permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Dec 25, 2013 at 2:30 PM, Toby Hemenway 
<toby@patternliteracy.com>wrote:

> (warning: rant ahead!)
>
> I don't want to get back into the debate about whether certain techniques,
> such as aquaponics, do or don't fit into permaculture. That's a morass.
> There's a much more valuable lesson here. Permaculture is a design process,
> not a set of techniques. That means that in some cases, a technique fits
> into a permaculture design, and in other cases, what is done with the same



> technique isn't permaculture design at all. For example: conventional
> farming uses herbicides in horribly destructive ways. But Holmgren has
> written about the benefits of a one-time use of herbicides for tree
> planting compared to the damage done by repeated hoeing and weeding to
> achieve the same effect. Surely, herbicides don't fit into permaculture! Or
> has David been watering down permaculture all these years?
>
>
Yes, as far as I am concerned. I am horrified. This is so not permaculture
at all. If someone can't figure out how to do weed biocontrol in an
orchard, woodlot, landscape or food forest
completely without herbicide he should not even start such a project.
Seriously. Surely he knows about the biocide and persistence issues with
all herbicides.


> In the mid nineties, I watched Mollison and his superb equipment operator,
> an Australian named Doug, use a bulldozer for many hours to dig a pond at
> the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center. Surely a diesel-powered bulldozer
> does not fit into permaculture. And it uses thousands of times more fossil
> fuel and embodied energy than an aquaponics system, and in terms of yield
> of fish versus resources consumed, this pond is far less productive and
> took vastly more embodied energy to make than an aquaponics system. And the
> work left, for several months, an ugly bare scar on the earth. That can't
> be permaculture. But, wait--it was Mollison who designed it and oversaw it.
> If a bulldozer can fit into permaculture, then a lot of other technologies
> having a far smaller footprint probably can.
>

Bulldozers are just tools as are hoes and shovels, planting bars, skid
loaders, backhoes and tractors. Its about what you do with them and why. Is
their use justified and can the job be done as completely as desires using
any alternative method. Caee in point: I chose to turn about 5 acres of my
land into systems of food producing raised bed gardens. I invested in a
large tractor and many implements and a skid loader. I used the loader to
mix hundreds of tons of quarrry rock dust, clean manure and natural soil
amendments and spread it out in four foot wide strips where the beds were
to be. The tractor did the necessary tillage and bed forming leaving
drainage trenches between the beds. Big rains come along and I see my
topsoil and expensive soil amendments washing away off site either to an
adjoining field or my neighbor's property. Enter skid loader again and
massine terraforming of the 5 acres complete with terracing and catchment
ponds. Now excess rainfall goes to another garden system, to one of my
fallow fields or into my ponds with prized aquatic systems providing
habitat for a diverse array of wildlife that would probably not exist
otherwise, beneficial wildlife and harvestable biomass (duckweed and
cattails). The only alternative to using the heavy equipment would have
been to scale back to hand dug raised beds with shallow tilth, no control
over water retention and nutrient loss and loss of the ponds. Construction
of a pond can be done to meet commonly accepted permaculture standards with
adequate creativity, planning and execution. Look at the work of Darren
Doherty and Sepp Holzer. People all over the place are getting the bug to
build swales, ponds, creative ditching and trenching,
wetlands, berms and Hugelkulture mounds; just search YouTube and you'll see
or do a Google search. To make a long story short, using a system the
progresses from intensive tillage, minimum tillage and no tillage is a good
plan. This is what I did and it has proved to be a good investment. I now
have acres of fertile, high and deep tilth biointensive raised beds that
can be worked no till or minimum till. Letting the soil rest, incrementally
one acre at a time, for a year or three after such intensive activity is
pretty much required.


> My hori-hori used an enormous foundry, vast amounts of fossil fuels, ore
> mined and trucked in, and was shipped to me from Japan. Surely that tool
> can't fit into permaculture.  If I do the same tasks with a flint knife,
> does that make it permaculture? If I walk to the nearest creek, where
> scarce salmon are just starting to return, and use my bamboo pole and
> recycled hook to catch salmon every day to feed my household, depleting
> that rare stock dangerously, does that fit into permaculture? I'm a
> hunter-gatherer, using a bamboo pole--what could be more permacultural?
>
>

> It's not about technique or tools. It's about how we arrive at their use.
> To miss that is to miss the most important aspect of permaculture design.
>

That is a great statement. I think that is what I was recommending without
realizing it.


> If permaculture principles and methods were used to design a system, and
> it is multi-functional, uses edge intelligently, uses less energy than
> alternatives, reduces impact on natural ecosystems such as fisheries and
> wildland now converted to farms, closes resource loops by recycling,
> teaches whole systems thinking, uses biological resources as major
> components while the technological resources used are no more complex than
> those in the average house (a pump, some plumbing, some tanks), cares for
> people by feeding and teaching them, is modeled on how a natural system
> works (e.g., an estuary), cares for the planet compared to other systems
> producing the same products (a fish farm or trawling, say), recycles
> surplus, etc. etc,--
>
> Then it fits into permaculture.
>
> For me, a major aspect of permaculture design is using the resources
> currently available to do tasks we need done in more ecologically sound
> ways than how they are conventionally done. In a perfect world, no one
> would ever use herbicides or a bulldozer. In this world, if you arrive at
> their use via a permaculture design process, then they fit into
> permaculture.
>
> Wonderful, this is classical permaculture.

Regarding stewarding permaculture standards I like the term "classical
permaculture". Think it brings to mind the distilled essence of the worlds
greatest teachers of permaculture and natural agriculture.


> Merry Christmas, in the most secular way possible.
>
> Toby
> http://patternliteracy.com
>
> Merry Christmas to you, Toby and a Happy Paleo New Year.


>
> On Dec 24, 2013, at 1:43 PM, Steve Hart wrote:
> >
> >
> > It is yet another subject very worthy of hard core debate and perhaps
> light
> > hearted discussion also. Having been around the PC scene since 1980...I
> do
> > reflect on many issues events and personalities. Also on the
> > generalisations and groupings also the stigma and titles. Also very much
> on
> > leadership, in all its forms. Also on the species man and its character,
> > how we are evolving in all its layers. Your list above LL is much longer
> > than this and can also fall into many different catergories. Good Bad and
> > Ugly to name but one grouping. However we are all part of the one family.
> > A very diverse family at that. The greater challenge I see is the need to
> > strengthen the core of what Permaculture is so as to avoid the watering
> > down of the whole subject but to strengthen it.  I recall the debate we
> had
> > on Aquaponics and Hydroponics where I think from memory only Scott and I
> > argued that neither fitted into Permaculture.  This to me is a classic
> > example of the watering down of Permaculture. No puns please. One PC
> > Principle I respond to most often is "Working with Nature, not against
> it".
> > Often, the complexity of this statement alone is far too mind boggling.
> But
> > the results are more than obvious in every walk of life.
> >
>
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-- 
Lawrence F. London
lfljvenaura@gmail.com
http://www.avantgeared.com
https://plus.google.com/+Avantgeared
Skype: lawrence.f.london