Re: Pc slammed in Whole Earth Review

[Pacific Edge Permaculture + Media <pacedge@magna.com.au>]

> From: Toby Hemenway <hemenway@jeffnet.org>
> Reply-To: "permaculture" <permaculture@franklin.oit.unc.edu>
> Date: Mon, 07 Jan 2002 12:05:01 -0800
> To: "permaculture" <permaculture@franklin.oit.unc.edu>
> Subject: Re: Pc slammed in Whole Earth Review
 
>  I see that the word "subsistence" has come up often in people's responses.
>If you only know permaculture through Mollison's books, you'd expect
>permaculture to be mostly about broadscale agricultural design. Yet, with
>the exception of some projects like the ones Darren Doherty and some others
>are involved in, most Pc is very small scale: individual residences and home
>gardens that aren't trying to generate substantial income. The measurable
>"yields" of home Pc gardens are more about reducing expenditures and
>consumption than generating money or bushels of food to store. In school the
>word "subsistence" was always said with contempt: those poor subsistence
>farmers in Africa scratching for a bare exisitence. I've come to think
> of subsistence living as an immensely honorable thing, a way of reconnecting
> to cycles that really matter, and to notice quality rather than quantity:
> all those unmeasurables that people have mentioned.

Using measures of productivity as in conventional commercial agriculture are
perhaps not so relevant when it comes to family subsistence gardens.
Subsistence gardens might not need maximum productivity because their
purpose is different from commercial farms.

Perhaps what is important in assessing subsistence gardens is optimal use of
resources such as garden space, fertilisers and irrigation and the diversity
of food crops grown. Diversity is important to the home subsistence gardener
because diversity of crops supports a nutritionally balanced diet which is
important to family health.
 

> At several points in Williams's article he referred to the disappointment so
> many gardeners would feel if they implemented Pc, supposedly because of
> lower yields. 

In a diversified garden where smaller amounts of more species are planted
you would expect lower productivity per species. To assert that
'permaculture' gardens are overall  less productive than other types of
garden would require a wide-ranging evaluation.

...Russ Grayson