permaculture

["Eugene F. Monaco" <EFMonaco@compuserve.com>]

Message text written by INTERNET:permaculture@listserv.oit.unc.edu
>It is indeed a great idea to look at spontaneous associatons of useful
plants
that have co-evolved and see if we can fit in.  However this is a far
narrower selection of associations than ever was intended by the
Mollisonian
use of the term guild, which is just sloppy language, sloppy thinking, and
very, very bad permaculture.  Or rather it isn't permaculture at all, in my
opinion.<

Wow Dan, you're really opening up a can of worms here.  Seems like you're
out to prove that Mollison doesn't know anything about permaculture.  I've
been told that one can overcome this condition with psychotherapy :)

You know we humans can't exist in a parking lot.  Permaculture is a design
system to create abundance on what was a parking lot.  First attempts might
be to plant one plant on the parking lot, fertilize it....    More evolved
attempts might include companion planting and organic gardening.  But what
permaculture thinking does is make us look at highly evolved ecosystems for
clues as to how many species of plants, animals, bacteria, fungi, and devas
interact to produce a balanced system.  

The term 'guild' is a lot like the term 'bioregion'.  We have bioregions
within bioregions within bioregions.  The whole earth is one big bioregion
and the local universe is still one on a larger scale.  An N2-fixing plant
and its microrhizza  are a 2-part guild; the whole earth is likewise one
large guild.  Dissecting guilds into smaller ones for study is not
non-useful as you suggest, nor bad permaculture.  Rather, it serves to
stretch those monocropping minds from the one-plant-in-the-parkinglot
mentality to the next order of evolved thought.  Mollison bashing in this
context is counterproductive to the cause.

Within a guild, as in the case of the artisans, as in the case of ALL
nature: elements which benefit from each other's existance also
paradoxically compete with each other  for survival, often very brutally. 
Pioneer species don't just roll over and give up the teritory without a
fight.  And artisans' proliferation is limited by the society's willingness
to fund their efforts; they compete among themselves for existance.  And
they are not all the same, just similar on a crude level.  An artisans
guild may consist of a multitude of styles and varieties.

So guilds do in fact exist everywhere.  That they may seem to
'spontaneously associate' in nature is what the study is all about.  Can we
mimick these associations in cultivated systems for human benefit?  Perhaps
we can in the short term.  Who knows unless we try.  Whether or not nature
will accept our cultivated associations or not is also unknown until we
try.  So I say go for it and learn, learn learn. 

Having said that let me also say that, yes, we are trying to manipulate
nature for our benefit.  And certainly it is folly to think that we can
superpopulate the earth with humans by outsmarting nature with our
permaculture which is modelled after nature.  Ultimately, the whole earth
(if not the whole universe) will need to be brought into balance.  The
contention by some that the human population has exceeded the limits of the
earth's carrying capacity becomes the central question.  Permaculture
solutions may very well lead to reduced human population load on the
natural systems.  It is only by our delving into the study of guilds, and
ecology  that we will we see the light.  One of the great benefits of
permaculture study is that it forces us off of the parking lot and into the
woods where the real lessons are.  As we increase our knowledge of how
nature works, we increase the liklihood that we will stop destroying her in
our short-term attempt to increase human population.  In that quest we will
discover who we really are.

In the meantime, I would love to hear more from other folks experiences
with guilds in their bioregions.

"They ripped up the parking lots and paved them with paradise"

Gene Monaco
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East Tennessee Permaculture  (EFMonaco@compuserve.com)
Herbs, consultations, & training for total health and environmental
sustainability
PO Box 11851, Knoxville, TN  37939      (423) 457-4354
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