Permaculture

Farmers markets and CSA both cut oil dependence by dramatically narrowing the divide between producers and consumers of food, yet they still uphold a degree of seperation. Weaving food growing into the seams of community life – connecting everyone directly with its rhythms, in effect – can further deepen food security. Permaculture, a contraction of “permanent agriculture,” is a holistic philosophy of ecological design and set of ethics that seeks to sustainably integrate food production systems into human habitat. Founded in the late 1970s in part as a creative reaction to the energy constraints and oil crisis of that era, permaculture (PC) strives for harmonious interplay of human dwellings, microclimate, fruit- and nut-bearing trees, annual and perennial plants, animals, soils, and water in stable, productive communities.

By mimicing patterns found in nature, PC aims to heighten the efficiency of human labor, eliminate waste, maximize biodiversity, and use biological processes as energy sources instead of fossil fuels. As a design philosophy, it is versatile enough to be applied to any ecosystem or built environment, and has been crystallized for all to read in the written wisdom of practitioners worldwide like Australian permaculture co-founder Bill Mollison’s voluminous “design manuals.”  Permaculture can offer particularly dynamic solutions to peak oil by responding to it, not as a terrifying threat, but enthusiastically as a perfect and unprecedented opportunity to transform ecologically barren, car-centered concrete jungles and suburban wastelands dependent on food imports into truly livable communities replete with restored green spaces featuring neighborhood gardens, food forests, and other “edible landscapes.”

“We have trouble visualizing decline as positive, but this simply reflects the dominance of our prior culture of growth,” writes fellow permaculture co-founder David Holmgren in his new book Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability. With brilliantly pragmatic insight, he analyzes how communities can embrace “energy descent” through permaculture with “whole-hearted adaptation to the ecological realities of decline which are as natural and creative as those of growth.” From an evolutionary outlook, he argues, the steep ride down energy descent can precipitate spiritual and cultural ascent: “When an adolescent sense of immortality and values of speed, novelty and endless growth define a whole civilisation, we are close to its demise and the birth of a new cultural paradigm.”