Measurements towards best practices in land use (spanish)

Notas del editor

• #3: Good morning. We might all get hungry. Thank you for resisting here anyway. I will propose you in the following a framework for deciding on best practices in land use. Being a farmer myself, the question which of the current paradigms between industrial agriculture, ecologic farming and permaculture, is most benefial is an essential question. Most subsidies and global measurements in agriculture and agribusiness are determined in monetary terms and we felt that this was insufficient. This is, how the following research was started last April as an Open Source Research Network between friends in the relevant sectors and university departments. In the following seven short points, I will give you a short overview about my background and the theory of community learning on which this research is based (1). I resume general assumptions and questions (2) and will present you the research framework (3) and the chosen approaches to answer these questions (4). In the second part I introduce the theory and methods, that lie behind this research (5) and state which are the proposed measurements I consider relevant to monitore. The last point gives you an overlook over the research process (7).
• #4: Community Learning
• #5: A few word on the background. I am a business manager, actively doing projects in agribusiness and related sectors. I study at the SMC University in Switzerland Diplomacy and Political Economy and I am currently writing my doctoral dissertation in the field of Discourse Ethis. My personal approach is based on Habermasian discourse ethics, Schutzian sociology, Vygotskian psychology and Menger’s Value theory, which you will also se reflected in here. Most of these theories are also reflected in the programmes of the European Community and highly valued by international organizations like UNESCO and the United Nations. In the academic field, I approach states and societies as learning communities and I am most interested in leadership and management of its constitutional process. In the business filed, I understand business much broader than just exchange of goods, rather I see business networks and markets as learning communities. The role of technology in these processes is conceived as “tool & result” in the Vygotskian sense. At the right side you see the conceptual spheres of the three pillars of sustainability as defined by the IUCN and the community learning process based on MIT professor Peter Senger.
• #6: The impulse in community learning comes from doubt about common solutions, failures in prediction and conflicting interests. The approach aims to focus on science as a tool to communicate problems and create awareness in the larger community.
• #7: Today we just have to turn on the radio and we are invaded with disastrous news in the economical, political, social and environmental field. All these relate in one way or the other with the way we use our land.
• #8: Once an impulse is given, in community learning we intent to find new solutions through a communicative circle. Current knowledge has not suddenly lost validity. Usually, the measures and data are right, but they are not longer understood under the existing paradigms. According Habermas enlightment, i.e. new solutions and a new understanding of the «truth» is only found within a participatory process. This leads us to consider that problems with the environment require an approach in which nature becomes a participant and not a mere object.
• #9: In a last step within the community learning process, helped by a physical place as a constant throughout time, mutual asertion of identities and their transformation can be made visible and factible. This place is the farm land, or just land.
• #10: “In nature's economy the currency is not money, it is life.” (Vandana Shiva) “C’est lorsqu’on est privé des choses qu’on les apprécie, et quand on a rien, on apprécie tout.” (Waris Dirie) “Education is life” (John Dewey) These are some of the statements that lead us to the following resaerch questions.
• #11: Goals, Assumptions & Research Question
• #12: Aims UN development goals Green economy Food autonomy Sustainably use of biocapacity and biosphere Strategic goals Bottom-up Scientifically validated Individual, self-reliant evaluation Understandable to all stakeholders
• #13: Assumptions are: a) Measurement in monetary terms insufficient. b) Measurements must account for all the three pillars of sustainability. c) Monetary currencies are not a common language between ecology & economy From this result questions like: a) How is life measured b) What have the three pillars in common? c) How to measure life objectively?
• #14: Research Framework
• #15: This graph shows the carbon cycle, which is one of the central systems within the environmental balance of our planet. In the outer circle we see the production circle in agribusiness as part of the socio-economic system in human life. A central point of both cycles is the soil. Since around 200 years we know about the Jevons Paradox, that states that more efficiency will not solve (necessarily) problems of shortage in material resources. If we want to use technologies in order to harmonize de imbalance between human needs and natural systems we must link them to human behavior.
• #16: This slide gives an overview about the three pillars of sustainability, which are elements of the discursive learning process. I will not go into details here. But I want to show the well known complexity and how much interrelated these three pillars are with each other.
• #17: In our opinion, a posible solution must comply with the following requirements: Objective terms understandable and accepted by all discoursive partners Common language between human sphere and other species (environment) From tecnological solutions towards discourse: Tools (signs and symbols) Tecniques (language grammar) Discourse (learning by communicative interaction – CLIL / discoursive or dialogical learning) Science as an inquiry-based teaching approach to humans (from the planet’s perspective) Theory of practice (lier, 1996) The world as a learning community Objective measurements: Triple crop approach for economic-ecologic cycles (Ecological footprint) Livelihood approach (Human subsistence needs) Balance and diversity of biosphere Self-defined happiness and cultural wealth
• #18: Approach
• #19: For our measurements we wanted quantitative findings, because it is the only way we could interact with nature on a basis that all human societies would accept. Qualitative facts, even about phenomena of the biosphere, are always subjective in the sense that they are always stated from a human point of view, an interpretation rather than the “voic of nature”. However, for social aspects and human needs, the subjective measurement is the more validated. We all know, that an objectively well fed human being can still commit suicide. These two approaches should be weighted in a discoursive process. To achieve this we chose three approaches: the Ecological Footprint for objective measurements about the biosphere, the livelihood approach for the social sphere and the community learning process for a combined evaluation.
• #20: Most of you are probably even more experience with the Footprint Approach than myself. As you know there are several elements like caring capacity of the soil, ecological health of water and air and biodiversity. The starting point in our project is the soil quality of a land and diversity and productivity of the living beings (including human beings) that live on and from this land.
• #21: The Livelihood Approachs has been developed for the proper self-management of autonome communties. It is the human focus on nature and what we take from it for subsistence and cultural tools and how we engage with nature as our living space, environment and in some cases also as a communicative other.
• #22: The third Approach is Community Learning, as already introduced above. The main goal in community learning is to find common standards, a language or a common grammar so to speak in order to communicate within a self-defined community with the aim to solve problems. This self-defined community should embrace very divergent parties like large cooperations in agribusiness (e.g. DuPont, Monsanto, Syngenta and similar), local, regional global institutions, governments and interest groups and of course the rural communities and farmers living directly on agricultural land. On the other hand, the process should include nature in the way to give nature a participatory voice, through which we can learn what nature requires to prosper in order that we may have a prosperous live.
• #23: Theory and Method
• #24: As a starting point we focus on semi-desertic rural communities as a self-defined group of human persons that live and produce together. The central question is to learn what wealth is and how it is best controled. The strucuturing place is the communities land, as a geographically defined space. We will start with four measurements a quantitative and a qualitative for the requirements of the land and a quantitative and a qualitative for the requirements of the human community and compare their relative development.
• #25: Out of the the human needs we take fundamental subsistence needs as quantitative measurements of the human persons. These needs are water and calories for food, shelter and housing. The other human needs regard qualitative measurements of the community which are measured according self-defined goals.
• #26: On the side of the land we measure energy balance of the biomass and land quality. Water and air may be monitored but are not the focus here. Biodiversity and balance of the processes (energy cycle, water cycle, carbon cycle) serve as qualitative indicators. Key stone species are one possibility to monitor the healthiness of the ecosystem.
• #27: In order to decide which of the agricultural practices are best for us and our land we had first to define it. Based on a common use in American agribusiness we use the definition of crops for land products and categorized it into three different crops.
• #28: Food crop, which includes all land produce grown for food, feed and related products like energy for cooking. Energy crop, required for clothing, climatizing the build environment, for machines, transport and similar. Cash crop, is everything produced in order to be exchanged outside the community. Usually it is converted into monetary currencies which are later exchanged for goods that cannot be produced by the community or seems uninteresting to them.
• #30: Our framework or learning tool is resumed here again. We have the choice between industrial agriculture, organic farming and permaculture. These categories may possibly be amended in the future. We monitor quantitative and qualitative measurements about a defined space and a defined community and compare them over time. We do not consider comparison between different communities and lands since we feel that this comparison is not possible based on the knowledge we have. But measurements should be scientifically valid.
• #32: As stated at the beginning, we planned this research on private iniciative of farmers in Spain, Switzerland and Turkey and do it as an Open Research Network, on own efforts. This presentations is also a call for contribution to find critics, improvements and interested partners who want to participate and share our work. A full research plan is developed and freely available open request. Hopefully, it will be improved through praxis and new contributions in the near future. At the current stage we are selecting communities which serve as models for measurements in order to start the monitoring process.