victorian kitchen garden vs permaculture

[oldjerry]

[quote="Green Aura"]Victorian Gardeners did everything they could to bend nature to their will ..

Isn't that husbandry?.....or farming?....surely if you're not hunter\gathering,you're bending nature to your will.Is it just really wether you try and work with it,or fight it...(told you this thread was making me think..)

[safronsue]

'bend' being the emotive word i guess, implying forcing, but really they just worked to accomodate the plants to their specific needs which is all we really want to do as gardeners. i'm just interested in doing things in a labour saving way which i think is the essence of permaculture.

[Green Aura]

With liberal use of arsenic, copper and other noxious chemicals, coal to heat the hothouses etc. The lives of gardeners on the big estates was apparently shorter because of the chemicals used. The programme may have made it look wonderful but I'm guessing that it was only good for the beneficiaries, not the staff.

But I'm also smitten by the romantic notion of a walled kitchen garden, BR. But it is just that, a wall - you can have one for the cost of stones or bricks. And, utilising permaculture principles such a walled garden could be a wonderful thing

[oldjerry]

[quote="Green Aura"]With liberal use of arsenic, copper and other noxious chemicals, coal to heat the hothouses etc. The lives of gardeners on the big estates was apparently shorter because of the chemicals used. The programme may have made it look wonderful but I'm guessing that it was only good for the beneficiaries, not the staff.

But that,as you well know (!) is to confuse politics with horticulture.If they had been practising permaculture,they'd have still got some poor sod to do all the work for them!

[British Red]

Nothing saying that a greenhouse cannot be heated by wood...or manure.

I just despair of the "greener than thou" nonsense associated with permaculture. The population of this country cannot survive without food imported on cheap fossil fuels and land fertilised with hydro carbon derived fertilisers. I have yet to see the permaculture productivity statistics that show how to support a person - food, fuel, housing and occupation on less than three quarters of an acre of land (which is the UKs per capita allocation).

We either intensively farm...or reduce our population by starvation or eugenics. This is the uncomfortable reality. I have yet to see a permaculture design that can provide food and fuel per person on 3/4 of an acre.

Red

[safronsue]

BR, I think you have made extremely sweeping statements in those few words. I am not a political person and do not study figures, cannot quote them, but in prefering permaculture i do not feel a cut above others, it's simply a sensible choice for me. i suspect many people who have made life choices to get away from densely populated areas do the same.
And fossil fuels will not be cheap for much longer surely! recycling will not be an option but necessity.
And when you say food are you referring to livestock rearing with its massive grain demand?
Oh dear, i think i'd better go and check on my composting toilet

[contadina]

I think that the main problem that I have with permaculture is that unless you have the paid for qualification, obtained with hardly any real hands on experience, then your work is dismissed, even if you have been following permaculture guidelines successfully for years; because let's face it, there is nothing really new in permaculture.

With three rather nebulous 'ethics' and a whole raft of intangible 'principles' permaculture makes gardening rather vague and potentially complicated. I know quite a few people who started out trying to be self-sufficient, happily feeding themselves and their families, who have then caught the permaculture bug. They then try fallowing permaculture guidelines and fail, run out of money and give up.

When I see things like the article listed below about a person who hired a permaculture designer and teacher to come up with a permaculture design for window boxes, it makes my blood boil.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/ ... rmaculture

Hedvig analyses my answers and comes up with a planting scheme that, among other things, catches and stores energy, produces a yield of food, knowledge and seeds, uses renewable resources and generates no waste – all permaculture principles.

You'd be hard-pressed to come up with a planting scheme that doesn't meet these 'permaculture principles.' Pretty much all fruit and veg capture and store the sun's (renewable) energy and give you some food and seeds for the future. It's surely down to the gardener as to whether they learn anything from growing particular things.

Producing no waste is a pretty daft aspiration. All plants produce waste. What you do with it is what makes it good/bad. Composting - be it via a compost bin, bokashi, or a wormery - deals with pretty much all vegetative waste, no?

[British Red]

Wasn't having a go or a dig at anyone ss - sorry it came over that way. I just don't believe permaculture works in the UK on any significant scale. It may well in Greece - but this little island has a massive - and growing - population density (over population).

It is a massive statement to say "the population of this country cannot survive without intensive farming "- I do stand by it though. In a century we have not been able to feed our population - even with cheap fossil fuels and massive importation and chemical fertiliser.

Much as I like the idea - and indeed the practice - of self sufficiency (and I have no problem permaculture for those that like the idea and have the space to do it), as oil prices rise, and food imports decline, I suspect that every inch of land in the UK will have to be farmed intenisvely - just to minimise starvation levels. Some of that will still of course be animals - its not a good idea to plough a Welsh hillside, but sheep do just fine there. By intensive, I don't per se mean tractors, nitrates etc. Just worked very, very hard.

To me its very difficult to accept the logic of something like permaculture without thinking through "how can this be applied to a population of seventy million living on an island of fifty odd million acres"? Its roughly the same as the logic that more people should heat with wood. Its simply not a sustainable proposition in the UK for large scale rollout - it may well work in Canada though for example.

Just my thoughts on the matter - if we subscribe to the ideal of permaculture, human beings are part of the design - and we need to address how to manage the numbers of them in the UK to a sustainable level. Its a problem the rest of the world will need to face up to as well.

Red

[boboff]

We are all doomed!

Two things stike me though Red.

1. We could make a start on trying to feed more from the land by planting public spaces with plants that can be foraged. it takes 20 - 30 years for a decent road side Orchard to establish.

2. We all eat too much! According to the only book I have read on Forest Gardening you can get 70% of a family of 4's food from an acre of forest garden.


Other than that it has to come down to economics. Stuff at the moment is cheap, relative proportion of peoples income spent on food is now the lowest it's ever been. We have a highly competitive grocery market in the UK. When prices go up, demand will go down, and therefore it could be that we actually do have a choice as permaculture may be a non Oil based food economy, which leaves UK national dependance on overseas assets aside.

[oldjerry]

A couple of thoughts,other than 1 and 2 above which seem pretty pertinent.

In agricultural terms 'intensive' means something specific, high energy use,animal abuse,widespread pollution,destruction of community,and an increasing gulf between the land and the person on the street,if that's what it takes to keep UK PLC afloat,bring on the iceberg.

[contadina]

Intensive farming isn't the answer. The advent of cheap fertilisers and pesticides and the need for bigger fields and machinery has not produced the returns that were promised, and clearly this will not be possible in a post-peak oil world. Organic farming will help restore life to soil damaged by intensive farming.

Cuba is the obvious example of a nation that produces it's food without the use of chemicals but there have been studies produced in Germany, the US and the UK, which all agree that each nation could feed itself if it farmed organically. The UK study, which was undertaken by the University of Aberystwyth in association with Elm Farm Research Centre, states that if the UK was to convert to an organic faming system, the structure of farming would have to change dramatically but all food needs would be met. Rotational farming would be necessary which would mean a reduction in certain crops in some areas but a reintroduction in other areas. Output of Cereals, Oil Seed Rape and Sugar Beet would be significantly reduced (30%, and around 60% respectively) whereas vegetable production would increase and legumes, in particular grain legumes would have to increase by around 175% (to feed livestock). This would lead to dietary changes...more vegetable protein and less meat, which has to be a good thing health-wise.

The UN consistently says that organic farming is the best option for feeding Africa, drawing these conclusions from a study conducted in 2008.

study found that organic practices outperformed traditional methods and chemical-intensive conventional farming. It also found strong environmental benefits such as improved soil fertility, better retention of water and resistance to drought. And the research highlighted the role that learning organic practices could have in improving local education. Backers of GM foods insist that a technological fix is needed to feed the world. But this form of agriculture requires cash to buy the patented seeds and herbicides – both at record high prices currently – needed to grow GM crops.

Regional farming experts have long called for "good farming", rather than exclusively GM or organic. Better seeds, crop rotation, irrigation and access to markets all help farmers. Organic certification in countries such as the UK and Australia still presents an insurmountable barrier to most African exporters, the report points out. It calls for greater access to markets so farmers can get the best prices for their products."

[British Red]

Thats the kind of intensive farming I'm talking about contadina. I don't believe there is anything mutually exclusive about intensity and organic. Intensive - to me at least - means "hard work" - I cannot find any definition that equates the word with "animal cruelty" or " fossil fuel". I don't think your UN report does reccomend an exclusively organic approach though

Regional farming experts have long called for "good farming", rather than exclusively GM or organic

Whether organic or otherwise - that is exactly the sort of approach thats going to be required - farming the land and producing at least double the current amount of food that we do today. Of course that still doesn't explain where we get fuel and energy from, but its a start.

For anything less than intensive farming, we need to match the output of the land to the people it can support. Personally I don't relish the "iceberg" as some seem to - mass starvation of the poorest isn't an appealing prospect - but its a very real one unless we achieve food independence.

[oldjerry]

Sadly 'intensive' agriculture as practiced isn't primarily about increasing food production per se,more increasing prductivity per man hour,and lowering the cost of production,agri business and the food retailing industry are not set up for the benefit of the starving poor.All the worthwhile projects,both at home and in developing countries, promoting self help and a recapturing of the ability to grow food for yourself have been small-scale ,local community based.

[boboff]

It strikes me really that this is pointless debate as we are all preaching to the converted.

There has to be a move from a situation where the energy inputs in "intensive" farming exceed the energy outputs (Dairy farming is the worst) to something where we realise that we can actually put less energy in than we get out, not just with farming but the way we view our lives and our carbon footprints etc, but try explaining that to the 8 billion Chinese living considerably less afluent lifestyles than the average doley in this country.

[Green Aura]

Sorry BR, to jump from I want a walled Victorian-style kitchen garden to permaculture will cause the world to starve - I must have hit a seriously ticklish spot. Had to sleep on that one.

Contadina, I agree totally about not getting too caught up in all the hype "permaculture" is a copyrighted term and of course some of the people who've paid lots of money to train will feel the need to make it exclusive - so many who expound it will be nobs, for want of a better term . I think you'll find though that, at its core, permaculture principles are pretty much what the Cubans are utilising, not the BS that the nobs are spouting. At it's heart it's fairly simple - diversity, multiple use, energy conservation and putting back in what you get out - I'm sure there's an awful lot more but as I said in my first post no one system has it covered, an eclectic approach always seems a better way to me.

Oh, and I'm not sure how you got to population control from the preceding discussion BR but it would appear you're much closer to the Permaculure nobs than you might think - it's one of their preciously held views.