The Permaculture Origin
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here did permaculture come from? Bill Mollison (“the father of the permaculture movement”) and his student David Holmgren were the first to coin the term “permaculture” from the concept of “permanent agriculture.” The type of agriculture they proposed was unlike its conventional counterpart in that it worked with nature and not against it. Permaculture comes from two Latin words: permanens, which means enduring, and cultura, which means practices that support human occupations, practices that help us grow. As the years went by, permaculture began to take on a more all-encompassing meaning beyond the scope of agriculture. Since the word was coined in the 1970s, awareness of and interest in permaculture have resulted in a greener planet, more food abundance, and a sustainable way of living. Permaculture has been used to reforest the over-grazed and desertified Loess Plateau in China and “Green the Deserts” of Jordan.1 Many permaculture applications have been for large-scale agricultural landscapes, but in recent years, it has been used to grow food on a smaller scale for individuals and families. Perhaps you’re a gardener looking to use permaculture for your backyard garden or hoping to glean insights from permaculture practitioners to incorporate them into your home cultivation practices. If this is you, you’re the person we had in mind when writing this book.
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One such student, Geoff Lawton, redefined permaculture not merely as revolutionary but as evolutionary in that it’s a type of design methodology that builds upon itself and grows the more one observes and understands nature and applies its principles. Permaculture’s original intention was to be practical, not theoretical. Indeed, my husband, Dave, and I belong to a large group of permaculture design certificate holders, in the tens of thousands at this point, if not hundreds of thousands. If only a few of us put what we have learned into practice, what a waste of education that would be! Not all PDCs are created equal. However, in general, PDCs give you a unique ecological design perspective through the framework Bill Mollison taught.
What Is Permaculture?
But first, what is permaculture? Mollison’s official definition in his 1997 book, Introduction to Permaculture, reads, 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.
Lawton (the student Mollison chose to carry on his legacy) more explicitly highlights permaculture’s design and holistic features in his definition: “Permaculture is a design system for ecological and sustainable living, integrating plants, animals, people, buildings, and communities.” big output There’s nothing wrong with having several definitions as long as the core principles, the ethics, and the applications of permaculture are clear. The features you value about permaculture will inevitably become a part of your own definition. A video from NetWorks Productions (vimeo. com/140885117#t=877s) relates how the Texas Department of Agriculture once asked Mollison to consult on sustainability. He then asked the officials their definition of sustainability. They couldn’t answer him. Mollison explained that, for him, a sustainable system was any system that, in its lifetime, had an output far exceeding the system’s input.
Sustainability
Meant for You and Me
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Permaculture is not some input lofty ideal reserved for an elite few who will use it to change a few large patches of land. Permaculture was meant for all of us to use to provide what Mollison called “persistent systems for human existence.” When Mollison and Holmgren asked, “If most of nature is dominated by perennial plants and trees, why is our agriculture dominated by annual crops?” their intention was not to limit the use of permaculture but to extend it. Every person who took Mollison’s 72-hour Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) course was eligible to teach permaculture to others. That was how he intended to cause “peaceful sedition” through decentralized education. He saw this effect accelerated with television and, toward the end of his life, through his students’ online work.
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