IPC9 Conference Presenters 

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KEYNOTE SPEAKER 

Conference Presenters

John Wilson John is a Zimbabwean who has been involved one way or another with sustainable land-use and living for over 30 years now. While he was living in exile during the 70s in the UK he became interested and involved in organic agriculture. On return to Zimbabwe at Independence he ran a smallholding in the eastern highlands before being involved in setting up Fambidzanai Centre. This followed attendance at a Permaculture course run by Bill Mollison in Botswana in 1987. In the early 90s, he was awarded an Ashoka fellowship and used the time for this to do the ground work for a schools programme (which Walter Nyika later launched as SCOPE) and for the establishment of the PELUM Association, acting as the first coordinator of this regional organisation from 1995 until 1998. Since the beginning of 1999 John has been a freerange facilitator working across east and southern Africa and in Ghana, and a little bit in the UK. The bulk of his work is and has been with organizations involved in sustainable land use and community development activities. It includes providing mentoring-type support to individual organizations and facilitation of joint sharing and learning workshops. He believes passionately in the need for those involved in offering an alternative development route for Africa to the industrial, western approach, to work together more and more and thus build a strong movement. The stakes are high as opportunities present themselves alongside enormous threats.

Terry Leahy Terry Leahy has been a permaculture enthusiast since the publication of the first permaculture text in 1978.  After many years of backyard gardening and bush regeneration at a variety of sites and climates around Australia, he undertook a PDC in 1996.  It was at Tyalgum where Mollison had his demonstration farm - a very impressive site for permaculture landscaping and restoration of a degraded pastoral landscape.  Following this he became active in the Permaculture International committee and served on that for several years, getting a sense of how the movement was developing in Australia.  He was also active in the Hunter Region Permaculture group and toured many local backyard sites for permaculture.  During this whole period, Terry has been working as a lecturer at the University of NSW (till 1988) and at the University of Newcastle (from 1990).  He is a sociologist and one of his key research interests has been sustainable agriculture for developing countries.  In this context he has researched agricultural strategies in Sulawesi in Indonesia and more recently in North Bali.  He supervised a research study of the EU irrigation project for North Bali and found there a mix of commercial and subsistence agriculture along with a mix of tree and vegetable cropping.   From 2003 he supervised the research of land care students coming from the South African agriculture departments.  During the Australian summer breaks they would return to the sites of their agricultural extension work to do a sociological study of the interventions in food security and poverty relief being organized by the agriculture departments.  Following this Terry decided to investigate this situation more closely and travelled to South Africa to study projects first hand.  With this he stayed in two villages in widely different climatic zones, looking at agricultural strategies pursued by the villagers and the impacts of project interventions on their lives and farming.  Coming out of this is his recent book "Permaculture Strategy for the South African Villages".  This book begins by explaining "permaculture" for those new to this idea and showing its relevance to development work.  It continues with a critical look at the kinds of project interventions that have dominated practice in South Africa and many other developing countries.  Terry's argument is that often these interventions are not well designed to fit with the social context of rural life in developing countries.   The book contains a thorough package of permaculture design ideas for the South African villages - how to design for home stands, cropping fields and grazing areas.  These are illustrated with diagrams showing relevant technologies and with photos of village agriculture.  Terry's take on the social issues is that agricultural strategies to relieve poverty should not be directed almost exclusively to turning small farmers into successful entrepreneurs of commercial agriculture.  Instead, attention should be paid to developing and strengthening existing strategies for food production for subsistence - for direct consumption by farming families and their relatives and friends.  These tactics can be massively aided by the infusion of some appropriate permaculture technologies for agriculture.  The intention is not to remove people from the market economy but to provide food that does not tax the limited cash resources of poor families - food as a partial substitute for cash income.  With this solid basis for food security, it is possible for families to devote surplus energy to work designed to enter the cash economy on more favourable terms.

Rev. Eston Pembamoyo Member, International Permaculture Council & IPC9 Coordinator.