Permaculture principles

 July 5, 2022

Permaculture. 

If you’ve spent some time on the ‘net searching for common-sense solution to climate change and environmental degradation, like I have, you’ve probably heard of permaculture. It’s gotta be mentioned, along with food forests and so on, even though someone who has just a bit of skepticism about this type of Internetting might wonder, isn’t this kind of pie-in-the-sky thinking?

I’m a fan of the idea of permaculture and food forests although I fully recognize that it would take a huge investment in human effort and time, as well as a whole new kind of mental framework for doing that kind of work. What I want to point out here, however, is, what about permaculture is not pie-in-the-sky, but rather, what about it is common sense?

I think one of the most important permaculture principles is the conscious treatment of topography in planting. Sometimes I pass by a field and see how it’s sloping downward into a gulley, and the crops are planted in the same straight rows, and the soil can be seen eroding away. There’s no reason to expect farmers not to plant in straight machine-harvestable rows, but there is a reason to expect farmers to get some benefit for taking topography of their land into effect. Permaculture includes some pretty out-there ideas that still may work, but also some ideas that are really fundamental and common-sense. And one of them is “plant on the swale.”

“Plant on the swale” means take the contour of the land you’re working with into account. The topography in even a small area of land affects the water retention of the land - at certain spots the water will be retained more than others. A swale is a low spot next to a higher raised spot, and if you plant on that topography you will reduce the need for watering. And so on. 

And you can also build contours into farmable land, to create swales and so on. There are definitely land erosion issues that negatively affect farmers’ land and the health of our waters, but again, there can be a positive benefit on the crop yield from practices that also reduce land erosion…