What is Permaculture?

Transcription

1 The Prime Directive INTRODUCTION TO PERMACULTURE The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children: We live on an extraordinary and beautiful planet. It s our home. If we want to continue to live here, we must take deep and better care of our world We know that environmental stability created by sustainable land use systems results in a natural stability in human population. We have been studying and growing plants for a very, very long time. We know how they work and there is little need for a revolutionary new breakthrough to continue growing them. What we do need is to learn another way of seeing these elements as part of a design system. Permaculture as a design system arranges what was always there but in a better way to harmonize with Nature s design. Just as in natural design, it works to conserve energy or to generate more energy than it consumes. Any system of commonsense design for human communities should not be considered revolutionary. What is Permaculture? Permaculture is the conscious design and maintenance of productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of people into the landscape which provides their food, energy, shelter, and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way. Permaculture design assembles conceptual, material and strategic components in a pattern which benefits life in all its forms. The philosophy behind permaculture is one of working with, rather than against, nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless action; of looking at systems in all their functions, rather than asking only one yield of them; and of allowing systems to demonstrate their own evolutions. Some background information & additional resources: In the 1970s, Australian University Professor Bill Mollison and his grad student David Holmgren started to develop ideas about stable agricultural systems. This was a result of rapid expansion of destructive industrial-agricultural methods. They saw that these methods were poisoning the land and water, reducing biodiversity, and removing billions of tons of topsoil from previously fertile landscapes. They announced their permaculture approach with the publication of Permaculture One in

2 The term permaculture initially meant "permanent agriculture" but was quickly expanded to also stand for "permanent culture" as it was seen that social aspects were integral to a truly sustainable system. To find out about the roots of permaculture, get ahold of a copy of Permaculture One, Mollison and Holmgren, Without permanent agriculture there is no possibility of a stable social order. Influences on their work include: Permanent Agriculture based on Tree Crops by J Russel Smith The Keyline Plan by P.A Yeomans. One Straw Revolution by Masonobu Fukuoka, Japan Howard Odum s work on energy and ecosystems in the 70s There have since been numerous other authors who have tackled the subject. Some of our favourite books include: Permaculture: A Designer s Manual, Bill Mollison, 1988 Introduction to Permaculture, Bill Mollison, 1991 Earth User s Guide to Permaculture, Rosemary Morrow, 1994 The Basics of Permaculture Design, Ross Mars, 1996 Gaia s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, Toby Hemenway, 2000 Permaculture: Principles & Pathways Beyond Sustainability, David Holmgren, 2003 Different cultures evolve different ethics based on their common shared values and principles which bind them together in a common belief system. Their shared understanding of right and wrong is another way to look at it. A people without an agreed-upon common basis to their actions is neither a community nor a nation. A people with a common ethic is a nation wherever they live. - Bill Mollison The Permaculture Ethics: Care of the Earth This includes all living and non-living things that share our planet (land, water, animals, air, everything). Make the earth child friendly. Care of People To promote self-reliance and community responsibility. If you don t take care of people, you can t take care of the earth. 2

3 Return of Surplus To pass on anything surplus to our needs (labour, money, information etc.) for the aims above. Hoarding is not part of the Permaculture ethic. Sometimes referred to as fair share or not taking more than you need. Implicit in the above is the Life Ethic : all living organisms are not only means but ends. In addition to their instrumental value to humans and other living organisms, they have an intrinsic worth. We are all earthlings. Permaculture is an ethical system driven by cooperation and guided by a positive outlook to achieve stable sustainable social systems. Real World Design The need for the establishment of sustainable systems globally is now obvious. However, the term sustainable has been often used and rarely defined. Also, there are some questionable uses of the word sustainable (sustainable oil sands production, is one that comes to mind). So first, let s define what sustainable means for Permaculture: A system is sustainable if it produces more energy than it consumes, with at least enough surplus to maintain and replace that system over its lifetime. Based on the definition above, we can make some generalizations about sustainable systems. Sustainable systems: Capture or store more energy than they consume. Create soils and forests. They are always restorative, never destructive. Produce most of the regional needs. Recycle or produce nutrients. Agricultural systems that can satisfy these criteria of sustainability: Forestry. Ponds, lakes and paddies. Permanent pasture. No-tillage cropping and mulched systems. To determine whether this definition of sustainability has been met, we need to conduct an energy audit (the new and exciting future of accounting?) to determine the Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI) 3

4 On the note of energy audits, let s consider our various diets. Vegetarian diets are very efficient, providing: they are based on easily cooked or easily processed crops grown in home gardens (soy beans take a huge amount of energy to process) Vegetarian diets are very efficient, providing: that wastes, especially bodily wastes, are returned to the soil of that garden that we eat from where we live, and don t exploit others or incur large transport costs. (many grains or grain legumes come from areas where hunger is very real: mung beans India; chickpeas Ethiopia; soy beans India and Africa.) Omnivorous diets make the best use of complex natural systems because: animals convert inedible plants into edible forms (i.e. goats eat woody weeds, we eat goats) to try to feed humans only from plant diets would require us to clear land and kill other plant and animal species in the process. Carnivorous diets have a valid place in special ecologies: Cold areas where gardening is not a sufficient food base Areas where food is gathered from the sea Where harsh conditions mean reliance on animals as gatherers We should always do energy audits on whatever we eat. Some Definitions Biomass Total plant and animal matter per unit area by weight Fast Carbon Pathways Plants that rapidly pioneer soil and provide structure and carbon through root systems and surplus biomass. These plants are important in the repair of damaged soils as they jump-start carbon cycles necessary in healthy soil. Plants are solar Carbon Pathways. Humans are solar collectors Pioneer Species are species which colonize previously un-colonized land, usually leading to ecological succession. Since un-colonized land usually has thin, poor quality soils with few nutrients, pioneer species are typically very hardy plants with adaptations such as long roots, root nodes containing nitrogen fixing bacteria, and leaves that employ transpiration. Climax Communities- Those plant/animal communities which have reached stability. Polyculture - agriculture using multiple crops in the same space, in imitation of the diversity of natural ecosystems Ecotone or Edge - a transition area between two adjacent but different patches of landscape, such as forest and grassland. 4

5 In nature, some systems produce more biomass per unit area. Here are some of the most common systems, listed in order of productivity, highest to lowest: Mangroves and estuaries Shallow lake and swamp systems Forests Shallow marine systems Prairies and crops Polycultures and ecotones produce more of a yield per unit area than any simplistic monoculture. Mixed plant/animal systems are part of a total polyculture. Permaculture concentrates on already settled areas and agricultural lands, almost all of which need drastic redesign and re-patterning. Redesigned food supply systems integrated throughout our settlements with fiber and fuel forests placed in a nearby zone and water catchments from our settlement run off surfaces, will free most of the area of the globe for the rehabilitation of natural systems. These large natural systems need only be of use to people in terms of a very broad sense of global health. The real difference between a cultivated designed ecosystem and a natural system is that the great majority of species and biomass in a cultivated ecology is intended for human use or their livestock. A Policy of Responsibility (to relinquish power) The role of a beneficial authority is to return function and responsibility to life and to people; if successful, no further authority is needed. The role of successful design is to create a selfmanaged system. In a world where we are losing forests, species, and whole ecosystems, there are three simultaneous responses needed: 1. Care for surviving natural assemblies and to leave the wilderness to heal itself. 2. Rehabilitate degraded or eroded land using complex pioneer species and long-term plant assemblies (trees, shrubs, ground covers) 3. Create our own complex living environment with as many needed species as we can save from wherever on earth they come. 5

6 Section II PRINCIPLES OF NATURAL SYSTEMS & DESIGN Integrate Rather than Segregate EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED TO EVERYTHING ELSE In every aspect of nature, from the internal workings of organisms to whole ecosystems, we find that the connections between things are as important as the very things themselves. Therefore, the purpose of a functional and self-regulating design is to place elements in such a way that each serves the needs of and is served by the other elements within the system. At the core of Permaculture is system design. Permaculture Design emphasizes the connection between things over the design of things in isolation. A rain barrel, solar panel, or a roof have their own design. Permaculture Design is how the roof, the rain barrel, the solar panel, or other elements are connected to perform multi-functionally and efficiently. To enable a design component to function efficiently, we must put it in the right place! Every functional connection you make between two elements is one less job you have to do Every waste product you turn into a resource, is one less type of pollution you need to deal with and one less type of resource you need to purchase (pollution = an unused and/or unusable (e.g. PCB s) resource) EACH MAJOR FUNCTION IS BACKED UP BY MULTIPLE ELEMENTS Major functions are your basic essential needs (i.e. water, food, energy, fire protection, income). Ensure that each major function is provided for by more than one element. If one fails, your system will still be resilient. MULTIFUNCTION: EACH ELEMENT PERFORMS MULTIPLE FUNCTIONS Place an element so that it performs at least 3 functions Smart design placement maximizing the use of everyday behaviours is very different from forcing an element to function. If we try to force too many work functions on an element, it collapses. (Yes, a cow might be able to give milk, raise a calf, forage its own food, plough, haul water, and tread a corn mill in a day. But it cannot do it well and it will not do it for long.) 6

7 Now, let s compare this principle to our industrial model. The Industrial System Extraction Production Distribution Consumption - Disposal A great video: From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns: The Ecological System From source to sink: Diversity increases Energy stores increase Organizational complexity increases 7

8 Diversity is related to stability. It is not, however, the number of diverse elements you can pack into a system but, instead, the number of useful connections you can make between these elements that creates interactive diversity: Interactive diversity leads to stability Stability leads to fertility Fertility leads to designed sustainable productivity Productivity leads to a designed sustainable economy. Sustainable economy leads to a designed, sustainable, and interactive community. Sustainable community, or permanent culture, results from interactivity. SO, how do we incorporate the idea of integrate rather than segregate into design? Start by identifying the functions, needs, and yields (products) of the elements that are to be included in your system. This is called a Needs and Yields Analysis. List the needs, the yields, and the intrinsic characteristics of each element. Lists are made to try and link the supply needs of elements to the production needs of others. Needs and Yield Analysis: Chicken 8

9 Maximize Edge Edges are the most dynamic locations in any Permaculture design. Edge is the surface or interface between either media such as air-water-fire-earth or systems such as forest-oceandesert-mountains, etc.. Every edge has a unique set of characteristics and potential. There are two possible directions for particle flows - ACROSS or ALONG. In nature, edges are often rich places for organisms. particles may naturally accumulate or deposit (the boundary acts as a net or a blockade) special or unique niches are available in space or time resources from the two or more media systems are available All edges have some fuzzy depth, where a third medium is formed. In a design context, edges can: Be Varied by Design - either increasing beneficial edge (such as nitrogen fixing trees) or reducing inefficient edge (such as pathways which require weeding) Create Microclimate - using water, colour, suntraps, frost protection, or weed barriers Trap Resources - hedges and fences or by providing habitat to attract bird droppings Encourage / Discourage Turbulence - in wind and water for example, which can be used to accumulate resources (such as gravel beside streams) or protect crops (windbreaks) Provide Rich Habitat -human settlements, for example, are often situated near resource rich river deltas Provide Productive Access by using keyhole paths and creating prominent locations which maximize edges for social interactions Compatible and Incompatible Components and Edges Possible effects between two elements (+,+) (+,0) (0,+) (+,-) (-,+) (0,0) (0,-) (-,0) (-,-) Eg. the yield of one element stays the same while the other increases yield due to their interaction would be represented by (0,+) By assessing the compatibility of various elements, we can design accordingly by selecting and placing components so that: Incompatibility is nullified - e.g. by placing a mutually compatible element between the incompatible elements. Interdependence is maximized - by placing as many complementary elements as possible together 9

10 Accept Feedback & Use Appropriate Scale Living systems are, by their nature, not static. They need to evolve and if we are to continue to obtain a yield, we need to recognize Negative Feedback Loops If: Positive feedback is seen as the accelerator Then: Negative feedback is the brake. Once we recognize there is a negative feedback, such as too much shade, we can rectify the situation by getting out the loppers, pruning saw or even an axe! The scale of the system comes into consideration here. Small cycles provide more rapid feedback than large ones, leading to a much greater awareness of usage. For example: Living off tank water compared with an invisible reservoir. Living from solar battery power compared with the grid Cycling of nutrients in a garden compared with massive remote market gardens Positive feedback loops Most things that we choose to do regularly; we do so because they give us an expected positive return in some way, whether that s pleasure, money, personal satisfaction, or fulfillment of personal aspirations, etc. Natural systems work in a similar way. Any system that most effectively obtains a sustainable yield and uses it to meet the needs of survival tends to prevail. A yield, or profit (including income), functions as a reward that encourages, maintaining and/or replicating the system that generated the yield. Thriving systems spread as a result. 10

11 Type 1 Error A Type 1 Error is a fundamental design flaw usually because the concept itself is flawed and irrational. It is something that cannot be fixed regardless of how much energy you have. It s already broken by poor design. A classic Type 1 Error is a home with a basement in a location with a high water table. To prevent basement flooding, a pump is required to run continually (or often). The home requires a continual input of energy and if the power goes out, the basement floods. Or you need a generator available as a power backup. Bill Mollison talks about type 1 errors in a 1991 radio interview: One of the great rules of design is do something basic right. Then everything gets much more right of itself. But if you do something basic wrong - if you make what I call a Type 1 Error - you can get nothing else right. [ ] There are a few societies that show signs of having been very rational about the physics of construction and the physics of real life. Some of the old middle-eastern societies had downdraft systems over whole cities, and passive, rapid-evaporation ice-making systems. They were rational people using good physical principles to make themselves comfortable without additional sources of energy. But most modern homes are simply uninhabitable without electricity - you couldn't flush the toilet without it. It's a huge dependency situation. A house should look after itself - as the weather heats up the house cools down, as the weather cools down the house heats up. It's simple stuff, you know? We've known how to do it for a long time. [ ] And that we don't design the garden to assist the house is much more eerie. That we don't design agriculture to be sustainable is totally eerie. We design it to be a disaster, and of course, we get a disaster. 11

12 Produce No Waste Waste is not found in Nature except in human nature. -John Jenkins, The Humanure Handbook In Nature, waste equals food. There is no such thing as waste in Nature, only food. - William McDonough, Cradle to Cradle Some of the major sources of energy we have available when designing a permaculture system are water, nutrients, and sunlight. Once these resources leave our site, they are no longer of use. Therefore we need to look at ways of capturing and cycling these nutrients before they leave our site. Here are some examples: Water A dam constructed at the bottom of property catches water before it leaves the site. A windmill pumps the water uphill to provide gravity fed irrigation Nutrients Deep-rooted plants (comfrey, yarrow, parsley etc) are placed at the base of the garden to catch nutrients before they leave. The foliage is chopped and used as mulch uphill, cycling those nutrients. The linear alternative is when you need to purchase more nutrients to replace those lost. Food scraps are fed to chickens become eggs, which are fed to humans, then deposited in a compost toilet, then returned to fruit trees, the fruit is consumed, food scraps go to chickens etc. The linear alternative is food scraps to landfill and sewage to sewage treatment and buy chickenfeed. Sunlight (carbon) Cattle are grazed at the base of the property by day. In the evening they are tempted uphill and penned overnight. The manure (containing large amounts of carbon and nitrogen) is raked in the morning into a worm-farm, converted into valuable compost, which is in turn used on the garden, locking up the carbon as humus which can remain in a stable form for centuries. In some situations, resources leaving our sites become a pollutant for those downstream. Therefore, pollution is an unused or unusable resource. Energy or resources that cannot be put to productive use become pollution. Relevance of Produce No Waste to modern living 12

13 Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Recycle is an appropriate hierarchy of strategies for dealing with waste. Alberta Waste Facts Alberta leads the country in the per capita disposal of Municipal Solid Waste at 968 kg/person. In 2004, Environment Canada surveyed 147 Alberta municipalities and found that average total demand for residential water was 271 litres per day per person. Check out Freecycle ( It's a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving and getting stuff for free. It's all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills. The Principle of Chaos and Disorder If resources are added beyond the capacity of the system to use them, then that system becomes disordered and goes into chaos. Chaos or disorder is the opposite of harmony, just as competition is opposite of cooperation. In disorder, much useful energy is cancelled out by the use of opposing energy, thus creating entropy or bound energy. Society, gardens, and human lives are unfulfilled when in disorder and opposition. The aim of the designer is therefore two-fold: To use only that amount of energy that can be productively absorbed by the system. To build harmony, as cooperation, into the functional organization of the system. Do not confuse order with tidiness, because tidiness is usually disordered in the life sense. 13

14 Catch & Store Energy Stored Energy - Yield Yield is the number of useful energy stores. It is the energy conserved, stored, or generated within the system. Never is it just product yield (e.g.-tons of grain per acre) but always a sum of storages. It is created by the complexity of the web we build which decides the number of useful storages. Yield can be defined as usefully stored energy, therefore, yield, is a function of design. Energy Laws Throughout the universe, energy is always spreading from centres of concentration to vacant regions where it tends to remain dispersed and diluted. As it disperses, the quality of the energy degrades to lower quality forms, which reduces its power to do work. The energy will degrade to the point of incapacity. This is known as entropy. Comparatively, self-organizing living systems can capture and transform a limited proportion of the energy they absorb. This stored energy is generally of a higher quality than its source and can therefore drive a wider range of processes. Living systems appear to defy entropy. HOW NATURE CATCHES AND STORES ENERGY Main sources of energy: The Sun all living things depend on the ability of plants to photosynthesize. The sun also drives the water cycle, winds, etc Gravity - both the earth and the moon provide gravitational energy The earth s thermo-nuclear power - this brings minerals to the surface Water storage In soil in both topsoil and subsoil, which leads to springs and year round flow into streams In organic matter (vegetation, humus) In pond and riffle systems In wetlands Nutrient storage Held in biomass and cycled Caught in bedrock and mined Transient from other systems and caught (e.g. smoke, dust, and pollen) Carbon storage Provides the chemical building blocks of life comes from photosynthesis 14

15 Provides food for humans and animals (protein, wool, energy) Is stored in timber and fuel forests Is also stored in humus Soil is the most important store for temperate regions while biomass is the most important store in Tropical areas due to the heavy leaching rains. Each of these storages = Global Capital. Why is modern society so rich? In terms of water, nutrient and carbon storages, modern society has been living a rich lifestyle by recklessly overspending its global resource capital. We will not be rich but,instead, very poor if we continue to consume our principle instead of the interest earned. We must learn how to save and reinvest the wealth that we are currently wasting. We need to build topsoil and improve our surrounding ecologies so both we and future generations can lead healthy lives and benefit from these essential natural resources. HOW CAN WE CATCH AND STORE ENERGY Energy sources which could be tapped? sun, wind, and runoff water flows wasted resources from agricultural, industrial, commercial, and forestry activities How might we best use the non-renewable resources currently available? Fertile soil with high humus content Perennial vegetation systems (especially trees) yield food and other useful resources Water bodies, soil stores, and tanks Passive solar buildings That is, reinvest our energy into creating sustainable systems for future generations. 15

16 There are several practical design considerations to observe: The systems we construct should last as long as possible and take the least possible energy to maintain. These systems, fuelled by the sun, should produce not only for their own needs but also the needs of the people creating and maintaining them. A system is sustainable if it produces more energy than it consumes and produces enough in surplus to maintain and replace itself over its lifetime. A well designed system achieves this and a large surplus of production over and above this basic requirement of sustainability. We can use energy to construct these systems, providing that in their lifetime, they store or conserve more energy than we use to construct and maintain them. Order of Investment priority should follow: (i) elements that produce a yield (ii) elements that save energy (iii) elements that use energy. Functional Ecological Design In summary, functional design is sustainable so it provides for its own needs and creates a surplus. For this to happen, elements must have no products unused by other elements and have their own needs supplied by the other elements in the system. If these criteria are not met, then pollution and work will result. Pollution is a product not used by something else; it is an over-abundance of a resource. Work results when there is a deficiency or surplus of resources, when an element in the system is not connected to another element. Any system will become chaotic if it has more resources than it can productively use. The work of the permaculture designer is to maximize useful energy storages and connections in any system on which they are working, be it a house, urban property, rural lands, or gardens. A successful design contains enough useful storage to serve the needs of people. 16

17 Impetus to Design DESIGN ANALYSIS Design Patterning & Strategy Permaculture design emphasizes patterning of landscape, function, and species assemblies. It asks the question: Where should this element go? with an emphasis on how to introduce an element for maximum benefit to the design system. The how is best determined by observing patterns in the current natural system. Patterns are essentially recurring behaviours in a regular and intelligible form or sequence discernible in certain actions or situations. Think of your friend who always dated the wrong person. Was there a pattern there? Permaculture is made up of techniques and strategies: Techniques are how we do things, (one-dimensional) Strategies are how and when, (two-dimensional) Design is finding patterns to fit strategies together (multi-dimensional) Patterning comes through observation. 17

18 Energy Efficient Planning The key to efficient energy planning is to use zone, sector, and slope analysis to place plants, animals, and structures. This is a classic set of patterns which were recognized by Bill and David early on and offer some of the best design tools we have for making the right choice when facing a blank slate. ZONE PLANNING Placing elements according to how much we use them or how often we need to service them. Elements used most often are closest. Areas visited every day are nearby Areas visited less are further away This seems like common sense, but it s not often followed with the classic veggie garden at the back corner of the garden. 18

19 Here s a general guide to the location of various elements within our system. Zone 0 - Centre of activity (house, commercial nursery, business) Zone 1 - Close to the house. - The most controlled and intensively used area - Veggie garden, workshops, greenhouse, small animals (rabbits, guinea pigs) firewood, clothesline, worms, and herbs Zone 2 - Still intensively maintained but less frequently visited - Dense plantings of larger shrubs, small fruit, mixed orchard, and windbreaks - Structures: terraces, hedges, trellises, ponds - Plants and animals requiring care and attention - Drippers to trees - Poultry forage in the orchard - Dairy cow lane from outer zone 19

20 Zone 3 - Commercial activities - Medium sized animals - Unpruned and unmulched orchards, larger pastures or ranges for meat animals, main-crop - Watering to selected trees - Swales. Zone 4 - Semi-managed, semi-wild - Animals - cows, sheep - Woodlot, forestry, hardy foods Zone 5 - Unmanaged, natural or wild systems. - Here, we observe and learn. We are visitors, not managers, in this zone. - This is one area where our Earth Care and Fair Share Ethics come into play 20

21 Zones are often pictured as an idealized set of concentric circles radiating out from the centre of activity. In practice, Zones will blur into each other and will be affected by the landform, soils, or site access. SECTOR PLANNING This deals with wild energies coming from outside the system. It is often arranged in a sector diagram, with wedges radiating out from the centre of activity. Examples include: Sun angles Fire danger Cold or damaging winds Hot winds Salt winds or dust Flood zone Soil types (sandy, clay, rocky outcrop etc) Water reflection Wildlife corridors Pleasant/unpleasant views Public passing by Incorporates the Precautionary Principle Designing for extreme events Not pessimistic, instead, realistic It s the 1 in 100 year event that will do the damage. Place design components to manage incoming energies Block or screen out Channel for specific uses Open to allow (eg. maximum sunlight). 21

22 SLOPE & ORIENTATION This looks at the site in profile which allows us to decide on placement of elements to take advantage of gravity. Examples: Greywater above orchard above chickens above veggie garden with nutrient catchers at the base. High dam for gravity water, fed by high access road. Low dam to catch before leaving property which is pumped back up hill. Sheds fitted with a tank, uphill of house, can provide gravity water to the house. Duck pond above garden for nutrient rich water. Animal access to carry manure up hill. Orientation is the placement of an element so that it faces sun-side or shade-side, depending upon its function and needs. 22