Permaculture

Question 1

Permaculture (as used today)

Answer 1

-Design approach founded on patterns and relationships of nature
and the ethics of sustainable societies.
-Based on indigenous knowledge from cultures.

Question 2

Sustainable Revolution

Answer 2

-Uses permaculture framework to identify locally based projects and networks that are
cultivating beneficial relationships between humans and the natural world

Question 3

Permaculture (originally used)

Answer 3

• theory of permanent agriculture,
• traced to Australians Bill Mollison & David Holmgren.
• Developed the concept while studying perennial farming (life cycle of more than 2 years) practices that are modeled on nature’s patterns.
• Coined term in 1970’s.

Question 4

Permaculture design initiative results

Answer 4

• restoring degraded landscapes,
• reversing desertification,
• creating self-sustaining food systems.

Question 5

How does permaculture mitigate climate change?

Answer 5

• directly drawing carbon out of the atmosphere through healthy soil building cycles,
• no-plow farming methods
• tree planting.

Question 6

Goal of Indigenous Permaculture

Answer 6

-establish a local, organic food source for residents,

-inspired by indigenous peoples’
understanding of how to live in place.

Question 7

Primary principle of permaculture

Answer 7

Observation!

Question 8

Indigenous Science

Answer 8

• practices based on a deep integration with the local ecology and
• an awareness of natural patterns and relationships.

Question 9

Cultural Hegemony

Answer 9

the domination of the global imagination by an *ideology that describes the social, political, and economic status quo as inevitable and beneficial for everyone (rather than the 1%)

Question 10

Focus of Regenerative Design

Answer 10

-focus not on each separate element -*focus on relationships created among different elements by the way they are placed together*; the whole being greater than the sum of its parts

Question 11

Fractal

Answer 11

• geometric pattern,
• repeated (either exactly or with slight variations) at
• ever-smaller scales to produce
• irregular shapes and structures.
• If you zoomed in on a single part of the fractal you would see the same pattern as the whole repeated to infinity

Question 12

node

Answer 12

center of human activity;

• each node can be seen as an information fractal,
• featuring patterns that encode a great deal of knowledge and observation.

Question 13

edge effect

Answer 13

the edge where 2 elements meet -

• key to regenerative design,
• because of cycling of materials and information, allowing for more synergy

Question 14

Synergy

Answer 14

the interaction of multiple elements in a system to produce an effect different from or greater than the sum of their individual effects

Question 15

Focus of Permaculture

Answer 15

• small scale,
• energy and
• labor efficient,
• Systems that use biological resources instead of fossil fuels.
• Designs stress ecological connections and closed loops of energy and materials

Question 16

Key to efficient permaculture design

Answer 16

-observation and the replication of natural ecosystems

Question 17

polyculture

Answer 17

-agriculture using multiple crops in the same space, -in imitation of the diversity of natural ecosystems, -avoiding large strands of single crops

Question 18

Closed Loop Energy System

Answer 18

Materials that would go to waste are re-used

Question 19

aquaculture

Answer 19

aquafarming; farming of aquatic organisms aka growing fish

Question 20

hydroponics

Answer 20

growing plants in water

Question 21

Aquaponics

Answer 21

1. water from the fish tanks is fed into a system of pipes,
2. where bacteria converts the waste products in the water to nitrites and
3. nitrates, are then used as nutrients by the plants.
4. Any remaining water filters back into the system.

Question 22

Benefits of Aquaponics

Answer 22

• it reduces water loss
• the extra nutrients allow plants to grow up to four times faster

Question 23

Sustainability

Answer 23

meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of the future to meet its own needs.

Question 24

stock

Answer 24

an inventory or supply or accumulation of a part of system

ex. population, fresh water resources, endangered species, attention span

Question 25

flow

Answer 25

an addition or subtraction a stock

water flowing in/out of a reservoir/bathtub, money, migration, carbon dioxide flowing in/out of the atmosphere

Question 26

system

Answer 26

collection of parts that interact with each other to produce outcomes that are greater than that which the parts alone could produce