THE PLOWBOY INTERVIEW BILL MOLLISON

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

PLOWBOY: Do you think there's an optimum number of members, then, for the ideal community?

MOLLISON: That's an interesting question, and the answer depends on what the function of a particular community is. I would suggest that we begin in tiny groups of five or six . . . but then these little units would later need to coalesce into groups of 30 or so and make a settlement. Finally, you'd need to form a larger tribe of about 200, to insure enough genetic diversity for the survival of the race.

So what I'm doing while I'm traveling on this tour is setting up connections. I hope to leave a string of new permaculture groups behind me as I go. The associations are actually self-forming — all I do is introduce the ideas and get them started — and self-run: There's no central secretariat or anything like that. What we want is not a bureaucracy, but an interconnected system of functional links . . . such as seed exchanges and reciprocal resource distributions. The associations can operate very efficiently on their own. In fact, I don't even know what most of them are doing . . . which is fine, as long as they're out there putting things right.

PLOWBOY: Is Tagari open to new members?

MOLLISON: Oh, sure. We'll accept up to 30 members at each location within the community . . . but we plan to stop expansion altogether at a total size limit of about 200 people. So it is open — for a finite period — at several locations. We take in some seasonal workers, as well. And we do have lots of interesting work going on. Actually, functions are split within the community: Some of us work in publishing the permaculture books, others work in information dispersal, and I work — along with several others — in design and networking. In addition, a number of us are involved in setting up alternate forms of property ownership. We now have quite an active land bank system, through which we acquire farms, houses, and other buildings and then parcel out stewardship of the properties.

PLOWBOY: And you're also educating permaculture designers?

MOLLISON: Yes, and they're trained to design to the very limit of their intellect, to apply the principles of functional connections to their plans. In that sense they're a new breed, totally different from traditional landscape architects or agricultural designers. We plan to train them initially in Australia and then send them out to teach regional courses to other people . . . thus we'll be setting up an expanding pyramid of functional design knowledge.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print