Liberation Ecology

Adapting the “Scale of Permanence” for diverse design challenges

// February 11th, 2013 // 1 Comment » // Education, Research

Summary: Neil Bertrando just authored a great article, in which he adapts my adaptation of the Scale of Permanence to generate some extremely useful strategic discussion of permaculture education and research in the USA. The content of his article is worthy of it’s own discussion, but here I’m just discussing method.

Over the past few years I’ve been ‘experimenting’ with the underlying structure of Yeoman’s Scale of Permanence - trying to see what it is about it that makes it so compelling and useful for site analysis and design. My interest has been to see what concepts it might be related to in other disciplines, and how it might be applied in other domains than landscape planning. I’ve come to think of the Scale of Permanence as a form of ordered constraint analysis. At it’s most general, it involves identifying all the most pertinent factors that shape the possibilities and potentials of the design challenge, and then ordering them by malleability.  Notice that I say ‘malleable’ rather than ‘changeable,’ since some of the most dynamic conditions may also be the least responsive to our efforts to influence them – e.g. climate, or floodplain hydrology (Hi, Keith Morris!). The process of identification and ordering structures the investigation of the design context – aka site analysis – and the ordered list structures the sequence of the design process. In Yeoman’s Keyline system – and thereby in permaculture, which imported Keyline wholesale – we design around the least malleable constraints first (climate, in the case of site design) and then proceed stepwise through list.

The first time the generalized take on the SoP saw the light of day was at the School for Designing a Society (where I taught a ‘liberation ecology’ course in the Fall of 2011), and then in a more realized form at Financial Permaculture, in Miami last month. Our design group in Miami used it as a way of structuring the strategic business planning process for the Earth Learning Farm at Verde Gardens – and it seemed like it worked well. (Our design team definitely kicked ass, but that was influenced by multiple factors.) Now, to my excitement, one of the design team participants has adapted the adaptation for another design context. Neil Bertrando just authored a great article, in which he uses a version of ordered constraint analysis to generate some extremely useful strategic discussion of permaculture education and research in the USA. (The content of that article is worthy of it’s own discussion, but for now I’m just focusing on method.)

(more…)

And… we’re done!

// December 15th, 2012 // No Comments » // Get Involved, Research, SciFund

By which I mean: we’re almost ready to begin.

Changing the Face of Farming concluded tonight, at a triumphant 173% of our original funding goal, or $8645.

That this was accomplished without any donations over $500, and very few over $100, is a testament to the power of both crowdfunding and the permaculture network. 164 separate individuals contributed to the campaign! It’s a rare privilege to get to thank 164 people for their support of your work.

A great unexpected benefit of this project has been the opportunity to connect with so many inspired and inspiring people, about the importance of all our work – and the place of this research within the much greater project of shifting our world in the direction of a just and sustainable society. I’m deeply grateful for this opportunity to connect with so many kindred spirits.

It’s worth noting that, as a result, I’m also way behind on email.So if I’m taking a while to get back to you, please know that I’m slowly and methodically catching up. I’m grateful for your patience, and for being in touch.

Changing the Face of Farming: Update #3

// December 10th, 2012 // No Comments » // Get Involved, Research, SciFund

Status Report

I can’t express my gratitude emphatically enough. Today, with five days left in the campaign, we passed the $8000 mark. That’s over 160% of our benchmark!

Changing the Face of Farming: Update #2

// November 27th, 2012 // 4 Comments » // Get Involved, Research, SciFund

Yesterday we hit our benchmark of $5000.

Thanks so much to everyone for all your support –  and it’s not over!

US Permaculture Farms (sample Aug 2012)

There is now enough money to get started, as I continue to seek the funding that will get us to completion. This project will go forward.

All donations going forward allow me to include more farms in the project, toward the ultimate goal, and full sample, of fifty farms. Let’s see what we can do in the 18 days left.

I’d like to continue to use these updates to talk about not just the fund raising (while it’s happening) but also about the research itself. So, where are we at in the process, and what have we learned so far? First – where we are. The project has four phases.

1. Identify possible permaculture farms - through internet searchers, email list queries, snowball referrals, and this. This has been going on since the summer.

2. Administer a short preliminary survey of all farms / potential research sites, to assess (a) level of influence by permaculture, and (b) scale of production. I’m looking for strong influence, because sometimes permaculture is one buzzword among many – and I’m interested in the farms that strongly identify with permaculture itself. And I’m looking for a strong production element, across a variety of farm sizes – because sometimes the word ‘farm’ gets applied to an educational project… or to a bed and breakfast!

3. Field research, and 4. Analysis and write-up.

Phase 1 is about ready to wrap up, and Phase 2 will probably finish with the year. (Yes, the phases are overlapping. You didn’t think these would be neat linear process did you?) So far I’ve only done any analysis on 75-90 responses to the (very) short preliminary survey. Without getting too deeply into it, here are some interesting patterns in this early analysis.

These are not hobby farmers.

65% of farmers surveyed do not have another major occupation. This is a higher proportion of full-time:part time farmers than the national average – which is about 50%.

Permaculture farmers are earning their living on relatively small plots of land.

This doesn’t come as a big surprise – but it does run against the grain of what you might expect based on the previous figure. Are permaculture farmers doing more with less? It’s tempting to jump to conclusions here – and I know some of you will anyway – but I’ll refrain.

This figure shows the distribution of (surveyed) permaculture farms by rural/urban setting. In a very widely cited figure (originally from the USDA - maybe), 15% of global food production takes place in urban areas – which includes peri-urban areas  (aka suburbs and sprawl). While I don’t, this moment, have a figure for the US, I think it’s safe to assume that our domestic proportion of urban production is  much lower. These figure suggest that the distribution in the more permaculture sector more closely resembles the global average. Note that I’m counting farms, and the global figure is counting total production, so this is just suggestive – not a rigorous comparison. That’s ok – we’re still very much in the well isn’t that interesting stage.

That’s all for now! These figures are really just pointers – a little bit of course-grained data, that can point us toward interesting questions to answer later. At the same time, I have to confess: this is pretty exciting. We know things that we didn’t know before. As I say in the video – I didn’t think that their were enough permaculture farms in the US to learn anything significant from.

So the first watershed moment of this project has been the opportunity to prove myself wrong. That’s one of the things I appreciate about the scientific community – as opposed to religion, and too often politics. We can seek out evidence to test our assumptions and theories, and find that evidence, and change our views - and like it. That’s a gift – and one that I think we can have more of in the permaculture movement.

Thanks to all for your support. Please give what you can, and help spread the word.

What do you think?

Is the permaculture community vulnerable to self-confirming assumptions and theories?

Do we exclude evidence that doesn’t fit with out worldview?

Do these preliminary findings confirm or conflict with your own expectations?

Let me know in the comments.

Changing the Face of Farming: Update #1

// November 21st, 2012 // No Comments » // Get Involved, Research, SciFund

Changing the Face of Farming is over halfway to our goal – after just 10 days of fundraising! The level of support for my research – and for permaculture research – means a tremendous amount to me. Thank you so much, to everyone who has donated and helped spread the word.

I thought I’d share a brief update to let you know how things are going with the development of the project.

Over 100 farms so far have responded to a preliminary survey.

This means we already have a course snapshot of the scale of production on permaculture farms, and the beginning of a sense of how permaculture is influencing farm planning. At this preliminary step, we’ve already increased our understanding of permaculture farms, and generated solid data that was never available before. Very exciting! (I’ll be blogging about this soon, so stay tuned for more analysis.)

Over 70 farms so far, from all over the country, have said they want to participate in the project.

This is fantastic, because it means we’ll have a large and diverse pool of farms to work with, and thereby a more diverse and meaningful sample. The larger the pool of potential sites we have to select the ~50 farms, the greater our ability to identify patterns in farm size and scale of production, and visit several farms at each level, in multiple ecoregions.

If you are interested in seeing this research project meet its goals for incorporating the full sample of 50 farms, there is a critical contribution you can make - regardless of whether you can donate cash: help spread the word.

• Think of people who should hear about this project. Pick a target: 3, 10, 20 people. Phone or email them directly. Tell them why you donated to the project, and why you think it’s important. Feel free to give these folks my e-mail address as well as the link to the project page (http://rkthb.co/11800).
• Share a link to the project (http://rkthb.co/11800)on whatever social networks you are part of: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and email lists. Tell your networks why you donated, and why you think it’s important.
• If you can think of fund-raising opportunities that I should look into, let me know.

And to those who have already taken these steps: thank you so much. 

Research funding campaign goes international

// November 15th, 2012 // No Comments » // Get Involved, Research, SciFund

The great blog at Permaculture Institute of Australia has posted the funding campaign right here.

Thanks to Craig!

Wait… you’re studying what again? (Part 2):
What do you mean by permaculture?

// November 14th, 2012 // 22 Comments » // Research

Deciding that you want to study permaculture is pretty easy. Dangerously easy. Even forgetting our dire need for sustainable design, and considering it just as a straight-up researcher for a minute (taking off my activist-scholar hat), it’s pretty juicey: complex, timely, controversial, and growing fast. And it’s wide open: there is almost, but not quite, zero peer-reviewed research about it. (That’s both an opportunity and a stumbling block, actually, but more on that in another post.)

It’s after that decision  - once you’re walking around with this idea in your head that you want to study permaculture – that the trouble starts. This is especially true for higher education, and especially especially if you want to do research. As I mentioned earlier, permaculture suffers from a mild definitional crisis: what is this thing? Our answers tend to veer toward the abstract and all-encompassing. Look at the suite of definitions over here.

For that matter, look at the definition that I came up with back in 2005 (and which I’ve been gratified to see has caught on pretty well). Permaculture is…

meeting human needs while
increasing ecosystem health.

(more…)

Off to a roaring start!

// November 12th, 2012 // No Comments » // Get Involved, Research, SciFund

Thanks so much to Lee Worden, Emily Chameides, Dave Jacke, Hiroyuki Hamda, Milton Dixon, Steve Bean, and Shir Yaakov Feit for the very first contributions to the project. Yahoo!

http://rkthb.co/11800

Getting ready for my crowdfunding campaign…

// November 2nd, 2012 // No Comments » // Get Involved, Research, SciFund

Things are getting exciting. I’m working with SciFund Challenge to launch a crowdfunding campaign to make my field research happen. We launch Nov. 8. Stay tuned, and help spread the word!

Participation Survey is CLOSED.

// October 22nd, 2012 // No Comments » // Participation Survey, Research

1,055 responses later, with 705 surveys completed to the very last question – it’s time to put the survey to bed. It’s been an exciting three months watching responses come in from all over the world. Permaculturists from over 40 countries participated!

Now the task of analyzing this mountain of data begins…