permaculture

[Heide Hermary <heidehermary@pacificcoast.net>]

This is really interesting, and in some ways reminds me of trying to define
the term "sustainable agriculture".  What really does it mean?

To me the term "permaculture" implies two basic things:

• permanent culture: i.e. permanent human involvement in / manipulation of the system
• a culture that can be permanent, i.e. sustainable.  In that way the cultural practices employed must serve/ be in tune with both the environment and the human "cultivator".

But where does the definition need to  stop?  Does it need to
include concepts such as economics, social equity and the like?  
Can we have one without the other? Can permaculture practices be globalized,
or are they entirely dependent on the local ecology?

Heide
 
 

Thilo Pfennig wrote:

Hi,

as a beginning for the FAQ
<http://www.alternativ.net/landwirtschaft/permakultur/fpcfaq/>
 I want to ask this simple question. For me permaculture is not
necessary what it was meant to be - what Mollison meant,etc.
Permaculture is, what we define it.

I would like to see permaculture as a word like "agriculture" or
"architecture" or "organic gardening".

If there is a substantial resistence to this viewpoint I would prefer to
invent a new word. I do not want wo mess around with copyrights or stuff
like that.

So permaculture should be a word, that describes a technic or attitude
towards planing and practice. Many words are missused. Not all bio-food
is really "bio" for instance.

I will never understand what Bill and David REALLY had in mind - and
maybe this is good. if Bill and David are seen as the parents of PC
, we as the "children" have grown up and making our own thoughts. Some
of us also have used pc principles, before the word was coined.

We can accept the word. May goal would be to see it in dictionaries
arround the world. It has its sources, but this should not mean that
defining it is limited to the lifetime of the founders.

My idea for this thread is that we argue on this topic and then come to
a statement of raw consensus. I would point to Dave & Bill in one or two
sentences for historical reasons. I also think that permaculture and
it's meaning has changed during its evolution.

As a second point one could answer the question "What is permaculture
NOT?"

And as a third: "Where is permaculture?" - Where can we see permaculture
in practice (continents,gardens,parks,cities,...)

This whole part would be the "Introduction".

So:

Part I - Introduction

as "Part II - Practical Permaculture" I would like to add some basic
technics as an example of permaculture (things like the chicken
tractor). Here I would like to add links to ressources online, which are
not a part of the FAQ but free documents.

As "Part III - Planning Sustainability".
Examples of how a permaculture system is planned. How principles are
integrated into the design. Here one could also add some online
ressources where this process is described maybe with photos before and
after the measures.

One part should be for general links:
PC organizations,important PC websites or link collections.

One part should deal with the copyright issue - maybe this could be
handled in a "About this publication" section.

Any comments on that or suggestions for a pc definition?

greetings,

Thilo

--
Thilo Pfennig
http://www.alternativ.net/edv/

_______________________________________________
permaculture mailing list
permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture