Why use permaculture

Make changes based on if replacement time is less than degeneration time. Design from patterns to details — Get the big picture of the system before planning details.

Pay attention to patterns that affect the system including seasons, time, space, light, sounds, temperature, branching, meandering, spiraling, growth and decay. Integrate elements rather than segregating — Each element that is included in the system should be able to perform as many functions as possible, given its location.

Use small and slow solutions — Use time as an element and advantage, allowing species to slowly integrate with each other and mature at their own speed. Use and value diversity — Needs should be met in various ways, and elements should work together to support the needs of the system.

Needs include water, food, shade or sun and fire protection. To ensure that the space is resilient, these needs should be served in two or more ways. Redundancy helps to ensure survival as it provides multiple methods of reproduction. Use edges and value the marginal — Pay attention to the important species that emerge in the margins between two systems, and changes that take place around the edges of the system.

Many species deer, rabbits, birds, and so on are edge species, preferring to live at the margin between forest and clearing. Creatively use and respond to chang e — Aim for flexibility and durability; be prepared to respond to changes that cannot be planned for.

Similarly, Bill Mollison mentioned 11 permaculture principles in his book, Introduction to Permaculture: Food forests forest gardening serve as an important aspect of permaculture. It involves designing gardens in a way to mimic natural forests. Food forests are biodiverse systems that produce a number of different crops and other yields, while simultaneously benefitting the system itself as it matures over time. This model is the stark opposite of industrial monocrop agriculture, or growing the same crop on the same land year after year.

When crops are not diversified and rotated, pests and insects have a better chance of becoming genetically-resistant to pesticides, herbicides and fungicides that are used over and over again as the years go by. Therefore, agroforestry is a combination of agricultural and forestry techniques. Food forests and agroforestry have many things in common and usually result in similar designs.

Regenerative practices also support a holistic food system that can be one key driver of mitigating food scarcity and climate change. Experts estimate that we are losing about 1 percent of our topsoil every year to erosion and the destruction tied to modern agriculture.

His mission is to do his part in helping to sustain life. The number one goal I have with the space is to create soil fertility.

I really believe the planet and all of its species can only continue living to the extent that we can replenish topsoil. A polyculture system is the ideal way to build topsoil and transform dead dirt into living soil. Jordan points out that regenerative agriculture has several key focuses:. An emphasis is placed on growing perennial plants which return year after year , as this helps to establish guilds. Perennials become more productive as time goes on, and they produce higher yields with less work.

His team is building a system that can be replicated in every city, state and nation on the planet, and this is one major step towards feeding a growing human population nutrient-dense foods. Who started permaculture? Permaculture began in the s, created by an Australian ecologist and University of Tasmania professor named Bill Mollison.

Mollison spent a great deal of time observing the natural cycles and relationships formed in various ecosystems, but was disappointed by how much environmental destruction he saw taking place due to human interference. Prior to the s, a number of individuals helped pave the way for the permaculture movement. One was an Australian man named P. Another was Joseph Russell Smith, who wrote about his experiments creating interconnected, mixed systems of trees, crops, animals and plants.

One billion permaculture-designed acres would provide about 1, nutrient-dense calories per day per person. Today, million acres in the U.

S are already used for farming and agriculture combined livestock and crop production. That means that America has nearly enough farm land today to feed the entire planet , but the land is being misused. The answer is creating a sustainable, localized food system, free from centralized production, but that produces very healthy foods.

Many permaculture courses are now available to the public, whether online or in-person on actual farms. Josh Axe is on a mission to provide you and your family with the highest quality nutrition tips and healthy recipes in the world What Is Permaculture? Organic Gardening vs. Relative Location 2. Multiple Functions 3.

Even though permaculture has many important advantages, there are also some problems related to this agricultural practice. One key advantage of permaculture is that it can lead to a significant reduction in waste. This also implies that nothing should be wasted and that our resources should either benefit the general public or nature itself. Hence, if this concept is really lived by people, chances are that the overall waste production would be significantly lower compared to conventional agriculture, which will be quite beneficial for our environment since far less waste has to be burned or disposed into landfills.

In order to get rid of our waste, a big fraction of it will end up in landfills, where it can significantly pollute our soil. With permaculture, the overall waste production is lowered significantly and therefore, also the soil pollution problem can be reduced.

Moreover, in conventional agriculture, large amounts of fertilizers and pesticides are used, which further pollute the soil and make it less fertile in the long run. Through permaculture, far less chemical fertilizers and pesticides are used and thus, also the soil will be protected from several sorts of pollution in a much more efficient manner.

Since permaculture is a concept that aims to make agricultural processes more sustainable and to protect our nature whenever possible, it also aims to reduce our emission levels. Through permaculture, less agricultural machines that emit harmful gases into our atmosphere will be used.

Moreover, also the transportation distances with permaculture should be far lower compared to conventional agriculture. Hence, this will lead to much better air quality and will also slow down global warming since fewer greenhouse gases are emitted into our atmosphere.

If the soil becomes polluted through conventional agricultural processes, those contaminants will be washed through the soil into our groundwater sooner or later. Water will become a quite scarce resource in the future due to global warming and it is therefore crucial that we protect our groundwater as best as possible. Therefore, in order to avoid soil pollution and the related groundwater pollution, we should rely more on permaculture instead of conventional agriculture.

Another advantage of permaculture is that our natural resources can be used in a quite efficient manner. The concept of permaculture states that our resources should be either used to benefit humans or to benefit nature, but that nothing should be wasted. Thus, through permaculture, our resources can be used as efficiently as possible, not only to benefit us humans but to benefit nature as a whole. Since the concept of permaculture implies using our natural resources as efficiently as possible and also to avoid pollution as best as possible, it can be regarded as a quite sustainable concept.

In fact, this attitude towards life is exactly what we need right now in order to solve our environmental problems. Even though the concept of permaculture may also have its weaknesses in practice, the values that are proposed by permaculture are crucial in order to overcome our global problems and to progress as humanity in general.

Another upside of permaculture is that this concept also implies that farmers also should try to produce their own energy. In fact, in our nowadays society, it is rather easy to install solar panels on our roofs and to produce plenty of energy. If every farmer did that, they could ensure their own energy supply by themselves and would likely even have plenty of energy left to distribute to other households. In general, permaculture also advocates the use of renewable energy sources in agricultural processes.

Instead of using fossil fuels which will not be sustainable in the long run, we should rather rely on renewable energy sources in all parts of our daily life. This is not limited to electricity, it also implies to rely on renewable energy sources like biodiesel or other substances that can help us to transit from fossil to renewable energies as soon as possible.

Permaculture does not aim for short-term goals, it can be regarded as a concept that will benefit humanity for hundreds or even for thousands of years and that is exactly what we need. Too many of our actions are concentrated on short-term solutions rather than to really tackle the actual problem instead of just mitigating the symptoms. Permaculture can really help us to make our agricultural processes sustainable in the long run and therefore also to ensure a livable future for the next generations.

Another benefit of permaculture is that this concept can also help farmers to diversify against risks related to farming. By doing so, certain pests cannot spread that easily and the yield will also not suffer too much in case of extreme climatic events since some plants are much better able to deal with those extreme conditions than others. As industrial food systems begin to appear threatened by a myriad of factors, from pests attacking monoculture crops to increased prices and dwindling supplies of the fossil fuels necessary to create industrial food and transport it, permaculture is gaining more and more support.

Communities are looking to permaculture as a way to ensure not only that the land they are on will remain healthy well into the future, but that their food supply will be sustained even through potential global crises. Source: Wisegeek. Please leave this field empty. We are committed to your privacy. You may unsubscribe at any time. What Is Permaculture?

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