This is sort of an addendum to my post A Propsal For a New Cult. Having done a lot more research on these subjects, particularly
aquaculture and livestock husbandry, I think some of these ideas wouldn't
really work as well as I would have expected a few years ago. While the general idea of spreading people
out by relocating people currently in cities to the country is an idea I'm
still very much in favor of, I think these perfectly symmetrical building
designs are kind of ridiculous. I'm
pretty sure I did mention at some point that they were intentionally simplified
for the sake of clarity, and that I actually prefer something closer to what
Native Americans were doing (maintaining rotational food forest gardens while
basically just managing hunting and fishing areas rather than actually going
through all the extra hassle, and questionable ethics, of ruling every aspect
of animals' lives). The closer we go to
the hunter-gatherer side of the spectrum the smaller the population I'd expect
to be supportable though.
For denser settlement patterns I do still like the idea of
trying to arrange buildings in a way that would double as fencing, probably
more oriented to the contours of the landscape than some predetermined
pattern. According to a lot of graziers
fencing is a constant annoyance that they'd love to not have to always
worry about. At this point I think the
best way to go would probably be buildings used as a perimeter barrier and
either stone, wood or even living fences for interior paddock partitions. If animals break through a paddock once in a
while that wouldn't be too big a deal but escaping the whole system causes
serious problems. And obviously keeping predators out is a big deal as well, both to protect livestock and not feel a need to exterminate local carnivores. There is also the
possibility of having grazing specialists who can manage herds without any
fencing or barns at all, acting kind of like the Samburu or something. Like I said, there will need to be
experimentation with different arrangements and it's a good idea to allow some
"imperfections" just to maintain some cultural diversity.
The idea of grazing around one aquaculture pond is something
I don't think I'd recommend trying at this point. While manure tends to be added to aquaculture
ponds as a fertilizer and therefore isn't much of a threat to the fish, I think
it might be a threat to the livestock using it as a water source. I guess it depends on size and whether it's
constantly fed by a nearby creek or something but using one water source that
they never leave just sounds really risky to me now. You'd also need some kind of bank protection
with ponds, maybe covering most of the shore with willows and alders and having
one small section of shore in each paddock lined with stone to prevent erosion
when the animals go for a drink. For the
most part aquaculture isn't as well developed, at least in temperate regions,
as a lot of books and videos might lead you to believe. Without intense management it requires a lot
more space than I realized (my idea of making them moat-shaped because the
space would otherwise be way too big was totally wrong). Most of them aren't really self-maintaining
ecosystems that will last essentially forever as long as they're not
overharvested. Some people actually
recommend draining them empty every few years and starting over. It seems to me like restoring the health of
nearby rivers and lakes would be more worth the effort. Again, most Native American groups seemed to
have it right. Rather than maintain fish
hatcheries they just found ways to encourage fish coming in from the ocean to
lay eggs where they could be easily found and collected so they could be
"planted" in new locations.
They also had ways of maintaining beaches that clams thrived in. And obviously even with no “cultivation” the
nearby fisheries were much more productive just from having less pollution and
gentler methods of harvesting. There are
examples of more intensive versions of these methods, like Veta La Palma in
Spain, but for the most part aquaculture done in any sustainable fashion likely
won’t be as productive as food forestry and grazing, at least in temperate
regions.
Another sort of strange idea I had since writing this was
encouraging some crops that people don’t really like but would eat in
emergencies. This would be things like
acorns and horse chestnuts. Besides
adding diversity to further stabilize the polycultures it would also,
hypothetically, help prevent famines when preferred crops fail. My reasoning is that since these are so
annoying to process, and not very appetizing, for the most part people just won’t
bother. So population densities will
stay slightly lower and in the event that they are the only food source
available there will still be enough to at least keep everyone alive. Creating some sort of religious taboo on
certain foods would have a similar effect but obviously I’d rather avoid
that approach. It might sound kind of silly
but I think ideas like this are at least worth considering.
And although I focused a lot on these “complexes”, even when
I wrote this I preferred the idea of most families just having their own little
5 acre plot and probably one paddock of a shared grazing commons. I like how little infrastructure is required
(even composting toilets wouldn’t really be necessary if people are so spread
out) and I like that everyone is involved in all aspects of their sustenance
while still having some connection to a larger community. Although the idea of having some specialist
graziers is pretty appealing too considering how much fencing it could
potentially make unnecessary. There are
many different ways of arranging things.
My main goal with this was just to get people to really think about what
a sustainable world would look like with something at least pretty close to our
current population and how we could make it happen. So even though I obviously don’t have all the
answers, hopefully I accomplished at least that much.
*Edited 1/17/16
I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this but I think I need to
update my update. Having wasted so much
time with my “ridiculous symmetrical building designs” I feel like I might as
well fix them to show how the general idea can still work, hypothetically
anyway. The main problems I was having
with my earlier designs I’m pretty sure I’ve managed to solve at this
point. The first mistake I noticed,
which is actually pretty amazing to have missed, was that I used a square shape
while trying to use as few houses to surround the grazing area as possible. The very first thing I should have done is
pick out the most efficient shape to use as a model. Obviously that’s a circle, not a square. Squares have a smaller perimeter to area ratio
than rectangles (40’ for a 100 square foot area versus approximately 42.5’ with
a rectangle whose length is twice its width) but circles are best
(approximately 35.5’ for the same area).
That makes perfect circles the ideal shape to limit the number of houses
needed to enclose the space. So
realistically you should try to pick out a building area that allows as close
to that shape as possible, but accept that perfectly matching the ideal isn’t
going to happen.
Another problem, which I’d mentioned already, was the single
pond that animals circle around. To
prevent funking up the animals’ water supply you’d likely need at least several
ponds so each one would only be used a few days at a time and get at least a
couple weeks to recover before animals return again. The paddock arrangement needs to be a little
more complicated to accommodate this design but with a little planning it can
be done, as the image below shows. You
have to keep in mind the slope of the land as well so the manure in one paddock
doesn’t wash into the wrong pond when it rains.
As the ponds are dug the dirt can be piled up between ponds to prevent
this. It could get pretty challenging if
the grazing area isn’t a large enough watershed to keep the ponds full but the
land used for crops will definitely be big enough as long as a significant
portion of runoff can be channeled toward the complex.
I added the close up image to fix another amazing mistake
that I can’t believe I missed (this is why I’m a huge fan of procrastination). With the ponds not fitting the shapes around
them the paddocks ended up being really goofy shapes and slightly different
sizes, some probably being close to double the size of others. I also decided to go with the wavy shoreline
to provide extra edge for cattail, wapato and lilies like I did in the earlier
ones. So the ideal is actually that
perfectly round complex with 4 of these ponds instead of the round ones it’s
shown with.
The “floating barrier” I talked about in the original post most
likely isn’t really necessary but a simple raft or train of canoes can be tied
to nearby fences or the alders and willows that I recommended covering most of
the shoreline with. Livestock can’t
generate as much power swimming as running so it only needs to be a simple
deterrent. I mentioned before that even
paddock fences probably won’t need to be too substantial, at least with sheep,
which I’m pretty sure I’ve decided makes the most sense to use. One compromise between living fences and
traditional fences that seems doable to me is to make wattle fences using
pollard trees as the fence posts (usually the most work with fencing). The posts then produce the wattle material to
fix the fence every few years. As far as
I can tell it wouldn’t cause much damage to the trees but if the trunks do show
signs of damage you could always just make wattle panels that get tied to the
trees instead. I like trying to keep
planted trees and shrubs on contour, and obviously these wouldn’t be able to do
that, but I don’t really see any other problems with trying it. Even with black walnut guilds for the
silvopasture you could use black locust.
And even the black walnuts themselves are pollardable (is that a word?)
so the fence lines might be the only trees needed to be planted. Not sure how mulberry trees and paw paws
respond to pollarding though. It
probably works. Just make sure there’s
some separation between the walnuts and ponds.
Pretty sure juglone will kill alders and willows, and possibly the black
raspberries I recommended using in a previous post somewhere. Elderberries are probably the best juglone
tolerant and shade tolerant fruiting shrub, but then again shrubs should
probably be kept to a minimum with silvopasture anyway.
The only other major issues with the original designs were
the number of people required, the total disregard for following landscape
contours and possibly clearing too large of food forests at a time. I think the estimate for the original was
somewhere around a thousand people, which I didn’t like but had trouble
shrinking down while still enclosing so many good-sized paddocks. The newer one I estimate around 48 houses
(more like 150-200 people) with 40 quarter acre paddocks and probably about
half an acre for each pond. Some houses
could be used as barns or workshops instead, making the population even
lower. The “realistic” version shows how
things would be shaped following contours (I tried anyway) and there are
several possibilities for clearing less at a time. The most obvious way is to use longer cycles. Existing examples vary from a several year
cycle for alley cropping agriculturists to 50 or even 100 years for indigenous
peoples who use fire to clear the forests.
Most applicable to this design would likely be anywhere between 10 and
30 years. If you’re closer to the 10
year cycle and have something like 200 acres (what I’d estimate for the above
design) and don’t like the idea of clearing 20 connected acres at a time you
could always spread them out. Imagine
subdividing each of the 10 divisions into another 10 divisions. So 10% of each one (10 two acre patches
pretty evenly spread across the full 200 acre territory) could be cleared each
year instead of an entire one (20 acres in one spot) every year. It would probably be more beneficial to the
land that way.
Even food forests separated in a way that doesn’t follow
contours could still use swales that do follow contours. I just think it makes more sense for the
boundaries to follow them as well. In
most areas of the world, not all plots are as productive as others so if you
want each division producing approximately the same amount of food then making
them all the same exact size isn’t going to be the best way to accomplish that.
It’s also worth pointing out that the way communities
cluster together can make a difference as well.
If it’s decided to leave 1 or 2 acres as untouched wilderness for every
acre used for production then you could either have each community surrounded
by an equal or double amount of wild land or you could keep most “used land”
together and most of the untouched wilderness together in larger clumps. A lot of wildlife, particularly apex
predators, need vast connected territories.
Leaving strips of token wilderness therefore wouldn’t be as beneficial. Below is another crappy picture I put
together to show ideal communities and realistic ones organized in clusters to
keep wild lands as large as possible.
Technically with permaculture landscapes the cultivated land is still
tolerable to most animals but I still think this is the way to go if we have
any choice in the matter. I made the
grazing cells yellow just because it’s too small to see the buildings and I
thought it’d be helpful to see where the complexes are. I also used solid lines for each community’s
boundary to separate it from the food forest divisions within each
boundary. For the ideal (imagined to be
working with totally flat and homogenous land) I decided to use honeycomb
shapes for the boundaries just because it keeps everything about as even and
perfect fitting as I could figure out.
The realistic side works with my made up land contours, which I wouldn’t
expect to really make sense to someone who knows about contour maps, and allows
variation in sizes, layouts, etc. It
also shows that realistically some areas within the cropland would likely be
too steep, rocky or swampy for cultivation and therefore left wild. I don’t show any paths/roads or other
buildings or recreational activity spots just to keep things simple. I’d imagine that paths can flow pretty easily
with the boundaries shown since they follow contours. Remember, the idea is a network of
communities who basically only use stone age technology and depend as little as
possible on trading, so any roads wouldn’t need to be too substantial. I’d hope that it wouldn’t take too long until
all that’s needed are dirt or stone footpaths.
The last thing I wanted to expand on a little more is what
it would look like to be a little closer to the hunter gatherer side of the spectrum. First just let me make it clear that this
wouldn’t be possible for everyone on the planet without both a significant drop
in human population and a significant increase in the health of our ecosystems. One statistic, which I got from Frank Marlowe’s
book on the Hadza, and that I’m pretty sure he got from Robert Kelly’s work, is
that the average population density of hunter gatherer territories (in some
of the healthiest environments to still exist) is around 1 person per 1,000
acres (4 square kilometers). For
marginal environments like the Juwasi’s territory I’ve seen estimates of 1 person
per 10,000 acres! Compared to my
estimate of communities that produce all their own necessities with intensive
permaculture that’s literally 1,000 to 10,000 times the space required. Since it’s such an admirable lifestyle
though, I’d like to see people experiment with getting as close as possible to
hunter gatherer. About as close as
realistically possible for any significant portion of the current population
would be something more like “trapper gardeners” (pretty sure I got this term
from Miles Olson), which is actually how a lot of indigenous people lived
thousands of years ago anyway. Basically tribe-sized groups (somewhere
between a dozen and a hundred) would still cultivate gardens, which would be
steered towards succession to forests dominated by fruit and nut trees just
like permaculture mosaics, but instead of raising livestock and fish they’d
just set up camp between productive fishing zones and hunting areas that get
only simple management (compared to conventional farming). The most famous example of “simple management”
is burning grasses and underbrush to keep the land attractive to grazing
animals and easy to move through for hunters.
Naturally you’d also expect that, whether intentional or not, the nearby
landscape would gradually shift to tree species more useful to humans. When cutting down saplings for building
materials or to clear paths anyone with even the slightest foresight will
choose to let a higher percentage of trees that produce edible nuts and fruits
stay standing. If you have to remove
some pine trees from a stand of several species and you recognize that one of
them produces food for humans then most of the ones you cut down will belong to
the other species. So these “semi-wild”
areas, although not actually cultivated, will end up with higher proportions of
hickory, beech, pine nut, low-tannin acorns and sugar maples than forests that
lack human influence. Only in the modern
world do humans choose to surround themselves mostly with useless varieties. In my opinion a reasonable population density
sustained this way could be around 1 person for every 10 acres, so a pretty
good compromise. Below is sort of a
bullshit diagram of what a typical trapper gardener community would look
like. Notice that the food forests are
laid out more organically as people can be a little more selective about what
land is worth using. The brown blobs
around the dwellings just represent cleared land but it could also be used for
growing vegetables or something. And the river could also be a lake shoreline
or sea coast.
I forgot to mention why “trapper” instead of hunter. Basically the stereotype image of the wild
human sniffing the air as he crawls through the mud with spear in hand isn’t
really how most groups got the bulk of their meat. This type of hunting was used but not as
effectively as setting traps in most cases.
It’s much more efficient to lure animals towards snares, pitfalls and
ambushes. Fish weirs were common in
rivers and lakes to harvest them by the basketful. And obviously when growing nuts and
vegetables a lot of rabbits and squirrels will come to you. Reading one of Gene Logsdon’s books on pasture
farming not too long ago I remember him saying that the amount of wildlife that
most farmers consider pests is possibly more productive than their domesticated
livestock at times, and without them really doing any work. Without having to worry about competing in “the
market” to earn the money to buy his necessities there’d be enough on his
property to provide what his family needs easily. So yeah, pretty stupid living arrangement we’ve
got here. Self-sufficiency definitely
obviates a lot of boondoggles.
Even with humane husbandry there are ethical concerns, like choosing
who breeds with who, making animals dumbed down and bored as hell, castrating
males and separating males from females, manipulating the relationships between
mothers and calves to get more milk, etc.
I mean, it basically is slavery.
When you watch wild animals they do have social lives and do seem to
appreciate some adventure. Considering
where we are though it does seem necessary.
As Allan Savory points out, a lot of the damaged land of the world, what
he terms “brittle,” can only heal with intensive planned grazing. If left alone that land won’t get enough
animal impact to return to healthy grassland on any time scale that matters to
us and will only continue to degrade. In most areas there
probably are comparably effective methods that don’t use animals. I’ve seen how much change can occur just from
laying out rows of rocks on contour or digging holes by hand that can be
planted with trees to slowly spread forests into desertified land. But with how fast and easy animals make
restoration it seems worth it to me.
I don’t see any reason why there can’t be vegan experiments
though. I personally don’t think
veganism is the best way to go but whether we agree with them or not vegans are
among us. Can they be accommodated into
these communities? I don’t see why not,
as long as they don’t try breaking the livestock out or waging a bloody crusade
against omnivores. As long as each side
respects the others wishes I don’t see why this issue should keep aspiring
primitivists too divided to work together.
I guess some communities could be reserved for the more zealous animal
rights people where they totally forgo grazing, aquaculture, hunting and
fishing. Those would actually be much
easier communities to design for. They
just need to incorporate as many plant sources of complete protein, omega 3
fats and clothing fiber as possible, like hemp, flax, cotton, butternuts, walnuts,
seaberries, purslane, soy, quinoa, and supposedly combinations of certain grains with
certain beans, etc. They’d also probably want longer cycles between clearing
land since the only manure they’ll have for fertilizer is their own, which can
work. The more mature you let the forest
get the more wild animals will find their way in, shit on it, die and decompose
there, etc. In my opinion the safest way
to use humanure would be to spread it on food forests after the ground crops
have been shaded out but still at least a couple years before replanting. They'd also likely want to set up shop in warm, non-brittle regions. Other than that they have a lot less to worry
about compared to the communities that have to integrate crops with domesticated
animals. The
biggest challenge I can think of is controlling nut-eating and herbivorous
animal “pests” without killing them.
Simply tolerating their presence will likely result in needing much more
land per person. I’d hope that the vegan crowd
would just keep the others asking how they can keep making things more humane
rather than cause any debilitating horizontal hostility. Like Allan Savory’s work as an example again,
he looks for ways to switch to wild grazing animals or allow succession to
forests when possible rather than just keep managing the land with domesticated
animals forever. At least that’s what it
sounds like to me anyway.
I’m pretty sure that covers everything that I wanted to
add. Hopefully this didn’t come across
as too obsessive-compulsive. There’s
just a lot to keep in mind before starting such long-term projects. Even worse is all the considerations needed
to actually bring such a project into existence. I’ve mentioned in previous posts possibilities
like philanthropy from sincere rich people, mass peaceful protest to demand
land reform, violent rebellion by radical environmentalists that forces change
and economic collapse that forces people to change even if nobody wants to. Currently the super rich are mostly wasting
the wealth of the world on shit that makes no difference, protests revolve
around getting more equal shares of the plunder of empire, environmentalists
spend all their time worrying about how even the most innocuous actions could
hurt something (while the less scrupulous members of society childishly bounce
from one whim to the next with absolutely no concern other than their own
personal dopamine levels) and environmental collapse appears ahead in its race
with economic collapse. Most likely
things are not going to end well for our species but I still see no point in
the “Fuck it! We’re done for” view that
the Guy McPherson types are spreading.
No matter how bad things get I’ll still be advocating these low-tech, self-sufficient,
degrowth communities. When all things
are considered I honestly don’t see how anything else can create a sustainable and
just lifestyle for humanity. I really
don’t.
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