We work with an aid agency on sustainable permaculture aid projects. One ofI think this attitude may be more common among aid agencies than we think. Over years of work with an agency, I have come across a skepticism regarding the effectiveness of permaculture as a tool in aid. I know that. a few years back, an agricultural adviser with AusAID (the Australian government's aid funding body) publicly ridiculed permaculture at an aid organisation meeting. He said "Permaculture is not a suitable technolology for overseas development" and likened it to Farming Systems Research of the 1970s.
the issues that came up at our last meeting was the lack of documentation
and research into the effectiveness of permaculture techniques.
Many case studies are documented in the various global permacultureArticles in the permaculture press are valuable as descriptive journalistic pieces. They are generally not, however, analytical articles which ask questions about processes and outcomes. They therefore lack that hard, enquiring edge which is needed to make a realistic assessment of things and which is needed to effectively answer critics. In fact, a great deal of permaculture writing is self-congratulatory, fails to address negatives (how else can we learn?) and make comparisons. This feels good in the short term but takes us nowhere over the longer term.
publications and in the International Permaculture Conference Proceedings
papers. However we do agree that there is a broad lack of research and
quantitative data reports on such projects.
Does anyone on this list know of any formal research into the effectivenessWe applied for and received funding from an agency research body to produce an evaluation - a documentation - of our program in the South Pacific and to produce some training manuals suitable for use by Melanesian field staff. These latter include a manual about basic introductory agricultural techniques for people using slash and burn farming (includes mulching, soils etc).
of permaculture strategies, or documentation of projects that could add to
our current knowledge?
Absoloutely! Permaculture provides that broad appreciation of a situation.
We believe (with a passion) that permaculture systems work if well designed
and considered, it would be great to have more documented evidence of this.
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