Permaculture as Defined by the Co-Founder: Permaculture(permanent agriculture) is the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of landscape and people providing their food, energy, shelter, and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way. -- from Bill Mollison's Permaculture: A Designer's Manual
When we're talking about Permaculture, we're talking about...
* Rationale: Without permanent agriculture there is no possibility of a stable social order.
* Elements: Permaculture deals with plants, animals (including humans), buildings, and infrastructures (water, energy, communications) and the relationships between/among them.
* Goal: Create systems that are ecologically sound & economically viable in that they provide for their own needs without exploiting or polluting.
* Based on: Observation of natural systems, wisdom from traditional farming systems, and modern scientific and technical knowledge
* Result: Create a cultivated ecology which is designed to produce more human and animal food than is generally found in nature, and is sustainable over time for humans and nature.
Key Concepts of Permaculture:
* Work with rather than against nature.
* Use human skills for protracted observation and intelligent design rather than protracted or intensive physical labor.
* Consider multifuctionality of each element in a system.
* Use each element's strengths/yields to meet the needs of the other elements in the system.
* Good design is created by putting elements in the right relative location to one another.
* Energy needs of the system should be provided by the system.
In Practice, Some Examples:
* Fruit trees are planted in a sunny corner of the yard where fruit can be harvested in season and windfall fruit and leaves will fall in the vicinity where chickens will be able to eat them and scratch their decomposing matter into the ground, where the earthworms will turn it into beautiful soil. The trees also provide a windbreak for the garden, and shade in summer from intense heat for leafy veg below. A bench below the tree is a nice place to sit and read a book, if you're a human :).
Some Great Permaculture and Sustainable Design books:
* Introduction to Permaculture by Bill Mollison
* Permaculture Designer's Manual by Bill Mollison
* The Permaculture Home Garden by Linda Woodrow
* Earth User's Guide to Permaculture by Rosemary Morrow
* The Humanure Handbook by Joseph Jenkins
* Wild Fermentation: the flavor, nutrition, and craft of live-culture foods by Sandor Ellix Katz
* The One Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka
No comments:
Post a Comment