Excerpt from SARE Grant Proposal

According to David Chaney, Stephanie Walker, and Richard Bowen, State Extension Leaders for Sustainable Agriculture in California, New Mexico, and Hawaii (respectively), there is a growing interest in Permaculture as a methodology for sustainable agriculture among small farmers in the Western Region.  Richard Bowen and Tom Bewick, the National Program Leader in Horticulture at CSREES, both acknowledge that extension service specialists are increasingly receiving questions regarding Permaculture and Permaculture-related topics from the small farming community, and must be prepared to respond.  Extension service specialists themselves are also expressing interest in Permaculture.  Bowen notes that when asked to request topics for WSARE trainings, extension agents in the Pacific Islands identified Permaculture as a top choice.  

Educational resources for Permaculture certainly exist, but because it is somewhat un-institutionalized as a field, original research is generally carried out at the grassroots level.  Furthermore, because there is no central repository for this research, it often remains unshared even within the Permaculture community, let alone with the larger Sustainable Agriculture community or related USDA agencies.  Accordingly, on the one hand is the agricultural professional community, bearing access to a very large audience and experiencing increasing interest in sustainable agriculture practices, and on the other is the Permaculture community, abundant with relevant information but without a proper mechanism for collecting and disseminating it.  Clearly, there is immense potential for a partnership between sustainable agriculturalists the professional level and those at the grassroots level, allowing for informational resources to flow in both directions.  Relevant information discovered at the grassroots level may be circulated at the professional level, and then re-disseminated to a wider audience the grassroots level, inspiring further discoveries – creating a mutually symbiotic flow of information.   

It is important to note the audience of USDA agencies is markedly different from that of Permaculture, as the former involves no specific value system, potentially being “liberal” or “conservative,” and simply hoping to attain financial sustainability.  By contrast, the latter tends to be “liberal,” considering itself “alternative” and perhaps espousing a “back-to-the-land” philosophy.  Because the former audiences may not actively pursue Permaculture on its own accord, due to value differences or even stereotypes, it is that much more imperative that this audience be able to pursue Permaculture through the informational sources it already draws from.  

Considering that the Permaculture movement operates primarily on the grassroots level, with courses only recently being taught in accredited institutions, it has gained considerable recognition worldwide and maintained successful communication through online means.  However effective this grassroots mobilization may be, though, for Permaculture to truly integrate itself into our agricultural practices in a systemic manner, the Permaculture community must collaborate with USDA agencies to reach their enormous and (and interested) contingency.  

Ultimately, PIW seeks to mimic the ecological webs it will depict in its own role within the SARE network, weaving relationships with other entities and situating itself within the existing educational framework so that it may most effectively support their efforts.