FACTS AND SOLUTIONS

 

BILL MOLLISON 1981

 

Excerpts from “Introduction to Permaculture” 

These extracts are there to give you an idea of what is Permaculture, the SPIRIT of Permaculture according to Bill Mollison.. and maybe you will like to read more from  HERE  :o)))

 

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                                                                   FACTS


The real systems that are beginning to fail are the soils, forests,

the atmosphere, and nutrient cycles. It is we who are responsible

for that. We haven’t evolved anywhere in the west

(and I doubt very much elsewhere except in tribal areas) any

sustainable systems in agriculture or forestry. We don’t have

a system. Let’s look at what is happening.

 

  

FOREST

 

Forests have been found to be far more important in the oxygen

cycle than we ever suspected. We used to think oceans

were the most important element. They are not. Not only are

they not very important, contributing probably less than 8% of

the oxygen in atmospheric recycling, but many are beginning to

be oxygen-consuming. If we release much more mercury into

the seas, the ocean will be oxygen-consuming. The balance is

changing. Therefore, it is mainly the forests that we depend on

to preserve us from anarchic condition.

 

 

It is the character of forests to moderate everything. Forests

moderate excessive cold and heat, excessive run-off, excessive

pollution. As forests are removed, immoderate extremes arrive.

And of course, it is the forests that create soils. Forests

are one of very few soil-creating systems.

 

 

CLIMATES

 

We can just go cutting along, and in maybe twelve more

years we won’t have any forests.

There is still another factor. It would be bad enough if it were

just our cutting that is killing forests. But since the 1920’s, and

with increasing frequency, we have been loosing species from

forest to a whole succession of pathogens.

 

 

The "Phasmid Conspiracy"

Now we come to a thing called the phasmid conspiracy.

Each forest varies in each country in that its elms, its chestnuts,

its poplars, its firs, are subject to attack by specific pathogens.

Insects are taking some sort of cauterizing measures.

……

Really, is it these diseases? What are the diseases? Phasmids

are responsible for the death of eucalypts. There is the

cinnamon fungus. In elms, it’s the Dutch elm disease. In the

poplars, it’s the rust. And in the firs, it’s also rust. Do you think

that any of these diseases are killing the forest?

 

 

What I think we are looking at is a carcass. The forest is a

dying system on which the decomposers are beginning to feed.

If you know forests very well, you know that you can go out this

morning and strike a tree with an axe. That’s it. Or touch it with

the edge of a bulldozer, or bump it with your car. Then, if you sit

patiently by that tree, within three days you will see that maybe

twenty insects and other decomposers and "pests" have visited

the injury. The tree is already doomed. What attracts them is

the smell from the dying tree. We have noticed that in Australia.

Just injure trees to see what happens. The phasmids come.

The phasmid detects the smell of this. The tree has become its

food tree, and it comes to feed.

So insects are not the cause of the death of forests. The

cause of the death of forests is multiple insult. We point to

some bug and say: "That bug did it." It is much better if you can

blame somebody else. You all know that. So we blame the bug.

It is a conspiracy, really, to blame the bugs. But the real reason

the trees are failing is that there have been profound changes

in the amount of light penetrating the forest, in pollutants, and

in acid rain fallout. People, not bugs, are killing the forests.

SOILS

 

As far as we can make out, we have lost 50% of the soils we

have ever had before 1950. We have been measuring pretty

well since 1950. And we have lost another 30% of the soils

that remain. Now this is as true of the Third World as it is in

the Western World.

 

 

WATER

 

The fact that water is becoming a scarce resource is manifestly

ridiculous, because roughly half a million gallons fall on

this roof right here annually. But you could be very short of water

here soon unless you build tanks or surface storages to

catch the water.

 

For every 5,000 gallons we can store

in concrete tanks, we can store 250,000 in Earth tanks at the

same cost

 

A DESPERATE FUTURE ?

 

At the very least, we have a desperate future. Our children

may never believe that we had surplus food. It is mainly because

of utterly ridiculous things. The entire output of atomic

power in the United States is exactly equivalent to the requirements

of the clothes-drying machines.

 

There is an horrific statement called the over-run thesis which says:

 "Our ability to change the face of the Earth increases at a faster rate than our ability to foresee the consequences of that change."

 

And there is the life-ethic thesis, which says that living organisms

and living systems are not only means but ends. In addition

to their value to man, or their instrumental value to human

beings, they have an intrinsic worth which we don’t allow them.

 

That a tree is something of value in itself, even if it has no value

to us, that notion is a pretty foreign sort of thought to us. That

it is alive and functioning is what is important.

 

 

PERMACULTURE : THE CHANGE IS POSSIBLE

 

MAN IS THE PROBLEM à MAN IS THE SOLUTION

 

We must involve all

our skills to organize life forces, not just a few.

 

 

Now all of this, including the energy problem, is what we have

to tackle at once. It can be done. It is possible. It is possible to

make restitution. We might as well be trying to do something

about it as not. We will never get anywhere if we don’t do anything.

The great temptation, and one in which the academic

takes total refuge, is to gather more evidence. I mean, do we

need any more evidence? Or is it time to cease taking evidence

and to start remedial action on the evidence already in? In

1950, it was time to stop taking evidence and start remedial

action. But the temptation is always to gather more evidence.

Too many people waste their lives gathering evidence. Moreover,

as we get more evidence, we see that things are worse

than they had appeared to be.

 

 

DELEGATION - COOPERATION

 

The only way we can do things fast is by making the least

number of moves in the fastest possible time, and by very rapid

delegation of work to people. There is no hope that we can get

this done in the next five years if we keep it to ourselves. Therefore,

I have come here to break the monopoly of the elite alternative

in America. We have got to let experts loose on the

ground. We need hundreds and hundreds of them. We don’t

want at any time to patent anything or to keep any information

to ourselves, not even keep our jobs to ourselves. The time for

that is gone. What we are involved in is a cooperative, not a

competitive, system

 

MONEY

 

I think we have an ethic here:

                       

                        to stop admiring the people who have money.

 

There has to be a big ethical change. It is an

interesting time to be living in. The big twist we have to make is

away from our educational system. All the methodologies and

principles we use arose as a result of observation of natural

systems, and are stated in a passive way. The mind twist that

has to be made to create permaculture is to realize that you

can get hold of that and do it. We have to make our knowledge

active. We have to move from a passive to an active thought

level.

 

 

INTERCONNECTION

 

In the permaculture garden, we must deal with the question

of ways in which elements are to be placed. Some of these elements

are manurial or energy-exchange systems for other elements;

others are defensive elements that protect other plants

in a whole set of ways; and some act as trellis systems for others

or provide shade. So there are physical relationships involved

and there are whole sets of rules that govern why certain

elements are put together. And we understand some of

these rules. A lot of them are quite obvious.

 

 

DIVERSITY

 

Diversity isn’t involved so much with the number of elements

in a system as it is with the number of functional connections

between these elements. Diversity is not the number

of things, but the number of ways in which things work. This

really is the direction in which permaculture thinking is headed.

 

So what we are really talking about is not

some grandiose complication of 3,000 species on a site.

It would be nice to make 3,000 connections between 30

species

 

So what we are setting up is a sort of guild of things that

work harmoniously together. There are rules to follow on placement

within the area. There are rules that have to do with orientation,

with zonation, and with the interactions. There are

whole sets of principles which govern why we put things together

and why things work.

 

These principles, rules and directives are based on the

study of natural systems.

Now I have evolved a set of directives which

say: "Here is a good way to proceed." It doesn’t have anything

to do with laws or rules, just principles.

 

 

ENERGY

 

We deal with the Earth, which has a fairly constant energy input

from other parts of the universe.

 

Between the source and the sink is where we intervene.

The more useful storages to which we can direct energy between

the source and the sink, the better we are as designers.

 

The closer to the source that we can intervene, the greater use is

the network that we can set up.