31 May, 2018 | Remembering Bill in Print
It was at the permaculture day and Permaculture Australia annual meeting in Nimbin, Northern NSW last May that permaculture educator and Permaculture Australia board member, Robyn Francis, raised the idea of republishing Bill Mollison’s writing in the pages of Permaculture International Journal. I had thought of doing this before but had done nothing about it. Robyn’s mention of the idea was the motivation I needed to get going.
Bill Mollison at Australasian Permaculture Convergence 9 in Sydney, NSW, 2009. Photo: ©Russ Grayson, Sydney, 2009.
The rationale is simple. Permaculture International Journal, PIJ as it was commonly known, was published between 1978 and 2000. Bill Mollison, one of the co-inventors of the permaculture design system with David Holmgren, wrote for the print magazine. But with the publication gone this past 18 years his writing, like that of the many who published in the pages of PIJ, is lost. Bill’s words exist only on the yellowing pages of editions kept by long-time permaculture practitioners.
The long tail of online articles
Unlike print magazines, online publishing keeps the long tail of past articles alive and makes them more accessible than they were in print. So it was that on returning from that Nimbin meeting I set about scanning the pages of the PIJs I have, a far from complete set I should point out, with an app on my iPad. This converted the image of text-on-page into editable text-on-screen. Far from perfect in its conversion, there remained much editing to do.
It was the same with the photographs in PIJ. These were half-tones, a format that used ink dot size and density to delineate lighter and darker areas in black and white images on the printed page. Photographed, the pictures on the screen appear grainy. It was better to have imperfect images rather than none at all.
A contribution to global permaculture practice
Bill did not write for every edition of PIJ. He kept a busy schedule, travelling within Australia as well as internationally to consult on permaculture design solutions, teach permaculture and developing, first, the Tagari community project in Tasmania, then the Permaculture Institute in the subtropical Tweed Valley of Northern NSW. Later, he relocated to Tasmania’s Bass strait coast near Sisters Creek, not far from where he began his varied and inspirational life.
We decided to call the republished articles The Lost Stories to signify their disappearance from the everyday world of permaculture design and, now, their resurrection.
Permaculture Australia believes the republishing of the collected articles of Bill Mollison to be a contribution to what has grown to be a global permaculture movement.
We also offer them on this, a year after Bill’s passing, as a way of remembering Bill and the continuing contribution he has made to creating the potential for a world of abundance and opportunity.
Thanks again Bill.
Russ Grayson, Sydney. September 2017.
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31 May, 2018 | Remembering Bill in Print
The Lost Stories are Bill Mollison’s articles published in the print magazine originally named Permaculture, then International Permaculture Journal and finally the Permaculture International Journal that was published between 1978 and 2000.
All stories and other content ©Permaculture Australia unless otherwise noted.
Story by Bill Mollison, 1987. Edition 26.
Feature photo: Bill Mollison and David Holmgren at Australasian Permaculture Convergence 9, 2009, Sydney. ©Russ Grayson 2009 pacific-edge.info
Published as an article in World Visions… and realities
AS YOU ALL KNOWÂ we have collected a very modest Trust-in-Aid fund to assist teachers to go to groups who have requested courses in Third World areas. This small fund, subscribed by our Australian readers, went a long way this year.
Slay and Bill Mollison were able to visit Nepal and India partly from this fund, and in the USA and UK. Badri N. Dahal did miraculous work in Nepal convening an excellent, experienced, and well-qualified group of Nepalese (17 people) and expatriate aid workers (12 people). We believe this proup to be one of the most dedicated, skilledmand experienced that we have ever taught. Badri has already asked for two end-to-end courses, the first for Nepalese women, the second a mixed course, for November December 1987.
We have now very few funds left and will need to raise $5000 to send a teacher from Australia or the US in November. Although the first Nepalese teacher group is convening, they feel that these additional courses (with them acting as assistant teachers) are required in order to gain confidence. Thereafter they will be teaching courses in Nepalese.
Please assist us in raising this $5000 any way you can!
After Nepal, we visited the Deccan Development Society(DDS) and their projects in Zaheerabad (southern India). Joining us was Robyn Francis of Sydney’s Permaculture Services. The DDS is convening a course scheduled for July 1987, with Robyn and Bill to teach. The course is funded by EZE, a West German church group, contacted by Vithal Rajan of the Right Livelihood Foundation for this purpose.
Students will be expected to arrange their food network lodging in Hyderabad. We hope to get in excess of 50 students, many of whom are (or can be trained to be) teachers and project workers, and we expect that Hyderabad will set up further courses for India, possibly in conjunction with some of the teachers and graduates from Nepal.
Future plans
There are serious enquiries for courses from Botswana, Lesotho and Zimbabwe in Africa. It would be quite feasible to cover all these in one trip early in 1988. A school teacher (Mary Ann McNealy) in Portland,
Oregon, has offered to try to collect the $6000 needed for the tour from her wages and those of her friends to see that this happens.
The Chile group in South America (see Directory) requested a course, with 20 people definitely interested and without doubt more interested throughout the other South American countries. They can also organise a course for Buenos Aires, Argentina. Brazil could be included in any ant teaching tour as our contact Julio Taborda (Directory) can convene it. Already an, industrialist friend of Bill’s has offered to pay a round-trip ticket from the US to Brazil, so we’re halfway there!
However, other funds and grants will be needed before a tching tour of South America could be considered.
If we can get to Nepal, Africa and South America to train local teachers, consultants and development workers, we will have achieved a great deal.Let us try then, by hook or by crook, to get the money for Africa and South America by 1988. WE have just $600 left in our Trust-in-Aid but have achieved a great deal with the first $2400 (not the least being life subscriptions to the Permaculture Journal for the permaculture romps in Nepal, Zimbabwe and Chile, and a set of back issues of the Journal for the Spanish group).
In Nepal, we have funded a fulltime employee for 12 months researching local domestic crafts and skills. We plan to co-publish with the Permaculture Institute if Nepal a book on local village crafts and skills, recipes etc. What we are trying to develop is mutual aid to promote local funding opportunities for local Institutes. If this is successful we will be repeating it in other countries. We hope that this will benefit us both, with the local Institutes having publishing rights for their own countries and Tagari Publications the right to publish in Australia, New Zealand and the US.
We would be very pleased to hear from experienced funding organisation who could assist in any way with the permaculture courses in Nepal, Africa and South America. These areas deserve your efforts and a modest bit of money. And many thanks to you who contributed that first $2,400!!
30 May, 2018 | Remembering Bill in Print
The Lost Stories are Bill Mollison’s articles published in the print magazine originally named Permaculture, then International Permaculture Journal and finally the Permaculture International Journal that was published between 1978 and 2000.
All stories and other content ©Permaculture Australia unless otherwise noted.
Story by Bill Mollison, 1987. Edition 26.
Feature photo: Bill and Lisa Mollison, Australasian Permaculture Convergence 9, Sydney, 2009.
©Russ Grayson 2009 https://pacific-edge.info
Published as an article in World visions… and realities
A KEY DISCUSSION PAPERÂ has just appeared, authored by Marc Nerfin for the IFDA Dossier (International Foundation for Development Alternatives.
It is called Neither Prince nor Merchant: Citizen, and probably predicates a new and long-felt movement towards a single global body representing ethical associations, not governments nor corporations.
Nerfin gives references and notes on the extremely targe number and wide-ranging concerns of modern associations and groups (non-governmental organizations). He notes that by 1981 France had 300,000-500,000 associations, forming up at the rate of 100 per day!
People who join or form associations subscribe to a common aim, ethic or project, and increasingly these associations are being formed to carry out a specific role or job in relation to environmental and human concerns at a local, continental or global level. There are large dictionaries of such groups, no doubt incomplete or out of-date even as they are published.
It has long been evident that if ethical groups could combine to direct their financial and consumer power they would be the largest unified world body in history. For while the ‘moral majority’ is a fiction of right-wing politicians, the ethical majority is a reality countable by the memberships of ethical associations.
Small nations
Such associations are, in fact, small nations of peoples who subscribe to common objectives. We can only define a ‘nation’ by some common factor, irrespective of place of residence (as for the Sikh Nation, the Shoshone Nation, Jewish peoples, and so on).
If we are to support our own world body — and even an annual $100 from such groups as the permaculture and Earthbank associations would probably pay for an effective international registry and journal — we would need to define a clear project area and function for such a body.
It is certainly important for us to count our numbers and to see how many of us there are. Thus, to record, census, convene and to collate a global policy paper to guide all groups in their action would be an admirable first aim.
To set a true united body up needs an early agreement on basic ethics. Minimal ethics today, in global terms, would be about as follows:
- Earthcare ethics
- groups and associations devoted to conservation, rehabilitation, protection and defense of the world’s natural, biological, atmospheric, water and soil environments.
2. Peoplecare ethics
- Groups and associations devoted to the accountability of corporations, opposed to torture, terrorism and repression; supporting equal rights and representation, defending minority rights and caring for a defined group of disadvantaged people, health and peace etc.
3. Investment ethics
- groups and associations ‘putting their money where their mouth is’ — associations for ethical investment, the redirection of money and resources from aggression and unethical enterprises, the application of social, environmental and fiscal audits and accounting to all enterprises, the establishment of trusts, charities and active projects; investment of human effort, resources, and capital towards all three ethics stated.
If any group feels no conflict in subscribing to the above broad ethical base, or at present have formed to act in one or other part of such an ethic, then they belong to or would be eligible for membership in such a body. Almost all governments would be excluded on the basis of ‘no common ethic’, torture, repression of minorities, non-accountability or devotion of resources to war, as would terrorist groups and exploitive industries or corporations and their members.
I would guess that within the next few years, again by co-evolution — an idea whose time has come — such a body will be put in place by a group or association formed to do just that. Even six to eight people could manage such a service to ethical associations.
All of us could then subscribe to a more detailed ethic in the areas of our interest and set the stage for the replacement of governments and corporations by a global association of small groups, trusts and charities devoted to beneficial projects.
The main role of governments to date has been to create monstrous bureaucracies, armies and secret services. None of these are needed by the world.
30 Apr, 2018 | Remembering Bill in Print
The Lost Stories are Bill Mollison’s articles published in the print magazine originally named Permaculture, then International Permaculture Journal and finally the Permaculture International Journal that was published between 1978 and 2000.
All stories and other content ©Permaculture Australia unless otherwise noted.
Story by Bill Mollison, 1985.
Feature photo: Bill Mollison in Tasmania. Photograph ©David Holmgren.
NO SOONER HAD we launched the idea of a Trust-in-Aid to help get resources to people who would otherwise find it difficult to pay for one or two of our teachers to set up a local, trained permaculture group, than several things happened at once! (It is always the case.)
Firstly, some of our members and readers sent in a total of $2500 for the Trust. We have spent most of it in these ways:
- new permaculture groups in Spain, Chile, Zimbabwe and Nepal have received life subscriptions to the International Permaculture Journal, books, and other booklets and pamphlets
- $1000 will be used as partial fares to Nepal to teach a full two-week permaculture design course in Nepal in November ’86.
Secondly, not only the above groups, but small farmer groups in Portugal, Thailand and an ecumenical aid group in Lesotho also wrote in to request education or other material aid.
Some additional funds were routed to groups from our tree tithe funds which are derived from the sale of our permaculture books. Such funds were sent to and used by tribal forest groups in Tamil Nadu (India) and to our group in Spain. Both were for tree projects.
Lastly, Lowell and Natalie Strombeck of The Friends of Right Livelihood visited here in Stanley, Tasmania and offered to help raise funds for a foundation trust to serve the Trust-in-Aid purposes. We hope that their initiative is successful, but as usual we are determined to proceed to help in any case. We hope for (but must not depend on) outside help.
Photo accompanying the original article.
Jon Correa, one of our New Zealand graduates, has (amazingly) raised $8000-$12,000 by his own work and is off to live in Chile, where the resident study group is to welcome him. We have promised to somehow get to him with teachers once the need arises, probably in 1987.
A friend in Brazil (Reinhard Hubner) has pledged to fund my fares once our representative there (Julto Taborda) has set up a study group to host (and attend) a course there in Porte Alegre (Rio Grande do Sul).
In all, we have a modest, busy, useful influence in areas of need. Many groups have contacted us after obtaining our books or after reading an article in translation or after recommendations by students of previous courses.
We estimate that is costs us about $6000 to get literature, seed and teachers to remote groups (and still stay alive ourselves), but wherever we travel (as to the Permacutture Convergence) we are able to earn paid courses to fund visits to nearby groups in need, so that we can often spin the money earned out to cover needs for nearby courses in areas of need. This will not work, however, for areas such as Nepal, India, or Africa.
I would remind readers that we have now established a rainforest trust and that they can take shares in this trust, at the one hit preserving rainforest and also funding the Trust-in-Aid with part of the mantes earned, or interest from that money.
We are also racking our brains to find ways to develop reciprocal systems. One way we will be exploring in Nepal and Thailand is to employ or fund local people to research local technologies and ‘recipes’, to illustrate them, and to share in the English-language publishing profits.
Jan Correa will also be investigating ways to publish in Chile, and we have given groups in need free access to our journal articles for local sale. Jon will also be seeking to collect and sell Chilean seed to USA and Australian companies such as Abundant Life (USA) and Phoenix Seeds (Australia).
We can set up mutual fair trade systems, then local teachers can help self-fund their native institutes by earnings.
Vithal Rajan (Right Livelihood Foundation) is anxious, as are we, to see teachers from areas such as India used in other (Western) countries.I believe that this will happen as we develop local institutes.
Of course, graduates from local universities such as the Arab University will also serve their country’s interests locally.
There is no reason whatsoever why our own Earthbank groups cannot lend modest revolving fund seed money (at fair interest of 10 percent) to newly-formed third world groups for local projects which will pay (eg. seed collection). Money can travel anywhere for little cost!
What we do need are local graduates to handle that money responsibly, or local ethical groups accustomed to assessing good projects.
How to help
How can you help? In any number of ways: direct modest gifts, bequests, tree tithes on your products or interest-free loans to our Trust-in-Aid (you get back the capital at call, we keep the interest and you are not taxed on it).
We have also contacted our lawyer to attempt to obtain tax-deductible status for our Trust-in-aid, but with the government spending so much on widgets, keep your fingers crossed.
Perhaps you can aid by tapping other sources of funds such as those of Live Aid; we really don’t have time! You can also invest in Earthbank.
Meanwhile, at home, our Aboriginal graduates and teachers (chiefly David Blewett) are hard at work in our own Australian third world of malnutrition illness and distress.
Shirley Peastey and other gallant ladies are working in the Enfield Urban Farm project and Rex Stuart is hard at work in the Baroota (South Australia) alcohol rehabilitation farm gardens.
We have come a long way on our own efforts. We have a long way to go. We certainly need more teachers to cope with demands!
Ideas
At this time, we would see some ideal of aid as follows:
- Respond to a contact from people in need by sending journals, books, seed and encouraging them to set up a project or study group.
- If a course is requested, try to have the study group convene a capable local group to train as designers and teachers.
- Reach this group, sending in teachers for two to four weeks to establish a group of trainees, giving emphasis to local climate, soils, species, existing local NGOs and educational establishment.
- Try to raise local and assisted revolving funds to start up more local projects.
- Explore the potential for reciprocal enterprises, intended to self-fund future enterprises in the local area.
- Try to establish a local teaching institute to continue education locally.
- Try to get land and capital organised locally for demonstration projects.
- Keep contact and explore ways to increase reciprocal contact.
Editor’s note
Bill Mollison mentions Earthbank in this article. More on Earthbank here.
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19 Apr, 2018 | Remembering Bill in Print
The Lost Stories are Bill Mollison’s articles published in the print magazine originally named Permaculture, then International Permaculture Journal and finally the Permaculture International Journal that was published between 1978 and 2000.
All stories and other content ©Permaculture Australia unless otherwise noted.
Story by Bill Mollison, 1985. Edition 20.
Reaching the Third World
It is never too early to give people all the capacity to plan for self-reliance that it is possible for us to give.
In the case of the Permaculture Institute, this means teaching our design courses on home gardening, sustainable agriculture, forestry, communications, community money management, ethical investment, land trusteeship and commonsense enterprise management that are the subjects of our unique permaculture training courses.
We have taught some 600 people in Australia, the United States and Europe over the last five years since 1979, and I am proud of the work they are doing in all those fields of the course.
To achieve this, those of us working full-time for the Institute have foregone personal income to fund the legal structure, land base, library and dwellings of the Institute. We have taken ‘wages’ of from $19 (1979) to $38 (1985) a week to do so. But our slender personal resources have never enabled us to respond to requests from people who are really in trouble — requests from India, South America and Africa.
A new funding initiative
We now propose a new initiative. It would take us about $30,000 per year to support two part-time teachers and a full-time administrator/secretary ($10,000 per year). From those of us now at the Institute and those who have obtained their diplomas based on two years of applied work, we have such teachers available.
Some of us have managed to teach Aboriginal designers, American Indians (Pauite Reservation) and Mexican people. This is only possible where we earned the money to reach them by working on other projects. The fares and accommodation costs to reach most Third World areas prevents us from doing so on our own resources.
In every course we have taught we have made places for people who are financially disadvantaged, sometimes as scholarships, reduced fees, work for training (barter) or by some such strategy. Such students, although unable to pay, have made effective teachers or workers in their own right.
How do we commonly reach groups quite unable to pay? This has always been a problem for us.
We have decided to go for a trust fund and in our minds we would place an upper limit of $300,000 on such a fund. This fund would, from a fair ten percent interest on investment, pay for teachers to reach the third world and train 40 people there as permaculture designers every year. They would then have access to our network, publications, and would become teachers in their turn. In this way we can build up a body of local graduates in the poor areas of the world.
We are opening this fund as of now. It would mean that 300 of us find $1000, or 600 of us $500, or some of us bequeath our estates or give surplus resources such as land to the Institute for sale towards this fund. I am personatly bequeathing any of my share of publishing income from my forthcoming book to the fund. This alone could do it over the next decade, but why wait ten years?
Colin McQueen (a permaculture design course graduate) has given a 182 acre rainforest to the Institute for such a purpose. It is valued at $40,000, and we are trying to sell it to anyone who can pay to preserve it, and then place it in trust with the Rainforest Information Centre (John Seed and friends) at Lismore NSW for preservation and care.
We will set aside an estimated $2000-$4000 of this money to help them form a trust to receive the forest and to pay transfer costs, and an estimated $5000 to set up a tax-deductible institute for our own purposes. The probable remainder would be placed in trust for the third world teaching fund. So we have started.
With $300,000, the Institute would be a foundation. Interest from ethical investment ($30,000 per year) would enable us to pay all costs associated with teaching (administration, travel, accommodation, etc). Also, when we publish in the third world, we plan to give a local institute the income from our books to help them set up their library and home base. Our own earnings will continue to go into the Institute too, so we may be able to send up the three to four teaching trips a year as long as they are needed.
That’s our plan. Anyway you can help achieve it, please do so. While Andrew Jeeves, Reny Slay and myself would be teaching where we can, we would also expect to fund others to teach if and when they have the time and have a demand from people in trouble. We have, in our Earthbank system, ethical brokers and investors to handle any such trusts.
If we achieve our aims and are able to send out three to four teams a year to teach, then we foresee a time when the capital of the fund wouldn’t be needed. We would then consider suggestions for the dispersal of the capital. One possibility we favour is that the fund be dispersed to Third World institutes to support local teachers whom we will have trained.
I now call on all of us to find ways to achieve these goals of free extension to the Third World. The need is obvious — and urgent.
Meanwhile, wherever we have taught people, they can give local courses for people in need in their region, and this is also our aim in the Third World.
I will be sending this open letter to a few friends and perhaps you would do the same.
Progress on the Third World Teaching Trust will be posted in the journal.
My great admiration to all of you.
…Bill Mollison
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