How Permaculture can Build Resilience and Meet Basic Needs During a Pandemic

Permaculture — a fusion of indigenous knowledge with modern science and technology — offers ways for people to meet their essential needs for food, water, sanitation and other non-material needs, with autonomy and harmony with nature.

The Problem is the Solution: how Permaculture-Designed Household Isolation can Lead to RetroSuburbia

A home-based lifestyle of self-reliance, minimal and slow travel does not provide protection against getting a virus as infectious as COVID-19, but it provides a base for social distancing and isolation that is stimulating and healthy rather than a place of detention.

Q&A with Regi Haslett-Marroquin on The True Cost of Food: The Bill Is Already in the Mail

Working with the Regenerative Agriculture Alliance in Minnesota, Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin is the architect and engineer behind the regenerative poultry system, one of many farm operations at the 100-acre farm in Northfield, through the Main Street Project. His approach to regenerative agriculture involves a biodiverse system of symbiotically connected livestock and perennials, with no chemical inputs, building soil, cleaning water and delivering economic benefits to the community.

A Climate of Emergence

Hear the language of the emergency? Is it to galvanise progressive change or engender fear? I’ve been in a few emergencies. I’ve even been in a house on fire. Clear thinking and quick strategic action were required. Fear and panic are highly contagious and are not helpful in an emergency. I’m noticing even committed permies around me are doubting whether our methods and principles are enough to avert catastrophe.

Applying Food Forest Growing to Farms: Beyond Garden Scale

As these “Farm Gardens” expand and become nodes that merge, I envision entire fields fully planted, feeding the soil, wildlife, farm animals, and us. I look forward to continuing to share this experience with you as the process unfolds.

With New Perennial Grain, a Step Forward for Eco-Friendly Agriculture

A cereal and beers are now being made with a new variety of perennial grain known as Kernza. Proponents say this marks a significant advance for a new agriculture that borrows from the wild prairie and could help ensure sustainable food production in a warming world.

Earth Care, People Care and Fair Share in Education: The Children in Permaculture Manual: Review

The Children in Permaculture Manual has been written by people who not only see the world through the permaculture lens, but also know exactly how, through thoughtful pedagogy, children can be engaged to see through this lens too.

Permaculture in Taiwan – Permaculture Day Spotlight

In September last year, I was very lucky and surprised to find myself in Taiwan for three weeks. I had two weeks free to travel wherever I wanted – so I put the word out for recommendations of permaculture projects, perhaps where I could volunteer and learn about the permaculture movement on another island (Taiwan is a bit bigger than Wales).

Bringing it All Together in Just. One. Diagram. (Part Four – the Nine Spaces)

Whenever you design and create anything, you deploy one or another conceptual framework. One or another way of framing and making sense of both what you start with, how to go about developing or changing it, where you are heading, and why you are even bothering. No matter if you’re aware of your conceptual framework. It is there.