[MUSIC] Penny, it's so good to see you. Thank you for coming in today. >> Thank you for inviting me. >> We've been talking about the sense of the large story in which we're living in the midst. And Thomas Berry would tell this story in a way that was very engaging, as you know, for all of us. But then he would point to people and institutions that are leading us into a transition moment, towards the sustainable or flourishing future. You like to speak of new human-earth relations, as you know. So, among the many things he would point to would be the significance of food in our life, the significance of plants and the land and how we treat it. This is an area where you've been a leader in the permaculture movement. And that's why we're delighted to have you here and to share your knowledge. Can you begin for us just by giving a sense of the history of the movement and how it's grown? >> Yeah, permaculture kind of came about in the late 70s, and it was coined the term permaculture, was about permanent agriculture was what it started out to be by a man named Bill Mollison. And Bill came from a place where he determined that conventional mechanized agriculture was one of the most destructive human activities on the planet and if we don't change how we grow our food, that this could result in huge planetary destruction. So, it started out to be permanent agriculture, but then really what he started to see was how culture and agriculture were tied together so closely and reflected each other. That it really became more about permanent culture. And the permanent part isn't about keeping things the way they are now, it's more about the dynamism of about how can we as a species live and survive for an indefinite period of time. And also in a way that enhances the earth. How can we provide for our needs in a way that isn't just less bad, but is in a way that creates ecosystems and environments that more fertile, more bio-diverse and healthy with our practices than they would be without our practices. And we're finding that that's doable. And this is what we do on our farm and on many farms, probably thousands of farms, all over the world. People are experimenting and trying new things in terms of how to integrate our agriculture in with the surrounding ecology of the climate and environment and the resource base, and all those kinds of things. >> So, you've trained thousands of people now. And as you've said, many people are beginning to do this around the world, in the Middle East, in Jordan, and so on. What are some of the key features of permaculture? >> Well the main tool we use is observation. We do a deep listening to the land and observing what's really going on. What are the patterns that are already happening? And try to work within the natural systems that exist in all these different places. And then I start with water. I think about and I observe, what is the water capacity and how can we increase that through capturing rainfall and storing water, either in the soil or in ponds or in tanks? But how can we really enhance our water capacity? And then the other thing is how do we build soil and how do we support the microbes and the fungus and all the life, the biota, that's in the soil? Because they're the rock stars, I call them. They're the ones that are really doing the work that is supporting life on the planet. So, even though we don't understand all the different microbial communities, just to be able to support them to keep doing what they've been doing for millions of years and build soil is our other thing. And then we grow soil, soil grows plants. So if you have water and good, healthy soil, you've got the capacity to grow food. So that's kind of where we come from. >> And as you've said about the soil, I love the way you put it, that the complexity of the soil is like the complexity of the earth and the whole universe. And so, we're seeing it in this microcosm, if you will, and nurturing that kind of complexity. >> Yeah. >> Even though we don't understand the full dimensions of that interactive community. >> Yeah, once you understand how complex compost is, and things like that. And how important these building blocks of life in the form of microorganisms are to supporting all of life. It's like it's in our body, in our intestinal tract. But if we didn't have the flora in our intestines, we wouldn't be able to survive. Well the earth is the same way. Whether you're looking at the microcosms or the macrocosms these patterns are similar. So, another tool we use is understanding pattern and applying pattern, natural patterning to design. >> What would be an example of that? >> For example, I look at a tree and I see the shape of a tree and the geometry of a tree. And I think why is a tree shaped the way it's shaped? And a lot of the reason why a tree is shaped the way it's shaped is because it has flow going up and flow going down. But what else has that shape? River systems. As you expand out and look at the earth you can see whole river systems, they have the same shape as a tree. So how do you apply that to design? I design all my pathways like a tree. So you see my gardens, they're not in grid shapes. They're often in the shape of branching trees. So, when I flow out into my garden, I'm flowing like water, and meandering out through all different pathways. And it also makes it feel good. It feels right because it's also related to our own cellular relationship. In architecture, looking at sacred geometry, and looking at the proportion of nature. That is really important. And all of the sacred buildings in Europe are all built in this geometric form as are the Iritic architectures of India and all throughout the mosques, everywhere people have built buildings with these proportions. And when you're in a room that's designed that way, you literally physically resonate with that place. And you don't want to sort of kick a wall out or pull a ceiling down, you just feel right. What a concept that we actually feel comfortable where we are. That would be a goal. >> And even the way we design gardens. As you say, the Chinese civilization that I study, it's all about microcosm-macrocosm correspondences they call it, and of course the directions and the seasons and so on. So these are very ancient things, as you say, in the human community. Coming to the gardens that you've created so beautifully at Bohena's at Common Wheel and a whole community there supporting this effort. Tell us a little more about the design of the gardens you're creating. >> Well, all of our garden beds are actually parallel with the contour of the land, perpendicular to the flow of water. So, we have these raised garden beds for our farm that, when it rains, every drop of water gets harvested. On the land and it eliminates erosion. Because when a soil is eroding, what's eroding the soil is water. So, we do everything we can to teach running water how to walk and slow it down, spread it out on the land, and ink it back into the earth, replenishing springs, replenishing aquifers. We've been treating the Earth like a bank account, we keep extracting without giving back in our practices, and it's just like what happens in your checking account, if you keep doing that, or your savings account. One of these days you're going to go there and there's not going to be anything left, and we're reaching the brink of that now. In many places, we have already reached that brink, and we're finding that permaculture is a very powerful, practical answer to providing solutions in some very dire places. [CROSSTALK] >> So harvesting rain is obviously at the heart of this design principle? >> Yeah. >> And then you've told us about building up the soils. What about just laying out the garden, where you plant things? How do you think about that? >> Yeah, >> While we're talking about water and soil, but we also design gardens in relationship to animals, making sure that if there's a slope above the garden, so that any manure and things, fertility that the animals provide can be using gravity to bring that down into the garden, working again with natural law. We also look at, say, the building, relating to the building. You've got a kitchen. What are you going to put outside your kitchen door, if you can, if you have the space? Why not have a little veggie garden, an herb garden, a salad greens garden and things like that that you can just run out your door and harvest and come back in. We're very practical and functional in how we design things, so that we want to make it easier for ourselves. When we think about energy efficiency, we also want to be efficient with our energy. We usually put the things that require more maintenance and are a little more persnickety and need more water, closer to the buildings and to where we spend most of our time. As it moves out, things like chickens, we might put a little further out but some place that we might visit twice a day because we know with chickens, you gotta visit them a minimum of twice a day, so we don't want to put them too far away. But then in Mongolia, they got their animals right underneath their house and the animals help heat the house because heat rises and all the animal bodies help heat the houses in Mongolia. So there's cultural elements too, in terms of where you put a lot of things. But we think about time and motion and distance, practicality, access in our designs as well. >> In terms of the gardens and tending them, what about weeds? >> We don't have that word in our language. They don't exist. [LAUGH] One friend calls them hardworking immigrants. Most of what we call weeds were actually brought here. If we're talking about the United States, they're mostly European pot herbs. A lot of them like mallow and curly dock, dandelions, and radish, they have more nutrition in those plants than often like lettuce and some of the other cultivated plants that we grow. Curly dock is a weed, before I knew any of this stuff, it was the bane of my existence, it's so hard to pull up. That root is a powerful liver tonic and if you go to the herbal store and you buy curly dock, it is actually more expensive than any tomato you could ever sell. They are crops, and if you want to think about it that way, and even if you are not using them and you pull them up and put them in a compost pile, this is how we mineralize our food, is through these plants. We distinguish between invasive plants and naturalized plants, and there are some plants that have come here that have taken over. They've just become mono-crop because nobody else can compete with them, so they've taken over hillsides. We try to look at the patterning there and think about what could eat them. We have scotch broom on our hill and we bring goats up there and they convert scotch broom into goat cheese and things like that. We don't want to see monoculture and we don't want to see a plant completely take over on the one hand, but on the other hand, in a garden, we don't consider them to be weeds. It's a reframing kind of thing. >> Tell us, what does permaculture have to say about seasonally based food? And transportation of food and things like that? >> Yeah, of course, it depends on where you live. If you're in the tropics, it's going to be a very different situation in terms of seasonality, you've got things all year. Here, I live in California on the Northern California coast, we can grow greens all year. But really when you get farther north, where there's a lot of snow, it's about food preservation and learning how to can and dry and freeze and root cellar food. There's also looking to the Inuit and the Eskimos and how they live, eating a lot of animals that have a lot of fat in them and so we look a lot to indigenous people. Here in California, the Native American people ate over 1,500 different foods. >> Incredible. >> We simplified our diet Permaculture is based on principles and one of the principles that we work with is diversity. That's a principle, whether it's diversity in the garden or diversity in your food. Diversity in your livelihood or honoring cultural diversity, like in the San Francisco Bay area where we live. Just celebrating the incredible abundance of cultural diversity that we get to be influenced by, and insect diversity. Even within our fruit trees, we grow many different varieties of apples and many different varieties of pears, different varieties of basil, different varieties of lettuce, and that way you'll never have an infestation. Because, again, if there's any species of varietal specific insect or fungus or anything, you've always got other ones that are resistant to those things, so you'll never starve. >> Yeah, this insect pest management that's come back more and more has been an extraordinary way of dealing not with pesticides and some but natural management. >> Absolutely. Look at aphids, for example. People really upset about aphids, but aphids, we call them trap crops. Aphids attract one of the most beneficial, minute little wasps that come and sounds a little brutal but they come and they'll lay their egg inside the body of the aphid. >> This whole insect and plant relationship and pollenization and all of these relationships. >> Yeah. >> You're trying to allow a space for them to emerge and do their own thing. >> Yeah, exactly. If you're walking through your garden, say on a sunny spring morning in the late morning and you just see insects just buzzing all over the place, and that's what you want, that's what you're striving for. >> A healthy garden. >> A healthy garden, and it's ironic because in some ways, it's the opposite of what we've been taught, especially in agriculture schools around insects. To get rid of insects, to eliminate them. Pesticides and all that kind of thing. Pesticides are non-discriminatory. If you're going to destroy any harmful insects, you're destroying all your beneficial insects. And if somebody comes along and eats a few of the leaves here and there, so what? It's not worth spraying. But any kind of infestation just doesn't occur if you have healthy soil, a good watering regime and the plants themselves are healthy. >> And gardeners who are watching the whole, right? This is so fantastic. You're keeping an eye on all these dimensions. And I keep thinking, too, then about seeds. Are you collecting your seeds and reusing them, and so on? >> Yeah, we save our seeds and it doesn't take much. I mean all you have to do is save maybe one or two plants and you've got plenty of seeds. It's an abundant model of gardening. Any and all gardeners know this, if you garden properly, there's enough to not only supply for your needs, but to also give away produce. So you can address the whole issue. A lot of people ask me, well, how are we going to feed the world? We need these big monoculture corn and soybean fields, and wheat and all this, to be able to feed the world. Well, we are not going to feed the world. The world has to feed itself. Every community needs to know how to feed itself. It's not up to the IMF and the World Bank and USAID and all these aid agencies to go feed people. Remember that saying about it's much more powerful to teach a man how to fish than it is to give them fish. >> Exactly. >> And it's the same thing with growing food. And everywhere you go where you see healthy communities that have healthy gardens, there's no way that they would ever starve. And if you think about the whole systemic nature, so it's not just growing food, it's how to cook food, it's nutritional knowledge, it's food preservation knowledge. >> And seed preservation. >> And seed preservation knowledge, exactly. And then even within a region, like we live on the coast. We can barely grow a tomato to save our lives. We've just got so much fog. But five miles away, we've got people that grow tomatoes. Yet we can grow greens all years. We've got greens and broccoli all through the winter. >> Barter is built into that, isn't it? >> Yes, so we barter and kind of more community efficiency. I think that's another way we've evolved over the last 30 years. Back in the early 70's, there was the back to the land movement. A lot of people moved out, trying to live off the land, but what their focus was, was self-sufficiency and that wasn't really an appropriate goal, I don't believe. It's about community connectivity. >> And that brings us to community supported agriculture. >> Mm-hm. >> Can you tell us about that movement? >> There's ones that we call community supported agriculture but they're technically subscription farms, and they're the ones that you pay how ever much a week or a month and they deliver you a weekly box of vegetables. And it encourages a diverse farm so that the farmers could be supported to grow as much of a complete diet on their farm as they can. And the other form of community support in agriculture is where the community actually gives the farmer a few hundred dollars for the year up front. It might be $400, and then the farmer has what it needs to produce the food. And then at the end of the season, the community shares in the bounty, and they also share in if there's a crop failure. It's our responsibility as citizens to support local farmers and support local agriculture and help mitigate the risks of the farmers having to pay the brunt of all of that. >> What about the reverse side as we're seeing, Agribusiness? >> Mechanized agriculture is a very, very brittle and unstable form of growing our food and it's a drastic mistake to rely on that for our food, because we have to have food. For example, in Indonesia back in the '90s, there was a huge economic crisis, and that had to do with, I think, buying and selling currencies. The economy crashed and the people couldn't even afford to eat the rice that they grew. Indonesia is mostly rice, is the monoculture that they've been taught by the universities to grow monoculture rice. Well, what brought those people through? It was their home gardens. That's why every person pretty much has a home garden, and that's how they survived through that. And so take these little anecdotal models and start thinking about, by design, how can we design a resilient food system into our communities? We can also look at urban agriculture. There's places on the planet where the majority of the food consumed is grown in the cities. So permaculture, it transcends climate, it transcends culture. You can grow food and develop sustainable practices, and sustainable shelter design, passive solar design and energy systems, working with the resources you have where you live. Every place on the planet has solutions based, we look often to the indigenous cultures and how people have tended the land in a good way for thousands of years. The indigenous people are holding a basket of tools for us to move into the future. And we should be really supporting these people and honoring their knowledge and their wisdom that they're holding, because they're here. In permaculture systems, that is what we look to as well, is how does nature do it? We are part of nature. We are a keystone species in the natural world and we've somehow forgotten that. >> Exactly. And we're part of this large story, right? So that everything that you've helped us to understand, our participation in complex ecosystems and complex soil formations and care for water, it speaks so much, I think, of reverence and gratitude, doesn't it? >> Absolutely. Absolutely. >> The sense that we're called back to a new presencing of ourselves with these amazing living systems that are feeding us, if we care for them. >> And we realize that we are part of those living system and we're living in a time of incredible opportunity and incredible crisis, and it's an exciting and dynamic time. And how we decide as a species, as a society, as a civilization, to provide for our needs and our supply lines into the next few hundred years is going to determine our quality of life and whether we even get to exist on this planet at all. [MUSIC]
