Future Fish’n’Chips (Part I)

Building Belize’s first solar powered aquaponics system… and why that's mouth-watering



‘Aqua what?’ would be a reasonable response but you may well be hearing this word a lot more over the next few years. One short answer is aquaponics as ‘promise’: the promise of cultivating delicious, organic fish and vegetables in a small space with minimal work; the promise of a major role in the next great step in human agriculture (forwards this time) in which we use our technology to make the most of nature’s intelligence rather than to ride roughshod over it; the promise of eating without eating into our future.

That’s a lot to live up to, yet we need some big answers to the big questions we face: how to feed ourselves as we approach 7 billion and the precipitous production drop in easy energy from oil and gas? How to save our precious topsoil and end the strip-mining of our oceans? Where will the water come from? [1] [2]

Could aquaponics grow into one of these big answers?

For millennia fish have been cultivated in captivity, raised in ponds or tanks as a food source.[3] This ‘aquaculture’ is effective but has always struggled with the sludgey problem of poop: fish defecate in their water until it kills them and so the water needs to be changed regularly. That can mean a LOT of water.[4] And since the early twentieth century vegetables have been grown in a liquid solution rather than in soil. This ‘hydroponics’ can be wonderfully productive but those plant nutrients have to come from somewhere - normally bought as a pre-prepared formula – and systems can also experience problems with disease, as all the plants are sharing the same solution. [5]

In a lovely example of the much sought ‘win-win’ you can combine the two, aquaculture and hydroponics, into aquaponics and their respective flaws are canceled out. By growing fish in a tank and cycling their water through plant-filled grow beds you create ideal growing conditions for the plants, which then clean and oxygenate the water ready for its return to the fish.

The result, according to the aquaponics evangelists, is an incredibly productive system. Joel Malcolm, founder of BackyardAquaponics.com, reports a six month crop of “50kg of fish and hundreds of kilograms of vegetables” in an 8m by 4m space in his backyard.[6] To put this yield in perspective the U.S corn industry, pushing nature to the limits with fossil energy subsidies (fertilizer) manages around 1kg per square meter.[7] Joel Malcolm is reporting roughly 3kg of fish and 6kg of vegetable.

In fact growing fish and vegetables together may be better for both than growing them separately, with benefits that go beyond simply canceling out the waste issue. Aquaponics practioners report lower incidences of disease in their fish and higher growth rates in their plants than would be expected in separate aquaculture and hydroponics systems.[8] More research is needed, but these early reports suggest a symbiotic relationship with great promise.

So why have you not heard of aquaponics before? Perhaps it's potential has languished, unexplored for the same reason as many other smart green solutions: the cheap and easy fossil fuel of the last few generations has made us lazy. Yet a chorus of voices grows ever louder, from climate scientists to oil geologists, that we need to smarten up. Fast.


I hadn’t heard the term until March when I arrived at the Maya Mountain Research Farm to study permaculture – a design system for sustainable living – full of the big questions and desperate for some answers (see my April 09 blog post). Permaculture is about applying ecological principles to human life, so that we can meet our needs without killing ourselves, and although aquaponics wasn’t on the syllabus it perfectly embodies this. One night MMRF’s director, Christopher Nesbitt, sat the group down in front of a laptop to watch ‘the aquaponics DVD’, a charming home production from Joel Malcolm [9]. Chris’s enthusiasm was palpable. This was ‘really cool’ he assured us, and through the shaky handycam walk arounds and strangely ‘oscar moment’ piano music, it became clear that it was. There was something to this.

The amateur roots of the system seem fascinating. There is some history of academic research in the field and a few businesses [10], but it appears that the driving force is now a global community of ‘hobbyists’. A few pioneers, notably Joel Malcolm in Australia (producer of the DVD), have experimented on a shoestring and shared their successes and failures with others around the world. That’s how Chris became hooked: “When I discovered the website I was up until sunrise” he told me. “What Joel Malcolm has achieved is fantastic". So Chris has been researching and preparing on and off for two years to build at demonstration system at his agroforestry farm and teaching center. I decided to return for my fourth visit to help out.

Designing the system
The elements of an aquaponics system are pretty simple: fish tank; fish; grow beds; gravel; plants; water; water pump; piping; roof. The final, crucial, component brings itself: the bacteria that convert fish poop into plant food in the water (ammonia to nitrites, nitrites to nitrates). Ongoing inputs are fish-food, top-up water and electricity for the pump.


Crucially we are building a system - every part affects every other. We have to think systematically, in the true sense of the word. The process is fascinating. Floor space affects grow-bed size, which affects tank volume, which affects the height from the ground of the grow beds, which affects height of fish tank to allow gravity feed etc. Systems thinking will be even more important once it is up and running, tweaking the elements until the ecology 'snaps' into place.


Chris had decided on a the ‘Constant Height In Fish Tank, Pump In Sump Tank’ model (CHIFT PIST !): water gravity-feeds from an overflow in the fish tank down through the grow-beds and then drains into a sump tank, from where it is pumped back at intervals to the fish tank, causing the process to start again. This is a version of the flood and drain system and it means that you do not need to be running the water pump constantly, as happens in a constant flow design. As our system will be relying on solar power keeping electricity requirements to a minimum is crucial. The CHIFT PIST arrangement also helps protects fish from an airy death - a fish tank pump would drain the system dry in the event of a leak - and the additional volume of water provided by the sump tank gives the system a greater tolerance.

When I arrived in late August a 25 foot by 25 foot area had been dug out down to the shale by MMRF staff James (right) and Herminio (above, drilling roof beams), long time employees responsible for many of the buildings on the farm and the real experts. It is impressive what these two achieve in a day. We smashed out nine holes and set concrete foundations for the sapodilla posts, which were bolted into place with threaded rod. Wood, on an agroforestry farm, is not in short supply and hurricanes happen, so triangulation is the name of the game at MMRF. There is a real elegance to the buildings here: chunky, charming and solid as sapodilla posts.

The roof is sloped following the two foot drop between the upper level (for the fish tank) and the lower lever (for the growbeds and sump tank). Roping up makeshift scaffolding we bolted on beams and rafters and triangulated them to the posts, then ‘pearlings’ between the rafters for attaching the roofing. There was a day in the blistering sun, painting the entire frame in burnt oil, blackening like derrick workers in a big strike - harvested from a local car mechanic workshop this will help preserve the structure from the munching of termites, carpenter ants etc and the dark, bronzed effect is fetching.

The fish tank will sit on a shallow concrete bed on the upper shale level and the sump tank directly on the shale. The grow beds need to be elevated for easy access and drainage. Using a rule of thumb calculation of 150 lbs per square foot (for stone masonry) we calculated that the grow beds will be carrying over 5000 lbs of gravel each, plus water - so if the ‘tables’ you can see in the photos (above and right) look built for One Tonne Man and his wife, that’s because its about that weight they will have to support.

Now we await delivery of our custom made tanks. Ordering them was fun, a day trip to Spanish Lookout. This Menonite town – Iowa with palm trees as Chris describes it – is Belize’s hub for agricultural supply and we were confident we could find what we needed. We looked at premolded plastic feeding troughs, and one at 600 gallons could have housed the fish, but in the end it was as cheap – and far more satisfying – to order bespoke tanks from Mr Penner, of Penner Metalworks Ltd. They will be sexy, shiney and crafted by hand.

So we are getting there. Three weeks into the project we are almost roofed and ready to wire and plumb. This will be the really fun part, piping the tanks together and installing the solar system.

In Part II: 'What are we gonna feed the fish?' and 'Did the Aztecs invent Acuaponics?'

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THANK YOU to our supporters. Your donations are making this possible!

We are still fundraising! If you would like to help us finish the system email eyeslikesaucerATgmail.com.

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[1] "Dr. Arnalds points out that between 1980 and 2000, the global population rose from 4.4 to 6.1 billion and food production increased 50 percent. With world population predicted to increase by another three billion by 2050, more food has to be produced within the next 50 years than during the last 10,000 years combined, he says." http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2007/2007-08-31-03.asp

http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/richard_heinbergs_museletter_what_will_we_eat_as_the_oil_runs_out

[2] "Unsustainable Development 'Puts Humanity at Risk'," New Scientist online, October 17 2007.

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquaculture

[4] Intensive aquaculture (fish in tanks, as opposed to ‘fish farms’ in open water, which is known as extensive aquaculture) can use a huge volume of water. One paper provides a useful comparison: for three systems, each with a volume of 20,000 gallons, it quotes:
- 720,000 gallons per day for a trout raceway (constant water flow)
- 20,000 gallons per day for a semi-closed system
- 1000 gallons per day for a closed recirculating aquaculture system.

Another website, praising the environmental benefits of recirculating aquatic systems (RAS), provides figures for RAS systems that equate to 800 litres of water per kg of fish. I have not found comparable data for aquaponics, but the small systems seem be an order of magnitude more water efficient.

[5] "Because each plant in a hydroponics system is sharing the exact same nutrient, diseases and pests can easily affect each plant." hydroponicsearch.com

[6] Backyard Aquaponics Magazine, Issue 1, page 5, Joel Malcolm.

[7] In recent years US corn growers have pushed their average yield over 160 bushels per acre: http://ncga.com/record-yields-help-set-another-corn-supply-record-9-11-09

[8] Research by Dr Savidov (Brooks, Alberta, Canada) has indicated that once the ecology of an aquaponics system matures its productivity outstrips that of inorganic hydroponics. This reseach is cited in a submission to the Australian government where one of the authors states: "aquaponics, before it has fully developed its all-important microbiology to change fish wastes to plant food, is not as productive in greenhouse growing of food plants as inorganic hydroponics.
But when the aquaponic system is fully operational after six months, it leaps ahead of inorganic hydroponics. This leads to earlier maturity of greenhouse crops under aquaponics, and much heavier cropping."
http://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/15359/sub046.pdf

[9] http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/

[10] The history of aquaponics includes early work by the New Alchemy Institute, started in 1969, and an ongoing programme by the University of the Virgin Islands.

Adios Guatemala (photos)

Xela's been good to me. When I arrived in December '08 I didn't think I'd still be here in eight months time. It's been fantastic. But I'm ready to hit the road.

Here are a few of my favourite shots of Xela town:

Amoebas / Amigas

I think the bag of cut papaya did it, though the culprit will never be known. A week later I was becoming better acquainted with my new favourite location and visiting enough baños to write a local guidebook. But my new co-habitants may have taught me a thing or two.

Caught
Every traveller gets sick. Well, that may not strictly be true - the official statistics for 'Traveller's Diarrhoea' are 20% - 60% [1] - but I'd hazard this pushes towards 100% in Xela at this time of year. 'Malo Mayo' (Bad May), as it is locally known, arrives with the start of the rainy season. You might assume the cleansing powers of torrential highland downpours, but you'd be precisely wrong. The water funnels down the steep, intensely cultivated valleys, collecting assorted fertilizers, pesticides, rubbish and precious topsoil and quickly fills Xela's aging sewers to overflowing, adding imaginable horrors to the sludgy mix. This flows through the narrow stone streets, mixing with dog excrement, slushing round street vendors food stalls. Next day's sunshine dries the deposited 'soil' to to a fine dust to be thrown up in clouds by every passing chicken bus. I paint a grim picture of an often beautiful city but the reality is that May to September is a boom time for doctors here and the hospitals are full.

So, in other words, I've not had a unique experience. There are hundreds of us clutching aching bellies. Xela is well prepared: while-you-wait poop test labs are two a penny here - or should that be one a pound (actually its one for Q20, £2) - and people don't think twice about collecting a 'botecito' (small tub) and returning it shortly afterwards with their sample. (The receptionist at Metropolis dresses very chic and I wonder if it helps compensate for being given shit all day). In fact stool samples seem as normal a topic of conversation for Xelatecos as potatoes or the weather were for my Irish grandparents. I had to retrieve my 'Examen De Heces' results sheet from my spanish teacher before she called yet another colleague over from the coffee counter for their penny's worth. Everyone here is an expert with their own recommended remedy: teas from local herbs; orange juice mixed with citrato de magnesia; Grapefruit Seed Extract; this or that vegetable...

Gut-tastic
Now I'm open to natural remedies and I did not want to make a hasty grab for the antibiotics. In fact the more I read about the wonders of our digestive system and the abuse of modern medicine, the more I hoped to avoid taking the 'Nuk-u-lar' option. Here are a few interesting facts: our 25 feet plus of intestines contain more beneficial microbes that we have cells in our bodies [2]; these 'flora' help to digest our food and tests on mice with sterilized intestines show that they need 30% more calories [3]; our gut is sterile in the womb but is rapidly colonised by flora in the months following birth, with some evidence suggesting the process is kick-started by trace fecal matter from the mother, a process denied to caesarian born babies who are perhaps less healthy as a result [4]. Furthermore the gut flora - or 'friendly bacteria' as the marketing genii of probiotic yogurts have dubbed them - create a 'barrier effect', occupying space and resources and so denying harmful micro-organisms the chance to move in. That's the risk of the nuclear strike: it wipes out the good with the bad. Post-antibiotic guts are weaker, more vulnerable guts. Not a scenario I wanted to embrace as I continue my travels.

Hence visiting two different doctors, both english-speaking, to get their opinion on my second poop-test results, which had indicated 'E. Nana: +'. They both confirmed it: Amoebas. It was not going to be a brief passing through (pun intended). They had moved in to stay and according to the doctors pressing the button was the only option.

Antibiotics Part I... and Part II
Strike One: Nitazoxanide; brand name Nodik 500; duration three days; one tablet every twelve hours. It seemed to work. My stomach, which had been like a clunky school plumbing system, sloshing and gurgling, returned to its normal self. Hurray! But a day later the waterworks were back, exactamente lo mismo de antes. The antibiotic Mario Brothers had failed.

'Antibiotic' means literally 'anti life' and, actually, 'anti-microbials' is a more accurate term. Since Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin in 1928 they have probably saved millions of lives, yet they are a blunt weapon. As mentioned, the more we learn about the complex symbiosis between gut flora and the digestive system the more risky the use of such a blunt blade appears. Many patients do not complete their course of antibiotics. They are a Prescription Only Medication in the UK but but easily available at Guatemala's liberal farmacias, which offer all sorts of potent potions over the counter. Not completing a course means some bugs may get away - the stronger ones.

This contribution to the breeding of antibiotic resistant diseases pails in comparison to the monumental folly of industrial meat production. Hats off to Europe - and on this subject I am proud to hail from the Old World - who have banned the practice [5], but US industrial meat producers feed antibiotics to their livestock on a daily basis, to prevent rather than cure infections. In the excellent Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan explains how American CAFO's ('Compact Animal Feeding Operations') create the perfect laboratory for new strains of antibiotic resistant infections. Economics - skewed by huge financial and fossil fuel subsidies - determine that corn is the cheapest 'input', so it is fed to cattle in the millions of tonnes. Never mind that their bellies have evolved over eons to digest grass and that feeding them corn leaves them, effectively, permanently ill. Hence the need to mix antibiotics in with their food. In fact 70% [6] of antibiotics consumed in the US is used in this way. 'Gripe A' anyone? We asked for Swine Flu and we keep asking for worse so long as we maintain this foolish practice. The Keep Antibiotics Working coalition in the US introduce a bill to ban the practice [7] which failed the first attempt and had been reintroduced to Congress in March this year. Will the media circus over swine flu do anything to further the next attempt? One would hope so. Media coverage of the issue is appalling and I'm amazed that 'Dirty Hospitals' can remain such a hot political potato in the UK with barely ever a mention of what is breeding the 'superbugs' in the first place.

Anyway, after visit number three to the doctor's I proceeded with the second strike: Paromomycin Sulphate; brand name Dediacol; four days long this time. Results were good. I seemed to be cured.

Schooled
The whole experience had been educative. My host family had laughed at my faulty pronunciation, joking about my problems with 'amigas' (female friends) but the lessons I've learned may make the misnomer strangely accurate.

In the months leading up to the illness I had been feeling healthier than ever before, with daily yoga and boxing training thrice weekly. But my amigas put the breaks on all of that. It was quite a contrast from one week to the next: from early starts to long, broken nights; from a thousand skips to stumbling on pavements, walking step-by-methodical-step, slow, energy saving movements. My plans to start teaching yoga; on hold. Working on by boxing combinations: on hold. More Kung Fu drills learnt: on hold. So much to do in my final months in Xela and half the energy to do it with!

There was a choice: get angry or accept it. I decided to accept it. My stomach ache was as much part of life as the pleasant, post-yoga ache of stretched muscles. "What," I though "if I decide to look on this as an opportunity rather than a curse?". I was being denied what had been most important to me, so why not chose a new focus? I picked up the guitar I'd bought a few months back, languishing in the corner, and began to practice. It was just the kickstart my playing needed.

That's one way of dealing with frustrated intentions: if one door closes, try some other ones. I've sometimes pondered that if I lost sight or hearing it would make me focus on what I had left. I used to run every day at university and loved it. A year after graduation I developed some sort of chronic inflammation in my left knee, brought on by repetitive movement. Gutted. But I learned to work round it, playing Ultimate Frisbee for exercise. Perhaps I would never have started my yoga practice without the forced change.

It will pass...
There's something about patience, here, too. If patience is a willingness to let things unfold in their own time then a patient disposition means accepting when things don't go your way. Yet patience is not fatalism. Fatalism is getting to a flooded river and giving up. Patience is sitting down and enjoying the sun, pondering calmly how you could cross, or whether there's another route, and waiting a while to see if the waters subside. It is finding that balance between, on the one hand, a raw determination to get something done, and on the other the ability to meet obstructions without anger - so they don't steal the pleasure of the moment. Patience is a quiet determination, allowing flexibility for reappraisal and open to the possibility of changing course - sometimes it really is best simply to cut your losses. Other times just don't quit it!

So, I tried to be patient with my illness. A patient patient. It felt like a lead jacket: a constant bellyache that sapped energy, sapped pleasure from the moment and molested my concentration. Yet I realised that the challenge was to accept and even embrace the discomfort: "This is where I am. I accept this illness. I accept this barrier."

All well and good. The blog would have ended here, with the illness having passed in a few weeks: "Listen to the great lesson I've learned"; blog posted; "Next life-enhancing experience please". Then the stomach ache returned. My mood sank with my energy and I was well and truly pissed off. That'll learn me! So much for my zen-like acceptance. I wanted to smash something up.

A warm welcome?
So maybe there's a shallower and a deeper acceptance. One can accept pain as a temporary nuisance - 'I accept this, it will pass' - and make use of it as an opportunity, but essentially this state of mind is one of waiting. That's fine, and frequently effective, but what if it never passes? Far more difficult to accept a barrier as though it was permanent and look for value in it.

I don't yet know if I'm free of amoebas (poop test four may provide some reassurance). I sincerely hope I am, but perhaps I'll have to live with a fragile belly for months to come. It could be longer - a friend suffered with parasites for years after returning from Brazil.

The real challenge is to keep at it, again and again, accepting where I am and how well or ill I feel. To welcome the suffering as a teacher:

"Most people want to take joy without suffering. I will take both. See how far suffering takes me. When you do not resist suffering, you will make friends with other people who suffer. I suffered a lot in my own body. Now when someone tells me of his sufferings, I feel in my body what that suffering is. My personal experience provides me with great love and compassion. So I say, "My friend, let me try and do something." Pain comes to guide you. When you have known pain, you will be compassionate. Shared joys cannot teach us this." (B.K.S Iyengar)

Cultivating equanimity in the face of adversity is a lifetime's work. I'm learning a lot about it through my yoga practice. And a lot about it through others. And perhaps the amoebas/amigas have been the best teachers yet.

_________

References:
1. http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/travelersdiarrhea_g.htm
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gut_flora
3. Sears CL (October 2005). "A dynamic partnership: celebrating our gut flora". Anaerobe 11 (5): 247–51
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gut_flora
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_resistance
6. Executive summary from the UCS report "Hogging It: Estimates of Antimicrobial Abuse in Livestock", January 001 and http://www.ncrlc.com/antibiotics-agri_page2.html
7. US Senate Bill S. 549: Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act of 2007
8. Light On Life, B.K.S Iyengar, p52.

Back To Reality

Studying permaculture at the Maya Mountain Research Farm

Into the Jungle
We are crouched in the dory, a traditional canoe carved from a solid tree trunk, being punted upstream through the darkening jungle. The vine covered rafters reach over us, blackening into the night sky. Jorge struggles valiently but weighed low with passengers we frequently grind to a halt and have to jump out barefoot and push. It starts to drizzle, only adding to the atmosphere.

Eventually we arrive, slipping precariously up the bank with our lumps of luggage, climbing a stepped slope until we arrive at a covered courtyard and calls of welcome from our fellow students. We've reached the Maya Mountain Research Farm (MMRF) ready to begin a two week Permaculture Design Course.


MMRF
MMRF is the life's work of Christopher Nesbitt, a forty-something New Yorker who in the eighties swapped the furious pace of a Manhatten cycle courier for a seventy acre damaged citrous farm in Southern Belize. From his early days living in a wooden shack, beholden to the sun for wake-up calls and lights-out, he has observed, studied, planted and nurtured his land into a lush and productive agroforestry system. Papaya, pineapple, breadnut, corn, beans, coconuts, eggs, vanilla, cacao, coffee... the list goes on and on. Solar panel by solar panel, stone by stone he has built a comfortable, light-filled home - complete with kitchen, book-lined study and panoramic vista'd bedroom - fit for the cover of glossy magazine.


Although the dreadlocks went decades ago he's not shaved since eighteen and Chris could now be credited with creating the 'Jungle Rabbinic' look: cropped hair and vast beard, baggy Carhartt pants betraying his urban roots, wellingtons, army surplus rucksack slung over one shoulder and riffle or machete over the other. His face is open and kind but his large, sad eyes hint at the tough graft and personal tragedies that he's overcome building his home in the jungle of this sparsely populated river valley.

Chris was the perfect host and his farm the perfect location to study something that I hoped desperately could offer a last minute reprieve to a world on life-support.

'Permanent Agriculture'
Permaculture is short for 'permanent agriculture'. It sums up the ambitious hopes of its founders, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, who in 1978 launched it with the publication of 'Permaculture One'. In 1988 the hefty 'Permaculture: A Designers' Manual' was published, one percent ethics and ninety percent practical design instruction, where the definition given is "the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive and healthy ecosystems which have the diversity, stability and resilience of natural ecosystems." Still not clear? I wasn't either.

Most of my fellow students weren't entirely sure, but our anticipation grew during the introduction: we were to be learning a whole new vocabulary that included the mysterious 'swales', the principle of 'stacking functions' and the crucial tool of 'needs and yields analysis'. With it we could share ideas with the millions of other permaculturists around the world, in the common language of the 'permaculture army'.

There were sixteen students, of all ages and backgrounds. Many were from the U.S. but there was a Canadian, some Mexicans, a Trinidadian and some Belizians on scholarship. Three teachers joined Chris - Albert Bates, Maria A Martinez Ros and and Andrew 'Goodheart' Brown - making an eclectic and experienced team who each brought their own angle. Initially teaching was theory-heavy as we learnt key principles of ecology and of permaculture design. Later in the week we practiced mapping out an area of the farm, using our bodies as rulers - our result was 2,000 square 'Erles' - and learnt how to use a simple A-frame to measure along the contours of a slope to dig a swale - simply a shallow ditch that catches and holds water, but a key tool to build healthy soil.

Piece by piece it started to make sense.

A Deficit of Ducks
There's a story that one day a student was lamenting to permaculture's founder, Bill Mollison, about loosing her lettuces to an onslaught of slugs. "You don't have a surplus of slugs problem." he replied. "You have a deficit of ducks". It neatly illustrates the goal of permaculture - to think like an ecosystem and strive always to 'close the loop'.

The carefully fostered illusion of consumer culture is that things magically appear and disappear to satisfy our needs. Yet every bit of matter passing through our hands comes from and returns to the earth's ecosystem and is part of its cycles. (A point made brilliantly in The Story of Stuff). Extraction and disposal have consequences and these can only be ignored for so long before they return to bite us. Simply put, our waste is wasting us - most prominently, our waste carbon, which we thought we could walk away from. Surprise, surprise, we can't. 'Up in smoke' should not be a synonym for disappeared.

Nature works in cycles and so permaculture rejects the whole concept of 'waste'. Waste is a resource that we've not been smart enough to put to good use yet. No good use at all - spent nuclear fuel rods, for example - is a warning that whatever system is producing it has no sustainable place in the world. There's no waste in nature as such.

So one of the key tools we learnt was 'Needs and Yields Analysis'. Each element of a design has needs and yields and the aim is to match them up - to close the loop. The chickens on Chris's farm are my favourite example. They need food, water, space to roam, a safe place for the night. They yield products and useful services: kitchen scraps disappear greedily, turned into tasty eggs and nutrient rich droppings. A big problem for tropical farmers are Leafcutter Ants, or 'Wee Wees'. The fossil fuel solution: put poison in the system, pesticides bought from outside - a complex external industrial product. The permaculture solution: Wee Wees as chicken food. Having been chased from my bed by Soldier Ants I gained a new found respect for the chicken as I watched them gobble up huge-pincered ants streaming from an aggravated nest.

Nature Resplendent
So we are part of the loop, but everyday life constantly hides this from us. For me the beauty of studying at MMRF was that you couldn't forget this basic fact: from the bug bites yelling "you're part of the food chain" to the tasty meals cooked from ingredients plucked straight from nearby trees. For the first week I recoiled: used to a more sterile environment I was faintly flustered by it all, by bugs and bites and slippy pathways. Then I relaxed, the unseasonal showers passed, and I felt wonderfully and peacefully at home.

My favourite moments were stolen between classes: swinging gently on the hammock, cool after a swim in the river, just soaking in the sounds; cheeps, flutters, rustles, whistles, pulsing bug rubbings, the high pitched whine and zoom of passing flies; the jungle community going about its daily business, from soil to canopy top. There was a rhythm and intimacy with nature that brought a deep sense of calm.

"Normal": Discuss
As the exotic became more familiar what struck me was that this 'exotic' was nothing of the sort. This is how it has been, day after day, for millions of years. My normal (our normal) everyday life is a freakish aberration: we drive complex machines over fields of asphalt, stopping at filling stations to pay pittance for fossilised sunlight, and then carelessly burn up this rich energy resource (equivalent to thousands of hours of human labour) on activities that we could often happily do without. All civilisations are temporary, perhaps as temporary as their foundations, and we have thrown in our lot with a dwindling treasure trove of inherited energy, egged on by blind faith in free-market capitalism whose priests insist that the mighty market will provide - "We'll cross that bridge..."; "Don't plan ahead (Communist!), believe"; don't save for a rainy day...

The 'normal' has a way of lulling us into a false sense of security and permanence. For hundreds of years life was very 'normal' in this now jungle-filled river valley, when it was part of a bustling Mayan metropolis. One evening we climbed the ridge in the gold of the setting sun and through a clearing in the undergrowth looked at a beautifully set Mayan wall, 1200 years old. Chris told us that there are literally hundreds of house mounds dotted around the farm (his house is in fact built on one). At their zenith the Maya ruled an area from Southern Mexico to Northern Honduras for over 600 years before their civilisation declined and came to an end. But we're smarter than them, right? We have Google and ATM machines. And cars. And toilet paper made from ancient forests. The Mayans might beg to differ and challenge us to last a little longer than the century and a half since industrialisation began.

Just not seeing it
When I first walked through Chris's farm I saw trees. Just lots of trees. But walk through with Chris as translator and you start to see complex systems, carefully designed and incredibly productive: coffee and cacao shaded under breadnut trees and coconut palms, pinapple crescents catching water and building soil around sapplings. My illiteracy was shared by the 'conquerors' five hundred years ago, who lamented the ignorant slash and burn agriculture while missing the carefully managed agroforestry system of the 'fallow' land (see 'Beyond Wilderness: Seeing the Garden in the Jungle').

Yes, we know more than the Mayans. Our scientific method is qualitatively different from what went before. It has given us great power. But perhaps we're all the more stupid for it.

The fertile middle ground
For me the genius of permaculture is that it recognises this stupidity but refuses to fall into the opposite trap of romanticising past cultures. It respects both the natural systems that ultimately support all life and also the scientific method that has given us so much power to understand and influence them. My interpretation of permaculture as that it is a science-based design system. Ultimately we are completely reliant on nature, but if we approach it with respect we can understand and learn from the systems that keep our world alive. Then we can apply our intelligence and creativity to tweak and mould them to provide generously for human life. It is a middle ground between domination (destined to fail) and subservience (destructive of our humanity), aimed at creating a humane space within the natural world. A garden.

Spades out for the revolution
So that's what it boils down to: permaculture is gardening. And to think as a boy I saw my Grandfather as such an anachronism, with his rows of raspberries and inability to operate a video recorder. If engineers ruled in the 20th Century then perhaps the 21st belongs to the gardeners: scientifically literate, socially influential and operating in their millions. We hope.

'Everything gardens' is a permaculture principle and it was illustrated every night as we carefully stepped over the torch lit highway of Leafcutter Ants, ferrying green chunks in their millions back to their nest. They use the leaves to grow mould that will feed the whole colony. They hardly ever kill a tree, Chris explained, but strip only some branches before moving on. They do not destroy that which they depend upon. The heart of permaculture is learning from nature, and we could take a leaf from their book.

I Will Survive: Permaculture Remix
It was a fun-filled night tinged with sadness, as everyone pitched in for the 'No Talent' show that rounded off the two week course. I'll spare you the full version, but my group had 're-designed' Gloria Gaynor's classic 'I will survive' to include lines such as: "At first I was afraid, I was petrified. Kept thinking I could never live without these pesticides" and "But no, not us, we will survive. For as long as we know how to swale I know we'll stay alive." After two weeks we had all become quite fond of each other. I wondered where this group of radical gardeners would get to, and what difference we would make. And why the course was only two thirds full when the 'normal' world is so clearly starting to unravel.

Still, we left inspired, determined to plant and compost to a better future.


Back to Civilisation
The bus was pretty swish - air conditioned, reclining chairs, video screens - but I felt uncomfortable. A growing sense of agitation was making me desperate for the journey to end.

We stopped at Gautemala's version of a service station. As I looked round at a forest of plastic, tin cylinders behind glass and bulging humans poking at synthetic food on polyester plates, I realised what I was suffering - culture shock. I was trying to place it all in the natural cycles I'd become used to and so little of it would fit.

It showed the change my fortnight at MMRF had brought. In my five years of 'environmentalism', first of study then work, I've heard lots of theory about living within the earth's limits. Now for the first time I really felt it, in my guts. Permaculture might not be 'the answer' - there's no such thing - but it taught me to see the fundamental logic of our place in the natural order.

More than this, perhaps it might allow me the audacity of hope for a reconciliation between humanity and the world we're currently beating the crap out of. Perhaps environmentalism does not equal atavism. Perhaps MMRF hints at a way forward, rather than a retreat, as the interns check their emails under locally grown bananas: the Apple Mac sitting with the permaculture pineapple.

I don't know yet, but I firmly believe that Bill Mollison was right in 1988 when he wrote that "in the near future we will see the end of wasted energy or the end of civilization as we know it". I just hope that, over two decades later, another of his assertions still holds true: "What we have done, we can undo."

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Photo credits: Thanks to Erle Noronha for the second picture (Chris's house) and Albert Bates for the group photo. All others are my own.

What permaculture can do - the mighty 'swale' in action. A great little video:

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COMMENTS: interested, bored, indifferent? Write a comment...

The List for ´09

Are New Years´Resolutions out of fashion? I´ve no idea but my list brought me to Guatemala. And that´s not the half of what it´s responsible for.

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I´ve no idea why but in Jan ´07 I made a list: what did I want to have done in twelve months time and how did I want to have changed.

Perhaps it was the recent end of a significant relationship or the time management course work had sent me on - whose golden rule was ´make lists, do the most important first´- but it goes down as a significant moment.


I´ve always enjoyed too many things, or so I felt as I struggled to narrow my focus, desperate to be really good at something yet feeling doomed to be a Jack of All Trades. So it was cathartic this time 24 months ago to sit and decide what I actually wanted from 2007, listing things I´d always said I wanted to do and deciding which I wanted most.

For example near the top of the list was ´learn to dance´. Now the viewing figures for the UK cult show ´Strictly Come Dancing´may well have been reaching their crescendo (although how many went dancing?) but I swear that had nothing to do with it. For years I had wanted to be able to partnerdance. Time to learn. So I asked about clubs in Oxford, immediately found that the University had an excellent one, open to everyone and only two quid per class. After six months trying out every style on offer I settled on Salsa - popular, fun to dance in a group (´Rueda´) and with an excellent teacher. So, fast forward to a few weeks ago: I was striding towards a salsa club in Xela, on my own (my new Xela friends having left for Xmas), to dance with strangers in a country whose language I barely spoke, and I realised I had come a long way from the days not so long ago when you couldn´t have proposed a more terrifying scenario. Thanks to List ´07.

There´s a great danger with lists, however. They can play right into the hands of a culture obsessed with outward success and accumulation. One of the most distressing moments of my life was the realisation three years ago that I was fixated on achievement and self-improvement, to the detriment of what really matters in life - friendship. A questionnaire I did with my fellow environmental Masters students had me far left at the ´Goal Oriented´end of the spectrum, with everyone else middle or towards ´People Oriented´. I was indignant with the stupid, over simplified pop-psychology... because it was true. Yet I knew from previous dark days that fellowship with "fellow (hu)man" was ultimately what made life worthwhile. I vowed to put people first from then on. Spending time with those I cared for was priority number one.

So it is heartening as I sit and look back at the lists for ´07 and ´08 to realise that while it is the "learn to dance" and "study spanish" goals that I´ve remembered as significant victories, they are actually full of targets like "Enjoy meals with housemates", "Go on holiday with Dad" and "Throw at least two houseparties". And of course the most important goal of all, which I´ve been surprisingly successful at achieving - "Wear more hats".

The people-focused goals are the most satisfying, of course. They can also be the hardest. I honestly can´t say I´m a better listener or a more selfless person and those will be carried over for a third year. Perhaps they need translated into the actions that might lead to them? Trying (too close to leaving for travel) to volunteer with the Samaritans was a decent one as far as listening skills.

As well as the type of goals - and many a self-help book will tell you that you need to start with an idea of the the person you want to be, or your ´legacy´ - I think the attitude to the goals themselves is crucial. Sorry Zen Masters (in your charicatured form) but I like doing things and enjoy striving to achieve targets. No apologies. It is fun to have a project. The difference now is that my self esteem is not (or at least not unhealthily) tied up with whether I achieve them.

This is the big difference between now and ´then´. I´m happy in the process, irrespective of the outcome. It is the practice of yoga, and to a lesser but growing extent meditation, that has helped to calm my achievement-hungry soul. I´m learning (you have never learnt) to breath in deeply the present, to forsake the look before and after and enjoy NOW: I´m alive, my heart is beating, my lungs empty and fill, the world, universe and everything flow unstoppably onwards.

But... January is a time for just such looking beyond the present, named as it is after the Roman god Janus who´s two faces look infront and behind. So Dr Buick prescribes some time out after the bustle of Christmas and before the new year picks up speed: to look back at things to be thankful for and lessons learned; and to look forward at what you hope 2009 will hold.

Then make a list. It may just make your year.

I´m working on mine. What´s on it? Ah, that would be telling, but I can´t rule out the involvement of hats.

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Picture: Gautemaltecos climb a local mountain to perform Mayan (right, in sunshine) and Evangelical Christian (left, lower down in the shadows) ceremonies and make prayers for the year ahead.

Photos: Mexico to Xela

Guanajato, Mexico

Guanajato, Mexico

Xela, Guatemala

Xela, Guatemala

Xela, Guatemala

Volcan Pacaya, Guatemala

Volcan Feugo, Antigua, Guatemala

Inside the Obama campaign

"Nowhere is it ordained that history moves in a straight line" wrote Barack Obama in The Audacity of Hope, and nowhere was it ordained that he would win, in spite of the palpable feeling amongst millions that this was his moment. A sense of destiny is not enough to win an election. Obama and his team knew this and two years ago began building what has probably been the most formidable ground operation in the history of politics. How did they do it and what was it like? I spent six weeks in the battleground state of New Mexico finding out:

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"We have a new full time volunteer! Meet Michael, from England" shouted Nick Rosa to a bustling Obama campaign office, which turned in unison with cheers, calls of welcome and the ring of the recruitment bell.

I arrived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, six weeks before the election, keen to help and to get an insider's perspective on Obama's much praised 'grassroots' campaign. A key swing state, New Mexico voted for Bush in 2004 by only 6000 votes - just 2 votes per electoral precinct. The campaign was taking no chances and had 39 field offices (compared to McCain's 10), 7 of those in the Santa Fe area ('Region 4'). It was into one of these that I'd walked on September 25th.

The atmosphere was something between a community cafe, a high octane sales room and a high school. The shop unit, looking out across a crowded parking lot, had been transformed with a collage of stickers and posters - some official, many homemade - and lists canvasers hung ready for new additions. A constant stream of volunteers was trained on the days' goals and left with their 'canvas packets' - the map and list of voter's doors they were to knock on. Others were returning their canvas packets filled out with the collected info, and a bank of elderly ladies at donated computers entered the data into the campaign database. There was a pleasant, energetic hum of conversation and laughter and in one corner three girls in their early teens were calling through a phone list to recruit more volunteers, pinging lobby style attention bells each time they won a new recruit, to a burst of cheers from the rest of the room.

This was the frontline of a ground campaign that has been widely hailed as groundbreaking. How so?

Firstly, the sheer scale of the operation. New Mexico has been awash with Obama volunteers. "They're out everywhere. They're like flies", said a Republican volunteer rather forlornly at the only - and sparsely populated - McCain office in Santa Fe. Recruitment built up week on week, with volunteers recruiting volunteers, until the office I started at had over 500 canvasers leaving every day - so many that they relocated the canvas operation to a nearby warehouse. In the two weeks prior to the election the region as a whole achieved over one hundred thousand door knocks, and made over fifty thousand phone calls - and there are less than 200,000 registered Democratic voters here.

The campaigns huge financial resources, with over $600 million raised, was clearly important but while the McCain-Palin campaign emails tried to suggest Obama way buying his support that was far from the truth - our region had at least four unpaid full-time volunteers for every paid Field Organiser, with hundreds of part-time volunteers on top of that. Americans in their tens of thousands were 'fired up' for their candidate is a way not seen for decades and the stories of volunteers' commitment could be moving: the man who arrived late to canvas, hugely apologetic, and smelling of smoke - his house had burned down in the early hours of the morning; the lady volunteer who, after being stabbed in the throat came in to the office a few days later, unable to speak but determined to help. They were of all ages, classes, backgrounds, from wealthy attourneys to school teachers, but college students and recent graduates have been the backbone - the "Kids Crusade" was how one aging campaign veteran descibed it.


Obama's message of hope and change, skilfully packaged and amplified by the campaign, has obviously been central, particulary in attracting the young. It provided an emotive core often lacking in Democratic campaigns. Yet it would have sounded flat and hollow were it not for the real secret of this campaign - community empowerment. "You feel Obama's community organiser roots through this entire campaign" explained Geno Zamora, a campaign senior advisor in the state. "They've taken tried and tested community organising techniques and modernised them. But it's still reaching out to people, getting people to tell their stories, to share and be involved". The basis of this style of engagement has been summarised as the public narrative-'The Story of ME - who I am; the story of WE - who we are; and the Story of NOW - what are we going to do together'. "If you look at Obama's famous 2004 convention speech, it follows exactly that structure" explained Siri Trang Khalsa, a professional policy expert volunteering in the Santa Fe HQ. "He has been able to personally connect with people in a way that no other politician has in a really long time".

This connection has been transformed into action - into tens of thousands of volunteers, millions of doors knocked, and a resounding victory - by a campaign that sought to push power out to its people on the ground. "Now I just totally understand how a small group of people can do a huge thing. When you're actually putting responsibility in the hands of others it just explodes with output." explained Bill Loundy, fresh from his final semester at Stanford, eyes glistening with excitement. "When you empower its like you've got a big jar of marbles and all you do is spill it. Just drop it. Spread everything out, throw the seeds all over the place and everything starts growing." The constant aim was bring people further in: Given money? Give a few hours to canvas; Given a few hours canvasing? Can you recruit four others and lead a canvas team? The campaign had genuine grassroots beginnings, it connected with them and it placed the highest value on getting communities to work for themselves to bring Barack to power. "The highest position in the campaign is that of the Field Organiser" declares the weighty campaign manual.

Yet a free-for-all it most certainly was not - the community action has been extremely carefully directed. "This is a very disciplined campaign at every level" explained Mr Zamora. "It's a level of organisation that's never been seen, not only of community organisation but folding technology into it." Firstly the ground campaign was integrated into the broader messaging, so a voter hearing a healthcare themed ad on their local radio station was handed a brochure on Obama's healthcare plan the same week. Secondly, highly sophisticated data mining and demographic analysis was used to target voters with great accuracy. Starting months ago with the publicly available list of registered voters, the campaign used its volunteers, through canvasing and phone calls, to expand and hone voter details, allowing them to be cut into highly targetted 'universes' with a specific strategy for each.

So behind the soaring rhetoric and inspiring slogans the campaign was being run clinically - by cold, hard numbers. Each state was analysed based on past elections and the precise number of votes needed for victory was calculated. Then the strategy to get these votes was broken down into weekly and daily targets, split between each field office. These targets were key to keeping the focus and momentum. Full timers - both paid and unpaid - have been working 15 hour days for weeks, sometimes months. In the evenings from around 8pm the buzz of the office would quieten down leaving the team of around 5-10 full time staff sitting round at their laptops. At 9.30pm every night we gathered round a cell phone, set to speaker, for the regional conference call with Regional Director Alfred Johnson, as each team reported the days numbers for volunteers recruited, doors knocked, phonecalls made, and then received his feedback on 'percent to goal'. Then at 10pm we all listened in as Alfred reported our region's performance on the state wide conference call. Competition between offices and regions was fierce, the determination to out perform growing as the camaraderie and character of teams solidified. Ultimately the numbers were reported to 'Chicago' and those coordinating the national campaign.

Finally, technology has clearly played a huge role on many levels, but particularly in the allocation of resources. The electoral collage system means the presidency is settled by a relatively small number of battleground states, but the internet and cell phones have allowed resource rich dark blue states to help in the fight as never before. I witnessed the campaigns fleetness of foot one night at the state headquarters in Albuquerque when, just before the nightly call, California reported a lot of spare phone capacity for the following day and 15 minutes later Brent Messenger, Field Director for New Mexico, instructed all field offices to focus volunteers on canvasing and leave the phone calls to the Californians - California made over a quarter of a million calls into New Mexico alone. It has also facilitated volunteers to come from all over the States - we had over 130 visit our region, joining us for a day or a week, from Texas, California, Nevada. Most paid their own way. Eddie Cruz drove for 12 hours on a Friday, up from Texas, canvased solidly for two days and then drove back in time for work on Tuesday. There were thousands like him across the country.

There's a telling moment in Obama's book 'Dreams From My Father': "I don't like politics much," exclaimed his sister Alma. "Why's that?" asked Barack. "I don't know" she replied. "People always end up disappointed." The question now, with millions feeling empowered by their part in this remarkable story, is will President Obama prove his sister wrong?