permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>]

Tripp Tibbetts wrote:
> See what our friend, Novella Carpenter, is up to for New Year's:
>  
> Increase productivity. This year, I’m creating French intensive beds. 
> For awhile I was trying to do those hippie permaculture jungles, but 
> I’m starting to see that for me, it isn’t as productive or easy to 
> harvest as it could be.
If someone's main aim is simply high yield (with high inputs for high 
outputs), or simplicity, then they'll be disappointed with "hippie 
permaculture jungles," since the latter are multifunctional, and include 
little items such as providing habitat, retaining soil, maintaining a 
functioning ecosystem, and in general sharing the planet with others, 
which means that sheer human food yields might be lower. And guess which 
one has a chance of being sustainable?

Written just after a visit to a real permaculture jungle in Belize, at 
Christopher Nesbitt's.
http:mmrfbz.org

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com