Healthfromthegarden

Permaculture farming – the art and science of sustainable agriculture. When most people these days think of farming, they think of vast tracts of cleared land containing only one or two crops such as wheat or soybeans. They think of man versus land. This is exactly the opposite of the train of thought embodied on a permaculture farm, where a key principle is working with the land, not against it.

Learning how to integrate with your surroundings in a symbiotic and sustainable manner is the name of the game in permaculture! In the simplest terms, it is the building of sustainable food forests that will last for generations if managed properly.

The applied science of permaculture farming is centered around a core set of ethics and design principles. By learning to apply these principles in a real world manner you gain access to an agricultural system which is extremely versatile, resilient, productive, and overwhelmingly self-sustaining by recycling its resources holistically. It accomplishes all this by relying on cyclic, harmoniously integrated, zero-waste farming systems.

Many people wonder what is the difference between permaculture farming and organic farming. The answer is the defined set of parameters involved. While many permaculture farmers utilize organic farming practices, and vice versa, this is not always the case. Ideally, organic farms are not using any chemical fertilizers or pesticides. However, regulations can vary greatly country to country.

A permaculture farm generally wouldn’t use either chemical fertilizers or pesticides on general principle as they have proven to be unsustainable, which directly conflicts with the core permaculture principle of sustainability. So because of this principle, most permaculture farms are organic farms, at least for the most part. While many organic farms might be apt to use certain permaculture principles in their designs, their core definition lies in the type of nutrients they use, which they may not necessarily employ in a cyclic or sustainable manner.