Permaculture: a philosophy of life

If there is a single claim, that I could make, in order to distinguish Permaculture from other systems of agriculture, with the notable exception of keyline concepts, it is that Permaculture is primarily a consciously designed agricultural system ... a system that combines landscape design with perennial plants and animals to make a safe and sustainable resource for town and country. A truly appropriate technology giving high yields for low energy inputs, and using only human skill and intellect to achieve a stable resource of great complexity and stability.

Bill Mollison

In his book Plants, Man, and Life, Edgar Andersen describes the garden/orchard plantings grouped around the houses in Central America. Close to the house and more or less surrounding it is a compact garden-orchard some 20 square metres in extent. No two of these are exactly alike. There are neat plantations more or less grouped together. There are various fruit trees (citrus, custard apple, sapote, mango and avocado), and a thicket of coffee bushes in the shade of the larger trees. There are tapioca (cassava) plants of one or two varieties, grown more or less in rows at the edge of the trees. Frequently there are patches of banana; corn and beans here and there in rows or patches. Climbing and scrambling over all are vines of various squashes and their relatives: the chayote (choko) grown for its squashes, as well as its big starchy root; and the luffa gourd, its skeleton used for dishrags and sponges. The cucurbits clamber over the eaves of the hose and run along the ridgepole, climb high in the trees, or festoon the fence. Setting off the whole garden are flowers and various useful weeds (dahlias, rosemay, gladioli, climbing roses, asparagus fern, cannas and grain amaranth).

Andersen is contrasting the strict, ordered, linear, segmented thinking of Europeans with the productive, more natural polyculture of the dry tropics. The order he describes is a semi-natural order of plants, in their right relationship to each other (guilds), but not separated into various artificial groupings. It is no longer clear where orchard, field, house and garden have their boundaries, where annuals and perennials belong, or indeed where cultivation gives way to naturally-evolved systems.

To the observer, this may seem like a very unordered and untidy system; however, we should not confuse order and tidiness. Tidiness separates species and creates work (and may also invite pests), whereas order integrates, reducing work and discouraging insect attack. European gardensj, often extraordinarily tidy, result in functional disorder and low yield. Creativity is seldom tidy. Perhaps we could say that tidiness is something that happens when compulsive activity replaces thoughful creativity.

Although the yield of a monocultural system will probably be greater for a particualr crop than the yield of any one species in a permaculture system, the sum of yields in a mixed system sill be larger. In the former, a hectare of vegetables will yield only vegetables throughout the year. In the latter, vegetables are a smaller part of the total yield of nuts, fruit, oil crop, timber, poultry, firewood, fish, seedcrop, and animal protein.

For self-reliance, this means that a family can satisfy all its nutritional needs with the available fruits, vegetables, proteins, and minerals. Economically, having more saleable products at different times of the year protects a family from market downturns and severe losses of one crop due to pests or bad weather. If the market for beef is down one year, for example, only firewood, nuts, fruit, seedcrop, and herbs are sold, keeping the cattle for better times. If frosts wipe out the fruit crop, other produce is available to eat or to sell.

Our aim should be to disperse yield over time, so that products are available during every season. This aim is achieved in a variety of ways:

• by selection of early, mid and late season varieties;
• by planting the same variety in early or late-ripening situations;
• by selection of long-yielding species;
• by a general increase in diversity or multi-use species in the system, so that leaf, fruit, seed and root are all product yields;
• by using self-storing species such as tubers, hard seeds, nuts or rhizomes which can be dug on demand;
• by techniques such as preserving, drying, pitting, freezing, and cool storage; and
• by regional trade within and between communities, or by purchasing land at different altitudes and latitudes.

Diversity is often related to stability in a permaculture. However, stability only occurs among cooperative species, or species that do each other no harm. It is not enough to simply place as many plants and animals as you can into a system, as they may compete with each other for light, nutrient, and water. Some plants, such as walnuts and eucalypts, inhibit the growth of others by releasing chemicals from their roots into the soil (allelopathy). Other plants provide overwintering habitat for pests and diseases harmful to nearby plants. Cows an horses grazed on the same pasture will eventually degrade it. Large trees compete with grain crops for light. Goats in the orchard or woodlot debark trees. Therefore, if we are to use all these elements in a system, we must be careful to place an intervening plant or structure between potentially harmful elements.

So the importance of diversity is not so much the number of functional elements in a system; rather it is the number of functional connections between these elements. It is not the number of things, but the number of ways in which things work. Whate we seek is a guild of elements (plants, animals or structures) that work harmoniously together.