Subject: Re: PERMACULTURE????

From: [email-masked] (Cyronwode)
Date: 10 Nov 1994 16:35:08 -0500

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] (Tero
Laakkonen) writes:

==============
having read the book [Permaculture by Bill Mollison] i had the feeling
that his methods would be:

1/ awkward and difficult in practical farming.
2/ unpredictable. no numbers in his book, just gut feeling mostly.
   mollison studiously avoids the use of numbers and resorts to fancy
   sketches.
3/ questionable: how can anybody take seriously a book with "ha-ha fences"
   and "two-person shovels"?

just my opinion. if anybody has any experiences of permaculture working,
let me know. i want numbers, not gut feeling.
========

Bill, i have seen Mollison's farm -- 180 acres. 5 acres has been under
Permaculture for 6 years, the other 175 acres has only been under
Permaculture for 2 years (he moved there recently from Tasmania -- and
there are already 6 productive fish ponds (perch and crayfish) on what was
once dry worn-out pasture. Commercial banana and mango orchards are
growing (3,000 bananas, 600 mangoes), and there is a small area set aside
for reforestation, too (the entire region was rainforest before clearing
for pastures and he wants to bring back some of the native species). He
says that when he moved there, he noted six species of birds on the land
and this year the species count was up to 96, due to increased habitat.
Old books on the natural history of his vicinity state that the area used
to carry 120 species, so he has made significant progress in the area of
recovering species diversity. 

Let me address your 3 objections as best i can: 

1/ awkward and difficult in practical farming.
          Mollison and his crew use heavy equipment, work hard, long
hours, and do not seem to suffer more awkwardness or difficulty than other
local banana and mango farmers. 

2/ unpredictable. no numbers in his book, just gut feeling mostly.
   mollison studiously avoids the use of numbers and resorts to fancy
   sketches.
          Mollison tries to universalize the concepts so that they will
work in all bio-regions. The sketches help that effort, i think. As for
numbers, i agree -- he is weak on that, especially when it comes to the
caloric input/output of intensive farming...but i tend to combine
Mollison's design ideas with the caloric counting of the extremely number
conscious John Jeavons (Bio-Intensive Mini-Farming) to arrive at hard data
on sustainable practices.

3/ questionable: how can anybody take seriously a book with "ha-ha fences"
   and "two-person shovels"?
          Tero, forgive me if i assume that English is not your first
language and that this objection of yours is based on ignorance of English
idioms. A "ha-ha fence" (and yes, that IS the proper English term, dating
back to the 1700s at least) is a boundary that confines animals by means
of terracing, moats, or other earth-works. It is called a "ha-ha" because
although from the back-side, you will see the moats or earthworks, viewing
it from the other direction it looks like there is no fence (that is,
looking over the greensward you cannot see the moats that keep the animals
>from  approaching closer to you), so it fools you ("ha-ha"). A "two-person
shovel" is just that -- a leverage-shovel used by two people. Do you not
have those in Finland? They are not common here, because most people use
gasoline powered tools, but the local organic/sustainable farm supply
store down the road from me sells them under that exact same name. 

catherine