Permaculture is an approach to land management and settlement design that adopts arrangements observed in flourishing natural ecosystems. It includes a set of design principles derived using whole-systems thinking. It applies these principles in fields such as regenerative agriculture, town planning, rewilding, and community resilience. The term was coined in 1978 by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, who formulated the concept in opposition to modern industrialized methods, instead adopting a more traditional or "natural" approach to agriculture.
Multiple thinkers in the early and mid-20th century explored no-dig gardening, no-till farming, and the concept of "permanent agriculture", which were early inspirations for the field of permaculture. Mollison and Holmgren's work from the 1970s and 1980s led to several books, starting with Permaculture One in 1978, and to the development of the "Permaculture Design Course" which has been one of the main methods of diffusion of permacultural ideas. Starting from a focus on land usage in Southern Australia, permaculture has since spread in scope to include other regions and other topics, such as appropriate technology and intentional community design.
Several concepts and practices unify the wide array of approaches labelled as permaculture. Mollison and Holmgren's three foundational ethics and Holmgren's twelve design principles are often cited and restated in permaculture literature. Practices such as companion planting, extensive use of perennial crops, and designs such as the herb spiral have been used extensively by permaculturists.
Permaculture as a popular movement has been largely isolated from scientific literature, and has been criticised for a lack of clear definition or rigorous methodology. Despite a long divide, some 21st-century studies have supported the claims that permaculture improves soil quality and biodiversity, and have identified it as a social movement capable of promoting agroecological transition away from conventional agriculture.
Background
History
In 1911, Franklin Hiram King wrote Farmers of Forty Centuries: Or Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan, describing farming practices of East Asia designed for "permanent agriculture". In 1929, Joseph Russell Smith appended King's term as the subtitle for Tree Crops: A Permanent Agriculture, which he wrote in response to widespread deforestation, plow agriculture, and erosion in the eastern mountains and hill regions of the United States. He proposed the planting of tree fruits and nuts as human and animal food crops that could stabilize watersheds and restore soil health. Smith saw the world as an inter-related whole and suggested mixed systems of trees with understory crops. This book inspired individuals such as Toyohiko Kagawa who pioneered forest farming in Japan in the 1930s. Another pioneer, George Washington Carver, advocated for practices now common in permaculture, including the use of crop rotation to restore nitrogen to the soil and repair damaged farmland, in his work at the Tuskegee Institute between 1896 and his death in 1947."Biodiversity Heritage Library" How to build up and maintain the virgin fertility of our soils, Holding institute: U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Library; Sponsor: U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Library; Date Scanned: 08/10/2016. Retrieved 2022-08-19"Henry Ford Collections and Research" How to Build Up and Maintain the Virgin Fertility of Our Soils, October 1936. Retrieved 2022-08-19"National Agricultural Library, George Washington Carver: A national agricultural digital exhibit" About George Washington Carver, scans of multiple publications by Carver. Retrieved 2022-08-19.
In his 1964 book Water for Every Farm, the Australian agronomist and engineer P. A. Yeomans advanced a definition of permanent agriculture as one that can be sustained indefinitely. Yeomans introduced both an observation-based approach to land use in Australia in the 1940s and in the 1950s the Keyline design as a way of managing the supply and distribution of water in semi-arid regions. Other early influences include Stewart Brand's works, Ruth Stout and Esther Deans, who pioneered no-dig gardening, and Masanobu Fukuoka who, in the late 1930s in Japan, began advocating no-till orchards and gardens and natural farming.
In the late 1960s, Bill Mollison, senior lecturer in Environmental Psychology at University of Tasmania, and David Holmgren, graduate student at the then Tasmanian College of Advanced Education started developing ideas about stable agricultural systems on the southern Australian island of Tasmania. Their recognition of the unsustainable nature of modern industrialized methods and their inspiration from Tasmanian Aboriginal and other traditional practises were critical to their formulation of permaculture.Introduction to Permaculture, 1991, Mollison, p.v In their view, industrialized methods were highly dependent on non-renewable resources, and were additionally poisoning land and water, reducing biodiversity, and removing billions of tons of topsoil from previously fertile landscapes. They responded with permaculture. This term was first made public with the publication of their 1978 book Permaculture One.
Following the publication of Permaculture One, Mollison responded to widespread enthusiasm for the work by traveling and teaching a three-week program that became known as the Permaculture Design Course. It addressed the application of permaculture design to growing in major climatic and soil conditions, to the use of renewable energy and natural building methods, and to "invisible structures" of human society. He found ready audiences in Australia, New Zealand, the USA, Britain, and Europe, and from 1985 also reached the Indian subcontinent and southern Africa. By the early 1980s, the concept had broadened from agricultural systems towards sustainable human habitats and at the 1st Intl. Permaculture Convergence, a gathering of graduates of the PDC held in Australia, the curriculum was formalized and its format shortened to two weeks. After Permaculture One, Mollison further refined and developed the ideas while designing hundreds of properties. This led to the 1988 publication of his global reference work, Permaculture: A Designers Manual. Mollison encouraged graduates to become teachers and set up their own institutes and demonstration sites. Critics suggest that this success weakened permaculture's social aspirations of moving away from industrial social forms. They argue that the self-help model (akin to franchising) has had the effect of creating market-focused social relationships that the originators initially opposed.
Foundational ethics
The ethics on which permaculture builds are:
"Care of the Earth: Provision for all life systems to continue and multiply". "Care of people: Provision for people to access those resources necessary for their existence". "Setting limits to population and consumption: By governing our own needs, we can set resources aside to further the above principles".
Mollison's 1988 formulation of the third ethic was restated by Holmgren in 2002 as "Set limits to consumption and reproduction, and redistribute surplus" and is elsewhere condensed to "share the surplus".
Permaculture emphasizes patterns of landscape, function, and species assemblies. It determines where these elements should be placed so they can provide maximum benefit to the local environment. Permaculture maximizes synergy of the final design. The focus of permaculture, therefore, is not on individual elements, but rather on the relationships among them. The aim is for the whole to become greater than the sum of its parts, minimizing waste, human labour, and energy input, and to and maximize benefits through synergy.
Permaculture design is founded in replicating or imitating natural patterns found in ecosystems because these solutions have emerged through evolution over thousands of years and have proven to be effective. As a result, the implementation of permaculture design will vary widely depending on the region of the Earth it is located in. Because permaculture's implementation is so localized and place specific, scientific literature for the field is lacking or not always applicable. Design principles derive from the science of systems ecology and the study of pre-industrial examples of sustainable land use.
Theory
Design principles
Holmgren articulated twelve permaculture design principles in his Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability:
Observe and interact: Take time to engage with nature to design solutions that suit a particular situation. Catch and store energy: Develop systems that collect resources at peak abundance for use in times of need. Obtain a yield: Emphasize projects that generate meaningful rewards. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback: Discourage inappropriate activity to ensure that systems function well. Use and value renewable resources and services: Make the best use of nature's abundance: reduce consumption and dependence on non-renewable resources. Produce no waste: Value and employ all available resources: waste nothing. Design from patterns to details: Observe patterns in nature and society and use them to inform designs, later adding details. Integrate rather than segregate: Proper designs allow relationships to develop between design elements, allowing them to work together to support each other. Use small and slow solutions: Small and slow systems are easier to maintain, make better use of local resources, and produce more sustainable outcomes. Use and value diversity: Diversity reduces system-level vulnerability to threats and fully exploits its environment. Use edges and value the marginal: The border between things is where the most interesting events take place. These are often the system's most valuable, diverse, and productive elements. Creatively use and respond to change: A positive impact on inevitable change comes from careful observation, followed by well-timed intervention.
Guilds
A guild is a mutually beneficial group of species that form a part of the larger ecosystem. Within a guild each species of insect or plant provides a unique set of diverse services that work in harmony. Plants may be grown for food production, drawing nutrients from deep in the soil through tap roots, balancing nitrogen levels in the soil (legumes), for attracting beneficial insects to the garden, and repelling undesirable insects or pests. There are several types of guilds, such as community function guilds, mutual support guilds, and resource partitioning guilds.
Community function guilds group species based on a specific function or niche that they fill in the garden. Examples of this type of guild include plants that attract a particular beneficial insect or plants that restore nitrogen to the soil. These types of guilds are aimed at solving specific problems which may arise in a garden, such as infestations of harmful insects and poor nutrition in the soil. Establishment guilds are commonly used when working to establish target species (the primary vegetables, fruits, herbs, etc. you want to be established in your garden) with the support of pioneer species (plants that will help the target species succeed). For example, in temperate climates, plants such as comfrey (as a weed barrier and dynamic accumulator), lupine (as a nitrogen fixer), and daffodil (as a gopher deterrent) can together form a guild for a fruit tree. As the tree matures, the support plants will likely eventually be shaded out and can be used as compost.