Potato potato - Greek crisis breeds Permaculture and Marx is proven right (again)

I am about to start a course in Permaculture design, and am trying to read up on the topic. So I was thrilled to see Permaculture ideas in action in crisis-struck Greece.

Permaculture is an attempt to answer the fundamental issues of our time in a coherent way - how can we live without depleting the Earth's resources. Be it oil, phosphorus, benign climate conditions or top soil - if we keep on the current trajectory, it will be very hard to generate food enough to feed humanity 50 years form now.

How could we arrange things differently? The answer that Permaculture gives is that since gardening is an incredibly efficient way to produce food, we must base our food consumption on local gardening, not global monoculture agriculture and food chains.


What can not be produced in the consumers own gardens, will have to be bought on the market of course. But it will be bought by nearby farmers, with a relation to the consumers.

Traditionally, high costs of transportation made it more profitable to sell potatoes to your neighbour than to foreign citizens. Today, there are a number of initiatives to achieve this. One is that customers "subscribe" to a farmers produce, pay a bill and receive a certain amount of potatoes each Friday.
Another is that a number of consumers get together and do the farming themselves and share the produce. Hopefully that will not be so much work per participant.

A third way is CSA - community supported agriculture. Wikipedia defines CSA as "a particular network or association of individuals who have pledged to support one or more local farms, with growers and consumers sharing the risks and benefits of food production".

I very much think that this is how we will get our food in the near future, so I have been browsing for similar projects in Sweden. There are some, run by idealists, but it is still a very new movement. In other places it is already becoming the norm.

The Guardian is reporting that a new movement is taking shape in Greece, where local authorities help linking local farmers with local consumers. Buyers and sellers then get together at local fairs and exchange goods and money. Farmers get paid instantly, and consumers get food much cheaper than in the Supermarket.



The Greek potato movement could be an idea straight from a Permaculture textbook. But as Marx would have pointed out - this revolution is not created by idealist radicals, but by the grim realities of a capitalist crisis. Permaculture is a very non-Marxist movement, emphasising individual life style choices over political action and ignorant of social classes. But I think Marx fundamental analysis - that the ideas do not become real because they  are good, but because they are economically necessary is right. Fortunately, Permaculture might be such an idea.

Boom

I live in Sofia. Every morning I leave my girlfriends flat in the asolute center and take the tram to the neighbouring Pliska district, an office district, still kind of central.

Sofia is booming,and has been so constantly since I came here. Building projects are everywhere. It is not difficult to understand why - still most people live in sadly underisolated communist block houses, that would be perfectly square if they were properly built, which they are not. With a major remont these flats can be made to rather cosy homes, and obviously there is a huge interest in DIY shops in this part of Europe, an interest that most likely has contributed to IKEA'Ss brilliant sales in Romania. Bulgarians are still waiting for their IKEA, and it would be here today if it wasn't for the financial crisis.

Crisis isn't exactly the first thing that comes to your ming when you see his frenetical building spree. But what if the whole thing is real? What if people like Michael J. Panzer are true - their thesis being that we are still far from any bottom, and the different bailout programs are like taking painkillers against a broken leg and keep walking. Everybody knows that building projects are a favourite mean of money washing world wide, so also in Bulgaria. So maybe the real economy is not so important as it looks on the paper... but still.

I sometimes have the feeling that these emerging economies are bubbles that might burst. Next to my girlfriend's flat Serdika center is now being built, promising to be the biggest shopping mall on the Balkan peninsula.

In a city that already has (at least three) shopping malls, and an average income of 200 EUR per month.In a country whith a GNP ten times smaller than in Sweden,where a three room flat have roughly the same price. Milk and clothing as well. Cars are more expensive than in Sweden - yet the streets of Sofia are completely crowded with them. Who buys this? Where do the money come from?

Economists warn that commercial real estate, like Serdika center will be the next collapsing market. If unemployments increases, or stablilizes on higher than now levels, consumers will probably not spend so much as they were calculated to spend. If they don't do it in the states, they will stop doing it in Bulgaria also, eventually.

Noone knows. In fact, never before has Bulgaria been an integrated part in a crising world economy, so how could we know? On my way I see some nice house, deeply necessary.

But I am never far from abandoned building projects like these... memento mori.

Sofia is so much. We can speculate as much as we will. But in the end Sofia, like any city, is nothing but a snapshot of human life.

Is the crisis coming to Bulgaria?

The much talked about international economical crisis has so far been invisible in Bulgaria, at least in Sofia. During the weekend, however, I personally spoke to some persons that spoke about increasing unemployment. Many international observers fear the effects of a jobs crisis in eastern and central Europe, fearing that it will raise the spectre of populism and hatred against minorities.

In Romanian Cotidianul I also read about an alarming increase in kidnappings in Bulgaria. Romanian media tend to be quick to report about whatever is not rigght in Bulgaria, but it does for sure not sound nice.

Hungary is on the front page of the New York Times today, in a feature article of violence against Roma people. And this film from slovakia, showing policemen humiliating roma boys has caused some outcry.


I hope the Bulgarians can keep it together. We're all in this together.