“What is Permaculture?”

By Kate Sims
Introduction to Permaculture
Fall 2007
Merritt College


    Unfortunately for this assignment, I like to try and
be as succinct as possible when someone asks me the
above question.  “A philosophy,” I’ll say, “that
includes all the ways that humans live, and attempts
to integrate them into ecological systems in a
sustainable way.”  Or,  “the attempt to create a
culture of permanence.  With regard to the
relationships between humans and the rest of the
planet.”  Or maybe, “a theoretical and practical
framework for how to produce food, build shelter, and
approach all other aspects of life in a way that gives
back to the planet as much as it takes out.”  Sound
bites.  Using more big words, or fewer, depending on
how much I think the person asking will be able to
follow what I’m saying, or appreciate it.
    
    For the purposes of this assignment, let’s look at
these sound bites.  What do they have in common?
First, the umbrella of “theoretical framework”; the
fact that we are talking about an all-encompassing set
of ideologies that extends to how we grow or harvest
food, how we prepare or preserve it, how we build
shelter, how we clothe ourselves, how we consume
energy, how we use land, how we design our
settlements, what we produce, recycle, and what, if
anything, we discard.  And it’s not just theoretical,
it’s practical.  Down to all the smallest details,
down to the health of the microorganisms that live in
the dirt under our feet.  From how to conserve and
recycle our communal water and energy, down to how we
treat and re-use our own bodily wastes.  It gives you
a how-to manual for almost every decision you might
need to make, and it focuses on using the resources
available in the most efficient way possible.
    
    A brief word about food and shelter, the two
particulars most likely to be mentioned in my
soundbites.  Food, the essential element of our daily
lives—of course we must address how we produce it,
harvest it, prepare and preserve it—it is our most
direct relationship with our mother.  While modern
life has done much to divorce food from the earth, it
doesn’t take a profound train of thought to re-connect
something we consume every day with its source, or to
acknowledge how important that connection is.  What is
more amazing is that a population as large as ours has
been able to disconnect them at all, and still
function and grow.  Permaculture strives to
re-position and honor that connection at all times, by
making sure that we are only consuming what we are
able to replenish.  Luckily, nature shows us how, with
its own perfected systems of nutrient cycling.  All we
have to do is pay attention, and take notes, and
participate as the others do, without taking more than
our fair share.  Some of the ways in which
permaculture asks us to accomplish this are through
mulching, creating plant communities, maintaining wild
space, encouraging biodiversity, and remembering that
there is no such thing as waste—only fuel for another
part of the cycle.
    
    Shelter is perhaps as much or more a psychological
need as a physical one.  Even in the tropics, where it
doesn’t get cold, where the breeze is a relief, we
want something over our heads to keep the rain out.
And in community, we want walls to close us in—or to
keep others out.  Permaculture shows us how to use the
materials at hand, to create shelter that could have
almost grown itself, or been created by nature, and
that does not disrupt the health of the creatures that
share the space, large or small.  Nature gives us
materials that are efficient and plentiful, and that
feel good to use and to inhabit, and gives us patterns
to follow in our building so that we again, are not
taking more than our fair share—of space, of energy,
of resources.  They are materials that are either
renewable or very long lasting, and they have
qualities of place (such as the thermal mass of clay,
or the resistance to rot of straw) that make them
appropriate for the place in which they are being
used.  Other ways in which permaculture applies to our
shelters include designing them to harvest as much or
more energy than they consume, and in a way that
conserves, protects, and recycles water and other
crucial natural resources.
    
    Lastly, there is this purpose word at the end of the
sound bites: sustainability… permanence… equal give
and take.  For a second, let’s consider the
relationship between these three things.  Equal give
and take is a sustainable behavior, and sustainability
creates the opportunity for permanence.    It’s hard
not to think about this without contrasting it to the
situation in our mainstream culture—which is almost
exactly the opposite.  But let’s not focus on what is
not permaculture.  While it may have been articulated
out of a need for an alternative, permaculture stands
on its own, and humans practiced it to varying degrees
for nine tenths of human history, before large-scale
agriculture, urbanization, and industrialization
became the prevailing trends.  Indigenous societies,
developing and fine-tuning their cultures in one
environmental context over thousands of years,
practiced permaculture out of necessity.  The ones
that didn’t have long since ceased to exist—and our
industrialized society is following their example.
The ones that did were about as permanent as any
creature or community walking this dynamic earth, and
we have much to learn from them.  Permaculture
encompasses many of the practices employed by
indigenous people, some specifically, and some
generally, because those practices reveal a
relationship with nature that our mainstream culture
has let lapse and can no longer access.  It is a
relationship that plants us human beings firmly back
inside the cycles of nature and the closed loop of our
ecological systems, rather than continuing to view
ourselves as separate or superior beings, and in doing
so, continuing to bite the very hand that feeds us.
And, all larger philosophy aside, permaculture makes
sense:  it saves money, it saves labor, it sustains
health, both body and mind, it creates beauty, and to
top it all off, it’s fun!