What exactly do we mean by “Permaculture”?
(Wasn't there supposed to be an S at the beginning?)
Even among people who claim to be Permaculture enthusiasts there seems to be a variety of ways to explain its meaning, without being contradictory. A methodology, a set of values, a science, a way of looking at the world around us, … all this and more! Since I see myself as one of these enthusiasts, and I'm planing on publishing various Permaculture related articles, I think a quick introduction will be useful:
Introducing Permaculture
Many great articles have been written on Permaculture, including on Steemit. My favorite is this one by @rimann, who unfortunately has not been very active lately. So instead of repeating his article, I would like to sum it up in my own words, adding to it where necessary. I have also published a more detailed article here to introduce Permaculture.
Conceptual Core
Most people agree that Permaculture goes back to Australian biologists Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, who in the 1960's developed a holistic approach to agriculture, emulating natural systems by taking into account the biological processes observable in nature.
Instead of trying to fight or regulate them, they adopted these natural processes as important elements in the overall design. The diversity of natural elements taken up into the system made the entire structure more stable, ensuring sustainable continuation, hence permanence. Later, the same methodology was applied to other realms of life, such as community development or commerce, so the name was expanded to mean “Permanent Culture” instead of just “Permanent Agriculture”.
Anything new under the sun?
While the term 'Permaculture' is a recent phenomenon, the idea behind it is as ancient as humans themselves. Though Mollison and Holmgren are considered the fathers of Permaculture, they would probably be the first ones to point out that the methods they described in their books are merely summaries of what had been practiced for millennia by people everywhere in the world.
Before industrialization the only way to survive was to rely on nature, understand natural patterns and cycles, and make use of them to create anything, from food to tools, clothing, shelter… everything. This ancient knowledge as practiced throughout the world had many things in common, though the specifics varied greatly throughout various types of climate, ecosystem, and other factors. It became the basis for the principles of Permaculture. Today, even though much of this knowledge is becoming abandoned and forgotten worldwide, indigenous cultures still remain our greatest resource for applied Permaculture techniques.
The Ethical Principles
No Permaculture introduction is complete without mentioning the three ethical principles, most often in their condensed form “Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share”. While the first two points, Care for the Earth and Care for the People is fairly self explanatory, it is the third one that has sparked a lot of discussions and led to misinterpretations.
In my opinion, "Fair Shares" doesn't really reflect the intended idea very well. I much prefer “Return all Surplus” or, as a like-minded friend and me put it once when translating these principles into Hungarian: “Care for Abundance” or “Create Abundance for all”. In other words, make sure you produce plenty of surplus for the benefit of the Earth and the People around you.
Different Sets of Permaculture Principles: the Twelve, the Five, and the Seven.
Beyond the Ethical Principles, each practitioner and instructor of Permaculture has their own way of outlining the ideas they consider most important. Probably the most commonly known one is Holmgren’s list of 12 Design Principles, which makes a great clock face with its twelve icons.
- Observe and interact
- Catch and store energy
- Obtain a yield
- Apply self-regulation and accept feedback
- Use and value renewable resources and services
- Produce no waste
- Design from patterns to details
- Integrate rather than segregate
- Use small and slow solutions
- Use and value diversity
- Use edges and value the marginal
- Creatively use and respond to change
If compared to other lists of ideas, however, one will notice a good amount of overlap and the unavoidable splitting / lumping. For example, the five important notions highlighted by Bill Mollison are:
- Work with nature, not against it
- The problem is the solution
- Maximum effect for minimum effort
- The yield of the system is theoretically unlimited
- Everything gardens
Complementing this, the instructor of my PDC (Permaculture Designer's Certificate) course, Scott Pittman, has a list of seven points:
- Cooperation instead of competition
- Every function is served by multiple elements
- Every element serves multiple functions
- Make the most out of energy
- Use the edge effect
- Everything is connected
- The problem is the solution
Just like @rimann started out, I want to discuss each of these principles in detail in subsequent posts. Since I can't re-steem older articles, I'm going to just write new posts for each point, giving examples of my own interpretation.
Manifestations of Permaculture
Since the philosophy of Permaculture can be applied to so many aspects of life, it is really difficult to make a comprehensive list of all its examples. The most commonly mentioned ones include chicken tractors, swales, and composting toilets, but they can just as readily include natural building techniques, and “invisible structures” such as alternative currencies and community design.
In future posts I also want to relate to some of these examples of Permaculture in action, mostly from my own experience (like the one digging swales in the pic above). So stay tuned for awesome design ideas on making our lives a little bit better each time. Till then, let me close with the immortal words of the late Bill Mollison:
“Though the problems of the world are increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple.”