Permaculture

Permaculture is a set of design principles that uses a “whole systems” approach to simulate or directly use the natural patterns and features of an ecosystem. Central to permaculture are three ethics and five principles:  

 

Three Ethics:

1. Earth care.  Caring for all living and nonliving things involves many decisions. Though we can’t all build our own house or grow all our own food, we can make choices about what and how we consume and conserve. Up to one third of our ecological footprint consists of the food we buy, even a small amount of urban or container gardening can make a difference.
2. People care.  Deepening community links benefits everyone, no matter where we live. You may not have all the skills to grow food or eco-renovate your house, but community networks can expand your capacity to live sustainably and be self-reliant.
3. Fair share.   This synthesizes the first two by acknowledging that we only have one earth to share with all living things and future generations. Permaculture aspires to design fairer, more equitable systems that take into account the limits of the planet’s resources and the needs of all living beings. 

 

Five principles:

1. Catch and store energy –  develop systems that collect abundant resources
2. Produce no waste – value and use all resources available to us
3. Integrate rather than segregate – develop relationships among all things so they work together to support each other
4. Use small and slow solutions – smaller systems make better use of local resources and produce more sustainable outcomes
5. Use edges and value the margin – the interface between things often holds the most valuable, diverse and productive elements of the system

 

In 2018 Gino Guerrero graduated from the Earth Repair Corps in Blanco, Texas, an intensive 4 month course taught by experts in permaculture, regenerative agriculture, sustainable energy, water conservation, among others.