Civilization and field agriculture reviewed

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Field agriculture is rooted in most of our minds as the best way for humans to live on Earth. Organic or not, it appears to me quite similar when I read texts like this one...

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From: Douglas Jack eco-montreal@mcgill.ca

O R C H A R D F O O D - P R O D U C T I O N E F F I C I E N C I E S
GUIDELINES FOR OPERATING A FORESTED EARTH

Advantages of continental & global return to:
INDIGENOUS (>Latin = ‘Self-Generating’) MULTILEVEL ORCHARD-TREE FOREST & field based AGRICULTURE & GOVERNANCE.***

TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE
A. Multi-Level ORCHARD FORESTS
Food sources determine Civilization 1
Manifest Destiny 2
Displacing orchard peoples 2
Sylvalizations 3
Comparative Productivity 3
Calculating harvest volume 4
About the author 4

B. Gaia’s Ten ORCHARD Culture Gifts
a) Solar Energy Photosynthesis 5
b) Roots pump water, minerals & nutrients 5
c) Bio-sphere’s creation of weather 5
d) Bio-Atmospheric Water Transfer, 6
e) No-till Agriculture 6
f) Oxygenation of water and air 6
g) Humidification of air 6
h) Storage of water 6
i) Moderation of air temperature 7
j) Tree wood storage of toxins 7

C. WELCOMING PEOPLE
Food production determines self-concept 7
Sylvalization starts with people 8
Law of the Great Peace, Kaienerekowa 8
Economic Democracy 8
Two Row Wampum 9
Wampum string-bead value 9
Vision-Quest 10
Indigenous Economy 10
Great White Tree of Peace 11
Community Mapping 11
Ecology 12
Longhouse or Pueblo Living 12
Feminism 12
Medicine Wheel 13
Elders 13
Voluntary Simplicity 14
Capital – Socialist Co-dependency 14
The cycle of giving and receiving 14
Waiting at the Wood’s Edge 14
Attitudes of scarcity and over-population 15

D. TREE PEOPLE
Recommendation 15
References 16 - 20
Acknowledgements & CONTACT 20 - 22

Section A only copied below. Write a mail to the author for the whole text.


A. Multi-LEVEL ORCHARD FORESTS
FOOD SOURCES DETERMINE CIVILIZATION

We constantly renew our relationship with each other and to the earth through our food. Our vision of ‘civilization’ (derived from Latin ‘civis’ = ‘people of the city’) and the debate on ecology is based in a western worldview, which ennobles western field-dominant agriculture as the world’s most advanced efficient system of food harvesting. While generalities aren’t fair, contrary to the myths field/cereal croppers have engendered, Indigenous Peoples very often lived in great cities. Indigenous food is often deliberately harvested from a diversity of Multi-level Orchard tree and field crops growing in often densely populated communities. ***Boreal forest and arctic communities require a separate ecological analysis.

Field/cereal croppers routinely cut down trees that get in the way of extended field-crops of cereal (wheat, barley, oats, rye etc.) grains and vegetables. Field-cropper protein comes from domestic animals fed cereal/grass and carbohydrates from cereal or root crops. Pioneers are proud to break land for crops and human habitation. Yet analysis of comparative productivity, leads one to conclude that pioneers cut multi-level orchards from ignorance of multi-dimensional living resources and 3 - dimensional planning. One concludes that planning for living resources is beyond the mental capacity of the colonial militarised thinker.

All of our science, our school systems and every ‘field-of-study’ start with a foundation of field agriculture as the assumed backbone of our economic system. We consider ourselves at the peak of species evolution. Field-food production and the security it purportedly affords are considered the foundation for every blessing we receive. There is a production-reality feedback loop that is entirely missing in this colonial scheme of things.

MANIFEST DESTINY
The very notion of civilization as understood by western tradition is founded on the development of field agriculture in Babylonia, passing to the Middle-east, Egypt, to Greece, to Rome, to Europe. In the Americas, we study historical advance passing from Britain (North America), France (Quebec), Portugal (Brazil) and Spain (Latin). Considering a whole world of historical influences, this select national inter-pretation of history or ‘manifest destiny’ or represents a dominant world view by conquerors required by field / cereal cropping.

All of our calculations on food production, the blessing of industrialisation, energy use, medicine, transportation, democracy in the western sense, foreign policy, mainstream scientific pursuits, education and war are based in comparative advantages of our system supposedly gained through our advanced field agriculture and animal husbandry.

These advantages are considered strengths of our ‘evolved’ dominance, which supposedly brought the unity needed for world advancement. Without this imposed unity, it is assumed that critical masses of people working together for their mutual benefit could never have been achieved.

At the same time civilization has pretensions of fair dealings, rule of law, kindness and gentile relations. Yet the contradiction of violence used to subject indigenous and other peoples is usually justified by the concept of economic efficiencies and the benefits accrued to everyone, so we continue to need to subjugate nature and citizens at every moment.

DISPLACING ORCHARD PEOPLES
As we break the land, indigenous peoples are driven off and indigenous plants and animals displaced. Cutting down the forest alters weather patterns and eliminates the water holding capacity of the land, air-humidity creating capacity of plants, stable soil-state of permanent tree and plant cover, solar absorbing capacity of the canopy, bounty and privacy creation of forest space, food plentitude of tree products and other life, wind calming and climate moderating.

Destruction of nature’s services leads field/cereal croppers to mechanical solutions of every sort for irrigation, respiratory difficulty, sun and rain shelter, clothing, health, enmity, irrigation, transport and energy, which in turn have had their own consequences.
The progressive subjugation and elimination of indigenous peoples starting 6,000 years ago, was a time of great change for earth’s people. Let us have a look at the way we think about this period, the period since, some basic scientific facts and our assumptions.

6000 years ago Babylon was covered as were much of Persia, Israel, Egypt, North Africa, Greece, Italy, Europe and the America’s with large orchard-tree forests. The indigenous people living in these forests enjoyed enormous reliable sustainable forest productivity of tree nuts, seeds, fruit, leaf-greens, animals, complementary low lying herbs, vegetables, berries, mushrooms, algae, fish, molluscs water and water plants.

Indigenous orchard tree forest productivity is legendary and still forms a key support of exogenous peoples ever since. We continually fail to supply our basic needs from our own exogenous resource productivity and rely on exploitive trade practices with an ever depleting Third World ecology harvested for our First world economic desires.

‘SYLVALIZATIONS’ (derived from the Latin ‘Sylva’ meaning wood or forest)
Great ecological cities existed in the indigenous orchard forests of Australia, Africa, Asia, South, Central and North America. These sylvalizations may have existed over time periods of millions of years. When Columbus arrived in 1492, the Americas held the largest cities of the world. During Cortez’ subjugation of Tenochtitlan the island city of Mexico City’s 350,000 people, and 29 million in the Valley of Mexico, he describes the cleanliness of its water and streets. Graphic systems of writing with Native and other indigenous peoples throughout the world have been buried under epidemics, burning of libraries and exogenous (> Latin = ‘other-generated’) expansion wars. Oral systems of historical recall, which complemented the written graphics and involved specialized story tellers with thousands of years of community history recall, have been lost through this social-degradation. In the nomadic suburban television generation of today, recall of appropriate family and community information reaches barely one generation (~30 years)

Field-crop dependent nation propaganda denigrates by calling the indigenous period, “savage” (derived from the Latin meaning ‘People of the forest’). What we know about this period is filtered through field-crop worldview that forest peoples were savage, brutal, primitive, half starving with unreliable food production based in the whims of nature.

COMPARATIVE PRODUCTIVITY
I owned a ten acre orchard during the 70's, worked in orchards and grown food for 34 years. I have worked in the Natural Food system, lived and worked with indigenous peoples over 37 years. Western Field and Cereal-based agriculture is unaware that it is ten times, 10 x, 1000% less productive of proteins and carbohydrates and other food stuffs than Orchard nut, seed, and fruit tree culture heritage of millions of years and still honoured by Indigenous Nations. If one considers the other food, housing, clothing, animal, warmth and health material production from the forest, we can understand cereal / field agriculture as being one hundred times, 100x, 10,000% less productive.

As long as Europeans are completely self-referencing (Chauvinistic) or fixated on our own Field Crop post-Indigenous ‘exogenous’ society, we will never understand how the earth, sun and human culture works. We have been taught to ignore this period as unproductive and therefore have never considered its strengths.

CALCULATING HARVEST VOLUME
Many common sorts of tree seeds are edible and can play a role in our well-being. If you want to gain an idea of how productive trees are go outside and calculate the production of a Maple tree’s seed. People do eat maple seed with some transformative processes. I don’t recommend maple although they are tasty if properly sprouted and processed. The goal of this calculation is to estimate the production of a giant three dimensional canopy because canopies are similar across oak (acorns) butternut, chestnut, hazelnut and other nut trees. Contrast this volume with what you have seen of linear wheat, barley, rye, oats, buckwheat and corn fields. Experience in cereal harvest points to a 1/10th harvest volume.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I owned an orchard in Deer Park, British Columbia on the Arrow Lake in British Columbia during the 1970's. I lived in and worked with orchards (apple, peach, cherry, pear, plum, hazelnut, walnut, grapes) of the West Kootenay, Dukobour & Mennonite communities. I worked in the orchards of the Okanogan Valley, East Kootenays and a grain farm in Ontario. I worked in provincial networks of Natural Food Co-operative Wholesale and Retail for fifteen years in British Columbia and Quebec.

I have organic gardened since 1971 in Idaho, British Columbia & Quebec following the training of Back-to-the-landers, Dukobour, Mennonite and neighbours of all sorts as well as reading ‘Organic Gardening Magazine. I’ve preserved (canned, pickled, sweetened, salted) fruits and vegetables in most regards, built food dryers and operated them in orchards and in farmers' markets. I have cooked for large groups of people while tree planting.

I have planted well in excess of 100,000 trees in reforestation projects. I have spent these decades studying and harvesting wild fruits and herbs, including a number from trees. I have encouraged wild species to grow and more fully fruit with compost, mulch, water etc.

I have travelled extensively by bicycle (noticing details) in the farm lands of California, Oregon, Washington State, Idaho, Montana, Vermont, Quebec and Ontario. During this time I have harvested Almond, Loquat, Pine-nut, Fig, Date, Cactus-Prickly-Pear, and sixty other tree products listed in the Acknowledgements section p19. I've travelled hitchhiking (interviewing drivers) further and stayed in different communities of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Maine, New Hampshire, New York across Canada and the USA several times.

What I have seen is that the volume harvested from Orchard trees (three dimensions) far exceeds that of two-dimensional Field/Cereal crops. The difference can be understood between how much fruit or seed is available from a two-dimensional surface-plane and then how much fruit, seed or nuts are available from a three-dimensional harvesting volume. The estimates that I have gathered from my own observations and reflected in literature from UNESCO studies is that Orchard multi-story Carbohydrate / Protein harvest is ten times that of Field only cropping. I have also become aware that our monocrop Orchards while greater in production don't approach the productivity of carefully managed multiple story Orchard cropping as a small number of First Nation communities still practice.