·         Shopping at local stores for the same reasons--to support our neighbors who own them. This results in money circulating an average of seven times in the local community instead of being sent immediately to the corporate headquarters.

·         Putting food by—growing it and/or buying when it’s plentiful locally and preserving it in natural ways which saves money and also helps prevent expensive health problems later.

·         Setting up time banks based on hour-for-hour exchange of services so that the amount of cash required to keep families and businesses running is reduced.

·         Mapping existing food resources in an area.  To give just one example, making neighborhood maps/lists of existing fruit and nut trees and posting them online.  From this could be developed small businesses to help owners care for the trees, harvest the food in a timely manner, sell it in local markets and share the profit with the tree owners.  This benefits all involved by making them less dependent on the large grocery chains which have been unable to supply people with food when their supply lines are interrupted by disasters such as Katrina or fluctuations in the availability of oil.

·         Investing in quality by buying appliances, cars, and homes that may be more expensive up front but will save money over time because they are made with locally abundant materials, will last longer, or are more energy efficient.

·         Moving investments, savings, retirement funds into highly ethical and sustainable companies that are aligned with our personal values, operate with financial transparency, invest in long-term infrastructure and reinvest profits in local communities. See www.greenmoney.com for more information about the growing field of natural investing.

• Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE).  According to the blog at PACE Now (http://pacenow.org/blog/) “PACE is a bipartisan local government initiative that allows property owners to finance energy efficiency and renewable energy projects for their homes and commercial buildings. Interested property owners opt‐in to receive financing for improvements that is repaid through an assessment on their property taxes for up to 20 years.  PACE financing spreads the cost of energy improvements such as weather sealing, insulation, energy efficient boilers and cooling systems, new windows, and solar installations over the expected life of the measures and allows for the repayment obligation to transfer automatically to the next property owner if the property is sold.  PACE is unique because it:

·         Creating cooperatives—everything from farmer’s co-ops to baby-sitting co-ops to natural food and supplements co-ops to banking co-ops to worker-owned industries. When the Argentine economy collapsed a decade or so ago, Workers occupied the factories that were being closed because they had failed, kept them running, managed them themselves collectively eliminating high salaries for management, and began making profits where none were being made before. To see how a collective of worker cooperatives in the Spanish Basque country became the 7^th largest corporation in Spain, see www.mondragon.com.

These are just a few financial permaculture strategies. We could add to this list of examples. We could also generate similar lists for each petal of the permaculture flower.

What is Permaculture?

Permaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and agricultural systems that mimic the relationships found in natural ecologies.

Permaculture is sustainable land use design. This is based on ecological and biological principles, often using patterns that occur in nature to maximise effect and minimise work. Permaculture aims to create stable, productive systems that provide for human needs, harmoniously integrating the land with its inhabitants. The ecological processes of plants, animals, their nutrient cycles, climatic factors and weather cycles are all part of the picture. Inhabitants’ needs are provided for using proven technologies for food, energy, shelter and infrastructure. Elements in a system are viewed in relationship to other elements, where the outputs of one element become the inputs of another. Within a Permaculture system, work is minimised, “wastes” become resources, productivity and yields increase, and environments are restored. Permaculture principles can be applied to any environment, at any scale from dense urban settlements to individual homes, from farms to entire regions.

The first recorded modern practice of permaculture as a systematic method was by Austrian farmer Sepp Holzer in the 1960s, but the method was scientifically developed by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren and their associates during the 1970s in a series of publications.

The word permaculture is described by Mollison as a portmanteau of permanent agriculture, and permanent culture.

The intent is that, by training individuals in a core set of design principles, those individuals can design their own environments and build increasingly self-sufficient human settlements — ones that reduce society's reliance on industrial systems of production and distribution that Mollison identified as fundamentally and systematically destroying Earth's ecosystems.

While originating as an agro-ecological design theory, permaculture has developed a large international following. This "permaculture community" continues to expand on the original ideas, integrating a range of ideas of alternative culture, through a network of publications, permaculture gardens, intentional communities, training programs, and internet forums. In this way, permaculture has become a form of architecture of nature and ecology as well as an informal institution of alternative social ideals.

Look here for some inspiration:

Urban Permaculture - 10 Ebooks about Sustainable City Strategies, Community and Guerrilla Gardening



An example of permaculture utilizing animals and gardens.

History

Franklin Hiram King coined the term permanent agriculture in his classic book from 1911, Farmers of Forty Centuries: Or Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan. In this context, permanent agriculture is understood as agriculture that can be sustained indefinitely.

In 1929, Joseph Russell Smith took up the term as the subtitle for Tree Crops: A Permanent Agriculture,^[1] a book in which he summed up his long experience experimenting with fruits and nuts as crops for human food and animal feed. A revised and updated edition was published in 1950.^[2] Smith observed, "Forest -- field -- plow -- desert -- that is the cycle of the hills under most plow agricultures... When we develop an agriculture that fits this land, it will become an almost endless vista of green, crop-yielding trees."^[2] Smith saw the world as an inter-related whole and suggested mixed systems of trees and crops underneath.

The work of Howard T. Odum was also an early influence on Permaculture, especially for Holmgren.^[3] Odum focused on system ecology, in particular the maximum power principle, which claims that natural systems tend to maximize the energy embodied in a system. For example, the total calorific value of woodland is very high with its multitude of plants and animals. It is an efficient converter of sunlight into biomass. A wheat field, on the other hand, has much less total energy and often requires a large energy input in terms of fertilizer if the wheat and straw are harvested and removed from the field.

The definition of permanent agriculture as that which can be sustained indefinitely was supported by Australian P. A. Yeomans in the 1973 book "Water for Every Farm."^[4] who introduced an observation-based approach to land use in Australia in the 1940s, based partially on his understanding of geology. Yeomans introduced Keyline Design as a way of managing water supply and distribution. Holmgren based his EcoVillage design on the keyline principle, (see WikiMapia view)
Other early influences were the work of Esther Deans, who pioneered No-Dig Gardening methods, and Masanobu Fukuoka^[5] who, in the late 1930s in Japan, began advocating no-till orchards, gardens and natural philosophy.

Other recent influences include the Vegetable Aquaculture and Animal enClosures (VAC) system in Vietnam which is a government-supported system to recycle resources^{[citation needed]}.

 

Mollison and Holmgren

In the mid 1970s, Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren started to develop ideas about stable agricultural systems. This was a result of rapid growth 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 1978.

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.

After Permaculture One, Mollison further refined and developed the ideas by designing hundreds of permaculture sites and organizing this information into more detailed books. Mollison lectured in over 80 countries and taught his two-week Design Course to many hundreds of students. By the early 1980s, the concept had broadened from agricultural systems design towards complete, sustainable human habitats.

By the mid 1980s, many of the students had become successful practitioners and had themselves begun teaching the techniques they had learned. In a short period of time permaculture groups, projects, associations, and institutes were established in over one hundred countries. In 1991 a four-part Television documentary by ABC productions called "The Global Gardener" showed permaculture applied to a range of worldwide situations, bringing the concept to a much broader public. Excerpts are available online through YouTube.

 

Further developments

Permaculture has developed from its Australian origins into an international movement. English permaculture teacher Patrick Whitefield, author of The Earth Care Manual and Permaculture in a Nutshell, suggests that there are now two strands of permaculture: Original and Design permaculture.
Original permaculture attempts to closely replicate nature by developing edible ecosystems which closely resemble their wild counterparts.
Design permaculture takes the working connections at use in an ecosystem and uses them as its basis. The end result may not look as natural as a forest garden, but still respects ecological principles. Through close observation of natural energies and flow patterns efficient design systems can be developed. This has become known as Natural Systems Design. (Dr. M Millington and A Sampson-Kelly)

 

Mature species on a keyline irrigation channel, 'Orana' Farm Temperate Victoria, Australia

Elements of design

Permaculture principles draw heavily on the practical application of ecological theory to analyze the characteristics and potential relationships between design elements.

Each element of a design is carefully analyzed in terms of its needs, outputs, and properties. For example chickens need water, moderated microclimate and food, producing meat, eggs, and feathers as well as manure which can help break up hardsoil hardpan.

Design elements are then assembled in relation to one another so that the products of one element feed the needs of adjacent elements. Synergy between design elements is achieved while minimizing waste and the demand for human labor or energy. Exemplary permaculture designs evolve over time, and can become extremely complex mosaics of conventional and inventive cultural systems that produce a high density of food and materials with minimal input.

While techniques and cultural systems are freely borrowed from organic agriculture, sustainable forestry, horticulture, agroforestry, and the land management systems of indigenous peoples, permaculture's fundamental contribution to the field of ecological design is the development of a concise set of broadly applicable organizing principles that can be transferred through a brief intensive training.

 

Modern permaculture 

Modern permaculture is a system design tool. It is a way of:

1. looking at a whole system or problem;
2. observing how the parts relate;
3. planning to mend sick systems by applying ideas learned from long-term sustainable working systems;
4. seeing connections between key parts.

In permaculture, practitioners learn from the working systems of nature to plan to fix the damaged landscapes of human agricultural and city systems. This thinking applies to the design of a kitchen tool as easily to the re-design of a farm.

Permaculture practitioners apply it to everything deemed necessary to build a sustainable future. Commonly, “Initiatives ... tend to evolve from strategies that focus on efficiency (for example, more accurate and controlled uses of inputs and minimization of waste) to substitution (for example, from more to less disruptive interventions, such as from biocides to more specific biological controls and other more benign alternatives) to redesign (fundamental changes in the design and management of the operation) (Hill & MacRae 1995, Hill et al. 1999)." "Permaculture is about helping people make redesign choices: setting new goals and a shift in thinking that affects not only their home but their actions in the workplace, borrowings and investments" (A Sampson-Kelly and Michel Fanton 1991). Examples include the design and employment of complex transport solutions, optimum use of natural resources such as sunlight, and "radical design of information-rich, multi-storey polyculture systems" (Mollison & Slay 1991).

"This progression generally involves a shift in the nature of one’s dependence — from relying primarily on universal, purchased, imported, technology-based interventions to more specific locally available knowledge and skill-based ones. This usually eventually also involves fundamental shifts in world-views, senses of meaning, and associated lifestyles (Hill 1991)." "My experience is that although efficiency and substitution initiatives can make significant contributions to sustainability over the short term, much greater longer-term improvements can only be achieved by redesign strategies; and, furthermore, that steps need to be taken at the outset to ensure that efficiency and substitution strategies can serve as stepping stones and not barriers to redesign...” (Hill 2000)

 

Permaculture on an organic farm on the Swabian Mountains in Germany.

Core values

Permaculture is a broad-based and holistic approach that has many applications to all aspects of life. At the heart of permaculture design and practice is a fundamental set of ‘core values’ or ethics which remain constant whatever a person's situation, whether they are creating systems for town planning or trade; whether the land they care for is only a windowbox or an entire forest. These 'ethics' are often summarized as;

• Earthcare – recognising that Earth is the source of all life (and is possibly itself a living entity — see Gaia theory), that Earth is our valuable home, and that we are a part of Earth, not apart from it. Agriculturalists traditionally exploit soil, plants and animals so intensely that serious internal (e.g. diseases, soil erosion, decrease of production through the years) as well as external problems (e.g. pollution from fertilizers, human diseases originating from farm factories) occur. Permaculturalists have introduced new ways of practicing agriculture, based on moderate yet problem-free rates of production. These ways are fundamental in restoring a mutually beneficial (and healthy) relationship between man and the environmental factors indispensable to his survival.
• Peoplecare – supporting and helping each other to change to ways of living that do not harm ourselves or the planet, and to develop healthy societies.
• Fairshare (or placing limits on consumption) - ensuring that Earth's limited resources are used in ways that are equitable and wise.

Modern thought about permaculture began with the issue of sustainable food production. It started with the belief that for people to feed themselves sustainably, they need to move away from reliance on industrialized agriculture. Where industrial farms use technology powered by fossil fuels (such as gasoline, diesel and natural gas), and each farm specializes in producing high yields of a single crop, permaculture stresses the value of low inputs and diverse crops. The model for this was an abundance of small-scale market and home gardens for food production, and a main issue was food miles.

Design innovation

The core of permaculture has always been in supplying a design toolkit for human habitation. This toolkit helps the designer to model a final design based on an observation of how ecosystems interact. A simple example of this is how the Sun interacts with a plant by providing it with energy to grow. This plant may then be pollinated by bees or eaten by deer. These may disperse seed to allow other plants to grow into tall trees and provide shelter to these creatures from the wind. The bees may provide food for birds and the trees provide roosting for them. The tree's leaves fall and rot, providing food for small insects and fungus. Such a web of intricate connections allows a diverse population of plant life and animals to survive by giving them food and shelter. One of the innovations of permaculture design was to appreciate the efficiency and productivity of natural ecosystems, to use natural energies (wind, gravity, solar, fire, wave and more) and seek to apply this to the way human needs for food and shelter are met. One of the most notable proponents of this design system has been David Holmgren, who based much of his permaculture innovation on zone analysis.

 

OBREDIM design methodology

OBREDIM is an acronym for observation, boundaries, resources, evaluation, design, implementation and maintenance.

• Observation allows you first to see how the site functions within itself, to gain an understanding of its initial relationships. Some recommend a year-long observation of a site before anything is planted. During this period all factors, such as lay of the land, natural flora and so forth, can be brought into the design. A year allows the site to be observed through all seasons, although it must be realized that, particularly in temperate climates, there can be substantial variations between years.
• Boundaries refer to physical ones as well as to those neighbors might place, for example.
• Resources include the people involved, funding, as well as what can be grown or produced in the future.
• Evaluation of the first three will then allow one to prepare for the next three. This is a careful phase of taking stock of what is at hand to work with.
• Design is a creative and intensive process, and must stretch the ability to see possible future synergetic relationships.
• Implementation is literally the ground-breaking part of the process when digging and shaping of the site occurs.
• Maintenance is then required to keep the site at a healthy optimum, making minor adjustments as necessary. Good design will preclude the need for any major adjustment.

 General Structure

An ideal permacultural system possesses the following structural features:^[6]

• Large trees dominate but not saturate the area, i.e. there exist patches barren of trees.
• Edges that create special favorable conditions exist.
• Initially the system is in a state of controlled -possibly ongoing- succession.

Patterns

The use of patterns both in nature and reusable patterns from other sites is often key to permaculture design. This echoes the pattern language of Christopher Alexander used in architecture which has been an inspiration for many permaculture designers. All things, even the wind, the waves and the earth on its axis, moving around the Sun, form patterns. In pattern application, permaculture designers are encouraged to develop:

1. Awareness of the patterns that exist in nature (and how these function)
2. Application of pattern on sites in order to satisfy specific design needs.

"The application of pattern on a design site involves the designer recognizing the shape and potential to fit these patterns or combinations of patterns comfortably onto the landscape" Sampson-Kelly. Branching can be used for the direction of paths, rather than straight paths with square angles. Lobe-like paths off the main path (known as keyhole paths) can be used to minimize waste and compaction of the soil.

 

Zones

Permaculture zones are a way of organizing design elements in a human environment on the basis of the frequency of human use and plant or animal needs.
Frequently manipulated or harvested elements of the design are located close to the house in zones one and two such as herbs for the kitchen.
Whereas chickens, for example, like to be close for their security but need to be kept at a safe distance to reduce noise, destruction of delicate plants such as herbs and vegetables and any risk of contamination. Less frequently used or manipulated elements, and elements that benefit from isolation (such as wild species) are farther away.

 

Links and connections

Also key to the permacultural design model is that useful connections are made between components in the final design. The formal analogy for this is a natural mature ecosystem. So, in much the same way as there are useful connections between Sun, plants, insects and soil there will be useful connections between different plants and their relationship to the landscape and humans.
Another innovation of the permaculture design is to design a landuse or other system that has multiple outputs. In terms of Holmgren's application of H.T. Odum's work, a useful connection is viewed as one that maximizes power: that is, maximizes the rate of useful energy transformation. A comparison which illustrates this is between a wheat field and a forest.

“It is not the number of diverse things in a design that leads to stability, it is the number of beneficial connections between these components” Mollison 1988.

Layers/'stacking'

In permaculture and forest gardening, seven layers are identified:

1. The canopy
2. Low tree layer (dwarf fruit trees)
3. Shrubs
4. Herbaceous
5. Rhizosphere (root crops)
6. Soil surface (cover crops)
7. Vertical layer (climbers, vines)

An eighth layer, mycosphere (fungi), is often included.

A mature ecosystem such as ancient woodland has a huge number of relationships between its component parts: trees, understory, ground cover, soil, fungi, insects and other animals. Plants grow at different heights. This allows a diverse community of life to grow in a relatively small space. Plants come into leaf and fruit at different times of year.

For example, in the UK, wild garlic comes into leaf on the woodland floor in the time before the top canopy re-appears with the spring. A wood suffers very little soil erosion, as there are always roots in the soil. It offers a habitat to a wide variety of animal life, which the plants rely on for pollination and seed distribution.

The productivity of such a forest, in terms of how much new growth it produces, exceeds that of the most productive wheat field^{[citation needed]}. It is in this observation — of how much more productive a wood may be on far less fertilizer input — that the potential productivity of a permaculture design is modeled. The many connections in a wood contribute together to a proliferation of opportunities for amplifier feedback to evolve that in turn maximize energy flow through the system.

 

The seven layers of the forest garden.

Polyculture

Polyculture is agriculture using multiple crops in the same space, in imitation of the diversity of natural ecosystems, and avoiding large stands of single crops, or monoculture. It includes crop rotation, multi-cropping, and inter-cropping. Alley cropping is a simplification of the layered system which typically uses just two layers, with alternate rows of trees and smaller plants.

Guild

Permaculture guilds are groups of organisms - plants, animals, fungi, bacteria etc. - which work particularly well together. These can be those observed in nature such as the White Oak guild which centers on the White Oak tree and includes 10 other plants. Native communities can be adapted by substitution of plants more suitable for human use.

The Three Sisters of maize, squash and beans is a well known guild. The British National Vegetation Classification provides a comprehensive list of plant communities in the UK. Guilds can be thought of as an extension of companion planting.

 

Increased edge

See also edge effect

Permaculturists maintain that where vastly differing systems meet, there is an intense area of productivity and useful connections.

The greatest example of this is the coast.^{[dubious – discuss]} Where the land and the sea meet there is a particularly rich area that meets a disproportionate percentage of human and animal needs.^{[original research?]} This is evidenced by the fact that the overwhelming majority of humankind lives within 100 km of the sea.^{[citation needed]} So this idea is played out in permacultural designs by using spirals in the herb garden or creating ponds that have wavy undulating shorelines rather than a simple circle or oval (thereby increasing the amount of edge for a given area). Edges between woodland and open areas have been claimed to be the most productive.^[7]

 

Perennial plants

Perennial plants are often used in permaculture design. As they do not need to be planted every year they require less maintenance and fertilizers. They are especially important in the outer zones and in layered systems.
Ken Fern of Plants For A Future has spent many years investigating suitable perennial plants, as has Wes Jackson of The Land Institute.

 

Animals

Many permaculture designs involve animals other than humans. Chickens can be used as a method of weed control and also as a producer of eggs, meat and fertilizer. Some types of agroforestry systems combine trees with grazing animals.

Some projects are critical of the use of animals (see vegan organic gardening). However not all permaculture sites farm the animals. The animals are pets and can be treated as co-habitators and co-workers of the site, eating foods normally unpalatable to people such as slugs and termites, being an integral part of the pest management by eating some pests, supplying fertilizer through their droppings and controlling some weed species.

 

Chickens in a chicken tractor prepare a section of land before it's dug up for a new vegetable bed. (An organic farm near Bruthen, Victoria)

 

Annual monoculture (anti-pattern)

Annual monoculture such as a wheatfield can be considered a pattern to be avoided in terms of space (height is uniform) and time (crops grow at the same rate until harvesting). During growth and especially after harvesting the system is prone to soil erosion from rain. The field requires a hefty input of fertilizers for growth and machinery for harvesting. The work is more likely to be repetitive, mechanized and rely on fossil fuels.

No pattern should be hard and fast and depending on the design considerations they can be broken. An example of this is broadscale permaculture^[8][9] practiced at Ragmans Lane Farm, which has a component of annual farming. Here the amount of human involvement is a key factor influencing the design.

 

Energy

Applying these values means using fewer non-renewable sources of energy, particularly petroleum based forms of energy. Burning fossil fuels contributes to greenhouse gases and global warming; however, using less energy is more than just combating global warming.

Using current agricultural systems the food production system is not fully renewable. Industrial agriculture requires large amounts of petroleum, both to run the equipment, and to supply pesticides and fertilizers. Permaculture is in part an attempt to create a renewable system of food production that relies upon minimal amounts of energy.

For example permaculture focuses on maximizing the use of trees (agroforestry) and perennial food crops because they make a more efficient and long term use of energy than traditional seasonal crops. A farmer does not have to exert energy every year replanting them, and this frees up that energy to be used somewhere else.

Traditional pre-industrial agriculture was labor intensive, industrial agriculture is fossil fuel intensive, and permaculture is design and information intensive and petrofree. Partially permaculture is an attempt to work smarter, not harder; and when possible the energy used should come from renewable sources such as wind power, passive solar designs or biofuels.




Natural Energy use: e.g. a cave for preservation

Chicken example

A good example of this kind of efficient design is the chicken greenhouse. By attaching a chicken coop to a greenhouse you can reduce the need to heat the greenhouse by fossil fuels, as the chickens' bodies heat the area.

The chickens scratching and pecking can be put to good use to clear new land for crops. Their manure can be used in composting to fertilize the soil. Feathers could be used in compost or as a mulch. In a conventional factory situation all these chicken outputs are seen as a waste problem.
In large factory farms (cooled by large air conditioning systems), chicken heat is a waste byproduct, along with their manure. All energy is focused on egg production. Thus it is a further principle of permaculture that "pollution is energy in the wrong place".

Holmgren's 12 design principles

These restatements of the principles of permaculture appear in Holmgren's Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability ^[10]; also see permacultureprinciples.com ^[11];

1. Observe and interact - By taking time to engage with nature we can design solutions that suit our particular situation.
2. Catch and store energy - By developing systems that collect resources at peak abundance, we can use them in times of need.
3. Obtain a yield - Ensure that you are getting truly useful rewards as part of the work that you are doing.
4. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback - We need to discourage inappropriate activity to ensure that systems can continue to function well.
5. Use and value renewable resources and services - Make the best use of nature's abundance to reduce our consumptive behaviour and dependence on non-renewable resources.
6. Produce no waste - By valuing and making use of all the resources that are available to us, nothing goes to waste.
7. Design from patterns to details - By stepping back, we can observe patterns in nature and society. These can form the backbone of our designs, with the details filled in as we go.
8. Integrate rather than segregate - By putting the right things in the right place, relationships develop between those things and they work together to support each other.
9. Use small and slow solutions - Small and slow systems are easier to maintain than big ones, making better use of local resources and producing more sustainable outcomes.
10. Use and value diversity - Diversity reduces vulnerability to a variety of threats and takes advantage of the unique nature of the environment in which it resides.
11. Use edges and value the marginal - The interface between things is where the most interesting events take place. These are often the most valuable, diverse and productive elements in the system.
12. Creatively use and respond to change - We can have a positive impact on inevitable change by carefully observing, and then intervening at the right time.