permaculture

[Koreen Brennan <koreenbrennan@gmail.com>]

There are some great responses to Lion's question.

I would add (though maybe repeating or clarifying points already made):

1. Permaculture is not just about farming. Permaculture has had valuable
effects in many areas. It has influenced designers, builders, landscapers,
educators, financial people, community organizers, vision makers and even
policy makers and is used in those fields and more.

2. As Toby pointed out, agriculture is a hard nut to crack. I am setting
out to be a $100K farmer but I am crazy. Very few of my friends would even
think of making that leap, because it's just too hard. Because the deck is
extremely stacked against small farmers, with artificially low prices for
food, hard to get financing for small business and even harder for small
farmers, onorous regulations, and the list goes on and on and on. I had to
go way out of the box to get as far as I have and still maintain other
goals that I have. Though I'm crazy, others are more focused on easier nuts
to crack like urban gardening, food forests, etc.

3. I think the real power of permaculture lies in its ideas. Joel mentioned
the concept of paradigm shift a bit ago. This is what I've always seen as a
major value of permaculture. It is systems design, and it integrates
systems. This is a revolutionary concept in western society. And it changes
the entire way that we do everything. If people are brought to
understanding of how this actually works, their worldview changes and it's
hard to go back, because it makes so much sense. Thus, permaculture has
influenced many, many other fields and sectors and will continue to do so.
We're not necessarily going to know the influence it has had, because
someone who was exposed to permaculture may now be using "no till" farming,
working with the USDA program for it so not calling it permaculture, yet
they were inspired by that original exposure. These examples go on and on.
These alternative methods of agriculture are catching on, all over the
world. In some places, there are major movement occurring (with locavore
activism, farmer's rights in India, etc). Rather than count the numbers of
"permaculture farms", perhaps we should look at overall trends, and try to
determine how permaculture has influenced those trends. I see tremendous
influence in my region, from almost nothing to interest from policy makers,
in just a few years.

I will say, that there are permaculture supporters in Extension, ag depts
of universities and other areas formerly completely commandeered by
chemical ag. So that landscape is changing, and that is exciting. It's
going to get easier and already is in some areas. One could think of the
work we're doing now, to introduce the paradigm, as "building the soil"
before we plant the forest.

4. Let's talk about permaculture farms some more. Permaculture farms are
not just farms. They are an attempt to create entire systems that are
compatible with local bioregions and watersheds, use zero net energy,
incorporate community and fair share economics. This is quite a bit more
complicated than, say, raising hothouse tomatoes with minimum wage workers,
and takes quite a bit more energy, strategy, know-how and planning. Thus,
the question of how many $100K farms there are can be misleading. My farm,
for instance, will focus just as much on teaching others to farm, providing
the means to do so (seedlings, etc), and encouraging urban backyard farming
in particular (since we live in a region of 4 million people, mostly in
urban settings). Do I need to sell $100K of veggies in order to produce
$100K of veggies that will have even less of a footprint than they would if
I was growing them all myself? No - and if I only focused on growing my
own, I might end up producing far less local veggies. I do want to grow
$100K of food and I think I have a plan that will work. But I'm not going
to know until I try, and it is not going to be my only product.  So when
looking at permaculture farms that aren't growing $100K of veggies, what
else are they growing? Paradigm shift, perhaps? :-) Community gardens
inspired and spawned miles from their farm? More farms with solar panels?
Watershed repair? Community building? etc. How valuable is that?

I can say with certainty that there are thousands of pounds of food being
grown in backyards in my region because of the work of local permies. This
food was not being produced before we started that work. If we're going to
count statistics, that should definitely be included.

5. None of this means that I think we can't do more. I most definitely
believe we can do more than we are doing, and one channel to achieve that
is more collaboration and cooperation. Thus, our farm is a group endeavor,
not just me and one or two other people. We'll get further, faster. Again,
it takes more planning and thinking through things, but we feel the
potential makes it well worth it.

I think we could use some strategy sessions at regional and higher levels.
I think we could benefit from linking up with activist orgs working on
issues dear to us. I think asking hard questions as you are doing Lion,
should be encouraged and we should allow ourselves to be pushed and
challenged as a result. I think we have a long way to go, and it's good to
both acknowledge the hard and fruitful work that has been done by many, and
continue to honestly look at what still needs to be done.

On Tue, Aug 25, 2015 at 4:06 PM, Jason Gerhardt <jasongerhardt@gmail.com>
wrote:

> This is another common critique of permaculture, that is, where are all the
> permaculture farms if it's so successful? I think Joel deconstructs that
> accurately in that it's not about farms per say, but all kinds of systems,
> and the same question still stands. "Where's the beef?" I think this is
> more complex than simple however...
>
> One, is that systems often need a critical mass before noticeable change
> can manifest. If I think about the greenhouse I've managed for the last
> five years, the first two years were virtually pest free, then I started
> noticing a little slug damage here and there. While nothing to worry about
> at that stage, in two more years it became clear the slugs were a force to
> be reckoned with. So it took time for the population to grow before the
> slugs could impact the greenhouse as a whole. Permaculture is still quite
> young is what I'm suggesting. From a farming perspective, we are up against
> arguably 10,000 years of momentum for a particular method, i.e. large scale
> annual soil cultivation. The same momentum could describe capitalism,
> architecture, or you name it. I don't think we've had time to reach
> critical mass enough to do much more than nibble around the edges, in
> short. This lack of time and momentum effects the refinement of our methods
> and design ability, as well as our population size. It's important to note
> this doesn't mean permaculture hasn't had an impact, it's just not at a
> large system scale.
>
> However, lack of critical mass, nor time and momentum, doesn't totally
> explain the lack of scaled impact, just as my greenhouse is much more
> complex than it would appear. Somehow, regardless of these factors,
> permaculturists are still quite the underdog considering whole system
> change and what we are up against in all arenas. But, underdogs are an
> interesting breed, as Malcolm Gladwell has unpacked the David and Goliath
> myth to show that it's not as simple as David being small and Goliath
> large. It was actually that David had a particular skill that rendered
> Goliath totally ineffective, regardless of size and might. So we can ask
> ourselves as permaculture practitioners, what is our skill that would
> disarm the gigantic forces we are trying to counter? In my humble opinion,
> too few of us have figured out what that force is. This suggests just
> because people identify as permaculturists doesn't mean we are all taking
> the same tact, approach, or using the same skills, and therefore, measuring
> success based upon the Permaculture moniker alone might be entirely
> useless, and probably is.
>
> This brings up the last point I have time for at the moment...what is
> permaculture for? I'm sure this question would generate a lot of different
> answers (does that prove the point above?), but to me permaculture's
> highest and best use is in waking people up through a particular form of
> education, the PDC. It doesn't seem like more permaculture design firms are
> the solution or more permaculture farms or more permaculture whatevers. To
> me, more people who see themselves as part of the greater ecosystem, more
> people who understand their wellbeing is tied in with that of all others,
> more people who have been taught design (defined as intelligent decision
> making), more people who can think in systems and recognize patterns, more
> people who can do for self, might just be the particular force that impacts
> whole systems. So, maybe it is permaculture education that is the force
> that disables the current plethora of destruction that is going on and has
> been for a very long time. And maybe our focus on farms instead of the
> education system is the thing that is holding us back. In my experience
> learning and teaching permaculture in the education system, there's a lot
> of truth in that.
>
> And this brings us back to critical mass, as well as time and momentum.
> This is certainly the route of permaculture education and the PDC. It's
> slow. It's small...at first. I believe it's lasting, however. Built designs
> are very short term. Education, that is, the transfer of knowledge, wisdom,
> skill, and values, endures. That's what changes culture, and I think that's
> what we are trying to do through permaculture.
>
>
> Jason Gerhardt
>
> --
>
>
> www.realearthdesign.com
>
> 720-496-9744
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-- 
Koreen Brennan
http://www.growpermaculture.com
http://permacultureinternational.com
http://northamericanpermaculture.org