What is Permaculture?

Would you like to have healthy and delicious food, beautiful surroundings, meaningful work for yourself and your family, more connection to the natural world, happy children and animals? Would you like to nurture the earth and the environment, reduce non-renewable fuel use and global warming, and help break the power of multinational corporations who exploit people, animals and the earth? Would you like to (maybe) work part-time at your job, spend more time with your family, get more outdoor exercise and do a few pleasant, interesting and varied chores? Would you like to reduce your expenses for food, energy and other needs, build your local economy and make some extra income? If any of these apply to you, you might be interested in permaculture.

The word “permaculture” was coined in the 1970s by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, two Australian academics and environmentalists. At first their intention was to create a “permanent agriculture,” but later they discovered that they were thinking along the lines of a “permanent culture.” Their ideas have spread literally around the world on every continent and have made huge strides in places like Africa where the re-establishment of small scale fertility and farming projects is crucial to health and survival.

Permaculture is primarily a system of land design for small scale home (or larger scale village) food production and energy use. The study of permaculture encompasses ecology, sustainability, organic growing methods, efficient energy use, home design, recycling, appropriate technology, and much more.

Permaculturalists consider that the present system of big agriculture and agribusiness, the use of chemicals and pesticides, the unnatural treatment of animals and the omnipresence of monocultural farming (corn, soybeans, corn, soybeans, corn, soybeans....) is seriously flawed. Scientists speculate that these practices are responsible for the disappearance of honeybees and many other species. When humans fail to work with nature and instead impose their own will and destructive methods on it, the natural world inevitably suffers. The permaculture idea is to work with nature through careful planning and design (some consider the hammock to be the most important permacultural tool) to create systems that nourish the earth and ourselves with less work and more bountiful results.

Some of the fundamental principles of permaculture design include the following:
1. working with rather than against nature
2. plant diversity rather than single crop farming
3. taking advantage of “microclimates” in the yard such as sunny, shady, warm, dry or moist areas
4. taking advantage of beneficial interconnections between plants, water, structures, insects, and animals
5. an emphasis on low-care perennial food plants and trees
6. “stacking functions” – each plant, animal or location has multiple uses (for example, chickens have the
multiple functions of producing eggs and manure, eating unwanted insects, clearing a garden bed by eating weeds
and scratching the soil to loosen it up, providing heat for a greenhouse, and providing education and
entertainment for children and adults)
7. gardening in “layers” – root, plant, bush, tree and vine layers, if carefully planned, can make use of vertical
garden space and result in productive “food forests”
8. working with “zones” of use intensity such as planting herbs and salad greens close to the house, vegetable
beds somewhat further, and orchard and wild areas even further, where visits are less frequent
water conservation and management (working with gravity)
use of solar and other renewable energy sources for home and garden

In light of the problems of global warming and the depletion of fossil fuels, permaculture design is a way for anyone to become part of the solution. Permaculture design can be implemented in suburban, rural and even city settings. The now famous urban homesteader Jules Dervaes and his family grow 6,000 pounds of produce annually on their one-tenth acre lot in Pasadena using permaculture principles.

Permaculture can be implemented at any scale depending on the time and resources you have to invest. Even if you just grow some herbs in pots, compost your kitchen scraps and coffee grounds, learn about edible wild plants, and buy as much as you can from local farmer's markets, you are making a start; and if you think about it for a few minutes, you will realize you are making a difference. The more you delve into the practice of permaculture, the more you will discover a fun and satisfying way of life.