this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
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Modern industrial agriculture has one outstanding advantage: productivity. Hundreds of acres of land can be cultivated with the labor of three or four persons.
Permaculture on the other hand doesn't allow for such productivity. Most people will need to grow their own food to some degree. That's actually great in the sense that food production becomes increasingly local, produced where it is consumed, in such a way that all nutrients make their way back to the soil in a cycle which has been broken by modern agriculture.
As another commenter pointed out, permaculture can seem unscientific at times. And it's perfectly fine. We all have different sites, climates, soils and experience, no size fits it all and it's often difficult in such circumstances to find the best solutions. Some will employ more unconventional ideas, as long as it works for them.
In the end, it will always make a lot more sense than planting a few hundred acres with a genetically engineering crop monoculture that can only survive with a constant supply of pesticides and fertilizer, while depleting the soil.
More reading: https://leanlogic.online/glossary/lean-food/
That conventional agriculture is especially productive is a myth. It is mostly just the cheapest way producing (that also externalizes a lot of the costs).
Yes, romantic views of Permaculture as mixed agroforestry with mostly human labour are an easy strawman to point out that we "need" conventional agriculture.
But actually, modern greenhouse agriculture incorporates a lot of the ideas of Permaculture while being orders of magnitude more productive than conventional agriculture on open fields.
I meant productivity as output/labor not as output/land. You're right in saying permacultural production exceeds industrial agriculture in output/land productivity, however it does require more labor.
This is a problem because nowadays a tiny proportion of the population works in agriculture. 200 years ago the vast majority of the population were farmers, and it couldn't have been otherwise. Until industrial agriculture allowed us. The vast majority of the population now dedicate themselves to other tasks, in the intermediate economy, which ultimately provides no value: transport, bureaucracy, etc. Let us call this "intensification".
Despite ultimately providing no value, these tasks are still required for our society to function, and thus we can't decide to do without them. Intensification is a one way process. If we want to keep the current society intact, we are stuck with industrial agriculture.
Perhaps as you say modern greenhouse is more productive in output/land, but this doesn't matter if we don't have the labor force to do it.
Now it may seem like I'm destroying my own point by saying permaculture is not globally viable. It's not, really. For it to become so, we'll need some sort of societal collapse at one point or the other. Deintensification.
There is another important metric: output/energy.
Today in the US we need around 7-10 calories of energy to produce 1 calories of food. It's possible thanks to fossil fuel bit it's not substainable in the long term.
Before 1950 the ratio was around 0.5 calories of energy for 1 calories of food.
Do you have any sources for this?
Here is an article where they discuss about this topic (in french unfortunately): https://resiliencealimentaire.org/lempreinte-energetique-du-systeme-alimentaire/#post-12761-endnote-6
The side of the article is this publication https://sci-hub.st/https://doi.org/10.1016/S0308-521X(02)00027-6
You mean to tell me you think no job other than agriculture has value? I think the exact opposite: that agriculture is a task fit for machines and a waste of human potential.
I think you misunderstood slightly. "Providing value" = primary producers, not "no value" as you understood.
The previous comment literally said “no value”.
Sure, but the context matters.
I only said jobs in the intermediate economy provide no value. I invite you to read more about it at https://leanlogic.online/glossary/intermediate-economy/
What value is the transport that brings me food produced thousands of kilometers from where I live, when it could've been produced locally, requiring no transport?
What value is the bureaucracy that keeps this exceedingly complex system working, when a smaller, easily manageable community would provide the same amount of well being?
I don't think any task is fit only for machines. That line of thinking, especially when applied to agriculture, leads to loss of skills, authenticity, and connection to our ecosystems
Then you'd starve to death the first time a localized crop failure happened in your area.
Even before that, your diet would be limited to whatever can be grown in your area. Areas unsuitable for agriculture would be rendered completely uninhabitable, which is the last thing we need in this age of severe housing scarcity and climate migration.
The global food distribution system has its inefficiencies, but it exists for a reason.
It wouldn't, and you need only open a history book to learn why. Life before global civilization was violent, painful, hungry, toilsome, and short.
Then you are in favor of wasting human potential. I can only hope that the majority disagrees with you on this point, or we'll never explore the stars.
That's rosy retrospection. History is not full of people leading full, idyllic, one-with-nature lives and passing away with a smile on a bed of flowers.
It's full of malnourished peasants forced to do unpaid back-breaking labor for their local warlord, only to be unceremoniously killed by the henchmen of some other local warlord.
Modern civilization, for all its faults, has done much to improve the standard of human life.