The Necessity of Permaculture
An autonomous system
Composed of meticulously selected elements, this system maintains the balance of ecosystems, allowing organisms and inanimate components to circulate seamlessly. It is a perfect system collaboratively built by humans and nature, a holistic perpetual motion machine. Could permaculture be the key to producing healthy food in the age of ecological crises?
Do you remember the days of summer vacation, building treehouses in the backyard, playing soccer or hopscotch, and frolicking with rabbits and hunting dogs, a time when the concept of boredom didn’t exist? I was 13 in 1996, dreaming like many of my classmates about the exciting things we’d do next summer. Looking back, I can confidently say I wasn’t your typical teenager. What set me apart from my friends was my penchant for pet fish and spending hours engrossed in science fiction and fantasy books. I often hid away in a “secret base,” immersing myself in the works of my favorite author, Arthur C. Clarke. That summer, I was captivated by “The Sands of Mars,” set in the early 21st century, depicting the trials of the first settlers grappling with the flight of the rocket “Ares” and the terraforming of the red planet.
Though published in 1951, the book was so realistically written that I was drawn into the isolated Martian base. There, various technological solutions (creating green plants that use oxygen, utilizing precious water in a closed system, cultivating food in the barren Martian soil) were crucial for the survival of the entire colony. What was once the creativity of science fiction has now become a reality shaping life on Earth. However, even then, global issues such as global warming, pandemics, dwindling natural resources, species extinction, and unprecedented natural disasters were already being discussed.
Life isn’t science fiction
In the 1930s, North America faced massive environmental devastation. The harsh droughts known as the Dust Bowl plunged the world into economic, social, and ecological crises, all due to human and industrialized agriculture’s impact. As a teenager, I was already aware of similar threats and wondered if our civilization could choose a path away from planetary disasters. Around the same time, I came across a copy of Patrick Whitefield’s article “Trees Among the Wheat” published in the UK’s Permaculture Magazine. The article introduced an unconventional farming method: growing wheat between rows of productive fruit trees, suggesting that if fruit trees matured to produce stable yields, wheat cultivation would become unnecessary. This no-till system was supported by animals, closing the nutrient cycle in the soil, complementing this sustainable agricultural ecosystem. Unlike industrial methods that rely on mechanical equipment for annual tilling, leading to desertification, transitioning agriculture to multi-year cultivation (for example, edible chestnuts grown on trees can completely replace rice or wheat in terms of amino acids, protein, vitamins, and minerals, bearing fruit for hundreds of years after planting!), eliminates the need for tilling or heavy machinery fueled by fossil fuels, maintaining a stable food production system.
The article referred to this cultivation method as “agroforestry.” It involves creating productive trees and cultivating crops like vegetables and herbs without tilling, while allowing livestock to graze. This approach enables the production of nutrient-rich food without disrupting soil or regional ecosystems. Similarly, we can generate similar solutions with permaculture design. By combining it with agroforestry, we might regenerate the deteriorating Earth while simultaneously producing food.
What is Permaculture?
Permaculture, short for “permanent agriculture,” is the science of designing and creating self-sustaining habitats that mimic natural structures and functions. The fundamental approach of permaculture is a philosophy of cooperating with nature rather than opposing it. Permaculture design focuses on carefully examining the potential of a place, the ecological, economic, and social functions, and the natural cycles of material and energy flow. Permaculture design is a complex and dynamic tool system for building and utilizing human living environments (cities, communities, farms, ecovillages, etc.), considering humans as part of the natural environment, enabling comfortable living while respecting the environment.
In the mid-1970s, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren of Australia embarked on developing stable agricultural systems in response to the rapidly evolving industrialized agricultural systems. At that time, water pollution, biodiversity loss, and the erosion of billions of tons of soil from once-fertile land were recognized as major causes. They released the Permaculture Manifesto in 1978 and published a guide called “Permaculture One.” As Morrison wrote, using the principles of permaculture design, one can “create ecologically sound, economically viable, self-reliant, non-exploitative, and non-polluting living systems.” In essence, permaculture is a comprehensive approach to creating our immediate environment.
Below are some key ethical guidelines in this field:
1. Earth Care
The Earth is a single organism (James Lovelock – Gaia hypothesis). Humanity is a part of this superorganism, an essential element in the network that determines the proper functioning of the entire Earth. Our primary purpose as inhabitants of Earth is to reconstruct the evolutionary mechanisms of life support destroyed by centuries of human ignorance and negligence, leaving the planet in the best possible state for future generations.
2. People Care
Emphasizing cooperation over competition. It advocates for cooperation among humans to build a sustainable civilization, highlighting that humans should creatively develop within the environment alongside all other species inhabiting the biosphere, emphasizing equality. As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote, “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.” This rule is not just about self-care but also about caring for others around us, fostering good relationships and creating spaces to strengthen those relationships.
3. Fair Share
This principle involves rational management of Earth’s limited (depletable) resources. It assumes the halt of our development, the increase in human population, and the consumption rate of Earth’s natural resources, redistributing crops/products/services developed through various permaculture systems.
Let’s pause and think about this third principle for a moment. Since my teenage years, I’ve been pondering, “What’s surplus, and how can we share it?” Back then, I didn’t have a lot, but I realized I had an excess of two resources: organic waste from the kitchen and slightly dirty water after taking a bath. Could we take a more creative approach to these two resources? So, I built a living ecosystem on my balcony, turning organic waste from the kitchen into compost necessary for vegetable cultivation and purifying the bathwater. These solutions allowed me to produce nearly 60% of the required food in a 7.5-square-meter space in the form of vegetables and mushrooms and use the purified water for the balcony’s crops or the small forest garden of edible crops I planted underneath instead of grass. If urban dwellers adopt these solutions, they might solve issues like methane and nitrous oxide emissions from landfills, soil erosion, droughts, water shortages, urban food deserts, and health problems related to discarded food. In conclusion, let me leave you with a classic saying: “The problems of the world are becoming increasingly complex, but the solutions are surprisingly simple.”
