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permaculture - Re: Mollison too general?

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  • From: Permacltur@aol.com
  • To: fronsk@cats.ucsc.edu, owner-permaculture@envirolink.org, permaculture@envirolink.org
  • Subject: Re: Mollison too general?
  • Date: Sat, 5 Jun 1999 09:38:00 EDT


In a message dated 6/5/99 7:24:24 AM, fronsk@cats.ucsc.edu wrote:

<<I am doing an organic gardening internship this quarter and we got into
a big discussion about permaculture and Mollison's ideas. Keep in mind I
am a beginner to permaculture and most of these ideas. On a tape of a
lecture Mollison gave at Eco-farm I was listening to Bill describe the
need for shade in vegetable farming situations because most plants
produced higher yield when they weren't exposed to intensive prolonged
heat patterns. His idea was that integrating trees would curb heat
stresses thereby increasing yield. Seemed logical to me so I asked the
guy I am interning with if he had heard the idea and if he was thinking
of going for more of the forest approach. Since he was mainly dealing
with medicinal herbs he said most of the herbs seemed to thrive in full
sun, but did not discount Bill's ideas. He suggest that Bill's ideas
were "too general" and not mindful of independent crop species and the
needs of plants at an individual level. Certainly a logically valid
point. But my question to the group is does Mollison deserve some merit
here AND in general can I expect Mollison to over-generalize or over
simplify? Any help here would help, especially before my ideas of
permaculture get too lofty. This is not meant to stir up a Mollison
debate, but merely to get different perspectives on how to interpret
Mollison and see what critiques of his ideas are out there.
Wishing you all well,
Kevin Snorf>>

Kevin:
The answer to your question is yes and no. Bill often propounds his
fanciful speculations, not always labeld as such. And he sometimes has
extremely concrete results to report. The problem lies when people not in a
permaculture frame of mind, and there is such a thing, look at something Bill
speculates about (and as I said, very often it is not labeled as speculation
but presented as fact tantamount to personal experience.)
I think if someone is to regard Bill as a guide, then I strongly
advise them as a first step to understand permaculture. Virtually every top
permaculture teacher, including Bill, stresses that permaculture is "site
specific." Context specific might be a better term, since that includes the
proclivities of people who influence the site,, the character of species that
may influence the site, etc. Let me give you an example from another
context.
Bill is a great proponent of the swale. He prances up and down the
stage, chanting swale here swale there and some people, alas, dash out,
disregard EVERYTHING ELSE HE SAYS, and tear up the landscape putting swales
in everywhere. Yet the first principle of permaculture design (sustainable
design in general) is restraint, do only what is necessary, ultimate
conservation including energy for change. The second principle is wholistic
design--no element is seen outside the context of the other elements. Bill
teaches this. He goes to great length to teach the management of water and
though I am unaware of anyplace where he says it outright, the sum
consequence of what he teaches includes the principle that if you concentrate
water someplace, you damn well better know what is going to happen to it
there. I have seen designs in the name of permaculture, nothing I would call
a permaculture design, where swales were created in places that would cause
serious erosion if they overflowed, for example. And certainly we don't need
to randomly slashing up the Earth with swales without a purposeful design.
The key is that permaculture is DESIGN. No design, no permaculture.
It is assumed that the design will be implemented, but the implementation is
not permaculture, any more than carpentry or plumbing is architecture. When,
in the context of talking about architecture, the architect drifts on to how
he uses his radial-arm saw, it may be interesting, but we view it as a
sidebar, so to speak, and maybe evidence of one way to achieve a certain
construction s/he designed.
Permaculture applies general principles to specific situations. You
need specific information tied to that site, that ecosystem, those people
living there, that human culture, etc., etc. The best permaculture designers
already have lots of concrete experience in some field(s) of direct
work--gardening, massage, solar building, forestry, whatever. Generally,
their academic experience is secondary. They immerse themselves in the
specifics of the site and let the site inform the design.
If one wants to introduce species or cobble together species
assemblies, this requires even more detailed information. If one has
grounded experience in working with, say, plant species, in the past, one is
well prepared to correctly interpret this information and insightfully apply
it in the context of the specific site. Specificity is where it is at.
Now a comment about plants needing shade to reduce their heat
exposure is a real shot in the dark, unless the context is known. I have no
idea of the soil and climate situation of "eco-farm." Bill does tend to look
for ways to get people to integrate their systems with trees. In tropical
and subtropical situations, much of the food in traditional gardens are
grown, indeed, in little agroforestries. Even sun-loving plants like
tomatoes bear acceptably in such contexts. Bill usually notes that when you
combine species like that, a given crop may yield less than if it had all
the space it wants. However, the total tonnage of food produced per acre is
greater, if the job is done well. Obviously you can overcrowd. And if you
live there, you can then adjust the design by thinning.
Let me share some personal experience on this. Because we live where
the summer climate is very hot, we favor as many trees as possible for HUMAN
comfort. Vegetables get a lower priority. Peppers, especially habanernos,
don't mind more than half shade. We get acceptable yields of sweet potatoes,
beans, and most greens. However the problem is not shade but root
competition, specifically for moisture. Here we have sand. Only someone
from Florida would call it soil. Water falls through it. Three days after a
rain, under mulch, in summer, crops are wilted. The commonest shade is the
sabal palm which is a water hog. Only cacti and epiphytes do well at the
base of these trees. (Well, there ARE some tricks to get around this.) The
best tree we have for evapo-transpirational cooling is clearly the mockernut
hickory. It must be sucking water no-stop by the hundreds or thousands of
gallons daily. Tough plants like establish comfrey die next to palms and
almost die if we miss a water cycle in our little forest garden experiments.
In loamy or clay soils, we would not have such extreme problems. If we did
not have such strong evaporation potential (almost continual westerly winds
from the Gulf of Mexico and high summer temps), plants would not suffer so
quickly from moisture stress. Mollison's advice thoughts on shade are tricky
to apply here. I can grow sweet potatoes no problem, but did you ever try
to dig root crops around established trees?




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