What Is Permaculture?
Q: “What is ‘permaculture’ and where did it come from?”
The term permaculture (a form of regenerative agriculture) is a word amalgam of “permanent” and “agriculture”, and was first coined in the 1970s by two Australians of Tasmania, David Holmgren (an environmental design student), and Bill Mollison (a senior lecturer on environment, and is also known as the “father of permaculture”). The foundations of permaculture rest on two concepts: understanding/acceptance of the diversity of whole systems vs. the soil-degrading effects of industrial monoculture; and on slow, yet dynamic, practice of observing the land, and its many complex ecosystems. Both of these principles have also been the core tenets of relating to and working with nature by Indigenous people the world over for millennia.
Why did we do away with this concept so many decades ago? Why did we, as guests in their lands, so to speak, feel we could just take over and re-create Nature in our image? I’m continually amazed, and sometimes embarrassed, of modern, non-native, god-like tendencies of human thought. We “immigrants” have been here less than 400 years…and yet we took it upon ourselves to fast-forward the planet and try to remodel a closed system. We’ve succeeded to do massive damage in less than 100 years. I’m sure the surviving original peoples of every invaded land, looked on in horror and great sadness as they watched the earth being poisoned and treated as a renewable resource.
Today, we are learning the hard way, that this IS the ONLY planet we have. Truth is a hard pill to swallow, but in this case it’s the only thing – along with a little humility - that will save the earth…. which is what keeps us alive. Are we humble enough to learn from that which we’ve tried to wipe out? Can we admit we were wrong in our approach to the soil and all it represents? Can we open our minds to learn the “old ways”?
Sherrie Ottinger, The Tennessee DirtGirl
