permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <hemenway@jeffnet.org>]

on 6/2/00 3:16 PM, Richard Morris at pfaf@scs.leeds.ac.uk wrote:

>The permaculture movement does need to prove that it actually works.
> I've yet to see any proper analysis of a permaculture project in terms
> of what was produced against the input to the system.

This makes tremendous sense and would certainly be useful for building
permaculture's credibility. I'd love to see it done (ought to do it myself,
since I've got the science/math for it--stab of guilt there). From a cynical
standpoint, though, since conventional agriculture is so incredibly
inefficient (that famous 40 calorie in, 1 calorie out potato for example), I
wonder if anyone in conventional ag would care. Most large food-selling
corporations (at least in the US) run their farms at a large loss and
subsidize them with the profits from their processing, wholesaling, and
retailing divisions. So efficient growing isn't a goal for them. But for the
small farmer and for those who are arguing policy, the numbers would be very
useful.

Permaculture does make a few claims that are at worst untrue and at best
unsubstantiated. It would be useful to weed those out, and
progress-toward-goal evaluations would do that.

Toby