We realize you’ve probably heard enough about the environment and agriculture recently to satisfy you for the next couple of years.  Still, with all this talk of “organic” and “local” and “natural” and other such oft-abused terms, there is something that often gets left out – permaculture.

“Permaculture (permanent agriculture) is the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems.  It is the harmonious integration of landscape and people providing their food, energy, shelter, and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way” (Bill Mollison, A Permaculture Designer’s Manual).

Which is another way of saying that Permaculture is an approach to agriculture and human settlement that emphasizes restoring damaged ecosystems, rebuilding destroyed ecosystems, and preserving the natural world – while all the while meeting human needs and providing a kind of abundance often absent from our world today.  Again, as Bill Mollison put it: “There are plenty of resources in the world for everybody.  There is land, food – everything.”  We just need the techniques that will let us harness those resources and meet the needs of all those people without taxing the natural environment.

This is permaculture.

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