permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <hemenway@jeffnet.org>]

Title: Re: Pc slammed in Whole Earth Review

Russ at pacedge@magna.com.au wrote:

a consultant to the Australian government's AusAID - from the CGIAR - once described permaculture to a meeting as 'a technology with no role in development assistance'

And there's a big part of the problem: the view that permaculture is a technology on the same level as, say, solar panels or growing row crops. When people start to understand that Pc is not a technique but a design approach, then they'll see that there are supporting data, and not so vigorously insist we show them a "permaculture farm" or other hard-to-come-by site. Since Pc helps organize techniques from agroforestry, appropriate tech, and all the rest, we can use their data. I've got a library book called Tropical Agroforestry by Peter A. Huxley. He cites many experiments that determine the efficacy of, e.g. alley cropping Leucana with millet (conclusion: without adequate rainfall, no benefit, but with rain, significant benefit over millet alone in yield, erosion control, and water infiltration). Or growing vanilla on Acacia auriculiformis trunks instead of on inert trellises: higher yields, protection from sun scald, less erosion, less fertilizer, plenty of free mulch. There are tons and tons of experiments and data like these, and they all support permaculture. All Mollison did was to show how to link these fields together (that's a really big "all"!). 

The difficulty is that we have to explain why the examples above are not just agroforestry but can also be considered part of a permaculture system. First there is overcoming the resentment over the notion that permaculture "includes" agroforestry (or organic farming, or consensus decision-making, or anyone else's favorite specialty that they've dedicated their life to and don't want to see called anything else!). It doesn't include or subsume other fields: it tells you when and how and where to apply them. So we suffer from a problem of perception; People think Pc is swales, or herb spirals, or a technique comparable to row-cropping. We need to come up with a coherent statement that allows us to use all the data in support of the techniques permaculture links together. So when someone says, "You can't use data from agroforestry," we can tell them exactly why we can.

Asking if permaculture works is a bit like asking if architecture works or has data to support it. Architecture organizes ideas from engineering, aesthetics,  materials science, centuries of experience, etc, to design buildings, and draws on lots of fields for data, but I'm not sure that "architecture" generates data. To ask "Where are the data to support architecture?" would get you some weird looks: the buildings are all around us, and, furthermore, compared to what--living in the open? So one answer to "where are the data for Pc?" (alluded to in someone else's post) is: Do you mean compared to all the systems of non-design that we know aren't sustainable when all factors (erosion, pollution, true cost, social justice) are taken into account? Or, to be less combative, we can answer, "Compared to what?" and when they say, for example, "To annual row crops," we can say: You get higher yields with agroforestry. Then when they answer, "But that's agroforestry, not permaculture," we explain that Pc isn't a technique, and how it integrates agroforestry into a larger design, based on the client's needs and what the land and culture will support. Sort of like architecture, but for sustainable systems, not just buildings.

I realize I'm answering my own question here; believe me, I didn't have these ideas before people started responding to my post; that group mind is at work. Until that great day when there are a bunch of successful farms designed by people with permaculture certificates, I think we can justify using data from agroforestry, natural building, AT, aquaculture, etc. But that still means doing the library research to collect the data. Putting that together would be a real service.

Toby