Permaculture

The term was coined in 1978 by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, who formulated the concept in opposition to modern industrialized methods, instead adopting a more traditional or "natural" approach to agriculture.

[5] Starting from a focus on land usage in Southern Australia, permaculture has since spread in scope to include other regions and other topics, such as appropriate technology and intentional community design.

Permaculture as a popular movement has been largely isolated from scientific literature, and has been criticised for a lack of clear definition or rigorous methodology.

[7] Despite a long divide, some 21st century studies have supported the claims that permaculture improves soil quality and biodiversity,[8] and have identified it as a social movement capable of promoting agroecological transition away from conventional agriculture.

He proposed the planting of tree fruits and nuts as human and animal food crops that could stabilize watersheds and restore soil health.

[11] Another pioneer, George Washington Carver, advocated for practices now common in permaculture, including the use of crop rotation to restore nitrogen to the soil and repair damaged farmland, in his work at the Tuskegee Institute between 1896 and his death in 1947.

Yeomans introduced both an observation-based approach to land use in Australia in the 1940s and in the 1950s the Keyline Design as a way of managing the supply and distribution of water in semi-arid regions.

Their recognition of the unsustainable nature of modern industrialized methods and their inspiration from Tasmanian Aboriginal and other traditional practises were critical to their formulation of permaculture.

[1][2][3][16] In their view, industrialized methods were highly dependent on non-renewable resources, and were additionally poisoning land and water, reducing biodiversity, and removing billions of tons of topsoil from previously fertile landscapes.

It addressed the application of permaculture design to growing in major climatic and soil conditions, to the use of renewable energy and natural building methods, and to "invisible structures" of human society.

He found ready audiences in Australia, New Zealand, the USA, Britain, and Europe, and from 1985 also reached the Indian subcontinent and southern Africa.

Seeking prosperity begins within a local community or culture that can apply the tenets of permaculture to sustain an environment that supports them and vice versa.

This is in contrast to typical modern industrialized societies, where locality and generational knowledge is often overlooked in the pursuit of wealth or other forms of societal leverage.

[28] The tragic reality is that very few sustainable systems are designed or applied by those who hold power, and the reason for this is obvious and simple: to let people arrange their own food, energy and shelter is to lose economic and political control over them.

This idea is reflected in permacultural designs by using spirals in herb gardens, or creating ponds that have wavy undulating shorelines rather than a simple circle or oval (thereby increasing the amount of edge for a given area).

[52] Such interactions include pest control, pollination, providing habitat for beneficial insects, and maximizing use of space; all of these may help to increase productivity.

A herb spiral, invented by Mollison, is a round cairn of stones packed with earth at the base and sand higher up; sometimes there is a small pond on the south side (in the northern hemisphere).

[24][74][75] A mature forest ecosystem is organised into layers with constituents such as trees, understory, ground cover, soil, fungi, insects, and other animals.

[78] Neighbors can collaborate to increase the scale of transformation, using sites such as recreation centers, neighborhood associations, city programs, faith groups, and schools.

Columbia, an ecovillage in Portland, Oregon, consisting of 37 apartment condominiums, influenced its neighbors to implement permaculture principles, including in front-yard gardens.

[79] Suburban permaculture sites such as one in Eugene, Oregon, include rainwater catchment, edible landscaping, removing paved driveways, turning a garage into living space, and changing a south side patio into passive solar.

[81] For example, Los Angeles' South Central Farm (1994–2006), one of the largest urban gardens in the United States, was bulldozed with approval from property owner Ralph Horowitz, despite community protest.

For example, land is used more ecologically in Jaisalmer, India than in American planned cities such as Los Angeles:[81] the application of universal rules regarding setbacks from roads and property lines systematically creates unused and purposeless space as an integral part of the built landscape, well beyond the classic image of the vacant lot.

[88][89] Marine forest habitat is beneficial for many fish species,[90] and the kelp is a renewable resource for food, animal feed,[91] medicines[92] and various other commercial products.

The focus is on durability and the use of minimally processed, plentiful, or renewable resources, as well as those that, while recycled or salvaged, produce healthy living environments and maintain indoor air quality.

[116] The service mark would have allowed Mollison and his two institutes to set enforceable guidelines regarding how permaculture could be taught and who could teach it, particularly with relation to the PDC, despite the fact that he had been certifying teachers since 1993.

Peter Harper from the Centre for Alternative Technology has lamented that, "for some people 'Permaculture' is a generic term for sustainable living, giving another whole set of shifting, fuzzy meanings".

[120] A 2019 study by Hirschfeld and Van Acker found that adopting permaculture consistently encouraged cultivation of perennials, crop diversity, landscape heterogeneity, and nature conservation.

They found that grass-roots adopters were "remarkably consistent" in their implementation of permaculture, leading them to conclude that the movement could exert influence over positive agroecological transitions.

[5] Going back to Mollison and Holmgren's early publications, permaculturalists have often claimed that mainstream science has an elitist or pro-corporate bias, or that academic institutions are too rigid to study the interdisciplinary approach permaculture proposes.