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My recent food harvesting metaphor keeps on bearing fruit!
I arrive at a workshop to see a buffet of fruit.
Tasty, but I wager none of it is local and most only half of it is in season.
So what we have is a system that is very good and delivering out of season fruit from far away while local, in-season fruit wilts on the trees.
If you were to start from a blank sheet of paper you wouldn’t design this.
A system that is efficient and scaled up in every step.
And absurd in its outcome.
A blog-writing gift from the universe.
A moment after I submitted my last post, the customer service attendant on the train came past and apologised that they didn’t have any food available.
But outside, just beyond the platform at Didcot Parkway station, the hedgerows are groaning with fruit.
So what would it take to get that fruit in here?
Well, there’d need to be a hedgerow fruit-picking company. This company would need to train its staff on the safe handling of fruit in the railway environment.
The fruit would then need to be transported to a logistics hub, sensibly by train but more likely by road.
There would need to be a food logistics processing hub, probably located centrally for transport convenience but potentially a long way from the fruit bush and the fruit eater.
All this transport means the fruit might spoil, so it needs to be put in plastic packaging, which requires its own supply chain of oil extraction, government lobbying, single-use plastic manufacture and waste gathering and processing stream.
Because it’s fresh fruit, it also needs cold storage. So now we need refrigerants, which means another supply chain.
All of this would need to be coordinated by a rail catering logistics company, complete with departments for HR, finance, compliance, managerial oversight and operations.
The fruit, picked, packaged and chilled, would then need to be re-transported to local train catering distribution hubs in Bristol and Swindon, from which stock levels can be managed using GPS-enabled (yep, satellites) apps on every train trolley.
Finally, the blackberries on the trolley, they can now be served, as long as the card reader can get reception.
Quite a journey for blackberries that are mere metres away.
Of course this is all silly. But then again, I’m not convinced the way we organise our economy is all that sensible.
This is the essence of the intensification paradox – more scale leading to more layers and multiplying costs. The scaling of each part of the system enables a profit to be extracted, but the overall burden is increased.
If we want systems that enable us to live within planetary boundaries, then we need systems that can:
Catering blackberries aside, these are the sorts of question the regenerative designer works with:
Close your laptop. Postpone your meetings!
For something amazing is happening in the hedgerows in the south of Britain. You may have noticed that they are laden with fruit. Crab apples like little red lanterns. The surprise of the yellows, purples and greens of so many mirabels, damsons and plums. Blackberries about to burst on the scene, like the negatives of 10,000 fairly lights. And the fattening of soon-to-be-ripe apples.
Of course, bearing fruit is usually an annual fixture. But in my part of England this year’s harvest in parks, hedgerows and allotments is particularly heavy. Even the tree at the end of my garden which hasn’t fruited for seven years is laden ripening damsons.
Why is this? It could be that the combination of wet and dry that we had in the spring means this is a particularly good year for fruit. This could also be a mast year, one in which trees produce extra fruit in order to ensure the animals that eat them leave some behind to turn into seeds.
Whatever the reason, the fruit is there for the picking, eating, pickling, bottling, jamming and, importantly, the sharing.
That’s the thing with abundance. It often comes on its own timetable. There can be plenty for everyone but we don’t get to control it. Instead we need to swim with the peak and prepare our community for the trough that inevitably follows.
Save your meeting for the dip! Consign report writing for leaner times!
Yesterday I wrote about the seven levels of a forest garden. I learnt about these at a talk given in the forest garden at Coed Hills Rural Arts Centre. The forest garden there is a flourishing, food producing space, but it hadn’t always been so. We heard how in 2009 the garden had been a field. And so how did the field become the thriving place we see today?
I’m interested in this question because it tells of taking active measures to create flourishing places. Left to its own devices the space would have brambled over, trees would have taken root and eventually the field would have become wood. But through active intervention, the team have created a space that is more flourishing than dense woodland would be — productive and in balance with its ecosystem.
Key early moves include designing the space for the way the light falls. Forest gardens have lots of openings to let in the light, and so this structure needs to be thought about from the start.
Another key factor was slowing down water that would run across the site in a storm and directing it through a series of swales. This was another dramatic intervention but one that has protected the soil from erosion and created ponds and multiple habitats.
And finally, the team spoke about the work of holding things in balance until a natural balance could be achieved. For example, until the high trees grow tall, there can be too much light and the ground level plants grow out of control. Again this speaks to an active intervention needed in the transtion from a monoculture to a thriving polyculture.
Most of the time, when humans build stuff, we have a negative overall impact on the world. Some say the best thing we can do is to stand back and let nature do its thing. But models such as forest gardening show how we can actively work with ecosystems to meet our needs while creating greater flourishing. We need to find the analogous models in construction, for example, for sourcing our construction materials. And we need to recognise that creating these supply chains will take many years of work before they can exist in harmony.
Today we held the third session for Cohort 2 at the Regenerative Design Lab (RDL).
Our monthly online sessions offer a platform for participants to discuss and digest the reflective work they’ve engaged in over the past month. Additionally, in these sessions we host skill development activities designed to bolster our understanding of regenerative practices.
Continue reading “Systems Mapping and Abundance Thinking: A Glimpse into RDL Cohort 2 Session 3”