Forests Towards an Ecocentrism for Food Security

NOTE: The following is an article I wrote for the February 2012 issue of the Peace Newsletter published by the Syracuse Peace Council.  This piece is also part of the in-class discussion I engage students with during the “Community Design” portion of the curriculum for the Community Training in Ecological Design course.  We are now finalizing registrations for the 2013 course (deadline to apply is Sunday January 27th at midnight – for details visit the Facebook event page at https://www.facebook.com/events/443712039011996  Following, I have included a brief press release for the course from earlier this Winter.  Please feel free to use either and/or both if you’d like to help us promote the course.  Best regards ~Frank

_____________________________________________

Forests Towards an Ecocentrism for Food Security

THE CURRENT THREAT

The world has just witnessed the international Year Of The Forest in 2011 declared by the United Nations.  The Vibrant Cities & Urban Forests Task Force, convened by the U.S. Forest Service, published their “National Call to Action” – a vision for how urban forests can serve our cities’ needs for health, social services, landscape design and economics.  As we are now choosing to speak for the forests, it is time to carry that voice into all aspects of life, including as an egalitarian means to human food needs.

Food security is threatened by numerous hierarchies that conflict with the goal of an ecological society.  Capitalism is perhaps the most glaring example – anti-ecological at its core due to massive amounts of material extraction and environmental degradation at the expense of exploited labor and natural resources health to maintain the domination over humans and nature.

The products, just as much as the actions perpetrated by capitalism, lead us further into a downward spiral of malnutrition from ubiquitous processed, nutrient-deficient food stuffs, maladjusted sensational marketing, and the bandying about of extended shelf-life provision commodities.  And further away from ecocentrism needed to develop an integral “phasing of nature into society”, predicated by the seminal thinking of Murray Bookchin, leading into an evolved and emancipated “free nature” humanity as the natural state of human and nature relations predicated on self-consciousness and intentionality through which justice can be foreseen.

FOREST GARDENING

Forest gardening provides one strategy against an ecological technocracy that requires hierarchical inequality for its preponderance.  The trends in current environmentalism tend to exist towards the status quo of resource development as a recurring necessity for economic growth – whether industrial production of biofuels through agricultural mechanization and relentless external inputs or the unbridled creation of high-tech management systems, for accomplishing the results that nature’s systems so readily provide already with only adequate human integration of understanding.

The Rahma Clinic Edible Forest Garden on South Salina Street in Syracuse is seeding the idea of forests as urban food resources utilizing principles of regenerative lifestyles and landscapes.  Permaculture design principles, best practices for accomplishing integration of human needs into the landscape based upon natural systems ecology, are being used to develop the 1/10th acre site.  Reflecting the health mission of the Rahma clinic, the forest garden will provide fruits and perennial vegetables to be picked and eaten as an alternative to the convenience foods found on most corners.  Rahma, meaning “mercy” in Arabic, is set to open clinic doors in 2012 and will offer free basic health care to the underserved.

PREMIERE SYSTEMS

Forest gardens are unparalleled food systems.  Temperate forests are among the most productive ecosystems (by measure of Net Primary Production), only falling behind tropical forests, swamps, marshes and estuaries, which are harder to come by along any street in the rust belt.  In a quantitative respect, forests are over twice as productive as single dimensional agricultural or garden land.

Forests also exhibit high levels of resiliency, a sense of existence that our neighborhoods are screaming out for.  Resiliency, the sustained ability of a system to respond to disturbances and retain function and structure, is exhibited throughout nature’s complex web of design. This design showcases that highly industrialized and manufactured materials from the current environmental vanguard of continued material progress are not necessary for system success and integrity of being.

The need for natural processes is being increasingly recognized in our society,  such as the increased popularity of green infrastructure.  Rain barrels, rain gardens, green roofs, porous pavement – as set forth by Onondaga County Save the Rain, are good examples of decentralized and  ecological sound, though at times one dimensional, solutions.  True resiliency is ensured by practices that are multidimensional, not just in the physical planes as forest gardens exhibit with vertical tiers and horizontal intercropping, but also in ecosystem and community services.

TRANSFORMING OUR SOCIAL FUTURE WHILE ENJOYING THE FRUITS OF OUR LABOR

A forest garden combines the best essences of green infrastructure’s ecosystem services with edibles production of traditional community gardening and reduction of input shepherded by hyper-localism; transforming our physical landscape into permanent resource, not permanent potential, and community landscape into permanent culture poised for ecologically social structural complexity.  Hence, allowing us to create resilient, stable food systems and empowering communities to prepare for the transition trifecta of economic instability, climate change, and peak oil currently presenting as the challenge of our generation and those to come.

As we as a species collectively move forward towards cooperation, our respect and release of nature from our domination must accompany this journey.   As we provide for our perennial food resources, we will also be providing for perennial ecocentric forest resources and an opportunity for increased comfort within nature.  Enabling ourselves through permaculture design ethics, people-care – planet-care – and fair-share of surplus, provides a framework for creating all future endeavors in the spirit of cohesive security among our neighbors.

_____________________________________________

For Immediate Release
Date: January 2, 2013
Contact: Frank Cetera, President, The Alchemical Nursery
frcetera@alchemicalnursery.org, 315-308-1372

The Community Training in Ecological Design (CTED) course is being offered for the second year in a row here in Syracuse, after successfully fielding a class of 30 citizen students during the Winter of 2012.  This Permaculture based class, a partnership between locally based Alchemical Nursery and the Finger Lakes Permaculture Institute (FLPI), teaches a land use design method to improve home scale food and forest production, to conserve resources, and save money.

SUNY-ESF Alum Frank Raymond Cetera thought he would be working in a rural district among tall trees and well worn dirt paths, instead he has found himself four years later still working among tall buildings and concrete roads and sidewalks.  But it hasn’t deterred him and his vision of an ecologically based lifestyle vision for our society.  In fact, he says “Urban residents need this training more than ever, and are hungry for examples and techniques they can use to create a greener tomorrow.”

Bringing Permaculture education to Central NY is only one way that The Alchemical Nursery is supporting eco-village and eco-social lifestyles.  The organization is also responsible for the implementation of the Edible Forest Garden at the newly opened Rahma Free Health Clinic at 3100 South Salina St, and has hosted numerous networking events such as the Upstate NY Permaculture Gathering which was held at The Gear Factory on the corner of W. Fayette and S. Geddes in 2010.

The CTED curriculum, developed by FLPI, enables the study of basic ecological principles and methods and how to use them to solve problems on your own home and landscape. Participants meet over a full weekend to open, and then once a week on Thursday evenings, to discuss the principles and techniques of Permaculture and ecology that help us make better choices for our land, families, and communities.  Class work includes a self-selected design project. Design your own backyard, garden space, vacant lot, field, forest, or even an entire neighborhood. Examples and applications will be presented in both a rural and increasingly urban context.

Cetera also holds a Permaculture Design Certificate which he received from the Hancock NY Permaculture Center in 2009, but has been a Permaculturalist since 1998 when he was a resident steward at Harmony House, an 83-acre Permaculture homestead in Slippery Rock, PA.  Cetera contends that “Bringing an ‘Ecology of Happiness’ and ‘Useful While Usable Landscapes’ to CNY transcends boundaries between neighborhoods, cultures, and politics while creating a permanent agriculture in our cities that can eventually alleviate issues of food justice and scarcity.”

The course fee is a sliding scale of $200-$400, three $100 scholarships are currently available on a need basis, and may be applied for during registration.  Classes begin with a full weekend on Saturday February 2 and Sunday February 3 from 10 am – 4 pm each day at the Westcott Community Center.  Classes then continue on Thursday evenings from 6 pm – 8:30 pm on February 7, 21, 28; March 7, 14, 21; April 4, 11, 18 at the Syracuse Educational Opportunity Center on New Street.  Details at www.alchemicalnursery.org.

# # #