From Sustainable Agroecosystems to Sustainable Food Systems - Agroecology: The Ecology of Sustainable Food Systems - page 345

THE PERMACULTURE IDEA

In the early 1970s, Australians Bill Molison and David Holmgren recognized that agriculture was heading in a
direction that could not be sustained forever. Specialization, reliance on fossil fuel-based inputs, soil-eroding
practices — all pointed to problems in the present and crises in the future. In response, they developed the idea of
“permanent agriculture,” or permaculture , a way of growing food that worked with nature instead of against it and
could thus be sustained into the indefinite future.
Since the 1970s, the concept and practice of permaculture has matured and expanded, becoming a whole-system
approach that integrates both the natural world and human society and moves beyond agriculture to include all the
relationships between people and the natural environment. According to the Permaculture Research Institute of
Australia (www.permaculture.org.au), permaculture is “the harmonious integration of landscape and people provid-
ing their food, energy, shelter, and other material and nonmaterial needs in a sustainable way.”
In its early conception, permaculture was mainly applied toward household and community self-reliance. But
its practitioners came to realize that self-reliance was meaningless to the majority of people, who for financial,
practical, and geographic reasons lacked access to land. So permaculture expanded to embrace practical strategies
for financing land acquisitions, building economically viable farming enterprises, and empowering communities
and regions to create settlement patterns with less impact on the environment. In this way, permaculture became a
holistic framework for creating a more sustainable human society. Today's permaculture can be applied at any level
from the household to the bioregion, and used to work toward goals ranging from restoring damaged environments
to building a more equitable and just society.
A core principle of permaculture is the beneficial design of systems. In essence, this involves carefully observing
the elements of a system, noting their needs and potential contributions and the ways that energy can flow among
them, and then positioning and interconnecting the elements so that they work in mutual benefit, becoming more
diverse and stable over time. In many respects, this is what agroecologists do, too — but there is a crucial difference.
Agroecology springs from ecological principles, derived from observing the workings of natural systems, and
through agroecological analysis of farm fields, communities, and landscapes. Agroecology therefore develops an
in-depth understanding of the mechanisms and processes operating in sustainable agroecosystems. Permaculture's
foundation, in contrast, is more philosophical. It is based on a conviction that observant and thoughtful humans can
design ways of living on the earth based on harmony and mutual benefit.
Although permaculture endorses scientific analysis and observation, an agroecological approach requires greater
depth in the actual analysis of systems. Agroecologists, therefore, are often better able to determine and monitor
the elements of ecological sustainability in agriculture. But the philosophical basis of permaculture has its strengths
as well. It inspires many people and spurs much-needed creative thinking and innovative problem solving. In
addition, its holistic approach emphasizes to good effect the commonalities among systems big and small, natural,
and social.
Ultimately, permaculture and agroecology are highly complementary. They share the goal of sustainability and
the principle that well-designed human and cultivated systems are based on the patterns and processes operating in
healthy natural systems. Their fusion has resulted in much good work and will undoubtedly produce more in the
future.

TOWARD FOOD SYSTEM SUSTAINABILITY

nations and generations. Inherent in this definition is the
idea that agricultural sustainability has no limits in space
or time — it involves all nations of the world, all living
organisms, and all the globe's ecosystems, and extends
into the future indefinitely.

Much recent discussion in the agroecological and devel-
opment communities has centered on formulating a defi-
nition of sustainability broad enough to include all the
forces at work in global food systems (Gliessman, 2001;
Pretty, 2002; Giampietro, 2004; Ikerd, 2005). Based on
the accumulated experience presented in this text, we offer
the following definition: A sustainable food system is one
that recognizes the whole-systems nature of food, feed,
and fiber production in balancing the multifaceted con-
cerns of environmental soundness, social equity, and
economic viability among all sectors of society, across all

C ONCEPTUALIZING THE S OCIAL AND E COLOGICAL
I NTERCONNECTIONS OF THE F OOD S YSTEM

Working toward creating the sustainable food system
described by this definition requires that we understand
how society shapes, and is in turn shaped by, agricultural
production, and how agriculture's ecological foundation