Permaculture is ...........

What is permaculture? Is it a new culture? Is it a hairstyle? Something to do with the football pools? No? grownupgreen asked Patrick Whitefield, Associate Editor of Permaculture Magazine, to explain.

A home-grown holiday is as much a part of permaculture as a home-grown apple.

The basic idea of permaculture, explains Patrick, is that we take natural ecosystems as the model for what we do ourselves.

That’s it? Ecosystems need space don’t they? This sounds all very well if you have a farm or a large garden, but what about people who only have a small urban garden, or even no garden at all? How can they use permaculture?

Patrick Whitefiled – with two examples food and transport.

One of the things which makes an ecosystem work is the network of useful links between all its components. An example is the relationship between flowering plants and pollinating insects, where one gets its reproductive needs met and the other gets fed. There are many similar links we can make in our own lives and these can reduce the ecological impact of getting our needs met.

Food

Only one percent of our energy consumption is used in farming but twelve times as much is used in transporting, processing, packaging and marketing it. Energy use is a rough indicator of ecological impact and this energy ratio suggests that where we get our food from is at least as important as how it’s grown.

Would you rather eat an organic apple air-freighted from New Zealand or one from five miles away which has been sprayed with artificial pesticides? Given the destructive nature of air freight, there’s no easy answer to that one.

Of course the ideal is to eat food which is both local and organic. But 70% of the organic produce eaten in Britain is imported. So a priority is to encourage more British farmers and growers to go organic.

Here we can use the permaculture principle of making links – links between producers and consumers. By joining a box scheme, where fruit and vegetables are sold directly to the consumers by the growers, we not only know exactly where the food comes from and how it’s grown. We also make organic growing more financially viable to the producers and thus encourage more local organic production.

Any food we grow for ourselves will have even less ecological impact than what we buy from local sources. Even people without gardens can grow some of their own food by sprouting seeds. Sprouting turns a relatively indigestible dry food with a negligible vitamin content into little plants which are highly digestible and bursting with vitamins. This increase in food value is definitely a form of food production rather than preparation and anyone can have a mini-garden in their kitchen.

Transport

Trains are not ecologically friendly – they’re just less damaging than cars. The first choice to make in transport is to live in a place where we don’t need to make long trips to work, school, shops and so on. For most of us this means living in the town.

The idea that the permacultural ideal is to live in the country is only true for the minority of us who actually make our living there. This is the principle of linking again, placing ourselves where we can make the links we need to without using fossil fuels.

Becoming car-free is a big change most of us can make to green our lifestyles, but not all of us are willing or able to take that step. A good intermediate step is to join a car sharing club. This means you can use public transport most of the time but still have a car when you really need one. Further info below.

Air travel is even more destructive than car, not just because it uses more fuel but also because pollution does more harm when released high up in the atmosphere.

It has been calculated that one round trip to Florida uses up each passenger’s entire lifetime allowance of carbon dioxide output, at the level we need to achieve if we’re going to stabilise the Earth’s climate.

So a home-grown holiday is as much a part of permaculture as a home-grown apple.

Thank you to Patrick for this insight. Patrick Whitefield is the author of the Earth Care Manual, the first full-length book on permaculture for Britain and other temperate countries. He has also written Permaculture in a Nutshell and How to Make a Forest Garden. He originally qualified in agriculture, and has wide experience of farming, gardening, nature conservation and rural crafts. He has been teaching permaculture since 1990.

Would you like a free subscription to Permaculture Magazine? Use your gugs ( What are gugs? ) to cash in for a free subscription donated by Permaculture Magazine.

Did you see grownupgreen’s feature on Car Sharing

Did you miss our discussion about Air Travel and Aviation

Did you catch Can We Shop More Sustainably or Food for Thought – Are greens greener?

Patrick Whitefield - 04/07/05

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