Permaculture, Citizen Science, and the Opportunities for Sustainable Food Production
When sustainability and science are mentioned in the same setting, it’s usually in the context of finding new technologies that use less fossil fuels or have a lighter footprint on the environment. Or you might hear that science is part of the problem…that the human quest for knowledge has lead us to embrace technologies and practices that have fouled our planet. But I believe that getting back to our roots as everyday scientists can lead us to a more sustainable–and fulfilling–lifestyle.
How did humans come to do science? One theory is that it began when humans were hunter-gatherers, with the practice of tracking. The theory is eloquently described by Louis Liebenberg in his book, The Art of Tracking, the Origin of Science. To track an animal, you must observe the environment, form a hypothesis about what is happening, and then look for clues that support or refute your hypothesis. A good tracker can look at evidence and form a theory about what an animal is doing and where the next evidence will be found. The tracker tests the hypothesis by looking for that evidence; if supported by repeatability, the hypothesis develops into a theory. 
Liebenberg has taken the connection between tracking and science one step further, turning Kalahari Bushmen into citizen scientists by sending them into the field with PDAs and software with a pictogram interface to collect data about the locations of plants and animals. In a society where the art of tracking was being lost, carrying a PDA has had the unintended consequence of re-elevating the status of the tracking as a profession.
It’s not hard to see how other food gathering techniques use the same kind of hypothesis testing. If you’re not able to reproduce the successful test of your hypothesis, you might not eat! Indigenous peoples are consumate naturalists; understanding the natural history of the land is imperative for survival. And think of the science done by early agriculturists!
The current crises of climate change and resource depletion are a symptom, I believe, of us losing our connection to the natural world. By trying to separate ourselves from nature, we’re literally on the brink of destroying ourselves. Our modern food systems are especially implicated. In his recent celebrated article Farmer in Chief, Michael Pollan explains how our industrial food system contributes to global climate change, fossil fuel depletion, pollution, health problems, and other ills of our times. Part of the solution is to reconnect with local food systems; by restoring local, biodiverse, and ecologically sensitive agriculture, we can help solve many of our problems. And that kind of agriculture requires people who are close to the land, and deeply connected to nature.
Restoring our connection to nature is a favorite topic of mine. I first heard it in the context of Hawk Watch, a citizen science program by Golden Gate Raptor Observtory (GGRO). As volunteer with Hawk Watch, I was interested in what GGRO Director Allen Fish described as “nature-deficit disorder” — our disconnection from nature. Nature-deficit disorder is a term coined by author Richard Louv in his book Last Child in the Woods. It was already clear to me that hawk watch benefited me in ways I didn’t quite understand; I began watching all kinds of birds, and spending more time outside. Like many of my hawk watching friends, I joined Hawk Watch not for the science, but for the love of hawks. But I noticed that our conversations (and sometimes arguments) on the hill often revealed that a deeper and more personal understanding of science was happening. We questioned our own data, and discussed how it was influenced by factors like weather, resident vs. migrating hawks, and different observers. I began to see how citizen science was connecting us to the practice of science, but also helping to connect us back to nature. Fish was right, nature-deficit disorder does not only affect children. My experience as a citizen scientist was having a positive impact on my mental and emotional health.
So how do we get from hawks and citizen science to food? The connections came to me as I started researching how to foster a deeper relationship to nature. I became interested in the Kamana Naturalist Training Program, a home-study course. Kamana was developed by Jon Young, who was mentored in his childhood by Tom Brown, Jr., who in turn was mentored by Apache tracker Stalking Wolf (Brown’s memoir about the experience, The Tracker, is a fantastic read.)
I was interested in Kamana, but followed links to some of Jon Young’s other projects, and that’s how I found permaculture.
Permaculture is a design practice and way of life that seeks to establish human settlements that work as natural systems. Permaculture combines growing and harvesting food, soil management, natural building, watershed management, forestry, animal systems, intentional community building and other skills, all towards living in a way that’s sustainable. It’s a celebration of natural abundance, and an appreciation of the skills of indigenous cultures that we can practice in a modern way. A permaculturist is a naturalist farmer…by deep observation of the local ecosystem, for example, one can design a food forest that produces an incredible abundance of food but looks nothing like the eco-disaster of an industrial farm operation. In fact, your food forest looks like a forest…it can be so well integrated with the surrounding ecosystem that it becomes indistinguishable from it. It’s extremely biodiverse, the opposite of industrial monoculture.
The art of tracking relates to permaculture because of its practice of nature awareness. It’s no surprise that Jon Young is involved with Regenerative Design Institute, where I received my permaculture training this summer. To be a good permaculturist, you need to have the inquisitiveness and awareness of a tracker. And to be a tracker, it helps to have the mentoring of someone connected to the land before you. Young promotes both nature awareness and mentoring in his work with Regenerative Design Institute’s permaculture program.
Permaculture also embraces the spirit of experimentation in other ways. It encourages you to experiment and try out your hunches. A tracker is a scientist. A permaculturist (or permie) is a scientist. And a farmer can be a scientist. Because so much of permaculture relates to food production, it’s here that I think the intersection of citizen science and permaculture can be especially fruitful.
Permies are big fans of Michael Pollan, who has been raising the alarms about our nation’s food systems for some time. Farmer in Chief makes it all the more explicit. Does citizen science have a role in sustainable agriculture? I believe it does. As Pollan notes, “Today’s organic farmers, operating for the most part without benefit of public investment in research, routinely achieve 80 to 100 percent of conventional yields in grain and, in drought years, frequently exceed conventional yields.” Organic farmers are doing their own research.
After his article appeared, Pollan was interviewed by Teri Gross on NPR’s “Fresh Air” program for a show titled Food As A National Security Issue (follow the link for a full recording of the interview). In the interview, Pollan describes an example of how small farmers can find solutions to pests using deep observation of natural systems:
“I’m not saying we should have no insecticide. There is place for insecticides in agriculture. What kinds of insecticides is the question. But I have been on a great many very sophisticated polyculture farms and one of the things that always surprised me…I always assumed these organic farmers were using organic pesticides. But it turned out very often they were using no pesticides at all, because they had worked out these rotations. I remember a potato farmer I went to see and I asked him how does he deal with Colorado Potato Beetle, which is the bane of the potato crop all over Idaho. I said, “Do you use BT?” (this organic pesticide). He said, “No, maybe one year in ten I have to use it if I have a big outbreak. Basically I found that if I plant wheat for a year before potatoes, the Colorado Potato Beetles get really confused and they’re not there with the potatoes come in.” So part of it is, we haven’t done the research to figure it out…there’s a farmer who figured that out on his own. But all our agricultural research, our land grant universities are directed toward maximizing production using fossil fuel fertilizer and pesticides and pharmaceuticals.
Pollan’s potato farmer is a scientist, a scientist who’s found a sustainable solution. There’s a long tradition of farmers who keep agricultural records…what if we could put that to work in a citizen science program to discover and promote sustainable agriculture? Permaculture, with its deep roots in observation, sustainable food production, and mentoring can help show the way. Citizen science can provide the tools for data collection and sharing. By getting back to our deepest roots as scientists, we might see our way to a future of sustainable living. We can see citizen science as an activity of healing, a process of uncovering the truth by observing and strivng to understand; an activity that’s an antidote to nature-deficit disorder. Making those observations strengthens the connection to the natural world that humans have always had, connections that we need to feel whole. When we recognize that we are not separate from the planet, we can realize that healing the planet means healing ourselves.
I liked your comments about permaculture, although I’m not sure I like the term itself – it sounds too much like a variety of yogurt . . .
I had the privilege to grow up as the son of a farmer in a small community in west central Utah, something that less than 5% of our current population can say. He farmed about 200 acres of grain, alfalfa, and corn. I helped my dad on the farm growing up, and saw his closeness to the land and seasons. No one was a more avid observer of the weather than he was – his whole livelihood depended on guessing when it was safe to harvest the wheat or the alfalfa. One hail storm could ruin a whole year’s effort. From him I learned soil conservation and crop rotation which formed the basis of my interest in environmental science.
Being out on a tractor all day for much of the year, you observe many things – the clouds, the animals that live in your fields and their predator-prey relationships (hawks and mice or coyotes and jackrabbits, for example – when coyotes were hunted for bounties, the rabbit population would bloom unti they were wiped out by one disease or another). This land was naturally extremely alkaline (the ancient bottom of Lake Bonneville) and I learned of a species of alkali bees that live in holes in the patches of alkali soil. We helped trap gophers to send to Cornell University for studies of hibernation and estivation (gophers are only active about three months of the year). Our farm was along one of the major migration routes for Canadian and snow geese, which would rest on a small wildlife refuge a few miles from our farm and fly overhead in the evenings in great flocks. In short, we were citizen scientists even then, observing nature because we lived in nature.
I agree that far too many people are trapped in cities and office buildings too far from nature. How many school children have even seen the Milky Way with their own eyes by getting far enough away from a city to avoid the light pollution? I applaud the recent program in Congress called No Child Left Inside, an effort to get students out of the classroom into the field doing science first hand.
Thanks again for the ocmments.
David Black
I grew up in a small rural town near Oklahoma City. My grandparents traded a six-mule team and wagon for a 120 acres of land they farmed on.
My grandfather made the trade without consulting my grandmother and at age 96, she’s still mad about that deal. Her six-mule wagon would be the equivalent of today’s BMW… LOL!!!
I think it’s amazing how we are beginning to make the circle back to a form of sustainable agriculture our grandparents practiced.
The “modern” (sick) post war industrialization of producing food in America has produced a generation of malnourished, cancer ridden, diabetics.
There’s nothing… I say “nothing”… that can replace the “natural” organic way of farming through sustainable permaculture practices.
Thanks for sharing your blog with the world.
Mark in Nashville