This is a bit of reference outline of some of my motivations for studying Permaculture / things I've been learning about:
• Learning to create "living whole systems" in ways that have beauty and support life, that are practical and wonderful and both "of the imagination" and "on the ground".
• Permaculture offers ways to grow fresh and entirely organic food in any landscape or climate. And more so, it provides a core philosophy and a way of being resourceful on many levels. This philosophical aspect is developed in particular by David Holmgren, student and one-time colleague and collaborator of founder Bill Mollison.
• Opportunity to learn and teach self-reliance skills.
• Design / install / maintain human habitats and food and flower gardens with maximum yield and minimum effort.
• Antidote to factory farming as we discover the net negative impacts currently being experienced worldwide of the post WW2 'green revolution' that produced much food abundance but destroyed much topsoil and added many chemicals into the world's ecosystems. By comparison modern farming is a petrochemically based system that frequently involves animal imprisonment and torture in the name of providing us with healthy food environments. We can do better - much, much better, by restoring a few old fashioned notions with a bit of clever postmodern strategic thinking and planning and feedback loops.
• Connect growing of food along with medicinal and cooking herbs directly with eco-habitats. Homes, farms, businesses get to have access to food and herbs and nice surroundings in zones that fan out naturally based on frequency of accessing each area. Visible and invisible structures, i.e. buildings and human interactions, are related accordingly, and in harmony with surrounding environment, plants, animals, natural features and settings. Artificial distinctions give way to boundaries that are designed but organic and flexible. Richness is achieved through simplicity, beauty, the resourcefulness of "stacking functions" together, doing much more with much less, and a continually evolving harmony with nature.
• Building community around environmentally positive food and herbs / clothing / housing / energy / water systems / seed saving.
• Restore regional food distribution systems and watersheds.
I park links on these
and other topics at
www.HumansAndHabitats.com ~
feel free to visit.
~
Blogger's Background
- David Glober
- San Francisco, CA, United States
- Training: Certified Leadership and Talent Management Coach; Certified Career Coach; Life Blueprint Facilitator; Permaculture Designer; Gardening and Composting Educator. ~ Affilitations (all in San Francisco, CA): Potrero Boosters; Bluepeter Building Restoration Working Group; Urban Energy Working Group; Permaculture Guild; Garden for the Environment. ~ Interests: Land Use, Water Resources, and Soil Development, in Urban, Suburban, Rural, Broadacre, Forest and Open Areas; Orientation of People to Sense of Place, Culture, the Natural World, and Each Other; Individual Development in the Context of Community Building, Group Dynamics, and Cultural Anthropology; Garden to Kitchen Connection in Cooking and Eating; Art and Architecture; Film and Music; Alternative Fuels, Clean Energy, Environmental Technology; Botany and Biodiversity; Ecopsychology.