"Making Small Farms Work" by Richard Perkins
and
"Restoration Agriculture: Real World Permaculture for Farmers" by Mark Shepard
Then there are the books by Bill Mollison that arguably started it all: "Permaculture: A Designers' Manual", and "Introduction to Permaculture"
But of course, when I was done with the course, I looked at where I could make some money doing permaculture. There were, as far as I could see, two ways:
* teach
* do landscape design
The first is much much easier to get into and isn't as hard as the latter. I think that is why you see so many courses.
I have applied permaculture to my land and my life, even though I can't make money from it directly.
A major emphasis of his work is to run his farm as a profitable business while using Permaculture design principles.
Is Regenerative Ag Profitable? Looking at Return on Investments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-A0uNUN9UG0&ab_channel=Richa...
And the whole ebook thing is quite frankly off-putting. There is a ton of hive mind/group think in this field which I find very off putting as well... I was at a Native Plant nursery and asked if they had any apple trees. Now as a computer programmer, permaculture is a hobby to me, I don't have the time to study it full time. But if I'm interested in something, I do read as much as I can about the subject. I had just read "Beyond the War on Invasive Species: A Permaculture Approach to Ecosystem Restoration" [0] which explores who defines native plants (pesticide industry) and why (to sell more pesticides).
So rather than having a friendly dialog, my request was met with a snarky and dismissive "Apple trees aren't native." I replied, "Define native." knowing this is actually a quite controversial subject.
But honestly permaculture is like any other field. There are some people who identify with their tightly held beliefs and don't question them. It bugs me but it doesn't take away from some of the great things are doing in this field. I've found that the best thing to do is to focus on people not topics.
For example, if someone asks me to learn Javascript. I tell them to focus on people like Eric Elliot, Douglass Crockford, Dan Abramov, etc. You will learn more doing guided learning from what they think is important than some random blog post on arrow functions. In the permaculture world, I recommend reading as much as you can from these people:
- Bill Mollison
- Elliot Coleman
- Mark Shepard
These people are great, and reading from them will produce more of a knowledge than any course. (Still recommend doing a course to meet other people interested in this stuff)... but some of the best recommended reading to me from permies wasn't about permaculture at all:
- Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows - It is dry but well worth it. Permaculture in a way is systems thinking applied to environment. Understanding the underlying science is the difference between knowing Javascript programming and just knowing one Javascript Framework.
- Hard Rain by Tim Egan - Beautiful anthropological history of the PNW.
- https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/08/opinion/against-sustainab...
- https://grist.org/article/doe-reprint/
- https://e360.yale.edu/features/environmental_failure_a_case_...
- https://monthlyreview.org/2002/09/01/capitalism-and-ecology/
I've found that people willing to dive into the science and areas that influence permaculture is the difference between someone who actually cares and someone who is an instagram farmer. And speaking of which, beware of biodynamics, it's a total pseudoscience [2] that people are starting to conflate that with permaculture. Biodynamic farmers will often tell you stuff like "oh it's like organic farming" or "You can do both permaculture and biodynamics". Maybe. But to me, new age mysticism isn't going to fix the environmental problems we have.
At the end of the day, the best way to learn permaculture is to get your hands dirty and start caring for plants. Even if you live in a city apartment with hardly any sun, treat it as a environment and find plants like peace lily's and devil's ivy that will grow just fine.
[0] https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/beyond-the-war-on-invas...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malus
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodynamic_agriculture#Effecti...
https://www.amazon.com/Short-History-Progress-Ronald-Wright/...
I think you may be confusing "agenda" with "perspective". He was pushing one perspective: his own, as all authors do. But it's our job as readers to understand the author's perspective and recognize it as such.
Neither history nor anthropology permits storytelling without a perspective. There's always a perspective. Reading for learning means understanding that perspective and determining which aspects (if any) we'll choose to adopt ourselves.
If you're used to science, it can come as a surprise that a person can willfully ignore (not just focus away from, ignore), all but one option for an entire book, and it still be considered an intellectual effort as opposed to a sales pitch or campaign tool.
Of course, sometimes none of the theories can be proven or disproved. So unless you want to leave a black hole you simply choose the theory that fits best, with the risk of it being overturned in the future.
If you are like me, you're probably wondering what you can do to mitigate some of the effects, while legislation and societal action is important. I also recommend checking out permaculture. Portland state has a great free online course [0]. I like to think of permaculture as ecosystem building, which you can do on a micro level. Enough microecosystems change the larger surrounding ecosystem.
[0] https://open.oregonstate.edu/courses/permaculture/