permaculture

[eric + michiko <emstorm@metro.net>]

Sorry for the earlier version of this; my wife accidentally sent it before I
had finished writing it.  Let me try again.


Lee had a good point about separating the vegan diet from the "vegan
philosophy".  It seems clear to me that the vegan diet would not pose a
problem.  I don't see the vegan philosophy a problem either (except if it is
taken to mean that any use ANY of animal "product", or by-product, is
exploitative).  It is not possible to separate ourselves from the
interrelations of plant and animal.  It is also not possible to have a site
without animals (at least wild ones), and therefore not good design if they
are left out.  Though we have (knowingly) introduced only three species
(humans and two kinds of fish) to our property, I have counted over 87
animal species from all orders of the animal kingdom, not including the
unseen, the micro-fauna and all of the insects and birds that I haven't
identified yet.

I think "the loop" is always closed.  It all goes back to design and
efficiency.  How will you integrate your actions with the life of your site?
Is it "exploitative" to allow the wildlife to do what they naturally do?  If
you decided to never knowingly or purposefully kill animals, or allow others
to do so on your site, I don't see why it would have to be a negative impact
on the design.  Is wool from a sheep too explotative?  Fine, if that's your
idea being lind to animals.  No manure?  This may be going further than
logic would allow.  I don't see how it would be possible to garden / farm
without the benefits of the worm manure and microbial activity at the very
least.  So, as long as you stay within reasonable limits, I don't see why a
"vegan philosophy" would cause a problem.  The only obstacle I can see, so
far, would be the difficulty of encouraging enough wildlife to hang around
some sites long enough to do as much good as domestic animals could in a
good design.  I would be interested to hear other's opinions.  Any thoughts?

Eric Storm




Miekal wrote:

2 of our 3 perm/terns are vegans & I had to honestly tell them that I
didnt know of many examples of animal less permaculture,  the plants for
a future project in the uk is the only one I can think of off hand. 
anybody know of any US ones, especially somewhere in the midwest that we
could visit.

Lee wrote:

Hmm.  Well I'm sure they exist, but IMO "vegan" and "permaculture" are
kinda mutually exclusive, with all due respect to PFAF who do tremendous work.

I don't mean that everybody has to eat meat.  That's a diet choice.  I
don't eat it myself in fact.  But the vegan philosophy - that is, that any
use of animal "products" is exploitative - just doesn't fly in the real
world, in my experience.

The thing is when you set up a Permaculture site, it has to include animals
- if not domestic ones, then wild ones.  The world has plants and animals
in it and it needs both.  If you decide you're going to be vegan and be
self sufficient, food-wise, then what happens is if you don't have
domesticated animals, the wild ones move in and start eating your food.  At
that point you have to do something about it or you will have a wildlife
population problem in a big way.  That's the "problem" with abundance!

Possibly you could get around this problem if you encourage and are able to
attract other predators such as cougars or wolves.  However I think it's
kinda folly to say that cougars and wolves are predators and humans are
not.  There has never been a vegan tribal society and there are good
reasons for that.

Anyhow what a lot of people will do who don't want to kill animals is to
fence them out of their gardens.  If you're vegetarian and you have to grow
a lot of grains and legumes to feed yourself, this becomes a problem
because you've had to fence off, and possibly clear, fairly large
quantities of land to accomplish this.  You could preserve a lot more of
this land if you were willing to kill a few deer and eat them.  The deer
eat things that you couldn't eat anyhow.  And the deer or other wildlife
are in any case liable to die if they are fenced out of their usual
territory and cut off from resources that are normally available to them.
Just ask the Kalahari bushmen whose antelope herds were found piled up dead
against farmers' fences.  You think that because you didn't eat the cow
that nobody had to die to feed you, but you don't see the thousands
antelope that died because somebody fenced them off their land in order to
grow your soyburger.

There is no way around the problem of having to kill something in order to
eat. All living things have to do that and if you don't kill when you must,
you end up killing a lot of things that you never see because you ran from
that responsibility.  I still struggle with this issue myself, but I do
realize that one can't philosophically defend veganism, especially if you
are trying to follow the permacultural principles of interrelationships
between all things.  Sooner or later you reach an impasse.

I certainly won't eat factory farmed meat, which IS exploitative, but to
compare animals in a permaculture situation to factory farms is just like
comparing home grown veggies in a PC site to genetically engineered,
factory farmed soybeans.

Well anyhow... don't mean to stir up a big argument or anything, just some
food for thought and an explanation as to why there aren't more vegan
permaculturists. :-)