Permaculture: An Approach to Agriculture :: Farming Food Papers

Permaculture: An Approach to Agriculture "Without agriculture there will be immediate mass starvation, but with agriculture there will be a continual eroding away of the productive basis of human livelihood." -Wes Jackson (23) With the exception of some indigenous cultures where hunting and gathering is practiced, agriculture has been humans' primary source of food production for thousands of years. As time has passed, humans have furthered their knowledge of how agricultural systems work. This has resulted in a modern agriculture backed by hundreds of years of scientific research that seeks to ever increase the amount of food produced by a given acreage of land. Yet while modern agriculture is becoming more focused on efficiently producing food, it is not being followed with sensitivity to how it affects the environment and even the health of soils under its own feet. Since food production is in essence a focused natural process (growth of specific plants and animals), it is intrinsically dependent on the natural world and its systems. Thus, as Jackson points out in the above quote, an agricultural system unconcerned with environmental health is ignoring its very foundations. A majority of the world's food needs are currently being met by the modern production-focused agricultural system mentioned above. However, as the scientific community is finding more and more evidence of a link between environmental degradation and this type of agriculture, new methods of agriculture are being developed and practiced that focus equal attention to both environmental health and food production. One such model, permaculture, is rapidly gaining attention throughout the world due to its foundational proposal: intelligent and ecologically sensitive design of agricultural systems should naturally be more efficient and productive than the ecologically destructive conventional systems. Problems With Conventional Industrialized Agriculture