Permaculture one

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1. sentientforestDec 2019
   On my list to read in 2020:

       The Visual Display of Quantitative Information 
       The Rust Programming Language 
       Progressive Web Apps 
       Permaculture: Principles and Pathways beyond Sustainability 
       Farming the Woods 
       Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms 
       Affinity Designer Workbook 
       The Age of Surveillance Capitalism 
       Walden 
       A Guide for Desert and Dryland Restoration 
       Ernest Hemingway On Writing 
       The Two Hands of God (Alan Watts) 
       The Anarchist's Design Book and/or With the Grain: A Craftsman's Guide to Wood 
       Dune 
       Some other fiction reading I'll decide on after I finish Dune
   
   

   Books/Authors I've read that I would recommend:

       Tao of Physics, Web of Life, Systems View of Life, etc. (Fritjof Capra) 
           ^Capra's work has heavily influenced my worldview and ability to think in systems
   
       Designing Data Intensive Applications (just finishing this week)
       Permaculture One & Two, Gaia's Garden, Edible Forest Gardens I&II
       Black Swan, Antifragile, etc. (Nassim Taleb) 
       Cloud Hidden: Whereabouts Unknown (Alan Watts, written late in life) 
       Ishmael, Story of B, etc. (Daniel Quinn) 
       You are Not a Gadget, Who Owns the Future, etc. (Jaron Lanier) 
       Goethe's Italian Journey   
       Vonnegut, Hemingway, Steinbeck 
       The Wheel of Time

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2. JeddNov 2023
   > So why is it not the dominant method of agriculture yet?

   Define dominant?

   I'll note that permaculture does not have an army of lobbyists, sales people, marketers, lawyers, pushing this into public policy, beating its drum across media, using threats of prosecution to lock people into expensive seed / fertiliser / herbicide combinations, and so on.

   It's a bit like free software competing with lower-quality non-free software, or fresh fruit competing with plastic-wrapped highly processed fast food - the product is demonstrably better for the consumer and the planet, but the disparity in advertising budgets dictate which is more popular.

   Apropos whatever you like ... Bayer is worth around 130B euro - having picked up Monsanto for USD $60B five years ago.

   In contrast, you can go do your permaculture design course for around US$1k, or pick up the original - Permaculture One - in ebook format for around AU$30.

   Anyway, I've assumed by dominant you mean pervasive or popular, rather than merely superior.

   > And yet, they're a basic part of most humans' diet. How many people actually get _all_ their food from permaculture?

   I think you're asking some interesting questions, but perhaps coming at it from the wrong angle.

   I mean, it's fascinating why it is that we're still using the same handful of grains that were chosen about 12k ya at a time when health & longevity weren't major concerns, and obviously weren't strong evolutionary factors.

   Grains are far from great, and arguably the move from hunter gatherer to fixed / agricultural settlements was a backwards step in terms of individual health, but you'd certainly live long enough to propagate genetic material on a diet of mostly grains, so in that sense you could say 'it worked'.

   Back to the thrust of your question - how many people actually use Debian rather than Microsoft Windows?

   Does this mean the latter is two orders of magnitude better, or just two orders of magnitude more dominant?

   > Anyway one of the things Monbiot talks about in his book are new perennial versions of wheat and rice that have decent yields, so maybe they can become part of permaculture.

   You should probably read some books on permaculture, because 'growing a better monoculture' is entirely not what it's about.

   If you're stateside, Toby Hemenway's book is well regarded. (He once intimated to me that my reliance on metric meant I couldn't be as good a designer as someone familiar with both metric and imperial / customary / archaic but nonetheless.) The original Permaculture Designer's Manual (600 pages) is hefty and dense, but definitely the canonical work.

   I mentioned Joel Salatin earlier - he doesn't identify as a permaculturist, but his integrated approach to farming definitely aligns with some of the permy principles. I've only read his 'folks this ain't normal' and 'everything I want to do is illegal' but he's got an abundance of books, as well as some great videos available on youtube. He's the chap that featured in Michael Pollan's 'The Omnivore's Dilemma'.

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3. JeddApr 2020
   > It's interesting that Permaculture is already more than 26 years old.

   It's interesting that, while the statement is technically true, you pick the number 26.

   Bill Mollison & David Holmgren published 'Permaculture One - A Perennial Agriculture for Human Settlements' in 1978.

   So it's not only more than 26 years old, it's also more than 41 years old.

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4. JeddApr 2020
   > "Permaculture" was really just Mollison ...

   It really wasn't.

   https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3961757-permaculture-one

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5. b42boyerJan 2010
   I'm looking for a book: Permaculture one. The closest library that has it is in Santa Cruz. Is there an open source or an electronic source I ca access?
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