permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>]

Juan, thanks for this excellent story. Designing with carefully stated goals 
in mind, rather than falling in love with a technique, be it natural farming 
or hugelkutlur or whatever, is critical.  One of the reasons permaculture is 
so hard to sell to "numbers" people, and to farmers who must make a living 
from their land, is that we are designing for the needs of more than just 
humans. We are sharing the yields. I think this was lurking behind much of 
what the author of the "Trouble" article was trying to get at when she talked 
about how little actual food was coming from some permaculture sites. Food 
forests are probably not going to produce as much human food, in terms of 
nutrition, as an annual vegetable garden can, unless we shift to eating a lot 
of nuts or grow carb crops in the openings. 

I think part of the great appeal of food forests is that we intuitively know 
that they create tons of habitat and ecosystem functions, and we eco-types 
want that. But people forget that when energy flows are dispersed among many 
recipients, the net yield for people almost always goes down. Many people 
build a food forest thinking they are going to get lots of meals from it—they 
think their goal is to have a food forest, but their goal is really to have 
food. But unless large parts of a food forest are devoted to standard calorie 
crops at first, while the nut crops mature, they won't get much food from it 
compared to what they could get from the same amount of ground devoted to 
annual crops. 

The author complained that one forest garden was using up good farmland that 
could have been yielding more human food, but she was ignoring the non-human 
yields. That's one-dimensional thinking, and it's thinking that permaculture 
is primarily about food. It's hard for me to look at a straight veggie garden 
and feel that permaculture's ethics and principles are being met, because 
it's all for people. Even adding some flowers leaves out all the perching and 
bark-probing birds, and many, many other species. If you live in an area 
where forest or shrubland is native, you need to mimic that structure to 
provide for the rest of nature. If you have an intense annual garden, you 
should be tending several times as much good habitat to make up for it.

So most complete permaculture systems, if they are to truly practice 
EarthCare, must be more extensive than a comparable food garden. And in a 
time when the everything is measured in money, and when we want direct reward 
for all our work, the "low" yields per acre of natural farming or of food 
forests are going to be looked at by the measurement people as inefficient. 
That's because permaculturists, at least, the smart ones, know that we are 
sharing Gaia amongst all creatures.

The trouble with permaculture, as many of the article's commenters pointed 
out, is not permaculture, it's the permaculturists who don't get that.

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com


On Jan 27, 2014, at 12:11 PM, Juan Manuel Burgos wrote:

> Personally i believe and fell that this article hits just right in the nail 
> in some aspects that need to be seen with new eyes about permaculture
> 
> I'm definately not as much experiences as many of the permaculture 
> teacher's and practitioners around here, or that i have met in the time (4 
> years aprox.) since i'm practicing and discovering this magnificent 
> art-science-game that's permaculture design as a tool for reconecting 
> ourselves to the earth, it's messages, it's language, and also with each 
> other. we inhabitants and crew of this "spaceship" called Gaia, or Mother 
> Earth. But after many experiences, and specially the last year, where i've 
> been taking care of a small piece of land (400 sq Mts), hosting workshops 
> for other teachers, teaching a bit myself, and also implementing many 
> "recipes and techniques" i can say i've lived on flesh some of the things 
> mentioned by the author.
> 
> It's quite noticeable at this point of permacultre history that not 
> everything that has been taught and said about it it's just like that, 
> right, an unquestionable truth. In fact, i feel, that as every other model, 
> it has to be questioned. Let us grant ourselves the chance of doing it with 
> an objective, critic, and open heart-mind attitude, so as to "obtain a 
> yield" from the experiences we live and also the ones other fellow partners 
> are finding on their way.
> 
> Not all the world wants to be a forest garden. That's a fact. We speak of 
> regeneration of the eart, ok, let's do it, but sahara desert, probably will 
> want to be just like that, it is the porpouse of it's existence, same as 
> some other landscapes. We're in a point where experience shows as what 
> works, what doesn't, and for sure when future generations take our place, 
> they will say to them (with a thankful and mindful attitude) thank you 
> ancestors for doing the best you could, we can see now that you've missed 
> the point here and there, and we have to responsibility to keep on working 
> to continue and improoving what you've done. Personally i even think that 
> they will almost transform the name...maybe DInamiCulture...the only thing 
> that's permanent, is change.
> 
> My biggest teacher this year has been the vegetable garden. At firts, 
> implemented during a workshop (the way i see it, a little bit to 
> "hyperventilated") held by a well known teacher from around here 
> (argentina). Without a detailed design, a lot of soil was moved, in a 
> single day. The idea was to make a "Ecosistemic Garden" something similar 
> to what Emilia Hazzelip proposes as Synergistic Agriculture. After a year 
> trying to plan and implement sowing, harvest, growing, managing, etc. of 
> this piece of land, it was obvious it had to be redesigned. Completely. 
> After a big and hard work, alone, it was done. Now the space usage has been 
> optimized, water-wise design implemented, maintenance tasks far better 
> done, and many more benefits. The first proposal was a chaotic garden, 
> profitable for Gaia, but not for people, at least in the context of a plot 
> of land that you expect to get a yield in the short term, so as, in the 
> future, implement a garden that can manage itself without that
>  much energy. Now, it is another fact that there's some kind of work that 
> we have to do in order to obtain a yield. Nature works "Wu Wei" style, but 
> it takes a time to do so in spaces where we have to regenerate broken 
> cycles. Until that, it's wise enought to honour and respect what elders and 
> ancestors have done, according to each specific context, and not fall in 
> the tendency of "Reinventing the Wheel" constantly. One tendency that many 
> of us seem to have, in some grade at least.
> 
> Just my two cents, sharing a little bit of recent experience, flowing along 
> with this open minded attitude of viewing this we're doing objectively and 
> reduce our margin of error. Of course, our mistakes are valuable indeed, 
> for they hold the possibility of growing, evolving and learning about this 
> path of re-connecting with the nature, it's language, and the way we can 
> correctly interact with it and everything that surrounds it.
> 
> Juan Manuel Burgos
> Integral Permaculture Designer
> Ananda AIken MultiEspacio PermaCultural
> http://anandaaikenmultiespacio.wordpress.com