Inhabit

"All we need to live a good life surrounds us.

Sun, wind, people, buildings, stones, sea, birds and plants.

Cooperation with all these things brings harmony,

opposition to them brings disaster and chaos."

- Bill Mollison, Co-Founder of Permaculture

00:22 Film beginnt mit Blick auf den sich drehenden, blauen Planeten (siehe "blue marble", cover des Whole Earth Catalogs)

Bilder: Sonnenuntergang, Großstadt, Fabrikschlote, konventionelle Landwirtschaft, Tierhaltung, Supermarkt, Verkehrsnetz

Vorspann/Interviews

01:33 Konzept der "keystone species": eine Spezies in einem Ökosystem, deren Population und Verhalten alle anderen Spezies beeinflusst => Mensch

01:47 Interview Frau: Fundament des jetziges Systems (economic system, political ideology) basiert auf einem falschen Verständnis von Natur, dem Verständnis, dass wir irgendwie getrennt sind von "natürlichen Systemen"

02:08 Grund warum Zivilisationen aufgehört haben zu existieren: weil sie ihre eigenen Ressouces, ihre Lebensgrundlagen zerstört haben

02:25 agriculture comes from agrarian: soil, agrarian culture means the enrichment of it agriculture today it is an extraction, a depletion of soil, an extractive process closer to mining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture#Etymology_and_scope

02:44 top soil loss in agriculture: 22mm per acre per year (Oberboden, Mutterboden, Humusschicht)

02:57 present world: industrial economy, centralization, mass production, long distance transportation - contrarian to evolution (?) how can we as a species adapt to how the earth works (?)

03:35 to design an agriculture or a culture that is ecological: look to our local models - the forest

03:55 an ecosystem generally doesnt require lots of energy input from the outside, from another ecosystem (???) It´s finding a way to work with the sun and all the natural cycles of the season to produce what it needs

04:09 nature is the best thing we got. We don´t have anything else (???)

04:29 lets now design ecosystems, that are ecologically sound, and economically productive - permanent agriculture...

04:41 permaculture is not a thing, it´s a way of thinking, a process of Design permanent + agriculture - can we create a permanent agriculture not permanent in the sense of concrete, but grounded in the resilient diversity of how ecosystems work... (???) also a permanent culture, can culture become sth. that is grounded in the real resilience of biology (???)

05:30 look at permaculture design as a whole way of seeing the world, looking at problems and seeing how they can turn into solutions

05:40 Permaculture is a design process that is applicable in any landscape for any set of objectives

05:50 (Ben Falk) Permaculture is dependant on the prospects for us doing good, not us just doing less bad. And that really has been the driver of a lot of modern environmental movements, it´s people doing less bad. Let's just do less damage, be "eco", lower our footprint.

06:10 concepts like this create a very dangerous self-image, because it is an self-image based on the notion that we are inherently bad, a scorge on the face of the planet.

06:28 (Ben Falk) If I want to have a small impact as possible, ultimately, it'd be better if you didn´t live with that approach. That´s where you go with that philosophy. Well I don´t wanna be dead, I wanna live, and I want the lives around me to live better as well because I have lived.

So all the sudden humans are doing good. And then, impact is a great thing. Footprint ist something we want to leave.

Hauptteil

07:45 Ben Falk
Ben founded the Whole Systems Design Permaculture Research Farm in Moretown, Vermont. He is the author of "The resilient farm and homestead".

...

how to restore health to degraded land while getting valuable yields (?)

time we´re in today: we need new tools and new strategies, new techniques for land repair, that are adaptive in a more rapidly changing world

by using grazing animals and their droppings, the grass moves right back into the soil-food-web-system

more richness in the soil in a season of grazing

adding organic matter, feeding the soil from the top, and also feeding from the bottom with roots, because that´s carbon that was in the atmoshpere , carbon going from the atmosphere into the soil, the opposite of a smokestack, or a factory reverse carbon conveyer belt = plants

Sanddorn: putting more nitrogen back into the soil than it extracts. plants that are medicinal for the soil are often also for us.

multispecies ecosystem

"We can actually be healing forces"

Suburbs

20:00 Eric Toensmeier
Eric co-manages Paradise Lot, a 1/10th acre permaculture demonstration garden in Holyoke, Massachusetts

He is author of "Paradise Lot", and "Edible Forest Gardens"

We spent one year learning the site. Watching it in every season, learning the patterns of light and shadow and rainfall and snow and wind