Thinking about permaculture…
The blogger in permaculture
Whether permaculture’s own or the mainstream media, journalism, photography and video have been critical carriers of the permaculture message. Today, the permaculture conversation is carried on in blogs and social media.
WITHOUT IT, permaculture would have been a lesser thing, the practices of a small subculture rather than a social movement, the work of a few rather than a popular activity. Educational opportunities would have been foregone, livelihoods too.
What am I talking about? The role of media in spreading the permaculture message across the world. Doing that has been the role of permaculture’s own internal media but also of mainstream media that took permaculture to audiences that permaculture by itself would never have reached. I think that is often overlooked within the permaculture milieu. When we look back the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Heartlands series, to The Global Gardener, to the radio interviews, newspaper and magazine stories, to successive TV gardening programs that featured permaculture gardens (including that of the author and his partner) all the way to today’s Gardening Australia with permaculture populariser Costa Georgiardis, we see how mainstream media has been critical to the spread and popularisation of permaculture.
As for permaculture’s own media, Australia’s Permaculture magazine morphed into International Permaculture Journal and on to Permaculture International Journal to become a global mouthpiece of the permaculture design system. It was supplemented by Permaculture Activist in the USA and later by Permaculture magazine in the UK. In Australia for a time it was complemented by Permaculture Edge and by Green Connections coming out of Castlemaine, Victoria, where Joy Finch was editor.
Those publications closed with the ending of the age of print magazines and the rise of digital culture. Now — other than for Robyn Rosenfeld’s PIP permaculture magazine produced on the NSW South Coast from where it reaches a national readership, it is the digital realm that carries the permaculture story.
Permaculture publishing’s move to digitalisation paralleled that of many magazines where, like a rampant vine in a vegetable garden it rapidly spread with the new opportunities brought by digital media which went on to democratise publishing. As if obeying the permaculture principle about diversity, permaculture publishing morphed into myriad forms as blogging became the main carrier of its ideas and was aided and abetted by social media.
Permaculture’s conversation home
Social media is where the permaculture conversation takes place today. It didn’t replace an earlier, pre-digital conversation space for—other than the Permaculture Oceania listserv started by the Sydney permaculture crew (an email-based discussion channel that was the forerunner of today’s social media)—there was no discussion space at the time other than that afforded by personal meeting.
When we look at the typology of permaculture media we can see how today’s bloggers have assumed the role of the pre-digital writers on permaculture and grown their work in quantity and quality. The change to digital media brought the democratisation of writing and journalism in permaculture. Before permaculture websites started to appear with Web v1.0, the read-only web of the late 1990s that followed the release of the Mosiac and Netscape browsers, then Internet Explorer and, later still, Apple’s Safari browser in 2003, publishing in permaculture paralleled that of mainstream media in which stories commissioned or written for print media passed through an editor — essentially a gatekeeper who could shorten stories to fit available column length or ‘spike’ stories (‘spike’ comes from print journalism and describes the action of an editor acculumating print stories for later consideration on a desk spike).
Anyone with a computer, word processing software, a website and an internet connection was now able to publish. Writing on permaculture proliferated. When I started in radio journalism there used to be this adage about checking whether a media release came from a reputable source or from ‘two people with a fax machine’. Now, with the advent of digital media, everyone has a fax machine.
The centrality of media to the development and spread of the permaculture design system has been recognised with the award of the diploma of permaculture design in media. This makes it all the more curious why permaculture co-originator, David Holmgren, ommitted media from his ‘permaclture flower’ model of permaculture’s fields of application.
Blogging permaculture
Bloggers who write, photograph and produce videos about permaculture play a crucial role in spreading awareness of the design system, in educating established practitioners as well as people new to permaculture and building a sense of community and belonging around permaculture as applied design and as a social movement.
Bloggers are the connectors of a design system whose practitioners are scattered across the world, the networkers who distribute news, analyses and good ideas. What role do they presently play and how could permaculture’s bloggers better serve the movement?
The question stems from my background as a blogger writing about permaculture, from someone who has been part of the permaculture design movement since 1984 and from my livelihood in journalism. It is a tricky question made all the trickier today with the polarisation of Western societies around politics, medicine, science and other themes and by the deluge of disinformation flooding what are commonly called the democratic nations. These things have been far from absent within the social movement around permaculture.
I earlier envisioned the role of the online journalist, the blogger, as connecting permaculture practitioners and writing about ideas in permaculture — a networking function, essentially, bloggers as nodes in the greater permaculture network and through whom news and ideas flowed. There were political differences in permaculture in those days — I should mention here that what I write comes from the Australian experience of permaculture — however people accepted their differences and focused on what they had in common in permaculture. But that changed with the pandemic. Opposing attitudes to medical science became divisions and political differences polarised with the disappearance of the middle ground where we could all meet and talk things over. This paralleled the same division in Western societies that has seen the disappearance of the grey zone between opposing black and white polarities.
The heat of that time has cooled with the passing of the years, however I suspect those divisions are still there, sublimated for the moment. What has been referred to as the ‘split’ in the social movement around permaculture led my to writing about it on my Medium blog (and here) as a means of thinking through what happened after permaculture co-originator, David Holmgren, made his attitudes clear on his blog and garnered support for them within the movement.
The episode led me to rethink the role of the blogger in permaculture. Sure, those networking functions of connecting and discussing ideas were still relevent, however I thought that more critical writing was now in order. What I mean by that is writing that looks at the social movement and the content of the permaculture design system and asks questions about what works, what could be improved and at new tools, technologies, trends and ideas. There has been too little writing about the social movement around permaculture, too little self-reflection as a movement.
The importance of critical writing
Search for permaculture online and you find plenty of booster-type blogs, some educational blogs and a few critical stories tucked away here and there. All of these can supply us with useful information of the reflective kind when it comes to thinking about permaculture.
Systems thinking is a core component of permaculture design. In systems theory there is a concept we know as feedback. Negative or corrective feedback is what we use to make corrections to what we do to make it work better. It indicates what is not working so well, what could be improved. We can apply this in our blogging about permaculture.
The parallel in journalism is known as ‘solutions journalism’. It examines what goes wrong and, rather than leaving the story there as is the practice in conventional news journalism, it looks at initiatives and ideas that might improve the situation. A more-rounded story is the result, a story that does not leave readers in despair but that points to ways out of the situation. In fairness to conventional news journalism I should say that, traditionally, it was set up merely to report the stories of the day, to garner facts and opinion but not to analyse and suggest solutions. Doing that was the role of specialist writers and opinion columns.
Critical writing directed to improving permaculture surely is a key role of the permaculture blogger when it is evidence based and makes proposals for improvement.
What other roles would the permaculture blogger fill?
Inform and discuss
Providing information, whether that is of what other permaculture groups, educators and activists are doing and sharing stories fulfills the established networking function within the social movement around permaculture practice. It is akin to news writing in conventional journalism — the what, who, when, where, how and why of initiatives.
Educate
Already an established field in permaculture writing, educating people through our blogging remains an important function.
Writing about and illustrating through photographs and video permaculture’s principles and practices can get the core concepts of the design system to people starting out on their adventure in permaculture practice and offer practical tips and guidance to help readers implement permaculture principles and projects in their own lives.
Bloggers can provide practical guidance on how to implement permaculture principles in different contexts such as urban settings, small-scale intensively-managed gardens, larger-scale farms and in land management. They can share resources, recommend tools and technologies and provide troubleshooting advice. Practical guidance helps readers overcome barriers and empowers them to take action.
By providing accurate and well-researched information as well as that coming from personal experience, bloggers can demystify permaculture and make it more accessible to a wider audience.
The how-to
How-to knowledge is the nitty-gritty of applied permaculture.
If in our blogs we provide step-by-step instructions, recommend tools and technologies, offer troubleshooting advice and a list of resources for learning more we provide something of practical value to readers to help them overcome barriers and take action.
Bridge the gap
Like any specialist practice, permaculture can appear complex and a niche practice. The perception is reinforced by the cost of the Permaculture Design Course that, in an economy constrained by a rising cost of living, can lead to the perception that permaculture is something for an educated, middle class demographic with discretionary spending power. From time to time we see this expressed in permaculture social media.
What can we bloggers do to get around this perception? One thing in writing about permaculture is to translate the design system’s technical concepts into laymans terms by using the language of the target audience and by giving practical and relatable examples.
As someone who has organised permaculture design courses with my partner, when the issue of course fees comes up and accusations are sometimes made about educators creaming-off the profits, I have found it useful to detail the costs of organising and running courses. What I find is that many of those questioning the cost of design courses have not organised events of the kind and have no idea of the actual costs involved. Rather than take a defensive position I agree with them about the costs being beyond what some can afford and explain why they are high. I also point to free online courses when they are available.
Doing these things makes permaculture approachable and relatable to the experience, knowledge and lifestyle of broader audiences.
Inspire and motivate
Bloggers can inspire and motivate people to adopt permaculture practices by sharing success stories, showcasing innovative projects, and highlighting the positive impact of permaculture on environments, communities and personal well-being. This can foster connection among readers.
Personalising stories by writing from personal experience allows us to share our own experiences, the challenges we faced and the lessons learned. People like people stories.
Network and collaborate
Bloggers are connectors within the permaculture community. They are not only sources of original information but are conduits through which the experience of others is channeled through the networks that are the substructure of the permaaculture design system.
By featuring guest posts, interviews or by collaborating with other bloggers, practitioners and experts, and by looking at different perspectives and amplifying the quiet voices in the movement, bloggers can foster collaboration, knowledge sharing and networking within the permaculture movement.
Engage and interact
Bloggers can actively engage with their readers by encouraging comments, answering questions and stimulating discussion. They can create a sense of community where readers can share their experiences, seek advice and connect with others.
Interaction helps to build a supportive network and encourages readers to become active participants in the permaculture movement through sharing what they know in the spirit of mutual asssistance.
Advocate
Bloggers can use their online platforms to advocate for the adoption of permaculture practices, to investigate environmental issues and promote the benefits of permaculture.
They can write about relevant topics such as urban permaculture, regenerative agriculture, food security, strategies to adapt to climate change and biodiversity loss. The blogger as advocates can inspire readers and viewers to do something positive and work with others towards some worthwhile goal.
Bloggers writing from a permaculture perspective have the power to educate, inspire and connect people locally and globally by providing useful information, practical guidance and a platform for collaboration. Some bloggers already do this, just as Permaculture International Journal did during the age of print.
Address misinformation about permaculture
Thanks to TV gardening programs, books and online media there exists numerous understandings of what permaculture is. How do we as bloggers in the permaculture network approach this confusion?
We can start by identifying the common misconceptions surrounding permaculture such as it being only for home gardens, homesteaders, large-scale farms, or lacking productivity. We can tailor our content to directly counter these notions and to provide examples to support what we say. Frequently lost is that permaculture is an integrated design system and not just a type of organic gardening or farming, or in more abstract terms, that permaculture is applied systems thinking.
Provide accurate information to debunk misconceptions is important to changing perceptions. Refer back to the design system’s core principles and ethics and emphasise the design system’s adaptability to different scales and contexts. Back up what we say with evidence, anecdote, research, case studies and examples.
Use appropriate language
Clear language and language familiar to our readership or audience make clear what we talk about. Avid jargon, abstract, over-technical or academic language and referring to theories and themes the province of well-educated, culturally and politically aligned people unless we write for them. Sometimes we have to use technical terms and for clarity we can briefly explain what they mean.
Something else to avoid is partisanship in the culture wars afflicting our society. Write about them, certainly, especially about how they affect perceptions of permaculture. Partisanship in our writing can be divisive in turning away people who might disagree but who also might benefit by reading what we write. If we really wish to engage in the culture wars then making our bias known and erecting a coherent argument around it will inform rather than pick an argument, and could even start a constructive conversation rather than a name-calling argument.
Break down complex concepts into digestible explanations to make them understandable to a broader audience. This is not dumbing down. It is making what we talk about relatable.
Use real-world examples
Permaculture is applied design, not an academic idea. Our focus is applying experiential, observational and scientific evidence about what works in the world. That is why in our blogs we share real-life examples of successful and unsuccessful permaculture projects, highlighting their experience in a way that informs people doing similar projects or who are in similar situation.
Through demonstrating tangible results, bloggers in permaculture can challenge misconceptions and inspire readers to consider permaculture as a viable option.
Counter disinformation
Challenge disinformation that could affect the public credibility of permaculture and lead to misguided design or personal risk. Do this by fact-checking misinformation, citing reputable sources and research and by debunking myths through clear explanations so as to help readers distinguish between truth and falsehood.
Permaculture has no natural immunity to disinformation. Posts spreading disinformation or misinformation (the unintentional spreading of disinformation) within the permaculture network can be challenged so that practitioners and the public are not misled.
If using AI as a research assistant, check what it reports as AI makes errors.
Intelligence officers learn early in their careers that perception is not reality; impressions can be manipulated, ‘alternate facts’ can be presented, and what one sees, or is meant to see, can convince the under-informed that up is down, and day is night.
…Jason Jay Smart, Kyiv Post 30.22.23
Encourage audience/reader engagement
Participation is promoted as an important characteristic of permacultiure projects. We can adopt it in our blogging by encouraging readers to ask questions and to engage in conversations.
This how we can directly address the concerns and misconceptions raised by our audience. Respond to comments, clarify doubts and provide links to reputable resources to deepen reader understanding of permaculture.
Collaborate with experts
Experts have been devalued in permaculture in the past in favour of the DIY approach, however expertise lets us avoid actions that are likely to be erroneous, cost us unnecessary expenditure and create designs that do not work. Experts can offer guidance.
As bloggers, we can best serve the wider permaculture community by seeking out experts to provide authoritative perspectives and insights. Guest posts, interviews, Q&A sessions with experts can lend credibility and expertise to a bloggers’ content as well as to permaculture generally, and can dispel misconceptions.
Use visuals
Online media is visual media. Often, it is the visuals that attract readers who then read the text we produce. This makes it worthwhile our supplementing written content with visuals of some sort. Where photographs are unavailable, AI apps can generate a visual from our written or spoken description of what we want. Label it as AI-created when we publish it. The way that AI can scrape existing images to recombine elements of them into a new illustration is a different discussion about intellectual property.
Visuals, whether photograph, video, illustration or diagram can simplify complex concepts. Some people find extracting information from visuals easier than from written text. Visuals help to present information in an accessible manner.
Discuss urban and small-scale applications of permaculture
Most of the world’s people live in cities and more will do so in times ahead. This makes a focus on urban permaculture solutions important to the continued relevance of the permaculture design system.
Specifically address the practical challenges of urban people and the solutions they generate: design for limited space, small and intensively managed home gardens, energy and water efficiency retrofitting of dwellings, the use of placemaking approaches to urban place design, community gardens for food security and learning, food co-operatives and local food schemes, environmental restoration and so on.
Build a supportive community
As bloggers, we can foster a supportive community through our social media platforms where participants can share their experience, ask questions and seek advice.
This harnesses the collective knowledge of the online cohort and encourages mutual assistance, collaboration and interaction.
Link to resources
Linking people to knowledge is a networking function of blogging.
Compile a database of resources such as books, websites, videos and online communities to assist readers in their permaculture work. Be sure to curate only trusted and factual resources.
Offer troubleshooting
If you have specialised knowledge or can access it from collaborators, we can help readers solve the problems they encounter while implementing permaculture projects. We already see permaculture social media being used for this.
Facilitate conversation
The Networking Principle states that the value of a network is contingent on the number of active participants. Networks are empowered through conversation and sharing. To put it in permaculture terms, ‘share what’s spare’.
We can encourage discussions by posing thought-provoking questions or present different perspectives to encourage readers to share their insights. Actively participate in these discussions to guide and moderate the conversation, fostering a respectful environment.
Include clear call-to-action statements at the end of blog posts, inviting readers to leave comments, ask questions or share their experiences related to the topic. Encourage readers to actively participate by explicitly asking for their input.
Actively engage with readers by responding to their comments and questions. Show appreciation for their contributions and provide thoughtful responses. This interaction demonstrates that their input is valued and encourages further engagement.
Incorporate interactive elements into blog posts such as polls and quizzes. Share personal stories and experiences to create a sense of connection and relatability and to inspire readers to share their own stories and engage in discussions.
Promote your blog on social media
The permacuture conversation is carried on via social media. Link to your blog posts on relevant social media platforms and encourage readers to share their thoughts and opinions. Respond to comments and create conversations around the shared content. Ask for feedback on your blog content and for suggestions for future topics.
Your blog benefits by having its own social media platform where you list stories and where people can find earlier postings of your stories.
In promoting your blog on your own social media:
- write compelling but not misleading headings: the wording of headings and an introductory blurb can pique curiosity and entice users to read more; powerful words and emotional triggers make your headlines compelling and shareable
- craft engaging and concise captions: captions or introductory text on your social media link should clearly communicate the content as well as the value of reading your blog post
- include relevant visuals: visually appealing images directly related to the content of our writing or that are indicitative of what we write about attract attention both on our blog story and in linking it on social media
- use hashtags: hashtags categorise our stories and help to make them discoverable by readers interested in the specific topic; look at hashtags used for similar stories that relate to our blog’s topic and niche.
The most important currency
Credible and reliable information is the currency of permaculture. Blogging and social media posts that are factual (speculative posts are best labelled as such), understandable and useful are enablers that inform, encourage and enable the application of permacultue.
