Permaculture in Lyon
By Monica Lafon
Lyon April 5, 2014.
Right after arriving at the train station, we managed to have a meeting with Valentine Prinet, a young citizen who is trying to promote permaculture and the use of shared gardens in the Lyon region.
We contacted her through Facebook, when we were researching how to visit green areas in Lyon. She has a page called “Permaculture Lyon” where she is currently looking for volunteers to work on her project.
The notion of agency is important and relevant to the analysis of the Gran Lyon concept. The question we ask ourselves is: are the actions of citizens only the result of policies that are promoted by their cities or can citizens also be catalysts of change and bring about initiatives, small revolutions, that were not brought about by consensus but could spark others to sum to a worthy cause?
This is why we will share with you how Valentine can be an important agent in the region of Lyon.
The place where we were supposed to meet her brought us to the traditional Saturday market. So where do citizens of Lyon get their vegetables from?
It was still around 11 a.m. but you could see families walking around, choosing their vegetables, talking to the farmers as if they had known them forever and teaching their children the names of different fruits. It is a nice scene. Most of the products from the market are certified “Agriculture Biologique”.
But what if we were to go further and plant our own vegetables near our houses in shared gardens? What if we went even further and participated in a permaculture project, which is a philosophy of creating a permanent culture of products, such as fruits and vegetables, in a more sustainable way?
The time came to meet Valentine. We walked together to a coffee and tea shop called “De l’autre côté de la rue”, which is also a store with bio products.
We asked he if she knew about the Gran Lyon initiative and what she thought of the concept of a ‘Smart City’. She said she had never really heard about it, and she didn’t think most citizens know about this concept.
She shared with us her story. The first time she heard about permaculture was in Canada, where she spent some time in a farm near Vancouver learning the techniques. She was inspired and this is why she decided to bring it alive close to home.
She created her own website and Facebook group but she admitted it is difficult to recruit volunteers, especially when a concept is so innovative and takes time to implement.
What is permaculture? She basically explained to us the principles as conceived by David Holmgren, which have to do with ethics and design:
What she really likes is that it has a human aspect added to it: it is the relationship between man and nature and whatever surplus you have, you are to share it or make use of it. Everything is recycled and all resources are used in an efficient manner.
She said that there is already a great example of a permaculture farm in France, Normandie: Bec Holloin and what they do is they train people in order to spread the philosophy and implemented in other farms.
Valentine said that there is actually nothing new in permaculture. That actually, it is a compilation of techniques that should not be forgotten and bring us back the values of sharing and the idea of becoming autonomous in food consumption, self-sustainable.
We also discussed the idea of bringing agriculture into urban areas. All these techniques such as vertical gardens, and hydroponic systems are antinatural to her and they promote more distance between us and nature as they are not “complete”.
Although, she did talk to us about a technique called “aquaponics” which makes gardeners out of fish. Basically, the idea is to create a symbiotic environment where waste becomes a benefit for another organism. It has existed since the Aztecs under the name Chinampas, or floating gardens which still exist in Xochimilco, Mexico. (I say this because I am from Mexico but there are also other cultures that might have had this technique of course).
In general, the more we create controlled and anti-natural environments to grow our products, the more costs and the less efficient. The idea is that if we try to immitate nature and let it be, it will grow and will bring us back more than we could imagine. But we just have to learn how to observe it and reproduce it. As Valentine said, “it is a return to laissez-faire”.
Tomorrow, I will continue the second part of this story to tell you more about the shared gardens we visited in situ.
Keep tuned.
PS: Here are some examples of citizen initiatives of consuming local that we saw posted in shops such as the bio store we went to get tea at or at random places like a bar.
