A model of community supported agriculture in the midst of suburban sprawl.
Global Gardener: In The Tropics
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- Transcript
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BILL MOLLISON is a practical visionary. For three decades he has traveled the globe spreading the word about permaculture, the method of sustainable agriculture that he devised. Permaculture weaves together microclimate, annual and perennial plants, animals, soils, water management and human needs into intricately connected productive communities. Mollison has proved that even in the most difficult conditions permaculture empowers people to turn wastelands into food forests.
'(Permaculture) involves caring for the whole system of earth and spaces, devising model systems with much design drawn from nature, with the end result being a system that's ecologically sound and economically profitable...Mollison provides practical and motivating information for just about anyone interested in gardening, sustainable lifestyles, and similar topics...Recommended.' Rachel Lohafer, Instructional Technology Center Media Library, Iowa State University, MC Journal
'A lively and informative two hour video that will be greatly appreciated by gardeners, farmers, horticulturists, and agriculturists.' Midwest Book Review
'Highly recommended.' Video Rating Guide for Libraries
Citation
Main credits
Gailey, Tony (Producer)
Russell, Julian (Producer)
Mollison, B. C (Narrator)
Other credits
Editor, Simon Dibbs; music, Andrew Garton and Nick Jeanes.
Distributor subjects
Agriculture; Anthropology; Architecture; Biology; Environment; Food And Nutrition; Gardening; Geography; Humanities; Land Use; Regional Planning; Sociology; Sustainable AgricultureKeywords
WEBVTT
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[music]
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Permaculture really starts with an ethic.
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Earth care, that’s care of the whole
systems of earth and species.
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So, we actually devise model systems.
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Much of the design is drawn from nature.
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The end result that we aim for is to
produce a system that’s ecologically sound
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and economically profitable. It can get as
sophisticated or as simple as you like.
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[sil.]
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Hi, I’m Bill Mollison.
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I sometimes get very sick of bad news. And I
think we should always look at things like
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that and try to turn it into good news.
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It’s really easy to turn things around.
In five weeks time
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this will be a nice set of potatoes.
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And for me, that’s good news.
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In the late 60s, I was protesting social
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and environmental issues. But by the early
70s, I decided protests wasn’t good enough.
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So, I commenced designing
gardens and positive
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design systems for human settlements.
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[music]
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If people would only realize that everything
they ever needed is right outside their door.
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What you really need is sun,
plants and keep your eye on the
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soil, and of course, we get plenty of
fruits, you’ve got a lot of fruits.
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[music]
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This is my garden in the subtropics. From here to
the Equator, all the fertility is held in plants,
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not in the soil. Therefore, you have to
make an extremely dense plant system.
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And the mulch and fertilizer we put on, is all
up in these plants. If we remove the plants,
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we have an infertile situation.
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In the tropics, plow agriculture is
totally inappropriate for cropping.
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For a few years, we can hold the
nutrient perhaps, but then it will go
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because of the (inaudible) and hot rains.
Even the silica leaves the soil.
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This causes more pollution in streams, more rapid
loses of nutrient, and would be a very rare crop
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that we can grow, which we get the valve
of the minerals lost back in the crop.
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If we produce a system
which doesn’t destroy
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basic resources like soil and
produces negligible pollution,
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then you have something that can go
on forever in which people can live
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for an indefinite period
without destroying the earth.
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And that is the ultimate aim and all… all
our sustainable systems achieve that aim.
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In 1972, there was no
word in English language
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for sustainable agricultural systems, so I coined the
word Permaculture from permanent and agriculture.
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[music]
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And this is where the designer turns into
a recliner. You can rest in your garden.
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If you have it already well planted, you
can pretend to be working in the garden
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and be invisible from the house. Now, only two
years later, I haven’t invisible from the house,
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and before where there were biting ants by
the thousands, there are now only worms.
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And, in fact, I can recline here
and be totally invisible from even
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10 feet away. When you build
a Permaculture garden,
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the nature doesn’t contain such a garden.
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This is incredibly… This situation here, well,
that has a configuration like of forest,
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is yet incredibly rich
in functional plants.
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Plants that have a good relationship to each
other, it’s also incredibly rich in yield,
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much higher than other any agricultural,
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monocultural situation or nature itself.
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So, I specifically built to serve the
needs of human households and community.
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[sil.]
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With most of the garden
perennial are self-seeding,
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your work in planting is almost
finished after you’re sowing,
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basically your foliage, it becomes foliage.
There’s already a
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wide variety of food, because a tremendous
amount of tropical food is root crops,
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the storage.
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Still at most times of year
there’s something good to eat.
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These gardens that we build in the tropics
are very much the disorder of nature.
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This year, I’ve been traveling. I don’t
have a lot of (inaudible) garden.
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Okra.
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There’s capsicum, there’s basil,
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or basil.
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And you have a fairly good base
for salads and… and main foods.
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There’s probably about another 30 varieties
that we could pick. I think there’re 412
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food plants just in this area here.
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If I look around, there’s all fields
and food that I could ever need,
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fibers, mulch to do the
garden, to extend the garden.
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All are here. It took me 30 working
days, over three years to achieve this.
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Once you setup your own home, so you
could leave it for two or three months
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and it just gets better, so
that you’re free to travel,
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then you can go and teach other people.
And that’s why we go to places like
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India and Africa, because a casual
tourist look at those places will show
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that the houses they are, are not
surrounded by all their needs.
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They’re surrounded by crop lands and
they’re surrounded by wastelands.
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Our first course in Southern
Africa was given in 1987.
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And two students came home and setup a
magnificent training center in Zimbabwe,
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the Fambidzanai Center, which contains
most of the examples that Africa needs.
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Who is this one, now?
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Like, you have a culture you’re working with. You have a
culture of method of work and a culture of method of learning.
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In Africa, everyone sings. They sing
the work, they sing the learning.
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They sing the story from village to
village. And to me, the set of people
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singing while they work is… is Africa.
We won’t find that in Europe.
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Many Zimbabweans are poor farmers.
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So everything new we introduce, has
to be able to be made on the farm.
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[sil.]
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Well, this is heap one really quickly does
it. What are we doing? What are you doing?
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Yeah, I’m… I’m just making these
holes here up to the ground so that
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when the air, because on the bottom we put
some branches so that air can circulate…
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Through the heap. Through the heap.
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Yeah, when it’s heats up. You chaps work fast when
you’re singing. Yes, yes. And it seem no time at all.
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Yeah, sure. Very good. Okay. Great. Yeah, yeah. We will enjoy
it, when we’re singing and making the composite at same time.
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Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So,
this is like concrete.
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Yeah. So, it’s like concrete. And you lived
in this house? Yeah. I find the students here
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are excellent and will
make very good teachers.
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(inaudible) who was with me
is one of those teachers.
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He is very fluent. And I find he knows at least
as much as I do about this sort of system.
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This (inaudible) where
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everything work together. And this winged
bean release nitrogen in the soil.
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And the bananadilla collects nutrients,
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nitrogen from the soil released by… by
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winged bean. Then we plant popo
so that it can be a stick for
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these creepers. And we are
also trying to maintain
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a house for frogs, lizards
underneath, so that they can pick
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the pests which come and eat some of
the flowers in the… the vegetable
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we have around. Everything in this system
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or everything in the ecosystem do
help one another in another way
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or in another round. Yes, I’d like
to say that this particular guild,
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I’ve never seen. And the
Permaculture is about… not about
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which species firmly, but
that you have a legume.
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A planted use as a legume. I plant that repels
pests. So, we will see hundreds of different guilds
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made by students. And they will find out
which ones are very successful for them.
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And then that can become more of a standard
and they can teach that one as a success.
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And when we’re trying to do is make a lot of mistakes,
because that tells us which ones are good ones to use.
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So, you can never have a
typical Permaculture.
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Everyone you visit will be very different. So what we’re
teaching is not how to do it, but how to think about doing it.
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[sil.]
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The center has to be appropriate
to small farmers everywhere.
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One of the good ideas which are
efficient is made of local materials
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and can be made by people who are not real
craftsmen. An extremely cheap beehive.
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This is a (inaudible) beehive.
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These are widely used in Africa anyways,
very easy to handle. Yeah. And… Cheap?
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Cheap to make. Anyone can make them?
Anybody can make them.
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You can see, it’s just an ordinary box.
So your honeycombs don’t stick
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to the sides of the hive. See.
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So when you are combing… When you’re combing, you don’t
have a problem. All you need to do is just lift the
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bark up and you lift it
clean with comb, with that
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shape of the box there. This is the starter
for the…? Yeah, this is to start them off.
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You see, it’s a bit of wax, which we use.
We have a good comber here, who’s expert.
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So it’s quite simple
indeed to… to work with.
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But these are African bees, these are killer bees.
No! African bees are very lovely to work with.
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We are… We are not dead, we are working
with the bees, Bill. Yeah. In America…
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In America, we’d tell these are killer bees.
They’ll kill everything that stop them.
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One of the very exciting things
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that has happened in Zimbabwe is
that students from Fambidzanai
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were invited to a local school
to teach Permaculture design.
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The children at Saint Vincent’s come from the farms and
villages of this district, many of their parents are farmers.
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[sil.]
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That was January. Yeah. You can see the whole
thing improved since… They and the teachers
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and the headmaster, Meg, who is every
enthusiastic, brought in seedlings and seed
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from their gardens. Really it’s time to go with the
rains. Yeah, right. In the beginning of the rain
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is just nothing. How come did they get learning?
About two minutes, we started here. Yeah.
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And we… we went…
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It’s not just an exercise for the kids,
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in two years the garden will be
producing all their lunches.
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The students worked out their site design and
began by putting in hundreds of meters of
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water harvesting ditches on contour.
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We dug a pit so that most of the water can
collect in there and we put the mulch in there.
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And this tree has worked as to support
the tree which will then grow.
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(inaudible). Did you
design this idea or? Yeah.
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I make the same thing at my home, that’s why
I recognized it. I think you’ll all come
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to the same conclusion. Yeah. To you throw
your old school books and waste paper.
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In Africa, we’ll see most people as fairly
healthy with access to a pretty good education.
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But in densely populated India, we
don’t have that level of resources.
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[sil.]
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The problem with the world may not be what
it appears to be just too many people.
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It may be that all investment goes to further
consumption and expansion of the city without any
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expansion of the resources, trees, forests,
clean water and air that the people need.
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As we stop we’ll hit an absolute shortage
of water, absolute shortage of air quality,
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absolute shortage of soil.
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The cities of India are at breaking point, because
they are being flooded with rural refuges.
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The resources could have been directed
to strengthening traditional methods
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and the great variety in traditional
crops, which fed everybody in India.
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But instead of that, resources have been
directed to a green revolution type
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of export agriculture, which has actually
taken away from real food for all of India.
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[music]
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We’re in India in the southern Deccan about
two hours by road north of Hyderabad.
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This whole area is covered with flat barren
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rock that’s been eroded over the years.
And it was here,
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that the first Permaculture course in
India. And this place, which is the
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Deccan Development Society’s headquarters is where
we started to spread Permaculture in India.
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And one of my students was Dr. Venkat.
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[sil.]
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Hello Venkat. So, this is the first
banana plant I planted here. Yeah.
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And it was all like hard like this in those
days. I remember the students helping me. We…
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We had to use picked seeds. I’ve always been
amazed at the good branches from this plant.
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How much have we got off it?
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About 80 to 90 bunches. In how many years?
One and a half years.
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That’s pretty good. Pretty good. Yeah.
And we’ve got a lot of bananas of it.
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This was the first banana circle,
I think, on the Deccan. In India.
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In India, yeah. In India, it’s the first
circle. Yeah. It stood up very well. Yeah.
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But what I’d really like to do is have a look at the system you’ve
put in because this is all we did in the first place. That’s right.
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And nothing in here would be older than what?
Two… Two and a half years. Two and a half years.
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Nothing… Nothing that you see here is more than two and
a half years old. And other interesting part about
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what you are seeing in this particular
area is that the foot below this
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is a bedrock of laterite. Towards
the end of December 1987,
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this is our farm looked like
- no trees, not even shrubs,
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not even grass. I remember that a lot.
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I remember using the pix, you know, we couldn’t…
we couldn’t have planted some of them.
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We couldn’t just plant at that time. This
is astounding, you know, the jackfruit.
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Pomegranate here. Pomegranate.
We have… Cherry. Cherry.
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Cherry there, and mango. Mango. God this
place is good with enough food here,
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bananas, coconuts. I never thought
this soil would produce like this.
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Yeah, that’s true. In the summer of 1988,
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in this area, our well was… had gone dry.
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Now… We have now got about
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2,500 to 6,000 trees and shrubs
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any many number of groundcover.
00:18:10.000 --> 00:18:14.999
So that you find here, on this farm,
there is not one square meter of
00:18:15.000 --> 00:18:19.999
barren area. Something or other is growing.
If no useful thing
00:18:20.000 --> 00:18:24.999
is growing, at least something which we
call a weed is going, but it is covered,
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the soil is covered. Now, all this growth
results in harvesting the rainwater.
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Now, where will this rainwater go,
it will definitely go into well.
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So much so this year, the level in our well after the
monsoon is the highest ever recorded in this district.
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[music]
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I think it must be mouse. Yeah.
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Under this the soil is very beautiful, they’re sweet
potatoes. Sweet potato. You have enough (inaudible)
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thousands of them. Just about
a foot with two nodes,
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we use it as a ground cover
and you get a good yield.
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You know, this is a fantastic mulch. Yeah, it is a fantastic
mulch. You can use can use this instead of paper.
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This is… This is your paper. This is our
paper. I use newspapers, you would use these.
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Newspaper in India is not feasible. Not common. Not common
or feasible. Isn’t that good for toilet paper, is it?
00:19:25.000 --> 00:19:29.999
No, no. It has acids pecules in the leaves.
True, true, but we don’t know the effect there.
00:19:30.000 --> 00:19:38.000
[sil.]
00:19:40.000 --> 00:19:44.999
Uh… So, just being making the
deposit on my cup of tea.
00:19:45.000 --> 00:19:49.999
Uh… These toilets flush across to a
dome, which is over a biogester,
00:19:50.000 --> 00:19:54.999
which sends the gas off, which goes to the
kitchen and then we light the gas there
00:19:55.000 --> 00:19:59.999
and we make a cup of tea. So, you if want a cup
of tea here, you have to make a deposit there.
00:20:00.000 --> 00:20:04.999
If you don’t have enough people, you can
put manure down this part and it goes down
00:20:05.000 --> 00:20:09.999
into the septic tank. After it’s digested,
00:20:10.000 --> 00:20:14.999
then the manure slides and comes up here.
00:20:15.000 --> 00:20:19.999
And here it’s full of yeast and bacteria, and
we can sow grass in it and feed it to cattle,
00:20:20.000 --> 00:20:24.999
because it’s got a lot more
protein than it had originally.
00:20:25.000 --> 00:20:29.999
And additionally we can mix it one to ten
with water and put it on the garden,
00:20:30.000 --> 00:20:34.999
because there is no fertilizer
lost in the digestion process.
00:20:35.000 --> 00:20:43.000
[music]
00:20:45.000 --> 00:20:49.999
The Deccan Development Group have been
a tremendous catalyst for change.
00:20:50.000 --> 00:20:54.999
They’d setup women sangams or
councils in every village.
00:20:55.000 --> 00:20:59.999
So from Venkat’s garden in Pastapur the ideas are
spreading throughout India with his students.
00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:04.999
[music]
00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:09.999
He alone is working with 120 villages in the
Deccan and the students in total would be working
00:21:10.000 --> 00:21:14.999
in more than a thousand villages. They’ve
had a tremendous affect of one were to
00:21:15.000 --> 00:21:19.999
health of the people and their… their spirit,
the way they feel about their lives.
00:21:20.000 --> 00:21:24.999
[music]
00:21:25.000 --> 00:21:29.999
Until the green revolution just a few years ago, all the
plants in his garden would have been growing in the field,
00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:34.999
but then the fields have become monocultural,
their landlords are putting in single crops.
00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:39.999
There is no food mainly in the fields for people
here, so these gardens are really necessary.
00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:44.999
[music]
00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:49.999
I first went to the Deccan about three years ago when the drought was
severe. People were selling or giving away their plough animals.
00:21:50.000 --> 00:21:54.999
Everybody was listless and
sitting in the shade,
00:21:55.000 --> 00:21:59.999
just trying to survive
until the rains came. So
00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:04.999
we had a great sense of urgency. We know that most
of the emphasis has been on the green revolution
00:22:05.000 --> 00:22:09.999
of annual crops and it just
won’t feed people in drought.
00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:14.999
They go in for cash crops
like sugarcane, cotton,
00:22:15.000 --> 00:22:19.999
then rubber, then tea, at the
expense of their own food.
00:22:20.000 --> 00:22:24.999
That is food has become a commodity now.
00:22:25.000 --> 00:22:29.999
And if we want to build a
sustainable system of food,
00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:34.999
we have got to reverse this trend, that
is take food out of the commodity market,
00:22:35.000 --> 00:22:39.999
make it a non-commodity. Not
for export and not for market,
00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:44.999
but primarily for consumption.
00:22:45.000 --> 00:22:49.999
One of the things which we’ve got to go against the
present agricultural system is the economic stranglehold,
00:22:50.000 --> 00:22:54.999
you see that the landlords have put on the poorer
sections of the people and of the country.
00:22:55.000 --> 00:23:03.000
[non-English narration]
00:23:05.000 --> 00:23:09.999
He had to get the seed for the potatoes,
00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:14.999
he had to purchase in the
market the seed for sugarcane,
00:23:15.000 --> 00:23:19.999
and he had to buy the fertilizers.
00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:24.999
And after all these inputs, he had
borrowed a loan of 4,000 rupees
00:23:25.000 --> 00:23:29.999
from a group in the village, but the group charged four
rupees per month per cent, that is it works out to
00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:34.999
48% per year. So after paying
back all these things,
00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:39.999
he was not left with anything whatsoever.
00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:44.999
He has got a 10-year-old boy,
who was sold to a landlord
00:23:45.000 --> 00:23:49.999
as a bonded laborer for
a loan of 1,400 rupees,
00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:54.999
that’s all, that is his life,
his life as cheap as that.
00:23:55.000 --> 00:23:59.999
So, we also paid back that
1,400 rupees to the father,
00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:04.999
who paid it back to the landlord and
the boy has started working here.
00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:09.999
He is excellent, very intelligent, sharp.
And possibly,
00:24:10.000 --> 00:24:14.999
he is going to be the first Permaculturist
00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:19.999
of this village in his own language.
00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:24.999
He will be able to practically
lay designs for farms.
00:24:25.000 --> 00:24:29.999
We are confident about that. And
coming from people like him,
00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:34.999
it will be much more effective rather
than coming from people like me.
00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:43.000
[non-English narration]
00:24:45.000 --> 00:24:49.999
He says, he had a talk with his parents, and they say
that they will have to continue to see the present
00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:54.999
question of sugarcane and other cultivation
which they are doing for their livelihood.
00:24:55.000 --> 00:24:59.999
But then they have absolutely no objection for
trees to be incorporated on their farmland.
00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:04.999
And he has said, you see that we will plant the trees in
such a design that it will not interfere with your tilling,
00:25:05.000 --> 00:25:09.999
with your plowing and with
your harvesting activities.
00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:14.999
He says, that is only in the initial stages there
is excess work, you see, because most of the things
00:25:15.000 --> 00:25:19.999
were going is for trees. So in the beginning there
will be extra work. And also he puts the question,
00:25:20.000 --> 00:25:24.999
without working how can we live?
00:25:25.000 --> 00:25:29.999
In the first year, the village just ignored me and they just didn’t
know that there was something going on here, there were not a thing.
00:25:30.000 --> 00:25:34.999
But this year, for example, quite a good
number of marginal farmers have been visiting
00:25:35.000 --> 00:25:39.999
on their own, on their own.
And first they just go around
00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:44.999
the entire farm and see what are all the things
that are growing, then they come back and tell us,
00:25:45.000 --> 00:25:49.999
”Well, there seems to be
something worthwhile doing it.”
00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:54.999
Then they say, “We are faced with the
problem that our livelihood depends
00:25:55.000 --> 00:25:59.999
upon our present method of food
production.” Then we tell them that,
00:26:00.000 --> 00:26:04.999
”Look, you don’t have to stop
totally what you are doing now,
00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:09.999
but to starting at say 10% of your land, you
get into Permaculture principles and design,
00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:14.999
functional design, then add on
every year about 10% or 15%.
00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:19.999
And in the course of about five or seven years,
you will have passed through the transition
00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:24.999
from an unsustainable system to a sustainable system,
which will definitely keep you above all and
00:26:25.000 --> 00:26:29.999
you will not have to starve.”
00:26:30.000 --> 00:26:34.999
[music]
00:26:35.000 --> 00:26:39.999
This is edible. And then the seeds are
boiled and eaten if you got any chest pain.
00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:44.999
Yeah, that’s nice. It’s magnificent,
00:26:45.000 --> 00:26:49.999
lot of weeds hanging. They’re
everywhere when you look up.
00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:54.999
Yeah. You will be have to eat them
on your own. How much you’ll eat?
00:26:55.000 --> 00:26:59.999
You find that there’s a clear potential
00:27:00.000 --> 00:27:04.999
that we don’t have to starve for food. Okay, most
probably. Absolutely, we don’t have to starve.
00:27:05.000 --> 00:27:09.999
[music]
00:27:10.000 --> 00:27:14.999
So here we leave Venkat in his Garden
of Eden in the tropics. We know,
00:27:15.000 --> 00:27:19.999
he can turn any wastelands back into food
forests. But next week we will look at deserts,
00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:24.999
and that’s a much tougher proposition.
00:27:25.000 --> 00:27:30.000
[music]
Distributor: Bullfrog Films
Length: 29 minutes
Date: 1996
Genre: Expository
Language: English
Grade: 7-12, College, Adult
Color/BW:
Closed Captioning: Available
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