26 lines
5.1 KiB
Plaintext
26 lines
5.1 KiB
Plaintext
PREFACE
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To many of us who experienced the ferment of the late 1960's, there seemed to be n positive direction forward, although almost everybody could define those aspect of the global society that they rejected, and these include military adventurism, the bomb, ruthless land exploitation, the arrogance of polluters, and a general insensitivity to human and environmental needs.
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From 1972-1974, I spent some time (latterly with David Holmgren) in developing an interdisciplinary earth science (permaculture) with a potential for positivistic, integrated, and global outreach. It was January 1981 before the concept of permaculture seemed to have matured sufficiently to be taught as an applied design system, when the first 26 students graduated from an intensive 140-hour lecture series. Today, we can count thousands of people who have attended permaculture design courses, workshops, lectures, and seminars. Graduates now form a loose global network, and are effectively acting in many countries. The permaculture movement has no central structure, but rather a strong sense of shared work. Everybody is free to act as an individual, to form a small group, or to work within any other organisation. We cooperate with many other groups with diverse beliefs and practices; our system includes good practices from many disciplines and systems, and offers them as an integrated whole.
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Great Changes are taking place. These are not as a result of any one group of teaching, but as a result of millions of people defining one or more way in which they can conserve energy, aid local self-reliance, or provide for themselves. All of us would acknowledge our own work as modest; it is the totality of such modest work that is impressive. There is so much to do, and there will never be enough people to do it. We must all try to increase our skills, to model trials , and to pass on the results. If a job is not being done, we can form a small group and do it (when we criticise other, we usually point the finger at ourselves! It doesn't matter if the work we do carries the "permaculture" label, just that we do it.
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By 1984, it had become clear that many of the systems we had proposed a decade earlier did, in fact, constitute a sustainable earth care system. Almost all the we had proposed was tested and tried, and where the kills and capital existed, people could make a living from products derived from stable landscapes, although this is not a primary aim of permaculture, which seeks first to stabilise and care for the land, then to serve household regional and local needs, and only thereafter to produce a surplus for sale or exchange.
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In 1984, we held our first international permaculture conference, and awarded about 50 applied diplomas to those who had served two years of applied work since their design course. Those of us who belong to the permaculture family have cause to be proud, but not complacent. Work has scarcely begun, but we have a great team of people which increases in numbers daily. To empower the powerless and create "a million villages" to replace nation-states is the only safe future for the preservation of the biosphere. Let interdependence and personal responsibility be our aims.
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AUTHOR'S NOTE
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This volume was written for teachers, students, and designers; it follows on the greatly enlarges on the initial introductory texts Permaculture One (1987) and Permaculture Two (1979), both of which are still in demand a decade after publication. Very little of the material in this book is reproduced from the foundation texts.
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Each volume of this work carries a surcharge of 50c which will be paid by Tagari Publications to the Permaculture Institute. The Institute (a public trust) holds the funds so generated in trust for tree-planting, and from time to time releases monies to selected groups who are active in permanent reafforestation. In this way, both publisher and readers can have a clear conscience about the use of the paper in this volume, or in any book published by Tagari Publications. Our trust funds are open to receive any such levy from other ethical publishers.
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PERMACULTURE DEFINE AND ITS USE
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Permaculture is a word coined by the author. Its copyright is vested in the Permaculture Institutes and their College of Graduates, and is guarded by them for the purpose of consistent education.
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Permaculture (permanent agriculture) is the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of landscape and people providing their food, energy shelter, and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way. Without permanent agriculture there is no possibility of a stable social order.
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Permaculture design is a system of assembling conceptual, material, and strategic components in a pattern which functions to benefit life in all its forms. The philosophy behind permaculture is one of working with, rather than against, nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless action; of looking at systems, in all their functions, rather than asking only one yield of them; and of allowing systems to demonstrate their own
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