permaculture

[Steve Hart <stevenlawrencehart@gmail.com>]

 M
Thanks for reading between the lines....look fwd to catchin up

S


On 1 May 2014 21:16, Holger Hieronimi <holger@tierramor.org> wrote:

> Hola-
> I´m a permaculture enthusiast, but I also find some critical aspects in PC
> promotion, the way PC is very often presented.
>
> As sombody who is struggeling to live from the land in Michoacán, México,
> after a process of now 12 years developing a small piece of land, inspired
> by PC principles, and also teaching and mentoring young students, I´ve come
> to be a bit more sceptic of some expressions of Permaculture (over-)
> promotion.
>
> This article I just discovered on the web, and in certain aspects speaks
> out of my heart.
> I´ll copy the entire article from the blog "Small Farm Future - Making the
> case for a small farm renaissance" -
>
> you can find the original at:
> http://smallfarmfuture.org.uk/?p=491
>
>
> "Permaculture Design Course Syndrome
>
> I wrote a version of this post quite a while ago, and have been sitting on
> it ever since. Various criticisms of permaculture and permaculturists had
> been accumulating in my thoughts, but I don't take parricide lightly
> (permaculture is, after all, how I got into all of this). Then the
> ever-excellent Land Magazine ran some critical articles about permaculture,
> followed by some predictable onslaughts from the eco-panglossian brigade,
> and I started to feel protective. But anyway, here for what it's worth is
> my post on the good, the bad and the ugly of permaculture.
>
> At Vallis Veg we're fortunate to have a seemingly inexhaustible supply of
> WWOOFers and HelpXers wishing to volunteer to work on our holding. Often
> they're young people with no special interest in farming or environmental
> issues who are simply looking for a cheap way to travel, and I've tended to
> look preferentially for people who can demonstrate a genuine interest in
> the work -- one such criterion being the possession of a Permaculture
> Design Certificate (PDC). However, I've increasingly been noticing what
> we've started to call 'PDC syndrome' in some of these volunteers, to the
> extent that I'm beginning to think twice about taking them on.
>
> PDC syndrome can involve one or more of the following symptoms:
>
>  *   a belief that no till or mulching or forest gardening or
>    polycultures or mob-stocking or chicken tractors or perennial crops
>    or compost teas or various other techniques must invariably be
>    practiced in preference to any alternatives
>  *   a belief that whatever Bill Mollison or David Holmgren or a
>    handful of other authors have written is above criticism
>  *   likewise, a belief that the way things are done by certain famous
>    permaculturists or on certain famous permaculture holdings must
>    always be faithfully reproduced elsewhere
>  * a belief that permaculture has cracked the problem of creating a low
>    input -- high output farming system
>  * a belief, consequently, that anyone who struggles to make a living
>    out of farming must be failing because they are not properly
>    following the correct principles
>  * a slightly superior smile at the sight of weeds, hoes, spades,
>    tractors etc
>  * a belief that a small garden crammed with edible perennial things is
>    proof positive that permaculture can feed the world
>  * a belief that controlled trials and numerical analysis are
>    reductionist and unnecessary
>  * a belief that people who question aspects of permaculture principles
>    are simply nay-sayers who sap the movement's joie de vivre
>  * most importantly, a ready admission that permaculture is not a set
>    of approved techniques or received dogma that must always be applied
>    everywhere but a way of thinking, a broad set of handy design
>    principles, before cheerfully reverting to any of the preceding
>    affectations
>
>
> I'm exaggerating a little of course. And the good news is that the
> condition is rarely permanent -- it usually fades within a few years of
> taking a permaculture course, faster if the sufferer takes on a farm
> themselves (the quickest cure recommended by physicians). Perhaps I'm just
> being over-sensitive to criticism: God knows there are plenty of things
> I've done on my holding that deserve it.  And in case it seems like I'm
> putting myself above those who suffer from this troubling condition, let me
> tell you that I had a very bad case of PDC syndrome myself for a couple of
> years. It's not that I feel I have nothing to learn from recent PDC
> graduates, but I do weary of the judgmental spirit that too often seems to
> accompany the process.
>
> From my perspective as a small-scale agroecologically-oriented commercial
> grower, I'd offer the following criticism of the package that many PDC
> graduates seem to emerge with:
>
>  * a tendency to over-emphasise the role of smart design tricks and to
>    under-emphasise the important but unglamorous basics of sound
>    growing/farming skills
>  * a tendency to be over-impressed by the media schtick of various
>    global permaculture gurus who very rarely make a living from
>    producing basic food commodities, and a tendency not to notice what
>    many unsung local farmers and growers are achieving as 'implicit
>    permaculturists' who simply apply good design in their practice
>  * a tendency to a religious mode of thinking, in which the rudiments
>    of scientific rigour are rejected as 'positivism' or 'reductionism'
>    and replaced by an overwhelming faith in the views of permaculture
>    gurus as per my previous point
>  * a metropolitan disdain for farmers past and present, and a
>    conviction that the way they have done things is wrong
>  * an insufficiently fine-grained understanding of agro-ecosystems
>
>
> I do struggle with these aspects of the permaculture education process --
> particularly the fixed ideas around what constitutes a 'permaculture
> approach' and the tendency to substitute a religious for a critical mode of
> thinking, with its concern to enact what X says rather than to think about
> what X has said, engage with it critically, and then apply what's useful
> from it to one's own situation. But I'm not going to turn my back on the
> movement, because I think its basic principles are sound when thoughtfully
> applied, because generally I like its cheerful can-do amateurism, because I
> usually find the way it imagines different possible ways of living
> invigorating, and because there are signs that it's sharpening up its act.
> The movement could probably have done a better job historically in
> subjecting its claims to some kind of experimental scrutiny, but the fact
> is that it's been a grassroots movement without the resources to do much
> proper research, especially when the methods it typically adopts are
> complex and multifaceted (on which note, more news of the Vallis Veg
> Experiment soon). Actually, I've recently been in touch with Rafter Sass
> Ferguson who's doing an academic study of permaculture over in the US --
> his liberation ecology site looks like a really promising project in
> sorting through the permaculture chaff from the grain. I haven't had a
> chance to assimilate what he's doing properly yet, but his site seems to me
> to be one of the 'act sharpening' signs I mentioned above.
>
> So -- well, I do despair of the kind of permaculture-principles-as-holy-law
> approach showcased by Angelo Eliades and some of his supporters in my
> debate with him about perennial crops (my key alarm bell phrase: "you'll
> never understand permaculture"; its equivalent: "you'll never let God into
> your life and you will die an unforgiven heathen"). But I think there's
> enough self-critical dynamism in the movement to compensate. I'm not
> especially proud of my exchange with Eliades, whose condescension got right
> under my skin -- but his condescension does actually raise interesting
> issues. As I recall, I mentioned that I was a 'struggling farmer' and
> Eliades proceeded to belabour me with comments to the effect that I was
> obviously struggling financially because I wasn't properly applying
> permaculture principles, citing various successful 'permaculture farmers'
> such as Joel Salatin. Now, from what I've read and seen of Joel I think
> he's fantastic, and the same goes for other permaculture farmers like Sepp
> Holzer. But I'd like to make three points about the nature of such success:
>
> It stems partly from being an innovator and opening up a new market, such
> as Joel's grass-fed chickens. Kudos for the originality, but normal market
> forces apply here. As more suppliers join in to fill the niche, the
> economic returns start to falter, which is pretty much where we're now at
> in the local veg box scheme movement. These innovators haven't found some
> golden goose to make food production intrinsically profitable.
> It also stems partly from being good at self-promotion and marketing a new
> product. Again, kudos for the success -- it's what you need to do as a
> self-employed small farmer. And I suppose you could say at a stretch that
> talking a good game is a permaculture skill. But being good at marketing
> doesn't really get to the heart of farm economics or agro-ecology.
> If I could make so bold, part of the success also stems from a certain
> credulity among the permaculture public, who too rarely ask tough questions
> of different farming systems. Joel Salatin's chicken operation is no doubt
> very productive, but it does rely on bought-in commercial feed, which
> enthusiasts tend to gloss over. Sepp Holzer has created an amazing-looking
> farm with some clever ideas that make people want to visit it, and that
> alone is worth celebrating, but I think the results are open to question on
> input/output grounds.
> Anyway, one good outcome of my debate with Eliades was that it prompted me
> to look more carefully at the literature on perennial cropping, with the
> result that I've now formalised my thinking on this in a journal article --
> all it needs is a home to go to, and I'll report back on that soon. Perhaps
> this illustrates what David Holmgren means when he says 'obtain a yield'.
> Hmm, guess I'm still a permaculturist at heart.
>
> Towards the end of the PDC I took 13 years ago, my esteemed tutor
> admonished his assembled students with the words "You don't know anything".
> At the time it struck me as a rather harsh note in an otherwise empowering
> course, but now I see his wisdom. I know a hell of a lot more now than I
> did back then, but I realise that I still don't know anything. I only wish
> a few more PDC graduates realised they don't know anything either..."
>
>
> --
> Holger Hieronimi - holger@tierramor.org
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-- 
Kia ora

[image: Picture]
*Steve Hart*
Ecology Architect
skype: stevenlawrencehart