4 ms·

Permaculture is fascinating. I'm interested in how it behaves on a macro scale, though; what would happen to the wider ecosystem if you had a town full of perma

Permaculture is fascinating. I'm interested in how it behaves on a macro scale, though; what would happen to the wider ecosystem if you had a town full of permaculture lots instead of grass yards?

tspike 3y ago
I’d have a hard time thinking of a more wonderful experiment to run.
photochemsyn 3y ago
Every estimate I've seen points to a minimum requirement of ~1 hectare of arable land to feed one human for one year (on a minimal vegetarian diet) and that estimate assumes highly productive soils and minimal crop loss due to insects, drought, or flood. The idea with permaculture is that you minimize (ideally eliminate) the need for fertilizer, herbicide and pesticide imports using effective composting and crop rotation (biological nitrogen fixation) and integrated pest management (raising insects that eat crop pests etc.) and water recycling systems and so on. Scaling this approach to tens of thousands of acres for reliably feeding even a medium-sized city seems challenging, but there appear to be some 1000-acre permaculture farms out there. However, yields are likely to be lower per acre with this approach as practices like using high fertilizer imports to allow double-cropping don't fit the permaculture model.
- throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
  It's worth noting that permaculture is not just about farming or homesteading. The point is mostly to have a balanced ecology that humans can live in. You can still have large farms, small farms, or no farms, and do permaculture. The big mistake we made was building large cities that required moving or reshaping the land, water, animals and plants to support large cities. There really should not be this many humans in the world, and certainly not with as many huge cities as we have. We're becoming a species dependent on a synthetic environment.
  - kamray23 3y ago
    I find this idea of a "synthetic environment" kind of strange in a way. We crossed that line twelve thousand years ago when we started large-scale farming. That alone was a transformation of nature which immensely upset the previous natural order and caused human population to rise immensely. But I wouldn't really consider that artificial in a major way, and on some level we're also part of nature. I don't think we are any more artificial in building cities than bees are in building their hives. There is a difference, but not one which matters for this conversation, though I will mention that that difference has to do with the fact that we picture an idea in our heads before projecting it into reality through labour. I don't think it's healthy to see the world as a struggle between the natural and artificial, because it's so hard to properly define. Humans are natural, making tools is in our nature, so is constructing shelter. I think the proper way to see the world is as this unity, humans exist within nature and act to transform it, as does every other animal species on this planet. The ecosystem would look wildly different did termites and bees not transform it for their own benefit, and similarly it is humans who transform nature in their own ways for their own benefit. This does not mean unconditional support for human activity. Glass, concrete, and steel towers and spreading suburbs are terrible transformations of nature. They are terrible because of their destructive potential for no gain, they are unsustainable by nature, they upset the balance in a way which makes the land less fertile, less capable of supporting life in general let alone humans, and in the long term are a loss not only for natural diversity but for the human species as well. There exists a rift due to industrial agriculture where humans take from the earth and give back to it from the mountains and the bedrock while pushing waste into the oceans, which is unsustainable and which has and will lead to ecological collapses. This is but one part, industry in general, pollution, the carbon cycle, land use change and associated environmental effects, it all acts to lower the carrying capacity of this Earth in the long term. This is how I believe it is best to critique transformations of nature in this manner, because terms are easy to define, the unsustainability is scientifically provable, you have no such ambiguities as when you talk about artificial and natural as two entirely separate concepts. This also gets you out of very bad ways of thinking. There is no "natural carrying capacity" for this planet except what it currently has. There is likely a theoretical maximum and some day we might hit it. What's clear is that we haven't hit it yet, we just fail to push the current carrying capacity by transforming nature in an unsustainable fashion for short-term benefit. You can no longer say things like "There really should not be this many humans in the world", since it's plainly not true. There are supposed to be exactly as many humans as there are, because humans naturally transform nature to support themselves. It is our own nature, our species being, to take those gifts of nature and use them to transform them, through our own labour, into products which are use-values to ourselves. This is just as it is the nature of bees to pollinate and build hives, the nature of woodland animals to eat their hives and the flowers they pollinate, and the nature of elephants to topple trees to create for themselves a grassland instead of a forest. It is not that there are too many humans, even with our unsustainable practices this planet easily currently produces enough food for ten billion to live well-off. It is not that there is artificial and natural, to make natural artificial is natural, because to transform nature is human nature. It is our current, wasteful and unsustainable transformation of nature, no different to those transformations that took place twelve thousand years ago except in its unsustainability, which has been been sucking the life out of this planet. But as humans, we have the unique ability to both imagine and then through labour project that ideal into reality, to once again transform what was natural to something which suits our needs. Our needs are, in the long term, sustainably keeping at the very least ten billion people alive, and permaculture is one of the ways in which we can both imagine that and start to bring it into fruition. However, our own relations and structures might prevent a total change in our transformation of nature in its present state, which is why political action is as important, if not more so, than homesteading or community gardens. Idk man, I don't think overpopulation is an issue and I despise imagining that there is something uniquely bad about artificial things and that they are somehow different from nature. They are nature, their creation is our nature, and we ourselves are creations of nature. It's only how we have in the last few millenia, really even few centuries, been doing those transformations which is the true issue. End of insane HN rant I guess. There's obviously no infinite growth, but we're also far from overpopulation. The world is not a Malthusian nightmare, it's not that resources cause population to explode and conditions to worsen, we can see that in the richer nations of the Earth where instead resources cause population to drop after a point. We'll naturally reach our peak well within the theoretical maximum carrying capacity of the Earth, that's my point. Permaculture is one important step on that path. Neo-Malthusians and genocidal maniacs and eco-fascists disgust me to no end.
- CapstanRoller 3y ago
  The thing people don't realize is that we waste so much space and resources on useless crap. 1 hectate per person is easy to get in any suburban neighborhood if everyone can agree that a stable healthy food supply is more important than endless lawns or empty lots. The resources are all there, we just grossly misallocate and squander them.
- modo_mario 3y ago
  I think one could do with far less if things were optimised for nutrient retention (including human waste which often isn't allowed in many places). In fact I think it's easy to produce enough for a person on far less than 1 hectare in my experience assuming one's climate is somewhat fitting. My tiny backyard produced more than I could eat last year albeit with barely any space for me to walk between the plants. It's doing it long term without fertiliser/manure that's difficult.
KaiserPro 3y ago
a whole town, depending on how things are done would look a bit different, but would handle different too. First, assuming that people are growing all sorts of things, and not trying to monoculture, you will get an explosion in different kinds of insects and their predators. Second, you should get an explosion of colour thirdly, assuming the growth of trees, creepers and other vines, coolers daytime temperatures, and reduced winds fourthly, and possibly more importantly, much higher water retention.

Permaculture is fascinating. I'm interested in how it behaves on a macro scale, though; what would happen to the wider ecosystem if you had a town full of permaculture lots instead of grass yards?

tspike 3y ago

I’d have a hard time thinking of a more wonderful experiment to run.

photochemsyn 3y ago

Every estimate I've seen points to a minimum requirement of ~1 hectare of arable land to feed one human for one year (on a minimal vegetarian diet) and that estimate assumes highly productive soils and minimal crop loss due to insects, drought, or flood. The idea with permaculture is that you minimize (ideally eliminate) the need for fertilizer, herbicide and pesticide imports using effective composting and crop rotation (biological nitrogen fixation) and integrated pest management (raising insects that eat crop pests etc.) and water recycling systems and so on. Scaling this approach to tens of thousands of acres for reliably feeding even a medium-sized city seems challenging, but there appear to be some 1000-acre permaculture farms out there. However, yields are likely to be lower per acre with this approach as practices like using high fertilizer imports to allow double-cropping don't fit the permaculture model.

throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
It's worth noting that permaculture is not just about farming or homesteading. The point is mostly to have a balanced ecology that humans can live in. You can still have large farms, small farms, or no farms, and do permaculture. The big mistake we made was building large cities that required moving or reshaping the land, water, animals and plants to support large cities. There really should not be this many humans in the world, and certainly not with as many huge cities as we have. We're becoming a species dependent on a synthetic environment.
- kamray23 3y ago
  I find this idea of a "synthetic environment" kind of strange in a way. We crossed that line twelve thousand years ago when we started large-scale farming. That alone was a transformation of nature which immensely upset the previous natural order and caused human population to rise immensely. But I wouldn't really consider that artificial in a major way, and on some level we're also part of nature. I don't think we are any more artificial in building cities than bees are in building their hives. There is a difference, but not one which matters for this conversation, though I will mention that that difference has to do with the fact that we picture an idea in our heads before projecting it into reality through labour. I don't think it's healthy to see the world as a struggle between the natural and artificial, because it's so hard to properly define. Humans are natural, making tools is in our nature, so is constructing shelter. I think the proper way to see the world is as this unity, humans exist within nature and act to transform it, as does every other animal species on this planet. The ecosystem would look wildly different did termites and bees not transform it for their own benefit, and similarly it is humans who transform nature in their own ways for their own benefit. This does not mean unconditional support for human activity. Glass, concrete, and steel towers and spreading suburbs are terrible transformations of nature. They are terrible because of their destructive potential for no gain, they are unsustainable by nature, they upset the balance in a way which makes the land less fertile, less capable of supporting life in general let alone humans, and in the long term are a loss not only for natural diversity but for the human species as well. There exists a rift due to industrial agriculture where humans take from the earth and give back to it from the mountains and the bedrock while pushing waste into the oceans, which is unsustainable and which has and will lead to ecological collapses. This is but one part, industry in general, pollution, the carbon cycle, land use change and associated environmental effects, it all acts to lower the carrying capacity of this Earth in the long term. This is how I believe it is best to critique transformations of nature in this manner, because terms are easy to define, the unsustainability is scientifically provable, you have no such ambiguities as when you talk about artificial and natural as two entirely separate concepts. This also gets you out of very bad ways of thinking. There is no "natural carrying capacity" for this planet except what it currently has. There is likely a theoretical maximum and some day we might hit it. What's clear is that we haven't hit it yet, we just fail to push the current carrying capacity by transforming nature in an unsustainable fashion for short-term benefit. You can no longer say things like "There really should not be this many humans in the world", since it's plainly not true. There are supposed to be exactly as many humans as there are, because humans naturally transform nature to support themselves. It is our own nature, our species being, to take those gifts of nature and use them to transform them, through our own labour, into products which are use-values to ourselves. This is just as it is the nature of bees to pollinate and build hives, the nature of woodland animals to eat their hives and the flowers they pollinate, and the nature of elephants to topple trees to create for themselves a grassland instead of a forest. It is not that there are too many humans, even with our unsustainable practices this planet easily currently produces enough food for ten billion to live well-off. It is not that there is artificial and natural, to make natural artificial is natural, because to transform nature is human nature. It is our current, wasteful and unsustainable transformation of nature, no different to those transformations that took place twelve thousand years ago except in its unsustainability, which has been been sucking the life out of this planet. But as humans, we have the unique ability to both imagine and then through labour project that ideal into reality, to once again transform what was natural to something which suits our needs. Our needs are, in the long term, sustainably keeping at the very least ten billion people alive, and permaculture is one of the ways in which we can both imagine that and start to bring it into fruition. However, our own relations and structures might prevent a total change in our transformation of nature in its present state, which is why political action is as important, if not more so, than homesteading or community gardens. Idk man, I don't think overpopulation is an issue and I despise imagining that there is something uniquely bad about artificial things and that they are somehow different from nature. They are nature, their creation is our nature, and we ourselves are creations of nature. It's only how we have in the last few millenia, really even few centuries, been doing those transformations which is the true issue. End of insane HN rant I guess. There's obviously no infinite growth, but we're also far from overpopulation. The world is not a Malthusian nightmare, it's not that resources cause population to explode and conditions to worsen, we can see that in the richer nations of the Earth where instead resources cause population to drop after a point. We'll naturally reach our peak well within the theoretical maximum carrying capacity of the Earth, that's my point. Permaculture is one important step on that path. Neo-Malthusians and genocidal maniacs and eco-fascists disgust me to no end.
CapstanRoller 3y ago
The thing people don't realize is that we waste so much space and resources on useless crap. 1 hectate per person is easy to get in any suburban neighborhood if everyone can agree that a stable healthy food supply is more important than endless lawns or empty lots. The resources are all there, we just grossly misallocate and squander them.
modo_mario 3y ago
I think one could do with far less if things were optimised for nutrient retention (including human waste which often isn't allowed in many places). In fact I think it's easy to produce enough for a person on far less than 1 hectare in my experience assuming one's climate is somewhat fitting. My tiny backyard produced more than I could eat last year albeit with barely any space for me to walk between the plants. It's doing it long term without fertiliser/manure that's difficult.

KaiserPro 3y ago

a whole town, depending on how things are done would look a bit different, but would handle different too. First, assuming that people are growing all sorts of things, and not trying to monoculture, you will get an explosion in different kinds of insects and their predators. Second, you should get an explosion of colour thirdly, assuming the growth of trees, creepers and other vines, coolers daytime temperatures, and reduced winds fourthly, and possibly more importantly, much higher water retention.