Asset-Based Community Development: Looking Back to Look Forward by Cormac Russell

Author:Cormac Russell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cormac Russell
Published: 2015-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Interview Five: Robert Rodale

The way the natural world works is an example and a metaphor for the way that community works. Some farmers in the United States would come and chop down all the trees and then mono-crop the land... In a sense, they’d created a desert. But nature has a strategy for recovering that land... At first, a group of fast-growing plants with big leaves appear. Then a second layer of plants grows: they need shade and some protection from the first layer until they grow bigger than the first plants. And there’s a natural succession in which recovery of the land takes place, until finally great trees appear – they’re the ultimate expression of the recovery.

CR: So John, that brings us to Robert Rodale. Can you tell us about Robert and how he influenced your thinking and ABCD work in general?

JMK : Robert Rodale, and his father J I Rodale, really got the organic movement started in the United States. They were big on the relationship between composting, chemical-free horticulture and health.

They started two very popular magazines, one called Prevention which was a non-medical approach to health and the other, Organic Gardening which was a guide to gardeners on how to garden without destructive chemicals.

So Bob and his father were national leaders of the organic movement and absolutely against all the pesticides and poisons that are put on plants.

I met Bob Rodale through Illich, who’d invited him to one his gatherings. We became close friends. We had many wonderful discussions. He wrote an editorial in every issue of Organic Gardening and in several he mentioned the discussions we’d had and the conclusions we’d come to. But I would say that what he did for me was to keep reminding me that the way the natural world works is an example and a metaphor for the way that community works.

A lot of our discussions brought together what I knew about neighbourhoods and what he knew about plants, ecology and environment and how each influenced the other. Up until that time I’d only focused on what I would call socio-economic space of neighbourhoods. I’d never thought about that space in terms of it being underpinned by the land. It was Bob that brought that into my thinking.

One of the most significant things he told me about was that early farmers in the United States would come and chop down all the trees and then mono-crop the land with wheat year after year after year.

If you did that even on relatively good land you’d find that after thirty or forty years the land would produce hardly any wheat because you’d taken all the nutrients out (that was one of the reasons the Rodales were big on composting, not chemicals). In a sense, you’d created a desert.

What really caught my imagination was when he said nature has a strategy for recovering that land in its very design. I presume that biologists know about this.

At first, a group of fast-growing plants with big leaves appear.

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