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  • From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] [Fwd: [fukuoka_farming] Greg Williams' critique of Permaculture]
  • Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 02:58:51 -0400

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [fukuoka_farming] Greg Williams' critique of Permaculture
Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2006 10:41:00 -0000
From: true_buckeye_warner <warner_T@eml.cc>
Reply-To: fukuoka_farming@yahoogroups.com
To: fukuoka_farming@yahoogroups.com

hello everyone,
My name is True Warner and my father has been a member of the Fukuoka
group and founder of our business WWW.WHOLESYSTEMSAG.ORG. I am a
farmer and certified Permaculture designer, and I have just read Greg
Williams' critique of Permaculture. I agree with many of his Mr.
Williams' points. From my design course, I observed that the majority
of the students were more mystical and religious about the whole thing
than scientific. If it wasn't for David Holmgren and his cogent book,
Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability, I wouldn't have taken
the course. Holmgren's perspective would not be so easy to attack.

Mr. Williams stated that Permaculture doesn't have enough evidence to
back it up through scientific studies. I would reply that one of the
many flaws of industrial agriculture is its top-down and centralised
approach. Indeed, the same methods cannot be successfully applied to
all cultures and geographics. Holmgren has stated that permaculture
has meant different things for many different people. He doesn't try
to find a holy grail for farming, but helps us discover the conceptual
tools, so that we can find our own farming methods that work for us.

The word Permaculture translates to "permanent culture." When we are
faced with depleted petroleum and other resources, the destruction of
our ecosystems, and a shifting climate, etc, it becomes clear that it
is not only our farming, but our thinking and entire culture, that we
need to make more sustainable.

Mr Williams misses this very point in his criticism of the use of
perennial and tree crops. Her asserts that we should instead use only
annuals because they are higher yielding, and that if we focus on just
this, we can protect the encroachment of untouched wilderness. In
this thinking he falls in line with the multitude of urbanites that do
not see the results of their actions. The average person's actions in
consumerism are far reaching and grave, not to mention unsustainable.

So I ask: where does he get the electricity to cook his "sustainable"
veggies or heat his house? Holmgren asserts that we can obtain a
variety of yields for local provisions. For instance, my garden is a
source of entertainment that comes at no cost to garden production or
the environment.

In saying that we should just grow annuals, I don't think he grasps
the dynamics of farming as applied to different places and situations.
For instance, with our low rainfall and long, hot summers, we are
concerned about our water usage for summer, so we have planted some
Holly Oaks and Carob trees, which do great here and need little or no
irrigation, and make excellent food (the average yield for a carob
tree is 250 pounds a year). "Forest gardens", if they yield less,
might still be practical to someone that has more land than they can
intensively farm. And there are nowhere near enough people willing to
get their hands in the dirt.

David Holmgren sees Permaculture as the combination of an indigenous
perspective and that of the new thinking and design sciences such as
Whole Systems Theory, Chaos Theory, and thermodynamics. He sees it as
a diversity of ideas, skills, and ways of living which need to be
rediscovered and developed in order empower us to provide for our
needs and that of future generations. Of course, nothing beats first
hand observation and experience that comes with years of working on,
andlearning from, your land.

I hope this was helpful,
True Warner WWW.WHOLESYSTEMSAG.ORG

--- In fukuoka_farming@yahoogroups.com
<mailto:fukuoka_farming%40yahoogroups.com>, Robert Monie <bobm20001@...>
wrote:
>
> Hi Jeff,
>
> On Gaia's Gardening, I suggest you read the intensely critical
review by G. Williams--
> on www.google.com --look for "Book Review: Gaia's Garden." Then
look at Toby
> Hemenway's response at www.google.com --look for "PC Slammed in
Whole Earth Review" where Hemenway conceeds most of the critics points
and admits that permaculture has a lot of internal problems to clarify
before they can make convincing claims.
>
> A more defensible recent book on sustainable gardening/farming is
the two volume effort by S. Jacke and Eric Toensmier, Edible Forest
Gardens, described at
http://www.edibleforestgardens.com/about_book.html.
<http://www.edibleforestgardens.com/about_book.html.> Also Eric
Toensmier has a book coming out in May 2007 called Perennial
Vegetables: From Artichoke to Zuiki Taro that should be worth reading.
>
> In all our debates we have to remember that farming is a physical
act and a practical art, something we do that is necessarily not (and
probably shouldn't be) entirely in our power or under our control but
is still subject to our planning and judgment. Good farmers and
seedsmen are those who continue to produce good yields year after year
using reasonably sustainable methods. Consider here in the US, for
example, Frank Morton, George Stevens, Tim Peters, Alan Kapuler in
Oregon, Tom Stearns at High Mowing, Glen Drowns at Sand Hill, Craig
Drehman at Redwood Seeds, Forest Shomer in Washington, or Elliot
Coleman who took over the Nearings' farm, to name a few. These
growers have been doing more or less sustainable farming for a long
time now--several decades--each in his own (sometimes very different)
way. Like Timex and the other thing in the commercials, they "keep on
ticking or gowing and going." They don't try to do farming in their
heads or preach mystical methods.
> You can make all the Zen gardens you want for meditation out of
sand and stone, but to farm, you have to GROW something that you (and
possibly others) will be willing to eat, over and over and over. The
longer you grow, the more you know or maybe the less you know (or
maybe the better the earth knows you), but either way the closer you
are to being something that can be called a "farmer."
>
> Theory can never get anybody, you, me or Fukuoka there--only
growing things can.
>
>
> Bob Monie
> Zone 8
> New Orleans--after the flood
>
> Jeff <shultonus@...> wrote:
> Thank you everyone for the fiery debate that has been
going on lately.
> Its the reason I joined the list, in hopes I would see stuff like this.
>
> Thank you too for the insite about Peters and others Bob,
> you are extremely well versed.
> Perhaps you could put together a suggested reading list. Several of
> the people you mentioned in the previous post were new to me.
>
> In the next several days I will be doing likewise.
>
> Gardening and Farming is a strange scientic endevour.
> It has its own art to follow. And it seems that so
> many of the alternative agri. heroes develop an art that
> is a reflection of their experimentation rather than
> scientifically,
> I applaud people like Wes Jackson, Peters, Marc Bonfils and Rhodale,
> that have approached the subject from scientific points of view.
>
> But there is so much other there that doesn't seem readily repeatable
> without going through that experientation phase: Fukuoka, Hazelip,
> Stout, Anna Edey (of Solviva).
> I've always thought that growing plants requires a higher principle
> than is given by the establishment,
> its just not readily available for desemination. and I sometimes
> wonder how much is available to provide people with a short cut to
> such knowledge must be gained a priori or through long ardous trial
> and error.
>
> It seems to me that if, eco-benign gardening and agriculture is to
> ever gain a serious foothold that this information must some how be
> formulatized.
> Right now there are two approaches that I see, neither one sufficient:
> Everythign is the same: what works here will work there
> and the oppisite extreme each site is wholly unque.
>
> There doesn't seem to be a collaboration between the two. There are no
> bridges from one side to the other. And its this lack of dynamics
> between the two that scares and distrubs my academic principles.
>
> I think that something a primary one certain basics, and then
> assembling knowledge on a much more condensed bio regional scale.
> The problem I see is that the people trying something different are so
> scattered that its difficult to elucidate anything after taking the
> regional aspect out of the equation.
>
> I recently finished reading Robert Hart's Forest Gardening, and Toby
> Hemingway's Gaia's Garden. THey seem to follow two different lines:
> Hart discusses mostly the path to knowledge he took, reading and
> exploring other (tropical) forest gardening by indiginous people as
> well as meeting with Fukuoka and Mollison. I was largely disapointed
> by the book though, because he claims to have 300 species, but never
> lists more than 30 in the entire book.
>
> Hemingway on the other hand, glosses over much of the sources of his
> knowledge and dives into specific techniques, leaving a decently
> adequate appendix of perrenial and self seeding edibles.
>
> And yes America is extremely polarized at teh moment.
> but its dangerous the way it is.
>
> People don't talk to each other about things. its considered rude and
> taboo, in my experience, people only talk about the political things
> with people that they agree with.
> And for the most part the difference are minor, and have no real
> impact on the everyday person and business.
> American gov't has completely sold out to Large corporations.
> Regardless of political party.
> Republicans do this through energy sector and defense spending
> and Democrats do this by driving the consumption of the masses
> The problem with this is that CEO are making ~300 times the average
> salary of their employess, (IN germany, I hear, the legal limit is set
> at 15 times).
> THe rich are getting richer, and the poor poorer.
> IN my city, we have the lowest unemployment in the nation,
> get in the last 7 years the poverty rate has doubled, these people are
> working 3-4 jobs and still not making ends meet.
> The big companies bring in large service centers, and instead of
> raising the wages when they can't get eough employees, they leave the
> city, and anotehr one takes in place in a couple of months.
> I don't understand, most people I talk to are so mislead by the media,
> and self delusionment (they only hear what they want to hear), that
> they don't know the basic facts, are frustrated and confused about
> this, and really don't even know why their so polarized, except that's
> the way their friends and or family are.
>
> This polarization has been in the media, but there have also been in
> the last month shows about how its a myth, because several red states
> turned blue. Its a sign of peoples complacentcy I think
>
> this is getting too long, sorry for off topic.
> Jeff





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