Toward Financial Permaculture: New Farms in the Old System

// December 28th, 2012 // Education, Event

FPC13.Challenges

Permaculturists face a wicked contradiction. We want to create, and support the creation of, businesses and organizations that point the way toward a new way of doing things. If we want to claim that permaculture is ‘design that meets human needs while increasing ecosystem health,’ then we need to be able to demonstrate how the enterprises we design are meeting this description. Otherwise, our ethics aren’t meaningful, and the claims we make about the value of permaculture aren’t credible.

The trick is that these enterprises also have to thrive right now, under industrial capitalism. If no one but the independently wealthy can use permaculture systems to both survive the current society and transition to whatever comes next, then permaculture isn’t much help at all. I don’t want to make lifeboats and pleasure gardens for the rich, and I don’t want to have to wait until after the apocolypse for permaculture to make good economic sense.

So there is our contradiction: we have to make truly regenerative enterprises that can succeed right now, enmeshed in a grossly degenerative socio-economic system. We have to make a future that can survive the present. I’m grateful that the Financial Permaculture series is helping address this challenge directly and with great intelligence – which is why I’m teaching at the upcoming course for expenses only.

The permaculture literature mostly deals with the tools and the opportunities available – so I’m going to keep focussing on the challenges. With this post I hope to frame some questions, and generate discussion, about the challenges we face –  particularly the two major challenges that I see for permaculture farms (and for the many who work and farm permaculture-style without having been influenced by permaculture proper).

  • At the scale of the farm itself, very few planning tools exist to support the level of diversification that permaculture farms will usually show. Even fewer tools exist to support successional budgeting and planning for perennial systems – the yields of which will change over time. Permaculturists who integrate animal, perennial, and annual production face a significant challenge in figuring out how to integrate the tools that are available – or create their own – so that they can do the necessary planning to ensure the viability of their business.

  • Beyond the farm boundaries, permaculturists find themselves in competition with cheap industrial food, whose price is subsisidized by cheap oil (and the wars that secure it), pollution, exploited labor, and tax dollars (via government subsidies). We have the local and slow food movements to thank for a growing base of educated consumers who will pay a ‘premium’ (ha!) for food whose price isn’t kept artificially low by degenerative practices – but these niche markets don’t exist everywhere, and they won’t get us all the way to where we need to go.

So how do we adapt and combine existing farm business planning tools for permaculture systems? How do we adapt and combine progressive business models that will permit regenerative enterprisees to thrive in the current system? What have you seen work, or fail?

  • http://twitter.com/ptroei Peter Oei

    Technically, there are so many options, but the basic question is: how to make enough money to continue operation? One option is the Polydome.
    Permaculture within greenhouses is quite new; Eva Gladek worked for us (InnovationNetwork/ Dutch thinktank ministry of Agriculture) on the design of such a system. She recently made detailed designs for three cropping combinations; the general report can be found on our website: the concept is called Polydome.
    We now have several ‘regular’ greenhouse growers interested in the system. With a large number of different crops, a grower can operate downstream the value chain. However, managing demand and supply is not easy. Typically, box systems do quite well as growers can then decide what to sell.

    • RafterSass

      Hi Peter – thanks for your comment! I’ve really enjoyed your work with appropriate technology for mushroom production – it’s great to have your input here. (That was you, right?). It looks like you have you moved on to more great work… which everybody can check out here: except.nl/en/#.en.projects.1-polydome.

      I think the question is really “how to make money while still regenerating social and ecological health” – i.e. not selling out. And I’m generally quite skeptical of the hi-tech and capital-intensive “vertical farming” models that get thrown about – generally by people with no real background in sustainability or systems thinking – as the way forward for cities. At the same time, the urban environment obviously demands a much higher ratio of innovation:recovery than rural systems. It looks like the Polydome project might lie in that sweet spot. I’m looking forward to implementation reports!

  • Matthew Bennett

    I think a look at the historical use of currency can help us imagine the next level for the exchange of goods & services & value.

    From my blog Cultural Succession: Journaling the meme that Healthy Human Cultures Naturally Regenerate through Distinct Phases similar to how a Forest Regrows after a major Disturbance (labeled ‘X’). Native Cultures -X-> Agricultural Civilization –> Industrial Civilization –> Cultural Creative –> Digital Native

    Currency Through The Cultural Phases:
    Indigenous -> Gift Economy via Barter, direct-trade
    Agricultural -> Barter, direct-trade, currency of gold & silver
    Industrial -> Paper money, fiat currency, debt currency, divested from gold standard
    Cultural Creative -> Local currencies, Alternative currencies, Time-banking, College Credit, Internships
    Digital Native -> Glocal currencies, Complementary Currencies,
    Open-Source Currencies, Digital currencies, Promotional Currencies, Game-Based Rewards

    For a more in-depth look at the Cultural Creative currencies and the up-and-coming DIgital Native currencies that we can implement to reward volunteers, students, and each other for co-creating a regenerative world, please see: http://culturalsuccession.tumblr.com/post/32812051831/currency-through-the-cultural-phases

  • willszal

    Thank you for this post Rafter, and thank you for being involved in financial permaculture [I've participated in FPC in the past]!

    On “financial sustainability:” Although I believe that there are a multitude of solutions for permaculture to become commonplace, I don’t feel as though trying to make permaculture competitive in the extractive economy is a particularly viable long-term strategy [except in a minority of niches, as it's done so far]. You mention that you’d prefer not to accept help from the “independently” [more accurately, dependently] wealthy. Might it be, that for a regenerative economy to be born, the extractive economy and it’s financial resources need to be devoured? I find Charles Eisenstein’s perspectives on gift insightful on this subject. Conversely, if the extractive economy derives profit from exploitation, wouldn’t a regenerative enterprise become a paradox in this environment unless it let go of the attachment to financial profit?

    Just musings – I know there are those in our community with the opposite view.

  • Beth Nitz

    The best answer to your questions that I have seen is Restoration Agriculture: http://restorationag.org/
    Based in WI, Mark Shepard is essentially doing farm scale permaculture. He also recently published a book on Restoration Agriculture, named after it. This is what we aim to do with our future farm.

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