permaculture

[Chris Carnevale <c.s.carnevale@gmail.com>]

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