Wildcraft Permaculture

Connecting everything together requires

a shift in thinking and doing. Today, we hear terms like sustainability and methods like Smartgrowth but many of the words and terms that envelop our language connected to a greener life have at their core certain ideas invented by certain people who history will note as the visionaries that changed our world.

The founders of a term called Permaculture were such visionaries. Permaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and perennial agricultural systems that mimics the relationships found in natural ecologies. It was first developed by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren and their associates during the 1970s in a series of publications. The word permaculture is a portmanteau of permanent agriculture, as well as permanent culture.

The intent was that, by rapidly training individuals in a core set of design principles, those individuals could design their own environments and build increasingly self-sufficient human settlements — ones that reduce society's reliance on industrial systems of production and distribution that Mollison identified as fundamentally and systematically destroying Earth's ecosystems.

While originating as an agro-ecological design theory, permaculture has developed a large international following. This "permaculture community" continues to expand on the original ideas, integrating a range of ideas of alternative culture, through a network of publications, permaculture gardens, intentional communities, training programs, and internet forums. In this way, permaculture has become both a design system and a culture of rewilding the human species

Permaculture is a broad-based and holistic approach that has many applications to all aspects of life. At the heart of permaculture design and practice is a fundamental set of ‘core values’ or ethics which remain constant whatever a person's situation, whether they are creating systems for town planning or trade; whether the land they care for is only a windowbox or an entire forest.

These 'ethics' are often summarized as;

Earthcare – recognizing that Earth is the source of all life (and is possibly itself a living entity), that Earth is our valuable home, and that we are a part of Earth, not apart from it.

Peoplecare – supporting and helping each other to change to ways of living that do not harm ourselves or the planet, and to develop healthy societies.

Fairshare (or placing limits on consumption) - ensuring that Earth's limited resources are used in ways that are equitable and wise.

Modern thought about permaculture began with the issue of sustainable food production. It started with the belief that for people to feed themselves sustainably, they need to move away from reliance on industrialized agriculture. Where industrial farms use technology powered by fossil fuels (such as gasoline, diesel and natural gas), and each farm specializes in producing high yields of a single crop, permaculture stresses the value of low inputs and diverse crops. The model for this was an abundance of small-scale market and home gardens for food production, and a main issue was food miles.