Permaculture and the Value of Tree Crops
“If most of nature is dominated by perennial plants . . . why is our agriculture dominated by annual crops? Why doesn’t it follow the design rules of nature?” These were the two questions that inspired permaculture co-founders Bill Mollison and David Holmgren as the two began conversing in the 1970s. Before sustainability was part of the public lexicon, these ecological pioneers questioned not only our impact on the natural world, but also the principles of design that guide those interactions.
Permaculture and the Value of Tree Crops
Their eventual answer to these questions was permaculture—a creative design process revolving around three ethics: earth care, people care, and fair share. The actual word permaculture is a fusion of two Latin terms: permanens—which Mollison defines as “to persist indefinitely,” and cultura—the practices that support human occupation. In Mollison’s eyes, permanent agriculture, or permaculture, would be “a valid, safe, and sustainable complete energy system” that provides for indefinite human flourishing.
In 1987 the UN-orchestrated Bruntland Commission published its “Our Common Future” report, which defined sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Permaculture pushes that envelope even further. Put into practice, permaculture principles help evaluate the ability of an ecological or agricultural system to persist in the long term. “A sustainable system is any system that in its lifetime can produce more energy than it takes to establish and maintain it,” Mollison explains.
To achieve such a design, any element of an agricultural system must be filtered through twelve permaculture principles:
• Observe and interact
• Catch and store energy
• Obtain a yield
• Apply self-regulation and accept feedback
• Use and value renewable resources and services
• Produce no waste
• Design from patterns to details
• Integrate rather than segregate
• Use small and slow solutions
• Use and value diversity
• Use edges and value the marginal
• Creatively use and respond to change
While some question the feasibility of permaculture on an industrial scale (increased diversity complicates mechanized systems), Mark Shepard, founder and President of the Restoration Agriculture Development, and CEO of Forest Agriculture Enterprises, is practicing just that on his New Forest Farm. Shepard transformed his 106 acres from row-crop grain production to a commercial-scale agricultural ecosystem that uses perennial crop plants to mimic the productivity of an oak savannah. Over 15 years, Shepard estimates he has planted nearly a quarter-million trees on the property.
In his text Restoration Agriculture, Shephard explains that “Biomass researchers have shown that short-rotation woody cropping systems (SRWCS) are able to capture three to seven times the energy per acre as an annual crop field.” Tree crops, he argues, are the key to implementing permaculture on an industrial scale.
His claim is an echo of J. Russell Smith, whose book Tree Crops, A Permanent Agriculture, was published 40 years ahead of its time in 1929. “Not only is the tree the great engine of production, but its present triumphant agricultural rivals, the grains, are really weaklings,” Smith concludes. While grain crops require the same level of attention year to year, tree crops require a decreasing level of maintenance as they work towards an increasingly large yield, all the while preventing soil erosion and sequestering atmospheric carbon.
A global shift from annual row crops to agriculturally productive forests may be a long time in coming, but if Mollison, Holmgren, and their colleagues are correct, it could be the key to an energetically secure future.
(Read more about Macroeconomics and Agricultural Output in China)