THE PLOWBOY INTERVIEW BILL MOLLISON

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MOLLISON: I can say in a word how it's different: It's consciously designed . . . and that alone makes it something brand-new. There's no real design in modern agriculture, you see . . . there doesn't seem to be any evidence of planning or thought in it at all!

The Chinese, for instance, have recently "modernized" their farming methods — that is, they went from hand tilling and fertilizing with natural manures to machine and flame weeding and fertilizing with artificials — and they increased their energy input by 800% in the process. Now they've gone beyond that and are heading toward an increase of 1,000%! And all that extra expenditure of energy produced an initial yield growth of only 15% . . . a figure that's now declining rapidly. In fact, it now looks as though productivity might even fall below its original level!

Here in the United States, all the established agricultural systems — such as the wheatfields of Kansas, the cornfields of North Carolina, and the orchards of California — are aberrant systems . . . and they're perishing as I speak. California, in fact, is rapidly turning into a desert. Modern agriculture, you see, can be summed up in only one statement: It destroys its own basis. It has already destroyed 50% of the world's soil . . . and, of the remaining 50%, about 30% will be disappearing in very short order. The problem with today's agricultural techniques is that—by ignoring the possibility of any design input — they fail to deal with interrelated functions.

One of the great principles of natural systems is that diversity and stability are directly linked. And if you're going to create a stable system — that is, one that will survive — you must provide for some diversity within it. Now creating diversity doesn't mean simply putting a lot of different plants in your garden. That's a diversity of species, yes . . . but it doesn't make your garden necessarily a stable one. What does create stability is a diversity in the relationships between species.

And that is the basis of permaculture: to see how many interacting relationships one can build into an agricultural setup.

PLOWBOY: Besides providing a high number of such functional connections, what are some of the other goals of a permaculture design?

MOLLISON: As I mentioned before, the system should be self-supporting . . . that is, it shouldn't require the addition of any external energies to operate. It should also be self-steering, requiring a minimum of input from the designer after the design has been implemented. Finally, it should enrich the people in it, and they should enrich it. In short, a permaculture should be nothing less than a Garden of Eden. Now that may sound like a pie-in-the-sky goal, but I really believe it to be an achievable objective for the whole world . . . and the only things needed to reach it are human energy and intellect!

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