Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Tommy Tolson <healinghawk@earthlink.net>]

Permaculture is a design system intended to consciously and ethically place humans back into the natural order, based on processes of observation and interaction, in a way that fosters ecological resilience.  Permaculture puts us in position to learn from nature to design ecosystems that support all the life that makes its living from the land with which humans in a Permaculture design learn to live.  Pattern literacy is a huge part of the design system.  We seek to design into the patterns of nature, so nature supports us - instead of rejecting us, as climate change threatens to do.  We learn to use any given landscape as our text, so we read landscapes to inform the basis of our designs.  

Mollison and Holmgren created Permaculture based on their grounding in Howard Odum's articulation of systems ecology.  Odum's "Systems Ecology" remains the single best Permaculture book in existence, but it's expensive and written to an advanced academic audience: ecology graduate students.  Mollison and Holmgren are both forest ecologists.  "Environment, Power, and Society," Odum's attempt to reach beyond an academic audience, is useful, in that it teaches human ecology and systems ecology in a straightforward way.

Permaculture designers create systems, rather than limiting designs to elements of systems, as reductionist education teaches.  A system may use legacy practices, or may inspire the creation of new practices, or mix both, or something entirely different.  The idea is to design so that nature does the work, creating low-energy systems which enable humans to sow once and reap many times, among many other advantages.  A Permaculture Design Course should focus on grounding students in systems thinking rather than any practice, per se, save design practices, as each landscape requires its own practice.  

"Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability" by David Holmgren is the single best Permaculture reference I know of presently.  Here's the blurb from www.alibris.com, where you can get the book new for less than $22.00:

About this title: David Holmgren brings into sharper focus the powerful and still evolving Permaculture concept he pioneered with Bill Mollison in the 1970s. It draws together and integrates 25 years of thinking and teaching to reveal a whole new way of understanding and action behind a simple set of design principles. The 12 design principles are each represented by a positive action statement, an icon and a traditional proverb or two that captures the essence of each principle.Holmgren draws a correlation between every aspect of how we organize our lives, communities and landscapes and our ability to creatively adapt to the ecological realities that shape human destiny. For students and teachers of Permaculture this book provides something more fundamental and distilled than Mollison's encyclopedic Designers Manual. For the general reader it provides refreshing perspectives on a range of environmental issues and shows how permaculture is much more than just a system of gardening. For anyone seriously interested in understanding the foundations of sustainable design and culture, this book is essential reading. Although a book of ideas, the big picture is repeatedly grounded by reference to Holmgren's own place, Melliodora, and other practical examples. 

Biodynamics is fairly commonly used as one element (annual production) of a Permaculture design.

Smiles.

Tommy

On Jan 16, 2010, at 4:42 AM, A Deville wrote:

--- On Thu, 1/14/10, Tradingpost <tradingpost@lobo.net> wrote:

From: Tradingpost <tradingpost@lobo.net>
Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Permaculture - Farms for the Future
To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
Date: Thursday, January 14, 2010, 2:51 PM

Beautiful video. I'd agree it's not suited to industrial scale farming. But then we shouldn't even have industrial scale farming.

The practices they call permaculture that actually work have been around for ages. Mollison, who invented the term, had a big brouhaha with the Americans who copyrighted the word and tried to charge big bucks to the unwary just to hear the philosophy behind it. Another form of Enclosure - put a fence around something and charge people for what used to belong to all (as in the English Enclosure movement, the AMA, and so on). I won't spend $800 on a weekend to hear stuff I've read all about for years.

In practice it's almost indistinguishable from Biointensive which I practice, with modifications (or Biodynamic, or SPIN, or whatever). I just use what seems to be the most sensible, sustainable methods I can manage. And none of it is original with me of course.  My problem with formal permaculture as they teach it is, it's more a philosophy than a set of practices to adapt for the urgent needs of people everywhere. And I don't have years left to develop a forest garden where no forest should be in the first place.

You asked!

paul tradingpost@lobo.net


*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 1/14/2010 at 8:59 AM Arzeena Hamir wrote:

>I'd never really given much thought to Permaculture for farming - it 
>always seemed more suited to gardening.
>
>Here's an excellent video from the UK that outlines the issues around 
>Peak Oil and gives examples of farms in the UK that are using 
>permaculture techniques to produce food without the reliance on fossil 
>fuels.
>
>Any comments would be much appreciated.
>
>http://www.viddler.com/explore/PermaScience/videos/4/
>
>Arzeena

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Greetings Paul,
   I think that you should understand that a forest is not just a Forest, and permaculture teaches that one should not place anything in an inapproriate place, including forests, be they fruit or fuel, ect, and that the proper LINKS between elements be made.
I do agree that P.C is indeed a Philosophy, and as well a way of life(living), and those very thing that you practice yourself are part and parcel under this great umbrella of permaculture. Agreeing also that  too many are charging far to much to teach others permaculture..........................Namaste'......."Dee

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