Permaculture
Soil, Community, Resilience
First Published: 2025-02-05| Last Updated: 2024-06-21
Status: stub| Audience: post-industrial farmers| Confidence: aficionado
Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labor; and of looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single product system
Traditional agriculture was labour intensive, industrial agriculture is energy intensive, and permaculture-designed systems are information and design intensive.
Permaculture is a holistic land management practice that attempts to mimic patterns found in nature. Bruce Charles (“Bill”) Mollison, an Australian biogeography and environmental psychology professor, coined the term permaculture, a portmanteau of permanent and agriculture, in 1978.
The goals of permaculture are responsible food production, sustainable agriculture, and land stewardship.
Personally
We use permaculture as part of our system of farm management, along with lean farming, organic production methods, and agroforestry. Permaculture also informs the design patterns we use in rehabilitation of the village structures and our drive towards decarbonization.
One of the most used concepts in permaculture, the idea of permaculture zones has been of particular use to us in our thinking about our mountain.