Webisode 4 shows some highlights of our trip to a very special sort of farm. As always, it just covers some broad strokes, so please head over to the corresponding blogs and pictures for the real deal.

Have a look- this is my favorite so far.

We visit a Mapuche native Pharmacy in Santiago to get our feet wet with native culture- and see how westernized Chileans interact with it.

Webisode 1- A little lo-fi,  but we’re getting better and better.

Sometimes you have to back up from an experience to see it more clearly. Sadly, the view back on my time in San Pedro appears no simpler from 37,000ft. San Pedro de Atacama sits squarely in one of the harshest and most beautiful places on earth. They get less rain than Death Valley, California, at a lung-aching 10,000 ft above sea level. I hoped that there, I would observe human life, stripped of all it’s garnish. Then, I could see what it is to be human, and how that condition might in the future support a more sustainable way of living. I suppose, to paraphrase a writer far greater than I, I hoped to observe the marrow of life, even if I couldn’t breathe deep at altitude. What I found was a small town, in the grips of an identity crisis, like a long-time blue-collar worker turned lottery winner.

Marcella and I arrived, checked into our pleasant little hostel, and nearly Marcela was struck by the changes that had come to San Pedro. She had been there seven years earlier, at the town had grown well beyond the one dirt street it used to occupy. The landscape was similar, but now there were a great many small restaurants, craft shops, hostels and bars- things you typically find a this concentration only in touristy areas. This place had changed, according to Marcela. I only hoped we could still find what we came for.

On the bus ride to town from the airport in Calama (a solid 2 hour drive over a half-finished road), we had talked to our driver about the best way to get around. He connected us with a man who became our guide, and ultimately, the source of my great conflict about San Pedro.

So, promptly at 10 the next morning, Wilson Flores entered our lives in a white, lifted, Daewoo sedan. Wilson was abut 40, tall and lean, with dark skin and shoulder-length black hair, wearing slacks and a tracksuit top that was so clean it must have been new. It occurred to me that an outfit this clean in a place where the air is so laden with fine tan dust must have been a serious effort. Marcela and I were an occasion for Wilson, an occasion for him to make more money in a few days than he might otherwise in a month. First world guilt welled up in my throat, but all that I let pass was the great respect and gratitude I felt for him and his assistance.

Our first stop with Wilson was his home. I wanted to learn about farming in the world’s driest place, and Wilson lived on a plot of land that had been farmed by his father’s fathers for at least 5 generations. Wilson thought his family had lived there longer, but was unsure, and only knew that his ancestors had lived in the area for thousands of years. Surely, this was whom I had come to learn from.

At his home, or more accurately, a piece of land with two small adobe and wood dwellings on which he and 6 members of his family lived, we were seated with his father to first talk about the life of a farmer here, and the process of bringing life to a desert.

His father, like many of the men in the family, had at one time worked in the copper mines here. He was a slim, sturdy man, about my height. His hands showed the wear of a lifetime of labor on and under the earth. He talked about farming in the desert, and how things used to be. We followed him past dry irrigation canals, about as wide and deep as a bankers box. He said that not only did they used to be full of water year-round, but these canals were just a modern shadow of the water that used to flow there- wide and deep enough to swim in, he said. The water was gone from these small canals for most of the year now because the town, with its explosion of tourism, was using more than ever.

He felt that tourism was a poor way forward for his community, because it really only benefitted the people who were already rich enough to take advantage of it- those who could run tours, start a hostel or a restaurant. He said he didn’t know what the future held for him and his family, but it was clear that he was living with a sort of resigned anxiety about the future of his way of life.

We said goodbye to Wilson’s family, and hopped back into his car for a visit and lunch with a man we’d come to know as Don Guillermo.

Don (a masculine title of respect) Guillermo (his first name) greeted us at the entrance of his simple, comfortable home/restaurant. We were here for lunch, but also to talk about farming and the native population. Don Guillermo also spent the first part of his life in the copper mines, before saving enough to open this restaurant and farm. He grows most of the animals and vegetables that the restaurant prepares, ad he does so with minimal water. He sowed us his small vegetable patches, which he strategically placed atop well –watered land, so that he only has to apply extra water less than once a month.

His farm was an excellent model for sustainability in a place with little water, but what was most interesting was his explanation of how water, the land and the native people coexist I this area. He feels that the main problem with modern growth is that most people don’t feel a sense of connection or belonging to the land. He said his ancestors had lived in this area for thousands of years, and there is still a connection between the people ad the land. He felt that the governments have a difficult time understanding that, so when growth happens, it happens on a scale beyond what the natives would be comfortable with, because they know what the land will sustain.

I felt like this idea was difficult to translate. How do you teach a modern, westernized society to build only what the land will take? Don Guillermo seemed to think the solution was in planning- how the government surveys for resources, and then sets up its development plan. There might be something to this, especially in a region that is so constrained by one resource. Maybe there should be new criteria for growth plans. Criteria that take into account what is naturally feasible for a region, and factor in the additional costs of surpassing a level of development that goes beyond that natural equilibrium. For Atacama, that would include lots of water analysis, but it could also include variables for arable (farmable) land, natural (green) power generation potential, and even the ability of the area to supply building materials for the proposed development. This type of pre-planning may not act as a perfect substitute for a native connection to the land, bt it may produce nearly the same result in terms of sustainable growth and respect for the available resources.

Don Guillermo shared his hospitality, his food and his family with us, and I was grateful for having had such wisdom shared so openly. We said goodbye, and headed back toward San Pedro to shoot some video and still mages of the surrounding area.

On the way back, we got to talking with Wilson about his family, and future plans. Wilson has worked in the mines, he had farmed the land, but he also felt that the way to more prosperity for himself and his family was to take advantage of the tourist growth in the region. His plan was to save enough money to fix the 4 cars he had collected, and then sell them in order to purchase a single, more reliable van. He hoped to use the van to start tours of the area, and eventually open a hostel on his farmland.

The drive to better one’s circumstances in the most efficient way is part of the human condition, not just a part of the American dream. Even if Wilson was turning his back on the life that had sustained his forbearers for generations, I couldn’t blame him for seeking prosperity. It is Wilson then who presented me with the biggest challenge. How do you ask someone to forgo the most basic levels of personal security in order to preserve the sustainability of a place or people?

The answer is that you cant. I mean, you could ASK, but I think any policy that doesn’t take into account the human drive to be more secure and prosperous than before is denying the true nature of the people it means to direct. The solution then is to come up with policies that provide avenues for development, while leading to a sustainable path. Indeed good policy can harness that human drive as an engine for change. People presented with opportunity for sustainable development, when no opportunity for development existed before, will chose the sustainable option.

I’m not positive what those policies or ideals will look like exactly, as they will surely vary from situation to situation. Wilson’s reality was a big part of the puzzle though. The real solutions I’m looking for won’t be complete without it.

It was another glorious travel day today for SP, though nothing so strenuous as our recent jaunt to the South. After 2 days of false starts due to logistical problems, Marcela and I finally boarded a flight for Calama this evening. Transportation to anywhere in Chile is always a cocktail. We began around 5 in Santiago, with a shuttle to the airport, followed by a 2 hour plane ride, then 2 more hours from Calama to San Pedro via shuttle. The moon was full tonight as our van trundled along the semi-paved highway 23 that heads south east from Calama to San Pedro. We arrived, starving, in San Pedro about 11 and were dropped right at the door to our hostel.

Let me give you a few quick facts on San Pedro de Atacama. Here, I am currently at about 11,000 ft above sea level, though not on a mountain. I am 20 miles from Bolivia, 35 miles from Argentina, and dead in the middle of the driest place on the planet. Due to that last fact, the water in town shuts off at 9pm every night, and in the 10 minutes I’ve been writing this, the power has already gone out twice. I am prepared though, and will forge ahead blogging, even if it means continuing by the light of my little petzl headlamp.

The place looked quite nice, with a sort of desert theme. The whole lobby smelled pleasantly of mesquite smoke, which is to say, it smelled of BBQ food. The first inclination I got that I was not longer in the first world, however, came as soon as the door to my room opened. It wasn’t the room that was the problem- the room was just fine. What I didn’t expect to see was a cat fly out of the room though the door I had just cracked. It’s a good thing I’m a cat person.

No matter though, for I was starving. Marcela and I wandered out into town, and eventually found a place that was still open, even if it was only really open because tonight Chile won a soccer game against Venezuela. We were welcomed in, and served the largest and most delicious empanada I’ve ever experienced. In case your not familiar with them, empanadas are sort of miniature calzones, or pocket sandwiches, usually a few inches across, and filled with cheese, meat, vegetables and whathaveyou. THESE empanadas, however, were the size of large calzones and were filled with warm beef, marinated vegetables and cheese. Think of it as being filled with what you’d find in delicious stew, without the water added.

So we feasted, had a drink or two, and headed back to our home base. Tomorrow will begin early, with a trip to a rental agency, to see what out best options are for getting where we will be going. For now though, it is time for bed. Just being this high up for this long is exhausting, and I need to save energy for the rest of the weekend.

Well wishes to all, and stand by for another podcast travel episode maybe tomorrow.

I had been looking forward to the last 2 days for about a month. Seriously, ever since Marcela got a line on the community we have spent the last few days with, I have been mentally preparing for what would be one of the most interesting experiences I have had in my (admittedly short) lifetime.

Marcela and I had arranged to spend a few days with a community of natives here in Chile. I don’t mean natives in the sense that I am a California native, but more like people whose ancestors have lived in the area for millennia. The native peoples in Chile are called the “Mapuche”, which, loosely translated means something like, “the people of the land”(incidentally, I’d bet money that more native groups names mean something along those lines than anything else). Naming ones selves “the people” seems only natural if you are the only people you ever interact with, but placing he word for “the land” in your name denotes a specific connection to it. Not a connection like one might have with a nation, but something more primeval and having to do with the physical land itself. It was this ethic I hoped to learn from.

I don’t want to give the impression that Marcela and I slogged through a jungle in pith helmets and khakis to greet some primitive people. There aren’t even “reservations” for the native peoples here. In fact its quite hard to pick a Mapuche out of a crowd of non-native Chileans. The only discernible differences, I was told by my Mapuche friends, are a slight accent, general shortness of stature and an overall stalkyness. Now, that is of course assuming you are a Mapuche who gets those dominant genetic traits. I, for instance, genetically speaking, am technically African American, though you’d never know it by looking at any member of my family. The same degree of mixing has happened over generations to the point that for many, being Mapuche means a set of traditions and culture. Unfortunately, it also often means a lower socio-economic standing as well. This is not a rule of course, but it is not coincidence that groups all over the world that have historically been subjugated have a rough time of it.

What you get here is more a humble small farm with a few small wooden buildings. The homes were cramped, worn, but warm from the wood-burning cooking stoves found in each. They featured precious little furniture, all of which appeared to have been made on the farm. Still, these were places of dignity, not of desolation or surrender. These homes, led by the women in them, were inviting and authentic shelter from the harsh cold of the winter outdoors.

Our group of Mapuche, shared something in common. They all engaged in a traditional practice of weaving and knitting that had been passed down from mother to daughter over the centuries. They still hand dye wool in small batches, over fire. They draw colors exclusively from plants, and then turn their hand-dyed wool into hand spun yarn, using several methods. The hand spun yarn (which until now I didn’t really realize was actually “spun” in the way that you spin a top) is made in most cases with technology that predates even the spinning wheel. The yarn is then knitted and woven into all manner of scarves, gloves, socks, hats and ponchos and rugs. These works are truly a sight to behold. They have intricate patterns with a color palette pulled right from the land itself. Green from the leaves of a pepper, orange from a stringy parasitic plant we call “Witch Hair” in the US, brown from certain kinds of mud, taken from the earth itself. After they are washed and dried, their character shows through. They are as beautiful and intricate as something you could produce on a machine, but they have individuality and a soul that simply cannot be manufactured.

Now, all of this is well and good- I mean, Its nice to know that somewhere in the world, people are still doing things the old fashioned way. But it bears the question, why are they still doing it? And why is it worth looking at for the kinds of lessons I am looking for.

The first answer is one of economics. These Mapuche women, aside from sharing the cultural knowledge of their weaving, also all share a similarly dire economic outlook. Each of them lives on a piece of land that they work in various ways, and all of them are unable to make ends meet with only the hard labor of running a small farm. These women have turned to their yarn work for their very survival. They make the money that fills in the gap from month to month.

Now, at this point I was thinking, “ok, that isn’t so revolutionary” I mean, my father did a few odd construction jobs in trade so my sister could go to pre-school. My grandmother sewed clothing to help support her family during the depression. This idea of using your extra labor to make ends is probably as old as humanity. The real interesting bit here is how these women are using the traditional bonds of their community to work, as a community, for the betterment of all of their members. These 50 some women from southern Chile got together and began organizing their output. With the institutional help of a local program, they have entered the global market as the “Artisenas Chilenas.” With contacts made through the local government, they have gained access to international customers in South America and Europe. This means that they have been able to meld their traditional organizational structure to the modern markets in order to better their own lives. It is fast becoming a belief for me that organic institutions like this, which are shaped by the actors in them as opposed to formulated from the top down, are ultimately more successful, and better serve their communities.

In this case, the organizational structure is what interested me most. The Mapuche women (and they are all women who do this) organize locally, in groups of anywhere from 10-100. These groups are presided over by officers who are chosen through a mix of votes and sort of general communal respect and seniority. All of this happens, mind you, without the aid of Internet technology. These communal groups meet monthly to go over the orders that they have to fill, assign those projects to the various members, and pay a small stipend to each woman.

At the meeting I was welcomed to, they also were setting about the business of establishing their first quality control protocols, and setting prices for the next batch of products. This is where the interaction with westernized economic society got interesting. The representative from the local government was there, basically to advise them on the ins and outs of supply and demand. Ultimately, the women decided, as a group, that they would raise their prices (meaning their individual take-home rate) by a few thousand pesos per item (500pesos is about $1US). They also agreed to justify this additional asking price by refocusing on quality, and agreeing that items that didn’t meet the standard would be returned and the maker would not be paid.

I have not finished reflecting on my experience at the meeting. There are definitely some interesting lessons there, but to be honest I haven’t sussed them all out yet. The thing that struck me most powerfully were the women, and their sense of community. I guess I can only explain what was there in reference to what was not. I feel like if it had been men, there would have been a more solidified power structure, something stiffer, and as a result, something that required enforcing. There would have been people trying to do as little as possible to keep getting the group benefit. The meeting was warm, inviting, communal and productive (if not a bit slow). When a new woman or guest would enter the room, she would go around and greet everyone individually. She would be welcomed to the room by an ovation of surprise and excitement, more like what you would feel in a stadium, when the hometown hero hit one that had to be headed out of the park, but in miniature of course.

This sense of community and social connectivity may have existed for several reasons. I think the first part of it is something generally regarded as feminine. I’m not a sociologist, but there is a difference in the way women and men interact. Men from many cultures I’ve interacted with, seem to have been taught to, or feel the urge to, succeed above the rest. I don’t know if its something dark and ancient like the solitary success of one hunter over another, or if it is just socialization in a single lifetime, probably some of both. Women, on the other hand, seem to have an easier time of judging success as being part of a successful group, defining themselves in reference to others. They understand and value social interactions, and develop skills for them. In this way, if part of the solution to the sustainability problem is remembering that we are all in it together, maybe masculineized, western society should learn something from the strength of its own femininity.

The second half of this communal success, in my opinion, has less to do with the touchy-feelyness of gender, and more with real-politik. These women, like it or not, are bound together in their venture. Each has tasted the benefits of cooperation, and they have come to rely on the success of this group, in some cases, for the survival of their families. Each member has a vested interest in the group’s growth and success at all levels. They don’t want to get a reputation for doing shoddy work, so every retuned garment, no matter who made it, is a blow to all. They don’t want to lose any members, because that means they can produce less and have a weaker bargaining position at the trade table. That means that when a member is sick, it is in everyone’s interest to get her well. When one has been inattentive to her duties for the group, she hears about it- not just from the leadership, but from the rank and file. This type of social group reinforcement is very effective, and has kept this group together, despite the daily hardships of its members and the great barriers to their meeting (none own cars and most live well out of “town”).

These women fascinate me, and I’m sure hold the key to a certain part of the puzzle I’m trying to assemble. I need to think about it further, and I’d welcome your comments and thoughts as I do. For now, you can learn more by going to the photo gallery and checking out the images of the weavers that aren’t displayed here in the post.

Thanks for tuning in.

The last few days have been a whirlwind, and today was no different. Marcela and I spent the day in a town called Jumbel, outside of Temuco in the south of Chile. We made the trip down, not for the beautifully frigid southern winter, but to visit with the managers of an internationally influenced sustainable farm.

Now, if you are anything like me, you’ll hear the phrase “Sustainable Farm” and your “crunchy granola, Subaru Forrester driving, north face wearing neuveau hippie “ alarm goes off, bigtime. It is far to easy to go to a place like this and think, hmm, this is about as foreign to me as regular farming… don’t all farms just have fields and pens and cows? I wanted to be careful to bring back information and lessons that would be more interesting than “you too can compost, in your own back yard!” That wouldn’t help anyone.

We arrived early, thanks to a short bus ride. I have to add that the bus ride was a bit odd, because it just sort of stopped in the middle of nowhere and let us off. We took it on faith and waited at a remote, deserted intersection to be met by our contact from the farm. I wasn’t really sure which I was expecting more… that the devil would show up and offer to swap me my soul for guitar skills, or for Jim Morrison to plod out from over a hill and reveal to me the secret to my own journey. Pop culture references aside, a few minutes later we were gathered up and taken about 1000 yards away to the farm.

This farm looked, at first glance, much like any other. It was smallish (maybe a hundred acres), and had a couple of houses and outbuildings on it- along with a long, low greenhouse, and a sort of planting style that looked decidedly “handmade” if you will excuse the metaphor. That is to say, the rows had not been cut with mechanized precision.

A few moments later, the reason for the lack of precision lurched by- it was a team of cows, lashed together at the horns on a long post that formed a yoke. They were pulling a hand operated plow through the earth- something I’d only ever seen happen in westerns.

The tour or the farm revealed everything you might expect from a fully sustainable, organic farm. Hand started seedlings whose lives began in little trays made from recycled egg cartons (which would then be composted). A greenhouse with the seedling plants, vast piles of compost in various stages of decay, worm boxes, bee boxes, planters made from inside-out recycled tires, and a couple of farm houses build in the traditional style out of wood and adobe (which I might add, after an exterior layer of plaster and paint, is probably one of the nicest looking, cheapest building materials I could imagine).

What makes this farm special though, as is true with most things in life, are the things that you don’t see at first glance. The first lesson that I came away with was one of soil conservation. Keeping dirt on your land seems simple enough, but in a place with lots of hills, or where soil takes a long time to form, it is an important part of planning any construction. Proper planning allows you to make use of almost all of the water that falls naturally on your property, and conserves what water you have to add by yourself. This farm uses a series of techniques, including digging irrigation channels, adding a gradual terrace shape to their hillsides and, as a last resort, cutting “V” shapes into hillsides too deep to otherwise cultivate. The V’s channel water, even on a steep grade, to the base of a tree they have planted, so you can basically have self-watering trees where trees would not otherwise be able to grow.

These water and soil conservation techniques seem like a great idea for a farm, but what really struck home for me, having grown up in semi-arid southern California, is how much water flows through a single family home lot and into the storm drain. That water was drawn from a fresh, potable water source in most cases, and anything that escapes into the storm drain just heads out to dilute to ocean. In Southern California, that doesn’t just mean wasted water in a place that goes though what seem like yearly droughts. If you’ve ever driven up Interstate 5 between Los Angeles and Buttonwillow, then you’ve been over the “Grapevine” and have probably seen the whacking huge set of pipes that take water up and over the mountains down to the LA basin. This is where a great deal of our water comes from, which means that water that makes that journey has an additional price tag. That means that every gallon that seeps into drains on our lawns and driveways also carries away with it the expense and emissions of the energy it took to pump it from where it began to our tap or spigot.

That may have been a little bit of a tangent, but it was something that struck me as I watched these little pine trees water themselves with what would otherwise be waste. The people of the United States like to pride themselves at being the best. We call ourselves the most advanced, the most developed, and consider ourselves to be at the apex of technology and skill. As I walked across this humble farm in rural Chile, I saw the touted efficiencies of my parents’ “water conserving landscaping” back in so-cal be put to shame by technology thousands of years old that had been adapted and improved for use in a modern context.

So that was just one little corner of the lessons to be learned here. There were starter-pots made of old tires, a food dehydrator that concentrated energy from the sun to do it’s job, and more kinds of naturally made fertilizer than I can count. One especially interesting gadget was a set of outdoor oven and stoves that were made of steel barrels, bricks and earth.

If that last little bit of technology sounds familiar, that’s because it is. In blog #8, “Ovens, Chickens, Greenhouses and Hope”, I talked at length about these cheap, sustainable technologies that were changing le lives of the poorest Chileans. Well, this is where they came from. FOSIS consulted with the very same sustainable farm when prototyping the ovens and greenhouses that they would help their beneficiaries build. Whether they new it or not, the Chilean government was forging a path forward by looking to the past. The ovens they build were very old designs, adapted for modern materials. They weren’t anachronistic replicas, meant to bring on a sense of nostalgia- they were new solutions that took the best of where we had been and melted it together with where we were to develop solutions for where we need to go. It was then that the real purpose of a farm like this struck me. It isn’t a place where they relish doing things the good old-fashioned way. This was a laboratory, a R&D facility, sort of a “Skunkworks” with pigs instead. I was glad to see the Chilean government looking to this organization for new solutions.

Maybe the piece of the puzzle that I should take away from this place is a new focus on where to look for solutions. Thoroughly modern western society seems to look most often to clean, stainless steel, carbon fiber, silicon wafer type technology to solve a given problem. Don’t get me wrong, I love what computers have given humanity. But maybe there are lots of problems we face, especially those that have to do with how we interact with good old terra firma, that would be better solved by looking for technologies that are a little less refined and a little more down to earth.

Oh, one more note- I’m trying this new “image heavy” formt for the blog. let me know what you think- and if you want to see lots more images, Just click the “Photo Gallery” link on the top left of this page and you can follow along with more pictures from the farm and all the other places we’ve gone.