Using permaculture agriculture

Permaculture is a practical design approach which enables people to establish productive environments providing for food, energy, shelter, material and non-material needs, as well as providing the social and economic infrastructures that support them. Permaculture aims to create systems that will sustain not only for the present, but for future generations.

Growing multipurpose structural and functional communities of trees, shrubs, bushes and herbs that can provide food, fodder, fuelwood, mulch, fruit, timber and other needs, and soil protection and renewal. The harmonious integration of landscape and people, providing their food, energy, shelter and other needs in an environmentally sound way.

The Australian, Bill Mollison, has promoted the 'Permaculture Movement' with the aim of promoting understanding of the conscious design of self-sustaining agricultural landscaping and the creation of agricultural ecosystems that embody the diversity, complexity and stability of natural environments. He says, "Our task is to work with the abundance of nature, to evolve a new ecologically based agriculture that is both bountiful and enduring".

Most broadscale permaculture is currently taking place in Australia and the USA, with a new farm starting up in Wales as a guide to temperate Europe. The book The Forest Garden, published by the Institute for Social Inventions, describes how to establish an all-food, minimal maintenance, layered garden, in town or country, consisting entirely of fruit and nut trees and bushes, wild and self-seeding vegetables and herbs.

The Earth Village Network is a worldwide foundation that sets up land trusts for the creation of permaculture projects and links these projects in a supportive global network.