What is Permaculture and What are its Benefits?
Permaculture is a method of agriculture which is very different from conventional agriculture. It tends to be more complex and ecologically-oriented than conventional agriculture, and it is very long-term oriented. It involves diversification of crops, growing multiple crops together in the same area, and using more perennial plants.
Although the term permaculture is relatively new, originating first in the term permanent agriculture coined in 1929, many of the practices used in this type of farming are very old and traditional, and can be found in many indigenous cultures throughout the globe.
To understand permaculture, and what makes it different from conventional agriculture, it helps to look at conventional Western agriculture and to bring into conscious awareness the things that we take for granted.
Modern Western agriculture
Modern Western agriculture is characterized by crop monocultures. Typically, land is cleared and different parcels of land are dedicated to growing different crops. The crops may be rotated from year to year, or separated into patches or strips, but generally are blocked out somehow in space or time. Many of the crops grown in this way are annual crops, grown only through one season. In Western Agriculture, farmed or cultivated land often stretches for miles, with at most only small buffers of wild areas in cropland.
Permaculture breaks all of these assumptions or standard practices. Permaculture often involves growing multiple crops in the same plot in such a way that increases total productive output and reduces problems with pests and weeds.
Ecological principles informing permaculture
The difference between permaculture and mainstream Western agriculture can be seen as the difference between an ecological approach to farming and a mechanistic one. Whereas Western agriculture tries to tame or control nature, permaculture is based around working with nature.
Permaculture thus requires a deeper understanding of plants, animals, and their relationships to each other, but it can potentially yield huge benefits.
Benefits and advantages of permaculture
One of the most immediate and compelling benefits of permaculture is a hugely increased yield of crops. Although Western monoculture farming is often the way to produce the highest yield per acre of a single crop, in permaculture, combining multiple crops on the same plot of land, the total yield of all combined crops can be much higher. For commercial farmers, this means higher income, and for homeowners, this can mean a greater total amount of food production.
Permaculture also reduces the need for inputs such as fertilizer and often completely eliminates the need for herbicides and pesticides. Although the labor for the initial setup can much greater for diversified permaculture methods, the long-term maintenance can be greatly reduced, especially the need for weeding. By recycling both chemical inputs and organic waste products from plants and animals, using them as fertilizer, permaculture also reduces the amount of pollution.
The result is an epic win for both sustainability and economic output.
Resilience and adaptability
Permaculture is also much more resilient in the face of abnormal weather conditions, such as unusually dry, wet, hot, or cold spells. The increased diversity of crops provides one buffer or security measure, as different plants have different levels of resistance to different types of adverse conditions. But the increased total biomass, which corresponds to more stored water, a greater buffer against wind, and a greater cooling potential in hot weather, also translates to increased resilience of the farming system to extreme weather events.
The diversification of crops is also an economic buffer, which helps protect farmers against price fluctuations, such as a glut of a particular crop that can lead to low prices for that year.
The result is a system that is not only more productive, but more resilient, stable, and predictable in the long-run.
Traditional permaculture examples
Native Americans in North America widely used a system of growing three plants in the same area, called the three sisters, beans, corn, and squash. These crops complemented each other ecologically as well as nutritionally. The corn would grow upright, providing a pole for the beans to climb. The corn had high nitrogen needs, but the beans were a nitrogen fixer. The squash, also with a vining habit, but more sprawling, would cover the ground, shutting out weeds. The squash also covers the soil, holding in moisture. The crop harvest combines to form a more complete protein for the human diet than beans or corn alone would provide.
Another traditional permaculture system from a completely different culture and ecoregion is the VAC system used in Northern Vietnam, standing for Vuon, Ao, Chuong, meaning “orchard”, “fish pond”, and “shed” for poultry or pigs. This is a highly productive system that produces animal and plant foods as well as fiber and fuel. Waste from the animals is used as fertilizer and fish are bold harvested as output as well as used as food for pigs. This system can produce income for farmers that is 3-5 times higher than that from farming rice alone, and it greatly reduces pollution as well.
In summary
Permaculture is complex and requires greater skill and learning, and often, greater initial investment of labor, relative to Western agriculture, but the results can be immensely compelling, with high total yields of crops, higher income for farmers, greater stability, and hugely decreased environmental impacts. Permaculture is one of the most sustainable forms of farming, and a major way through which humanity can achieve a truly sustainable society.
Alex Zorach is a naturalist and advocate of gardening as a tool for ecological restoration, which you can read about in his piece Why Native Plants?. He is also the founder and editor of RateTea, a social review site for tea drinkers, where you can also read about the influence of climate and geography on tea production.
Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Alex_Zorach/433569
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