Transcription
Usually, the playbook for modern agriculture goes like this: Buy a huge plot, plow the earth, plant one single crop. Fertilize, use pesticides, harvest. Buy a bigger plot, plow it to death, be forced to buy new seeds, plant the same super-engineered crop. Emit carbon, poison the soil, degrade the earth. And that – we're supposed to think – is the only way to produce our food.
By this definition, Falk Gärtner is doing everything wrong. He has a tiny plot, no machines, no toxins, and many crops. "Look at this!" "And with that, he turned a dry, sandy patch of ground... into this." The cherry on top: He’s much more profitable than the average industrial farm. The method he swears by is called: Permaculture. And it may hold the key for us all to produce food without destroying the planet.
"So we’re on our way to a permaculture farm about 1,5h away from Berlin." "This is quite remote, we’re off road right now." "Hello!" "Hello!" "Kiyo!" "Falk!"
Falk Gärtner bought this plot seven years ago, quit his job in advertising, and started a permaculture farm. "I really want to show how to produce food in a sustainable or regenerative way. I want to leave this place better than I found it. Anywhere in the world you could do this." He follows permaculture principles, sells directly to local restaurants and shops, works by hand and recycles his waste, meaning his food is basically climate neutral – unheard of in industrial agriculture.
So, permaculture. Permaculture is a mix of the words permanent and agriculture. The idea is to create a food production system that is self-sustaining and circular. The term was first coined in 1978 by Australian authors Bill Mollison and his student David Holmgren, earning Mollison the alternative Nobel Prize a few years later. The gist of the idea is not new, though. It’s inspired by many indigenous traditions of self-sufficient farming, like living off small plots of land and planting multiple crops. Many of its techniques have been tried and tested for millennia. Since the 80s, Permaculture has grown to encompass more aspects – it's built on not only what is called “earth care”, but also “people care” and “fair share” – or redistribution. But for the sake of this video, we’ll focus mostly on the agricultural part.
So say you bought a plot. The first thing you're supposed to do is to look at the landscape, water flow, climate and design your farm around the circumstances. Falk’s problem: very dry ground. "Ah yeah, here's a good example, it’s really coarse sand with small stones, it doesn’t hold any water, the water just goes in here and drops right through." Since sprinkling thirsty crops with tons of water like industrial agriculture often does it not an option. Falk made a so-called swale, a trench that lies lower than the rest of the property where water can trickle in. "I put lots of biomass in that dug-out trench and put all the earth on that hill, and then put logs and sticks into that trench." "It’s crazy it just looks like a bunch of logs somewhere and this actually acts as a sponge and as a water collection system." "Water collection system for the trees to really grow." He applied the same idea underneath the paths between the fields – and covered the trenches with wood chips – a process called mulching. Burying logs and wood also stores more CO2 than if you would burn them for energy. The water that does fall through the ground gets collected in a well. Falk calculates how much water falls on his property and only takes out that amount – and has a fully automated sprinkling system that reduces his water usage significantly.
Second on the agenda: Protecting and building up a fertile ground. We all know the big trenches tracktors leave when tilling the soil. But in permaculture, the top soil with the minerals and its own ecosystem stays intact. And is nurtured with sometimes quite unusual natural fertilizer. "Compost and dove droppings." "That’s very specific..." "It’s very specific. It’s because it’s so local, that I really love it. Trash for somebody is usable for somebody else. That’s a permaculture principle, produce no waste." That's why dead trees turn into sponges, and bad harvests back into compost. What’s striking is also that every little row has different produce growing on it – and each one gets re-planted up to four times a year, producing more with less space. And if one crop fails – others grow to balance it out.
But some rows aren’t even for harvesting. Strips between rows are kept completely wild, so that native animals can thrive, promoting bioderversity – with one other pleasant side effect. These small slugs were eating a lot of Falk’s salads until bigger slugs appeared, eating the smaller ones. "So it’s a natural pesticide?" "Yes, it’s not just with slugs, it’s with mice, it's with insects, a lot with birds. We have all these birds nesting around so we make all of these hedges that actually are nice nesting grounds for the birds. And the birds eat all the insects." The farm now even gets visits from a fox that eats all the mice. There is only one pest without a natural preditor – the flea beetle that comes from nearby rapeseed monocultures and loves Falk’s salads. That’s what the nets are for. Falk already factors in that he could lose up to 25 percent of his produce. "Keep calm, maybe accept a little loss, and nature will find something to remedy it."
To be honest, a lot of this sounded a bit too good to be true. But most of these individual methods have scientific evidence to back them up. Polycultures are less prone to crop failure and more resiliant to extreme weather. Flower strips have been shown to reduce pests by an average of 16 percent. And other techniques like agroforestry – growing trees next to produce – can reduce carbon emissions and increase biodiversity. Not to mention many of these methods have been used all around the world for hundreds of years.
That’s one reason why permaculture has gained an international following. With farms everywhere from India, South Africa to Brazil. Farmers are combining the ideas with local agricultural traditions and adapting them to their specific contexts. In India, so-called food forests are popular, with local fruit trees like papaya. In Colombia, chagras, an indigenous tradition of growing food in the tropical rainforest is merged with permaculture principles. And it’s taking root in cities as well. Growing food closer to the consumer, cutting down on transport emissions and using even smaller spaces efficiently. But usually most of these are subsistence farms or model, educational projects.
In a world that’s dominated by big farms and industrial agriculture, farmers like Falk need to get creative if they want to turn a profit. "Something that you don’t really see in normal farms I think." "Look at it! Look at the colour!" Or these small snack carrots. Most of the produce is fast-growing and has a twist. "It’s a way higher value product. Which I need for making a revenue because I can't compete with big field carrots." His vegetables are more expensive than conventional produce, similar in price to organic veggies sold around the region. "Let’s get these dirty little bastards clean!" "Vegetables are expensive. These cheap prices come from cheap labor. You can’t feed the world on one euro carrots beause it's destroying the world." And that’s the dilemma. Current prices for food do not include the cost of the harm done to the environment or the workers. Quite the contrary. Agriculture is big business, with a big lobby. In the EU, the bigger your farm, the more subsidies you get, and the more you can lower your prices with economies of scale. Which – by design – is hard to do with permaculture.
But that doesn’t mean it can’t grow. Organic produce was also once seen as too niche, too complicated and too expensive. Today, organic products are available in many mainstream supermarkets and are getting ever more popular. And permaculture has one big advantage: If the system does become self-sustaining, you need very little inputs to produce food. "So I have a really high profit margin, 80 percent of my revenue is profit." "That's insane." "That’s insane! Because I don’t have a tractor, the only things I actually pay for is the compost and the seed, it’s not that I’m getting rich but I don’t need much to live off because I have my food and everything here as well."
Of course, this doesn’t mean we can all turn our mega monocultures into tiny permaculture farms. Big Agriculture argues only they can feed a growing population. But relying solely on them could threaten our future food supply. Studies show we’re facing worldwide soil degradation due to the intensive farming methods. And it could be irreversible. Monocultures are fragile, prone to pests, and sensitive to extreme weather conditions – of which we’ll of course see much, much more of in the future.
So what could industrial agriculture learn from permaculure? "Some things are definetly adaptable – with the compost, and also with the in-between rows with habitats, that’s definitely all possible. Agroforestry is a big theme there, to grow trees around, not to be afraid to have shade on your field. I think that’s all things that big agriculture needs to address." As well as planting multiple crops that are more resilient, using less water and building up soil. All changes that have been proven to work and have already been made in larger scale organic farms. They might cost more money now. But in the long-term these changes could become the only way for farmers to keep making money. Not to mention protect the environment.
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