He’s currently working on a book on forest farming – the cultivation of crops in the forest understory, with Cornell professor Ken Mudge. They are running a crowdfunding campaign in order to visit and document forest farming operations across the US. Their work is worth your support.

Check out a podcast interview with Steve, by Scott Mann over at Permaculture Podcast.

Then head on over and check out the short video and other info at their crowdfunding campaign.

You won’t regret it.

The post Forest Farming with Steve Gabriel appeared first on Liberation Ecology.

Great, thought provoking article by Rhamis Kent now up at Permaculture Research Institute of Australia.

“Permaculture and Slavery: A Systems Analysis” kicks off a welcome and badly needed discussion of the legacy of African slavery in the development of the US economy – all through the energetic lens of systems ecology, long beloved by permaculturists. Go check it out. You’ll find me in the comments.

The post Permaculture and Slavery appeared first on Liberation Ecology.

The Finger Lakes Permaculture Institute (FLPCI) and The Permaculture Institute of the North East (PINE) are delighted to offer four fellowships for the upcoming Permaculture Design Certification course (PDC) offered this summer, in upstate New York from July 26th through August 11th.

This fellowship is both need-based and merit-based. It aims to support community organizers, educators, and activists to share their permaculture knowledge with their communities. We encourage fellows to use their earnings as seed money for community-based permaculture education and activism.

Women, people of color, and individuals from other historically marginalized groups are strongly encouraged to apply.

We will begin selecting applicants on a rolling basis after April 17, 2013.

More information can be found at http://FingerLakesPermaculture.org
_______________________________________________

The post This just in:
Permaculture Fellowships for Organizers, Activists and Educators appeared first on Liberation Ecology.

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.)

Those mindmaps he created are complex, but they are worth working your way through. In the process of doing so, I came to feel like Neil was working toward something that has been on my mind a lot vis-à-vis the Scale of Permanence and its adaptation.  There’s something about the difference between designing for ecological constraints, and designing for social constraints. Using the Scale of Permanence, we design from the least-malleable toward the most-malleable. That may well be our ideal sequence for implementation: first the water systems, then the infrastructure, then the biological systems. (Whether that ideal is often realized is a different question.)

When I’m designing social interventions, I still design for the broadest vision first, and thereby for the least malleable constraints. But the prospect of intervention at that level (petro-capitalist oligarchy, I suppose) is overwhelming, disheartening, and impractical. So in social systems, the sequence for implementation is flipped on it’s head. If I work the scale of constraints in reverse, by applying myself first to the leverage points that are most responsive to my efforts, I can chart a course from constraint to constraint, and work my way from the immediate challenges and possibilities, toward the horizon of profound systems change. The real value of ordered constraint analysis, if any, may be in the way in which it lays out a strategic pathway for intervention.

Of course, a design tool does not a revolution make. But I’m excited about the potential for concepts that help us think strategically about systems change – and especially, that diminish the emotional load and cognitive shut-down that can accompany addressing the scale of the problems we face. And I’m deeply appreciative of Neil’s use and development of the ordered constraint analysis approach – and more broadly his great contribution to the conversation about how to make permaculture more effective and relevant.

The post Adapting the “Scale of Permanence” for diverse design challenges appeared first on Liberation Ecology.

The post Where am I? appeared first on Liberation Ecology.

Check it out! http://www.thepermaculturepodcast.com/2013/rafter/

My guest for this episode is Rafter Sass Furguson, a PhD student at the University of Illinois whose doctoral thesis involves visiting and documenting 50 self-identified permaculture farms across the United States. Though that work forms the body of our discussion, along the way we touch on science literacy, permaculture education, crowd-funding of scientific research, permaculture and metaphysics, farms and financial permaculture, and his work as an agroecologist and how that discipline informs his teaching and practice of permaculture. Quite a bit to cover in the 45 minutes or so of our conversation.

As Scott notes, the interview is actually a pretty good introduction and overview to my work – for anyone seeking something along those lines.

The post Interview on Permaculture Podcast appeared first on Liberation Ecology.

Some thoughts on making the investment:

• $657 for 5 full days (and evenings) with an (ahem) star-studded 16+ person teaching team is impressively cheap.

• Food is included in that figure – lodging is $165 for dorm-style, $60 for camping, or you can arrange your own.

• If you enter LIBECOL at registration, they’ll knock $80 off your tuition.

• Scholarships are available.

• If you refer others to the event, your tuition will be reduced by 10% of whatever they pay.

I’m teaching this workshop for expenses only* because I’m excited about this format and teaching team – and because, as I’ve mentioned in other posts – I think it’s getting at the heart of the economic bottleneck that regenerative businesses are facing. I think it’s going to be an amazing event.

*Expenses, in this case, means that I’ll be provided with food and lodging, and most of my travel expenses will be paid for. Teachers also get 10% of tuition paid by students they refer to the course. In my case, it will probably amount to enough to cover another slice my remaining travel costs. It’s worth it!

The post Scholarships available for Financial Permaculture! appeared first on Liberation Ecology.

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?

The post Toward Financial Permaculture: New Farms in the Old System appeared first on Liberation Ecology.

Holmgren and Temford’s Ethics icon

Here is a lightly-revised version of “Putting Some Teeth in the Permaculture Ethics,” originally published on my old website in 2010 (then republished on this revamped site last August). I’m revisiting it here because it’s been on my mind, as I prepare for teaching at Financial Permaculture 2013, Jan.21-25, in Miami. This course is addressing one of the big gaps, and areas of great innovation, in the evolution of the permaculture framework.

We are in the grips of a paradox. In order to designing projects and businesses that can help regenerate landscapes and communities, we have to design projects that are socially and ecologically sustainable. But these projects must also be able to thrive right now, in our current society that often seems to reward exploitation and destruction before anything else. Reconciling this contradiction in our design work requires new ways of thinking, above and beyond the tools that permaculture has historically offered to the design of human settlements. In order to address the ethical questions and standards that I raise below, we must incorporate strategies for surviving and growing in the current financial system while we work to replace it.

This is, in part, why I’m excited about the upcoming course (and why I’m teaching for expenses only). I think that FPC2013 is helping navigate that paradox. Hope to see you there!

(Psst! If you are going, enter LIBECOL at registration for an $80 discount.)

What follows is the new edition of Putting Some Teeth in the Permaculture Ethics…

(1) Care for the Earth
(2) Care for People
(3) Redistribute Surplus

 

These three ethics have always been at the heart of permaculture thinking and teaching. At least, that is what folks in the permaculture movement claim – including me. They are easy to agree with – especially the first two – in part because they are so vague. This abstraction is part of their strength – they are widely appealing, and serve as a commonsense and positive entry point to draw people into a conversation.

But how well do the function when it comes to the heavy lifting that’s required of ethical principles – that is, guiding our behavior? If I don’t occasionally review the Ethics, and change some current or planned behavior as a result,then they by definition make no difference. The trick is, the abstraction that makes them such a good conversation-starter is also part of their weakness. I have often found that the Ethics are taught in a watered-down and feel-good style, that does more to create good vibes and excitement than it does to challenge students, or help designers navigate the sometimes-murky waters of choosing clients, partners, and projects. If they get reduced to a story about tending our garden, then sharing our kale with our friends, and then composting our “surplus” kitchen scraps back into the garden, then what does the movement really gain by having ethics at all? Other than to say – with permaculture, it is so easy to be ethical.

The way I think about the Ethics – and the way I train future designers – revolves around the idea of putting some teeth in Ethics. “Care” is a tricky term, after all – it can refer to emotion alone. Like: “In my heart, I truly care for the Earth, and so I shed a single tear every time I turn the key and start up my Hummer.” I prefer to think that, as used in the Ethics, it refers to the action of caring – of taking care of something. So the question becomes, how do I know when I am taking care of the earth, of people?

This is a question that I spend some time with, and revisit. I identify choose indicators and benchmarks, to help shine some light on when I am following the Ethics, and when I am coming up short.  Specific measures are up to the designer, but there are a few questions that I think the Ethics demand that I ask,  and ask repeatedly. If I never find that I have to revaluate my actions because of the Ethics, then the Ethics are useless and I should sharpen them.

Care for the Earth: What, really, is our measure of ecosystem health? The most popular in the Pc movement seem to be biodiversity and energy capture, but I would easily accept topsoil depth, presence of top predators, decreasing levels of nutrient or contaminant runoff in surface waters, structural/functional diversity, etc. What matters to me is not which indicator is used, but that there IS one. I need ways to measure my results, and to see if I am measuring up.

Care for People: What is my measure for social health? A trickier question, even, than measuring ecosystem health, but I still have to spend time thinking about it if I want to accomplish it. The questions that emerge from this Ethic are:

How is this project helping this community USE AND CONTROL it’s own resources regeneratively? How is this project helping a community take control of its own destiny – to self-determine?

It may not be as easy to come up with a number or a measure for this, but I want to hear you (and me) at least make an honest and compelling case for how our work is doing this.

Redistribute Surplus: Trickier still, this third ethic, and most often neglected. And exactly as crucial as the other two. This one merits a little digression.

Most introductory permaculture presentations start with an “Evidence” section – a presentation of the most compelling evidence for the need to do  something different – and not go on as we have been. That’s classic permaculture, as many folks are aware – to spend just a few minutes on doom and gloom, and then focus on solutions for the rest. I present the usual littany of bummers for my evidence section – deforestation, soil loss, climate, peak, etc. etc., and then as the last item, I put up a slide on “Inequality.” I use this graphic for the slide:

Source:contexts.org/graphicsociology/files/2009/05/conley_champagne_distribution.png

I leave this slide up, while we have a little discussion on “Why is inequality an ecological problem?” The discussion that follows is generally very productive.

These are my own answers:
(1) Because of the environmental EFFECTS of inequality: poor and marginalized communities are where the end of the pipe is found. Communities with little political or economic power are unable to defend themselves against toxic contamination, and have no buffer against instability in economic and ecological systems, so bear the costs of environmental degradation disproportionately – especially disproportionate when compared to the comparatively tiny ecological footprint of these same communities.

(2) Because inequality is an environmental DRIVER: as long as the people making decisions about production and extraction are making a killing from it, and can also shield themselves indefinitely from its effects, while those who do the work and actually bear the brunt of industrial fallout don’t have any decision making power about production and extraction, there will be no sustainability. Research supports this statistically: in counties, states, and nations, worse inequality produces worse environmental outcomes. When the benefits go to power-holding decision-makers, and the detriments go anywhere else, why would we even expect the system to change?

(3) And finally, because it’s actually and fundamentally ecological – albeit socio-ecological. The movement of energy and matter through complex living systems is the stuff of ecology, and we can use that lens, and those tools, to understand it and to change it.

SO, back to the 3rd Ethic. The way I see it, the question that the 3rd Ethic “Redistribute Surplus” demands of me is this:

How is my work helping, in some way, to begin to flatten the terrible mountain of inequality that lies between me and true sustainability?

Or, to reverse the metaphor…

How is my work helping to fill the chasm that separates the 80% world from the 20% world, that must be filled to regenerate our culture and our biosphere?

These are the questions that I try (and sometimes fail) to put at the root of my work: research, education, and practice. I’m confident that there are jobs that I don’t get because of this. These are the questions with which I try and infect the slowly growing horde of change-agents that I am privileged and amazed to call students. These are the questions I would like us to be asking each other all the time, and asking of the projects and partners we consider supporting – especially but not only the ones we call permaculture.

What does it take, after all, to create a project that can answer this set of questions substantively, and in the affirmative? It takes more than the Principle of Multifunctionality and the Scale of Permanence. If we want to build a movement that works – that gets us the world we want to live in – then I think it’s (past) time to put some more of that critical design thinking that we pride ourselves on into the design of the movement itself. Leavening the feel-good and inclusive nature of the Ethics with some provocative questions is one way to do it.

The post Teeth in the Ethics (revisited) – toward Financial Permaculture appeared first on Liberation Ecology.

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.

The post And… we’re done! appeared first on Liberation Ecology.