Permaculture

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Permaculture is an approach to agricultural design that focuses on whole systems thinking, as well as using or simulating patterns from nature.

The term originated from David Holmgren in 1978, but the practices of permaculture date back much further.

Permaculture has 3 core tenants:

• Care for the earth. In other words, help all life systems continue to exist and multiply. Because if we don’t have a healthy planet, humans can’t exist at all.
• Care for the people. Allow people to access resources they need to survive.
• Fair share. You should only take what you need, and reinvest any surplus. Any extra can go forward to helping fulfill the two other core tenants. This includes returning waste products back into the system so it can be made useful again.

Conventional agriculture tends to work against nature, instead of with it, it tears up whatever natural ecosystem was on the land before, and turn it into a blank slate that is then planted with crops or used to raise livestock on. But there’s another way.

By using principles of permaculture, you’re working with nature, instead of against it. That means that you can let nature do most of the work for you.