Permaculture News - PRI

Interview of Nikos Salingaros by Mumtaz Soogund on Defimedia, Mauritius, 8 March 2013. Dr. Salingaros recently joined the CT (Centrale Thermique) Power debate in Mauritius, and in this light graciously agreed to share his views on the matter with the readers of News on Sunday. MS: A coal-powered plant proves to be a massive investment [...]

The top valley dam, nestled amongst rainforest All photographs © Craig Mackintosh After Geoff’s Urban Permaculture talk at the Noosa Permaculture Group meeting on March 21, 2013 (watch for the video, which I’ll upload in about a month from now), we headed a few kilometres north, to the Permaculture Research Institute Sunshine Coast, [...]

We’re rolling out a series of free videos from Geoff Lawton. The first video is about how Geoff Lawton got started in Permaculture and how he used it to transform his burnt out farm to abundance and what a little permaculture knowledge can do for you. This first video has been a terrific [...]

House front — before House front — after We all encounter rough spots in our lives. Fortunately, we get to choose how we handle them. For me, permaculture provided the perfect lens for placing hard times into a healing, long term context. So often today, we are taught to think of things in the [...]

by Rick Pickett, Eco-Ola Rehabilitating degraded land in the Peruvian Amazon requires utilizing many tools in ecological agriculture’s arsenal. We use a mix of sea kelp, calcium solutions, organic fertilizers, and rock phosphate to add nutrients to our sacha inchi and mocambo polycultures. One fertilizing solution we were without on the farm when I arrived was the [...]

March 20th is the vernal equinox here in the northern hemisphere and the autumnal equinox in the southern hemisphere. During the equinox, the sun crosses the plane of the equator, making night and day approximately equal in length. Why is the equinox important for permaculture? One of the first questions my PDC instructor [...]

Why are we exploiting unconventional gas when we can’t afford to burn existing supplies? by George Monbiot Click for larger view There’s only one way of knowing whether or not governments are serious about climate change: have they decided to leave most of their fossil fuel reserves in the ground? We have already discovered far more carbon than [...]

Canberra, Australia’s capital, has been lacking access to permaculture education. Whilst the surrounding areas of Bungendore, Braidwood, Bredbo, Murrumbateman and Yass show some great examples of permaculture applications, and Permablitz ACT exists as a growing and active group, a group of independent permaculture specialists have now set up Permaculture eXchange to address the need [...]

Photo© Craig Mackintosh In one of the first segments of the Permaculture Design Course DVDs with Bill Mollison and Geoff Lawton, in addition to the massive amount of information, a few comments made by Mr. Lawton struck a chord with me. The nature of his comment, as I understood it, was that the PDC [...]

It’s nearing the end of summer here at Fernglade farm and what a summer it has been. Two inches of rain in over five months, and extreme heat for days on end, results in a most unpleasant experience. Still, despite it all, things are still growing and there is still food to [...]

Terra Sancta Permaculture and InsideOutside Management are having another Holistic Management training session in Lismore, Northern NSW. We have just finished up on our first and I can say that it’s the best training I have undertaken. For those that missed out the first time, you’re in luck. Teaming Holistic Management with Permaculture has an [...]

Freshly keyline plowed (Photo: Kirsten Bradley) Plan the work then work the plan. — P.A. Yeomans Intro In the mid 1950s, Australian engineer P.A. Yeomans demonstrated a new system of land management he called the Keyline system. The consensus of the time, championed by people like Dr H.H. Bennett, was that soil was a finite resource [...]

In short, this is a fabulous 44 minute documentary. And for good measure, the essense of the banking industry, stated in less than two minutes: Further Reading/Watching: Money as Debt The Money Masters

The desire for sustainable projects for non-government organisations and the need of reliable sources of income for small scale farmers is ever increasing in Tanzania and the ‘developing world’. Within international development ‘sustainability’ is a buzz-word often bandied round, with many communities and organisations slowly helping to transform traditional top-down development models to investing in [...]

A fully referenced version of this article is posted on ISIS members website and is otherwise available for download here. Shale gas could be a useful stop-gap substitute for more conventional fossil fuels on our way towards fully green renewable energies, but health and environmental risks including pollution to ground water remain to be addressed. by Prof [...]

The world is dotted with individuals that are driving change from the inside out, inspired by the principles and approach of permaculture. I wanted to share with you “Stories from our Food Gardens” an e-publication made possible by the Saville Foundation here in South Africa, written by Melveen Jackson. Their partnership is an example of [...]

by J. Matthew Roney, Earth Policy Institute Wind has overtaken nuclear as an electricity source in China. In 2012, wind farms generated 2 percent more electricity than nuclear power plants did, a gap that will likely widen dramatically over the next few years as wind surges ahead. Since 2007, nuclear power generation has risen by 10 [...]

The Economics of Happiness is a 2011 documentary film directed by Helena Norberg-Hodge, Steven Gorelick, and John Page, and produced by the International Society for Ecology and Culture. The film has been widely acclaimed and received numerous awards but most pertinently it has linked a number of cutting edge thinkers across the globe [...]

Aronia, also known as chokeberry, is a bush with a long history. It seems to have been forgotten for many years as a food source but has recently been “re-discovered”. There are two well-known species, named after their fruit color — red chokeberry and black chokeberry — plus a purple chokeberry whose origin is [...]

Actual view from Mountain View Eco Farm site As some readers may remember, I wrote an article last August outlining my experience at the Sustainable Agriculture Development Program of Nepal, and of the farm manager’s (Govinda Paudel) dream of establishing his own permaculture inspired education and demonstration farm. Well, at long last, Govinda has [...]