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| Musings on Permaculture and a Raw Food Diet As you have found this page, you have proven your interest in the subject already, however slight. There is no need to explain to you why agroforestry and permaculture (A/P) are an answer to – if not ‘life, the universe and everything’, then, well, ‘life’ at least. It was while reflecting on the magnificence of nature and our ability to mimic some of its systems to our benefit that I wondered, as a vegan myself, and an environmentalist, whether raw food veganism was a feasible extension of the process that led me from omnivore to veggie to vegan all those years ago.  I met a gentleman last month who was a vegan but who had ‘converted’ to raw food. It felt strange to be the one asking: “So… what do you eat then?” as even now, when celebrities and pop stars have brought it into the mainstream, I am asked the same question about my vegan diet. His answer troubled me then and still does. His morning smoothie comprised banana, avocado, flaxseed oil, and fresh or frozen berries. Lunch was a salad of plenty of greens and other vegetables with perhaps some bean sprouts and soaked nuts. Dinner was a variation of the same. Raw juices that included wheatgrass, sesame and other seeds and so on also punctuated the day. All organically grown, of course. I mentally tallied the daily cost of all that then multiplied it by the four in our household and came up with our weekly food budget. OK… We all make our choices. He could afford it; it sat lightly on his conscience. But I couldn’t and it didn’t sit lightly on mine: air freighting, hot housing or freezing all those exotic foods was certainly not the most sustainable practice. I didn’t voice this at the time. I wish I had: it would have made for an interesting debate.
At home I discovered a copy of “Nature’s First Law: the Raw Food Diet” (serendipity strikes again), which is considered by some to be the modern ‘bible’ on raw food eating. It was written by three Californians, who have access to fantastic fresh food pretty well all year round by virtue of their climate and perhaps economies of scale – even in organic production. The key points of their argument are compelling: I shan’t list them, but the reference is given for anyone who wishes to read the text. It was inspiring, and my enthusiasm led me to wonder if it was a possibility for me – us – here in Britain.  The book argues that the way we can achieve optimum health and lifespan is to eat as our ancestors once did: eating a great range of foods and losing none of the nutrients – particularly enzymes – through cooking. Early humans thrived for many thousands of years on a raw food diet. Their food was varied and seasonal. During those years of human evolution we would have settled where food was plentiful – probably at the edges or in clearings of tropical forests. A nomadic existence or that of the hunter-gatherer was not really necessary. Only when forced from this ‘Garden of Eden’ by environmental disturbance such as fire or flood might people have explored further afield, eventually to less hospitable environments. This was achieved, perhaps, in part by learning to preserve foods for the journey, or by increasing their reliance on animal products, hunted en route or carried with them. It certainly helped people colonise other places but it set us on a path that has led to where we are now, with many of us living in built up areas, eating processed, preservative-laden imports rather than local, fresh food.
In the 21st century it seemed to me initially that raw food plant-based diets were only suited to locations and climates where crops grew abundantly all year round. Could we grow sufficient food all year round, in our (increasingly erratic) maritime climate, to sustain and nourish a family – or even feed a country? By this point I was itching to look up what foods could be harvested in what is traditionally, and perhaps with good reason, called the ‘hungry gap’ of the growing year. For the sake of the exercise the foods should be available fresh, to eat in a raw state – not preserved through drying, freezing, pickling, salting, being made into jam, or held commercially in sealed fridges in a high CO2 atmosphere, etc. Didn’t it leave potatoes (raw? maybe not…), root veg, a few hardy salad crops, stored fruit such as apples and pears, some nuts and not much else? Was it any wonder that people stored foods dried (beans and grains in particular) or processed them in some way?  I wanted to explore as far as possible the potential for more than subsisting on a raw food diet. I felt it would be easy to find an excuse not to, purely from my ignorance of what would grow here in the slowest part of the year. Reason told me that there must be plenty of other foods that we could grow and eat, of “…the 7,000 known to have been grown as crops during recorded history.” Patrick Whitefield writes: “Estimates of the number of edible plants on Earth vary, but the total is probably somewhere between 35,000 and 70,000.” Scan the plant list compiled by Plants for a Future (4,000 edible plants). Look at what Martin Crawford grows at the Agroforestry Research Trust in Devon. Delight in what Joy Larkcom grows in her vegetable and salad gardens in Suffolk. Admire the diversity of species grown on numerous small-scale individual and community plots.
By filtering out the plants not at all suited to our climate and identifying those that were edible in spring (not counting very similar plant species), sifting out the ones that offer little ‘user value’ (eg take up too much space in return for a significant crop; are poor-tasting or fiddly to prepare) – what would we be looking at: a few hundred different crops maybe? I don’t yet know if that’s an optimistic estimate. Readers are welcome to offer their thoughts and best guesses. So perhaps the possibility is not so easy to dismiss: there might be a way, theoretically at least, for those who choose to do so to follow a raw food, locally sourced, interesting and sustaining vegan diet. It could cut food miles, eliminate the use of cooking fuel, and – using A/P techniques – vastly reduce the energy expended in production (as nature teaches us) compared even with organic production. Agroforestry and Permaculture suggest ways to generate not only more food per unit area but also greater diversity. An A/P system could extend the growing season and improve the local/microclimate in a way that does not compromise environmental sustainability through burning fossil fuels.  It wasn’t quite a revelation, as I knew at heart that the answer was there to be found, but it certainly made me think that an A/P solution was possible. Now I just need to find somewhere to grow my research project and test the premise. Would anyone in Kent care to join the experiment?
© Helen Wharmby, 2009 | |
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