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[bereal]

It is said that North America was rather heavily populated at just pre-conquest, and that by the time the explorers went inland, the devastation European diseases left behind made the whole continent seem pristine and hardly inhabited. And of course nature was able to replenish itself tremendously.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here.  I define intensification as a process of change, of growth or increase, and from everything I've learned about the first peoples of America, before European contact (i.e. before the apocalypse of smallpox, invasion, and genocide) the subsistence practices of the cultures of North America were stable - in other words, not in the process of intensifying (growing, increasing, etc).  I'm sure various cultures had intensified their practices at some point in their history, maybe hundreds or thousands of years ago, before they figured out the level that kept their culture sustainable over the long haul. 

I'm finding this discussion about sustainability to be interesting, because I'm realizing that I don't like it's basic premise.  Namely, humans "designing" the part of land for human consumption, and leaving another part of the land "wild" (untouched by humans).  The mindset behind this is humans existing outside of nature (the "wild"), and that we either leave land alone "wild" and don't live there or interact with it at all, or we totally alter the landscape to serve us and only us ("our" land).  The book "Tending the Wild" presents a radically different view, that of humans being a part of the landscape the same as any other animal, and like any other species, altering the land in fundamental ways by our very presence.  In other words, totally demolishing the dualism of humans vs. nature.

According to this latter way of existing in the world, humans wouldn't "design" certain areas and leave other areas untouched, but would instead have a true relationship with the land the way all other animals do, having an impact on the wider landbase through various horticultural practices, while respecting the wants and needs of the land and the other living beings that also live there.  In other words, working alongside the rest of the community of life in the process of both taking from and giving back to the land. 

[bereal]

Mmm... I am not good at being a gypsy. Though I keep trying... I think most humans used to be only semi-nomadic; they would circle around and come back to camps where they used to live, and still had some huts, maybe...

This is an interesting side point.  What I've read about nomadism in various cultures is exactly what you described of cyclical migrations.  From this perspective, the whole landbase, the region within a community moves, would be considered "home".  This is totally different from what I think of as being a "gypsy", in the sense of always moving from random place to another, never feeling connected to a particular place as "home". 

[JohnF]

The mindset behind this is humans existing outside of nature (the "wild"),... "Tending the Wild" presents a radically different view, that of humans being a part of the landscape the same as any other animal,... humans wouldn't "design" certain areas and leave other areas untouched, but would instead have a true relationship with the land the way all other animals do, having an impact on the wider landbase through various horticultural practices,...

Yes, absolutely. A key, maybe the key to all of this! Yet it leaves me with a big question. (I have, but haven't yet read, "Tending the Wild." Hmmm, maybe that would clear it up for me?) Through most of human history we were clearly living within nature, a part of it, just as any other animal. Certainly that would be true if we look all the way back to when we were mainly scavenging and gathering plant foods. It would seem true as well once we began hunting. Things like scattering seeds, a little pruning, etc. seem like they could still fall into that. But as we get more and more complex in our horticulture, creating forest gardens, seriously transforming a landscape such as the Amazon rainforest (much of this sort of thing appearing, I think, only in the last 10k years or so), can we still say, "Yeah, we were still living as a part of nature, just like any other animal, as clearly as we were when we were scavenging."?

But the phrase "tending the wild" does create an image of something with clear limits. It wouldn't support absolutely any and all horticultural techniques, would it? Sounds much less transformative, more just nurturing. Okay, yeah, I gotta crack that book. 

[vera]

Bereal, to be fair to gypsies,  I think they cycled too in the old days, before the states began to crush them. I remember that where I come from (central Europe) gypsies would show up to help with the harvest and such, and it was more or less the same people, already known to the villagers.

Yeah, cycling makes much more sense than just wandering...

[vera]

I just meant the line at which we cross into the unsustainable. Though I like the simplicity of trying to boil the whole thing down to intensification, I think it must make it hard to identify the level at which problems develop. To me, the horticulture/agriculture distinction helps with that by identifying specific techniques which usually do or usually don't cause problems.

John: Well, see, and for me, that’s exactly the reason why I abandoned the horti/ag duality because it is not specific techniques, but how those techniques play out in various climates, soil types, water availability, whether prone to salinization or not, natural fertilizers (volcanic ash), and other local characteristics. (Ok ok, I make an exception for the moldboard plow. Baaad shit!)

Aha… the line where we cross over into unsustainable. I am assuming that’s the point where the land becomes degraded, comparing “yesterday” and “today.” What else could it mean?

[vera]

John, there were tons of primarily horti societies. All of Oceania that I know of, for example. New Guinea too. And many stayed that way. To me, it does not really matter, because if they got into ratcheting intensification of food production, who cares what exact techniques they used? They began to go against the well being of the land.

You are right, surplus gets into it too, and as far as I know, the only people not into surplus were the immediate return folks, and the more simple delayed return people who only kept small surpluses to tide them over the winter and such. Like you say, the immediate return people have built-in limits. Now maybe it will all crash, and immediate return more or less will be the path. But I have set myself the task to imagine a way that would be good for the earth that does not simplify/primitivize all the way. Could be there is none. But I am working on it.

Zerzan goes all the way to language, and I have begun to wonder if he does not have a point… But I don’t feel fatalistic about it, just wondering if we have not been trapped into a language cul-de-sac where it’s mostly become a way to overwhelm and exploit. A different thread!

Sorry everybody, by intensification I mean economic intensification (which is built on top of intensification of food production).

[vera]

Oakcorn, I have also fantasized about families getting together to set apart larger zones 7. But basically, private land ownership gets in the way of permaculture, IMO.

Bereal:

from everything I've learned about the first peoples of America, before European contact (i.e. before the apocalypse of smallpox, invasion, and genocide) the subsistence practices of the cultures of North America were stable

Not what I have been hearing. For example the book 1491 goes against that older hypothesis.

You make a great point about living with the land rather than apart... I guess there are at least two approaches... one is to set land aside, and even call it tabu, as some cultures have done, and then the other model, of tending it in its wild state. I think both can work. I have a hard time imagining the latter working with us afterculture folks. Takes far more skill than the first method, don't you think?

[oakcorn]

(I have, but haven't yet read, "Tending the Wild." Hmmm, maybe that would clear it up for me?)... more and more complex in our horticulture, creating forest gardens, seriously transforming a landscape such as the Amazon rainforest (much of this sort of thing appearing, I think, only in the last 10k years or so), can we still say, "Yeah, we were still living as a part of nature, just like any other animal, as clearly as we were when we were scavenging."?

But the phrase "tending the wild" does create an image of something with clear limits. It wouldn't support absolutely any and all horticultural techniques, would it? Sounds much less transformative, more just nurturing. Okay, yeah, I gotta crack that book. 

Tending the Wild is pretty awesome. Im already planting three species of corms (all in the book) and two species of wild onions. All are delicious and grow bigger if left in the loosened soil for next year. I also grow several varieties of domestic onions and at least two varieties of garlic, but those arnt in the book.  IMO the California native plant with the greatest potential for short-term ramp-up in staple foods is Hooker's Evening Primrose (Oenothera elata). This plant can be an annual, biennial, or short-lived perennial, depending on conditions. The first-year plants' taproot can be used like a small carrot, though not raw. The young leaves, flower buds, and very young seedpods are edible boiled and the seeds are small and oily, having omega-6 fatty acid. The flowering stems are somewhat woody and can reach from 3 1/2 to 8 feet tall. The large yellow blossoms are adored by medium to large bees and humming birds. At least that has been my experience.

[vera]

Peter, when I opened up this topic, I said my take goes against one of Jason’s theses. That is why I respectfully placed it in the manure pile. Please feel free to place it there again. I did not open the topic to argue against Jason or to debate definitions which people do until the cows come home (a recent anthro paper listed 10 different definitions of horticulture!).

I figured folks here would be interested in my take on things, and understand what I am talking about, and help me think it through further. And I wuz right! 

Indeed, why would anyone argue that cultivation is bad? Except perhaps the most adamant theoretical primitivist. But people feel free to say ag is bad, because they first define it as destructive (e.g. intensive grain growing on lands other than those replenished naturally, like with the Nile). I am trying to take a different angle than Diamond did, and see if we can gain some understanding from it.

If you were to intensify horticulture on the other hand, you would end up with old growth forests. Because it's succession based, not field based like agri (field) culture (cultivation).

This part, I don’t understand. What do you mean you would end up with old growth forests? Ratcheting economic intensification – pushing the land to produce more and more – will eventually lead to a severe problem. And indeed, traditional horticulturists, when pushed to intensify, begin to shorten fallow periods and burn more and more forest… with predictable dire consequences. So you must be thinking in a different way. How?

I did not mean to imply that intensification of food production is inherently destructive. I am saying that for those of us looking for the key to what went wrong in late Paleolithic into Neolithic and eventually ripened into the monster of “this civilization”, intensification points in the direction of greater understanding. Or in any case, that is the hypothesis that I am trying out.

Here is another way to look at my logic:

1. Hoticulture is a subset of cultivation
2. Horticulture is not inherently good
3. Good means beneficial to the land
4. Horticulture will do damage if the land is pushed beyond what it can bear (via ratcheting intensification of food production)

[bereal]

Hmm.  Again, I think that I am using a different definition of "intensification" than you are, Vera.  I'm thinking of it in terms of increasing the use/frequency of a particular cultivation practice (or set of practices).  Thus, if one's practices enhance succession (according to the anthropological definition of horticulture, as Peter said), then intensifying them would lead more quickly to the most mature stage - i.e. old-growth forest (for forested landbases, at least). 

Your term "economic intensification" seems to have a very different definition - as you said, pushing the land to produce more and more food, presumably for exclusive human use.  Looking at it that way, it makes sense that any increase of food production would eventually become unsustainable (damaging to the land), regardless of the particular cultivation methods used.  Thus, intensification (as you are defining it) becomes the cause of unsustainability, and not necessarily the methods used - although I would argue that it is increasing + methods that makes food production become unsustainable (in other words, they can't be separated).

Although I do see a clear difference in cultivation methods between civilized cultures, who act in an adversarial way to the land, and nature-based cultures, who act in a reciprocal, respectful way to the land, I think that underlying those lies a fundamental difference in attitude.  I think this is important to recognize, because changing our practices while still holding onto a civilized mindset will prevent us from figuring out a truly sustainable, harmonious way of life.  In other words, both aspects are necessary.  I think that difference in perspective lies in how we view the act of cultivation.  Do we see it as us, humans, "growing" food - thus implying that we are the only beings taking action (that the plants, soil, etc are just objects that we act on), and also implying that the food "we grow" is "ours" (that we are entitled to exclusive use of it, if we wish)?  Or do we see it as us participating in the cycle of life (which would happen with or without us, just maybe in a different way), along with many other beings in a wider community of life?  That we are helping the plants to do what they are already doing?  That the food we take from the land is a gift given to us by the plants & animals (assisted by many other beings), and that we are not at all entitled to it but actually incur a debt in the taking of it, in that we are obligated to give gifts in return?  That our cultivation practices are actually a service that we perform, as a way of giving back?  Etc etc (this way of thinking is a road that we could continue traveling down, for ever I suppose).

Hence the problem I have with agriculture and permaculture, and the very concept that we can "grow" food at all (much less the concept of "food production" ).   

[vera]

I slept on it, Peter, and decided to use the word cultivation for all the various modes of cultivation, good, bad and indifferent. I did not mean to sow confusion.

Bereal and Peter: how does horticulture enhance succession? The picture I have in my mind is people burning down a forest section, planting stuff in the ashes, and letting it grow for a few years. Also planting some fruit and nut trees. Then the soil becomes exhausted and the band moves on... to return in say 20 years when the trees planted are bearing fruit, and the soil has replenished itself -- and again burning it down and planting etc. -- a cycle of clearing, growing, and leaving alone, and clearing again. (?)

Do we see it as us, humans, "growing" food - thus implying that we are the only beings taking action (that the plants, soil, etc are just objects that we act on), and also implying that the food "we grow" is "ours" (that we are entitled to exclusive use of it, if we wish)?  Or do we see it as us participating in the cycle of life (which would happen with or without us, just maybe in a different way), along with many other beings in a wider community of life?  That we are helping the plants to do what they are already doing?

Definitely. That is the turn around we must make. Great paragraph, btw.

Perhaps we would profit by thinking of helping foods grow, encouraging foods to grow, helping our favorite plants, helping the forest or prairie thrive...  yah, co-adaptation. Mutual aid, not just among humans, but with the rest of livingness as well.

[Peter Bauer]

Thanks vera, and everyone.

I'll post a nice response here this weekend about the horticulture thing. Swamped at work for the next couple days.

[incendiary_dan]

Well duh, not all strategies work in all places.   But the difference is that some forms of horticulture can be sustainable in some places.  Agriculture (monocropping) is not sustainable.  Period.

[vera]

Monocropping worked for the Egyptians. The Nile replenished the soil every year, and their plow and monocrop cultivation went on for 3000 years.

[Peter Bauer]

Hey All,

I like the point that you make Vera, about agriculture working well for the Egyptians. It plays into the discussion really well. They are a great example of how civilizations start. Also, it can show you how agriculture could be less destructive, if used in places like the Nile Delta, and if limited to not full-time agriculturalists. The problem with agriculture is more then just the soil depletion though. Population dynamics play a large role in agriculture's destructiveness. Because agriculture creates an easy-to-store food source, and because it is very fragile, agriculturalists have insane amounts of food storage. I know lots of horticulturalists did this too. I've read the Iroquois had 7 years of food stored at any time for example. I think that food storage, like agriculture, is a slippery slope of population growth problems. Depending on your region, some cultures could not survive without food storage or caches. The problem with agriculture is that it promotes grain storage specifically. Also, grain calories increase fertility. Agriculture, or rather, full time agriculture creates an artificially inflated population. "artificially inflated" meaning, beyond sustainable carrying capacity. Its a short term population increase, followed by a collapse. So when a population, like the Babylonians for example, begin to crash, they take what is a less destructive to the land practice like river basin agriculture and move it outside of its origins to a place where it does not "work". It's like Asian civilizations doing the same thing with rice paddies. They build damns to flood areas to create more rice paddies. But it's not a replenishing flood like a river flowing out of a mountain range, so it doesn't replenish the soil. This is why we have to use Petroleum as fertilizer; this replicates what the river would have done.

Taking agriculture out of the river basin was inevitable in a way. When the population crashed, rather then recognizing that it doesn't work full time, the exported the practice out of the river in an attempt to curb the population crash. This is why Stanley Diamond said, "Forests precede us, deserts dog our heels." We're recreating a flood plain or field or river delta, where there is none. This creates an exponential growth problem of population and deforestation.

Let's talk about Horticulture. The Natives of the Northwest had ridiculously large populations for "hunter-gatherers". Anthropologists says this is because there were so many salmon here and the population didn't have to do much or move. So you had sedentary cultures of hunter-gatherer-fishermen. This isn't exactly true. They lived here for 10,000 years or so. They relied heavily on Western Red Cedar for their daily survival. Cedar is not a food source. When we think of "increase in food production" or managing the land for "food production" we often do not hear about all the other forms of life that are not direct food, but are used in the production of food. For example, Cedar canoes were taken out for fishing. Cedar boxes stored food. Cedar bark was used to make baskets to collect food. Cedar wood was used to make all of their longhouses. Cedar is a late comer in terms of succession in the Northwest; a cedar forest is the climax of succession here. Old growth Cedars today pale in comparison to what the white people were clear-cutting 200 years ago. We're talking about trees that were over 2000 years old. These trees were so large and so old that the natives here harvested wood out of them in a way that didn't kill the trees. In a very real sense, they tended these forests and perhaps even created them with routine fire maintenance. If your objective is growing old growth forests of Cedar, you're not going to destroy the soil from under yourself; you're going to build it. "Forest gardening", "Permaculture" or "Horiticulture" are example of subsistence strategies that are heavily engaged in land management in a way the builds soil and biomass. It might mean more people in dense areas, and that leads to more social problems, but not environmental ones.

I really recommend these three books:

Tending the Wild by M. Kat Anderson
The Earth's Blanket by Nancy Turner
Keeping it Living (edited by Nancy Turner)

They basically cover how this is accomplished.