Value
I value my ability to eat a nutritious and diverse diet. However, I also value minimizing my environmental impact. Lastly, I don’t have an unlimited budget. Therefore, I value my access to affordable, healthy and environmentally light foods. I value governments and organizations that invest their resources in supporting permaculture agriculture, soil health, biodiversity, and boosting ecosystem services.
Vision
Permaculture farming is an awesome solution to a lot of our agricultural problems. By leveraging biodiversity and ecosystem services to support a resilient food-forest, permaculture promotes food production that does not inherently starve the soil, exclude organisms, and leave plants susceptible to disease. The only problem is it can be extremely time and resource intensive to set up permaculture farms. There is a lot of risk in relinquishing control over a farm, and a lot of money is needed to allow for changes to occur in a new permaculture ecosystem. In my vision, permaculture practices are scalable and available to everyone, because systems are in place to support farmers to adopt these practices, and protect them if something goes wrong in the practice. Financial support also always sustainably grown produce to remain affordable.
Intervention
Education and funding could be made available to support permaculture practices. Government organizations could cover the costs of increasing biodiversity and reintroducing native species. Funds could also be made available to cover the increased costs of harvesting under a more complex growing model, and to cover the years that the farm is not producing food as it is being set up.
Image: I worked on a permaculture in the north of France last fall. We had more veggies than we could eat!
Hi Anya, I agree with your values, vision and intervention. Increasing the amount of biodiversity in the farming zone is essential to delay the rate at which pests become resistant and maintain soil health. How can we convince/encourage governments to invest in permaculture practices?
Hi Anya, I totally respect your dedication to that green project in France last fall and it is so nice to hear your thoughts on permaculture practices.
Hi, Anya!
'Love this topic! It can get really really detailed in terms of degrees and orders and scales of observation, study, and applied learning when it comes to Permaculture and Ecology!
This according to Google:
Permaculture is an approach to land management and settlement design that adopts arrangements observed in flourishing natural ecosystems. It includes a set of design principles derived using whole-systems thinking.
Sounds great to me!!!!
Is there any way to find out how to invest in and finance these permaculture foods production operations, for those of us (not me!) who have the means and interest?
Cheers!
Thought you might like this image of my niece at her first pumkin patch in Richmond BC, Unceded Coast Salish Territories! 'Tis the season as I write this!
Hey Anya, love that you added your own photo! Permaculture, for sure presents a promising solution to our agricultural challenges. Your vision of making permaculture practices more accessible and scalable is great. Overcoming the initial hurdles of setup, ensuring financial support during transition years, and safeguarding farmers who opt for this sustainable model are some interesting interventions to consider, in efforts for this intervention.
Hi Anya, this is a very cool and interesting method of farming that I had not heard of. I agree that we must value sustainable food with a minimal ecological impact.
Hi Anya, permaculture sounds like a fascinating method of establishing an agriculture-centric ecosystem. However, how likely is it to become prevalent given that, from what I understand, it essentially excludes the possibility of growing important annual crops such as wheat? Would it provide alternatives for annual grains and other annual crops?
Hi Anya! I found your post super interesting. I have never heard of permaculture farming before and would love to learn more. Where is permaculture farming currently being used?
Hi Anya, I have actually not heard of permaculture farming prior to today, but I really like the sound of it and it sounds like a great solution! Also, just a question about your experience in France last fall: what would you say are the biggest differences between working on a permaculture vs. working on a regular farm? What are some benefits and drawbacks?
Hi Anya, amazing picture! I love to see farming in applications as such in real life. I also noticed that in order to implement sustainable farming, there is definitely the trade-off of high resource allocation and lots of effort in planning. This comes back to the point of rewilding in agriculture mentioned in the lecture that it's possible to intervene but our social component is impeding this change because everything is centred around the budget aspect, unfortunately.