Permaculture: a magic word to protect the Earth ?

Kiwi's Table
Sep 9, 2018 · 8 min read

Who ? Rory & Jennifer from Permakai. One anecdote : 3 years ago he was programming computers !
Why did we choose to meet them ? They run a farm using permaculture principles and educate children about it.
When ?
September 2018.

What is the activity of Permakai?

What we do here is grow vegetables, basically anything seasonal (beetroots, silver beets, leeks, spinach, kale, turnips….). We use permaculture design for multiple use: the main one is sharing, we teach horticulture to high school students and adults. They come here and we share our knowledge, grow vegetables, teach them how to do a compost… We entertain anyone who wants to come and see what we do. We are starting to be popular in the area because what we do it’s kind of unique here. My partner and I we were both educators. So being involved in educating, encouraging, enabling, inspiring are things we have been doing all our life.

What are the other principles of permaculture applied here?

The other principles of permaculture are care for the earth and care for the people. To care for the earth, we’re doing organic farming. Organic is a concept which involves the whole property. The technique we are using is inspired from what the Parisian market gardeners used to do: back then, they were taking the produce into the centre of Paris to sell it, and they were bringing the horses faeces back to the gardens. Their limitation was space, so if they wanted to have more produce, they had to make the soil better. You can use permaculture techniques in every country even in the desert, and it’s been quite successful.

To know more about these techniques, Rory recommends to read the work of Jean-Martin Fortier, John Jeavons (bio-intensive method), & Jeff Lawton (permaculture in the desert).

Could you share specific examples of permaculture design with us?

These beds are “permabeds”, we put compost on it. This is what the French market gardeners used to do: they dig a bed once and they continually make it better and better. It’s not like what you can see around, they get the tractor and they dig it, use it and dig it again. We don’t do it and we actually let the weeds grow because they are covering the soil and they are retaining the moisture. So it’s nice and dark and the worms are coming right to the surface. The type of weed grows because the soil is deficient in that particular mineral. Then when it dies, it will release that mineral back into the soil. We disturb the soil as little as we can, that’s the “care for the earth” part of the permaculture principles.

We plant our garlic in a triangle, it’s a good example of the bio-intensive technique. Because if you plant in square you are actually wasting space. A triangle in a square meter will give you 10% more.

Another rule in permaculture is to “keep the vegetables close to the farm” because we come here every day so we don’t waste too much time.

What about the animals? What’s their use?

We have 5 cows, in permaculture they have multiple use: they keep the grass down so there is less fire risk. Secondly, they are like mobile compost because they eat and poo so they naturally make the land better. And last, every 2 years, we shoot one and eat it.

We also have chickens, these guys are scratching the beds for us and they’re pooping in it which makes fertilizers. We move them to clean the beds for us (taking all the seeds, all the bugs…), and they’re giving eggs of course.

How do you sell your vegetables?

We hopefully are going to market this year, it’s the only way for us to sell the vegetables. We are maybe producing 200 or 300 kg of vegetables. If you go to the market with that you will not have any vegetable left for the next week. People need to rely on you. This year we will have enough volumes to build up a customer base.

We are three years down the road now so we are much more efficient that we were at the very beginning, and we saved our seeds from last year. The seeds are acclimatized to that particular area (to the type of soil, the weather) so the crops are getting stronger.

Are people ready to buy organic vegetables in your area?

It’s very hard to sell these vegetables. It’s as if when people see the word “organic” they immediately think that it’s expensive and that they’ll look horrible. They’re used to go to the supermarket, it’s easy for them. And we don’t embrace the supermarket model, because the time between the harvest and the purchase is too long, it’s travelling all over the place and goes into a plastic bag, that’s not what we want. But people’s behaviour is slowly changing.

As an example, there was a brand of coffee here, ten years ago that used to put “fair trade organic coffee beans” on their packaging. But they stopped labelingl it that way because people were not buying it, assuming it would be more expensive. Now they have the same coffee labelled in two different ways: one with “organic and fair trade” and one without. People are more responsible now, that’s good.

Do you think Kiwis will consume more local produce than imported ones one day?

I would like to think so but I am not very optimistic. I am not convinced. I think New Zealanders are incredibly conservative and lazy when it comes to food. Don’t forget New Zealand is a low-wedge economy and they don’t have a lot of money to spend. So vegetables have to be kept at low prices. It’s not like Denmark where they spend 45% of their income in food, here they spend less than 20%. If the economy raises, it will happen here too.

People do not have long sit down meals around a table here, do they?

Culture here is fast food and beer while watching the All Blacks. Supermarkets are easy. You just have to get out of your car and think about what you will eat that night. When you buy local food you have to think ahead. We are addressing that in the work we do with schools. They have learned what it means to dig in the ground, to soil the seeds, to plant the transplants, to harvest, to water. They understand that. Hopefully, something will stay with them as they move up to 20, 25. For them, lettuce is something between the meat and the bun in the Big Mac. When they see it grow in the ground, it’s a total paradigm shift for them.

Do you think permaculture will become mainstream?

If you follow the pure principles of permaculture, we’re actually farming inefficiently. You can feed ourselves and few others but that’s it. For that reason, it won’t become mainstream, people won’t take it on. And it’s usually something that rich people do because they can buy a piece of land, apply the permaculture principles and 5 years later they have a food farm. But the land has not been productive during those 5 years. Permaculture is a very fashionable word. People are moving towards a more consciously sustainable way of living. It’s spreading everywhere but the word permaculture is more about that lifestyle than actual farming.

We’ve seen a lot of organic or vegetarian restaurants in Auckland though…

It became mainstream in Auckland about seven years ago. When I first came, my boss brought me to a very expensive restaurant in the city. He told the waiter “Rory is a vegetarian, what can you offer him?”. The waiter answered: “Sorry, we don’t serve that type of people here”. That was Auckland 22 years ago. With the Americans and the Europeans coming, it made a big difference. Restaurants realised that there were people out there with lots of disposable income who wanted to spend it on vegetarian meals.

Are you still a vegetarian?

I was for 20 years before I came to New Zealand. I very quickly changed that because I could not find vegetarian food here. I was vegetarian because I didn’t want to eat pigs and cows full of hormones, or fish that are grown in oceans full of toxic waste. Here it was different, I realized cows and chickens were running in the fields.

Why did you choose to live that kind of life?

I didn’t choose to have this life, I just thought “why not?” We wanted to be self-sufficient and this opportunity came up so we took it. I’ve been organic since I was 24 so it was pretty obvious for me. It’s really more a question of “why not” rather than “why should I”. Farming, growing vegetable is probably the hardest job that is. But I would probably do it again.

How did you learn all you know about farming?

We had the advantage of not knowing anything when we started. Three years ago, I was programming computers. So we came into farming not knowing anything, which is great because we didn’t have the history. So we learned all the modern techniques (through youtube, books, talking to people, and especially younger farmers). But you have to be careful, there’s a lot of rubbish on the internet. Some people even give advice that actually kills crops.

What about waste?

We try to limit it as much as we can. Today, we put a 20L bag once every 3 months whereas our neighbours put 3 times 20L bags once a week. For me, that is what permaculture is about. It’s a mind-set to reduce your impact on the earth. We’re buying grains, nuts but that’s it. We are self-sufficient in vegetables and meat.

Is the farm economically self-sufficient today?

We cover our costs. Selling vegetables isn’t enough yet. If we could sell our produce more regularly, more frequently, it would be. They say it takes between 3 and 5 years to become profitable. We are profitable because of the students. What we haven’t achieved through growing vegetables we’ve achieved it through education.

To learn more about Permakai, visit their website and Facebook page !

Kiwi's Table

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