Introduction to Permaculture

Paul Vedant — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 00:42:33 +0000

Permaculture is essentially a holistic agricultural ecological design system. It involves the development of perennial agricultural systems that are based on natural sustainable environments. The word permaculture was coined by Bill Mollison, an Australian scientist and naturalist, as a combination of permanent and agriculture. However as human habitats and their social aspects are an integral part of a truly sustainable system, it is more accurately a combination of permanent and culture.

Permaculture has three guiding ethics or core values. These have been distilled from both research into community ethics as well as traditional indigenous cultures that have existed in relative balance with their environment for much longer than more recent civilisations.

These ethics are:

Care for the earth
Care for people
Fair share

These ethics guide the 12 practical design principles of permaculture:

Observe and interact
Catch and store energy
Obtain a yield
Apply self-regulation and accept feedback
Use and value renewable resources and services
Produce no waste
Design from patterns to details
Integrate rather than segregate
Use small and slow solutions
Use and value diversity
Use edges and value the marginal
Creatively use and respond to change

I completed the Permaculture Design Certificate at Ecoforest in 2004, and have been applying some of these principles on my land since then.

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Introduction to Permaculture