant we confront or try to move away from it. The M.I.I.P.C.C. (military-industrial-intelligence-pharma-corporate-complex) uses 90% of the energy, fuel, metals, minerals, water, soil....and creates most of the pollution and environmental damage.
But (BY DESIGN) when we do, we're steered into individual lifestyle-ism virtue signalling. A little Permaculture garden here or food forest there does not threaten the dominant paradigm.
So what needs to go along with Permaculture, is revolutionary resistance to this dominant insanity, fierce support of activists on the barricades, especially local organisers and any remnant indigenous cultures who know how to live sustainably.
If we are soooo awesomely lucky to get a future, it will be very local, very low tech, very light ecological footprint. Head in that direction and defend your beloved!
"If people are still alive in 50 years, they will look back at this time, and wonder, what the fuck was wrong with us, that we didn't fight back as the biosphere was going down. Love is a verb. Defend your beloved!" Lierre Keith
This resonated with me. I spent much of my life dreaming, planning, waiting for that opportunity to buy some land, live sustainably, wisely, abundantly. Permaculture was always in my greater plan, as was living off grid. My partner and I achieved this goal in 2021. Over the last decade or so, the homesteading movement became less about healthy, sustainable, free living and more about generating revenue from YouTube, podcasts, the workshop circuit and selling books. All from the comfort a 40 acre farm with a large house with power, gas, electricity, fiber internet, sewer and waste services, multiple tractors and a seemingly endless budget for buying and maintaining flocks and herds of livestock.
My partner and I spent 2 years clearing land, acquiring animals (small scale chicken & rabbit), establishing a garden and all the systems we would need to live (rainwater catchment, humanure composting, 12v power for small things like lights and cell phone charging). We cooked on open flame, baked bread and cooked roasts in a Dutch oven over coals, yadda-yadda. Any opportunity we had to learn about what the outside world homesteaders were doing became a frustration, really. Things like "baking is so easy, just pop this into the oven at 450 for 20 minutes and voila! P.S. Subscribe and Like! P.S.S. You can buy our book at <link>"
I attempted a podcast, primarily to educate, but also to generate a few bucks. One of my episodes was on this very topic - I can't stand behind the homesteaders who spend half the season traveling to teach at paid workshops, rather than being a homesteader. I may sound a little bitter. I am. What can I say. I stopped podcasting because I felt cheap, hypocritical and disingenuous.
In any case, I enjoyed the read and I appreciate the message! I'll be looking for ways to evangelize and propagate the values and knowledge of simpler homesteading without selling out.
Really appreciate this thoughtful comment. It’s a strange time to be alive, but whenever my head starts to spin, I just head out to the garden or the woods and do what I know I’m supposed to be doing. Best cure I’ve found.
I don't think all these things are absolutely wrong, although perhaps in degree.
I'm 100% with you about eliminating plastic. It physically pains me in the chest to see plastic mulch used!
Invasives are. I would not suggest to propogate them, but we should be open to using them once they've become established. They can be an incredible resource. The local "anti-invasive" charity used to hold work parties where they'd go pull up Scotch Broom… and deliver it to my goat feeders! Yay! Meanwhile, the broom grows right back. It is firmly established.
(BTW: I know how to get rid of Scotch Broom! It's a pioneer species, and like all pioneers, it wants full sun and disturbed soil. Want to get rid of it? QUIT CLEARING LAND! Let the fields and roadways revert to a natural succession! Within a decade, the broom will have been succeeded out!)
The other arguments seem to be matters of degree. Sure, anything to excess is bound to have unintended consequences. But Permaculture is based on patterns, and the problem is people tend to follow specific examples, rather than pick something with the same pattern that fits your situation.
The fact that people use examples, rather than patterns, is not a problem with Permaculture; it's a problem with its practitioners.
Lots of good points. Especially kudos on calling out the plastics. I’m so OVER plastic seed trays and any other plastic used in gardening, especially single use. I like things that break down.
I will say though I do think it’s both - as far as setting example versus top-down activism. I think grassroots, small scale is valuable alongside top down activism.
Overarchingly, the problem is settler-colonial mindsets. The founders or originators of permaculture were white Australian men who grew up in a time when it was still legal to hunt Aboriginal Australians as game that had a cash reward per head. I'm not saying Bill Mollison was himself a person who hunted Aboriginal people, just that that kind of racism was normative in his formative years and as such, he was steeped in it at a cultural, fundamental level whether he leaned into it or not. Hell, I'm a white American and am well aware that this is the pot calling the kettle racist as various academic studies have shown that even super Leftist whites in America have a measurable differential in the speed with which we attribute positive adjectives with faces that are perceived to be White vs. Black, indicating a deeply programmed bias or slant in favor of White-presenting people.
But what I'm getting at here more specifically is that Permaculture purports to be predicated on indigenous practices and received wisdom from native people. Yet if you go to any permaculture course here in the USA that I've ever seen (and granted, I'm in New England so perhaps there is more diversity outside of this region and internationally), you'll find it is OVERWHELMINGLY Caucasian. I do not think I have seen a single Black participant in any permaculture course I've ever engaged in (though I'm sure there are Black folks out there with PDC's, they're just probably under-represented relative to their population), and I've only encountered 2 Latinos and 1 South Asian person in courses. Other than that, I've encountered hundreds of White participants in this space. That is a problem.
I must conclude that either we (and by we I mean 'the sum total of all people who consider themselves Permaculturalists) are not reaching communities of color successfully OR when we do reach them, our message tends to repel them from participating. I will grant that it may be difficult to convince people of color to participate in an overwhelmingly white space just because such spaces tend NOT to be safe-places for POC's, but if we are Internationalists, Socialists, and Humanitarians (all of which ought to be ethical values near and dear to Permaculture), we MUST find a way to stand in solidarity with our Black, indigenous, Asian, African, Latino, Pac. Islander, etc. etc. comrades, all of whom have communities that are facing devastation from climate change and all of whom would be benefitted by appropriately applying Permaculture within their socio(agri)cultural milieus. This is work that White Permaculturalists must engage in UNDER THE GUIDANCE of BIPOC Permaculturalists in order to be better comrades to our non-white brothers, sisters, and non-binary siblings.
So to that end, I have been thinking over in my head for some years now a new concept that I call "Integriculture". It is Permaculture but placed within a materialist-historical context that is intersectional and inclusive. The source of this term is from permaculture, a fusion of "permanent" and "agriculture", and "integrity", a word with numerous meanings. Integrity can mean "wholeness, totality, undividedness"; it can mean "honesty, earnestness, truthfulness"; it can mean "intact"; it can mean "ethical, sound". I feel that Integriculture should embrace ALL of these things within an integrative, inclusive, intersectional framework.
This would mean expanding Permaculture to be more internally consistent and coherent. This leads me to some things:
1. This probably won't be popular and will get dunked on somewhat, but Integriculture should progressively move toward animal-free systems of production. Obviously there will always be animals involved in agriculture because moles, voles, mice, birds, deer, etc. will engage with human systems of food and resource production in ways that we do not (and ought not) to have control over. Non-human animals have free moral agency as much as human animals (i.e. us). Indeed, as we move toward a future with "no gods, no cages, no borders, no masters" we must increasingly accept that human beings are NOT a special case: we are not the product of divine creation--or if we are, all life was created by the divine--and therefore do not get some special dispensation or privileged status to do what we wish to all other life on earth. Rather, we should increasingly move to a place where all life is respected, from the least dust mite to the greatest whale, and we should strive to produce the yield we need in order to survive in a manner that reduces the input of animals--either as "yields" themselves or as unintentional by-catch or casualties of running combines and other forms of mechanized harvesting. Indeed, the fact that many Permaculture texts discuss the "yield" of animals is, to just about any serious system of ethics, at loggerheads with one of the primary Permaculture ethics that "all life has value." If all life has value, how can any life be reduced to a "yield" without violating that ethic right out of the gate?
Comrade LastFarm touches on this somewhat with their point about the over-reliance on formulas within Permaculture. Integriculture would seek to systemize the implementation of food and resource production but would seek specifically not to do so in a formulaic, "one size fits most" manner. It would also avoid animal inputs completely outside of those inputs that are naturally given by wild creatures (bear scat, deer droppings, bat guano, etc. as they browse in our food forests). Some people may say "that is not possible or feasible" but that is a learned helplessness and entrenched human-supremacist view. Will Bonsall has an excellent book on self-reliant vegan permaculture. He does not use any animal inputs. The only thing he does that I find that is glaringly inconsistent with Integriculture is that he goes through his plants and squishes pest larvae on any of his plants as part of his "Intelligent Pest Management". We need a better solution than death and destruction.
Why does this matter so much? Well, as Christopher Sebastian McJetters and Dr. A. Breeze Harper, as well as numerous other Black, native, and Latino voices, have excellently pointed out: there cannot be settler-colonialism without the tools of settler-colonialism anymore than there can be a revolution without revolutionary theory. The language of "othering" that ends up being applied to Black, Latino, indigenous, Asian, etc. persons to de-humanize them (and as you well know there exists a PANOPLY of harmful, hateful epithets and slurs for non-white people) begins with the de-personalization of non-human animals. How could a Nazi harmfully label a Jewish person "vermin" except we first label rats, mice, etc. as "pests" and "filthy vermin"? How could a Hutu call a Tutsi a "cockroach" to justify their extermination except they first accept that a cockroach is a creature with no value, no worth to its existence, and something that must be exterminated? How could a Black slave be called a "beast of burden" and forced to work under the lash except White settlers first accept that cows, oxen, mules, horses, etc. were creatures that existed solely to serve the whims of homesteaders and settler farming ventures and that using the lash to spur them to work harder was acceptable? I do not go so far as to say that, for example, dairy farming is morally equivalent to chattel slavery or that modern industrialized fish farms are equivalent to the Holocaust; forbid it that anyone should ever be so callous! But they do exist on the same spectrum of de-personalizing and denigrating the individual to nothing more than what can be extracted from them. Absent the language and categorizing of settler-coloniality, the framework for such horrors directed at human beings would not exist and any such program would be orders of magnitude more difficult to enforce. I believe in making it harder to EVER again do the Holocaust, chattel slavery, and genocide, not easier. I believe that starts, like most things, at the most foundational level of our existence and communication.
Moreover, the aforementioned Christopher McJetters and Dr. Harper have also pointed out that non-human creatures are our fellow proletariats. Their bodies are LITERALLY crushed (and macerated and extruded and tenderized and broiled) by Capitalists in order to extract profit. Do not think for one minute that if Capitalism could find a way to sell mass-butchered, battery-cage-raised humans to us that they would refrain from doing so. What prevents us from being viewed as a product to fatten and slaughter for profit is the fact that there is widespread revulsion to consuming one's own species that is highly selected for as a preventative for disease (prions are particularly nasty pathogens, some of which persist even after thoroughly cleaning and cooking the individual). Once non-human animals are viewed as fellow proletariats, it becomes an act of class-betrayal to consume them, to benefit from their captivity and torture, to enjoy their secretions, etc.
Moreover, animal products are NOT healthy for humans to eat as they promote hypercholesterolemia, atherosclerosis, loss of bone density, skyrocketing rates of cardiac arrest, an epidemic of colorectal cancer, etc. ad nauseam. The reggae artist Bob Villain has an EXCELLENT song that hits on some of ALL of the above points called "Health is Wealth" (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DxMFYpZZEo). It's catchy and it makes a great point:
"The state need not kill those that are killing themselves...
The killing of kids with £2 chicken and chips
Is a tactic of war, waged on the poor
Can't save wages on slave wages...
...What's the deal? Eat right, stay active
Stay strong 'cause the revolution is real
Never know when a man might have to dash
And a [cop] can't kill what a [cop] can't catch..."
He unfortunately uses the term "pig" for cops (and I refer back to my previous commentary about the use of "othering" language as a simple rationale for discontinuing this use: how man actual pigs do you know who have beaten an unarmed Black man to death? I can't think of a single one. COPS on the other hand are not content just to brutalize the Black communities they over-police, but go on to SELF-REPORT that the majority of them engage in intimate-partner violence). It is otherwise a great song that drops so much truth in like 2 minutes that you have to listen to it numerous times to keep unpacking more. Excellent.
If none of the above has convinced you that this should be an ethic woven into the heart of Permaculture, consider this: Black people and indigenous people in America are WAY over-represented in the vegan community. In other words, whereas about 3% of white people are vegan, around 8% of Black people are. There are a number of cultural reasons for that, but at the end of the day, when you look at the history of America and of the global North vs. the global South, are you going to sit there and tell me Black people aren't leading the way forward in SO many ways? Do you think what they put on their plates is the one thing they're just whiffin' it on?
But Integriculture needs to go further than just veganic modes of food and resource production. It needs to be anti-capitalist specifically. I do think that the vast majority of Permaculture-heads are anti-Republican and I would believe even anti-capitalist in the soft sense of being frustrated that there are billionaires with the ability to heavily influence global politics and foreign relations. But I have not heard too many people in the Permaculture community specifically quoting Marx, Lenin, Mao, Guevara, Kropotkin, Malatesta, Volkov, Rocker, etc. We should be doing the work of reading theory and incorporating Revolutionary Communism or at least Anarcho-Communism into the interpretive framework of Integriculture.
Why? Because if we do not correctly identify the wellspring of environmental degradation and extractive/exploitative agriculture as the Capitalist class that owns the overwhelming majority of the means of production of all food groups nationally and internationally, then we are fundamentally failing to fight the system that is causing the problem. What, then, is the point of Permaculture? Integriculture must correctly identify Capitalism and the billionaire-class as enemy #1, and it must FIGHT that enemy in ways that improve the material conditions of the communities where Integriculture is implemented. Again: otherwise what is the point?
Integriculture must educate. It must recruit. We must find a way to teach people how to do it. We need Integriculture Blitzes that go to the poorest in our midst and say "here is how you can produce food security in your city, town, village, backyard, balcony, etc." We need to understand the communal nature of humanity. Indeed, that is another form of integrity that must be baked into Integriculture: the building of community, viewing human individuals as members of a permaculture 'guild', the filling of personality-niches within those communities, the valorization of all individuals in that community regardless of gender, orientation, neurotypicality, able-bodiedness, etc.
There is so much more I could write about this, and maybe I SHOULD write a book, I don't know. What I know is none of this is possible as a solo individual. Can you successfully implement Permaculture as a homesteader in rural Wyoming? Maybe. Probably not at a high level without some form of assistance. Can you implement Integriculture on your own? Categorically and definitionally no. Integriculture can only be done in community. Indeed, I would argue that community should be centered as one of the most important yields of Integriculture. Community should be the sentinel indicator or bellweather for the success of any Integriculture installation. If it does not engender and propagate community, it is not a healthy Integriculture system. Nor should only human communities matter: does it gather a host of sparrows? an army of frogs? a maelstrom of salamanders? How many communities of creatures can we encourage to share our Integriculture space? And can we encourage cooperative, mutual-aid-oriented affinity groups among various species rather than cut-throat competition? Mutual aid is, after all, the far more common mode of interaction between species than predation or extraction.
So since this is impossible as a solo person, I guess I would call on anyone reading this message to reach out to me if they feel moved to coordinate. Maybe we don't share geographical location, but we CAN share encouragement, knowledge, and motivation. I'm just about starved to death for community from the alienation and isolation of Capitalism and COVID. Let's strive for a world where branch out and build robust communities within our spheres of influence, because then we will begin to change the world.
Integriculture must educate. It must recruit. We must find a way to teach people how to do it. We need Integriculture Blitzes that go to the poorest in our midst and say "here is how you can produce food security in your city, town, village, backyard, balcony, etc." We need to understand the communal nature of humanity. Indeed, that is another form of integrity that must be baked into Integriculture: the building of community, viewing human individuals as members of a permaculture 'guild', the filling of personality-niches within those communities, the valorization of all individuals in that community regardless of gender, orientation, neurotypicality, able-bodiedness, etc.
There is so much more I could write about this, and maybe I SHOULD write a book, I don't know. What I know is none of this is possible as a solo individual. Can you successfully implement Permaculture as a homesteader in rural Wyoming? Maybe. Probably not at a high level without some form of assistance. Can you implement Integriculture on your own? Categorically and definitionally no. Integriculture can only be done in community. Indeed, I would argue that community should be centered as one of the most important yields of Integriculture. Community should be the sentinel indicator or bellweather for the success of any Integriculture installation. If it does not engender and propagate community, it is not a healthy Integriculture system. Nor should only human communities matter: does it gather a host of sparrows? an army of frogs? a maelstrom of salamanders? How many communities of creatures can we encourage to share our Integriculture space? And can we encourage cooperative, mutual-aid-oriented affinity groups among various species rather than cut-throat competition? Mutual aid is, after all, the far more common mode of interaction between species than predation or extraction.
So since this is impossible as a solo person, I guess I would call on anyone reading this message to reach out to me if they feel moved to coordinate. Maybe we don't share geographical location, but we CAN share encouragement, knowledge, and motivation. I'm just about starved to death for community from the alienation and isolation of Capitalism and COVID. Let's strive for a world where branch out and build robust communities within our spheres of influence, because then we will begin to change the world.
Right on! This is why I find the Bioregional Organizing movement so inspiring. By focusing on landscape scale it gets people out of their private yard and farm projects and develops the whole systems view. There are now bioiregional regeneration networks all over the globe, with many permacuturists involved. See examples: Regenerate Cascadia and other examples at https://www.bioregionalearth.org/pathway/design-school.
The Crisis and Transition: A Common Way Forward substack wants to help connect these dots.
Majority of the changes are occurring from people individually and collectively attempting to play the role of a creator. The chart is easy to read. L shaped chart. Left side reads ‘find out’. Bottom reads ‘playing around’. Both measured and marked equally based on amount of effort applied. Play around, find out. Very historic, as we all see this chart.
The big problem is the insane dominant culture, in which we all swim, are captive, enmeshed, indoctrinated, inculcated. It tends to pull us back in the instant we confront or try to move away from it. The M.I.I.P.C.C. (military-industrial-intelligence-pharma-corporate-complex) uses 90% of the energy, fuel, metals, minerals, water, soil....and creates most of the pollution and environmental damage.
But (BY DESIGN) when we do, we're steered into individual lifestyle-ism virtue signalling. A little Permaculture garden here or food forest there does not threaten the dominant paradigm.
So what needs to go along with Permaculture, is revolutionary resistance to this dominant insanity, fierce support of activists on the barricades, especially local organisers and any remnant indigenous cultures who know how to live sustainably.
If we are soooo awesomely lucky to get a future, it will be very local, very low tech, very light ecological footprint. Head in that direction and defend your beloved!
"If people are still alive in 50 years, they will look back at this time, and wonder, what the fuck was wrong with us, that we didn't fight back as the biosphere was going down. Love is a verb. Defend your beloved!" Lierre Keith
I must admit I clicked on your SS expecting to defend permaculture, but you’re right
Quite a compliment, thank you!
This resonated with me. I spent much of my life dreaming, planning, waiting for that opportunity to buy some land, live sustainably, wisely, abundantly. Permaculture was always in my greater plan, as was living off grid. My partner and I achieved this goal in 2021. Over the last decade or so, the homesteading movement became less about healthy, sustainable, free living and more about generating revenue from YouTube, podcasts, the workshop circuit and selling books. All from the comfort a 40 acre farm with a large house with power, gas, electricity, fiber internet, sewer and waste services, multiple tractors and a seemingly endless budget for buying and maintaining flocks and herds of livestock.
My partner and I spent 2 years clearing land, acquiring animals (small scale chicken & rabbit), establishing a garden and all the systems we would need to live (rainwater catchment, humanure composting, 12v power for small things like lights and cell phone charging). We cooked on open flame, baked bread and cooked roasts in a Dutch oven over coals, yadda-yadda. Any opportunity we had to learn about what the outside world homesteaders were doing became a frustration, really. Things like "baking is so easy, just pop this into the oven at 450 for 20 minutes and voila! P.S. Subscribe and Like! P.S.S. You can buy our book at <link>"
I attempted a podcast, primarily to educate, but also to generate a few bucks. One of my episodes was on this very topic - I can't stand behind the homesteaders who spend half the season traveling to teach at paid workshops, rather than being a homesteader. I may sound a little bitter. I am. What can I say. I stopped podcasting because I felt cheap, hypocritical and disingenuous.
In any case, I enjoyed the read and I appreciate the message! I'll be looking for ways to evangelize and propagate the values and knowledge of simpler homesteading without selling out.
Really appreciate this thoughtful comment. It’s a strange time to be alive, but whenever my head starts to spin, I just head out to the garden or the woods and do what I know I’m supposed to be doing. Best cure I’ve found.
You hit the nail on the head with this post, and not just once but five times.
Thank you, Lynn!
Thanks for this thoughtful analysis. I can’t disagree. It will be good food for thought for me.
🙏🙏🙏
I don't think all these things are absolutely wrong, although perhaps in degree.
I'm 100% with you about eliminating plastic. It physically pains me in the chest to see plastic mulch used!
Invasives are. I would not suggest to propogate them, but we should be open to using them once they've become established. They can be an incredible resource. The local "anti-invasive" charity used to hold work parties where they'd go pull up Scotch Broom… and deliver it to my goat feeders! Yay! Meanwhile, the broom grows right back. It is firmly established.
(BTW: I know how to get rid of Scotch Broom! It's a pioneer species, and like all pioneers, it wants full sun and disturbed soil. Want to get rid of it? QUIT CLEARING LAND! Let the fields and roadways revert to a natural succession! Within a decade, the broom will have been succeeded out!)
The other arguments seem to be matters of degree. Sure, anything to excess is bound to have unintended consequences. But Permaculture is based on patterns, and the problem is people tend to follow specific examples, rather than pick something with the same pattern that fits your situation.
The fact that people use examples, rather than patterns, is not a problem with Permaculture; it's a problem with its practitioners.
Lots of good points. Especially kudos on calling out the plastics. I’m so OVER plastic seed trays and any other plastic used in gardening, especially single use. I like things that break down.
I will say though I do think it’s both - as far as setting example versus top-down activism. I think grassroots, small scale is valuable alongside top down activism.
So I have thoughts.
Overarchingly, the problem is settler-colonial mindsets. The founders or originators of permaculture were white Australian men who grew up in a time when it was still legal to hunt Aboriginal Australians as game that had a cash reward per head. I'm not saying Bill Mollison was himself a person who hunted Aboriginal people, just that that kind of racism was normative in his formative years and as such, he was steeped in it at a cultural, fundamental level whether he leaned into it or not. Hell, I'm a white American and am well aware that this is the pot calling the kettle racist as various academic studies have shown that even super Leftist whites in America have a measurable differential in the speed with which we attribute positive adjectives with faces that are perceived to be White vs. Black, indicating a deeply programmed bias or slant in favor of White-presenting people.
But what I'm getting at here more specifically is that Permaculture purports to be predicated on indigenous practices and received wisdom from native people. Yet if you go to any permaculture course here in the USA that I've ever seen (and granted, I'm in New England so perhaps there is more diversity outside of this region and internationally), you'll find it is OVERWHELMINGLY Caucasian. I do not think I have seen a single Black participant in any permaculture course I've ever engaged in (though I'm sure there are Black folks out there with PDC's, they're just probably under-represented relative to their population), and I've only encountered 2 Latinos and 1 South Asian person in courses. Other than that, I've encountered hundreds of White participants in this space. That is a problem.
I must conclude that either we (and by we I mean 'the sum total of all people who consider themselves Permaculturalists) are not reaching communities of color successfully OR when we do reach them, our message tends to repel them from participating. I will grant that it may be difficult to convince people of color to participate in an overwhelmingly white space just because such spaces tend NOT to be safe-places for POC's, but if we are Internationalists, Socialists, and Humanitarians (all of which ought to be ethical values near and dear to Permaculture), we MUST find a way to stand in solidarity with our Black, indigenous, Asian, African, Latino, Pac. Islander, etc. etc. comrades, all of whom have communities that are facing devastation from climate change and all of whom would be benefitted by appropriately applying Permaculture within their socio(agri)cultural milieus. This is work that White Permaculturalists must engage in UNDER THE GUIDANCE of BIPOC Permaculturalists in order to be better comrades to our non-white brothers, sisters, and non-binary siblings.
So to that end, I have been thinking over in my head for some years now a new concept that I call "Integriculture". It is Permaculture but placed within a materialist-historical context that is intersectional and inclusive. The source of this term is from permaculture, a fusion of "permanent" and "agriculture", and "integrity", a word with numerous meanings. Integrity can mean "wholeness, totality, undividedness"; it can mean "honesty, earnestness, truthfulness"; it can mean "intact"; it can mean "ethical, sound". I feel that Integriculture should embrace ALL of these things within an integrative, inclusive, intersectional framework.
This would mean expanding Permaculture to be more internally consistent and coherent. This leads me to some things:
1. This probably won't be popular and will get dunked on somewhat, but Integriculture should progressively move toward animal-free systems of production. Obviously there will always be animals involved in agriculture because moles, voles, mice, birds, deer, etc. will engage with human systems of food and resource production in ways that we do not (and ought not) to have control over. Non-human animals have free moral agency as much as human animals (i.e. us). Indeed, as we move toward a future with "no gods, no cages, no borders, no masters" we must increasingly accept that human beings are NOT a special case: we are not the product of divine creation--or if we are, all life was created by the divine--and therefore do not get some special dispensation or privileged status to do what we wish to all other life on earth. Rather, we should increasingly move to a place where all life is respected, from the least dust mite to the greatest whale, and we should strive to produce the yield we need in order to survive in a manner that reduces the input of animals--either as "yields" themselves or as unintentional by-catch or casualties of running combines and other forms of mechanized harvesting. Indeed, the fact that many Permaculture texts discuss the "yield" of animals is, to just about any serious system of ethics, at loggerheads with one of the primary Permaculture ethics that "all life has value." If all life has value, how can any life be reduced to a "yield" without violating that ethic right out of the gate?
Comrade LastFarm touches on this somewhat with their point about the over-reliance on formulas within Permaculture. Integriculture would seek to systemize the implementation of food and resource production but would seek specifically not to do so in a formulaic, "one size fits most" manner. It would also avoid animal inputs completely outside of those inputs that are naturally given by wild creatures (bear scat, deer droppings, bat guano, etc. as they browse in our food forests). Some people may say "that is not possible or feasible" but that is a learned helplessness and entrenched human-supremacist view. Will Bonsall has an excellent book on self-reliant vegan permaculture. He does not use any animal inputs. The only thing he does that I find that is glaringly inconsistent with Integriculture is that he goes through his plants and squishes pest larvae on any of his plants as part of his "Intelligent Pest Management". We need a better solution than death and destruction.
Why does this matter so much? Well, as Christopher Sebastian McJetters and Dr. A. Breeze Harper, as well as numerous other Black, native, and Latino voices, have excellently pointed out: there cannot be settler-colonialism without the tools of settler-colonialism anymore than there can be a revolution without revolutionary theory. The language of "othering" that ends up being applied to Black, Latino, indigenous, Asian, etc. persons to de-humanize them (and as you well know there exists a PANOPLY of harmful, hateful epithets and slurs for non-white people) begins with the de-personalization of non-human animals. How could a Nazi harmfully label a Jewish person "vermin" except we first label rats, mice, etc. as "pests" and "filthy vermin"? How could a Hutu call a Tutsi a "cockroach" to justify their extermination except they first accept that a cockroach is a creature with no value, no worth to its existence, and something that must be exterminated? How could a Black slave be called a "beast of burden" and forced to work under the lash except White settlers first accept that cows, oxen, mules, horses, etc. were creatures that existed solely to serve the whims of homesteaders and settler farming ventures and that using the lash to spur them to work harder was acceptable? I do not go so far as to say that, for example, dairy farming is morally equivalent to chattel slavery or that modern industrialized fish farms are equivalent to the Holocaust; forbid it that anyone should ever be so callous! But they do exist on the same spectrum of de-personalizing and denigrating the individual to nothing more than what can be extracted from them. Absent the language and categorizing of settler-coloniality, the framework for such horrors directed at human beings would not exist and any such program would be orders of magnitude more difficult to enforce. I believe in making it harder to EVER again do the Holocaust, chattel slavery, and genocide, not easier. I believe that starts, like most things, at the most foundational level of our existence and communication.
Moreover, the aforementioned Christopher McJetters and Dr. Harper have also pointed out that non-human creatures are our fellow proletariats. Their bodies are LITERALLY crushed (and macerated and extruded and tenderized and broiled) by Capitalists in order to extract profit. Do not think for one minute that if Capitalism could find a way to sell mass-butchered, battery-cage-raised humans to us that they would refrain from doing so. What prevents us from being viewed as a product to fatten and slaughter for profit is the fact that there is widespread revulsion to consuming one's own species that is highly selected for as a preventative for disease (prions are particularly nasty pathogens, some of which persist even after thoroughly cleaning and cooking the individual). Once non-human animals are viewed as fellow proletariats, it becomes an act of class-betrayal to consume them, to benefit from their captivity and torture, to enjoy their secretions, etc.
Moreover, animal products are NOT healthy for humans to eat as they promote hypercholesterolemia, atherosclerosis, loss of bone density, skyrocketing rates of cardiac arrest, an epidemic of colorectal cancer, etc. ad nauseam. The reggae artist Bob Villain has an EXCELLENT song that hits on some of ALL of the above points called "Health is Wealth" (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DxMFYpZZEo). It's catchy and it makes a great point:
"The state need not kill those that are killing themselves...
The killing of kids with £2 chicken and chips
Is a tactic of war, waged on the poor
Can't save wages on slave wages...
...What's the deal? Eat right, stay active
Stay strong 'cause the revolution is real
Never know when a man might have to dash
And a [cop] can't kill what a [cop] can't catch..."
(continued)
(continuation)
He unfortunately uses the term "pig" for cops (and I refer back to my previous commentary about the use of "othering" language as a simple rationale for discontinuing this use: how man actual pigs do you know who have beaten an unarmed Black man to death? I can't think of a single one. COPS on the other hand are not content just to brutalize the Black communities they over-police, but go on to SELF-REPORT that the majority of them engage in intimate-partner violence). It is otherwise a great song that drops so much truth in like 2 minutes that you have to listen to it numerous times to keep unpacking more. Excellent.
If none of the above has convinced you that this should be an ethic woven into the heart of Permaculture, consider this: Black people and indigenous people in America are WAY over-represented in the vegan community. In other words, whereas about 3% of white people are vegan, around 8% of Black people are. There are a number of cultural reasons for that, but at the end of the day, when you look at the history of America and of the global North vs. the global South, are you going to sit there and tell me Black people aren't leading the way forward in SO many ways? Do you think what they put on their plates is the one thing they're just whiffin' it on?
But Integriculture needs to go further than just veganic modes of food and resource production. It needs to be anti-capitalist specifically. I do think that the vast majority of Permaculture-heads are anti-Republican and I would believe even anti-capitalist in the soft sense of being frustrated that there are billionaires with the ability to heavily influence global politics and foreign relations. But I have not heard too many people in the Permaculture community specifically quoting Marx, Lenin, Mao, Guevara, Kropotkin, Malatesta, Volkov, Rocker, etc. We should be doing the work of reading theory and incorporating Revolutionary Communism or at least Anarcho-Communism into the interpretive framework of Integriculture.
Why? Because if we do not correctly identify the wellspring of environmental degradation and extractive/exploitative agriculture as the Capitalist class that owns the overwhelming majority of the means of production of all food groups nationally and internationally, then we are fundamentally failing to fight the system that is causing the problem. What, then, is the point of Permaculture? Integriculture must correctly identify Capitalism and the billionaire-class as enemy #1, and it must FIGHT that enemy in ways that improve the material conditions of the communities where Integriculture is implemented. Again: otherwise what is the point?
Integriculture must educate. It must recruit. We must find a way to teach people how to do it. We need Integriculture Blitzes that go to the poorest in our midst and say "here is how you can produce food security in your city, town, village, backyard, balcony, etc." We need to understand the communal nature of humanity. Indeed, that is another form of integrity that must be baked into Integriculture: the building of community, viewing human individuals as members of a permaculture 'guild', the filling of personality-niches within those communities, the valorization of all individuals in that community regardless of gender, orientation, neurotypicality, able-bodiedness, etc.
There is so much more I could write about this, and maybe I SHOULD write a book, I don't know. What I know is none of this is possible as a solo individual. Can you successfully implement Permaculture as a homesteader in rural Wyoming? Maybe. Probably not at a high level without some form of assistance. Can you implement Integriculture on your own? Categorically and definitionally no. Integriculture can only be done in community. Indeed, I would argue that community should be centered as one of the most important yields of Integriculture. Community should be the sentinel indicator or bellweather for the success of any Integriculture installation. If it does not engender and propagate community, it is not a healthy Integriculture system. Nor should only human communities matter: does it gather a host of sparrows? an army of frogs? a maelstrom of salamanders? How many communities of creatures can we encourage to share our Integriculture space? And can we encourage cooperative, mutual-aid-oriented affinity groups among various species rather than cut-throat competition? Mutual aid is, after all, the far more common mode of interaction between species than predation or extraction.
So since this is impossible as a solo person, I guess I would call on anyone reading this message to reach out to me if they feel moved to coordinate. Maybe we don't share geographical location, but we CAN share encouragement, knowledge, and motivation. I'm just about starved to death for community from the alienation and isolation of Capitalism and COVID. Let's strive for a world where branch out and build robust communities within our spheres of influence, because then we will begin to change the world.
Integriculture must educate. It must recruit. We must find a way to teach people how to do it. We need Integriculture Blitzes that go to the poorest in our midst and say "here is how you can produce food security in your city, town, village, backyard, balcony, etc." We need to understand the communal nature of humanity. Indeed, that is another form of integrity that must be baked into Integriculture: the building of community, viewing human individuals as members of a permaculture 'guild', the filling of personality-niches within those communities, the valorization of all individuals in that community regardless of gender, orientation, neurotypicality, able-bodiedness, etc.
There is so much more I could write about this, and maybe I SHOULD write a book, I don't know. What I know is none of this is possible as a solo individual. Can you successfully implement Permaculture as a homesteader in rural Wyoming? Maybe. Probably not at a high level without some form of assistance. Can you implement Integriculture on your own? Categorically and definitionally no. Integriculture can only be done in community. Indeed, I would argue that community should be centered as one of the most important yields of Integriculture. Community should be the sentinel indicator or bellweather for the success of any Integriculture installation. If it does not engender and propagate community, it is not a healthy Integriculture system. Nor should only human communities matter: does it gather a host of sparrows? an army of frogs? a maelstrom of salamanders? How many communities of creatures can we encourage to share our Integriculture space? And can we encourage cooperative, mutual-aid-oriented affinity groups among various species rather than cut-throat competition? Mutual aid is, after all, the far more common mode of interaction between species than predation or extraction.
So since this is impossible as a solo person, I guess I would call on anyone reading this message to reach out to me if they feel moved to coordinate. Maybe we don't share geographical location, but we CAN share encouragement, knowledge, and motivation. I'm just about starved to death for community from the alienation and isolation of Capitalism and COVID. Let's strive for a world where branch out and build robust communities within our spheres of influence, because then we will begin to change the world.
Right on! This is why I find the Bioregional Organizing movement so inspiring. By focusing on landscape scale it gets people out of their private yard and farm projects and develops the whole systems view. There are now bioiregional regeneration networks all over the globe, with many permacuturists involved. See examples: Regenerate Cascadia and other examples at https://www.bioregionalearth.org/pathway/design-school.
The Crisis and Transition: A Common Way Forward substack wants to help connect these dots.
An idea for how to organize at bioregional level https://climatewaterproject.substack.com/p/how-to-activate-your-local-community
And also how to grow the permaculture movement faster, also from my newsletter https://climatewaterproject.substack.com/p/a-permaculture-framework-to-create
Majority of the changes are occurring from people individually and collectively attempting to play the role of a creator. The chart is easy to read. L shaped chart. Left side reads ‘find out’. Bottom reads ‘playing around’. Both measured and marked equally based on amount of effort applied. Play around, find out. Very historic, as we all see this chart.
https://open.substack.com/pub/misrule/p/permaculture-is-misunderstood?r=1lz2r1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I dont' plant it but Japanese knotweed could be mega harvested for reserveretrol
I’m supportive of the idea of using invasive species for something after they have been removed, but only if the goal is their eradication.