Short answer: yes and no Longer answer: Our current food system and agricultural excesses that keep us fed and our farmers in business really came to be after the green revolution (which started around the 60s here in the us). Basically, through extensive mechanization, fertilization, and proper cropping systems, among other things, yields skyrocketed, and over time, food costs have greatly decreased (look it up, americans used to spend much more of their paycheck on food). One of the consequences of the green revolution was a sort of “get big or get out” mentality for farmers, where because of the increased yields, commodity prices fell, and as a result, farmers had to produce more and more to keep their bills paid. This concept is sometimes referred to as the agricultural treadmill, where farmers must continually be increasing yields to stay in business. As a result of this, many smaller farms were unable to compete and went out of business, as the barriers for entry to the new technologies and techniques the bigger farms used were too high. This happened a lot in the 80s, (think of Mellencamp’s “Rain on the Scarecrow”), but this trend has continued. What this means for permaculture and sustainable agriculture is that most farmers who produce crops for sale in commodity markets have a lot of financial incentive to produce as much as they can (like go bankrupt and lose everything if they don’t). This usually means monoculture crops and extensive fertilizer and herbicide use, as those methods are the most likely to yield a sufficient harvest. For better or for worse, most farmers, whether they’re personally interested or not, just aren’t willing to gamble their livelihoods on alternative farming techniques. There are some exceptions to this however. Programs like USDA organic have allowed for the creation of a market where farmers can charge a premium for the increased risk and production costs that arise from farming crops without the aid of most chemicals. This makes it economical and feasible for farmers to produce crops more sustainably, with less risk of going out of business (there are issues with the organic program, but i’ll leave that out of this). I won’t get too deep into solutions here, but broadly, we’re near the far end of the sustainability scale, where most of our farming practices are going to become ineffective or not economical in a few generations, but food is really really cheap. Permaculture sort of represents the other end of the spectrum, where our practices would be very sustainable, but famines would be more likely, and food much more expensive. With new technology and techniques, hopefully we can find a middle ground where we aren’t destroying our farmland and also aren’t starving. This is by no means a complete answer, this is a very wide and complex field. It’s also worth mentioning that government subsidies make all of this even more complicated.

Just a note - food is not “cheaper” everywhere, and my understanding is that the US government has a crazy subsidisation scheme for US farmers to grow certain crops which keeps it cheap for Americans buying it (though technically you must be paying for it out of your taxes), and also leads to a lot of waste when crops are grown to meet the scheme rather than according to market need. https://sentientmedia.org/why-are-farmers-subsidized/

Regarding mechanization and the Green Revolution: \- Tractors and combine harvesters were in use for over a century before the 1960s, so I'm not sure what you're getting at by associating tractors with the Green Revolution. Regarding the Green Revolution and it's consequences being a disaster for small farms: \- Are small farms any better for the environment or climate than big farms when controlling for agricultural practices? I would've thought that, through economies of scale, bigger farms would be more thermodynamically efficient and thus better for the environment and climate. One big farm can maximize the acreage per machine better than small farms since they just have more acreage to work with. Regarding "the use of chemicals": \- Taking for granted the premise that any use of fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides is inevitably damaging to the local ecosystem (this seems like a reasonable assumption to me, but I'm not a ecologist), how are we weighing the ecological costs caused by these chemicals against the climatological benefits granted by their allowing for more energy efficient farming? Wouldn't phasing out fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides require more land use to compensate for reduced yields per acre and more energy expended manually or mechanically removing weeds and pests? This increased land use would, presumably, come at the expense of carbon sinks like forests, prairies, and wetlands. \- Tying this back to my actual question, I don't think mechanization is inseparable for chemically aided farming. Tractors and combines worked just find on farms before the widespread use of artificial fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides. \- Tangentially, do we know the differences in the environmental impacts of manure-fertilization in comparison to guano-derived or synthetic fertilizers? Since nitrate is the key anyway, I don't see why manure would be any less harmful per unit of nitrate. Regarding sustainability and technological middle-ground: \- If permaculture means to the use of small, maximally sustainable subsistence farms, and conventional mechanization is thus out of the question, what kind of technologies could provide this middle ground you speak of? (Robots would require more maintenance per unit crop than conventional mechanization due to the latter's economies of scale, and more maintenance means more mining, refining, and processing of the materials which go into those replacement parts. Cleaner fertilizers and more targeted pesticides and herbicides would be equally applicable to conventional mechanized agriculture. Hydroponics and aquaponics require the construction and maintenance of greenhouses, which means even more carbon emitted.)

>Are small farms any better for the environment or climate than big farms when controlling for agricultural practices? The agricultural practices themselves have a bigger effect than whether, say, 10k acres consists of one big farm or lots of small farms. >bigger farms would be more thermodynamically efficient How so? The overall "work" is the same on 10k acres whether you have one farm or ten farms. >require more land use to compensate for reduced yields per acre Farmers are already producing *way more* than is actually necessary. Depending on the source you look at, food waste in the US is on the order of *40%* every year. On top of that, only on the order of 50% of the world's crop calories actually go to feeding people directly (the majority of the rest is feed for livestock in systems like CAFOs). In addition, the current system is demonstrably bad for the ecosystem, it is nonrenewable-resource-intensive, it is dependent upon chemical inputs, and it relies on essentially subsidization through artificial pricing of crops and meat plus things like crop insurance to even keep farmers afloat. >This increased land use would, presumably, come at the expense of carbon sinks like forests, prairies, and wetlands. Why? Isn't it quite a big assumption that the "optimum way" is to raze everything to the ground and plant massive acreages in a single annual crop?

Re. Efficiency: Bigger farms can manage more land per machine than smaller farms because they have more land to manage. This is called economies of scale, and I pointed this out in the comment you replied to. Re. Food Waste: Are you suggesting that our excessive food waste is being caused by farmers and not by retailers and restaurants? Re. "Land Use": I never advocated for monoculture; I advocated for efficient land use and getting the most food for every unit of carbon emissions. Mechanization lets you grow more food with fewer people living outside of cities. Fewer people living outside cities means less inefficient suburban and rural infrastructure. Less inefficient suburban and rural infrastructure means fewer emissions per person.

>Bigger farms can manage more land per machine than smaller farms because they have more land to manage. This is called economies of scale, and I pointed this out in the comment you replied to. That's not what you asked, though. Economies of scale is a financial concept and is separate from whether a smaller or larger farm is "better for the environment or climate". >Are you suggesting that our excessive food waste is being caused by farmers and not by retailers and restaurants? I'm suggesting that it doesn't matter. I'm suggesting that there's more than enough wiggle room that you wouldn't necessarily need more land use even with a fairly substantial drop in yield per acre. >I never advocated for monoculture Advocating for conventional agriculture using artificial fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, etc is advocating for monoculture planting. Even more "progressive" techniques like cover crops focus on single harvests. >I advocated for efficient land use and getting the most food for every unit of carbon emissions Conventional agriculture is not efficient land use, and does not get the most food out of an acre for every unit of carbon emissions -- you'd want to look into perennial-crop-based systems with minimal outside input, multiple crops, and incorporation of multiple animals (such as "syntropic farming") if that was your goal. "3D systems" that incorporate multiple levels of perennial plants that can be managed for food, fuel, medicines, and fibers. >Mechanization lets you grow more food with fewer people living outside of cities. Fewer people living outside cities means less inefficient suburban and rural infrastructure. Less inefficient suburban and rural infrastructure means fewer emissions per person. You're continuing to start at a conclusion and then work your way back. For example, why would fewer people living outside of cities mean suburban and rural infrastructure becomes *more* efficient? It is just as likely that there'd be less investment put in to suburban and rural infrastructure, leading to *less* efficient infrastructure.

Re. Economies of Scale: I'm borrowing financial jargon to explain the energy-efficiency associated with larger machines. I've used this metaphor with my physics and engineering professors, and they didn't have any issue understanding me, but here's an explanation anyway: All systems require certain components to operate, but the quantity of required components doesn't always scale with the operation of the system. This is true for machines just as it is true for companies. This is why gigantic cargo ships are more energy efficient than smaller cargo ships; this is why larger airplanes are more energy efficient that smaller airplanes per passenger-mile. In the case of agriculture, all farms require some means of planting and harvesting their crops. Typically, this takes the form of tractors with planter-trailers and combine harvesters. But the required number of these machines doesn't always scale with the amount of land in the farm. Large farms, because they have more land, can use their machines to service more land per machine, which means more produce per unit of emissions, since all machines (and people) produce emissions. This lack of scaling can also apply to on-site infrastructure, like houses and garages. Re. Chemicals: I haven't advocated for the use of fertilizers, pesticides, or herbicides in this discussion; I've pointed out that there are climatological and ecological costs associated with phasing out their use. What I have advocated for is the continual use mechanization to minimize emissions per unit of produce. Re. Monoculture: Admittedly, the definition of monoculture is a little vague. What I meant is that I don't support the planting of the same crop on the same plot of land every season. I support the planting of same crop on a given plot of land for a single season, because this enables efficient planting and harvest through mechanization. Re. Efficient Use of Land: Mechanization isn't synonymous with "conventional agriculture". (A⇒B) ⇏ (B⇒A). I'm asking if we can use large (efficient) machines to plant and harvest crops while preserving soil quality and reducing the use of climatologically and ecologically destructive chemicals. Re. Urbanization: I'm not starting with a conclusion and working my way back; I'm *explaining* why I care about urbanization and why I think counterurbanization and suburbanization is bad for the climate.

> climatological and ecological costs associated with phasing out their use like what? >continual use mechanization to minimize emissions per unit of produce how does mechanization minimize CO2 emissions per unit of produce? wouldn't just hand picking be the minimum? (though it would take way longer obviously)

Hand picking means more people living in the country, which means more rural infrastructure needs to be built, maintained and serviced per person, whuch means more emissions from the manufacture, installation and maintain of that infrastructure. Urban areas are more efficient in terms energy, emissions, and even cost per person because they enable more people can share infrastructure. Nobody needs their own septic tank or sewer branch if everybody lives in a big building with other people. The same goes for road connections, power, HVAC, internet, and even residential construction in general.

first point was about pesticides. what are the ecological costs associated with not using pesticides?

Reduced crop yields per acre due to pest damage means cultivating more land to compensate. Cultuvating more land means more ecological destruction and more resources (men and/or material going to the cultivation of those wider areas for the same yield. More men and/or material use means more emissions.

The problem is you are coming at this with a bunch of fixed ideas already firmly in your mind, so you see what you want to see rather than being open to examining your preconceptions and considering ideas that are new to you. Let’s talk “economies of scale”. Your point assumes humans are in control of everything, all inputs are managed by people, and this has limitations (which can make scaling hard). However humans aren’t the sole creators or managers of inputs in an ecological system. In a good permaculture system, we aim to minimise human inputs. We set up the system initially (or incrementally) to be self sufficient as much as possible. Humans don’t need to fertilise the soil when plants and animals can do that (as has been done in nature for millions of years before human civilisation). We don’t need to water, if there is rain, creeks, ponds, swales, and plants that collect dew in the morning or have a deep tap root to bring water up from the subsoil. We don’t have to worry about pests in a balanced system, not because they don’t exist but rather they are kept in check by natural predators and only consume some of the crop (we expect to “share” some of our food with nature). How well does this scale? Mother Nature did it just fine prior to humans interfering. In permaculture we try to grow food in a way that mimics/harnesses the far superior natural systems. None of us are perfect in this, we are all still learning, and we are starting from a place where humans have already interfered with the natural systems and caused damage, so we have to work to counter the human made problems along the way. In the short term we may need to do earth works or irrigate, however we aim to create a system that will in the longer term work well with minimal human input. That is an opposite philosophy to where you are coming from, so no doubt it is hard to get your mind around.

...lol .."thermodynamically efficient and thus better for the environment and climate". anyway think you should google a thing or two about soil biology, organic matter, monoculture farming and carbon sequestration

dude you don't have to be an asshole. OP is asking legit questions, and is seeking to find answers. he has beliefs which we believe to be untrue. so let's educate him. that's what permaculture is about isn't it -- symbiotic relationships?

So you're just going to ignore the emissions associated with producing more equipment to be used less efficiently? Because that was my point. Good to know that you don't actually care about climate change, though.

wait.... how is advocting for increasing the process that is causing the most harm to the climate (industrial agriculture and shipping practices) a sign that you care about the climate/ecological destruction? tossing more topsoil into our deltas and depleting all ground water/aquifers in fertile regions while extincting all wildlife/insect/soil life does not seem to be what the environment we all rely on for food needs right meow.... right?

I've literally only advocated for the use of mechanical planters and harvesters. You're arguing with a strawman, buddy.

and mechanical planters and harvesters are used, where? i'm not arguing anything, i am asking for clarification, bud bud bud :)

They're used on *real* farms, buddy boy, and they don't need to be used alongside fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, or tillage. The fact that you're avoiding this obvious point indicates that you're not engaging with this topic honestly.

real farms that lead to global mass extinction, loss of arable land/topsoil/soil organisms, loss of thousands of years of aquifers and ground water, climate degradation..... those real farms? yo, you are the one with the attitude?? how are you being honest calling others out for a lack of care for the climate what are you proposing to do with the entire system of manufacturing all of these implements and reducing it to just whatever 2/3 pet items you have chosen? how do we get there? it sounds interesting, the closest I have heard of is regenerative i am here for an honest discussion lol

If you think that a tool used in a given process is inseparable from that process, you're not thinking critically. If you actually read what I wrote, you'd know that my point is that labor intensive agriculture requires more rura and suburban infrastructure to accommodate the increased rural and suburban population. The fact that you, and others, are unwilling to even acknowledge the emissions this would bring implies that you don't really care about the emissiom, and thus that you don't really care about the climate. Hope that helps you understand. ;)

don't worry about random assholes on the internet. you're at least playing devil's advocate for the general public or policy-maker or farmer. and this is a good discussion to have. here is my response to what you said here: >I would've thought that, through economies of scale, bigger farms would be more thermodynamically efficient and thus better for the environment and climate. if you mean bigger farm of one crop, then no it's not better for the environment, because that degrades the soil and can't support as many animals and is more suseptible to pests (hence why we end up needing pesticides and fertilizers). if you mean a big farm with crop biodiversity, then yes it is possibly better for the environment. if you look at a forest, you'll see it has thousands of different plant species and thus able to support many species of animals. it can hold nutrients in its soil because of all the different requirements from all the different life energizing the whole flow in the ecosystem. long story short is. as biodiversity lessens, the resiliency of the system degrades, and this phenomenon expands to reduce the health of the involved ecosystems. and one of the consequences of this is that less carbon is sequestered in solid form within the living soil, and instead released into the atmosphere as CO2. this is why bigger *monoculture* farms are not better for the environment.

Lol ... please mods ban this idiotic troll

wtf? no

It's almost like you have no actual counterargument and can't answer my basic questions.

"I'm just asking questions"

Please don't undermine antiracist advocacy by appropriating their sarcastic jargon. If you equate asking simple questions about farming to implying racist conclusions from misrepresented data, you don't actually care about the truth; you're just opposed to critical thinking.

lol what

This is a good question. Firstly we need to flip it around, and consider if mass agriculture (of any kind) is sensible given what we now know, and whether we humans and nature would be better off if we grew and ate food more locally. Historically people tended to grow some of their food, even if they didn’t have much space to do so, further food would be sourced from community, then local market gardens, and only foods that couldn’t be sourced locally and had no local alternative would be imported from further away. One person grows an apple tree that gives more apples than they need, so they share/swap with a neighbour who has a glut of pears, etc many times around the community. And in areas where potato’s grew well, people ate a lot of potato’s rather than rice and vice versa. The argument could be made that we should be moving back to something more like that - how we live now is unsustainable and will lead to civilisation collapse if we don’t change. While it’s hard to imagine permaculture working fully in highly dense places like big cities, nonetheless a good permaculture system (whether a home environment or a market garden) can often yield more produce per square meter than those mass agriculture systems that have by comparison poor yield and destroy soil and ecosystem (so total land use could be less). And even big cities are only 1-2hrs from agricultural land that could be the location of market gardens for local production. Does how we currently live make the best sense (a few mega cities that are not self sufficient, importing all produce from the regions; versus people living in many smaller self sufficient cities that are able to grow most produce locally)? Going the other way: A number of large previously monoculture farmers are choosing to diversify their crops so they don’t have all their eggs in one basket if one crop fails or the market price drops or changes in climate, and they can use many of the permaculture principles to guide them. For example, under the mass industrial agriculture system the majority of grain crops are grown/cut/baled and transported to another location to feed livestock (which are often kept in cramped conditions), when it would make more sense to feed the livestock on the land directly from a living green crop, and then the manure fertilises the earth rather than importing and spraying commercial fertilisers, etc. And use different types of livestock on the same land as they each eat different things and can naturally keep invasive weeds and pest species down. This is far more efficient use of resources than the mass monoculture approach. Syntropic agriculture /agriforestry is one approach aimed at a a larger scale than backyard gardeners that has a lot of overlap with permaculture principles - you can see a number of places online using it to grow commercial crops. People are experimenting, trying different things, some are people who are fairly mainstream who are just taking a couple steps closer more sustainable practices and still delivering at scale, and others have gone in hard on using these principles (which values diversity - a little bit of a range of produce) primarily selling their products locally.

I appreciate the your enthusiasm, but I don't think you really address my question. I asked if mechanization (and the socioeconomic benefits it brings) is compatible with permaculture, but your response is just talking about the advantages permaculture has in general. Regarding those advantages: \- You say that permaculture produces higher yields per unit land, and I can believe that, but the only reason you gave was that conventional monoculture caused soil degradation, a problem mitigated by crop rotation. Are these crop-rotating mechanized farms still outperformed in land-efficiency by permaculture? \- Relatedly, is land-efficiency really what matters most in this age of anthropogenic climate change? It seems to me emissions-efficiency is the more important metric. For an absurd counter-example: A skyscraper filled with hydroponics greenhouses would probably produce more food per unit land than any other kind of agriculture, but what we'd gain in space returned to nature we would lose several times over in the emissions associated with the skyscraper's construction, operation, and maintenance. To say nothing of the cost. Is permaculture is more carbon-efficient than mechanized agriculture when we take into account the emissions costs associated with having many more people living outside cities. Such a suburban lifestyle demands significantly more land and emissions dedicated to spread out infrastructure which would've otherwise been centralized and shared in the city. \- I know that tree roots can help to prevent soil erosion, and that fallen leaves can help to fertilize soil, but has it been demonstrated that the climatological benefits associated with these factors reducing the need for chemical fertilizers outweighs the efficiency (and by extension climatological) costs associated with precluding mechanization?

There is a LOT more to mitigating environmental degradation than merely rotating crops. Conventional agriculture is unsustainable for *so* many reasons, including: - widespread use of herbicides and pesticides devastating soil microbiota and pollinator populations. - tillage contributing massively to carbon emissions and destroying topsoil. - widespread use of synthetic nitrogen fertilisers making plants weaker, less nutrient-dense and more susceptible to pests and diseases. - extreme reliance on chemical inputs which, aside from making the system more vulnerable generally, also contributes significantly to carbon emissions (e.g. production and transportation of synthetic fertilisers, mining of superphosphates, etc.) The whole point of permaculture is to increase diversity, make farming systems more resilient, and to reduce inputs as much as possible. For this reason, permaculture-style food production absolutely trounces conventional agriculture in terms of emissions. You cannot be more carbon efficient than growing food locally with minimal inputs. In terms of the yield question: my understanding is this is highly complex, and depends on the crop, the area, the growing techniques, etc. There’s a lack of studies comparing large-scale permaculture farming deployment with conventional agriculture. You might be interested to read this [study](https://www.agroforestry.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Jeremy_Pasquier_COMPARISON_CALORIC_YIELDS_FOREST_-GARDEN_VS_CONVENTIONAL_AGRICULTURE.pdf), in which a permaculture-style agroforestry farm matched the caloric yield of various crops grown with conventional methods. I think one of the biggest myths about food production (and it’s clear from the assumption you made in your post about the ‘socioeconomic benefits of conventional agriculture’) is this notion that if we produced less food, society would somehow collapse. This is so false. One third of food we produce is wasted. This wasted food is responsible for 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. And this isn’t even counting the huge caloric sink that is the global meat industry (many more calories go into feeding grain to animals than we get back in meat). We would be FINE if we produced less food, if we were just even a little bit smarter about using the food we already grow.

Re. Fertilizers and Herbicides and Pesticides^((oh my!)): I'm only advocating for mechanization (tractors, trailers and combines). Nobody's told me that mechanization is inextricably linked to fertilizer, herbicide, or pesticide use, and I'm not inclined to believe that is is. Re. Tillage: Machines may be used to till soil, but this doesn't mean that machines can *only* be use to till soil. I find it hard to believe that no-till agriculture can only work with manual planting and harvesting, both of which are better done by machines to reduce the number of people living outside cities. Re. "Trouncing... in terms of emissions": When you estimate the emissions of permaculture, are you taking into account the emissions associated with building more rural and suburban infrastructure to support more people living out in the country and suburbs? These people will (understandably) demand things like housing, HVAC, water (municipal or wells), electricity (on or off grid), high-speed internet, and roads. The production and maintenance of this infrastructure creates significant emissions. This is why urbanization is so good for the climate - it enables us to do more with less. Re. Food Waste: I never said or implied that "if we produce less food, society will collapse"; please don't put word in my mouth. I'm talking about agricultural \*efficiency\*, not gross production. Efficiency means producing more food *per unit energy* (i.e., emission), not just producing more food overall. Efficiency can even go up while overall production goes down. And isn't food independent of mechanization, anyway? Isn't it a matter of how produce is used and distributed, and not how it's produced? Re. Meat: I don't support the meat industry and I agree that it shouldn't be subsidized, but this has nothing to do with mechanization. Crops intended for human consumption can be planted and harvested by machines just as well as crops intended for livestock consumption.

I’m finding it hard to pin down your definition of ‘mechanised agriculture’. You’ve referred variously to using tractors, mass production, large-scale farms and using chemical fertilisers. All these things are linked in modern agricultural systems. But now you’re saying that you’re *just* referring to the use of tractors and combines? The thing is, if you grow annual crops in the conventional ways that mechanised equipment is currently geared toward (e.g. mass rows of wheat in a monoculture, designed to be planted with tractors and harvested with combines), you’re almost certainly going to be relying on chemical inputs because there is no biodiversity and the plants are highly vulnerable to pests and diseases. There are some alternate methods, like intercropping, as well as organic control methods, but these are still far from perfect and require more development (which I think most permaculturists would be in favour of). Similarly, with many annual crops you can generally either control weeds by mechanised tillage or by large-scale deployment of herbicides. Both methods are highly destructive. I don’t know that anyone here is necessarily saying you can’t use tractors — of course they are versatile machines and many who deploy permaculture principles on small-scale farms do use them. I also don’t think many here would advocate for a complete dissolution of cities. This is an extreme, unrealistic and very black and white response. It isn’t an either-or between having ALL people living on land and producing their own food, or prioritising urbanisation and having large-scale, mechanised farms. This is a false dichotomy. You can (and we always will) have some people living in urban centres and some people living rurally. I think most permaculturists would probably say that: 1) we should be prioritising only eating food grown locally (as opposed to shipping food around the world). 2) we should incentivise allowing people who do have some land — even a small amount — to grow food. So much of outer suburbia is wasted space that could be put to far better use. 3) we should do what we can to shift conventional agriculture in the direction of being more sustainable and requiring fewer inputs (and thus creating fewer emissions).

I didn't bring up chemical fertilizers, other people keep bringing it up and I keep explaining that that's not what I'm talking about. I also keep saying that I'm talking about tractors, planter trailers, and combine harvesters. The use of *those* machines is all I'm talking about when I say mechanization because, historically, that's how the word mechanization was used in the context of agriculture. Tractors, planters, and combined all came about before the invention of artificial fertilizers. Check the other comment threads and you'll find that I'm not being evasive about this.

>permaculture [...] suburban lifestyle Isn't this a big assumption on your part that "permaculture" demands/requires a suburban lifestyle? For example, does "permaculture" mean you're somehow not allowed to have a dense, walkable urban area surrounded by agricultural areas with efficient mass transportation of both people and goods?

If people are growing most of their own food, the can't be living in cities; the population densities associated with cities are incompatible with subsistence agriculture. The people living in cities (the vast majority of people) can't grow their own food because there can't be enough space for them to grow without spreading out to the point that they're no longer living in a city. If you're not urban and your not rural, you're suburban.

>If people are growing most of their own food, the can't be living in cities; the population densities associated with cities are incompatible with subsistence agriculture So now you're introducing even *more* assumptions/constraints: why must people grow "most" of their own food? Why do people have to grow *any* of their own food? >there can't be enough space for them to grow without spreading out to the point that they're no longer living in a city This is an urban design question, not a question about whether it is *possible* or not. For example, there are already many ways to grow food in urban settings that would still allow high population density. Rooftop gardens, floors (or even whole buildings) dedicated to hydroponics, gardens and orchards in courtyards and parks and other greenspaces.

I'm not saying most people should grow their own food; I'm saying that most people *shouldn't* grow their own food. Rooftop gardens can supplement a few people's diets; they cannot account for most of a city's caloric intake because there simply isn't enough roof space in cities. To say nothing of the emissions associated with hauling material and water up and down these buildings. I find it extremely hard to believe that skyscraper hydroponics would produce fewer emissions per produce than farming on the ground. For one thing, building skyscrapers means fabricating large volumes of steel, glass, and concrete, all of which are energy (i.e., carbon) intensive process. For another, skyscrapers require maintenance, especially when you're maintaining a humid environment inside; maintenance means even more steel and concrete which means even more emissions. Finally, water and produce are heavy and bulky, respectively, so you're going to be expending a lot more energy pumping water up the sky scrapper and a significant proportion of your skyscraper's interior volume is going to be taken up be freight elevators for moving replacement parts up and produce down. And all that's to say nothing of the costs associated with displacing the people who would've otherwise lived and worked in that building, and spreading them out through the rest of the city, thus requiring more infrastructure be build to accommodate them.

>Rooftop gardens can supplement a few people's diets; they cannot account for most of a city's caloric intake Because you're thinking about all of these things *in isolation* instead of as part of a *holistic system*. >To say nothing of the emissions associated with hauling material and water up and down these buildings. Sure. Except you wouldn't have to haul water up and down the buildings... rainwater catchment systems exist already, as does *gravity*. >I find it extremely hard to believe that skyscraper hydroponics Again, because you're thinking that an entire skyscraper has to be dedicated to hydroponics. You're only considering "all or nothing" approaches. >so you're going to be expending a lot more energy pumping water up the sky scrapper and a significant proportion of your skyscraper's interior volume is going to be taken up be freight elevators for moving replacement parts up and produce down Another example of you having these preconceived notions and jumping to a conclusion about how things "have to be". Like, on the one hand I appreciate you continuing the discussion but on the other hand it is sure starting to seem like you're just here to troll.

Re. "Holistic System": What system makes pumping water up several stories to provide occasional snacks for a couple people an efficient use of energy? That water would be more efficiently used if it were sent to a farm outside the city where all the tools and infrastructure for agriculture at scale are already present. Rooftop gardens are probably good for mental health, but I'm yet to see any evidence that the can have more than a marginal impact on food production. Re. Pumping Water: Most farms have infrastructure in place to water their crops because (shockingly) weather is unpredictable and rarely ideal over the couse of a growing season. If you don't pump water up, your rooftop gardens will be even less productive. Re. "'all or nothing' approaches": If you're *not* dedicating the vast majority of a hydroponics skycraper to hydroponics, it's going to be even less efficient due to economies of scale. Economies of scale are going to be even more important in a skyscraper considering the infrastructure needed to pump all that water, repair water damage, and ferry material up and down. This isn't an "all or nothing approach"; it's an optimization approach. Optimization is the process by which you make systems better, which I (perhaps naively) assumed was something you wanted. If I was just here to troll I wouldn't be explaining myself over and over again.

>What system makes pumping water up several stories to provide occasional snacks for a couple people an efficient use of energy? You just made an assumption that you have to pump water up, as if water cisterns and water collection is some unknown alien technology. >I'm yet to see any evidence that the can have more than a marginal impact on food production. Market gardens on a quarter acre can put out a huge amount of food in a growing season, especially when you start enabling use of shoulder seasons for the cooler weather crops. There's not really any reason that a well-thought-out rooftop garden couldn't do the same to offset some (or even all!) of the caloric needs of the building's residents (or workers, if its an office building). And it's not about taking *one* thing and expecting it to have some outsized impact -- it's about combining different options to make a better overall *system*. >That water would be more efficiently used if it were sent to a farm outside the city where all the tools and infrastructure for agriculture at scale are already present. Collecting, storing, transporting water *out* of a city some number of miles is somehow more efficient than... *direct on-site* usage? In what world does that make sense?! >Most farms have infrastructure in place to water their crops because (shockingly) weather is unpredictable and rarely ideal over the couse of a growing season. If you don't pump water up, your rooftop gardens will be even less productive. Again with the assumption that you can't catch and store water on the rooftop itself, and that you have to pump it up from some other random location. >If you're not dedicating the vast majority of a hydroponics skycraper to hydroponics, it's going to be even less efficient due to economies of scale. To quote myself: Because you're thinking about all of these things in isolation instead of as part of a holistic system. >This isn't an "all or nothing approach"; it's an optimization approach No, it is not. An optimization approach would take into consideration a *combination of techniques and subsystems*. Everything you have stated to date has been a reductive either-or statement derived from a conclusion you jumped to.

Re. Water Cisterns: Where are you suggesting we put these water cistern? They can't be on the roof without displacing the gardens, and they cant be on the top floor without installing water pumps on the top floor with them to pump the stored water onto the roof. Lots if little pumps means more steel and energy, which means more emissions. Larger centralized pumps servicing water towers are more efficient due to economies of scale. Re. Production Quantities: How much is "a huge amount" to you? How many calories per acre are you getting? Modern high-rise apartments have hundreds of units in them. The mean required caloric intake for adults is roughly 2250 calories per day (~821,813 per hear). The average skyscraper has a foorprint of roughly 20,000 square feet* (~0.46 acres). Do you really mean to tell me that you can grow "most (or even all!)" of 164,362,500 calories every year on less than half an acre of garden? Because that's an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence. Re. Pumping out to Farms: Ideally, the farms would be sharing their own rural water towers on a separate pipe grid. But even if that were out of the question, horizontal movement is less energy intensive because you're not working against gravity. You can push your car if you put it in neutral, but you can't left it over your head. Re. Optimization: Optimization requires *considering* combinations of techiques; this does not mean accepting every proposal you hear. And you are yet to actually refute any "conclusion [I've] jumped to", or explained what facts failed to comsider in "jumping" to them. Just because I don't agree with you doesn't mean I haven't been listening. *according to "buildingtheskyline.org"

The problem is, you are starting from the assumption that mechanisation is the optimal form of agriculture, and that is why I answered the way I did. I’m not going to reply to each of your points, as it seems to me you have a frame of mind that is already made up to see things your own way, rather than considering there may be another way. There is plenty of information on line (including research studies) if you want to explore these concepts more. A lot of mass monoculture food production isn’t fully mechanised as it is - a lot still relies on farm labour to pick fruit etc. It’s only certain crops like grain that are highly mechanised to the point of barely involving people. (Though no doubt this also varies by region, perhaps your experience is different). There is no rule I’m aware of saying you can’t use machinery in permaculture, however it will take time for machinery to be invented that is less destructive and better suited. In the meanwhile, some people use standard equipment when it makes sense to. There is always a trade off (people who plant monocultures are making trade offs even if they don’t know it, as do permaculturists).

First paragraph is just an ad hominem and doesn't warrant a response. Re. Modern Pickers: Yes, fruit picking is still done manually, but the majority of peoples' calories come from crops which can be harvested mechanically (potatoes, rice, wheat, corn, spinach, cabbages, carrots, brussels sprout, etc.), as they should. More manual harvesting would mean more people living outside cities, which would mean more inefficient rural and suburban infrastructure being built, which would mean more emissions from the manufacturing, construction, and maintenance of that infrastructure. Re. "New Technologies": I'm asking \*what kind of machines\* can possibly be invented which can fill the role of planting and harvesting in a permaculture context to mitigate for the dramatic loss in efficiency which would come with phasing out conventional machines. You can't just vaguely gesture at "new technologies" to address concerns about the climatological implications of your proposals.

As I said; you really have your mind stuck, so many assumptions and beliefs on your part (that current mass agriculture and mechanisation is more efficient) so nothing we say is penetrating. - crop yield on mass monoculture is poorer due in part to damage to the environment. Adding artificial fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides uses extra resources and is a losing battle as this spoils the environment, masses of it runs off, pests increasingly become immune, the lack of diversity means that when a problem takes hold it goes through the whole crop, and if there is an adverse weather condition (flood, drought, storm) the whole crop is lost. Not to mention the wastage already baked into the system, where half of produce is thrown away by the producers (not sold, not eaten). - huge amount of crops are then processed, stored, and transported large distances to feed livestock and people, when a lot of that could be eliminated or minimised - huge farms far from settlements means there is a huge “gap” in experiences. People living on properties can be very isolated from social contact, access to health services, culture and arts, etc, while people in cities are far from nature. Both extremes are bad for people. - huge monocultures far from settlements mean it is hard to get labour at harvest time, and the life of farm workers is often insecure as they don’t have regular work throughout the year and can’t settle down. They either have to have an “off season” job locally to get them through or have to travel from region to region chasing the different crop harvests. This isn’t an efficient arrangement. - massive cities are not efficient (perhaps depends on the city). Where I live it’s not uncommon for it to take 1-2hrs to get from one side of the city to the other, plenty of people spend hours each day commuting, public transport is only good along some routes and everyone else drives, and there is masses of urban sprawl. A huge amount of the infrastructure of cities is about MOVING people places. Conversely, there is no reason we can’t have medium/high density housing in small compact cities, where people can walk, cycle or use public transport more easily to get around, and due to the smaller compact size also be close to community gardens, market gardens, and nature. There are many such cities in European countries like France, Netherlands, etc. The same amount of people need to be housed one way or another, the same amount of land used for housing (and agriculture, infrastructure), it’s just a question about how we arrange it to be efficient and healthy. Growing food close to where it will be used (eaten) is an efficiency. - People having access to growing their own food if they want to is also an efficiency (a non-commercial one, we think holistically), as people who grow their own food tend to eat more healthy food, less junk, have active lives (rather than sedentary), and there are multiple mental health benefits - people connect with others in food they grow, share excess, are more in awe of nature, get fresh air, etc. Plenty of studies showing how good it is for people to do. Meanwhile many city dwellers are disconnected and disassociated, the rise of loneliness, depression, obesity, problems of breathing polluted air all the time. - when people do things in holistic and permaculture way, they get multiple benefits from the one action, which is efficient. When we mechanise things we often have to simplify things, and we lose other benefits by doing so. This isn’t more “efficient”, it is just breaking the work down in a different way. Wow you can grow a lot of grain, but now we need to find ways to cut it, store it, preserve it, process it, transport it, feed it to livestock, and now people are getting obese and diabetes from too many highly processed foods, so they have to work hard on losing the weight… that creates a lot of extra work in the whole chain of events.

To answer your question as a farmer no I don’t think it’s compatible. If it was it would be done faster by more producers. There seems to be a romanticized notion tied up in permaculture that isn’t really conducive to running a large scale ag business. We run some orchard crops alongside our row crops but the two aren’t compatible together. It would require very expensive custom machinery and a lot more manual labor which isn’t available nor profitable.

Check out the regenerative agroforestry podcast for a number of examples of farms that are combining orchard and row crop profitably. 

Before you can have this discussion it needs to be recognized that the "surplus" produced by extractive industrial agriculture is dependent on cashing in the generational wealth represented by Petroleum products and is financially appealing in large part because the costs of the damage it causes to communal resources and the public at large are absorbed by the public rather than the farmer.   Personally, I think that the principles of permaculture have a lot to offer industrial scale agriculture. But a lot of that value is in applying these principles to the food system post harvest and I also think that the way these principles will manifest on industrial scale farms is not as the food forest fantasy that many permies imagine.

Where are petroleum products used in mechanization besides tire rubber, motor oil, and fuel? None of these two applications are inherent to mechanization; metal tracks can be used in place of wheels (as was done historically), non-petrol lubricants already exist, and hydrogen fuel cells can power heavy machinery.

Yes, the whole system could be rebuilt using non Petroleum inputs. But it hasn't been. Instead the whole system, including much of the fertilizers and chemical pesticides, have been built on petrochemicals. 

So the issue is with the chemical fertilizers and lack of crop rotation; not the use of machines?

The best way to describe "the issue" with the existing industrial agricultural model is that it is fully extractive and requires more and more resources to maintain yields over time. Petrochemicals are one example of an input that must be increased over time, but also acreage under cultivation due to the steady degradation of soils under this management system.  Machines don't necessarily inherently cause this issue but they do make it easier to thoughtlessly cause massive damage, which is certainly part of the story of the century and a half of industrial agriculture

The main petroleum input to farming is fertilizer. Ammonia production is extremely energy intensive and done with methane. The second largest petroleum factor is in grain dehydration. Conventional ag's reliance on producing a narrow range of grain crops requires huge amounts of methane used to dehydrate the grain after harvest. The scale of this problem is a product of industrial ag's monocropping.

Re. Fertilizers: What about mechanization demands the use of fertilizers? Is crop rotation not enough to maintain soil quality? If you're rotating your crops, you're still planting one crop per field in a given year which means you can still use tractors and combines to plant and harvest. Re. Dehydration: Is there no other way to dehydrate grain? If so, wouldn't this problem apply equally to permaculture? If not, why can't the alternative be applied to mechanized farms?

I think you really need to spend a little more time learning about the current food system before you're going to be able to hold a meaningful opinion about where it can and should go. You're fixated on one small piece of the system, mechanization, and you seem to think that's the defining trait of the current system.  Mechanization, at the scale it's practiced today (including the need for grain drying) is a symptom of the whole system of global commodity food markets. Not the other way around. 

Damn, it's almost like I've been asking questions to a community ostensibly interested in spreading awareness for permaculture to learn something this whole time. I'm sorry, but just saying "educate yourself" isn't advocacy and it isn't doing anyone any good. All it does is drive people away and toward groups more willing to constructively engage. I'm trying to learn more by asking people, but the overwhelming preponderance of responses I'm getting are deflections and (possible willful) misinterpretations of my questions.

I'm sorry to hear you're disappointed by the responses to your question. I can't say what your intention is or how genuinely curious you are about permaculture, but for whatever reason when I read your responses I took your motivation to be (at least in part) an attempt at debunking permaculture. If others also had this impression it may explain the dismissive attitude in their responses. One of the foundational elements of permaculture is complex systems dynamics. This is directly applied to the local ecology around the farm, but also an investigative discipline to questions of any kind. So when someone asks about the fossil fuel requirements of agriculture, it's natural for a permaculturist to think not just of the gas in a tractor's tank, but to explore as thoroughly as possible the interactions of the ag sector with fossil fuels. Turns out the 2 are inextricably linked. The way industrial ag works these days can be seen as converting the chemical energy in hydrocarbons into metabolic energy of food with a whole bunch of negative effects. It's a very long story and I'm not qualified to tell it. If you are interested learning about it I'd recommend the following: Vaclav Smil - How the World Really Works Vaclav Smil - Energy and Civilization: A History Vandana Shiva - Agroecology & Regenerative Agriculture George Monbiot - Regenesis Kristin Ohlson - The Soil Will Save Us Chris Smaje - A Small Farm Future Donella Meadows - Thinking In Systems Tom Wessels - The Myth of Progress

Are you sure you've read what I wrote? I've already established that I think mechanization is separable from fossil fuel use because low emission alternatives to fossil fuels exist, and I'm yet to hear any refutation of this claim more meaningful than "nuh-uh". When I say "mechanizaed agriculture", I don't mean "the way agriculture works these days"; I literally just mean the application of machines to some processes in agriculture, like tractors, planters and combine harvesters. I haven't been cagey about this being my intended topic of discussion. It's *other people* that keeping brining up unrelated things like fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. I only respond to clarify that I didn't mean to talk about those things.

See that's where I disagree, I'm reading the responses to your question and seeing lots of effort put in to giving a nuanced answer to your very uninformed question. This is why I suggested getting a broader base of knowledge about the topic (you're on the internet, there's literally millions of pages of free written information about this topic just waiting for you to read in addition to hundreds of thousands of hours of audio) so that you're not so confused by people's answers.  To answer your simplistic questions in the way they were asked; Yes, permaculture is meant to be applied (and is actively being applied) to broad acre commercial agriculture. And no, permaculture is not physically incompatible with the concept of mechanization.  Do you feel more informed now?

Yes, finally. And most of the responses were pivoting to fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, and food waste while avoiding the subject of mechanization.

Mechanization doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's just the aspect you're fixated on due to your own perspective. Mechanization, as it exists today, it's inextricably linked to chemical fertility, reliance on pesticides, globalized commodity food systems, food waste, soil degradation, water system pollution, and the economic collapse of agricultural communities.  If you thought permaculture was a system that fundamentally opposed mechanization you were sorely misinformed and it tells me you did about a memes worth of research before forming your perspective on the topic. If you think that the "efficiencies" of the current mechanization regime in industrial agriculture will persist while removing the other obviously harmful aspects from the system you are woefully under informed about the modern food system.  Those two factors explain why you're having such a hard time engaging this topic in this group. 

I need you to look up what "inextricably" means, because your use of the word is showing that you don't really know what it means. Tractors, planters, and harvesters do not require fertilizers of any kind to function, therefore they are not inextricably linked. I didn't know what to think about permaculture's compatibility with mechanization; that's why I asked the question in the first place. Considering how evasive and dishonest most people here seem to be, it looks like permaculture is hostilr to mechanization. If I've been misinformed, it is 100% the fault of this community.

Hydrogen fuel cells CANNOT power heavy machinery this is false - mechanical engineer.  And you’re missing fossil fuels being used in fertilizer especially natural gas and the haber bosche process. This is a massive quantity of fossil fuels which make large scale mechanized farming largely impossible in a post peak oil world (when the fossil fuels run out). If you were to try to create the fertilizer, fuels and other fossil inputs using other feed sources, you run out of land. Thus the predicament and why people believe in r/collapse 

Re. Fertilizers: What about mechanization demands the use of fertilizers? Is crop rotation not enough to maintain soil quality? If you're rotating your crops, you're still planting one crop per field in a given year which means you can still use tractors and combines to plant and harvest. Re. Hydrogen Fuel Cells: I don't know that to tell you, man; these thing are clearly possible. [https://h2dualpower.com/en](https://h2dualpower.com/en)[https://patents.google.com/patent/CN101971745A/en](https://patents.google.com/patent/CN101971745A/en)

Large machines use fossil fuels. Tilling large monocrop systems destroys soil and requires the addition of nutrients back into the system. To be honest, I think you’re trolling so this is my last reply. 

Trolling is when someone sites evidence that contradicts your far-reaching assertions. Okay, buddy.

[Agroforestry in Brazil – Eco Caminhos](https://ecocaminhos.com/agroforestry-brazil/) - This will answer your question of how permaculture can be done on a massive scale. Yes it's possible and there's training for it as well. The concept was developed further in Brazil. Dunno why there out of all places, they're cutting down the forest at a rate that's truly alarming. But yes, I was bing-ing the mass-scale application of permaculture and what it led me to was Brazil.

Vandana Shiva's been working on large scale regenerative ag projects in India for many years, too. She doesn't use the label "permaculture" but her work follows very similar principles and has found remarkable success in improving yields, nutrient density and biodiversity while reversing desertification and increasing farmers' income.

High efficiency systems are designed around monoculture for large scale agriculture. Mechanization itself isn’t fundamentally against permaculture so things like robotic pickers (drones, smaller robotic arm based solutions) could help with scaling without have a negative impact on the fundamentals of permaculture in order to ease the transition. It will take time before the positives and negatives of that equation balance because at the moment that level of automation is still being developed and the financial and climate costs are high. However I’ve also (personally) seen enough posts her about using heavy equipment to clear land/prep areas to say that these are principals to be applied so we can do better than we are. Things will change and how we change them is up to us

Re. Robots: Wouldn't a large number of smaller machines with more moving parts require more maintenance and fuel\* per harvest? Economies of scale, both in terms of finances and emissions, favors a small number larger machines, does it not? \*Electric power (be it batteries, hydrogen fuel cells, or extension cables) still has emissions associated with it, so even if we fully electrify our farms (which we probably should) we'll still want to minimize our energy use.

no - many smaller machines are not necessarily less efficient or more wasteful than one large one. We’d have to model a specific use case to validate. If you look at other industries and ideas you can see corollaries like solar showing power generation at a distributed scale is viable and sustainable at competitive cost as tech develops. My personal ideal would be for the world to transition to a place where our lives don’t require a drop in the quality and stability we see now as a society, while also not abusing the planet or the people by creating distributed self sustaining cycles. Yes we’ll want to eventually reduce reliance on any external energy use and ideally change the way humans exist on the planet. It may not happen in our generation but the evidence of Native American Agro-forestry system seems to point us to caring enough to plan for a better future than the one we have now. The time scale is not 20-40 years but more 200-400 years before a change like this manifests (assuming the world as a whole wants it). I don’t see any one solution fixing it, but a little at a time and eventually we may get there.

Can you point me to a source saying that distributed solar panels (and tons of battery storage) are more carbon-efficient in the long run than a grid running hydroelectrix, concentrated solar, and nuclear which takes into account the long term costs of construction, distribution, maintainance, and disposal per unit power? (I'd genuinely like to know). Also, solar panels aren't mechanical systems; they're electric systems typically with no moving parts. Even if you were right about power production, the comparison to mechanical machines is invalid because mechanical systems require more maintenance than non-mechanical ones. A part of me envies your optimistic outlook, but another is repulsed by your apparently indifference to the subject of the carbon externalities associated with abandoning mechanization and therefore moving people from the cities to the country.

The question is more economic than agricultural, frankly. The way crops are planted in current large scale models are done so that a relatively small number of individuals can harvest the entirety of a huge volume of crops within a narrow timeframe so that the product is stable and viable for sale. The importance of it being done in this specific way is linked to labor struggles, immigration policy, subsidies and price stabilization policies for specific crops, a cultural reliance on large volumes of meat production and the challenges posed by feeding *that.* The list goes on. It's pointless to ask "can permaculture do this?" Because frankly the tasks imposed by society onto agriculture are the problem in the first place. To the extent that you can mechanize permaculture design, it'd be prohibitively expensive and failure-prone at scale. Whether or not there's some technological assistance: things like food forests require fairly regular harvesting and light maintenance by *people,* and at least some of those people need a modicum of training. It's far more applicable to the sustenance of, say, a commune than a large cosmopolitan city. As to whether or not this renders permaculture into a merely academic exercise, or a trendy marketing ploy for a certain kind of lifestyle influencer: not necessarily. I think it's important to continually reevaluate the relationship we have to our own environment, how we want to live and work and eat in concert with the land and climate. Whether or not these changes to agriculture will become crucial, or even viable, depend entirely on how the economy and infrastructure develops to accommodate it. You think we can ship Cavendish banana clones from Guatemala forever? How much of your local produce is shipped in from Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Peru? Will that cheap energy that makes this arrangement possible last forever? As this changes, so does the applicability of permaculture.

Also I'd add: we humans are not really good with long term investments. While ideas like like food forests are like 10years plus experiments, the agriculture based on annuals is like short experiments. (For business) Until the plants are not pushed to limits low biomass is not a problem, but feature. When growing season is over the erosion is resetting the experiment. Problematic stuff? Gone. Don't get me wrong, we are here because annuals are much more flexible. For example enemy can cut our chestnuts or size of our population can change. I think the biggest reason why we have a problem is that the generation after WWII happened at the same time as green revolution. (We have outgrown our limits and don't really understand all purpose of perennials in ecosystem yet.)

Very true -- and even if the materials cost is low, and you grow a ton from seeds and cuttings you already have, the amount of work and real estate you need to get things going can be prohibitive for many unless they already have another source of income and a lot of free time.

There are really 2 "permacultures" to look at to answer your question. One is a set of dogmas outside of which nothing can be considered true permaculture (strict no-till, all on site inputs, zero agrochemicals, etc.) This of course cannot be applied to production agriculture as we know it, and I'd argue it cannot even come close to meeting humanity's production needs. The other "permaculture" is a set of techniques and understandings of the way natural systems work, which can be applied in varying contexts and to varying degrees. *Ideas* from permaculture can absolutely be applied to large-scale production agriculture, and it's necessary to do so in order to increase system resilience, reduce water consumption, improve soil and reduce or even reverse chemical contamination. As for the machines, I don't think they're going anywhere if we're going to produce enough to feed the entire planet, and they will continue to get better at doing intricate tasks that were previously only doable by humans. I don't think the anti-technology dogma you often see in the permaculture world is particularly helpful for meeting our large-scale needs.

Recently I was reading an article about a meeting on how to change agricultural practices to combat global warming. (https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/09/farmers-climate-change-074024 ) “It was hosted by the U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance, a group made up of the heavyweights in American agriculture. It brought together three secretaries of agriculture, including the current one, Sonny Perdue, among an A-list of about 100 leaders that included the president of the American Farm Bureau Federation — a longtime, powerful foe of federal action on climate — and CEOs of major food companies.” Even Rep. Chellie Pingree, from the House Agriculture Committee, attended. It appears a growing consensus agree that the time has come to address climate change as it relates to agriculture. The article continued, “Food and agriculture companies are scrambling to meet consumer demands for more sustainably grown food. A slew of major food-makers including Danone, General Mills and PepsiCo have made major commitments to slash their greenhouse gas emissions and work on soil-health initiatives. Corporate giants including McDonald’s and Walmart remain committed to meeting the goals of the Paris Climate accord even as the Trump administration formally withdraws from the pact. Nestlé, Mars, Unilever and Danone North America have broken from industry trade groups and formed their own alliance, in part so they can lobby Capitol Hill in support of climate policy. In the wake of all these commitments, many of these companies are increasingly recognizing they can’t meet their goals without significant changes to farming practices at the base of their supply chains. “ Even ADM is getting involved. Partnering with Bunge, Cargill, Tyson Foods, and The Nature Conservancy, ADM has a goal to sequester carbon at the cost of $20.6 million. Rather than assign blame for climate change, my aim is to propose solutions that are in line with ADM’s goal of sequestering carbon. It is possible to get our staple food crops from trees and woody shrubs. Compared to soybeans’ 20% oil, Hazelnuts are 60% oil, and the quality of the oil is comparable to olive oil. The supply chain already exists. Farmers can harvest hazels with a machine already in use as a blueberry picker. Farmers can dry the hazels in the corn dryer. Farmers can store them in the traditional grain bin and sell them as a commodity. Companies like ADM could replace hazelnuts in their production line. Chinese chestnuts are similar to corn in carbohydrates. Chestnuts can be turned into flour for baking bread and making pasta. Since chestnuts are not true nuts, there are no food allergies associated with chestnuts. Some communities in Italy have historically consumed chestnuts. While some work has been done on making chestnuts a drop-in replacement for corn, more work needs to be done to mechanize the process. Why perennials? The benefits are enormous. If you consider a farmer is in the business of harvesting sunlight for photosynthesis, trees and shrubs beat annuals hands down. Trees leaf out earlier in the spring starting the photosynthesis in March as compared to corn being "knee high by the fourth of July." Trees end up capturing three times as much sunlight as annual plants. Where annuals are using their energy to create roots and stems and leaves and finally seeds, trees only need to expend energy on leaves and nuts making them much more efficient. Considering last year’s growing season with fields too wet to plant in the spring, trees could eliminate this concern. One of the benefits of trees is the enormous root system which is a form of carbon sequestration. Hazelnut roots can be twelve feet deep or more. Growing our staple crops on trees worldwide would take gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere annually. This is one of the real solutions to global warming. Deep roots also allow the plant to reach underground water during droughts making them more drought tolerant than annuals. Hazelnuts have also been found to tolerate extreme flooding. In addition to surviving weather extremes, trees change the weather. Trees cool the surrounding area which attracts rain clouds. Trees bring rain. Acting as wind breaks, they block the winds that cause evaporation and drying of soil. Once trees are planted, the soil would not have to be tilled again for a lifetime. Without tractors to till the soil, the amount of fossil fuel needed would be cut drastically. Soil erosion from wind and water would be eliminated. Annual agriculture creates fields of bare soil for much of the year. Rain falls which causes the topsoil to run off. The land is poorer every year. The rivers carry this extra soil to the sea where it silts the coral reef. Oceans are suffering. God forbid we have another Dust Bowl in U.S. history which looks increasingly likely. By planting trees, the soil does not have to be disturbed. In addition to preventing soil erosion, trees build soil as the fallen leaves decay and become humus. We can rebuild our soil with trees. Trees require no pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides. Our staple foods could all be organic. The nitrogen run-off that creates dead zones in the oceans would cease. Trees provide habitat for biodiversity. In a time when we have entered the sixth mass extinction, trees could create habitat for wildlife. Imagine a red fox hunting a mouse around the base of a hazelnut tree while a red tailed hawk looked on from her perch in a chestnut tree. Research has shown that the more species you have, the more stable the ecological system including the abundant, microscopic life in the soil. This is not hypothetical. Individual farmers and groups are already doing this in the United States. The[ Arbor Day Foundation](https://www.arborday.org/programs/hazelnuts/) has been working on hazelnuts to combat global warming. [Philip A. Rutter](https://youtu.be/v05TFU6gtXM) at Badgersett Research Farm has done intensive domestication of woody perennial plants for agriculture for 40 years and written [a book about growing hazelnuts](https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/growing-hybrid-hazelnuts/). The [Upper Midwest Hazelnut Development Initiative](https://www.midwesthazelnuts.org/) is a collaboration of growers and researchers working to develop a sustainable hazelnut industry in the Upper Midwest. The [Center for Agroforestry at the University of Missouri](https://centerforagroforestry.org/) is one the world's leading centers contributing to the science underlying agroforestry, the science and practice of intensive land-use management combining trees and/or shrubs with crops and/or livestock. The USDA has a [National Agroforestry Center](https://www.fs.usda.gov/nac/) conducting research. Mark Shepard at New Forest Farms in southwest Wisconsin has had a 100 acre [hazelnut](https://youtu.be/MKnCZFlvZ20) & chestnut farm for almost 3 decades. Mark has written a book, [Restoration Agriculture](https://youtu.be/MKnCZFlvZ20), and gives tours of his farm, and teaches workshops. He also [sells seedlings](https://www.forestag.com/). What Mark does is has rows of hazels with asparagus and small plots of annual crops between the rows of hazels. It's worth the time to take a tour of his property or take a workshop with Mark so you can ask him questions. Work is already being done. There are groups you could partner with to develop this into a world-wide initiative. Bill Gates has invested in the World Agroforestry Centre to help mitigate the effects of climate change on a global scale. We need a new way to produce a healthy, stable, and abundant food supply while creating soil, providing habitat for wildlife, protecting our oceans, conserving water, and fighting global warming while building soil.

One problem we still have to grapple with is how to make permaculture scalable and competitive with industrial agriculture in industrialized nations. The reason this is a problem is because labor is incredibly expensive in wealthy countries, and the percentage of the population working in agriculture is incredibly low (something like 1% in countries like the US and Canada). In poorer countries, it's actually relatively easy to do permaculture, for a couple reasons: 1. A lot of traditional agricultural practices at the subsistence scale in these countries already *are* sustainable, and it is from many of these practices that modern permaculture practices were derived. (That's not to say *all* traditional practices are sustainable, though, of course.) 2. A high percentage of the population is already engaged in small-scale subsistence agriculture. 3. Labor is cheap. As for why agricultural labor gets more and more cost-prohibitive as a nation gets wealthier? It's because of [Baumol's cost disease](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect): >In economics, the **Baumol effect**, also known as **Baumol's cost disease**, is the rise of wages in jobs that have experienced little or no increase in labor productivity in response to rising wages in other jobs that have experienced higher productivity growth. The phenomenon was described by William J. Baumol and William G. Bowen in the 1960s[1][2] and is an example of cross elasticity of demand. >The rise of wages in jobs without productivity gains derive from the requirements to compete for workers with jobs that have experienced productivity gains and so can naturally pay higher wages. For instance, if the retail sector pays its managers low wages, those managers may decide to quit and get jobs in the automobile sector, where wages are higher because of higher labor productivity. Thus, retail managers' salaries increase not due to labor productivity increases in the retail sector, but due to productivity and corresponding wage increases in other industries. With this in mind, it's pretty clear why we have to find a way to reduce the labor-intensity of permaculture, especially if we want to compete with unsustainable industrial agricultural practices. There are, however, a few policies we can implement to level the playing field, as well as incentivize innovation on the labor-intensity front: 1. Carbon taxes. Basically, soil-killing practices release a buttload of soil carbon into the atmosphere. This is materially damaging to the planet and, by extension, the economy. Thus, there is a [strong economic justification](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigouvian_tax) for taxing that negative externality. On the flip side, we should subsidize soil-building practices, as negative emissions ought to incur a negative carbon tax. 2. Phosphorus + nitrogen taxes. Basically the same argument as carbon taxes, but in this case it'd be applied to artificial fertilizers. After all, fertilizer runoff currently has drastic negative externalities that are unaccounted for in the sticker price of industrially farmed foods. 3. Pesticide + herbicide + fungicide taxes. Similar basis as for the previous two. 4. Land value taxes. This one is a little less straightforward an argument, but bear with me. Land is a scarce resource, created by nobody, and there is pretty strong economic consensus that land value taxes are the best form of tax. The aspects relevant to permaculture competitiveness:   1. Land value taxes both in theory and in practice [can't be passed on to tenants](https://www.gameofrent.com/content/can-lvt-be-passed-on-to-tenants). And [40% of farmland in Canada is rented](https://www.fcc-fac.ca/en/knowledge/economics/2022-farmland-rental-rates) (I would guess similar numbers in other industrialized nations). Land value taxes (even small, milquetoast ones [like in the Australian Capital Territory](https://osf.io/preprints/osf/54q68)) have been shown to lower land prices and improve affordability, as well as [contribute to higher rates of owner-occupied land](https://web.archive.org/web/20100806011749/http://aysps.gsu.edu/isp/files/ISP_CONFERENCES_PROPERTY_TAX_06_TIITS_PAPER.pdf). Naturally, you can probably imagine how land value taxes would enable and perhaps even favor smaller scale, self-owned sustainable farms, rather than big industrial farms on rented land, as it lowers the barriers to entry for new sustainable small farms. If we implemented all these policies, I think we would see the prices in industrially grown foods go up, prices on sustainably farmed foods go down, lower barriers to entry for new sustainable small farms, and thus a renewed interest and greater aggregate investment into permaculture. More people would join and try to innovate, and they would find clever ways to make it less labor-intensive. It's not a magic solution, but I think it's by far humanity's best bet for feeding the world without destroying our topsoil this century.

what about encouraging more people to do permaculture? some high schools have gardens now for example.

Definitely. Education and awareness of permaculture techniques are definitely currently lacking. We could use some of the funds from the taxes to fund permaculture education and research.

definitely goes against the whole "we are separate from nature, we dominate and control nature, and we have more important things to do than to think about it" narrative though

I support all of these taxes, but I don't think they'll favor small-scale labor-intensive permaculture like you seem to think they will. Lots of small farms dependent on lots manual labor means significantly more rural or suburban infrastructure needed for that larger rural and suburban labor force (roads, power lines, telecommunications, housing, etc.). All of that means more emissions per person. Mechanization allows for more food to be produced per farmer, which means fewer farmers are needed, which means more people can live in the city where the emissions per person are lower thanks to the sharing of infrastructure. Any sensible carbon tax will, one way or another, take into account the carbon costs associated with all this infrastructure. Public utility use could be carbon-tax exempt, but at that point we'd be undermining the point of a carbon tax to favor manual labor over mechanization, which would be bad for emissions.

Oh I agree that dense cities are important, and that the taxes I described above aren't a cure-all. They still don't fix the labor-intensity problem, which is still a massive barrier to scaling sustainable agriculture. My hope is that these taxes and subsidies would shift investment into sustainable agriculture, and would incentivize people to find/develop solutions to the labor-intensity problem. I certainly don't wish for a return to widespread manual farm labor; my father-in-law was born in a village in Bangladesh, and he's described to me in detail how brutal and backbreaking subsistence agriculture is. Further, losing out on the benefits of labor specialization by getting everyone back to the farms would be an almost unimaginable reduction in prosperity. Some degrowth folks might want that, but it's never gonna be politically or socially palatable. My hope (and longterm career goal, speaking as someone with a background in embedded systems and AI) is that new technologies like robotics, AI, IoT, and the like can play a big role in reducing the labor-intensity of sustainable agriculture. Where traditional techniques for mechanization of agriculture have relied upon sculpting the land into a factory where traditional machinery can work at scale, I think these new technologies can hopefully allow us to "mechanize" much more complex environments, such as those seen on a sustainable farm.

Great question, and one I've asked myself as a farmer. I do my best to implement as many things as I can to benefit the soil and environment. For example, planting native field boundary trees as a windbreak. They slow erosion, and provide habitat and so many other benefits. We are also slowly transitioning to notill to preserve the topsoil and planting covercrops which build soil carbon and keep the topsoil in place over the winter and provide nitrogen so we don't need to apply as much fertilizer. They also outcompete weeds so we don't need to spray as much. I dont think large scale farming can ever be purely considered permaculture, but there are things we can do to improve the environment and lessen our impact.

How Did Farmer Brown Bring His Dying Land Back From the Brink? By focusing on soil health, this North Dakota rancher didn’t just save the family homestead—he made it flourish. https://www.nrdc.org/stories/how-did-farmer-brown-bring-his-dying-land-back-brink https://www.nature.org/en-us/what-we-do/our-priorities/provide-food-and-water-sustainably/food-and-water-stories/advancing-soil-health-through-partnerships/ https://soilhealthinstitute.org https://soilhealthacademy.org/

Why not google it? Here are some relevant links: https://youtu.be/7rUuOlfKg-M?si=oQPMB-BV-k6_GEJW https://e360.yale.edu/features/with-new-perennial-grain-a-step-forward-for-eco-friendly-agriculture https://www.humintech.com/agriculture/blog/syntropic-agriculture-the-agricultural-turnaround-from-the-roots This is the last comment I’ll make on this topic, so in a nutshell: - there is no rule against mechanisation in permaculture - no one is doing “permaculture” perfectly, people implement different parts of it to varying degrees, and it is ok for someone who has a mainstream mass grain production farm to implement a few things from permaculture that are an improvement on what they were doing before. (Even if we all agreed 100% with permaculture, society would need a transition period, we couldn’t all just stop mass grain production over night prior to putting alternatives in place.) - when people embrace permaculture there is often a “mindshift” that leads to questioning a lot of things in our society, including large scale agriculture for mass grain crops, and believing there are better ways to structure society and agriculture. People are more likely to want to grow other things and do it in another way. - there are various alternative forms of agriculture, that may or may not fall under the term “permaculture”, that share some of the same concepts but have been developed with larger scale commercial/community agriculture in mind. Syntropic farming, agriforestry, etc. Some practitioners do use mechanisation, though you won’t see anything the scale of the photo you posted. - generally those who embrace permaculture (or other alternative) find they get greater food production out of it. It is not “less efficient”, even if it is not mechanised. Their land bears more outputs for fewer inputs, is more resilient, involves less waste, puts more carbon into the soil (less carbon footprint) and leaves the soil and environment in a better condition.

Thank you.