permaculture

[Richard Morris <webmaster@pfaf.org>]

Hi Folks,
        Thanks for the responses to my slightly OTT post, just the
sort of thing I was looking for. In fact so good I though it might
make a good web page. First draft reprinted below. If any one
has problems with using their email address or messages please let me
know. It would be nice to see some more examples like this, I think
it could make a really good advocacy document for PC.

While we may not have much quantitative data there is a lot of
qualitative 
info which is just as important. Gathering such info is important.

Heres what I've got so far:

Some Good Examples of Permaculture 

There has been a lot of discussion recently over the merits of
permaculture and the how to measure its the success. Conventional
measures such as yields don't really capture the benefits of
permaculture so instead I've gathered together some messages about some
really good examples of permaculture obtained from a discussion on the
subject on the permaculture mailing list at ibiblio. 

One of the best examples I've seen is a wet land system designed to
treat the waste from a Cider farm in Herefordshire, England. Its a four
acre plot, consisting of lots of ponds and swales and planted with 200
species and varieties of willows, reeds and other plants. You can see
its working as some very mucky waste is going in one end and at the
other end clean water is coming out the other end. Its also producing a
lot of willows for all the thing willows are good for. It was put
together by Jay and Claire at Biologic design. 

Steve Bonney sustainableearth.steve@verizon.net writes: 

There are many, many examples of farm features that embrace the
principles of permaculture. Even in Indiana, we have good examples:
constructed wetlands cleaning wastewater from a milkhouse, alleycropping
of agronomic crops between rows of black walnut trees, managed intensive
grazing systems that maintain a permanent crop cover on the soil and
increase water infiltration instead of runoff. These are all features of
permaculture, or rather, demonstrate principles of permaculture. 

There are many striking examples of permaculture that have been
developed by listmembers. I don't want to slight anyone, but what Robyn
Francis has built upon the principles of permaculture in a short time is
truly amazing to me. 

Toby Hemenway hemenway@jeffnet.org 

The best ones I've seen are: Flowering Tree in New Mexico, Roxanne
Swentzell's place designed by her and Joel Glanzberg. Rox has taken a
1/2 acre of bare gravel desert and, starting with swaling, mulching, and
lots of N-fixers, now has a nearly closed canopy of walnuts, fruit
trees, N-fixing trees, with fantastic habitat and more food and mulch
than she can deal with. 

Permaculture Institute of Northern California, Penny Livingston's place,
an acre of suburban jungle with chickens, ducks, and again, more food
and biomass production than she can use. It's got a cob office, and two
load-bearing straw-bale buildings, a marsh and pond system that handles
all the greywater and supports the duck and some irrigation. There's a
Bed-and Breakfast attached, so lots of visitors come away inspired. Too
bad Penny just dropped this list, but she's busy with a thriving design
business. 

The Bullock's property on Orcas Island, north of Seattle. 10 acres
that's the best developed food forest I've seen, plus several acres of
wetland that has chinampas in it (mostly for wildlife). They hold
classes for 3 weeks each summer with 30 students, and there's enough
fruit to support grazing for the whole class the whole time. They're off
the grid, and supported by a nursery business and teaching. These are
all very attractive sites, too. 

None of these people are measuring yields, though I think they all have
some idea of rough quantities of certain crops. I'm sure that converting
each property into a conventional, row-crop farm or orchard would
generate more total output (ignoring inputs) than they are currently
getting, but at a severe loss of habitat, multiple function, and
education about integrated systems. 

And that reminds me of Jerome Osentowski's Central Rocky Mountain
Permaculture Institute in Colorado. The particular interest here is that
Jerome's income source for about a decade was a many-specied
salad-growing operation he ran in raised beds and two large greenhouses
(a real feat, going year-round at 7000 feet elevation). He sold to tony
restaurants in Aspen. He got sick of the huge amount of work, and
demoralized by the vast quantities of organic matter that he was
importing, burning up, and exporting as C02 and salad. Really high
inputs. So he shifted to a food forest, which is just reaching good
production now and supported a lot of heavy grazing during a class I
helped teach there last summer. Again, no hard data, but his decision to
shift from intensive row-cropping to food forest, and his enormous
happiness with the result, is a powerful statement. 

Ute Bohnsack sustag@eircom.net writes: 

for anyone interested in this topic, the Swiss Institute of Organic
Farming has done some very interesting work on this front. They have
assessed the long-term agronomic and ecological performance of
bio-dynamic and bio-organic systems in comparison with conventional
arable farming systems in a replicated 21-year field trial study (the
famous DOC-trial in Therwil). Some of their results are given in
http://www.fao.org/organicag/doc/RTS58.pdf and at
http://www.sac.ac.uk/envsci/external/bsss/poster2.htm I translated some
more recent results for FiBL in 2000 but can not share them for
copyright reasons. However, the author of that particular paper, Paul
Mäder paul.maeder@fibl.ch, can probably be approached for the info. The
general 'gist' of the results is: "The variety of substrates utilized by
soil microorganisms serves as an indicator of microbial functional
diversity, which was higher in bio-dynamic than in conventional soils.
Concomitantly, microbes in the bio-dynamic soil decomposed added plant
material to a higher extent than in conventional soil with a higher
proportion of the plant material being used for microbial biomass
build-up. In conclusion soil quality as indicated by the abundance and
diversity of soil organisms as well as by their activity tends to be
improved under organic agriculture. " 

The article Holistic approaches in organic farming research and
development: a general overview by Urs NIGGLI also addresses some of the
aspects debated here in relation to the possibilities of comparing Pc
with other systems/paradigms/models, whatever you want to call them. 

From: Maddy Harland 

"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. 

From: Graham Burnett gb0063551@cableinet.co.uk 

John Comben & Sue Ferguson have compiled reports on Cool Temperate PC
(i.e. UK). 

From: Chris Dixon mawddach@gn.apc.org 

With regards to yield figures, I did collect some basic data which is
available on my web site; http://www.konsk.co.uk/design/argelacs.htm
this is a page on Argel, the wilderness regeneration site and my
attempts to quantify yield there. 


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