As an advocate for sustainable food, it's easy to wag a finger at Confined Animal Feeding Operations, or even just "Big Ag." But focusing on the negative is kind of a bummer. So here's something positive: permaculture. It's an exciting and refreshing take on how we use our resources, and you don't need to be a brain surgeon to understand its basic principles.
Graham Bell, author of The Permaculture Way, defines permaculture as "the harmonious integration of the landscape with people providing their food, energy, shelter and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way." The term comes from the combining of the wordspermanent and agriculture and essentially aims to echo in cultivated land what happens naturally in an ecosystem free of human intervention.
Think of it this way: when leaves fall in a forest, they are naturally composted with the help of the sun, soil and excrement of forest animals. Permaculture asks how humans can re-create this closed loop in our own developed environments. For example, permaculture encourages the planting of complimentary crops in place of the single crop fields used in traditional farming, and investigates how these crops can also attract beneficial insects to the land or provide grazing fodder for animals that could be raised there.
Because it's so holistic in scope, permaculture can be initially intimidating. Much of permaculture focuses on waste reduction, or reuse of what is traditionally considered waste. Advanced systems might incorporate composting toilets or gray water systems, but even placing some aquatic plants in a rain-collecting bucket with a little tube for drainage is a step in the right direction.
Hip Chick Digs, a Portland-based DIY gardener, has a great overview of how she incorporated permaculture principles into her own backyard last year. Appropedia, on online sustainable wiki, breaks down the basics into easy to understand categories, such as irrigation and water, pest control, and plot design. These resources can help you get started with a raised bed on the roof or a simple swale in your backyard. To understand more of the sustainable theory, check out Spiral Seed's Beginners' Guide to Permaculture.
Above all, permaculture focuses on three ethics: care for the earth, care for the people, and fair share. In today's terms, they could loosely be translated as a convergence of environmentalism, cooperative living and economic justice. Any system that's founded on such high-minded ideals while also giving practical advice on planting to increase both crop-yields and nutrient-retention is worth checking out.
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