permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>]

On Apr 13, 2013, at 1:46 PM, Douglas Hinds wrote:

> Now I get it - You HAVE to take these positions (that aren't really yours), 
> as an EXPERT on Permaculture

Ah, we've degenerated to personal insults.

> perhaps you believe that hydroponics recreates life in the sea


And here I thought we could make an effort to understand and converse rather 
than twist words to score debating points. Sigh. 

> That's what the Pro-GMO people say.

Next you'll compare me to Hitler and then we can invoke Godwin's law, and 
that will end it.

>  it's (what I write here) is about ... ME! My life, my food.

I've figured out what works well for me, too, and with that done, my interest 
is to help others where things are obviously not working well for them, like 
that neighborhood in Denver. If that looks to you like taking positions that 
aren't really mine, then you are welcome to your judgment. I have access to 
soil and gardens. They don't. So I help them look at their options, even if I 
don't need that particular solution right now.

Some people (not Douglas, perhaps) feel that rainwater harvesting using 
galvanized metal roofing with baked enamel paint, plastic or metal pipes, 
metal, plastic, or concrete cisterns, and usually a pump and pressure tank 
constitutes permaculture design, while the same materials used to grow fish 
and plants in a closed loop system do not. I think, understandably, that we 
are comfortable with systems already in place even when they are tech-heavy, 
but we don't like to see new systems emerge that are tech heavy. 

What I like about aquaponics is that it produces high yields of both plant 
and animal food in a tiny footprint, has low maintenance inputs once 
established (like any good Pc system), can be set up as an intensive, small 
scale system, and is a very clear, easily graspable way to demonstrate a 
closed-loop, whole system, which is something most people have a very hard 
time understanding. The food tastes good to me, but perhaps I don't vibrate 
on as pure an etheric plane as others. 

To move away from obviously fruitless opinionating about whether we like 
aquaponics or not, I offer something from one of my mentors, Tom Ward, that 
helps me see where some technologies fit. Tom classes our designs in 3 
categories, quick fix, retrofit, and ultimate permaculture. Let's say we are 
in a place with a leaky gutter and droughty plants. First we do:

The quick fix: put a bucket under the leak and dump the stored water on dry 
plants.

But also plan to do

The retrofit: repair the gutter and direct the downspout toward the dry 
plants, which maybe you have mulched, too.

And when you have time and resources, do

Ultimate permaculture: build a rainwater harvesting system, build the soil to 
hold water, mulch, swale, etc, etc. so we minimize long-term inputs, etc. etc.

Most design work is retrofit, since there is so much to fix. But often a 
crummy quick fix is needed fast, while ultimate Pc is where we want to go. I 
see aquaponics as part of the retrofit stage in a broken culture. A  relevant 
solution at a certain point, but in the long run we want ultimate 
permaculture, when urban soils are remediated so we can grow food on them, 
everyone has land, money, and the education to do critical thinking about 
food issues, everyone has the freedom to leave the US or go wherever when 
they want, and all that. Meanwhile, I see a role for techs and activities 
that are less than perfect if they increase quality of life in easily 
measured ways like providing alternatives to industrial food.

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com