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Pc slammed in Whole Earth Review
- To: permaculture "permaculture" <permaculture@franklin.oit.unc.edu>
- Subject: Pc slammed in Whole Earth Review
- From: Toby Hemenway <hemenway@jeffnet.org>
- Date: Sat, 05 Jan 2002 12:06:01 -0800
- Newsgroups: permaculture
- User-agent: Microsoft-Outlook-Express-Macintosh-Edition/5.02.2022
He used some pretty strong language: "The fundamentally misguided ideas of
some permaculturists . . . show signs of polluting the larger culture." It's
unpleasant to see this in a widely respected and influential magazine.
One of Greg's less cogent arguments was that Pc's whole idea of mimicking
mature ecosystems was stupid because immature ecosystems are more productive
than mature ones. This was easy to dispose of, since he missed the
difference between fully mature (senescent, ancient, less productive)
forests and maturing forests (5-200 years old, which Pc seeks to mimic),
which are 2-10 times more productive than meadows or farms.
But his most damning points were about the absence of data, testing, and
experiments with controls to support any of permaculture's claims of being a
superior system to conventional agriculture or gardening. He wrote that he
has never seen "any convincing evidence that temperate zone forest gardens
can do better than meadow gardens at providing useful products." If anyone
ever did measure, he says, the yields of conventional gardens should dwarf
those of forest gardens.
Permaculturists, he writes, "have neglected the scientific approach to
determining the worth of their ideas . . . and instead have argued for and
against particular gardening techniques on the basis of (at best) incomplete
theoretical notions and (at worst) pure intuition. This is worse than
glossing over the details; it is misconstruing the details. . . . It is
completely unacceptable when their claims are made to the general public,
who stand to waste huge amounts of time and money on a (much)
less-than-optimal approach to boosting garden output."
The problem is, it's hard to find data to refute his claims (I did my best,
but to an insider, there may be a faint whiff of the barnyard about some of
my reply). We just don't collect data. What do we answer when a farmer asks,
"How much more money or produce, or less erosion, will your system get me?"
That we just know it works better? Does anyone have any numbers? I've looked
at a lot of Pc sites in North America, and I haven't seen one where people
are measuring yields.
So are we justified in saying that this stuff works? Or is permaculture just
for those, as Williams says, "who do not require optimal solutions to
pressing agricultural and ecological problems"?
If anyone's got any hard numbers, or other reputable data, please share
them. If not, it points to a huge lack in permaculture, and we should get
busy setting up trials and getting reliable data instead of just banking on
Bill's wild claims. Without data, more folks like Williams will erode
permaculture's credibility.
I've also had inquiries from a researcher who wants yield data from
permaculture farms for a thesis. If anyone has these, let me know.
Toby
_____________________________________________
For a look at my new book on ecological gardening,
Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, visit
http://www.chelseagreen.com/Garden/GaiasGarden.htm
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