And funnily enough, further down in my inbox I
found;
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2002 9:47 AM
Subject: Re: [PermacultureUK] - Fw: Pc slammed in Whole Earth
Review
Toby
The Woodland Way by Ben Law is full of data. There is
also an analysis of income and pc woodland management which was part of a MSc in
the centre pages. Greg is out of date. We now have lots of post graduate data
here proving pc works (not the wild kind but serious, cool temperate systems
which have been thoroughly researched) and pc design is taught at university and
horticultural colleges. Wake up Greg - pc is no longer a hippy thang!
I
have been feeling bad that Patrick's review of your book wasn't good enough (he
agrees in retrospect) and I am going to addres sthe balance by publishing
another view which is more appreciative.
Warm wishes
Maddy --
Permaculture Magazine - solutions for sustainable living Permanent
Publications, The Sustainability Centre, East Meon, Hants. GU32 1HR,
UK. www.permaculture.co.uk 0845 458 4150 Fax: 01703
823322
---------- From: "Graham Burnett"
<gb0063551@cableinet.co.uk> To:
enquiries@permaculture.co.uk Subject: [PermacultureUK] - Fw: Pc slammed in
Whole Earth Review Date: Sat, Jan 5, 2002, 8:35 pm
I wondered if anybody here
(Permaculture UK) could help Toby with this? What about john comben & sue ferguson's reports on
Cool Temperate PC (ie UK) that have recently been made available (still
waiting for my copy from the Assoc) ? are these online? If not Micah, stop
slacking! (only joking mate!) My own take (from my recent article that was published in
Permaculture Magazine (UK)) http://pages.unisonfree.net/gburnett/essay/allotment1.htm
: "The question
"does permaculture work?" is a tautological question- Permaculture is BY
DEFINITION about was DOES work and what it is sustainable for future
generations in your locality; and is also about what suits you where you are
in life..." IOW
Permaculture is about ethics, principles & design, not specific techniques
as Greg seems to be saying... Cheers Graham Burnett www.landandliberty.co.uk <http://www.landandliberty.co.uk> Now
available- 'Permaculture A Beginner's Guide' also tee shirts-
'Permaculture Manadala' & 'Land Is Liberty- Plant A Seed
Today...' -----
Original Message ----- From: Toby Hemenway <mailto:hemenway@jeffnet.org>
To: permaculture <mailto:permaculture@franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Sent: Saturday, January 05, 2002 8:06 PM Subject:
Pc slammed in Whole Earth Review
Those of you who can get Whole
Earth Review may want to look at the new Winter 2001 issue. WER
sent a copy of Gaia's Garden for review to Greg Williams, a one-time
agroforestry guy who publishes the HortIdeas newsletter. Turns out Williams
absolutely hates permaculture, thinks its mostly bull (he took one of the
first American courses from Bill). Williams didn't focus too much on my book,
but spent a couple thousand words blasting permaculture, very persuasively.
Whole Earth was kind enough to let me reply in print, and I did my best
to address his gripes, but he raised a couple of very good points (both Greg's
piece and mine were cut about 30% by the editors; the tone of Greg's was
originally very nasty and sarcastic, but the editors removed most of
that).
He used some pretty strong language: "The fundamentally
misguided ideas of some permaculturists . . . show signs of polluting the
larger culture." It's unpleasant to see this in a widely respected and
influential magazine.
One of Greg's less cogent arguments was that
Pc's whole idea of mimicking mature ecosystems was stupid because immature
ecosystems are more productive than mature ones. This was easy to dispose of,
since he missed the difference between fully mature (senescent, ancient, less
productive) forests and maturing forests (5-200 years old, which Pc
seeks to mimic), which are 2-10 times more productive than meadows or farms.
But his most damning points were about the absence of data, testing,
and experiments with controls to support any of permaculture's claims of being
a superior system to conventional agriculture or gardening. He wrote that he
has never seen "any convincing evidence that temperate zone forest gardens can
do better than meadow gardens at providing useful products." If anyone ever
did measure, he says, the yields of conventional gardens should dwarf those of
forest gardens.
Permaculturists, he writes, "have neglected the
scientific approach to determining the worth of their ideas . . . and instead
have argued for and against particular gardening techniques on the basis of
(at best) incomplete theoretical notions and (at worst) pure intuition. This
is worse than glossing over the details; it is misconstruing the details. . .
. It is completely unacceptable when their claims are made to the general
public, who stand to waste huge amounts of time and money on a (much)
less-than-optimal approach to boosting garden output."
The problem is,
it's hard to find data to refute his claims (I did my best, but to an insider,
there may be a faint whiff of the barnyard about some of my reply). We just
don't collect data. What do we answer when a farmer asks, "How much more money
or produce, or less erosion, will your system get me?" That we just
know it works better? Does anyone have any numbers? I've looked at a
lot of Pc sites in North America, and I haven't seen one where people are
measuring yields.
So are we justified in saying that this stuff works?
Or is permaculture just for those, as Williams says, "who do not require
optimal solutions to pressing agricultural and ecological problems"?
If anyone's got any hard numbers, or other reputable data, please
share them. If not, it points to a huge lack in permaculture, and we should
get busy setting up trials and getting reliable data instead of just banking
on Bill's wild claims. Without data, more folks like Williams will erode
permaculture's credibility.
I've also had inquiries from a researcher
who wants yield data from permaculture farms for a thesis. If anyone has
these, let me
know.
Toby _____________________________________________ For a
look at my new book on ecological gardening, Gaia's Garden: A Guide to
Home-Scale Permaculture, visit http://www.chelseagreen.com/Garden/GaiasGarden.htm
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