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Interesting article... how many of you practice permaculture? I just learned about it last year, & have incorporated many of the principles into my gardening w/ great success! However I guess I already practiced a lot of the ideas ,such as companion planting. My gardens have never had nice neat rows.
Quote:
Permaculture, a contraction of permanent agriculture but also increasingly permanent culture, means working with natural forces like the wind, sun, water, the forces of succession, animals and other 'natural' energies. These permaculture designs provide food, shelter, water and meet other needs required to build sustainable communities with minimum labor and without depleting the land and bioregional, regional, national even global ecosystems.
Humans originally worked with nature as hunter/gatherer societies. The human populations remained very small until we started enhancing nature with permanent cultivation and eventually irrigated agriculture.
I doubt if permaculture would supply enough food to support the current human population let alone the increases expected by some futurists.
I know a bunch of people who are 'into' Permaculture Design. I attend some of their meetings, I barter with them, and I have presented a couple workshops for them.
I live in a region where there is a growing sub-culture of people living off-grid, organic, sustainable lifestyles. Often marketing their surplus veggies for their income.
I kind of have one foot in with both of these sets of people.
I am into permaculture! There is a large permaculture movement, worldwide.
It has been proven over and over again that it will feed the worlds population and even bring back the places that have been turned to dust bowls and deserts by industrial agriculture. It is just so hard to convince all of the folks who have so much invested in the current system, they have been taught , and continue to spread , so much missinformation.
I have gotten so frustrated at the gardening forum here because of all of the folks who are profesional landscapers selling chemicals and the like, without any regard for the damage it does.
Killing ourselves for money.
I used to but they seem to becoming more rigid and elitist in their beliefs. A few of the leaders and their friends have allowed the power and fame to go to their heads. They have lost touch with reality. It has turned me off.
By the way, my employer uses farming methods that are all natural and is not a Permie.
Permaculture hasn't cornered the market on organic farming. Permaculture draws from lasagna, square foot, etc. gardening and claims it as it's own.
Last edited by PinkFlowerGarden; 05-03-2013 at 12:49 PM..
Permaculture could easily provide the same quantities of food in the same space as conventional agriculture... maybe even more since you are growing edibles at more than one level. The main difference is that you wouldn't be getting a whole bunch of one or two things in the space.
Instead of a flat square acre of 'insert monocrop'... you would have trees bearing edibles at the canopy layer, shrubs and vines bearing edibles in a middle tier, and 1-2 layers of edibles at ground level. Beneficial companion plants would be interplanted to improve soil condition, attract pollinators, repel pests, and provide organic matter for fertile humus. Essentially, you'd be making things easier for the plants to grow, not the person to harvest... that's the big difference.
Philosophical beliefs. That is complicated. There are three different groups. The minority is made up of those that are honestly looking to better the world, be closer to nature, and create a community. The second group is made up of self-serving individuals that use permaculture for an ego trip and/or instant atm. The third group is made up of radicals that believe there is only one way to do things. The majority, the second and third groups, have all but destroyed the credibility and advancements of permaculture in the US.
Actual design principles. Permaculture doesn't have any original ideas. The movement takes others' inovations and groups them together under a title. They have a couple wonderboys that they constantly promote, meanwhile there are others outside of Permaculture that are inventing new and fresh designs. The main core refuses to accept any change or that an outsider could do better and offer an improvement.
Permaculture is nothing more than a popular trend that has become archaic.
Last edited by PinkFlowerGarden; 05-06-2013 at 07:48 AM..
I think there's a 4th group of individuals who are simply trying to create a sustainable, low-impact/low-input, and mostly self-sufficient system that is tailored to their unique environmental conditions and circumstances... practical, not philosophical.
I do agree that many of the methods utilized to achieve permaculture designs are from other endeavors, and even some of the ideas behind the design principles aren't unique. It's simply grouping the design principles together to create a functional system and approach that's easy to understand and convey.
Now, the people who are saying that they are followers of some Permaculture doctrine can be stuck in their ways, acting elitist, and generally thinking wrongly... but that's not a flaw of the design principles and systemic approach, that's a flaw of humans. Zealots, regardless of what they claim to believe in, distort the original message and are never good for the long-term. Which is a shame really, so many good ideas, principles and techniques get shoved off into the bin because a few people get all nutty or hoity.
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