Knowing a little bit about Permaculture

My approach to Permaculture was out of curiosity; the Knowing that you can made a house built with mud. That made me lead to the typical question about safety for Vinchuca and the disease it brings: Chagas disease. Investigating a little about it clarified me that it wasn’t so, if the necessary precautions were taken. But that was many years ago and I was always keep intrigued with how it would be done, if it is viable anywhere in the world, if it would be true that you could build your own home yourself, and take the materials from there, from the Land.

Now I returned to the investigation, a little driven by the Pandemic and all the existential rethinking that this situation brought us, I think for all of us; It really seems to me that it is the only solution we have as humans to survive, in the sense of staying alive, but of living well, in harmony and connection with Nature and all its components.

Because as we’ll see Permaculture is not limited only to the construction of adobe houses, or to the organic family garden. It is a sustainable lifestyle choice, respectful with the environment, in which we will observe that it can be applied to all areas of our life. It doesn’t matter if you don’t live in the country, if you don’t have a green space to develop your garden; the interesting thing about permacultural “philosophy” is that it provides us with tools and understandings for each and every one of our acts.

It has a lot of spirituality; theme that I have been studying and applying for many years, and the truth is that when you enter the world of Permaculture, you see that everything closes, that this is the correct way to face a complete life, in harmony, in accordance, consistent with which promotes a more spiritual life. I invite you to meet them together.

When I started to investigate from the beginning, that is to say, the meaning of the word “Perma” the first thing I found was an explanation from an American psychologist, -Martin Seligman who is the founder of Positive Psychology- who “invented” the word “Perma” to summarize his theory of Well-being, or how people choose what makes them happy freely. So PERMA is actually an acronym: P for Positive Emotions, E for Engament, R for Relationships, M for Meaning, and A for Accomplishment. I found his proposal that we should have a Pleasant Life, a life of Commitment, and a life with Meaning very interesting.

I continued investigating and realized that Permaculture has nothing to do with the term Seligman coined. It is born from the word “permanent”. Australian’s Farmers Bill Mollison and David Holmgren inspired by the Masanobu Fukuoka Model of Natural Agriculture proposed “Permanent Agriculture” and then used this philosophy in all areas of life, and therefore Permaculture.

So, seeing that Seligman’s Perma had nothing to do with the origin of the word with the Australian Perma; I thought that maybe Permaculture actually has enough of Perma. Commitment, Meaning, Relationships; as one of the Design Principles of Permaculture says that we will see later; Integrate instead of Segregate.

The already named Masanobu Fukuoka was a Japanese farmer who dedicated his entire life to the Natural Agriculture Model, which becomes the Individual’s Spiritual Health. This model promotes “do not” agriculture: Do not plow the land, do not use fertilizers , do not eliminate weeds, do not use pesticides, do not prune, and do not water. I know, it seems too “not to do”, so we will have a jungle in our garden, or field? We will see later the theories explained of this “not to do”.

Enough to say that Fukuoka was the inventor of the “Seed Bombs” or “Nendo Dango” in Japanese; surely you have heard of them: the idea is to take several seeds and make a ball with clay; until it dries. Then those little balls are thrown in a desert place, and the seeds will be protected by the clay: when it rains the water will dissolve the clay, exposing the seeds that with sufficient humidity will grow and form small oases. This is how Fukuoka did and turned a rather desert area into one of the most productive in Japan.

Ethical principles of Permaculture Observed then the permacultural movement as a way of living, the three fundamental ethical principles on which it is based give the guidelines of what is going to develop. The ethical principles are: Caring for the Earth, Caring for the People, and Sharing surpluses.

1-Care of the Earth.

Permaculture understands that all the actions that we do in our life must tend to the care of Nature. Knowing that we are only one more part of it, and not the owners and masters, who decide what is done or not. The drive is to value ecosystems, is to take care of all living and inert beings, no matter how small or insignificant they seem. Neither is more or less important. The idea is that humans can use nature to self-supply but in a harmonious way, without over-exploiting or contaminating the soil. In order to make a permacultural design “sustainable”, they have to integrate with a long-term perspective the natural cycles of materials and energy mechanisms within the fundamental systems that sustain life.

2- Care of the People

If we bear in mind that Nature must be cared for and made self-sustainable, we humans also enter there; who should have a harmonious quality of life that helps preserve and care for our environment. If you really think of permaculture as a matter of common sense, clearly life should be self-sustaining, and not over-exploit resources until they become unusable and contaminated. Large corporations do everything to sell more; using toxics to kill what does not serve them, to get the most out of the earth, without worrying about how the resource is being left.

The challenge is to satisfy and make human needs compatible with the natural environment. Which brings us to the Third Ethical Principle. Caring for People begins with oneself, but expands in increasing circles to include family, neighborhood, and local and older communities. In this sense, it follows the pattern of almost all traditional ethical systems. To be able to contribute to the greater good, one must be healthy, strong, and secure. Viewed from this perspective, the principle means: Take care of yourself, loved ones, and the community.

3- Share the Surplus

The fair and equitable redistribution of the surpluses that have been achieved together. You can use the phrase: Celebrate Abundance in Nature and Accept its limitations- To emphasize this apparent contradiction between abundance and limits. Only when we cultivate the ability to limit our need to unsustainable consumption, can we see and create natural abundance….

Human beings have to learn the practice of self-limitation regarding our needs — as a human species towards the earth and its ecosystems (including plants and animals), but also among ourselves, as individuals and communities. To the extent that it reduces our consumption of things and supply of our basic needs in local and household risks, it is to the extent that it reduces the demand that leads to inequalities.

Once our basic needs are met, we can share our surplus time, skills, knowledge or financial resources. Share without the personal interest of creating dependency, and share above all beyond your immediate circle. Beyond the current discourses about social justice, a culture that wants to remain, will not only seek to distribute resources and capacities fairly among the people who are living in the present — it will try to include in its plans and designs, people who will be born in the future, and who are inheriting the planet from us. What are we going to share with them? Ancient pre-industrial cultures will have the ethical premise of considering up to the seventh generation, a time scale that is impossible to understand for most modern human beings.