Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
'horrible stuff, horrible!', whereas I was thinking that from a cow's point of view it looked
really tasty.
In the absence of any comprehensive land use strategy of their own, it is understandable
that many vegans should gravitate towards a theory promoting the view that perennials
such as trees and shrubs can be highly productive. This is not true of all vegans. The stock-
free grower's magazine Growing Green International , is wary of adopting the permacul-
ture label, and promotes 'vegan-organic' agriculture. But the sheer volume of vegans at the
radical end of the UK spectrum seeking an agricultural expression for their dietary beliefs
has, I fear, skewed permaculture in a graminophobic direction. If this is the case, the alli-
ance between the vegan movement and the permaculture movement is potentially helpful
to veganism, but doesn't offer anything to permaculture - the one is parasitic upon the oth-
er.
Perhaps this is happening because everybody is too polite to discuss the matter properly.
There sometimes seems to be a gentleman's agreement within the permaculture movement
that differences between meat-eating and vegan permaculturists should be glossed over.
Nobody, to my knowledge has attempted to examine this fault line publicly. There have
been a few spats in the letters column of the UK-based Permaculture magazine, but the
editor, Maddy Harland, tells me that a few years ago she (understandably) got bored with
publishing vegan and anti-vegan rants.
This polite reticence is in evidence in a 60 page booklet called Permaculture, A Begin-
ner's Guide , written by Graham Burnett. Burnett is an active campaigner against meat-eat-
ing: he has written another pamphlet entitled Well Fed - Not an Animal Dead! 29 But his
guide to permaculture breathes not a word of his vegan beliefs, not at least until we get
to page 50, where there is a mention of the excessive amount of land devoted to animal
raising and the entirely reasonable suggestion that 'if we are to reduce our environment-
al impact we will all need to think about life-styles which are less dependent upon animal
products and the inputs these entail'. In the spirit of politeness which pervades the public
debate (though not private conversations), he adds, 'not everybody might be ready or want
to make such changes'. Other than that, there is not a single mention of domestic animals
in his entire book, except for ducks kept to eat slugs. A plan drawn for a farm in a cool
temperate zone shows areas for orchards, cereals grown in clover, vegetable crops, forest
garden, woodland etc., but no pasture and not an animal in sight.
There is nothing wrong with Burnett's brand of vegan permaculture and there is no reas-
on why this farm could not function successfully and contribute to a society which is less
dependent upon animal products. Burnett's book would be fine if it was called Vegan Per-
maculture: A Beginners Guide . I don't think he is meaning to deceive, I think he is just
being polite. But as it stands the topic gives the beginner a distorted picture of what perma-
culture is or could be.
 
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