The term Permaculture is a combination of the words permanent and agriculture (or just culture), and was coined by the Australian ecologist Bill Mollison, and his student David Holmgren.

This world, that combines a complex group of philosophical and practical ways of thinking, has so many meanings that I think the best way to describe it is by listing a bunch of them.

So, here they go…

Permaculture definitions:

  • Permaculture is the use of ecology as the basis for designing integrated systems of food production, housing appropriate technology and community development. It offers a practical, creative approach to the problems of diminishing resources and threatened life support systems now facing the world.
  • Permaculture is a globally recognized environmental design methodology.
  • Permaculture is a whole systems approach to ecological planning and design – a way of thinking, based on a positive and creative solution-finding, that provides tools for working towards long term sustainability
  • Permaculture is a way of bringing together in a sensible system: ourselves and our communities, with whatever bit of land/space we are tending. It can be as small as a window with sprouts or as large as a farm or a bioregion. It can be in the city, the suburbs or in the country.
  • Permaculture addresses the way we live on this planet in a graceful and healthy way, respecting the plants and animals around us, and leaving the biosphere in a more productive and healthy state than we found it.
  • Permaculture is an innovative framework for creating sustainable ways of living. It is a practical method of developing ecologically harmonious, efficient and productive systems that can be used by anyone, anywhere.
  • Permaculture is based on the environmental ethics and principles of design and close observation of nature rather than a set of techniques. These ethics and principles draw from a broad across-section of disciplines. The aim is to create beneficial and supportive relationships between elements in the landscape that recognise the interconnectedness and diversity of the natural world. It calls for a move from monoculture to polyculture.

And so on, and so on…

Origins of Permaculture

Permaculture was created in the 1970′s by Bill Mollison, an Australian ecologist and University of Tasmania professor. He had spent many years out in nature as a wildlife biologist observing how natural systems work and became very distressed at the destruction that he saw going on around him. He decided that instead of being angry about what was happening and reacting against the destruction he wanted to work on creating a positive solution And he thought the solution would be living based on the patterns he had observed in nature.

By observing nature, Mollison came up with several important insights. He observed that natural systems, such as forests and wetlands, are sustainable. They provide for their own energy needs and recycle their own wastes. He also observed that all the different parts of a natural ecosystem work together. Each component of the system performs important tasks. For example, bees help to pollinate, birds provide pest control, certain plants pull nitrogen out of the air and fix it into a form that other plants can use. So everything does useful work. He applied these and other insights to design and create sustainable agricultural systems.

In the 1970′s he and his student David Holmgren wrote and published some books explaining his ideas. In the 1980s he published his design manual and started teaching permaculture design courses to spread his ideas around the world. By the 1990s permaculture had started spreading throughout the US, although it’s more well-known in other countries around the world. To this day, it’s continuing to grow as a global grassroots movement and people primarily learn about it through permaculture design courses and workshops that generally happen outside of academia.

The ethics or Core Values of permaculture

Permaculture is a broad-based and holistic approach that has many applications to all aspects of life. When we talk about permaculture we can start by talking about the ethics because permaculture is an ethical design system.

The ethics are at the core of permaculture. They define how one should behave toward the earth and each other. These ‘ethics’ are often summarized as:

  1. Care of the earth means that our number one priority is taking care of the earth, making sure we don’t damage its natural systems.
  2. Care of the people means meeting people’s needs so that people’s lives can be sustained and have a good quality of life as well but without damaging the earth.
  3. Accepting limits to population and consumption (fair share) is realizing that as a human species we cannot continue to increase and also sustain the planet. We must put limits on our own growth and on our own consumption. Sometimes you will hear this ethic phrased as “share the surplus, invest all of your means in the first two ethics”. This means limiting your consumption so that you can invest your resources in caring for the earth and caring for the people.

Everyone needs to eat and drink, and it is the issue of food production where permaculture had its origins. It started with the belief that for people to feed themselves sustainably they need to move away from reliance on industrialized agriculture. Where industrial farms use fossil fuel (gasoline, diesel, natural gas..) driven technology specializing in each farm producing high yields of a single crop, permaculture stresses the value of low inputs into the land and diversity in terms of what is grown. The model for this was an abundance of small scale market and home gardens for food production with food miles being a primary issue.

The O’BREDIM design methodology

O’BREDIM is a mnemonic based on Observation, Boundaries, Resources, Evaluation, Design, Implementation and Maintenance.

  • Observation allows you to first see how the site functions within itself, to gain an understanding of its initial relationships. Some people recommend a year-long observation of a site before anything is planted. During this period all factors, such as lay of the land, natural flora and so forth, can be brought into the design. A year allows the site to be observed through all seasons, although it must be realized that, particularly in temperate climates, there can be substantial variations between years.
  • Boundaries refer to physical ones as well as to those your neighbors might place on you, for example.
  • Resources would include the people involved, funding, as well as what you can grow or produce in the future.
  • Evaluation of the first three will then allow you to prepare for the next three. This is a careful phase of taking stock of what you have at hand to work with.
  • Design is always a creative and intensive process, and you must stretch your ability to see possible future synergetic relationships.
  • Implementation is literally the ground-breaking part of the process when you carefully dig and shape the site.
  • Maintenance is then required to keep your site at a healthy optimum, making minor adjustments as necessary. Good design will preclude the need for any major adjustments.

The Seven principles of permaculture

Permaculture practitioners have identified many principles from Nature, but we are going to focus on seven basic principles which will give you an understanding of the function and importance of permaculture principles.

1) Conservation

Use only what is needed. For example, a family uses a hand pump for water on their homestead. The hand pump encourages them to conserve water and makes them very conscious of how much they are using so they only use what they actually need. Another example of conserving water is showering instead of taking a bath.

2) Stacking functions

In permaculture we speak about getting many yields (outputs) from one element (thing) in your system. For example, a tree might be an element in your system. A tree can provide shade, shelter wildlife, produce mulch and building materials, be a wind break, fertilize the soil, prevent erosion, raise the water table, etc. A tree can do a lot of different work for us in our system, and that’s what we mean by stacking functions.

3) Repeating functions

Meeting every need in multiple ways. For example, one family meets their household need for water in two ways. They have a spring, but in very dry years the spring dries up so they need a backup. They also have a rooftop water catchment system so they can catch the rainwater running off their roof for domestic purposes.

4) Reciprocity

Utilize the yields of each element to meet the needs of other elements in the system. This means there is a give and a take between elements. The output from one element can be an input for another element. A good example of this is composting. Kitchen scraps could be an output from our kitchen where we have left over organic matter and we use that as an input to our compost pile and when it’s in the compost pile it will turn into valuable fertilizer which we can then put on our garden. And then an output of our garden is food which would again be an input into the kitchen. So, you can see that the inputs and the outputs are circulating within our system.

5) Appropriate scale

What we design should be on a human scale and doable with the available time, skills, and money that we have. A good example of appropriate scale would be looking at a massive hydroelectric dam which can severely disrupt the patterns of flow of a river or a stream and also cause flooding and loss of habitat compared to a small hydroelectric generator which could be used to generate electricity from a small stream without diverting the flow, without causing flooding or disruption. So using a micro hydroelectric generator is probably much more of an “appropriate scale” than creating a large dam.

6) Diversity

Create resilience by utilizing many elements. We can contrast a garden which has a variety of plants in it with a field containing only wheat (monocropping). If you have a drought year or a wet year or if you have a certain kind of pest, all the wheat will probably be susceptible to the same condition or pest and you might lose your whole crop. But if you have a system that’s mixed, with a variety of crops or plants, they might not all be susceptible. You might have some plants that are drought tolerant, others that do better in wetter conditions – if you have a drought year you’ll just lose some of your plants, but you’ll still have others that will do well. So, the idea is that the way to create a resilient system that can survive and get through difficulties is by having many different elements.

7) Give away the surplus

Create systems that are abundant and share the abundance rather than hoarding it for ourselves.

Permaculture zones

Permaculture zones are a way of organizing design elements in a human environment based on the frequency of human use. Frequently manipulated or harvested elements are located close to the house in zones one and two, while less frequently manipulated elements of the design are farther away from the house.

  • Zone 0 — The house, or home center. Here permaculture principles would be applied in terms of aiming to reduce energy and water needs, harnessing natural resources such as sunlight, and generally creating a harmonious sustainable environment in which to live, work and relax.
  • Zone 1 — Is the zone nearest to the house, the location for those elements in the system that require frequent attention, or that need to be visited often.
  • Zone 2 — The vegetable garden, larger scale compost bins and maybe beehives.
  • Zone 3 — Is the area where crops are grown, both for domestic and trading purposes. Would include orchards. After establishment, care and maintenance requirements are fairly minimal providing mulches, etc. are used. Watering or weed control is once a week or so.
  • Zone 4 — Is semi-wild. Used for timber production from coppice’s managed woodland and the placement of aquaculture ponds.
  • Zone 5 — The wilderness. There is no human intervention here apart from the observation of natural eco-systems and cycles. Here is where we learn the most important lessons of the first permaculture principle of working with nature, not against it.

Concrete Strategies for Diverse Purposes

Food production

Being able to meet our needs for food is an important part of a sustainable system and a focus of permaculture.

Strategies:

  • Produce food on site or locally.
  • Use organic methods, polycultures, and perennials and limit fossil fuels.
  • Treat animals humanely.
  • Build up the biological resources of your site.

Natural systems

Natural systems, such as forests, wetlands, and streams, perform vital functions for us, and preserving them gives us multiple yields.

Strategies:

  • Repair and protect natural ecosystems.
  • Protect and enhance biodiversity.
  • Meet human needs using as little land as possible.

Water

Strategies:

  • Capture and store the water on site.
  • Use water as many times as possible in the system.
  • Conserve water as much as possible.
  • Release water from the system clean.

Waste management

Strategies:

  • Produce no “waste” or pollution.
  • Refuse to use substances that cannot be recycled.
  • Reduce what you use.
  • Reuse materials.
  • Recycle materials.

Energy

Strategies:

  • Use renewable energy sources.
  • Maximize efficiency and minimize emissions.
  • Use fossil fuels only to establish systems that create more energy than they consume.

Shelter

Strategies:

  • Locate buildings to minimize environmental impact and transportation requirements.
  • Renovate older buildings.
  • Use natural and recyclable materials.
  • Design buildings to incorporate sustainable energy, water, food production, and waste management systems.

Sources: Permaculture.net, HeathCote.org, Wikipedia

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