What does Permaculture mean?

Based on the three ethics of earth care, people care, and fair share, permaculture follows a set of 12 principles to create systems and designs to mimic nature and create and maintain diverse and resilient ecosystems with predominantly perennial agriculture that continuously feeds us humans.

Earth care refers primarily to soil. It is regarded as the best indicator for health and well-being of humans in the future and must be cared for before anything else.

People care or care for self indicates that humans are empowered to take responsibility for their own situation and actions.

When the earth and people are in balance, the resources available to us can be distributed fairly: setting limits to our consumption and re-using any surplus lives behind the concept of fair share; the idea that abundance exists in the world, and we are responsible for keeping this balance, to ensure long-term sustainability and profitability.

This may sound like a handful, but it is quite simple: Permaculture considers us as being connected with nature and we intend to live together without creating the negative impact we have made in the recent past.

The principles seem simple, yet universal at the same time: produce no waste; catch and store energy; observe and interact; use & value diversity (see further reading for a link to the full list). We are to adapt to the location we find ourselves in and find smart solutions, that serve a multitude of purposes, not harm anyone or anything in the long term; collaborate rather than compete, as we are all in it together.

Permaculture and Soil Restoration

Did you know that there are about 50 billion microbes living in 1 tablespoon of soil? Bacteria, Actinomycetes, Fungi, Yeast, Protozoa, Algae and Nematodes, cohabit with arthropods and insects. That is a heck of a lot of life in 1 tablespoon!

When growing foods, we are using up minerals about 16 times faster than those little microbes can rebuild them. So, we need to feed the soil and its inhabitants if the garden is to feed us.

When we dig and turn the soil, this underground ecosystem is exposed to the sun; it dries out, organisms die, and nutrients get lost. We add fertilizers to maintain nutrients and subsequently, the soil becomes less fertile, ultimately leading to desertification, minimizing the space for us to grow our foods.

Permaculture gardening follows the ‘no till’ method, practicing ‘sheet composting’ or ‘Hugelkultur’: different layers of carbon and nitrogen containing organic materials are layered on the garden bed to create a healthy layer of topsoil over the course of a few months. This does not only remove the back-breaking and fuel-using labor of turning the soil; it restores soil, makes fertilizers use unnecessary and saves money. Another tick on the list of catching birds with one stone!

The Benefits of Permaculture on the Environment and People

We humans tend to think in problems, making it difficult to think long term, as we are focused on solving the issue in front of us. In nature, there is always a balance between input and output, or labor and yield, so there is always enough for everyone.

• Alleviating Poverty
  Poverty as we know it, does not exist in nature. Intending to mimic nature, applying the principles of permaculture could be a solution to alleviating poverty, a problem that the UN intends to address with their 17 SDGs. Simply, we could achieve self-sufficiency by growing foods in our community, using local resources. It goes beyond growing food though. The innovative way of thinking and creating resilience can be applied when creating communities and building sustainably. There are many little steps that can be taken for everyone, starting from reducing waste in the kitchen, growing local seasonal fare in small spaces, or lobbying towards green spaces in cities.
  
• Reducing waste
  One of the principles of permaculture is reducing the waste we produce. There is no waste in nature: food waste turns into compost, which feeds the plants that we eat, and the waste will be turned into compost again. Everything is part of the cycle. Plastic for example, which we created for convenience, is not part of this cycle, and we are running out of space to get rid of it.
  
• Self-Care
  Observing, accepting feedback, responding to change, integrating rather than segregating, using & valuing diversity; does this sound a bit like life philosophy to you? Permaculture may focus primarily on food production, but the ethics and principles can also be applied like a toolbox to wherever we are in our personal life.

Can permaculture be a scalable solution to feed the world?

Looking at these success stories and benefits, why are we not applying permaculture to our everyday farming? Simply said – permaculture can never succeed when trying to align with conventional farming. It is a different system, that is not meant to work that way.

Conventional farming would have to move away from monocrop-farming and introduce a much higher diversity of foods. The practices of companion planting and food forests, the ‘no-till’ method, the absence of pesticides and fertilizers, and the concept of zones for decreasing distances from farm to table would require a complete overhaul of the food industry as we know it today. Scaling requires more scientific research and rules and regulations set as done in organic farming, which conflicts with permaculture’s individual approach to farming depending on the local circumstances. 

If farming in a decentralized way was a solution; if people were re-skilled to understand the benefits of growing food for their communities; if we valued the quality in foods we consume and protected the loss of biodiversity in the world and on our plates, securing abundance for the future generation – then, permaculture could be a scalable solution in a de-globalized way, where people are empowered and live sustainably.