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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] those $1,000 permaculture certificates...

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  • From: yarrow@sfo.com
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] those $1,000 permaculture certificates...
  • Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 10:13:35 -0800

paul tradingpost@lobo.net
You're right, there are places in many countries where they make
sustainable improvements in food growing and someone labels it
"permaculture". Problem is, there's nothing new in "permaculture" except
the word itself.>

True. But the value of "permaculture" as a buzzword is that it's shorthand for a perspective on the world around which to generate enthusiasm for good old gardening and farming. A rallying point for a new generation, so that they can think they are rebelling against the old ways (heh heh) and inventing something new. And I'm for anything that teaches more people to grow plants organically.

I used to think it was a random and fuzzy cultish thing, permaculture. But so is "sustainable" this or that (a term largely coopted by corporate interests, though it was never well defined to begin with). I like the old term "appropriate technology," but it does not give the sense that it is connected to the land. "Deep ecology," though also connoting a point of view that relies on biological rather than mechanical metaphors, is too bookish. "Green" has also gone corporate. "Gardening" and "farming" themselves conjure images of toxic sprays and monoculture and patented seeds (every suburban nursery reeks of pesticides), yet adding modifiers (organic gardening, agroecology, ecofarming) doesn't help much, because you still have to define the parameters when you use it, and it leaves out part of the (pardon the expression) lifestyle.

So anyway, now I see permaculture as a useful umbrella term for a lot of useful knowledge, even though I still wince when I hear of $1K courses that purport to teach the gardening wisdom of the ages (and more!) in just two, count them, two weeks.






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