It’s not so much that the current system is failing as it is less productive. Take a corn field out in Iowa. The energy input far outweighs the output when you start to factor in the labor and materials that go into manufacturing the mechanical plows, John Deere tractors, fertilizer, herbacides, and pesticides. All of this effort directed at growing a high yield of one crop is a huge strain on the land. So huge plots have to lay fallow as crops are rotated every season. Otherwise you get the Grapes of Wrath dustbowl effect and a huge surplus of one thing: Corn that you can’t sell in a saturated market.

Permaculture is different from industrial monoculture because it works off of naturally occurring symbiotic relationships. It creates a closed-circuit that minimizes energy input and maximizes output. The diversity in the system balances out individual elements. For example, let’s take that corn again but interplant beans between the rows and add chickens. The beans create groundcover that discourages weeds and the roots fix nitrogen into the soil, eliminating the need for herbicide and fertilizer. The corn provides shade for the beans and stalks for them to climb up. The chickens provide pest control, instead of synthetic pesticides, by eating bugs. They also apply manure on the spot needed in the garden. All three elements have marketable value.

Yes, plots of farmland are smaller these days. Monoculture has wiped out the majority of the arable land on the planet and now you’re seeing the food security crisis emerging. In Sub-Saharan Africa the challenge is compounded by high birthrates leading to dense population growth. Obviously, there is a genuine interest there to learn high-intensity gardening on small plots of land.

I think that you’ll see more permaculture in the future as Earth becomes increasingly urbanized. Buying strawberries shipped in bulk from distant Argentina will become less and less cost effective. There will be a consumer panic. My hope is that permaculture will be the reaction to that.

Of course permaculture is a new idea. Agriculture has never been as designed-oriented as before. Until recently, we’ve never had such a position of control over our environments. In fact it’s only been sixty years since the United States had its green revolution. Previously it’s been all about beating back the wilderness and transforming the existing environment into something totally new. Permaculture on the other hand looks at the land and uses the existing ecosystem as inspiration to create these human-benefiting food webs and maximize their efficiency.

Agro-corporate fat cats aside, I don’t think many in the agrarian community are adverse to the idea of permaculture. The subsistence farmers I collaborated with always told me that the only thing they lacked was knowledge of newer, more effective techniques. What is changing is that, through our increased understanding of the sciences like biology and botany, we are more keen to pick up on the naturally occurring relationships and capitalize on them rather than destroying them. Let’s hope that our learning curve is fast enough to outrun the current mess we’ve created.