 Well, how about this for an idea if most places on the planet nature creates some sort of forest as its optimal Sort of design solution. Why doesn't our agriculture if not literally look like a forest Function like a forest. There's none other than the co-founder of the concept of permaculture, David Holmgren David is an environmental designer Activists futurists author many more adjectives that is impossible to to to bring it together and together we'll discuss what permaculture is Was some of their principle and how to develop permaculture principles in all urban and non-urban Territories Hello everyone and welcome to the circular Metables in podcast the bi-weekly meeting where we have in-depth discussions with Researchers policy makers and practitioners to better understand the metabolism of our societies or in other words their consumption of resources and their emissions of pollutions and how to reduce them in a systemic socially just and context-specific way With all that being said David. Thanks so much and welcome to the podcast. Pleasure to join you. We've already had a fantastic Discussion before the podcast I'm excited about what we will discuss I want to give the people who are to the people who are listening and watching some context Meaning of course you have co-developed this concept with Bill Morrison in the 70s But can you take us back and let us know what was this period this era like So there is I have here a couple of points you grew up in a radical political activist family, of course There was the limits to growth There was a rise of environmental movement. There was the political situation in Australia There was the this whole, you know, whole systems theory period as well So it was just a boiling period somehow. What was it like to grow up and and live then? Well, of course any Period people live through of Extreme change in some ways is experienced as just natural or normal But it was a period of great excitement In a left political family after 23 years of conservative government the most radical reformist government in Australia Labor government under Goff Whitlam came to power in 1972 and changed almost everything at the same time on the steps of the first energy crisis to hit the Affluent countries since the end of the Second World War Happened the following year didn't hit Australia as hard as many places in Europe But it was part of the whole Fervour of environmental ideas ideas in the counterculture that year was also 1973 was the year of the Aquarius festival in northern New South Wales, which was sort of part of the counterculture back to the land Movement but also in Tasmania where I Was traveling around Australia as a young person Having completed school in in Western Australia and came across many of these ideas and Especially the environmental design school led by Barry McNeill in Hobart which was the most radical experiment in tertiary education in Australia's history as far as I can tell and You know it was to train architects landscape architect urban planners But without a curriculum based on the idea that the world is changing so fast that there's no point in teaching Design professionals a specific set of skills because by the time they come to practice Those skills will be irrelevant and you have to teach them had a problem-solve and how to to think And so I joined that school in 74 Where all of the radical dissonance and dropouts from all the architecture Landscape architectures got all gathered in little Hobart, which Europeans might not understand It's only a city of 120,000 people in a the island state with only 500,000 so having all of the infrastructure of Democratic society with only a population of 500,000 it it was an amazing time and where people were sort of very connected across academia across environmental activism and very connected still to the rural roots of Tasmania being an an extractive economy of Hydroelectricity forestry mining agriculture all of those things and You know meeting Bill mollison He was at the time a senior tutor in the psychology faculty actually at the other Institution I never went to one of his lectures, but I was interested in his ecological thinking ideas and his background as a wildlife researcher who had been employed as an Uneducated rabbit trapper by some of the top wildlife research scientists in Australia because they recognized how capable he was so all of those things were happening at that time and of course the European green movement has since recognized that Tasmania was the place where was one of the birthplaces of the modern green political movement in the opposition to the damming of the last world rivers and Bill mollison was involved in all of those early campaigns and Was connected to all all of that World that also overlapped with the the most active Organic farming Networks in Australia were also in little Tasmania. So it was both a small hinterland place You know like being in Corsica or Nova Scotia in Canada or somewhere And yet there were all of these incredible creative ideas and Connections to the world happening there at that time Yeah, that seems fantastic this convergence of people ideas and and fights as well I mean struggles at the same time. It seems that it was Like being at the right place at the right time or I mean, it's hard to say as you say It's it's easy to say when you're in the future looking back that this was a turning point or a tipping point into something but Why were you interested in? Environmental design. What was this more of a sign of activism were you interested in architecture? What was well, I was Very interested in in design and my initial interests were Very much I was a practical person with my hands and although I was a an ideas person and Interested in theory. I was very oriented to Practical things and I was initially attracted to Architecture and in some ways I would still regard myself as a more competent ecological builder than ecological farmer, but in that first Generalist degree course in environmental design by the end of the first year my interests had gravitated around the if you like the profession of landscape architecture and I was interested in the crossover between landscape architecture the science of ecology and The practice of agriculture where humans get their most important basic needs food and other things and I could see how two of these Intersected in various examples, but I couldn't find anywhere where all three came together and It was around that time that I met Bill mollison through a chance event that he was participating at and You know, we got talking about what I was going to throw myself into in the second year Of the course because I had total freedom to do Whatever I wanted and that was that was um Late 74 where the seed of the idea For the perm culture concept and urged and then our relationship was that of Mentor to student but never a formal Relationship and we worked together and I crafted This manuscript which actually became the unpublished manuscript that I then used as my primary reference in my thesis slightly arrogant As David Holmgren would say, yeah Uh And uh, I Then walked away from The second stage of that academic uh course, which would have given me a professional level qualification to Just get my hands on experience and it it was Bill in that phase who encouraged me to hand the manuscript back to him and He was ready to take these ideas to a larger stage than the university where he was and in 76 We published a joint article And did some interviews and then We have this huge interest from publishers wanting to publish the manuscript that became permaculture one So that's my sort of marker to say to people how come 15 australian publishers Approached a relatively unknown and cantankerous Tasmanian academic and a completely unknown graduate student Wanting to publish that manuscript in 1977. What was going on in the world? Because my thesis is that move forward to the 80s After 83 in australia, I'd say and the idea would have sunk like a lead balloon because we were we were into the Thatcherite Reaganite neoliberal revolution even though we got that with a sort of a human face and a green tinge under the Hawk Keating labor government, but nevertheless You know all of those ideas were sort of pushed on to the back burner. So in that sense that timing was there and Bill mollison had the energy and the the boldness to leave his tenured position at the university and outside of academia take permaculture to the world whereas I was very young and I didn't feel Exactly like I had the grounded experience to sort of back all the interest that there was in this so My interest was in if you like doing permaculture rather than talking about it or Whatever and So, yeah to any extent, um, you know, I say while I and bill mollison were the co originators of the permaculture concept Bill mollison was the father of the permaculture movement And right from the beginning it sort of really became a movement You know, which had all of the downsides of popularism eco fashion all of those things But, you know, I get the years get dirty as they leave the sort of Headspace or The academy and get into the real world And they get dirty in different ways in the same way that permaculture got dirty through becoming popularist and Just practical grassroots activity Sustainable development, you know, almost a decade later got very dirty by going straight into sort of global politics You know, so You know, yeah, that's a sort of complex history in the in the origins of Of permaculture and and of course in calling it permaculture which meant permanent agriculture as a foundation for any permanent Culture and we were using the word permanent In lieu of the word sustain the sustainability concept was didn't exist and it was referencing of course um, a visionary book from the 1930s by American agronomist Russell J Smith tree crops a permanent agriculture this idea of enduring forms of Cultivation based on perennial plants tree crops rather than the vulnerabilities of just annual crops but from the beginning the the The permanent culture was implicit In the concept. Yeah We're gonna have some more time to dive in into the the concept. Of course what what I wanted to What you said also how the the concept originated in the 70s and that was the right moment to do so because Later it might have been either diluted shut it down or many other elements in the same moment. There was People like Herman daily with steady state economics Um, yes, I think there was a Kennedy who was critiquing growth back in the 60s early 70s as well Yes, so so there was a ripe moment for these board ideas Uh, and somehow they they put a lid on it for a number of years until they re-emerged today and permaculture today has an extraordinary um Success and welcome as well because it's felt as necessary. So we we discussed about these you know lulls and peaks or valleys and peaks about when it's ripe for some Revolutionary and strong and bold ideas and when the system kind of Plateaus and and flattens everything Uh, you know this idea of post-growth degrowth critique of growth Has known several phases and in the 70s it was Extremely interesting to read about that when politicians u.s politicians talked about we should not aim for growth. I was I was Really flabbergasted. So, yeah Yeah, it it is true where these things come in in cycles and I see the periods in between Are opportunities for consolidating the ideas grounding the ideas Proving what works sieving the grain from the chaff And then these pulses when there's adoption by another cohort of people another generation or uh another group And also when that becomes second generational Where people are have already been raised maybe when they were young in a family Where some of these ideas or related concepts were sort of part of the osmotic absorption environment then people when the signals change in society those people who Have those ideas and not so much struggling To grapple with them just at a conceptual level But they actually have something of that in them selves ready ready to go Because these processes of deep cultural change don't just happen out of some smart ideas We always worry that yeah Yeah, that were one article away or one policy away to to change the word but actually yeah, it takes some generations to do so um Yeah, let's dive in a bit. I love the fact that You were looking at the intersection between these three elements ecology agriculture and landscaping design um, and you were saying that you know, you could find combinations of twos but not combinations of threes and Does that already reflect your systemic thinking? about links flows toxicosystems Yeah Kind of having the academic jargon or grammar to to think about these and put them together Yeah, I think it was partly intuitive and also coming from my upbringing because You know my father's understanding of geopolitics went, you know in history You know, he left school when he was 14, but he is you know, the probably the most significant thinker in early influencing me to sort of Stand things that I now look back and say he was thinking systemically And when I met bill mollison, you know, I My judgment was ah This person thinks in a way Uh, what I called ecological thinking because all of the academically trained ecologists I'd met Uh, I had sort of somewhat arrogantly in my youth written them off as reductionists. They were bit people You know, they were really botanists and zoologists who, you know Ecology was the new thing, you know, and Yeah, and they might have had a lot of knowledge, but it was bit knowledge Whereas when I met mollison, I thought Yeah, he thinks ecologically Now as I said, I didn't he didn't have a label. I didn't know who he was So I was already thinking In that way, um, I can now sort of understand it wasn't something Specifically that I was trained in even though there was a lot of those elements floating around in environmental design um You know, for example, we had the colleague of EF sheer marker George McRobie was um Did three months teaching at the school Uh, while I was there. So there were there were people who in their different ways were Yeah, we're thinking systemically and um, and so you mentioned that Uh, there was these two elements, of course the the permanent element and the culture element. So permanent is kind of us to to stay over time or to subsist over time culture and activity that That helps humans thrive Um, but there was this dissonance or as your colleague bill was mentioning that How come agriculture is annual and you know forests or or perennial or was that the the yeah Well, so there was the seed of the idea that mollison said to me in response to that question If this is what I'm interested in and he said Well, how about this for an idea if most places on the planet nature creates some sort of Forest as its optimal sort of design solution Why doesn't our agriculture if not literally look like a forest function like a forest? And I thought yeah that that is this is perfect as a starting point, you know and so of course a lot of permaculture one was focused on how to design Integrated perennial polycultures, but of course there was a lot of other elements that were there to around polyculture itself as opposed to monoculture within annual cultivation the integration of animals and plants that in ecosystems animals You don't have animal ecosystems and plant ecosystems and at least in australian agriculture We were familiar with the idea of animals integrated with crops whereas already industrial agriculture in many parts of the world was separating those Those functions and then the big one was the separation of human settlement from agricultural production and resource extraction and of course this is what The the best synthesis of this that I believe is Sebastian Morrow's work in Architecture and agriculture taking the countryside that these two fundamental activities of of shelter and habitation That we associate with the profession of architecture and the provision of basic human Needs from a working relationship with nature agriculture that the separation of these two functions is actually at the core of the environmental crisis and he's tracking of the various Ideas and practices to bring those back together and recognizing that that distillation that permaculture is actually at a lineage center of that reunification of of settlement and And production and if you look at that in just a direct practical way That's in the household economy where people provide for themselves starting at the The back door step where the the garden farming Extends from the built Environment so it's bringing those things right back literally together ends in some form and that lineage run right runs right through to my You know more recent work on retro suburbia Because obviously urban form Whether at small Pre-industrial scale or post-industrial mega scale and it's Involved some degree of separation of function between the biological and the and the built the technosphere and the ecosphere but In many places those lower density developments offer that sweet point where there's that intersection where there's the a collective population big enough to provide some of the functions we associate with urbanity and And to some degree of self-reliance we associate with the rural In environment So how those things, you know intersect is Is was obviously, you know central to To permaculture, but I think it's also important to recognize that That from the beginning Permaculture was predicated on the assumption that the environmental crisis Was fundamental and that the limits to growth were real and that a steady state Outcome from the limits to growth was less likely and something that almost all commentators called some sort of collapse But I always Saw as some sort of decline descent Required some sort of re ruralization Of society to some degree or other and a real localization of the economy And that that's what distinguishes ideas like permaculture from the second wave environmentalism that got going in the late 80s Where there was a much greater confidence about The technospheric Sustainability And that you know that all the world will be living in cities and all of these assumptions and energy transition Will enable all of these systems to transform if not in some accelerated onward and upward phase at least into some sort of steady state and I see that as very much emblematic of mainstream sustainability Emerging unconsciously mostly out of the sweet point of the final scenario of the limits to growth Model run where everything's appeared to move out onto a steady state Was certainly predicated In the 70s and then over the decades. I've certainly articulated it as An adaption to a world of energy descent And that that means there's some sort of differences or differences of focus from a lot of you know other You know environmental thinking which is you know being predominant certainly emerging in the 90s and the 2000s I think you you put your finger on of course the the big Elephant in the room which are fossil fuels cheap abundant fossil fuels And how they they really tear tear the parts cities and their hinterlands or cities and and Well life in a broader sense somehow When we look at this 200 200 year period where beforehand urine and manure was used in your backyard And this became you know through fossil fuels nitrogen based Fertilizers when we had Everything just rocks throw away and now we have trains and then we got cars etc and pushed them back where we had Certain types of plants certain types of animals etc, etc So we see that the disconnect grew further and further apart the more we put fossil fuel in the engine first coal then petroleum etc etc. So fossil fuel is really this This new system that That's change our whole agriculture and current system and you you have this as a as a critique, of course How do we need to redesign? our agricultural and current society without fossil fuels or this Famous energy descent and I think this is important to to to underline because you Well You also critique growth in in that sense because fossil fuels enables Long-lasting or infinite at least in our mindsets growth. It's not It's not a reality. Of course. There is a point where we cannot go further Not only because of environmental, but also societal issues. So Where did that so this energy descent? Concept or idea was this based on the limits to growth Was it something that you experience yourself also in the agricultural system? Where did that come from and how did you use it or mobilize it? well, we were seeing of course the adverse impacts of Industrialization industrialization that actually agriculture was the last human activity to be industrialized The first was textile production and there were sort of massive gains in productivity With that because basically a mechanical process Agriculture was the hardest thing to industrialize and it's really not till the second half of the 20th century in a lot of places where It starts to become industrializing because everywhere is so different You know, it's not amenable to this, you know one size fits all and The early organic movements around the world in in germany and britain in the united states quite independently of that The early concepts of natural farming In or nature farming in japan in the 1930s were starting to react against the impacts of Fossil fuel based industrialization of agriculture. So there's that adverse impact, but there's also the Inevitable logical these things are not renewable. So at some point they run out You know, so how do you what's the point of designing a civilization? That should last for thousands of years based on something that's going to sort of disappear And The assumptions, of course about that were so often You know in the 1950s it was going to be nuclear power was going to be so cheap and and the The solar revolutionaries in the 70s were also saying, you know, we will have this limitless energy so the understanding energetic Realism and understanding the foundations of that is being sort of central to my work and You know, it's interesting that the first reference in permaculture one is to howard teodam's energy Environment power and society in 1971 and that was hugely influential on me understanding this how The world works how nature works how agriculture works how the history of human evolution and culture operates according to energy laws and how energy can be used as both A measure of things and is the driving force in any Self-organizing process at any scale in the universe and understanding energy density And those things are really the key to understanding Ecological literacy and any sort of sustainable design So I think those ideas that Were coming from many different sources, but for me the most Conceptually strong one was was howard otam's work and that continued to sort of influence My work my book permaculture principles and pathways beyond sustainability is dedicated to His memory so in that sense I was already in the early 80s having debates with colleagues who were focusing on urban development around Compact urban form trying to get away from car dependent australian american style cities to more european Style and I can remember those debates about a colleague who'd just come back from doing his phd in cobin hargan and talking about row houses You know not necessarily facing the sun just for energy efficiency and walkability And I was saying no here passive solar design Open orientation to the sun and having direct access to some land to grow food is actually More important now one of those distinctions was a distinction between cloudy western europe And sunny southern australia You know over just a very hard difference between 30 potential passive solar gain in in western europe and 100 percent in southern australia But another part of it was this energy descent idea that we will again have to produce perishable food Directly where people live we Although we can transport grains and other enduring things and special concentrates Over great distances if necessary Perishable food needed to be produced where people live and the most efficient way to do it is outside the the monetary economy In the household and community Economy and so that meant lower density residential development actually makes a lot of sense And so right there, you know like I remember that discussion And the person who was doing that he was in his youth and later a very active member of of permaculture melbourne And he'd been a student when I was sort of Doing visiting lectures At his school and he became a very very significant urban planner in australia and obviously my more radical ideas Didn't gain traction because there wasn't You know food and energy did not go radically up You know as soon as we thought it would and so without Expensive food and energy the environmental commitment to doing things is actually a very thin Dry a very weak driver Uh, you know without that need to do something and we I believe we are starting to get that shift now where Structural inflation the real cost of energy and food Is actually rising and although a privileged minority might not be feeling it Those things are starting to bite and they they become strong Uh economic and then cultural drivers in in these things out of necessity But of course a lot of our planning framework is completely in a different universe that that doesn't recognize or Or see any of those problems Well, of course, we're just 50 years or so too late in the in this problem And of course it was just as you mentioned Because we managed to fix or some people call them the capitalism fixes to To lower the prices of foods or maintain them relatively low of energy and food We found ways from the 70s, which were the energy crisis to today to always make a small fix to keep them low To not actually act And I think this is one of the important elements that you use Which is the Perspective element or the futurists hat that you have Which tries to say, okay, what if what happens when food is Gets too expensive. What happens if we can have agriculture and settlements Close once again. What happens if we stop expanding, etc, etc and I think this this perspective element that you have is essential and I guess this is of course a logical element in systems thinking and also in, you know Having an idea on the practical side and not theoretical, but How do you use this future thinking in your Practice and your designs as well to inform you about You know, how to navigate The future, right? Well, I suppose there's What I Came to the conclusion sometime in the in the 90s that That the changes although they weren't happening as fast as We thought They were happening fast enough to be way in excess of the cycle time For redesigning and rebuilding our urban form, especially of our great cities that that was a 100 year project To do that even with rising net energy Uh, so the turnover time of building stock of infrastructure all of those things meant we would be deep into the energy descent fundamental crisis Having to live with what has already been built in the fossil fuel era And so what that meant is that ideas of the gleaming new green cities were not the actual cutting edge or the the most important thing and even projects that have been involved in like rural eco villages as a designer and a developer, you know, in a very small way those Were sort of learning cycles for some elements that could be applied In non-intentional communities where people just live The recreation of community of geographic community out of these non-communities and similarly the the retrofitting of buildings the retrofitting of the biological landscape in with garden garden farming And the retrofitting of our own behavior to make it fit for purpose So that concept which was there in the energy crisis in the 70s, especially in the united states of this going from cheap energy to expensive energy and needing to insulate houses for the first time and and retrofit them to make them fit for new purpose I think is a very powerful Metaphor but it's also suggests that the the key action is actually bottom-up in community small scale Rather than planned structural change from from the top I mean, there's also been that for me a political Priority to subsidiarity that always do things in society at the smallest scale at which it can practically work Because it's more democratic more equitable and being very suspicious of centralization globalizing forces that are trying to Amass the structures to a greater hierarchy and make decisions at that level So that then, you know feeds into the very practical Empowering aspect of permaculture of people just doing stuff not waiting for some government policy or corporate magic Wand of modeling the world we want by just living it each day and adapting What we have and accepting that things are not Perfect and we have to in some ways muddle our way Through the you know this crisis And as you say, I mean we need to act at the same time as live because else we we're just going to become Crazy and imprisoned in this system and therefore you have these principles, right? These 12 permaculture principles in your opus Where I think so I'm just going to read them and then we can Interact with them. So you have number one observe and interact catch and store energy grow Sorry obtain a yield apply surf regulation and accept feedback produce no waste Use valuable and renewable resources and services Design from patterns and details to details apologies integrate rather than segregate Use small and slow solutions Use and value diversity Use edges and value the marginal and finally creatively use and respond to change And I think some of them are very Inspiring and and kind of can lead our everyday life that can help us a bit like mantras help us, you know Settle down and remember what we have to do because it's so overwhelming so complex that we don't know where to start when I read Use small and Small and slow solutions Okay, I feel that we can start small I can think about manual labor and then figure out what we need more apply self regulation So frugality is kind of a mindset or cultural change that we need to include Before anything else and I feel it's also very similar to you know, the leverage points of adonah meadows Where you need to act at different levers and different levers have different, you know Can multiply the force that you Put towards the system, right? And so how do you So you have these 12 principles I can imagine you you When you give them or when you talk with people you can give them for an ecological design But also restructuring a household as you as you say like a household life, but also in a wider system So these are I think From bottom up to larger scale projects now Yeah, so they're really thinking tools into Uh, the world of whole systems thinking and in a sense You can go through one principle and and sort of then that leads you into another and also they are in dynamic tension like the spokes of a bicycle wheel with the effects of Care for the earth care for people fair share which are universal in all traditional and indigenous cultures of place in some form or another That they represent the hub and the 12 principles represent Spokes which are intention. So for example the two power principles catch and store energy and obtain a yield especially obtain a yield. It's really capitalism brought down to the scale of one driving force rather than the only driving force Where there's got to be something which is providing the net energy that the real Go to make something. Yes, let's do that again the positive feedback And catch and store energy systems that actually store resources for lean times that that cope with the pulses that invest Thinking about the future and that those are balanced by The self regulation and accepting feedback negative feedback, which is like The brakes to balance the accelerator In the car, you know, so that these things have various analogies that can be Business analogies and mechanical analogies, but of course mostly The modeling of these things come from how that how nature works And then also the basic intuitive design principles which governed all indigenous and traditional cultures of place. So a lot of these principles that You know, a lot of permaculture when explained to often more traditional rural practical people Sometimes that they say Isn't a lot of that just is common sense. That's just common sense And I say yes. Well, a lot of it is but it's no longer common So there is an element where it's this rediscovery From modern people embedded in the Technosphere, how do we Change our thinking and so some of these things are a dynamic opposite to the prevailing one like integrate rather than segregate Well, the predominant design strategy in in the industrial era has been to segregate things because they conflict with one another You know, you put the housing over here in the industry over there because they make a mess when they're together You know and and that was a response to fossil fuel and fossil fuel scale and and Yeah, the energy density of a steel foundry doesn't go very well with with people but you know that Recognizing that the prevailing pattern in all sustainable cultures and in all ecosystems is systems tend To be integrated that symbiotic and complementary relationships The more common But of course, there's always an element of competition and predation And and including segregation, you know does exist in nature But it's it's it's not the predominant way of doing things and so Similarly with small and slow solutions and diversity You know, all of these things are about swinging the pendulum away from where the industrial mindset has has taken us and that that is a deep deep change and very hard often to To fathom but of course these design principles don't give you solutions. They are sort of big high level things or things you come back to when You realize you need to go back to the drawing board and maybe you need to go back to the drawing board in some more fundamental way and think from first principles again so But in their generality they they can be universally applied But of course they yeah, they don't give you the design answers You know And and that's what part of the critique that some people have said Yes, they see the thinking behind those principles and for people who have some grounded knowledge in what they are trying to design or create They make sense But they might not This is the critique might not help people who know nothing So this is this tension between theory You know of getting some abstract framework to guide you and just getting your hands dirty just doing something You know becoming embedded in what? what you need to relate to and And and that pathway and and they're obviously you know that theory and practice in dynamic tension in everything we do Well, that's a perfect said way to go to practice then Of course, you have done a number of small medium and big projects Which have used these principles and I think it's very inspiring for the people that listen and watch because You know in this podcast sometimes we we remain too theoretical We we discuss about donut economic steady-state post-growth critique to capitalism and all that but We we feel sometimes robbed of imagination. We we don't know what to do next, right? I mean, we know about universal basic income. We know about Doing riots. We we know a number of elements about how to attack the system that is prevalent today, but we have We it's difficult to also imagine what's the word that we want Which it's as as they say it's more easy to imagine the end of the word than the end of capitalism. So I think it's important that we we also give some some empirical and practical You know projects that have You know, you have built over time and because a permaculture project is not You know, you don't draw it and then the next year it's off the ground. Sometimes it takes many Decades to to thrive There are a number of them. Perhaps we can go through Well, when I was in bronze week, I think it was eight years ago or nine years ago I I visited of course the seris park, which was fantastic one of the small islands of melbourne actually which You look around and you don't understand where you are. But of course, there is where you are right now meliodora Um So perhaps can you just give us a brief overview of some of the Projects that are the most important to you then we're going to go more in details in meliodora because I think it's a Of course a a flagship project and what happens from the thinking to the doing like where are some of the You know steps Yeah, well, I think It you mentioned series, which is the sort of flagship project of the australian city farms and community gardens movement and it started on a 10-acre site of some of the worst industrial wasteland in In melbourne that had been a quarry and a rubbish dump and A bitumen batching plant and everything and I was there in that early phase and and permaculture was one of the influential ideas but it was interesting that You know the local government gave The organization this 10 acres of urban land on a peppercorn rental because it was a disaster It was a local who could want this and so I think it was emblematic of of The sort of permaculture strategy of using what others don't see as having any value You know and whether that's picking up something that people have discarded on the street or or finding wasted organic materials to create a garden instantly The whole series project You know that confidence that we could Remediate this You know toxic landfill in a way that probably now you would You would say oh no, you know like there were too too many things that would say no you can't deal with a site like this and there's you know, there was certainly a lot of naivety In the way some things You know evolved in that project, but it was also where there was complete uncertainty about funding about skill sets about people coming and going of all different Interest groups as in any community process. So rather than a grand design for the whole place it sort of Evolved organically and you know, there are many many stories including ones that I was in involved with of outrageous decisions, you know like having to be made to put something where it was and and You know, I then came back to the project in 89 as a consultant looking at where it had already become something and now the local government wanted some Assurance that this was actually worthwhile and didn't have a longer legacy And so I think, you know permaculture has been just one of many ideas and Agents of influence That worked through a place like series. So series isn't branded as a permaculture project even though they're they have long running Teaching of permaculture there, but it's it's been a an incredibly strong influence over the the decades and I think that's one of the ways that permaculture has been very successful is through the influence of ideas and organizations that were perhaps A little bit more mainstream within the organic certification movement, for example, the NASA organization, it's called the National Association of Sustainable Agriculture in Australia had a much more holistic A sort of permaculture lens to it than a lot of the other Certification organizations and it's no accident that people who started that were actually quite strongly influenced by permaculture, you know from the early years So I you know, I think there's those Things where that that type of Influence and sometimes, you know, not necessarily That credit coming back to permaculture as a result similarly the in rural Australia the Australian land care movement Which is a very broadly based Originally spontaneous farmer initiated response to land degradation in the 80s that that then got government support and funding in the 90s In various parts of Australia Permaculture was one of the influences in actually creating that even though later bureaucrats in that system had no conception or knowledge of those Interactions so I've been quite positive about those sort of informal And organic processes As much as things that are very conscious from You know permaculture design and branded if you like in a movement senses This is Permaculture And then of course, I mean there is the place where you are right now Meliodora Which is kind of the An Accomplished site meaning that you you have managed from design because from scratch to actually have A thriving place where at least two or three persons sometimes or four persons sometimes live so Yeah, well there's often more. There's three semi-autonomous households Here for the last Nearly a decade now Yeah, so so the numbers fluctuate So can you walk us through what happened when you and your partner Came together saw this place or And what were some of the steps? I mean, of course it's uh From what I've written here around one hectare of land you have From what I understand you are in charge of the plants and your partner Is In charge of the animals and you have different zones. So you have the house You have food plantation right right around the house, but also the orchard You also have water catchment water catchments and studios and all of that But I guess this was not a master plant and let's go we're gonna do it in a couple of years This was iterations Well, yeah, it was also a culmination of a decade of Of of mostly self-training as a permaculture designer and then the urgency of Leaving melbourne my partner leaving her well-paying job her two Teenage children and and then a baby on the way and my micro business as a permaculture consultant You know that We needed to do things within A limited budget working without debt from savings and primarily to get those systems Happening and me balancing that work of building a passive solar house developing the property with consultancy work that I was doing with farmers and other Landholders so that balance between the monetary economy And the non-monetary economy of of self-reliance of being an owner builder working outside the system of of debt with frugal living and then developing That in a progressive way, but thinking long term of getting the the basics of water supply Thinking about a drying climate in the mid 80s about What were the prospects with climate change of what would how would An area be affected that some of the most fireball bush fire vulnerable regions in in australia so all of that long-term thinking and getting that basic infrastructure in place and without really a strong sense that we wanted to be Completely self-sufficient or as people say these days off the grid You know those weren't really objectives and yet we became more self-sufficient than pretty much anyone we knew and more embedded in living modeling that permaculture way Of living and the original idea was a small property A modest property which I I thought this was small when I was in my 30s It doesn't feel quite so small now that I'm in my late 60s But that that would leave us free to put energy into larger projects In in the region and the the two larger projects that beyond involvement in many other community activities One was the informal The community-based management of the common land Downstream of us and what we call the spring creek community forest Which was a completely informal project and the other was a much more formal project that which was within our region the development of the friars forest eco village, which was a full development approval infrastructure and all of the governance structures So those were the two sort of somewhat larger projects that by having a property that was relatively modest Rather than I saw a lot of people on larger farms The whole project from a permaculture point of view was totally filled their their whole life and their Their work and that's pretty much Emerged and I think the the eco village Was also closely associated with my passion for sustainable forestry because it's a place where Which is unusual in Australia where people with environmental disposition Greenies are greenies with chainsaws and thin and manage the forest. This is very unusual in Australia much less Common than in Europe There's this great phobia about forestry being an impossible Thing to do sustainably in Australia as a result of our history so that that has been a big part of my work there and with the the local wild landscapes all of my work In relation to novel ecosystems and emergent ecologies the management Here that we've done without any government funding or any government approval just From the community doing things is as much an informal scientific research project to study what nature is doing And so a lot of my work and writing has been around that that that field of novel ecosystems of how nature itself is actually responding to human caused land degradation and creating New ecologies and that those are models from which we can learn to design Ecologies, which is of course the original conception of of permaculture. We're going to design an ecosystem So how does nature actually go about this process? And it's much more informative to look at where she is working in real time than ancient co-evolved stable ecosystems They are not actually as informative as these new emergent processes In response to radical change and so that's been a big theme in in my work At a theoretical level, but it's also very directly related to practice of Okay, how do we manage the places close to where people live so they're fire safe and they absorb water and purify Toxins and and build soil and store carbon and all of those functions that We need So there those projects have sort of You know over the years had some degree of integration and connection because I have focused more strongly within a bioregion even though I you know, I have had some travel and participation further afield but Most of my work has been You know concentrated in this Bioregion so that gives the opportunity to sort of Weave together many of the different threads that are that are relevant and basically participate with like-minded people in our community and many of them in our region there's a critical mass of people who have actually done some sort of permaculture Training through the permaculture design course, which has been the main mechanism by which permaculture has spread so in this region, it's not like It's a sort of a permaculture bioregion But you know, there's a lot of those threads in in different ways are expressed here And and that's as a result of work of a lot of people Certainly beyond and independently, but also connected to the work we've done Um, so we've talked about the permaculture principles and thinking and And let's say designing can you If it's okay with you, I would like to get a sneak peek of what is permaculture living. What is your everyday? Like how do you live in a place which is designed with permaculture? principles What were the everyday things that you have to do that you have to think that what is your life like? Yeah, well, I suppose my partner says about the house Passive solar it's passive solar design but active humans, you know, you need to open the blinds and you know the vents and You know do the various things that make the machine of the house Work and that that's a good thing that that humans need to do that rather than it all being run by computers Because you understand it and it's just part of the normal living pattern It's just that the house is a much more powerful Efficient engine than the average house, but traditionally every house needed to be Managed for climate Comfort so some of those things uh are sort of Yeah become more empowered because of the permaculture design and similarly, of course with Food growing And animals The Seasonality and the same way the house is governed by the The seasonal cycle of the weather systems all our activity is locked to the The seasonal cycles and that includes everything from you know, when you plant things, you know, there is times to do stuff And if you miss that That window is gone for a year, you know in the human Technospheric control world everything's sort of negotiable, you know, we can reschedule things Well dealing with nature is not like that You know, you have to do things at a certain time and you have to be ready for stuff and then that governs right through to my most far-reaching work and influence in the world like Any trips away have always been in the winter Because we don't go away for any significant time in the summer because there is too much activity happening And then most of our work has been home based So even before the internet we ran a home based business and that I sort of really saw my time divided about one third Paid in some way mostly as a consultant, but then progressively as a teacher and writer and public speaker one third in the household non-monetary economy providing for our Basic needs and one third sort of in the Work in the wider community And permaculture networks that aren't paid that are just sort of contributing To some larger goods. So that one third one third one third has sort of Been the way we've operated a lot Um Certainly sue has been more strongly in the household economy and and that was very much her preference And uh Though she's also been involved in our business and our business has been Home based and then progressively as we had other people involved in that business Uh, they are often working out of our home office And so we would have days where That's a that's sort of a business day And we now have days where it's a a farm work day. So the three households that are resident here contribute to doing all the stuff that needs to be done with Plants and especially with animals with livestock, of course It's non-negotiable the the welfare of those animals They are dependent on you and especially with dairy goats that you know have to be milked and all of those sorts of things so that um In a week There's a lot of different things happening and they're all quite closely integrated and a lot of people find that quite threatening or quite challenging where business and social relationships and Basic things that often people think of as private hobbies are all a bit mixed together And it was interesting. We had uh a journalist Who was traveling on a bicycle to places like us His book was called changing gears and the piece he wrote about us here I was talking about home-based living And as an urban person used to getting up in the morning and going somewhere else That was what he found more challenging about our place than the compost toilet or any of the other physical things that was this idea that In the future maybe most people will get up each day and more or less Be at home or within walking distance And that people won't sort of teleport themselves to some other place for the day And as a very urban person he just found that really challenging and of course For us, it's just like not just natural. We hate the idea of That you would commute anywhere And so that was like for me a decision. I think I made at a very young age Possibly when I was 17 years old I looked at the whole commute lifestyle. I thought I am never going to do That that sort of world So yeah, but each Time of the year there's very different things happening because of that That seasonal cycle So you integrate rather than segregate your Your thirds of your life into one place Absolutely and our son has critiqued this He says it says we have gone too far of muddling everything together and the need to No, that's business This is Yeah, so like what what does a holiday actually mean you have a very rich lifestyle where you you have A huge amount of autonomy Of self control But you actually live with very limited frugal Consumption, I mean as best we could model it about 10 years ago with the early ecological footprint Modeling spreadsheets. It was sort of about a quarter of the Australian average or something and living at that level and yet managing to maintain some Sort of influence in the wider world Because there's obviously attention between living very simply and frugally and Can you project if you like in some form power into the world? Well, most people do that by consuming directly and indirectly large amounts of resources including flying around the world and networking with People so we've sort of tried to make that You know that balance where there's not a means and ends Conflict is is so strong. Yeah, I think it's a wonderful example that a number of us aspire to Figure out a new lifestyle as well. How do we get community? Work with our With our own work and how do we get? Well, just enough of paid work to do all of the rest that is important for us for our community and And I think it's a very valuable Insight and I think you need that community as well for that. So in your you mentioned bioregion, which I think it's extremely relevant. So I had my My I told my friend Josh that I was going to talk with you and he said, oh just I'm very curious about how do we upscale this this? permaculture principles you mentioned bioregion, but of course in some places Uh, we we we said this divide between, you know, Australia and North America and Europe where in one place you have very dense urban cores Uh, and the other you also have suburbia where you can implement very easily Permaculture principles, but I'm wondering how do you I guess you have thought about it many times But how do you envision the scaling up? either bioregion in Australia and North America, but what happens when you have a large concentration of urbanites? Well, what what happens there? Yeah well, I think there's there's two two things that one is that scale and and density and there's definitely permaculture strategies and practices that Uh are relevant in in higher density places and if you if you look at that simple idea of Uh of garden farming to provide a household's needs that strongly Makes sense at both a rural and a suburban scale and then you look at high density Although there are some opportunities for, you know, rooftop gardens and aquaponics systems and mushroom cultivation in basements and all sorts of different things the basic thing that makes sense is a a relationship between those people and uh either sort of community collective garden spaces at urban fringe Or the community supported agriculture model where there's a relationship to commercial Farmers so obviously those both those intense urban forms of food production or the organizational relationship involve more participants more stakeholders and greater organizational complexity and governance issues And so therefore you're more working within the constraints of what the society provides Or what its current rules are Whereas in a rural area, there is still greater freedom to sort of do things that are really different from what the society thinks is proper and even legal So permaculture is always navigating that space those gray areas between You know the formal and the informal the legal and the illegal and deliberately sort of pushing those boundaries But I think through my future scenarios work. I think also need to recognize the large-scale hardening top-down Control structures which inevitably We are subject to and are partially a top-down response to the climate and the energy and the the poly crisis And that inevitably the structure of those things is more Authoritarian and more of a command economy and uses the power of the corporations to do things But in a parallel sort of shadow world There's opportunities at the margins to do things outside of those systems And so this is a very great difficulty for many activists and designers to come to terms with That that increasingly there's this divide that you're either in the system Or you're out of the system and the ability we've had to crossover between these Realms is actually getting harder and harder and the strategies That are actually being driven are actually quite Opposite even though they are both responses in their own ways to if you like the work, you know the poly crisis so Certainly from my point of view Permaculture has these opportunities at the fringes whether that's the geographic fringes or the conceptual fringes The informal economies the non-monetary economies And in the current world of the move to digitization and control if you like the cash and informal monetary economies and so some of those things from some perspectives are because I Disfunction and gridlock in in the top systems and that some people attribute to Dysfunction or evil But a lot of them are sort of just structural Outcomes of that we are really already deeply in the crisis So, you know at the same time that we're talking about sustainability and Limiting resource use, you know, there's one of the highest energy wars going on in Europe at the moment You know destroying military equipment and and human lives on a giant scale and accelerating the military industrial complex To make lots more of the same stuff. So We have to accept You know the ambiguities of that sort of world at the large scale and At the small scale so that at the small informal scale there's the need to ethically Deal with the issues and have an understanding of the larger picture But there is a priority to survive and Do one's own due diligence and to a significant extent treat the larger system Understand that it is actually a threat At the same time that it may be attempting to do things that are responding to the The crisis so I see there's that there's the scale thing and the density thing But there's this overlay between the formal and the informal and whether people are putting their energy Into one or the other and people involved in perm culture often span across those two realms But increasingly I think for everyone it's getting harder and harder to To do that So a lot of the things that I see are Huge creative opportunities in the gaps To do things which are small models And they don't change the larger system But they set up working models under very difficult circumstances that potentially In the right conditions in the future could Could be Models for larger scale change And if that fails then they're lifeboats in some form or another So that's That's I suppose a summary of You know how I see those Those dynamics working. I mean, yeah, we could talk about the pros and cons of you know rooftop gardens and whether Ideas like food growing on vertical walls makes energetic sense and and all of those Things and the You know the the huge learnings that there are in soil ecology and enormous positive you know Space that's coming to support a lot of the principles of organic and regenerative Agriculture but You know some of these things of course are relevant to some people and for others they are an abstraction Or they're not you know don't relate to where people are at and that that issue of what is relevant To me here now and what is the message? Getting used to the idea that context really changes everything In permaculture design it always depends No, and yet people the mindset of the modern world is oh, there's there's one Big answer that sort of works everywhere And that's very challenging for people to come to terms with How whether it's a household or whether it's a piece of land The context is Needs to be what what shapes the emergent design No, of course, it's an impossible question and that's why I I want to have your your wisdom kind of on this because It's also a matter of societal justice because most of the people that are the less Fortunate are gonna end up in cities within the system And then get trapped and so I think permaculture might be this This way out. How do you welcome people or what is the approach to get people on boards in permaculture? for people who are not Necessarily interested in or You know did not have the privilege to understand The the vastness of the environmental challenge and also why we should act. I mean a number of people just are in everyday You know struggle and they they don't have the The luxury to see outside of their everyday struggle, right and I can imagine that this is also the Urban versus not urban it's I'm not saying that rural lifestyle is Flowers and you know, everything is great, right? But at least you can make a subsistence for yourself and your household Sometimes and the urban words you are very much trapped in what you mentioned, you know, this top-down system So how do you welcome? Yeah underprivileged communities and people in in this Yeah, well, I think there's There's the recent movement of people into cities on an accelerated scale the biggest of which of course has been in China But it's part of, you know, the process of urbanization that's been going on for the last 500 years and when people Make that new move and it's often Carrot and stick they're drawn by the attraction and it's also the stick of the enclosure of the commons war and Dispossession that drives people that From the non-monetary economy into the household economy and out of Territory that one is familiar with to territory one is unfamiliar with Those people often in quite difficult situations still often have the skills of poverty And have the some innate intelligence of self-organization And although people can be in the worst of circumstances I've been More aware of what's happened in the long affluent countries where you get generations Of people who've only known wage work or social welfare work And don't have the skills of poverty Don't have any connection to nature Don't remember don't have any cultural memory Of any of those things and this is the poverty that's emerging very strongly in places like the united states Now and it's a different sort of poverty and a different sort of difficulty because you know people have been eating junk food generationally And we know now from epigenetics that what your grandparents were eating is actually You know shaped your body so these are sort of very different types of disadvantage compared with people ain't new stories of people who'd moved into Jakarta Indonesia in the boom and you know living in Slum settlements and then when the the developers The development economy stopped they immediately started just growing food because they weren't being threatened by the police with You know having their places bulldozed And they may have lost their jobs on construction sites But they went back to cousins farm in the village and helped out You know because they still had that connection whereas a lot of people That world is completely Lost so building those those On those sorts of From those sorts of disadvantage has been actually a common aspect of permaculture projects in in many places and sort of in that sense that becoming like remedial holistic for people who've been You know failed in the system The system of consumption as the system is gradually pushing more and more people often now since COVID rapidly accelerating the destruction of the middle class So those those situations are really very very challenging because they're also overlaid by a whole lot of culture wars Subculture conflicts And and I don't think permaculture has been necessarily any better at Navigating those those difficulties the permaculture Movement has been subject to those same Problems but dealing with people's real Problems and issues as is I think the the the real Focus and challenge and that's a challenge. I give back to people involved in permaculture too It's great to have a lovely buyer diverse garden with all sorts of, you know, wonderful herbs and and Plants but where's the the basic things that people relate to that that they want to eat and where's You know the knowledge of wild foraging Rebe kindling those skills the skills of how to how to have Using waste fuel to have a fuel efficient cooking Stove so a lot of permaculture has been focusing on these very basic things and introducing those things To people who've never had any experience of those things But have have been dropped out of the system at at at the bottom But I think that is Really challenging and it's You know because you know, we're often starting from scratch, but the other recognition is that a lot of those People of disadvantage have been struggling often for generations And like Aboriginal communities in Australia They are battlers and survivors who are used to chaos And all sorts of conflict and as bill mollison said to me about Aboriginal people He knew so many of them. This was back in the 70s walking around with illnesses that would have you or I in hospital But they are still out there surviving So that is actually a sort of a quite counterintuitive thing that comfortable well educated middle class people who understand a lot of the issues Are often so cocooned in a world so comfortable That any sort of stress Any sort of rupture They are actually more vulnerable and a lot of the the battler communities Still have that somehow that Survival instinct that can be rekindled in obviously very nasty ways, but they can can be rekindled in very positive ways As well. So I think it's a sort of a very mixed story as who are the people of disadvantage, you know Is because of that yeah, and of course Well, sorry, we went a bit into a dark place, but I think it's where it's an important issue to To to cover and of course you have created many educational content books Trainings online. So if you go to to your website home home grand dot com dot au You will be able to find a number of these resources and Just go on youtube and type permaculture You I think everyone will find an abundance Of of elements also of stories. Perhaps stories might help The people that are listening to us to To take up some of these skills also to rethink and see how the lifestyle change of some of these people because I think that's what's the most Engaging or the most Enacting is to see how your friend your colleague your your parents change their lives and live Better and have managed to to to to grow food. I think growing food is really one of the things that There you have a sense of pride and you have a sense of fulfillment and safety In this unsafe word. So I think really just dive deeper into this. We're going to start wrapping up Is there a message that well in your Let's say 50 years of intellectual pursuits and practice You you you came across and say that's okay after me looking at all of this I tend to say the same thing over and over again Is there something an advice or a message that you see yourself saying to to to new persons or to relatives? That is kind of your sentence or expression that you always kind of say well, I think connecting to nature through a practical way like growing food that has just relates to our animal nature and our ancestral nature so much is Remains one of the most powerful ways to experience the Abundance of nature and the resilience of nature Rather than the constant story of nature's fragility and nature falling apart and and nature withering away and that we are part of Of nature and so whether it's my Reading landscape work or the the focus on food production at home Not just for its practical benefits, but for its psychic mental health benefits and especially with children to expose children at the youngest age at the beginning from babies to that world and Connected to that is the most important thing For the future and it's a it's a joyful thing from amazingly simple things that are surprisingly Available to a lot of people in all sorts of small small ways so I think those That message is still You know one of the most powerful ones to To deal with the world that we're facing And any last recommendations about books or films or articles? I mean, of course, there is your books permaculture one the principles of permaculture Retro suburbia we mentioned Howard T. Odom. Is there anything that That you read or you watched that's really inspired you into thinking about this future Um, I want to aspire to interesting at the moment. I'm a judge on an environmental film festival I'm not a great connoisseur of films, but I've been looking at through 10 international feature films. It's an india centered Film festival, but there's one category for international films and I've just watched a film called Planet earth a planet soil And it's all it's dutch And it's all examples from duck from the netherlands and it's extraordinary of the the emerging science of soil ecology and just phenomenal micro world that Permaculture and kindred people have been discovering both directly through how to Work with soil life, but also the science of it as incredibly inspiring film. So there's something that People might like to follow up Fantastic. Well, thanks so much David for this discussion. Thanks as well to all of you listening watching until the end and of course, please just share this with friends that that are either trapped in this situation and want to feel like a An escape or that they are already knee-deep in permaculture and they want some more inspiration I would also highly encourage you to watch some other episodes with Herman daily on city-state economics carlin still on, you know, the the history of agriculture and cities To enrich what we mentioned again, then yes once again. Thanks so much, uh, davids It's been a pleasure Right to talk to you nasty