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  • From: Chris Carnevale <c.s.carnevale@gmail.com>
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] The Trouble with Permaculture; Permaculture Data
  • Date: Mon, 27 Jan 2014 21:55:33 -0500

It seems to me that permaculture does need more data but it isn't primarily for the sake of convincing skeptics. I think the value of more data is for permaculturists to tweak and improve their own systems. For example more data on plant variety trials within a polyculture ecosystem, rather than monoculture systems, which is where academic literature tends to focus. This kind of data gathering and sharing has been happening among permaculturists for decades, albeit not necessarily peer reviewed, which is the standard of academic journals.

If the goal is convincing skeptics, it's the narrative and story of a movement that matters most. This is what we are experiencing in the climate action realm. There are mountains and mountains of data to support the scientific validity of global warming, but using data as a tactic always fails against a compelling narrative such as that perpetuated by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, which is also supported by lots of money and generally the status quo.

It's the same thing with agriculture.

There is plenty of data out there already on organic farming vs. chemical-intensive farming to show that organic farming is superior in many respects--but that is subject to your value system. While data shows us that organic farming can have a more efficient calorie in:calorie out ratio, that also means that it's more human labor, rather than petroleum burned. That is good in some people's books, but is bad in others (i.e. just more work to do).

It has likely been a strong narrative--such as that provided by Rachel Carson, Wendell Berry, Michael Pollan, Vandana Shiva, and a number of other environmental spokespeople--that has shifted peoples' value systems to value environmental benefits in agriculture rather than just the conventional bottom lines. These narratives are based on data, but wouldn't necessarily be strengthened with any more data.

Chris Carnevale
Charleston, South Carolina

On 1/27/14, 9:14 PM, Jason Gerhardt wrote:
Ann Owen’s article on Resilience.org and Richard Perkins in Permaculture
Magazine give very short shrift to the level of thought that the topic of
the role data, or lack thereof, plays in permaculture. I hope to hear
others thoughts on this. I’ll offer mine.

First, it seems an underlying assumption about why permaculturists need
good data is because we are having a hard time convincing farmers to adopt
permaculture. I’m not sure there is commonality among permaculturists of
what that would even look like. Are we talking farmers giving up their row
crops for hugelkultur mounds, sheet mulch, pastured poultry, food forests?
Or are we talking about farmers adopting permaculture as an integrated
design system? I would hope the latter. That way we can evaluate whether
the above techniques would even make any sense on a farm scale.

Second, if we are looking at permaculture as a design system, what does it
look like to have data on that? How does one compare a farm designed using
permaculture to one that wasn’t? Does it come down to crop yield to labor
ratios solely? I would think this is a rather limited view on yield, as
most permaculturists I know would consider quality of life for the farmers,
ecosystem health, ecosystem services, and many other factors. For ecosystem
services alone, any ecologist will tell us, they are very hard to quantify.
I think most of us would agree that the lack of viewing agricultural
practices through a lens of ecosystem impacts and services is what has
gotten us in a lot of trouble to begin with. So how do we quantify that
kind of yield, and all the other theoretically unlimited yields to be had
out there?

Last, a story…I had a consultation on a 30 acre integrated animal/vegetable
farm last week and ran directly into the issue of farmers adopting
permaculture. When I bluntly asked the farm owner what he was looking to
net financially, he said, ‘we aren’t netting a profit, we just need to stop
losing money’. As he said that, we both swallowed pretty hard as we hit
upon the deep sadness of what it means to be a modern day farmer. It was a
candid moment as we looked over the rolling farmland. For many farmers it
is more a question of how to keep doing what they love without going into
debt to do it. To a large degree farmers are underwater. They can’t
consider an alternative to what they know because their slim margins can’t
support the risk. It’s easier for a farmer to say, ‘permaculture is for the
birds’, than to consider it seriously, because they actually can’t consider
it, seriously! We’re in a state of triage for farmers and the planet. The
question is how do we stop the bleeding using permaculture design?

Unfortunately, this is what we are up against, and it takes a tremendous
amount of creativity to solve these problems, not just data. I don’t doubt
the value of data, as there might be some surprises in there, but we can
make some pretty educated guesses about what the data at this point will
tell us, i.e. that we have a lot of work to do to improve marketable crop
yield in permaculture designed systems. So is data what most
permaculturists really need to focus on? I tend to think we need a longer
period of wide-eyed enthusiasm to try out all the crazy ideas we can come
up with to see if they work, and if they do, document them, then replicate
them, then document that. Its apples to oranges in a way; comparing
something that has had some 40 years to experiment with versus 10,000.
Patience with those overly zealous permaculturists who think they can save
the world might actually serve us, as they might be the ones to find that
bigger kernel. What’s it gonna hurt, our chance to reach farmers with
permaculture? I haven’t been wide-eyed enough to believe that for a long
time now. There are much bigger issues preventing that. I do believe
permaculture as a design system has a very good chance to solve some of
those bigger issues, which might be what most permaculturists should focus
on.

Jason Gerhardt






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