Does permaculture need a rebrand?
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, By any other name would smell as sweet.” As Shakespeare so poetically put it in Romeo and Juliet, names are not representative of the thing or person they refer to: while they are useful in differentiating objects, their value does not go beyond that. But we know that in real life, this statement doesn’t hold true.
Take lab-grown meat, for example. Now that the process of creating steaks from single animal cells is mature enough for companies to start thinking about commercialisation, they are all scrambling to find a more appealing name. Ideas such as “in vitro meat”, “animal-free meat”, “motherless meat”, or even “immaculate meat” are being thrown around but (thankfully), the brainstorming exercise is still ongoing.
The name “permaculture” stems from the combination of “permanent” and “agriculture”. Just because of these roots, the word has divided permaculture enthusiasts for decades. For example, in her year-long permaculture course, instructor Heather Jo Flores mentions that the idea of permanent agriculture is misleading, as nothing in nature is permanent. And since permaculture consists of producing food as similarly as possible to the way it occurs in nature, the use of the word “permanent” can be seen as problematic.
A few weeks ago, Permazone published an article titled ‘Beyond permaculture: how do we achieve zero-waste agriculture?’. It was based on an interview with Christopher Bush, the founder of a small, Canada-based NGO called Catalyst Agri-Innovations Society that has made zero-waste agriculture its number one goal. In this endeavour, Bush seemed to believe that using the word “permaculture” could be too limiting, even though the solutions developed by his organisation very much fall within the purposes and principles of permaculture.
“A lot of permaculture is about looping the cycle and putting the nutrients back in the soil, but maybe we take the soil out of the equation, maybe we take the animals out of the equation, maybe we even take the plants out of the equation. Maybe technology takes us to where it’s all microbial conversion. We don’t want to take any base assumption and let it stand untested,” said Bush, adding that he and his company preferred to settle on the term “zero-waste agriculture”.
This week, Permazone spoke to Yoann Lemain, co-founder of garden assistant app Agrikaïdo, about the potential for technology to boost the adoption of permaculture practices around the world. Agrikaïdo focuses on backyard food production, targeting busy professionals who would like to apply permaculture principles to grow their own produce, but don’t have a lot of time to learn them.
Lemain explains: “The goal is to allow anyone to use basic agroecology concepts in their garden. The user connects on the app, tells it what he or she would like to eat, and the app tells them when to do what and which plants to associate to each other. We are now developing a solar-powered IoT device to plant into the soil as well, that will collect real-time data on the temperature, humidity and solar exposure of the soil to warn the user if any action is required, depending on the plants chosen.” The beta version app gathered about 100 users last year, and is now being improved for an official launch this spring.
To a millennial concerned about industrial food production, trying to start a vegetable patch but daunted by the complexity of permaculture systems (yours truly), the solution seems like a godsend. But mixing technology and permaculture (or even gardening) is no easy feat, judging by the many failed attempts by others: Greentastic (a permaculture design app), Groww (a garden assistant app), Edyn (a connected device to help gardeners monitor soil conditions), LaCool (smart greenhouse), etc.
According to Lemain, this has to do with both the difficulty in finding the right business model, and the nature of the target market itself. “The gardening market is not always very fond of technology, and to some, practising permaculture with connected devices in your garden goes against certain elements of the permaculture philosophy,” he says. “That’s why we prefer using the term agroecology.”
The fact that people who have ‘permaculture-like’ ideals at heart, and are trying to spread permaculture practices in industrial or individual food production, are tip-toeing around the word “permaculture” begs a number of questions.
Are we too restrictive about what permaculture is and isn’t, and which tools it can and cannot use?
If we want more people to practise permaculture, is it time to modernise our approach it?
Is the permaculture movement losing out because of its name?
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