PIL survey
When I got the recent Permaculture International Limited membership form I was hooked by the question at the end — what can we do to make permaculture relevant to societies undergoing environmental, social, economic and technical change? I instantly filled the lines provided with the start of a long rave and ended up going to the computer to add more. In a way I think the answer to this question is that we are doing really well and that nothing needs to change. Going on the web is clearly the answer for our movement in the context of the closure of two key magazines. The education being done through Crystal Waters and Djanbung Gardens, the networking and info provided by Pacedge in Sydney, articles in EG and Grass Roots like the recent Van Raders’ piece, the decision of Seedsavers to put up a website, the development work that is being written about on the Pacedge site. These are just a few examples and it is difficult to see how any of this could be improved. More of the same would be the best formula!
Nevertheless I sometimes feel that there is a bit of a sense of a crisis in permaculture at the moment, and not just because of problems unique to Australia. My ongoing worry is that our area of expertise and interest is being taken over by two other tendencies within the environmentalist movement. Both of these cover agricultural issues but have a slightly different philosophy and a different label from permaculture.
Organics: Used to create the terms organic food, organic gardening and organic agriculture. The success of this term is partly due to the fact that people instantly understand what “organic” might mean. They can see why it might be preferable to chemical/artificial agriculture from an environmental or health point of view. This is why it has become the key marketing term. Sometimes organic agriculture makes certain promises that permaculturists might worry about. It promises consumers that they can go on eating the same foods as they always have – but they will be produced in a way that does not damage the environment or their health. For farmers it promises them that they will be able to continue to specialize in particular profitable crops and send them to distant markets for a premium price.
Sustainable Agriculture: This has become the key academic term used to cover the field that permaculture also occupies. Like “organics”, the term “sustainable agriculture” is successful because it conveys a meaning that most people can readily understand. It also fits with other uses of the term “sustainable” in the environmental movement. Writings that use this term are keen to present a scientific image. Yet in fact the ideas are remarkably similar to permaculture in almost every respect. “Sustainable Agriculture” is very likely to completely replace “Permaculture” as a term and philosophy in every academic context; where appearing to be scientific and even obscure is a necessity for continued employment and promotions. It seems likely that this is the guise in which permaculture ideas will become mainstreamed to commercial farmers. Mostly, these farmers will want to be guided by accredited, university trained experts. These experts will be as well versed in current market opportunities as they are in sustainable agriculture techniques.
So is this a problem?
It may be that none of this is a problem. Why should we worry if ideas that are central to permaculture are also being promoted by other movements? Individually I am sure we are capable of moving with the times and using new terms to describe our ideas if that seems appropriate. But on the other hand if permaculture has something unique to offer which these other movements don’t share then it would be a shame for it to vanish. We could look for this distinctive difference in the definition and philosophy of permaculture or in our practice.
Definition and Philosophy
When people want to define permaculture they turn to the introductory preface and first chapter of the Designers’ Manual . In the preface it is defined initially as “permanent agriculture”.
- This is explained as “the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems”.
- The next sentence broadens this to include elements that are not usually considered as agriculture — not just food but also energy, shelter, material and non-material needs are to be provided “in a sustainable way”.
But when we say a system is stable and resilient aren’t we just saying that it is sustainable? If a system was not stable and resilient, how could it be possibly be sustained? Even diversity could be taken as just something that is implied by sustainability. Books that use the term “sustainable agriculture” also argue for diversity, saying that it is necessary for sustainability. We’d have to agree with that! In the second sentence of the definition Mollison seems to accept this equivalence himself, summarizing a number of points with the term “sustainable”.
One way in which this definition separates permaculture from sustainable agriculture is in going beyond agriculture to total settlement design. Yet this is not necessarily a great help. The people who want to use the “sustainable agriculture” label are just the kind of people who will say that permaculturists are crazy if they think they can make plans for the whole of settlement design. They will recommend instead that this be divided up into specialisations which are already out there — eco-architecture; renewable energy; waste recycling and so on. All of these are associated with particular university degrees and TAFE qualifications. And anyway, if permaculture covers everything why does it emphasize agriculture, defining permaculture initially as a kind of agriculture? If it is really about everything it could just be called — environmentalism.
For most people I have spoken to, one answer is that permaculture goes beyond agriculture to include an ethical and social perspective, spelled out in the first chapter. Yet these are ethical guidelines that Permaculture shares with the environmentalist movement as a whole. This means that what is distinctive about permaculture in relationship to other tendencies for agricultural reform becomes difficult to explain. If permaculture is just a set of ethical principles shared with the rest of the environmentalist movement, why is most of the Manual and members’ discussions about agriculture? If it’s primarily about agriculture, how is it different from sustainable agriculture?
What seems to me to be actually distinctive about permaculture as a philosophy of agricultural reform is its emphasis on perennials in the context of stable polycultures. For me this is very clearly put in Permaculture One, but by the Designers’ Manual it is has become a background that is not argued for openly.
There is no mention of perennials in the parts of the Manual that define permaculture. Nevertheless they do get a mention later in the second chapter. In the section on diversity, Mollison says that moderate stress such as we create in gardens creates the richest (most diverse) environment, because there are some areas of low stress that are left alone while mowing or digging in other areas creates stress. We could assume that the low stress areas are mostly perennials or at least self seeded annuals. This is confirmed on the next page where he says that Permaculture uses the time resource of natural systems better than “annual gardening alone” and that “the mixed ecology of annuals and perennials” maximizes product yield. What is particularly interesting about these passages is that they act as thoughwe already know that permaculture is about a mixture of annuals and perennials and that it is different from most current agriculture which emphasizes annuals.
In Permaculture One, Mollison and Holmgren handle these issues quite differently. The emphasis on perennials in the context of long lived forest systems is a key theme of the first two chapters and the book as a whole. The first paragraph defines permaculture as follows:
Permaculture is a word we have coined for an integrated, evolving system of perennial or self-perpetuating plant and animal species useful to man.
Even in Permaculture One, there is no intention to eliminate all annuals from agriculture so what is this book actually saying?
- That we should try to replace annual cereal crops with tree crops of nuts and fruit, with some use of perennial tubers.
- That where possible we should grow our veggies as perennials within plant leagues with other perennial crops, within a system of stacking that includes trees.
Why? The world’s soil resources are the accumulated humus left by previous forest systems that have now been destroyed and replaced by grasslands or annual crops. Ultimately this is not sustainable. Large scale annual cropping systems encourage soil erosion. Habitat for wild species is more possible in a food forest. Permaculture One relates this to some political points that are separate from the agriculture and sustainability issues. Planting and harvesting vast monocultures of annual cereals is a boring job, suitable only for slaves. Political centralisation and domination have always depended on the storeable surplus provided by crops of annual cereals. I would add the point that there can be little aesthetic pleasure in working in a pared down monocultural environment. The permaculture aesthetic is an attractive alternative to industrial agriculture.
There is no doubt that this set of ideas distinguishes permaculture from both organic agriculture and sustainable agriculture. Both are trying to find good ways to make an agriculture dominated by annual crops sustainable.
So why did Mollison vastly tone down this emphasis on perennials in his later books? One can only guess, but there seem to be a number of good practical reasons.
- Partly, it is obvious that there are techniques that can help to make annuals sustainable – rotations with legumes; slashing and mulching; green manure; no-dig methods.
- There is a strong cultural preference for traditional annual crops as food. Especially the cereals but also veggies. This is really hard to shift.
- In the context of developing countries the only approach that works is using permaculture skills to help people to solve problems that they themselves perceive as problems. Going in with an agenda about what plants are OK is neither practical nor ethical.
- It is actually quite difficult to create a sustainable biodiverse perennial system that will satisfy food needs. It certainly takes time, which a lot of amateur backyard gardeners may not have.
While the technological fixes listed in the first point above solve some of the problems of annual cropping, they are far from the whole package of environmental reform that we might want to see implemented in the long term. As well, it seems to me that it is the emphasis on perennials which actually makes permaculture distinctive. From my experience it actually informs a lot of what permaculturists do and think even when it is not the explicit topic. I tend to think a lot of the Designers’ Manual actually assumes this goal and that terms like “stability” are read by permaculturists to refer to the centrality of perennials and tree crops..
My feeling is that we should try to be more explicit about holding these issues in balance — for and against the replacement of annuals with perennials. We should argue for a stable polyculture based mainly in perennials as the ultimate goal of permaculture action. We should actively distinguish permaculture from sustainable agriculture in terms of this long term goal. This is not to say that we should ditch any of the work we are doing with annuals or go into developing countries with some mad and unrealistic agenda about replacing grains with perennials. We should maintain the work we are doing now but think of it as a transitional program, with the full program of permaculture to be gradually introduced where and when it seems appropriate.
Educating Amateurs and Popular Culture
Or maybe the above argument is quite wrong. We could accept that there is nothing about the goals and philosophy of permaculture that really distinguishes it from sustainable agriculture. But at the same time there is heaps about the practice of permaculture and its place in society which is different.
The strength of the permaculture movement is that it creates hands-on instruction for amateurs who want to get involved in sustainable agriculture. It does this by treating agriculture as a form of gardening. Lots of people in the rich world like gardening as a hobby and permaculture convinces gardeners that they can use their skills to become part time farmers involved in a project of environmental reform.
So what works better than anything is lots of diagrams and pictures of plantings, how-to instructions on usual and unusual plants, advertising for seed-savers, seed companies and nurseries, networking links for people to get connected with others with a similar interest. These are key things that we are now putting on the web, as Earth Garden and Grass Rootsare only alternative gardening magazines left in Oz.
Maybe some of us who have been around for a while don’t want to see yet another frog pond diagram but the fact is that this movement still has a long way to go to be extended and consolidated within the community. Walk down your average suburban neighbourhood and check out how few frog ponds there are!
This popular focus is one of the most distinctive aspects of permaculture in relation to other tendencies for agricultural reform. Sustainable agriculture does not educate amateurs at all — it certificates professionals. Organic agriculture does it a bit, but not with the same emphasis on perennials and polycultures that you find in permaculture. Permaculture is popular culture and this is its strength and its significance within the broad movement for environmental change. The downside is that it will never be taken seriously by those who don’t think ordinary people can know anything important.
This is not to say for a minute that everyone involved in permaculture is an amateur. TheDesign Certificate is intended to qualify you to put yourself on the market with the skills of a permaculturist. However, at the same time, most of the people who have actually got jobswith this certificate are working as teachers of permaculture and their students are people who are amateur farmers and gardeners.
Key permaculture sites for amateur involvement:
- Backyards
- Community Gardens
- Hobby farms
- Intentional communities
Development Work
Permaculture is successful in development work because it links people educated in the milieu of amateurs to aid organisations, local communities and local agricultural experts. The most usual niche is situations where large scale commercial agriculture is not particularly profitable or where it has already come unstuck and departed. In large scale commercial settings, useful agricultural reform is more likely to be initiated by agricultural scientists using the terminology of “sustainable agriculture”.
Reading about permaculture projects in developing countries links the community of amateurs in the rich countries to these other communities in developing countries. Both gain a sense of involvement in a project of global agricultural reform. Again, what works in promoting this development work is lots of diagrams, pictures, plant names and descriptions, personal accounts and so on. What we should be putting on the web is not just projects labelled permaculture but anything of interest in the way of agricultural reform in developing countries.
And So …
Is there really a problem for pemaculture at all? Does it really matter if “sustainable agriculture” and “organics” are the terms more and more people are using to talk about the things we do? Is there any way to stop the rot or at least make the situation a bit clearer? Is emphasizing what is distinctive about the definition of permaculture the way to go or is the role of permaculture as popular culture the most important thing?