Permaculture TV - some background

Contact

Nicholas Roberts email nicholas@themediasociety.org

Summary

1. Permaculture.TV will work to create educational and documentary video that will empower self-help, by increasing food security and community resilience, in a time of economic and ecological crisis.
2. Permaculture.TV is a website that features online videos of people making home, school and community gardens around the world.
3. Permaculture.TV is a media cooperative project that uses web video technology to educate the community about grass-roots solutions to sustainability, such as gardens in schools, community gardens, home gardens, healthy eating, and lifestyles.

About Permaculture

“The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children”
Bill Mollison, co-founder of Permaculture, 1990

“What permaculturists are doing is the most important activity that any group is doing on the planet. We don’t know what details of a truly sustainable future are going to be like, but we need options, we need people experimenting in all kinds of ways and permaculturists are one of the critical gangs that are doing that.”
Dr David Suzuki geneticist, broadcaster and international environmental advocate

Permaculture is a broad-based and holistic approach that has many applications to all aspects of life. At the heart of Permaculture design and practice is a fundamental set of ‘core values’ or ethics which remain constant, whatever a person’s situation, whether they are creating systems for town planning or trade; whether the land they care for is only a windowbox or an entire forest. These ‘ethics’ are often summarised as;

• Earth Care – recognizing that the Earth is the source of all life (and is possibly itself a living entity – see Gaia theory) and that we recognize and respect that the Earth is our valuable home and we are a part of the Earth, not apart from it.
• People Care – supporting and helping each other to change to a way of living that is not harming ourselves or the planet, and to develop healthy societies.
• Fair Share (or placing limits on consumption) – ensuring that the Earth’s limited resources are utilized in ways that are equitable and wise.

Modern thought about permaculture began with the issue of sustainable food production, short for “permanant agriculture”. It started with the belief that for people to feed themselves sustainably they need to move away from reliance on industrialised agriculture. Where industrial farms use technology powered by fossil fuels (such as gasoline, diesel and natural gas), and each farm specialises in producing high yields of a single crop, permaculture stresses the value of low inputs and diverse crops. The model for this was an abundance of small scale market and home gardens for food production, and a main issue was food miles.  The benefits of low-input diverse-crop model was that it did less damage or even revitalized the soil, therefore was a more sustainable way of growing.

Soon after, realizing that survival of the human species relied on much more than food, Permaculture now is discussed in terms of what “permanant culture” would look like.  All aspects of culture — finance, energy systems, water systems, soil health, transportation, community relations and food — are linked, and to ignore one element and focusing on all others is likely to lead to a failed system.

Permaculture TV seeks to bring Permaculture’s concept that we need to seek immediate sustainable systems.