The word
'permaculture', coined by Australians Bill Mollison
and David Holmgren during the 1970s, is both permanent
agriculture and permanent culture. However, the concept
is evolving... As with Life Coaching, its harvest of
wisdom is growing as it addresses our changing situation
and our urgent need for sustainability.
Permaculture means designing
robust, flexible, living systems. It has primarily been
applied to gardening and always draws inspiration from
ecological systems and Nature's patterns. But
its vision comes from the urgent need to redevelop sustainability
in both small, local, individual ways, and national
and global ways. It plans the creation of productive
and sustainable lifestyles by integrating ecology, landscape,
organic gardening, architecture and agroforestry. The
focus is not on the elements themselves, but rather
on the relationships created among them; the whole becomes
greater than the sum of its parts. It
is both visionary and practical. It is about "reading
the Book of Life", recognizing universal patterns
and principles, then learning to apply them to the problems
at hand.
Think Global Act Local CARE OF EARTH: Rebuild local sustainability
CARE OF PEOPLE: Rebuild local community
LIMIT POPULATION & WEALTH: Responsibility
From Permaculture - Principles and Pathways
Beyond Sustainability
1. Observe and Interact - “Beauty
is in the eye of the beholder.”
2. Catch and Store Energy - “Make hay
while the sun shines.”
3. Obtain a Yield - “You can't work
on an empty stomach.”
4. Apply Self-Regulation and Accept Feedback
- “Mistakes are signposts on the road to success.”
5. Use and Value Renewable Resources and Services
- “ Let nature take its course.”
6. Produce No Waste - all "waste"
is just resources and pieces looking for new uses
7. Design from Patterns to Details - “Can't
see the wood for the trees.”
8. Integrate rather than Segregate - “Many
hands make light work.”
9. Use Small and Slow Solutions - “The
bigger they are, the harder they fall.”
10. Use and Value Diversity - “Don't
put all your eggs in one basket.”
11. Use Edges and Value the Marginal - “Don't
think you are on the right track just because it is a well-beaten
path.”
12. Use and Respond to Change Creatively
- “Vision is not seeing things as they are but as they
can be.”
Aronia
- used by native Americans to make pemmican (dried meat) because
of its astounding and unique health-promoting, flavour-enhancing
and preservative properties. Research is
now showing that these properties seem to beat those of almost
every other edible plant species. It was unknown to European
settlers, who called it Chokeberry, because of its astringency. Aronia
is a very hardy and vigorous bush, growing in all soil conditions
to well over 2 metres and yielding heavy quantities of fruit
in clusters of berries. It's an unknown but naturally permacultural
plant!
Greening the Desert - Geoff Lawson,
Australian permaculturist, turns Dead Sea desert into green
orchards - if Jordan, why not all the deserts of the world
- and quickly, too?
from letters from Yakub
- Yishay Mor: I don't think that the Geoff's youtube
video does this project enough justice, it maybe his humility.
They even built a pond to raise geese and fish to provide
nutrients for the irrigation system. Here
and here
are the web links describing the project in detail with the
more technical aspects of the design process, soil type and
nutrient consistency, local plant varieties utilized, crop
yields, water management, integrated pest management system,
etc...
See the desert research institute at Sde
Boker here.
The Nabatians mastered desert agriculture a millennium ago,
and people are now trying to revive their methods: see here.
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