Chapter Five -
Connecting Sustainable Agriculture
and Psychosocial Transition
ORIENTING
This Chapter
explores the research question, ‘What were the theoretical and action
precursors firstly, to Neville Yeomans evolving the therapeutic community psychiatric
unit Fraser House, and secondly, to the ways of being and acting that Neville
Yeomans used in his life work?’
Some
aspects of Neville Yeomans’ way of thinking, processing and acting are
detailed, and their origins are firstly traced to the innovative work that
Neville did with his father Percival A. Yeomans and brother Allan (and later
with the younger brother Ken) in evolving Keyline, a set of processes and
practices for harvesting water and creating sustainable agriculture. The
chapter then details the influence on the Yeomans of Australasia Oceania and
East Asia Indigenous and grassroots ways.
INSPIRING
TRAUMA
Neville’s two
traumatic incidents mentioned in Chapter One also had a profound, though
different impact on P.A. Yeomans, his father (Mulligan and Hill 2001, p. 193). Neville’s father was, at the time
Neville was lost, a mine assayer and a keen observer of landscapes and
landforms. His father was deeply impressed by the Aboriginal tracker’s profound
knowledge of the minutiae of his local land, such that, in that harsh dry rocky
climate with compacted soils, he could so readily follow the minute traces left
as evidence of the movements of a little boy. The other thing was that upon
finding little Neville, the tracker was so intimately connected to the local
land and its form, he knew exactly where to go to find water. It was not that
this tracker knew where a creek or a water hole was, as there was no surface
water. He knew how to find water whenever he wanted it, and wherever he was in
his homeland. He and his people ‘be long’ there (40,000 plus years).
They were an integral part of the land. They were never apart from it. The
tracker and his community saw the Earth as a loving Mother that provided well
for them continually (‘The Earth Loves us’ – from Neville’s Inma poem). The
tracker was ‘of the land’. As soon as the tracker found Neville, he had
to find the right kind of spot for a short easy dig. Because of Neville’s
dehydration, the tracker needed water for Neville fast. He used his knowledge
of his place and quickly had Neville sipping water.
Mulligan and Hill
report that:
According
to Neville, it was probably this incident that gave his father his enduring
interest in the movement of water through Australian landscapes, because he
could see that an understanding of this would be a huge advantage for people
living in the driest inhabited continent on Earth (2001, p. 193).
In the years
after leaving mine assaying, P.A. Yeomans had moved on to having his own
earth-moving company. P. A. had just purchased the Nevallan and Yobarnie
properties in
WATER
TELLING US WHAT TO DO WITH IT
P. A. emulated the
Aboriginal tracker in becoming familiar with the landform of his two
properties. P.A. wanted to store or use all of the water that landed on
the properties. In the Forties, P.A. wanted to be able to water his two
properties so they were so lush and green all year round, they would be
virtually fireproof. When the families acquired the properties the soil was
‘low grade’. It was undulating hill country with plenty of ridges that were
composed of low-fertility shale strewn with stones. The following photo taken
at Nevallan, one of the Yeomans’ farms, shows the original poor shale and rock
‘soil’ throughout the two properties when the properties were acquired.
Photo 1The low fertility shale strewn with stones on P.A’s farm - from Plate 30 in P.A.’s book ‘Challenge of Landscape’ – used with permission (Yeomans
1958b; Yeomans 1958a)
Photo 11 shows a spade full of fertile soil after two years of the
processes evolved by P.A. and his sons. To clearly show the difference in the
soil, a clump of the fertile soil has been placed beside earth on the base of a
tree stump that became exposed when the tree fell over. This lighter low-grade
soil had not been involved in the processes the Yeoman’s evolved.
Photo 2 Fertile soil after two
years compared to the original soil -
a copy of Plate 30 in P.A.’s book ‘Challenge of Landscape’ - Used with
permission
Within
three years, Yeomans and his sons had energized what conventional wisdom said
was impossible; they had altered the natural system so that the natural
emergent properties of the farm, as ‘living system’, created ten centimetres (4
inches) of lush dark fertile soil over most of the property. What is important
is that the local natural ecosystem did the work. P.A. enabled emergent aspects
in nature to self-organize towards increased fertility. With the interventions
that P.A. introduced, the property became lush and green twelve months of the
year. It was virtually fireproofed!
In
1974, P. A described processes whereby 4 inches (10.16 cms) of deep fertile
soil could be created within three years (Yeomans and Murray Valley Development
League 1974).
The
balance of this chapter will specify the processes the Yeomans evolved and
applied on their farms and the Indigenous precursors they drew upon. It then
briefly introduces the ways Neville evolved in adapting his family’s farming
processes to psychosocial change.
Keyline Emerges
Over
thousands of years, if this continent’s Aborigines wanted to spear fish in the
shallow creeks and rivers, they would copy the behaviour of the wading birds
that wade slowly, and then react extremely fast with their long beaks. The
Aboriginal hunter with his spear mimics these waders. Resonant with the
continent’s Indigenous ways, P.A. and his sons engaged in bio-mimicry - letting
the water, the landforms, the soil biota, and the balance of the local
eco-system tell them what to do. Neville told me (July 1998) that P.A. would
take Neville and Neville’s younger brother Allen out onto the farms as they
were growing up whenever it rained so they all could learn to see directly how
the rain soaked in at different times, how long before run-off would occur on
different land forms, and what paths down the slopes the run-off moved on
different land shapes. Like the Aborigines, they were learning to have all of
their senses focused in the here-and-now, attending to all that was happening
in nature. As action researchers, they became connoisseurs
of their land and all life on it (Eisner
1991, p. 176). Whatever action P.A. and his sons did, they always observed how
nature responded.
P.
A. obtained contour line maps with a useful scale of his property to further
aid his understanding of landform. According to Ken Yeomans in an October 2003
phone discussion, the map scale was typically 1
in 25,000 with 5 metre contours. Neville said that his father constantly referred to
the three primary landscape features - the main ridge (elevated from the
horizontal), the primary ridge (lateral to the main ridge) and the primary
valleys (lateral vertical cleavages). The farm was perceived by P.A. as a
cleavered unity, a feature pervasive in nature. P. A. discovered where the best places
were to store run-off water for maximum later distribution using the free
energy of gravity feed. It was high in a special place in the primary valleys.
Overflow from dams high in the primary valleys were linked by gravity-based
over-flow channels to lower dams.
Below
is the most succinct statement I have found written by P.A. Yeomans about what
he called ‘Keyline’. I have extracted it from P.A.’s speech at the UN Habitat
‘On Human Settlements’ Forum in
Keyline
relates to a special feature of topography namely, the break of slope that
occurs in any primary valley. Primary valleys are the highest series of valleys
in every water catchment region and lie on either side of a main or water
divide ridge. They are widely observed as the generally smooth or grassed over
valleys of farming and grazing land but are often overlooked and disguised in
the city. On either side of the primary valley is a primary ridge. Of the three
basic shapes of land, namely, main ridge, primary valley and primary ridge, the
primary valley shape occupies the smallest area of land and the primary ridge
shape, the largest. In the rural situation irrigation is a matter of watering
the large primary ridge shapes, even on land which appears flat.
All of the structures, processes
and practices that P. A. Yeomans evolved he also called Keyline (Yeomans,
P. A. 1971b; Yeomans, P. A. 1971a). Diagram 1 shows the main ridge (the dotted
line along the left), two primary ridges (with the arrows) and two primary
valleys.
Diagram 1 – Photo from
P.A.’s UN Habitat Speech (1976, p. 9)
Note that the Keypoint is on the fall line
on the contour above the first wider gap between the contours. The fall line is
marked on Diagram 1 above as the dotted line through the Keypoint. This wider
space between contours indicates less steepness on the slope.
Above the Keypoint is typically an
armchair-shaped land form that directs the water run-off so that most of it
ends up arriving in an area that may be as small as a square metre (the
Keypoint) – sometimes the very start of the typical creek as creek.
P.A. found that the optimal locations for
dams along the Keyline are where it crosses the drainage lines within primary
valleys. As stated, he called these the Keypoint for that primary valley.
P.A.’s
‘On Human Settlements’ Forum speech contains another description of Keyline:
It will be observed that in the
primary valleys the first slope falling from the ridge above is short and steep
– usually the steepest slope in the immediate environs – while the second slope
is flatter, much longer and extends to the watercourse below. The point at
which the change occurs between these two slopes is named the Keypoint; the
Keyline extends on the same level on either side of this Keypoint and partly
encloses a concave shape on the land. Only primary valleys have Keylines (see
contour diagram above) (Yeomans, P. A. 1971b; Yeomans, P.
A. 1971a; 1976, p. 7-8).
Ken
Yeomans in a December 2005 email referred to the above quote:
I question the technical accuracy of saying it ‘partially’ encloses
a concave shape on the land. Actually the Keyline occupies all of the concave
shape of the contour line curve. The change of direction of the contour from
concave through the valley to the convex curve of the ridge
defines the end of the Keyline on either side of each primary valley.
Diagram 1 above shows Ken Yeomans point
mentioned above - that the Keyline extends either side of the Keypoint for a
particular distance along the contour line running through the Keypoint.
P.A
then goes on to give a key point summary (1976, p. 9):
The
Keyline is significant because:
1. It
is the first place in any valley where rain run-off water, concentrated from
the higher slopes, can form a stream.
2. It
is also the first place where run-off water disappears when the rain stops
unless the water is contained.
3. It
is the highest possible storage site in any valley of the land.
4. It
is often the highest point at which good construction material for earth dams
is available (higher up the earth may be less decomposed and less suitable for
dam building).
5. It
is the essential starting point for a water control system in any landscape
that produces run-off; and
6. It
is the line of change when the three shapes of the land merge and readily
disclose the geometry of land contours and the behaviour of surface flowing
waters.
The Keyline is thus of major
significance to any concept that aims to enrich the environment by controlling
and using all available water.
Note
point six above - the Keypoint in nature is saturated with information carrying
capacity. On this typically square metre of land is the junction of all three
land forms. Information distributed through each landform is present at the
Keypoint. The Keypoint, for those with eyes to see, is the place that reveals
the interaction of water with land. There is a confluence at the Keypoint of
all the water runoff from the main ridge and adjacent primary ridges down the
curved slope at the head of the primary valley.
Lincoln
and Guba made a similar point about distribution of information within a system
(quoted in Chapter Four):
Information is distributed
throughout the system rather than concentrated at specific points. At each
point information about the whole is contained in the part. Not only can the
entire reality be found in the part, but also the part can be found in the
whole. What is detected in any part must also characterize the whole.
Everything is interconnected (1985, p. 59).
The
Yeomans’ genius was that they spotted the information distributed throughout
the three landform systems and saw how the distributed information
inter-connects and interacts at the Keypoint. Keypoints are saturated with
information that is distributed in the system. Sensing and observing the
Keypoint may reveal insights as to how the whole complex dynamic system works.
Resonant with the above, Neuman also makes the observation that at
each
point in a living system, information about the whole is contained in the part (1997, p. 433).
Not only can the entire reality be found in the part, but also the part can be
found in the whole. What is detected in any part must also characterize the
whole. Everything is interconnected, inter-dependent, inter-related and
inter-woven.
Also
resonant with Yeomans and Neuman, Joseph Jaworski (1998, p. 80)
writes of a conversation with theoretical physicist Dr. David Bohm:
We
were talking about a radical, disorientating new view of reality which we
couldn’t ignore. We were talking about the awareness of the essential
inter-relatedness of all phenomena – physiological, social, and cultural. We
were talking about a systems view of life and a systems view of the universe.
Nothing could be understood in isolation, everything had to be seen as a part
of the unified whole.
Jaworski
writes of Bohm saying that it’s an abstraction to talk of nonliving matter:
Different
people are not separate, they are all enfolded into the whole, and they are all
a manifestation of the whole. It is only through an abstraction that they look
separate. Everything is included in everything else.
Yourself
is actually the whole of mankind. That’s the idea of implicate order – that
everything is enfolded in everything.
While Jaworski and Bohm were
talking about a ‘radical, disorientating new view of reality’, this view has
been the natural view of Australian Aborigines since antiquity, and it was this
view that the Yeoman’s used to perceive inter-related things that Western farmers
had never seen before. Barabasi (2003)
in his book ‘Linked - How Everything is Linked to Everything and What it Means’
also explores the same theme. Consistent
with the foregoing, for the Yeomans, the farm was a living system made up of
interconnected, inter-related, inter-dependent and interwoven living systems
and associated inorganics. I have been referring to this as ‘connexity’; this
term was not used by Neville or the other Yeomans, although it connotes their
understanding of system linkages well.
Where the context around a
Keypoint made it possible P.A. placed a dam wall so that the dam could fill to
that Keypoint. He designed his farms Nevallan and Yobarnie to fit nature. All
of the dams were placed so as to simultaneously get water run-off, pass
overflow to a dam below by gravity, and by gravity-based irrigation, pass on
the water to the soil when desired. Neville (August 1998) and Allan (May 2002)
both confirmed that they were with their father at the moment when they
recognized what he called the Keypoint and the Keyline in landform – the
central concepts in Keyline (Yeomans 1955a, p. 118). The very spot where they
realised the significance of the Keypoint is where the closest water is in the
closest dam in photo 12 below; the primary
ridges are on the left and right of the primary valley.
P.A. wrote:
Once the eye becomes trained to see these simple land
shapes, and the mind has selected and classified one or two, there is a
fascination in the continuous broadening of one’s understanding and
appreciation of the landscape (1958, p. 56)
In
December 2005 Allan Yeomans told me that the special properties and
significance of Keypoints and Keylines as well as the associated design
principles such pattern cultivation, and placement of roads, fences and
irrigation channels were slowly realised over a number of years. Photo 14 below shows strategic design of tree plantings as
windbreaks and shade for livestock.
The Social Ecol