Many in Permaculture view the New
Homesteading movement and other approaches to ecological restoration
as the new frontier. Within Permaculture, we are taught to think
about the Earth as the source of all wealth, and it is, but we forget
that most of the Earth’s accessible, concentrated wealth has
already been harvested, and is being stored within the bounds of
civilization and industrialism. Concentrated metal ores are almost entirely gone, and the existing mines are grinding up huge volumes of rock to obtain a scant amount of metal. Fossil aquifer levels are dropping rapidly. The soils are depleted of phosphorus and magnesium. Most of the world's forests are under assault, and the prairies are turning to dust, and on and on. The biosphere certainly has a
capacity to renew itself to a degree, but on its own terms, and its
own time frame. The task ahead of us, as humans, is to return much of our
stored wealth back into the diversity of life and our ecological
support systems.
It is easy to look at the systems at work in our world in a hierarchical way. The ecosphere is at the base of the pyramid, the industrial economy rests on top of that, and so on. In reality, the systems are best viewed as a web. They are recursive. They all feed into each other. Under the current circumstances, of course, the flow of energy is primarily unidirectional, from the biosphere and into the capitalist human economy. This imbalance is the source of our predicament and must be rectified. Those who would derive their livelihood from working with nature must understand this. We coax the Earth back to health by giving, not taking. Our own individual sustenance, and the initial feed stock for any attempt at restorative endeavors, must come, at least initially, to whatever degree is feasible, from the system that is overbalanced, not the system in decline – from the great concentration of wealth that we call civilization. To do otherwise is ineffective and counterproductive.
Toby Hemenway states that a new garden takes six years to "pop". The first five years tend to produce lackluster harvests. These gardens have large pest populations, poor water retention, and so on. I can attest to this myself. My own garden has taken exactly six years to become fertile and abundant. Most of the work that went into this garden prior to this year has been soil building and preparation - making compost, adding mulch, digging hugelkultur beds, cutting or pulling weeds, and that sort of thing. Of course I did plant vegetables and some herbs every year prior, but nothing ever produced more than a bare handful of food (the lambs quarters and dayflower are a different story). Where did all this fertility come from? biomass brought in from off-site, by and large, mostly in the form of food and yard waste. This process is well understood by most practitioners. There is a reason most Permaculturists spend the first several years on a new site planting leguminous trees and dynamic accumulators before transitioning into the fruit trees and vegetable gardens that characterize a mature site. Here I propose we look at both the biological and non-biological, physical and non-physical aspects of our work with nature in this way.
Permaculture and the ecological sciences in general, have taught us a tremendous amount about the techniques for regeneration, and that has been a significant and essential revolution in thinking, perhaps as significant as the industrial revolution. We understand the techniques, and there is a growing number of people enthusiastic about this knowledge. There is a strain of thinking that views any use of the industrial system at all as problematic, which has led to a degree of purism among the ecologically conscious. It is very understandable why, and I participated in it myself. However, the instinct at that point is to turn to the biosphere and look for ways to fulfill our needs directly from it, in ways that sidestep the industrial system entirely. My problem with this, is that, while the techniques are more benign than industrial extraction, it is still potentially extractive. I suggest that we can't simply sidestep industrialism if we hope to make the changes we need to make at the proper scale, and in the needed time frame. We have to actually turn industrialism on its head, reverse the flow, empty the coffers and return the wealth that was taken.
It is easy to look at the systems at work in our world in a hierarchical way. The ecosphere is at the base of the pyramid, the industrial economy rests on top of that, and so on. In reality, the systems are best viewed as a web. They are recursive. They all feed into each other. Under the current circumstances, of course, the flow of energy is primarily unidirectional, from the biosphere and into the capitalist human economy. This imbalance is the source of our predicament and must be rectified. Those who would derive their livelihood from working with nature must understand this. We coax the Earth back to health by giving, not taking. Our own individual sustenance, and the initial feed stock for any attempt at restorative endeavors, must come, at least initially, to whatever degree is feasible, from the system that is overbalanced, not the system in decline – from the great concentration of wealth that we call civilization. To do otherwise is ineffective and counterproductive.
Toby Hemenway states that a new garden takes six years to "pop". The first five years tend to produce lackluster harvests. These gardens have large pest populations, poor water retention, and so on. I can attest to this myself. My own garden has taken exactly six years to become fertile and abundant. Most of the work that went into this garden prior to this year has been soil building and preparation - making compost, adding mulch, digging hugelkultur beds, cutting or pulling weeds, and that sort of thing. Of course I did plant vegetables and some herbs every year prior, but nothing ever produced more than a bare handful of food (the lambs quarters and dayflower are a different story). Where did all this fertility come from? biomass brought in from off-site, by and large, mostly in the form of food and yard waste. This process is well understood by most practitioners. There is a reason most Permaculturists spend the first several years on a new site planting leguminous trees and dynamic accumulators before transitioning into the fruit trees and vegetable gardens that characterize a mature site. Here I propose we look at both the biological and non-biological, physical and non-physical aspects of our work with nature in this way.
Permaculture and the ecological sciences in general, have taught us a tremendous amount about the techniques for regeneration, and that has been a significant and essential revolution in thinking, perhaps as significant as the industrial revolution. We understand the techniques, and there is a growing number of people enthusiastic about this knowledge. There is a strain of thinking that views any use of the industrial system at all as problematic, which has led to a degree of purism among the ecologically conscious. It is very understandable why, and I participated in it myself. However, the instinct at that point is to turn to the biosphere and look for ways to fulfill our needs directly from it, in ways that sidestep the industrial system entirely. My problem with this, is that, while the techniques are more benign than industrial extraction, it is still potentially extractive. I suggest that we can't simply sidestep industrialism if we hope to make the changes we need to make at the proper scale, and in the needed time frame. We have to actually turn industrialism on its head, reverse the flow, empty the coffers and return the wealth that was taken.
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