Purpose

So, I've decided to start an experimental blog over here as a place to drop some longer-form thoughts on the subject of "Evidence Based Permaculture", which I think about a lot.

I'll give some flavour to that, because the prefix "Evidence Based" gets thrown around a lot, sometimes in cases where, informatically speaking, there is no way for evidence to have any bearing on a thing.

Something I've joked about in the past, is that there are two kinds of permaculturalist: The kind who appeal to mysticism and aesthetics, and the kind who appeal to pragmatism and experimentation. I'm far more interested in the latter, even if I enjoy me some mysticism and I do love good aesthetics. Permaculture is more interesting than "making rugged and spiral-festooned gardens", because it posits that a culture can be constructed around a way of managing our ecology that can be nurtured and exploited indefinitely. A Permanent Culture, even if (taken to the extreme of the word "culture") that's actually a bit intimidating to think about.

Given that I'm writing this on Sunbeam City, it's worth pointing out how closely the concept of Communalism / Eco-Socialism dovetails with the general thrust of Permaculture, so it's very on-topic.

In sharp contrast to Organic, I also appreciate that Permaculture is about what you do, rather than what you don't. I see very little value in an ecological farming model that takes a certain aesthetic point of view and turns it into an enduring dogma, even when it flies completely against objective facts and emerging scientific and agronomic knowledge. Permaculture isn't proscriptive, and it's not a "protected designation", so even if most permaculturalists strongly disagree with my points of view on the merits of genetic engineering, they don't get to tell me that I'm not a permaculturalist. That's a valuable thing in a radical movement, because ideas that don't change and grow, instead stagnate and dogmatise. I might never convince my fellow permaculturalists, but at least I'm not wasting my breath in trying.

So what might I post here.. I have a few things in mind in the short term, including:

• An exploration of what happens to our concept of "abundance" as we shift some macro-variables like climate, population, and even scientific knowledge. When we imagine a post-scarcity future, what is plausible now? What was plausible a few decades ago? What will be plausible if we continue on a few big trends?
• A ruminating overview on "Evidence Based Herbalism", and how that differs from "Traditional Herbalism", and how it compares to "Conventional Medicine". And perhaps, how it can empower Permacultural medicine but also demonstrate a clear role for permacultural pharmacy.
• A little overview of some neo-staple crops for a temperate permaculture that I've been experimenting with lately, and how the modern diversity of crops to choose from can help us improve the yield-to-labour ratio of our backyard cropping. I might dive into a quick overview of how the economics of crops grown at scale (as we must) necessarily differs from backyard crops, and how this explains why low-yielding crops like heirlooms make a lot of sense in gardens but not so much on farms.

Anyways, hopefully that's enough motivation for me to actually follow-through on something here. Feel free to shame me if I don't. :)

If you're not familiar with Plume, by the way, it's a federated blogging engine. So you can find and favourite or boost this post directly from a Fediverse account such as a Mastodon account, by dropping the URL into the Mastodon search box (I'm not sure how this is done from other Fediverse engines like GNU Social or Pixelfed, sorry!). Likewise, you can drop the URL to the blog into the search box to follow my blog from a Fediverse account. So, follow me there if you like the idea of the above or feel like contributing ideas. :)