Permaculture - Bill Mollinson.pdf - PERMAKULTURA - forestek1

Chapter 1

Transcript of a

Permaculture Design

Course by B. Mollison

(1.0-4)

First Introduction (Thomas Fischbacher)

t.schbacher@soton.ac.uk

The presumably most fundamental issue underlying the present converging

nancial, climate, food, energy, and environmental crises is that most of us only

have a very dim perception of what it actually would mean to “live sustainably”

if one were for once to take that notion seriously. Quite a number of people seem

to have this vague idea that the destruction of our natural resources is kind of

inevitable as the alternative would invariably involve “going back to the stone

age”.

Related to this problem is a very widespread misconception in our society

concerning the notions of “ethics” and “ecology”. Almost all people in our

society perceive these as what one may call “must-not-do” disciplines: they are

widely thought to exclusively deliver prohibitions. Many a book on ecology has

been written whose introduction starts out mentioning “The Limits to Growth”.

Likewise (and somewhat bizarrely) there are ethical banks who seem to think

they could make a point towards prospective customers concerning their ethical

standards by measuring it in terms of the amount of prots missed due to

adherence to ethical principles.

But is this all appropriate? Should there not be another side to both ethics

and ecology, one that does not demand abstaining from certain behaviour, but

mandates certain types of action? How does “the active side” of ecology look

like? Simply stated, there only can be one answer: Stabilization and improve-

ment of our natural resources, especially where they were degraded through

CHAPTER 1. TRANSCRIPT OF A PE. . .

previous human interference. In other words: Gardening . Is it possible to do

this in such a way that at the same time, we can meet all the essential needs of

the human population? While this question is most central to the very existence

of mankind, and the need for an answer more urgent than ever, man has not yet

managed to nally solve this puzzle. Nevertheless, as Nobel Laureate Dario Fo

would say, “Great People are born out of necessity”: the problems in particular

of the last few decades are of a very special and rather novel kind. Therefore,

one should not be overly surprised to see that some people took them as a strong

incentive to investigate this question much deeper and nd ways to do better

than we did so far.

One should, however, be aware that here, we are not dealing with an issue

of the “someone else will nd some solution – just leave that to the well-paid

experts” type. Fundamentally, one idiot can create more devastation than all

professors in the world can repair. That is the tragedy of human existence. So,

getting out of the mess we got ourselves into will certainly need our combined

eort. And quite heroic eort indeed. In the end, it will be up to you to get

your garden going and up to me to get mine going.

Bill Mollison, who received the Right Livelihood Award (also known as the

“Alternative Nobel Prize”) for his “Permaculture” concept in 1981, managed to

demonstrate quite dramatically what can be achieved by working with nature

rather than trying to impose our will on it by force and gave many courses

in which he taught his integrated framework. In these days, there are Perma-

culture associations in many countries that oer standardized “Permaculture

Design Courses” based on Bill’s lectures, and, in particular, the material in

the Permaculture Designer’s Manual. This set of lectures is a typographically

more friendly re-edited variant (extended with many additional comments) of

a freely available (in PDF form, at [URL] 1 ) transcript of one of the original

Permaculture Design Courses given by Bill Mollison back in 1981.

This material is interesting for many dierent reasons. For one, it is a free

resource which gives quite a detailed idea what Permaculture is about. Likewise,

it should serve to give a good idea of what Permaculture actually is not about!

While Permaculture to a large extent is a clever amalgamation of rather sound

simple physical, engineering, and ecological principles, it certainly is not some

mystic esoteric occult Hippie New-Age woo woo hanky panky. True, Permacul-

ture is attractive to many dierent groups of people, which may in particular

include Hippies, Pagans and Druids, but just as well Biologists, Physicists,

Hackers, and ordinary people. Furthermore, the main reference text on Perma-

culture, Bill Mollison’s “Permaculture – A Designer’s Manual” unfortunately is

a bit cryptic in some places, and these lecture notes frequently provide a dier-

ent and much more colloquial re-phrasing of some important concepts, which

can help a lot to comprehend what some technique is supposed to do and how it

works. Still, for a more detailed and more well-structured discussion, one is very

strongly advised to consult the “Permaculture Designer’s Manual”. Quite a fair

bit of the content we nd in this course transcript, and to much lesser degree in

the Designer’s Manual, is easily misinterpreted. For example, Bill occasionally

says “10” when a physicist would rather say “about an order of magnitude”.

(Actually, this holds true for quite many works on resource management, in-

cluding as well the Bible, for instance.)

1 http://www.bettertimesinfo.org/pdc all.pdf

As with every involved subject, it usually pays to read through the intro-

ductory texts multiple times, as one inevitably will extract more information

from it already having a rough map of the subject in mind. Dr. Thomas Fis-

chbacher, who decided to embark on this transcription project, turning the old

PDF lecture notes into more useful HTML form, learned a lot over time by

linking dierent texts and sources. As all this background information is not

available to the newcomer, he added a number of footnotes and comments to

most of these chapters (more to follow) with the intention to build bridges into

this subject in order to (hopefully) make it more accessible to people who so

far never gave issues such as food production much thought. Unfortunately,

there are a number of points where Bill can be rather misleading, especially if

taken literally and unquestioned. While there is a lot of sense in much what Bill

Mollison has to say, should you nd that he just cannot be right in some issue,

this presumably is a matter of missing context. In many situations, it should

be pretty evident, however, when he is joking, for example.

The rst version of these pamphlets was numbered 1.0-1; later modications

which will add further footnotes and explanations will have version numbers

1.0-2, -3, etc. The major version number will only change should Bill Mollison

himself start to make changes to the content. Later versions with additional

information will (might) follow. Thomas Fischbacher would like to personally

add that from his perspective the most important bit that is explained in a

far better way in the Permaculture Designer’s Manual than in these pamphlets

is the bit on the energy ows in natural systems and how to creatively put a

large number of productive uses between source and sink. In his eyes, that

issue alone denitely is reason enough to get the Designer’s Manual. (Also,

one thing that seems to be completely missing in the published permaculture

literature is the issue of self-organizing criticality in structure formation and

an appropriate discussion of natural hierarchies and the extra energy expenses

required to impose articial hierarchies. [Note to self: by now have written up

something about that issue, but in German only, and it makes the point in a

way presumably only accessible to theoretical physicists...])

Even if only a small part of what Bill Mollison has to teach us were right

(T.F. is personally convinced he presumably is more right on a lot more things

than pretty much anyone else) – these texts at the very least should be highly

useful to overcome many of the mental blockades our culture is facing at present.

Studying historic reports of resource scarceness, these blockades often have been

among the most important impediments. For example, there is one report from

an obstetrician who worked on the island of Jersey during the Nazi occupation

which includes such bizarre situations as a hospital running out of soap, until

he himself eventually started making some – which actually would not at all

have been that dicult straightaway!

However, as important as it is to make these approaches widely known which

presumably are far closer to the right way to do things than anything we de-

veloped over the last two centuries, two things should be remembered: the rst

is that this is not a dogmatic approach. It certainly would be wrong trying

to cast the underlying principles in stone, just as much as it would contradict

Gandhi’s principles to turn them into a formal catechism-type belief system. In

particular, it is well possible that there is a number of things in here that will

not work as expected, and it may often be trickier than rst suspected to get

things right (even though it is possible and should be done). Secondly, as the

CHAPTER 1. TRANSCRIPT OF A PE. . .

saying goes, “fair words plant no cabbages”. If we want to go down that route

(and it both seems to look rather promising and there by now is considerable

experience with systems that have been set up according to these principles

some decades ago), there is a lot of work that lies ahead of us which will require

action where we have to involve ourselves personally, for example, getting urban

garden-scale mini-farming going. After all, problems will not go away by just

talking about possible solutions, rather than really tackling the big challenge!

Second Introduction (David Hemenway)

Permaculture started in 1975 or 1976 as a public interest when Bill was

talking about it to a friend who had a friend who was a radio interviewer on the

national, government run, radio station in Melbourne. Bill was asked whether

he wanted to do a talk-back program at this radio station. So he did. It turned

out to be the most interesting talk-back program they had ever had. The board

was just lit up for the rest of the day. People were asking what it was about

and where could they get more information.

Bill, at that time, had a manuscript that he had been working on, just

ideas. He thought now was the time to publish something because there was

so much information needed. He had at least three thousand letters coming to

him saying, “Where can I get more about this?”

At that time, David Holmgren was writing a thesis at the University about

permaculture, working together with Bill who was directing his research. So

they got the thesis together, Bill added some more, and they rushed together a

book which turned into Permaculture One. Twenty-ve thousand copies were

printed. Within three years they were out of print.

Out of that came a group of people wanting to get together to talk about

permaculture. They decided to set up an association. The Quarterly now has

about three thousand direct subscribers. [Now known as The International

Permaculture Journal, it has ceased publication, at least temporarily. However,

there are quite a few active permaculture publications around the world. -D.H.]

Regional permaculture groups started. People get together once a month or

every two weeks to talk about permaculture. Maybe they get something going

politically or set up a bioregional association to let each other know what is

going on regionally. They are swapping plants, and mapping species of trees

in the bush which are good bearers of nuts, and operating a seed exchange,

that sort of thing. Thirty-six of those groups in Australia arose in the rst

four years. Everywhere we hold a workshop, a group usually forms and starts

doing something. Every one of those groups seems to be performing a dierent

function.

About two years ago, Bill decided that Permaculture Two needed to come

out because there was more information. There was also a need to update a lot

of the material in Permaculture One and change the emphasis from theory to

something more practical. We got the manuscript together that Bill had written.

It was pretty haphazard. I went to stay with the editor of the Quarterly and we

put it together and edited it some more. Then we had thirty thousand of those

printed. This book is now reprinted.

Bill came over here to America last year, just lecturing and going from place

to place with a few books and selling them, and scraping the money together

so he could get to the next place, not really having much money, buying a van

in California for $700 to get across here. It was during that really hot summer

and the van died. Bill was stuck out in the middle of nowhere, dead van, and

wondering whether this was all worth it?

Then he went to the Futures Conference in Toronto. There were probably

1500 people there. They gave him a little spot, and he gave a talk about

permaculture. Someone asked him whether he would like to talk again. He

said, “Yeah, ok.” There were 700 people at the next meeting. And he was

asked to talk again, and there was a bigger crowd. Bill was one of the main

nishing lecturers. When things seem to fall down a bit, and no one knew where

to go on from there, Bill got up and started talking, and everyone was going,

“Wow! Listen to this guy!”

After Bill’s trip across the USA, a few groups of people decided that they

wanted to hold some more workshops. One of these was The Rural Education

Center. And here we are. It probably depends on you as much as it does on us,

now.

(T.F.: ...Removed some old advertisement material here...)

1. Preface

2. Energy

3. Introduction to Permaculture

4. Permaculture in Humid Landscapes

5. Permaculture in Arid Landscapes

6. Permaculture on Low Islands

7. Permaculture on High Islands

8. Permaculture on Granitic Landscapes

9. Permaculture for Fire Control

10. Designing for Permaculture

11. Permaculture Techniques

12. Forests in Permaculture

13. Water in Permaculture

14. Permaculture for Urban Areas & Urban-Rural Linkages

15. The Permaculture Community

16. The Permaculture Alternative

17. Permaculture for Millionaires

Permaculture - Bill Mollinson.pdf

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