Permaculture

Permaculture refers to a design system created by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren on the island state of Tasmania in Australia in the 1970s. [Page 1128]Permaculture includes design principles and practices, a particular worldview, and an international social movement. The term is a portmanteau coined in 1978 that has been described by the founders as combining the words “permanent agriculture” or “permanent culture.” In its early stages, permaculture was conceived as a set of design principles and practices meant to improve sustainable, smallholder agricultural production by creating a complete agricultural ecosystem based on perennial polyculture and ecological patterns. By the late 1980s, permaculture expanded to include a broad framework for designing the sustainable communities as agriculturally productive human settlements based on ecological patterns that facilitate ...