Permafraud Part 2

Permafraud

Part 2

Permaculture working with

Government and Big Business

Gavin Edwards

Centre for Community Self-Sufficiency^™

Lapoinya, Tasmania.

10th October 2017

Permaculture, Government, Big Business

and the Truth Crisis

I believe that this permafraud situation has come about because permaculture works with governments and big businesses. This is Permaculture's fundamental strategic mistake. Governments and Big businesses don't Care for Earth or Care for People - the permaculturists are breaking their own principles and therefore permaculture becomes unethical and unsustainable.

If you are doing permaculture then you should now know that you have been sucked in and hoodwinked by a "system" that works with government and big business - including Monsanto, Dow, Syngenta, Bayer Crop Science, etc. Permaculture is also linked to large media companies, the universities doing GMO research and the ultra rich (more on this later). You need to ask yourself if you are doing the right thing by doing permaculture and reassess your commitment.

Why the government supports permaculture while trying to exterminate Self-Sufficiency

Governments promote permaculture as the answer to a food security crisis but there is more than one solution to that imagined problem. I find it hard to believe in a food crisis when I can buy carrots for $25 a tonne (too big to process) but there is a good, healthy non-sprayed food crisis and there does seem to be a truth crisis. There really will be a food crisis if all our open-pollinated seeds are crossed with agribusiness' GMO monstrosities.

Governments promote permaculture because they want their business mates, and in fact their own businesses (government now operates as businesses) to take control of the green agenda and the 'alternative' food production system. They have rushed this takeover through like the nazi blitzkrieg. The takeover has been swift using permaculture as a tool and now taking both sides of the food production network they control the whole way our food is grown. That is, if it weren't for some pesky smallholders practising self-sufficiency standing in the way. Virtually no-one in the world has realised what has really taken place, a lot of people have joined the permaculturists mistakenly believing they are doing the right thing but it is not possible to change the system from within. It must be fought against. It must be brought into the open and defeated.

The sons, daughters and grandchildren of the rich are often the ones who do permaculture; it's expensive. The rich families are usually heavily tied up with government and big businesses. They can afford to send their kids to expensive universities where they encounter permaculture as a 'rebellion' against the system. Wake up fools - it has joined with the system. You have been deceived. Lacking the wisdom that (can) come with age - they mistakenly think they are part of the solution. They are - the final solution. There is no going back if we pollute our food gene pool. In truth, this is a eugenics agenda of the ultra rich and the very evil (but you will have to wait for me to reveal the truths on this as I am still writing it). There is nothing wrong with wealth (within limits) if it has been gained ethically.

The issue is - who defines ethical?

The governments and big businesses are the masters of spin - it is common practice to hire large media firms to promote their agenda. These firms often have an extreme lack of ethics. Governments and big businesses use them to get elected, cover up chemicals spills, sell products they know are killing people, promote policies that favour large corporate interests and silence their competition.

Permaculture is easily manipulatable

Governments and NGO's have been infiltrated by vested interests for a very long time and we can be assured that permaculture is no different. No-one would suspect a system which on the surface appears to be anti - establishment and about growing food.

Permaculture now sides with the same scientists who created poison chemicals and engineer GMO's. Australia has a track record of relying on these experts advice. This is what has led to most of Australia's arable soils being polluted with toxic chemicals - they told the farmers they were safe. They lied and they are still lying. GMO's will prove, as they have in other countries, to be a dangerous experiment. There is no proof that they can produce more food than organic growing and it is just a gamble to put them into the environment when no long term studies have been done. Humans should not be the guinea pigs and the Earth should not be the cage.

Permaculture has developed a hero mentality that has made potential permaculturists want to be just like them - to have that look, to be seen to be one of them. It is ego-glorification gone wrong. It is recreating a different system but one which retains similar values of greed and ego. While we're on the topic of the permaculturists themselves let's talk about drugs. My experience is that I've seen a lot of permaculturists addicted to pot. They say it's not addictive. Fine, give it up. They say it does no harm. Not from what I've seen. Most pothead permies I've met have become nasty, delusional backstabbers who I wouldn't trust any further than I could kick them. Someone has to tell it like it is. While they are stoned and the government doesn't interrupt their pot sideline they are of no threat to the status quo.

The ego-greed complex exhibited by permaculturists has it's ultimate manifestation in the permaculturists that do business. Their businesses are often funded by government itself, that is, by the public. They often compete with existing small or local businesses. This is unfair competition. The solution - work with them. Join them or be sidelined and out competed. All fine until ethics get in the way. Take the example of a permaculture run community garden. Most community gardens in Australia are now controlled by permaculture. The plan is to find a block of public land in a city or town, get it for very little or on a peppercorn lease, and then set up a nursery (which competes with anyone trying to do a small nursery). Then they put in produce (often selling it cheap or giving away to the “poor”) which competes with small-scale growers who are generally battling as it is. Now set up they teach more permaculture and so suck more people into the system. It's a good marketing strategy especially if done near or at universities where there are lots of 'intelligent' and willing suckers waiting to become permies. City people are, of course, dying to get their hands back in the dirt without the commitment or risk of having to move to the country. "There's no jobs in the country", they cry. That's because people like them have shut them all down. No wonder conventional farmers spray your food. No wonder there's been rural decline.

A word about rural decline

This rural decline has been going on since before the industrial revolution. The rich (the lords) grabbed the common land (the commons) which was once owned by all the people. This has continued and so we have the rich and their governments (show me poor people in government) owning more and more of what was our common heritage. The Industrial revolution greatly accelerated the process with tractors and oil doing the work of thousands. They moved to the cities where they became trapped in the urban insanity, the concrete and tar cesspits we call civilization. Trapped and forgetting the hardships of the land. You know, things like fresh air, green grass, farm animals, fresh food, flowers, talking to you neighbours - those sort of horrible things better forgotten to make way for Where is the best place to eat out?, What's on TV? and What is the quickest way to central avenue?

Part of the reason smallholders have moved from the country is that government and big business have given them a hard time. Smallholders are made to pay for a great deal of services that they do not receive, or in many cases, even want. They are on the leading edge of sustainability but are being made to pay for their lifestyle choices. For doing the right thing. It's only since governments and big businesses realised that these people really are sustainable and that the general public now want to go that way (in other words there's money in it) that governments, big business and permaculture wants to mimic it and take it over. To control it.

Smallholders doing Self-Sufficiency benefit society

These people should be applauded and they are the real heroes. They live lightly on the Earth by producing what they need themselves, often producing most of their own food, providing their own water supply (and using less), generating their own power and generally being more self-reliant and less of a burden on society.

There are enormous savings in energy - food grown by conventional agriculture is produced at an enormous energy cost. Big Ag relies completely on fossil fuel to run the tractors and harvesters. The crops are sprayed with poison chemicals derived from oil. Fertilizers added are often made or mined using an enormous amount of energy and trucked to the farm. Then food is trucked to the city. Up to 90% of that food is wasted in the growing, harvesting, sorting, transport and distribution. So growing your own food and providing for yourself in the country is really the most sustainable thing a family could do. 'Living it' is sustainability.

Is self-sufficiency good for the economy?

Damn the economy. The economy as it stands does not benefit smallholders but only hinders them. Smallholders don't need the type of economy that governments and big businesses want to impose on them. They don't need a city persons cage economy. What we need is just for them to leave us alone so we can live in peace. Local economies form by themselves and do not need controlling from above. Local economies are about trade of things that you have not produced yourself or cannot produce. My hope is that local, community self-sufficiency can bring down this evil economic system based on greed and lazy bastards who do not want to grow any of their own food and provide for themselves. Is there going to be suffering in the 'realignment' process? Undoubtedly, but tell me there's not suffering being brought about by wars for oil that the support the current system. Western people just haven't been the ones paying the hidden costs, unless that is we talk about the hidden costs of cancer treatment from chemical pollution in our food and environment and the hidden damage to the Earth that we need for our collective survival. Those hidden economic costs don't tend to figure highly in the existing economy. It's my view that self-sufficiency can lead to new local economies that are just, rewarding and lead to more community self-reliance and a better life.

So let's do urban-farming-permaculture-cohabitation guys? Go milk a chicken. I'm cranky. I'm standing up for smallholders trying to do the right thing only to be crapped on by rich uncaring, city permaculturists trying to take our markets. I'm a country person and proud of it. I've done it hard, harder than most and I've survived. Bring on the food crisis.

Why attack Self-Sufficiency?

Simply, because self-sufficiency is a threat. If people are more self-sufficient they buy less and the big businesses, and now government businesses, make less profit from us. We don't need to travel as far - using less fuel (oil) and waste less energy. In short, being self-sufficient threatens the whole system as it is. People might even move from the cities back to the country and live real, meaningful lives full of love and laughter, and give a shit about nature and other people again. It empowers people and then perhaps they won't need to be governed? Heaven forbid, we could have a grass roots revolution and they could have no power over us. The rich and powerful might be displaced, out of a job and might have to get their hands dirty growing their own food. Sounds very good to me.

Small businesses and smallholders have always been a problem for the rich, government and big business needing less as they provide their own incomes or food or both. The problem is that the government-big business machine "the thing" has become so powerful it has crushed most resistance.

Permaculture has shown itself to now have joined with 'the Thing'. They have become the Permathing. How many people can stand against them? The answer - two - YOU and I. I will proudly stand with any man or woman who has the guts to stand against them and not work with them. Those who have survived the crushing process are doubly hard to kill.

One way permaculture has tried to help kill self-sufficiency is by not mentioning it. There is only permaculture. Everything is permaculture. Biointensive growing isn't a permaculture technique but was championed by Alan Chadwick and John Jeavons (and John Seymour talked about it in The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency in 1978). It seems permaculture has tried to take over a lot. Even the name permaculture comes from 'Permanent Agriculture' a term coined by J. Russell-Smith for Tree Crops: A Permanent Agriculture. In, fact if you have a very close look near the front of The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency you will see a whole lot of the 'permaculture' ideas. Forest Farming by James Sholto Douglas and Robert A de J Hart also contains a great deal of what is permaculture. If you combine these two books with Tree Crops name you essentially have permaculture. I won't say it's plagiarism but I do say it's very similar. The reason this is not talked about - Forest Farming is not a common book. Bill Mollison being a scientist did read it. Forest Gardening was not a permaculture idea but was invented by Robert A. de J. Hart in the UK. The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency is hardly referenced in the permaculture books. What came first? The Fat of the Land by John and Sally Seymour in 1961.

An infiltration attack by permaculture is happening at the moment, some permaculturists are trying to say they are doing self-sufficiency while in reality all they are trying to do is make money from it without having done it. John Seymour was the founding father of self-sufficiency. It was John Seymour who tried to preserve the 'Forgotten Arts and Crafts' which permaculturists now are trying to take. I'm proud to teach self-sufficiency. I retain my honour.

What's in it for government?

Everything is at stake. What governments fear most is independent people. People who can think for themselves. These people do not need to be governed. If they are also self-sufficient they do not need anything else either. Government becomes superfluous, unnecessary and they know it. The rich run the governments, they risk losing everything they have. They risk losing power and control. Given that smallholders like myself aim at self-sufficiency it can be taken that the rich, and therefore the government and big businesses, see us as the enemy. By supporting permaculture against us they retain control. To the permaculturists I would say be careful you don't become the thing you hate.

What governments are most afraid of is revolution. The American revolution was a revolution by a backbone of immigrant Scotch-Irish small farmers against the British. "If defeated everywhere else... I will take my last stand for liberty among the Scotch-Irish of my native Virginia", said George Washington. Although, I'm not sure the native Americans thought he was native.

If one, or more, revolutions around the world, were to happen, I wouldn't know anything about it.

Down with the Permathing!

Bring on the Self-Sufficiency Revolution!

References:

Hart, Robert A. de J. (1991). Forest Gardening. ISBN 1-870098-44-7.

Russell-Smith, J. (1978). Tree Crops: A Permanent Agriculture. ISBN 0-06-090610-3.

Seymour, John & Seymour, Sally. (1961). The Fat of the Land. ISBN 0 571 10532 7.

Seymour, John. (1978). The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency. ISBN 0 571 110 95 9.

Sholto Douglas, J. & Hart, Robert A. de J. (1976). Forest Farming. Towards a Solution to Problems of World Hunger and Conservation. ISBN 0-87857-2287.

Gavin Edwards is The Self-Sufficient Farmer™.

He is an independent researcher of Edible Plants and Small-scale Sustainable Food Production.

Gavin and his wife, Lisa McAndrew, run The Good Heart School of Self-Sufficiency™ , in Lapoinya, Tasmania, where they teach aspiring small farmers how to run a Self-Sufficient Smallholding™ and do Self-Sufficient Farming™.

They were the founders of Australia's first Sustainable Small Farm™.

© Gavin Edwards 2017. All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced without prior permission from the author.

The Self-Sufficient Farmer™, Self-Sufficient Farming™, Balingup Sustainable Small Farm™ , Sustainable Small Farm™, Good Heart School of Self-Sufficiency™, Self-Sufficient Smallholding™, Centre for Community Self-Sufficiency™ are common law trademarks of Mama Earth Pty. Ltd. ACN 146 054 828.