Permaculture Database

["Scott Pittman" <scott@permaculture.org>]

I thought that I would try to bring a little historical perspective to this
conversation, since I can't contribute anything about programming.

The whole guild database idea came from a conversation I had with Stephanie
some time back about what she could do to help forward the cause of
permaculture.  I told her that for years the concept of guilds had been
floating around in permaculture conversations but very few had been
documented or developed.  

What is a guild anyway.  A guild was an idea I first heard from Bill
Mollison though it may have been developed by others.  It is based on the
medieval concept of a union of men in the same craft or skill to protect and
maintain the standards of the craft.  Interestingly it is also a term used
in plant ecology to refer to any of a group of parasitic plants.

The idea is that every plant evolved with a collection of associates that
provide for its needs ie minerals, fertility, pollination, protection,
procreation and etc.  This collection would be classified as a guild and
would include other plants, animals, and micro flora and fauna.  Over time
most plants that have been domesticated have been stripped of their
associates and have become dependant on us to maintain them in relative
health.

It is obvious that many plants, say the apple, which evolved in the Caucasus
had a very different guild in its native habitat than what would work in
Mexico but the functional needs would remain the same and those needs could
be met with analog species that are native to Mexico.

So to build a guild one needs to know what any given plant needs and then
try to provide those needs on site.  A partial list would be nitrogenous
plants, birds for nitrogen, phosphate and seed dispersal, predator insects
for insect control as well as plants to support those insects, bulbs to keep
the soil open around the root zone, and etc.

I had in mind that a lot of this information already exists, it certainly
does in the Former Soviet Union through all of the Vavilov botanical
stations.  With a data base we could invite people from around the world to
contribute existing knowledge of the composition of guilds in their area.
What does the pomegranate associate with in Persia??

It is a very daunting task but could be done one plant at a time and slowly
built.  I don't think that we would want to include in this data base
pruning tools, or grafting techniques that would be for another discussion
and catalog.  

We received a Threshold grant to produce a guild database and I believe that
should be the focus of this particular project. I wish that I knew more
about creating a database but I don't.  I do know that we have spent over
$3,000.00 and endless hours of time talking about how to do it and very
little seems to have materialized out of that time or money.  

I would love to see one guild developed, how about the apple?  And receive
as much input as we can handle on this one specie and then move on to stone
fruit or what ever.  I realize I may be naïve about the process but it still
seems to be a fairly straight forward concept.

Thanks for your time.

Scott Pittman
Director
Permaculture Institute