Sense-Making in a Changing World

Episode 50: Polish Permaculture with AgroPermaLab and Morag Gamble

July 13, 2021 Morag Gamble: Permaculture Education Institute Season 2 Episode 50
Sense-Making in a Changing World
Episode 50: Polish Permaculture with AgroPermaLab and Morag Gamble
Sense-making in a Changing World with Morag Gamble
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Show Notes Transcript

Welcome to this wonderful conversation on the 50th podcast episode of Sense-Making in a Changing World hosted the Permaculture Education Institute.

I am joined by two wonderful permaculture educators and designers from the AgroPermaLab in Poland - co-founder/, Joanna Bojczewska and urban gardener/educator/activist Klaudia Kryńska - both social anthropologists.

The way they are sharing permaculture embraces cultural and artistic dimensions and inspires people to engage, think and act differently. The way they are approaching permaculture education embraces traditional culture, contemporary culture, climate emergency and creativity.

AGRO-PERMA-LAB is a grassroots organisation, integrating political and popular education in Agroecology, Permaculture and Food Sovereignty. They create innovative training for community leaders, activists and educators; develop community research tools and publish audio-visual materials.

I became aware of the work of AgroPermaLab at the International Forum of Permaculture Educators in May and was immediately fascinated.  AgroPermaLab co-hosted this event with Biennale Warszawa.

In our podcast conversation Joanne and Klaudia also talk about their amazing digital project - The Supermarket Museum: Living Together within Limits.

I hope you enjoy this conversation just as much as I did.

Listen to the video version here.

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Morag Gamble:

Welcome to the Sense-making in a Changing World Podcast, where we explore the kind of thinking we need to navigate a positive way forward. I’m your host Morag Gamble.. Permaculture Educator, and Global Ambassador, Filmmaker, Eco villager, Food Forester, Mother, Practivist and all-around lover of thinking, communicating and acting regeneratively. For a long time it's been clear to me that to shift trajectory to a thriving one planet way of life we first need to shift our thinking. The way we perceive ourselves in relation to nature, self, and community is the core. So this is true now more than ever. And even the way change is changing, is changing. Unprecedented changes are happening all around us at a rapid pace. So how do we make sense of this? To know which way to turn, to know what action to focus on? So our efforts are worthwhile and nourishing and are working towards resilience, and reconnection. What better way to make sense than to join together with others in open generative conversation. In this podcast, I'll share conversations with my friends and colleagues, people who inspire and challenge me in their ways of thinking, connecting and acting. These wonderful people are thinkers, doers, activists, scholars, writers, leaders, farmers, educators, people whose work informs permaculture and spark the imagination of what a post-COVID, climate-resilient, socially just future could look like. Their ideas and projects help us to make sense in this changing world to compost and digest the ideas and to nurture the fertile ground for new ideas, connections and actions. Together we'll open up conversations in the world of permaculture design, regenerative thinking community action, earth repair, eco-literacy, and much more. I can't wait to share these conversations with you..

Morag:

Over the last three decades of personally making sense of the multiple crises we face. I always returned to the practical and positive world of permaculture with its ethics of earth care, people care and fair share. I've seen firsthand how adaptable and responsive it can be in all contexts from urban to rural, from refugee camps to suburbs. It helps people make sense of what's happening around them and to learn accessible design tools, to shape their habitat positively and to contribute to cultural and ecological regeneration. This is why I've created the Permaculture Educators Program to help thousands of people to become permaculture teachers everywhere through an interactive online dual certificate of permaculture design and teaching. We sponsor global Permayouth programs, women's self help groups in the Global South and teens in refugee camps. So anyway, this podcast is sponsored by the Permaculture Education Institute and our Permaculture Educators Program. If you'd like to find more about permaculture, I've created a four-part permaculture video series to explain what permaculture is and also how you can make it your livelihood as well as your way of life. We'd love to invite you to join a wonderfully inspiring, friendly, and supportive global learning community. So I welcome you to share each of these conversations, and I'd also like to suggest you create a local conversation circle to explore the ideas shared in each show and discuss together how this makes sense in your local community and environment. I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land in which I meet and speak with you today, the Gubbi Gubbi people and pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging.

Morag Gamble:

I'm delighted to share with you this episode. I have with me two guests from the innovative AgroPermaLab in Poland, Joanna Bojczewska. I'm sorry Joanna, that's probably not right. And Klaudia Kryńska, they are bringing together permaculture, agroecology, food sovereignty, education, arts, and activism. The AgroPermaLab foundation is a grassroots organization. And I first came across them when they organized the International Forum of Permaculture Educators this year. And this was co-hosted with the Biennale Warszawa. And I'm so delighted to chat with them today to learn more about what's going on with permaculture in Poland, and also the bigger picture of what's happening around that, and also to be inspired by the direction in which they're taking their permaculture education and their thinking. One of their new projects, which is really fascinating and which we talk about later on in this conversation, is their new project, the Supermarket Museum: Living Together Within Limits. I just so love this chat, and I really feel like I made some new friends in this show, and I know that we're going to keep up this conversation. So I hope you enjoy this conversation just as much as I did.

Morag:

It's my delight to welcome to the show today Klaudia and Joanna from AgroPermaLab. Now I came across their work when I was, as you do, searching around the internet for really fascinating and interesting things that are happening in the world. And I came across their International Forum of Permaculture Educators and, you know, running the Permaculture Education Institute is immediately piqued my interest. And then I started exploring what they've got going on. And so I thought I need to talk to these wonderful women because they got so many amazing perspectives on how to share permaculture in the world, which is really innovative. And I think this is, you know, often when we think about permaculture, it's just about what's going on in the garden, but there's that, and there's so much more, and that's why I was really excited to see the work that you're doing and really excited to talk more so welcome to the show. So I thought maybe a good spot to start would be, what's actually happening in your part of the world in terms of permaculture. So you're in Poland and what's permaculture like in Poland, what’s a Polish permaculture?

Klaudia:

Maybe I'll start because I’m in Warsaw. I’m a Warsaw-based gardener. So in Poland we have two paths like rural and urban and I think that in the past 18 months, I can observe that more and more people in the city are interested in permaculture. I think that the pandemic, or at least it's beginning changed our approach to the food itself and permaculture stepped in when people were looking for the ways of growing food on their own, in the small home scale so that's, I think that's the most interesting things now in Poland that more and more people are involved in this urban permaculture and they're trying to practice it in their allotment gardens or even in their balconies and terraces. And so it's very interesting and impressive and at the same time, we have also groups of people who have their own land in the countryside and they decide to join the permaculture movement. And so we also do have like these eco villages and people who have, I would call them cooperatives, like food cooperatives and they work together in using the tools of permaculture. So these two paths, urban and rural involvements.

Morag:

Wonderful. Did you want to add anything to that Joanna cause there's lots of questions that I'd like to dive in your follow up on that. But before I do, just to get your perspective on where things are at,

Joanna :

I think Klaudia gave a really good sense of on how the most recent two years have impacted the zeal for returning to the lands, like coming back to basics, taking care of your own food growing, but in also in a bigger context, Poland has quite a special place in Europe because we are centrally located as a country geopolitically, historically. And so, the gap of the generation that has known how to grow food was connected deeply to the peasant culture of the countryside. The allotment culture has not faded away yet. So this gap is much smaller to bridge, unlike in some other Western countries where there might be perhaps two or three generations of people who have specialized in other areas of work. So that's one thing. And perhaps another thing to say that this permaculture movement in Poland or this, you know, just natural growing of a network of practitioners is maybe around 15 years old, going back to some of the real pioneers in Poland who are just doing their own thing somewhere on the map. Right now we have the permaculture map of Poland. We've dotted with different farms, educational centers and we have the first PDC inspired online course that is just being completed. We have a small publisher who's translating books. We have you know first training in cities, et cetera. However, it's worth saying because we've only had one, in those few decades, only one PDC training as far as common word goes. So we are, there are probably some teachers who are getting ready to collaborate and offer operative kind of longer training and our organization is apparently interested in supporting all kinds of little and bigger movements to make permaculture available in all domains of life, but also to make permaculture education, which is much more experiential, practical, transpiring through different areas of life as well, different domains, different sectors. Yeah.

Morag:

Fantastic. Oh, that's so exciting, publishers and online courses and all sorts. And before I get into that, I just wanted to touch base with what you mentioned Klaudia about allotments and ecovillages. So I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions about that. So with the allotments, are they quite large allotments with like, little houses on them? Is it that style or is it more like little pocket ones like in Australia and allotment for us would be something that's not much larger than the bench that I'm sitting at, you know, so for you, an allotment is something quite different. So the question with that is, how do people, like do many people access allotments? Is there a preponderance of allotments or people are like really struggling to get their hands on one now that it is so popular, what's the allotment world and how much of that, how much permaculture is going on in allotments?

Klaudia:

So I think that there was something in the middle of something between bench and the huge pile of land, something I think in the middle and its origin is in a probably, people of the Republic of Poland. So they were popular back then in the nineties after the transformation, people started, they resigned to grow food there and started to plant only flowers and decorative trees. And now during the pandemic of COVID-19 many people wanted to have such allotment gardens to plant food there, to grow their own food. So now allotments are becoming more and more popular. And as Joanna said, there are two generations there. So elderly people who remember the times of communism and the times where food producing or home food growing, was very popular. On the other side, we have the young people who can gain knowledge from their grandparents who are still alive and they're focused on growing their own food. So they also want to relax on their allotment, but their main goal, their main aim is to produce food there. And while they are producing food, they're constantly seeking for natural tools, natural methods of doing this because they don't want to, they're very aware of climate change. They’re very aware of such important issues as water shortage, for example. So they, I think in these fields, they're really more aware than their parents were and while they're trying to tackle these problems like I've mentioned for example, water shortage, they are looking for natural methods and they find permaculture. So permaculture is one of the tools for them. And in Warsaw, we have quite a huge increase of interest in the allotment gardens and they can cost up to, I don't know, 20,000 or even more, or even 50,000 now. So yeah, these are huge prices. And this is one of the cons o f.

Morag:

Do people own these, or are they renting them or like how

Klaudia:

They’re renting it but to rent you have to have this amount of money.

Morag:

Yeah. So with the people who are moving out of the city, you mentioned that, and you talked about the ecovillage idea and there's cooperatives, is that moving into villages that might not have been, and that might've been abandoned. Is that something that's in your country or is it more just going out to the land where there's vacant land and starting up something new?

Klaudia:

Hmm. I'm not sure if we, in Poland, we do not have abandoned villages. Still. We have many people living in countryside and growing food. Of course, there is a mega trend that this urbanization trend that people are moving to the cities and districts, it's really visible nowadays, but still we do have farmers, peasants and this knowledge is passed on from one generation to another. So we do not have abandoned villages, but more like vacant lands as you said. So people, especially from the cities, which are interested in permaculture and which are very environmentally aware and, they're looking for such lands in the countryside and they're moving there with their friends, with the group of friends, not on their own. That is very common nowadays.

Morag:

So Joanna, you mentioned the connection with the peasant history of your country. And,I'm wondering whether permaculture, people coming to permaculture are seeing it as a kind of form of neo-peasantry, or is there a relationship with that or is it like, is there a particular Polish way of being in permaculture, do you think, is it different, or I wonder?

Joanna :

That's a great question, actually. Part of what inspired me to address this blending of different cultures and different ways of speaking about nature or about innovation in land use or food growing is that there are multiple cultures. And for sure now, as this trend of picking up permaculture and just setting your raised beds and growing food, you know, within a few months has shoot-off permaculture can mean quite little. It can also mean quite a lot when you're going through the design and the philosophy and even spiritual aspects of it. But in terms of integrating, I think it's present. I think there is a simultaneous recovery and reappreciation of our indigenous ways of processing food, creating landscapes. Y ou must contextualize, perhaps to feel it a little bit more that Poland and Italy and Romania all together have 50% of small farms in Europe. So it means that we have so many small dotted parcels of land that have been generationally handed over and are marked by the regional tradition and by the regional, well, it's by origin, by the territorial resources, et cetera. So there's the peasant culture with all its technology that was very economical, very resourceful, very unwasteful. It is there bubbling, but of course it's been replaced. It has been stigmatized by communists. It has been, in the second wave, stigmatized by a new capitalist aspiration. And yet the way we are trying to bring ourselves back into connection is by, on the one hand, bringing the, what is fashionable in a way, which is permaculture, there’s a lot, like a wealth of resources, there's a wealth of experience from other countries in the world and from the international community. Th at's why we also did the forum. And on the other hand, we're trying to speak the language of agroecology because our society is structurally rural and peasant. So it kind of you know, transpires through all layers of our being culturally in terms of ethics. There's, I guess there's that, you know, like in so many Polish households, like, it will be almost sinful to waste food, like literally, uh, even if people live in apartment buildings, they will have their little preserved stock for the winter. And nowadays it became much more fashionable during the pandemic. People started baking bread again, which just isn't so far off. So all these things I think are available. And this integration with permaculture of peasant culture is still not clearly visible. We are more able to relate the peasant culture to agro-ecological framework, the agriculture movement from food sovereignty movements in the world that stresses community aspect of knowledge making, knowledge sharing of land use, of a food being a central part of relationships and not a commodity and not just the raw material for production. So really, whether you're a big farmer or a small farmer, the point is that we are serving a social function, actually the food growing and landcare is social. So just to finish, there's a stigma, there's a lot of[inaudible] culture, something archived, but I think there's space for rekindling the gifts of that indigenous ways of knowing the environment actually.

Morag:

Yeah. Yeah. I was going to ask you, thank you. Oh sorry, go ahead, Klaudia.

Klaudia:

Just to add one thing to what Joanna said, I think we're in an interesting moment right now as we are trying to get our roots back and get ourselves rid of this, of shame and it is connected with living or being from the countryside because in the nineties, and it is linked with capitalism. And I think it was a shame to have such roots. And now we're in this process of transition of getting back to the admiration of, maybe another version, but accepting that this is our history and this is us. So there's nothing to be ashamed of.

Morag:

No, and this is, you know, what a gift actually to be not so far away from it, you don't have to dig too far or scratch the surface too far to be able to find it. And to know that there's people around in your living community that have this deep knowledge, which is just amazing. So I wanted to just touch on what something you said Joanna about agroecology and permaculture, and maybe you could just make, like, define or describe your distinction between the two and how, I kind of got a sense that you feel that the peasant community might be more open to the agroecological approaches as opposed to permaculture. And I just wanted you to kind of open that one up a bit more, like, what is the difference you see, and what do you think might be some of the barriers to permaculture or how it's perceived possibly? Yeah, just if you could kind of play with that a bit.

Joanna :

Yeah. We can play about with Klaudia who compliment me. This will be just one perspective of course, but it's a great question. Like what barriers or opportunities both terms and ideas about those cultures present? I mean, first of all, I think of course I will just take a little broader, which I think is that, when we speak about, when we use one or the other framework for describing what we do with the land, how we manage this, how we organize ourselves, I mean, they can be a little exclusive in themselves. So once you settle into a framework, then you identify with this and you, especially if there's an economic aspect to what you do, then it becomes meaningful to be coherent within that, but actually people will speak very different languages about what they're doing. And now, just to mention some key defining features from how we see from the Polish space permaculture or agroecology. I mean, there's also regenerative farming, organic farming, right. And agriculture will say, well, agriculture is anything from the traditional, in the indigenous way to regenerative farming, organic, certified and non-certified peasants, pastoralism fisheries. I mean, anything within agriculture, because these are systems that intelligently mimic positive ecological patterns whilst applying them to manage landscape, let's say right for food production specifically, but not all. And for biodiversity for soil restoration, permaculture will say something similar where we have, we are the design foundation based on three principles of ethics that is aimed at recreating regenerative abundance, you know, spaces where humans and other beings and components of environment can co-exist abundantly in wellbeing and amplify each other's goodness, you know, in very basic ways, right. The Permaculture community has been very, very grassroots. And I think the other, it stays more or less balanced between, from what I can observed from Polish perspective, worldwide, let's say between this very kind of an anarchic spirit, a local innovation, authentic thing in my own compound or in my own community to like the commercial part of it that has created new job descriptions from a designer to consultant, to teacher, to you know, what else can you have like a podcaster you could, I mean, you could really base your work on spreading that philosophy and practice agroecology in my view, permaculture, except for few places, for example, in Portugal where the Tamera community has been used in Tamera has been used as an example in state policy has not entered very much that public policy domain, whereas agroecology with its very specific accent on popular and political education and the empowerment of citizens to shape their own environments and create good mechanism for self-government governance as the basis based on solidarity, based on mutual aid, like, based on respect for food producers, fundamental respect for food producers who are feeding us. And the fact that agroecology has been simultaneously defined by FAO, Food and Agriculture Organization of United Nations and by a mass movement of peasants by La Via Campesina Movement is still the largest social movement in the world gathering organizations from, I don't know if it's not 130 countries or something. I mean, this is a grassroot peasant organization with maybe Indonesians counting, Indonesia organization counting as many as a few dozen, I mean a few hundred thousand people, right? It's a very big move. And therefore there is an accent on a system change much more and there's many more mechanisms developed to really stand and fight for our rights. It's a right, a human rights based system. Recently, about two years ago, this movement, the food sovereignty movement, agroecological movement, they are interrelated. They oppose, basically they oppose a trade-based World Trade Organization, defined food system where food is just you know, how do you call it, the import export commodity or our food needs are defined based just on calorie intake. So you can feed me whatever you want. As long as I get 1,500 calories, this is not what we want. So yeah, this is, they are principally not different. They have so many different interlinking core principles from the ecological, biological mimicry through interlacing many functions, closing cycles, empowering community, looking at the community as an ecosystem, but agroecology has much more of an accent on political system change and permaculture has it, but it's a little more on community level, I would say, or, and maybe Klaudia, you wanted to add something that.

Klaudia:

I am on the same page as, as Joanna and I would totally agree that permaculture has great tools, but agroecology is more about an impact on policy, on policymakers and is a huge movement that can empower peasants and indigenous people so I think that that's the main difference, but permaculture also goes beyond the idea of single farm. It's also, it should be a huge movement that calls for cooperation, because for me that's the most important and in permaculture, these connections between the particular elements of the system. I can speak from my own experience, that's a few years ago, I had some, let's call it a quarter life crisis, and six years ago.

Morag:

I think I had one of those too.

Klaudia:

So you know what I'm talking about. I’m going to find myself in the community garden at the local culture center run by my friends, and it was a place of total freedom for us, a place for gardening experiments. And we invited many permaculture practitioners and learned new techniques and practices in our daily work on an ongoing basis. So we built raised beds, compost heaps, and it started too much. We started to work with the soil as to nourish it, not to dig it. So at first glance permaculture for me, these were just techniques, methods that I can use to grow foods naturally, but we did not call it permaculture then, we did some things really intuitively but when I started digging deeper and to when we browsed through websites and books, I really, what I've found really appealing. It was the approach that permaculture cares for the people as much as it cares for the environment, for the earth. So I think in these terms, we can say that the permaculture also is a huge movement that can have an impact on politics on policymakers. But I would agree with Joanna that in Poland, agroecology can be a more suitable for country areas. Yeah.

Morag:

For talking at a different level, I guess there's different languages that you use in different ways. And that, like you're saying there's a lot of in steeping between these different concepts and in some ways they're inseparable, but around the ages, there's something that is different, I guess, in how they're described or how they're perceived and how, like you're saying, there's this great big movement behind the agroecology, that has recognition at a UN level and the government level and so on. And so I wonder, you know, what is the policy? I mean, sorry, this is a little bit off track, but does your government have an agricultural policy that supports regenerative, sustainable agro-ecological types of growing? Sorry, I should ask a particular one of you.

Klaudia:

That’s a tough question, I think.

Joanna :

Yeah. It's a great question. I mean, there's a, maybe it's really hard to know where to begin or does it have, is there an attention to let's say organic regenerative farming? There's some, yes, but the political agricultural scene is very much dominated by a kind of mechanization lobby and industrial farming lobby. So that's for sure, it's kind of small scale matters agenda or small farm that can feed us is largely neglected. But the government, actually, we, for example, countrywide, we do have a center of agricultural advisory centers actually in almost every parish or every small region. And they do have an organic farming program. There are organic farms, organic demonstration farms and educational farms. And they are very well supported. I mean, I think there are maybe five or six hundred members by now. So dotted across Poland that makes it quite accessible work. Let's say, 20 to 30 farms, principally for education of young people, schools and adults in one province. And the interest is there, it's like, but within institutions, there are battles for narratives. Right? So for example, the center for agriculture advisory has offered us to write educational scripts for teaching permaculture on farms and seed education scripts, and agrobiodiversity. But yet when we wanted to put into one article, the fact that 70% of food worldwide is still produced by small producers. They didn't want to put it there. Like I've produced a long list of reports, worldwide reports by UN departments and independent researchers. And they didn't want to take it because there's a, they are on above, right. But again, and this looks like an example, the allotment association, this is a very old structure. One of the oldest associations in power, maybe it has more than half a century or maybe 60 years. I'm not sure now, but they have picked up permaculture. They are creating their own, now there's more articles in their monthly magazine, which you get in paper as an allotment keeper. So, you know, it's how many, I think is around 500,000 little allotments or more in Poland, it's quite a big number. And they create their own podcasts. And they saw that the permaculture is our new way of speaking about managing the small space. So yes, the institutional can bend but a white system to write something into law, like let there be a city budget for creating like annually five new, large community gardening spaces or something. I mean, this kind of people's food policy as it was made in the UK, for example, it's the civil society sector is filling the gap for now. Yeah.

Morag:

Yeah. I wonder whether the food forest concept too is coming in or like the community food forest model is emerging there too, or is it mostly just vegetables and herbs and annuals and things?

Klaudia:

Yeah, I would say mostly vegetables and herbs, not fruit forest, fruit forest are not very typical for Polish countryside, I would say. Or maybe Joanna or you have other experiences.

Joanna :

I think you are right. I mean, we would have a variety of perennial fruiting, or even vegetable plants in the gardens traditionally, and the allotments, you know, they have all their old varieties, nice trees and bushes et cetera, but it's not as the forest garden principle is already elaborated elsewhere. I think now there's, again, we are having the first book translated in Poland about forest gardening by Thomas Regnault. This is going to be the beginning of probably offering some training and really bringing them, no this is not because actually we're talking about connecting plans and then like, you know, a subsequent kind of design of management in time that is different from annual management. Even I cannot say I have big experience with the forest garden.

Morag:

Oh, that's really interesting that there's new publishing that’s happening and that Thomas's book is coming. That's great. Yeah. Really exciting. So I wanted to ask you more about the work that you do in your organization. So maybe if you could tell us a little bit about what it is and when you started it and what are some of the projects, I know you've got a couple of really interesting projects that are on the boil at the moment. Do you want to just speak to some of those and maybe tag team between each other to respond?

Joanna :

Okay, maybe I'll start with the roots and Klaudia can go with the shoots. Well, the AgroPermaLab has emerged as a training branch of the food sovereignty network of communities, organizations. So we saw that whilst we are bringing some new concepts and knowledge and practices, we also need to strengthen the organizational capacities of community leaders. And so our organization's main mission is really to empower education for the development of permaculture, agroecology and food sovereignty, but also to strengthen this intersectorial sense of collaboration. And we do it in a few, initially, we assumed we'll do it in several ways. One is through creating like residential trainings that are based on dialogue, a lot about meeting different ways of knowing, meeting people from different sectors and taking a topic like agroecology in a global and Polish perspective and engaging agroecology and women's rights or agroecology and economics or so this is how it's, this is how it started. And the special thing about this is that when we meet, we bring trainers who meet us as equals in that dialogue. So they bring a little bit of, let's say expert or special, maybe not expert, but specialized perspective based on the long experience of working with a topic. For example, in seed, we've had Ben Gable from a heritage seed catalog from the UK, we had Maria Carrascosa from the Spanish community Seed Bank Network. We had, I think Catherine from heritage seed library from garden organics from the UK, and also our Polish speakers who are activists or educators special or knowers of some area. We also have this idea of working as a lab and going a little bit to the edge and meeting in the area where no one is quite yet. Sure what is becoming or what is it going to mean and how to translate it into the system perspective, into personal perspective, into community perspective? We work with synergy. So for example, we try to bring agroecology and permaculture together and they're like, okay, how do they brush against each other? How do they like each other? How do they compliment each other? So this is based on conversation, but an important thing, for example, has been that our trainings, except for this year, COVID when the seed training was online, we placed it on the farms. So part of the training is not just all the time worldly exchange or lectures, or actually, there’s no lectures, but like kind of dialogue. It gets quite intense when people fully listen to each other and review each other with concerns and outlooks, but also practical farm work so that when we come out of the classroom where we are actually, we can let go. We can have informal conversations. This is part of the publications, you know, also some little films. And maybe I heard over to.

Klaudia:

Apart from the seed training that Joanna already mentioned. We also organized this International Educators Forum, Permaculture Educators and this is the event that you've mentioned at the beginning. And it was the first event of its kind, I think in Poland because due to COVID, we had to conduct it online. But thanks to that, we also managed to provide an opportunity to share the knowledge and to meet with people who are already pioneers or active leaders in permaculture fields around the world, and they wouldn't be able to come to Warsaw. So, it was a great opportunity to meet them online, at least, and it was a real eye opener for me because during this forum, I had an opportunity to join the lecture of Rosemary Morrow. And I think I said a few words about it previously because she said that permaculture needs redefinition in the today's societies, because we are used to permaculture as a, as a method that can be implied in on the farms, in ecovillages, but Rosemary has a huge expertise and the experience in working with refugees in refugee camps. And she thinks that nowadays, we have to find solutions that can be used in crowded places, on small plots of land, such as refugee camps. And permaculture has to be translated to illiterate people, for people who cannot read. So we have to think about permaculture as something without books, without money wells, but with a large amount, for example, all the visual materials or podcasts such as such as yours which will enable these people to learn, so new permaculture for more crowded, maybe urban areas for new groups of people is needed. So that was very eye opening for me during this forum, and I think that such a, that much more ideas such as Rosemary's appeared on this forum. And it was very, very, interesting and now we are, our ongoing project, which we're counting days to the premiere of, is a Supermarket Museum Project, this is a web dock, a digital exhibition, I would say that aims at answering the question is how can we live in modern societies as they are within given limits of the planet, of the earth, of the environment of the climate and its explores and interprets the supermarket culture, which is linked with the industrial agriculture, monoculture. So it tackles the problem of lack of social solidarity, economical solidarity. And it tries to answer the question, how can we change that? And it also presents the alternatives.

Morag:

So is this like, as an exhibition? Is that like, including art pieces? Is it multimedia? What does it look like? I mean, this is fantastic because it shifts the way that we're thinking about and communicating permaculture using different forms of culture. So yeah. How, what is it going to, is there a preview of like, of just, yeah. What do you expect, or what can people expect to see when they enter into this?

Joanna :

Great, thank you for appreciating the possibilities for new ways of communication. For me, when we were thinking about this project a year, over a year ago, it was becoming very obvious that we are getting a little bit worn out of using all the time, the same way of talking and that we need to subvert something and maybe collaborate with the artists who really reveal mystic truths. You know, they can communicate without words right into the depth of you without you being able to know exactly what is going on. You have to discover yourself again. So, yes, the web dock as an online exhibition will be a possibility to enter a map or actually like a supermarket space, where you can hover around different alleys and shelves. And it's all made with simple drawing lines but there will be pop up windows that lead you into artists artifacts. So, real artists from Europe who have, actually from all around the world. I think there are 11 nationalities from three different continents. It was quite a small collective of artists, but those artists have not been previously much exposed to the topic of economical or environmental justice in relationship to supermarket culture or the food growing innovations, growing from the grassroots up. So you get like some interesting interpretations and quite thought provoking, for example, a supermarket VR, it's a story of going through a supermarket as if with the VR set on your eyes and picking produce and getting the full scan in few seconds of where this egg came from, how many chicken factories, so you get the upload and you get a success.[inaudible] our trailer. And maybe we send you a link as well, where the Czech artists have found this record of the ex president and ex prime minister.

Klaudia:

Yes, the prime, Prime minister of Czech Republic.

Joanna :

When he describes his first experience of going into the supermarket, after the economic transformation into capitalism, and she says, and you go on, there are these lines long, long, long, and you go and looking for something. And I couldn't find a yogurt when you see this, like quite hilarious, and then we have the garden. So what we want to do is level the critique and bring to awareness what no one wants to know about, which is which we all know about the environmental and social cost of our convenience culture. But on the other hand, we want to show, Hey, there's like actually a lot of interesting stuff going on. There's community gardens, community-supported agriculture co-ops. And we present a garden map with some innovative philosophical take on food growing with migrants,with more growing in schools, food growing as a way to develop ecosystemic ethics and intelligence and you know, just like an educational space, but I hope also transformative space. When you

Morag:

Sounds magnificent, it's going to be an English version, or is it, oh it is. So whenever you can share a link to that, I would love to share that out. It's absolutely brilliant. And then really diving into kind of like the whole politics of our food system, and seeing that backstory of our food and giving more of a platform for why and how we can be moving forward. So that's absolutely brilliant. What is your hope for permaculture in Poland and where you would like to see it take you then, maybe you could start Klaudia and then you could say goodbye,got to go and zip off.

Klaudia:

I would love to hear what Joanna will say, what are her dreams, but Joanna uses this term often, Part-time gardener. And I think this is one of my biggest dreams that in like 10 years from now, everyone will be a part-time gardener and everyone will be somehow involved in permaculture. So it can be as we said previously, you can be a designer, a podcaster, a teacher, and a gardener, a farmer, there's a whole range of activities that you can involve. And so yeah, this is my dream. And Another one is that, policymakers will listen to people who are from the permaculture society and listen to their needs and listen to what is holding us back and what are our perspectives. So I hope that the government, not only certain institutions, but governments will listen to us.

Morag:

Fantastic. I hope so, too. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here, Klaudia. It's just been wonderful to meet you.

Klaudia:

Thank you for having me here. And yeah.

Morag:

So I know you've got to go now, so yeah. Feel free to duck off whenever you need to. Yeah. Thank you.

Klaudia:

Bye. Thanks once again.

Morag:

So Joanna, your, what you hope for the future and where you see permaculture emerging in your world?

Joanna :

Yeah. Klaudia named it, and this is not my idea of the part part-time gardener. It's just what is, for example, in South America, where in certain regions and countries where people, you know, they always remain farmers. Maybe they moved to another job for a time being, but they know they can always lean back and come back and they can support some kind of food growing, life growing activity. For me, I think the main dream will be more fundamentally about re-definition of growth and redirecting of our idea of growth towards completely other set of values that are aimed at material as ecological well-being like materiality interpreted through ecological lens in almost all cases with input impacts, implications, needs of all elements of ecosystem. And another one will be to redirect our sense of what we strive for or what we want towards a higher non-material goals, which is, you know, a pleasure out of a mutual connection, a sense of being able to be relaxed and are rested and spend time with family and friends and not work our lives away for money, which we have to pay for electricity for everything that we spend so much, because we are in this unidirectional system that pretends that it does not have an end terminus, which is capitalism, as far as I see in this current hyperinflated version, because capitalist as an, in being industrial or entrepreneurial, it’s not good, it's our nature to want to innovate and bring things into optimal working condition. So I think these things are critical. And I would say that in the future of permaculture reality, that this permaculture really shapes educational systems, it enters health care sensitivities. It defines profiling of next political candidates together with psychotherapy. I would say that I'd like to see three main capitals becoming really societal capitals, which is soil, which is knowledge and seeds. Because through seeds we can connect to all the diversity that we are losing and without soil, we cannot grow anything. And without the knowledge, appropriate knowledge and free open source knowledge in the commons we are going to stay dependent or we'll lose channels of transmitting or spaces where knowledge can be shared because actually you cannot learn farming or gardening from books alone. It takes several seasons of like figuring out, getting surprised and adjusting your body to physical, skilled physical work with plants or with the soil. So these three capitals, I think, seeds, soil, and knowledge or society, you could say society.

Morag:

Seed, soil, society

Joanna :

Seed, soil and society and I recently watched it. And I think it's spot on that there's this also, what[inaudible] or Gary Snyder we're pointing to the pioneers of this ecological transition that we have to make in ourselves as much as in the systems is like, I forgot right now that I wanted to say but es, it's the spiritual, it's actually the spiritual aspect, this kind of a quiet thing down of our human being so that we actually can feel the nature on the outside being continuous with us right now, there's, I will finish it with,we need to address this separation that enables us to treat the outside of us as mirror object, objective material stage for our infinite mindless innovations. We need to really take, and zen master said, the whole earth is my entire body. If we start treating earth or the extension of our body.

Morag:

Who said that did you say?

Joanna :

Dogen, Master Dogen

Morag:

I love that.

Joanna :

The whole earth, the earth is my, not even whole body but the entire body, to break these boundaries, it takes some time of, yeah.

Morag:

And so I think, you know, like what you've just been describing there is really that, like, that is kind of the bigger picture of the higher purpose or what it is that is the sense of where we're moving towards. And in a way, really things like permaculture, agroecology, are kind of pathways or ways of seeing and ways of being that can actually help us to move in that direction and help to do that reconnection work, because we have had that separation. And it's kind of really the bringing together, lots of different things that can help us to find our way back home.

Joanna :

Yes. I have been so inspired recently, surprisingly by the case of Bhutan, which has instead of having the gross domestic productivity product GDP measure, they use the gross national happiness, and they have defined it in nine different elements. And Julia Kim, if anyone is interested to check it out, the center for, I think it's called Center For Wellbeing of Bhutan or Center for Happiness of Bhutan. I mean, this is really amazing because the policy is designed in this country in the way that whatever next decision is being made, it needs to measure the impact, the nine areas of impact on the environment, on the individual wellbeing, on wellbeing in different groups of age groups, for example, they do not have normal tourism. They have only, they have mainly ecotourism. They have 60% of land in Bhutan is preserved as forest and will not be touched. I mean, this is, you.

Morag:

It’s so different, isn't it? It's so different, yeah I agree.

Joanna :

This is just to finish with a very inspiring example. I don't know how far they have been engaging or using permaculture but I think it will be completely congruent with.

Morag:

I think maybe that's, you've inspired me too, there's someone who I came across, who is involved in that work deeply, who's part of the Ecovillage Network and an ambassador of the eco villages. And I'm also part of that network. So you've inspired me to go and seek out to have conversations around that too. Thank you for reminding me. That's wonderful. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. Joanna, it's been an absolute delight hearing about your work and really innovative ways of sharing permaculture, and just to see, to hear your perspectives on that. And, you know, I think something that really grabbed me went right early on in the conversation was when you talked about being indigenous in your land and that you have that deep sense of connectivity where you are, I mean, as a recent arrival in Australia that, you know, I don't have that connection. I mean, I'm cultivating that connection here, but it's not that ancient connection with this land. There is an ancient connection I'm learning as much as I possibly can but there's a difference. And so that's, I found that fascinating too. And to know that that connection is so close and so tangible, and it just, I feel really hopeful that through agroecology and through permaculture and that there's a way of that connection being made andthe knowledge, the deep knowledge of place, not being lost. And that's just, you know, the language, culture, place, the rich, and deep connection that happens when you have that kind of knowledge passed on is just amazing. So thank you again, thank you so much. And I look forward to staying in touch and hearing more about your exhibition and, and joining in on that. And we will be putting for people who are listening, we're going to put all the links below to all the different projects and work and how to get in touch with Joanna and her programs and projects. And that will all be down below. So if anyone wants to follow up more about this work, I'm sure you'd be very happy for people to get in touch or to go and visit your websites and things like that.

Joanna :

Thank you Morag and thank you for this connection to Australia at this point. And for asking us questions that help to reflect and reflect more broadly, this is very, very inspiring, and we also wish you good vital work with clarity in your vision. So thanks and good luck.

Morag:

Thank you. Thanks so much. That's all for today. Thanks so much for joining me. If you like a copy of my top 10 books to read, click the link below, pop in your email, and I'll send it straight to you. You can also watch this interview over on my YouTube channel. I'll put the link below as well, and don't forget to subscribe, leave a comment, and if you've enjoyed it, please consider giving me a star rating. Believe it or not, the more people do this. The more podcasts bots will discover this little podcast. So thanks again. And I'll see you again next week.