You may notice that in the next few lessons we will still be focusing mainly on the assessment and information phase of the design process.
David Holmgren says, “Traditional agriculture was labor intensive, industrial agriculture is energy intensive and permaculture design systems are information and design intensive.”
To the degree we get the information part down, the design part becomes much more likely to be very successful! In our society, people are not encouraged to gather enough information or understand something sufficiently before jumping in and making changes. Many of us have never even been shown how to gain that information, especially about the natural world.
The introduction section of the course about industrial agriculture gives us an indication of how much can go wrong when we don’t take the time to do that. We emphasize observation of the systems you work with over authoritarian learning. There is value in what we know, for sure, and much can be learned from that, but your own observation and experience is vital too. This is where the simple permaculture principles become truly powerful and your designs become great. Or as we like to say, regenerative whole system designs.
But perhaps an even better reason to do this, is that it’s fun to observe, interact with and understand the natural world more deeply. Nature is endlessly fascinating, and in Land and Nature Stewardship, we’re going to take a look at her from a number of different angles.
We’ll cover the pattern language of how nature responds to climates and microclimates, how water works within the landscape and how you can become water secure, the nature of different types of soil and how you can improve soils with simple techniques, and how nature produces abundant food, and how you can mimic a natural ecological system with your food production, thus greatly reducing the energy and labor inputs that many don’t even question.