Exploring Permaculture's Evolution and Future with Ryan from Earthed Up

I think also making time to consciously design and decide what we're going to do and kind of step back from the rat race for a second, right? And not just— just to add another metaphor— not just to be on that hamster wheel, keep going, keep going, keep going, more, more, more. Yeah, I think what we've learned in recent years as a result of the pandemic and all of the effects societally from that is that, hey, if we do have a chance to just pause and step back and look at ourselves and what we're doing, we might then make some changes for better.

Hello and welcome to Rethink What Matters, the podcast dedicated to aligning the economy with the ecology and everyone for improved business performance Stronger families and a greener, cooler planet. And today I'm joined by Ryan Sanford Blackburn, founding member of Earthed Up, and we're going to be discussing permaculture. So, hello, Ryan.

Hello, nice to join you.

It's great to be speaking with you about this. It's such an important subject, such a big subject, as I know we'll get into. I found quite an interesting definition of permaculture: to create resilient and regenerative systems that reduce the impact on the environment while enhancing human well-being. So I think it's spot on for what we're trying to do here at Awateroo. And it's also, um, it's also a great podcast for us to be doing because we've already covered indoor vertical farming Green Roofs, Urban Biodiversity, Rewilding, and Conservation for Kids. So this really, really works well with those podcasts too. So perhaps if you could start by telling us a little bit about EarthDupp, please, Ryan.

EarthDupp is a plant nursery. We're a very small and young plant nursery founded in 2021. We operate as a workers cooperative. We're a registered society. So there's 3 of us all directors and all getting our hands dirty, literally and metaphorically. So EarthDuck grow all our own plants, they're edible and useful plants, so they have wonderful places in our garden where we grow them ourselves and then propagate from them.

Okay, okay, so, and if you could tell us a little bit about permaculture then and your interest in permaculture.

Permaculture helped me co-found The Nursery. It's a design system that, for me, helps get stuff done. And I think what we're seeing at the moment is there's a lot to be done. There's a lot of changes happening to us, it can feel like. Permaculture allows us to design those changes and implement them for positivity. Permaculture allows us to take positive action and design those changes for ourselves. At the core are 3 ethics: care of the earth, care of people, and fair shares, making sure there's enough to go around.

Okay. And is this something then you think that, you know, we should all be doing, we should all be working towards?

I think most people, those ethics will ring true. I haven't found anyone that will disagree if we've got We've got a healthy, happy planet, we're looking after people, and we're making sure there's enough to go around now and for future generations. Like, nobody can argue with that. And I think the vast majority of the population are working towards that, whether they consciously know that or not. What permaculture can offer us by studying it and by practicing it is the framework to more consciously operate in that way.

Okay, okay. So I think the challenges we have, I think, are around energy. Transport, waste, and obviously taking care of the environment and the social side of things as well. And so permaculture really, I suppose, helps with all of that, doesn't it? Because if we're growing things locally and we're managing things more locally, then we're cutting down on energy, transport, you know, we're reducing food waste and taking care of the environment, and we're engaging people locally. So it seems to tick all the boxes.

Yeah, not a lot then, hey? And it's hard to find many disciplines that are so all-encompassing, and I think one of the appeals and the strengths of permaculture to me is that it is holistic, and it does see that everything's connected. So, it's systems-based. What do we mean by systems? You know, we've got transport systems, education systems, financial systems, all kinds of invisible systems in, you know, global society, or in countries, or in regions, in villages, even at parish level. We also have it in our back gardens. You know, we've got a compost system. Maybe it's as simple as lifting the lid, chucking your scraps in there, ignoring it for a couple of years, right? But permaculture works at that systems level, and it sees the whole, and it also pieces together the detail in, in cool ways, actually. Like, there's loads of people using really cool practice as part of their permaculture design. So there's a lot that permaculture has been used to design across the world. I worked with Permaculture Association, uh, 2015 we published a study, uh, called Next Big Step, and that was studying what the global permaculture network looks like. And we know that it's in most countries around the world, there's people practicing permaculture everywhere, right? At least 3 million people that have studied a design course, so that's like the, the gold standard of permaculture education. There's many millions more that have dipped their toes in just below that level on an introduction to permaculture course, or they've gone to a talk, or they, they've read a great book about it. So there's loads of people everywhere and And it has been used to design kitchen cupboards, yeah, a really sensible kitchen cupboard, up to the food distribution system for a region in northern India. And it's— that's why it's really hard when you Google what is permaculture to get one definition that sticks, because there's probably as many definitions as there are people using it, because it's holistic. and it's all-encompassing, and, uh, and you've got those core ethics. So for me, you can't point at something and go, that's permaculture, right? Unless it's communicated in that way, and someone says, hey, I used a permaculture design process to get to this end result, right? To the point where we are now, there is no end, right? Everything goes in cycles. So yes, it's been used to sort to design transport systems, food distribution systems, community composting schemes, and so on and so on. So I think the key thing is to learn the philosophy and the design tools and connect with a network of people that are using it.

And tell us a little bit about the Permaculture Association then.

The Permaculture Association are 40 years old this year. They're a charity, registered charity in England and Wales and Scotland, and they've been going, going for 40 years teaching people about permaculture and connecting them through events. And it's on the front of it as simple as that. And remember, permaculture is holistic and is used in many different places in many different ways. So right, there's so much work to to do. The Permaculture Association staff and members are excellent networkers and they connect with Friends of Earth groups, political parties, businesses, all sorts of organizations on different levels. And what I see as the real strength is their networking and bringing people together, synthesizing that effort and kind of bringing it to the front and continuing that momentum All right, okay, so it's a fantastic philosophy.

I think it's where we'd all like to get to, if you like, you know, it'd be— but there are challenges with something like this and scaling this up, aren't there? You know, I think one of the reasons we're not doing this would be just time. People don't have the time to grow their own.

I think also making time to consciously design and decide what we're going to do and kind of step back from the rat race for a second, right? And, and not just— and just to add another metaphor, not just to be on that hamster wheel. Yeah, no offense to our small mammals, but just keep going, keep going, keep going, more, more, more. Yeah, I think what we've learned in recent years as a result of the pandemic and all of the effects societally from that is that Hey, if we do have a chance to just pause and step back and, and look at ourselves and what we're doing, we might then make some changes for better.

Okay.

In our own lives of work, in how we travel, in how we enjoy our time, in how we spend our money. So everybody that has this choice, that has the privilege to be able to step back and and take a look at their life can do so and think, is this the most ethical path I'm taking to care for the Earth, to care for myself, and to make sure there's enough resources to go around now and in the future?

Okay, okay. So it seems that this would work best at a community level where people can get together and share knowledge and skills and obviously just make the economics of it work.

We have to work together. That's what we do as a species, and we have to work with other species. Okay, we have— we know that we have to plant more trees, for example. We know we have to create more habitat for insects. We know that we have to build the soil so they can store the carbon and feed us. We have to work together holistically, so we have to work in community, sure, with lots of other people, and all the other resources in our environment too. If we're just going to be extractive, imagine that person in your community that's always take, take, take. We don't get along well, do we? It doesn't build happiness and health. So if we can just give and keep giving to our community, share our skills, share our abundance. We've got a garden full of courgettes and runner beans. It's July. I think a lot of us growers do at the moment, you know, give it away. Maybe then some people will exchange with you and they'll give back some lettuce or some pound coins. You know, we have to work together and we have to find ways to keep scaling out as well as scaling up our efforts. Right. If you— if I just think about the neighborhood I live in, you know, there's 150 houses We don't have a village center, we don't have shops, services, etc. We're near a main road and 150 houses— I don't know how many people that is, at least 500, I think. There's lots of families, it's a mixed neighborhood. If we could all work together and we had a conscious permaculture design for just our neighborhood, that would be so impactful on so many people. I think we'd get a lot more food grown, we'd share a lot more tools, we'd totally change how we work and how we commute and childcare. And the first step towards that would be bringing us together. And like I say, we don't have, you know, we don't have a shop, we don't have a village hall, we're just, you know, stuck on the side of a hillside on the edge of a town.

Can you tell us a little bit about the history of permaculture, please, Ryan?

There's many points in history I could start the story of permaculture. Um, I'm going to go back maybe 500 years, and let's, let's think about how indigenous communities around the world were surviving and thriving in those times. We don't have to pick on any community in particular. I think the best pattern to look at is that they're working with nature. Okay, we think about indigenous tribes now in the Amazon, okay, they're really integrated into the rainforest. They work with the species that they're alongside every day to help themselves thrive for medicine, for shelter, for food. Food. Now let's fast forward to the 1970s, to Australia. Didn't know we were going to land there, did you? So we have Bill Mollison, who's teaching at the University of Tasmania. And Bill, uh, Bill left school when he was 16. He'd worked in fisheries, he'd worked in forest, he'd worked with timber, worked in different natural ecosystems, and then he started to teach. And what he realized was that Mother Nature's got it sussed. She doesn't find it hard. You know, if, if humans could act more like nature, then it would be a lot more efficient and a lot healthier to live and thrive on this planet. So he started to put this to the test, and Fast forward a few years, David Holmgren, one of his students, jumped on board and said, yeah, Bill, I want to help you test these theories, and I see you doing this. And so, so they started doing it, it being permaculture. And books were published, and Bill sent out students of permaculture around the world to spread the message. And he said, we need an army of land workers to spread the word of permaculture. Now, that feels like it puts the cult into permaculture, okay? We've got to say that. It's a criticism I've heard, and I get it. And it was a different time. It was the 1970s. I wasn't there. I've got to put my hands up and say I don't remember those times. I wasn't born. But permaculture started to spread across the world, and in the UK, we had pioneers like Rod Everett teaching people about permaculture. We had the first people sort of just trying it out across the country and, and setting up smallholdings and farms and gardens.

So can I just come in there with a quick question, Ryan, if I may? So what I'm not, what I'm not really understanding at the moment is what were they doing that was new or radical? Or different to what was already happening?

So what was different about permaculture? It was at a time where the Limits to Growth report had been published, which essentially said all of our natural resources that we're extracting have their limits. You know, peak oil will come, all these natural resources will run out. So with those core ethics of earth care, people care, fair shares in particular, like limiting growth, living consciously. And there were lots of other similar movements at the time, but what permaculture did was put it all together and take action. Okay, so, so we've got the ethics, we've got the principles which go further into how nature works, and we've got some design systems. And right, the first, the first published books were really practical. And permaculture initially was permanent agriculture, and then over time got contracted to permanent culture because of the holistic nature of it. So growing things differently is how it started— perennial systems. So an annual intensive system, you may picture a tractor with a plow year on year digging up the soil acre, you know, acres upon acres sowing the same species, the whole field of wheat or corn or maize, what have you, fertilizing that with chemical fertilizer, spraying that with insecticide, adding fungicide, and so on. So that, that's really limiting diversity. What perennial permaculture growing systems typically look like is abundant diversity and a bit chaotic. Okay, if you walk into a forest and it's in straight lines, that's probably because it was planted after World War I by people. If you go to West Wales and you look at some of the, the last remaining rainforest in the UK, it's chaos. Okay, there's, there's ponds and brooks, there's, there's fallen trees and insect galore and all of the undergrowth and brambles you have to scramble over. And, and it's going to take a long time to get through that woodland. Permaculture mimics those natural systems, okay? So it tries to be like a woodland edge where where you've got that meeting of two systems. You've got the meadow and the woodland. Somewhere in the middle, you've got this, this really abundant edge. Imagine the brambles and the hazel, the wildflowers and the herbs. There's a lot for humans to interact with there. So if we, we are chaotic and we jumble that all together, then you've got diversity. However, it's quite inefficient. You know, you've got to look look at that and go, well, how am I going to harvest that berry all the way deep in there? And how am I going to do— Permaculture mimics woodland edge, but it doesn't recreate it. It's inspired by it, and it works with nature.

Okay, all right, okay. So yeah, thanks very much for that explanation, Ryan. That's certainly a lot clearer about, you know, about its history and its journey to this point and what it's trying to achieve for everybody. He does really, but the scaling of it I think is obviously the challenge, isn't it? I mean, monocultures exist because they're so efficient at feeding, you know, vast numbers of people. And we know that they aren't perhaps the future, or maybe they are the future but not in the way that they're implemented at the moment. So are farmers an industry adopting permaculture in, in the way that they're managing land and the way that they, in their land management practices.

There's no one solution that's going to feed us all. If we've got lots of tools in our toolkit, then we're more likely to succeed. And permaculture is full of tools, and it gives a framework. So, Paul, you say that monoculture farming is really efficient. I think if we look at the numbers, it's not in terms of water use, in terms of soil fertility and health of plants, hence health of the people it's feeding. It's just not particularly efficient. Now, monoculture is, is kind of a broad stroke pattern. It depends, you know, we might have a market garden bed of 10 meters long, 1.2 meters wide, and it's just lettuce. That's not exactly the same as 50 acres of maize.

Yeah, right.

So we have to look at it in context as well, because the lettuce might be beside some dill that's allowed to flower and it's attracting loads of hoverflies, right? It might be alongside lots of of other diverse beds. So it's not— yeah, try not to be reductionist. And I think that's difficult for a lot of us because our education system, our Victorian education system, is reductionist. And, you know, we learn a little bit at a time, and as we get older, we get a little bit more and a little bit more. And maths is in that box, and literacy is in that box, and geography is over there somewhere. A garden is a great place for people to learn. And you see that it doesn't fit neatly into a box.

So, yeah, no, I completely agree with you in saying that. And it's, you know, everything's driven by the economics at the end of the day, isn't it? And so, but the economics are changing. That's, you know, in the 21st century, as we're all quickly realizing that we need to put more value on nature. And permaculture is certainly a way for us to be doing that and implementing that. So do— so, but the other, the other side of this then would be just knowledge and skills that are required in order to be able to adapt to, or to, to be able to create a permaculture, or to implement permaculture. Because, you know, a lot of people don't have green fingers, do they? So do you have to have green fingers to get involved with permaculture?

So the vast majority of people in the world are fed by small farmers and growers, right? It's a myth that big agriculture feeds the most people. It doesn't. And this is from the United Nations FAO. Yeah, that one of their focuses a couple of years ago was on small farmers. La Via Campesina is the largest workers union in the world, and it's of land workers and peasant workers that grow food and feed people, and they grow fiber and clothe people. It does take a lot of people. At the center of permaculture is the prime directive, which says the only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children. Mm-hmm. I don't understand why every one of us us should rely on lots of other people to feed and clothe and warm us. We can take some of that responsibility to look after ourselves and our families, right? And I think it's really powerful when we do that. Now, you said not everybody has green fingers. That's right. And when I'm stood on a market stall selling plants, I get one of two reactions. I get people come up and say, "Oh, mint! I've got enough mint, I could sell that to you, hahaha!" Wow, great, yeah, isn't it brilliant when you give it the right conditions that it thrives? If we allow things the right conditions, they can thrive. That works with people too. The other reaction I get is, "Oh, these look really nice, but I'm not going to get anything because I always kill things." Okay, do you? Like, do you try to kill plants? No, no, they just die. It's like, yeah, that's right, they just die and they feed other things, and then other things come to life. Oh yeah, because I've got loads of poppies in the garden and they're pretty and they're lovely and the bumblebees love them. Like, all right, well, you did that. Yeah, I guess so, but I didn't have to do anything. Like, isn't that good? Look at all of these plants we've got. They're perennials. Once you plant them water them once, they do their own thing, and you don't have to do much. That's the case for most plants, unless we're trying to grow some exotic orchid. No. Yeah, so there's a lot of potential in a lot of people, and what I've seen over several projects over the years is a lot of people need some self-confidence boost, right? That's not saying that we want loads of arrogant people walking around the streets, you can be confident with compassion.

Right, okay.

That confidence in an ecological definition is something like there's enough resources to maintain the system.

Right.

So people need to be sure they have enough resources to maintain their own system, like their body and their health. I think what we're seeing at the moment with a quote-unquote cost of living crisis— yeah, those words are really, really powerful. Yeah, how much does it cost for me to live? Oh yeah, we can take some of that responsibility into our own hands and choose what it costs for us to live. That, that comes with a load of loaded privilege. A lot of people don't have the choice to do much different to what they're doing. They can't just go out and start a garden. It's not as simple as that. And how much can they feed themselves anyhow? It's not what I'm saying. I'm saying we can grow a bit, and we can grow a concentration of really nutrient-dense food. We can empower ourselves with that knowledge of what we can forage, what we can find in our gardens already, what we can introduce that's, that's low effort, And then we can talk about that with other people in our communities, whether they're face-to-face local communities or online communities. And I think we just have to keep building up that confidence, building up those resources that give us the confidence, share that knowledge, find something online, listen to this podcast series. There's loads of great inspiring ideas from a range of speakers. I've been enjoying catching up on it. Find an online course, you know, watch YouTube videos, find a book in the library. There's loads of ways that we can do it. And I think then the powerful thing is coming together with other people on that learning journey and chatting with them and doing it together. Excellent.

Has there been much government support for yourself and Earthed Up?

We know there are lots of government ministers that know about permaculture and have said that they're supportive of it and they would like to know more and to support it further?

I think it helps to also talk about reducing waste and saving energy, like we started— like we said at the start of the podcast, because that is a big problem, isn't it? If we, you know, if we use less, that's half the battle actually. And permaculture, going back to the way we started the podcast, does a lot for that. You know, it reduces transport, reduces energy, reduces packaging. And yeah, I think that's almost where this starts in a sense, you know, doing things locally more efficiently. And, you know, so we're not producing things halfway around the world that we can create locally. Would seem to be a good plan if we're to take on the challenges of the 21st century. So what's the future of permaculture, do you think, then, Brian?

Yeah, nobody likes waste. I've just got Charlie McGee, Formidable Veg Sound System song in my head. There's no such thing as waste, because in nature there is no such thing as waste. Everything goes in cycles. When things die, they give room to life. So there's no such place as away. And we know that, we're conscious of that, that if our plastic is littered on the floor, it ends up in the river, it ends up in the ocean. We know about the Pacific Garbage Patch. We know about the source of that pollution, and it's really disempowering to go into the supermarket and see everything wrapped in plastic, and you go, but I haven't really got a lot of choice because I can't afford to shop somewhere else, or I don't have the time. So we need to keep pushing. And being really visible about our ethics and saying, hey, we don't want organic stuff wrapped in plastic, can you do that loose like the other stuff too? The future is, what I'm seeing is a lot more people discovering it, a lot of people coming together in lots of different ways, whether it's on a Reddit forum, through a podcast, a permaculture convergence in London this September, shameless plug, for that awesome event. Come together and do more. And we need to think about taking responsibility for our own existence. Can we grow a bit of our own food together? Can we source some wood fuel more locally to heat our homes? What can we do to help ourselves locally with others?

Okay, all right, thanks very much, Ryan, for that. And if people want to engage with you at Earthed Up, how can they do that? How can they find you?

Find out about all the things we're doing at earthedup.com. Send us an email if you've got any questions about what we do. Hopefully you can come and visit the nursery. We're launching mail-order plants this autumn, and we've got a full program of events and courses.

Okay, great. Well, thank you very much for your time on this podcast, Ryan, and clarifying what permaculture is and how we're all going to benefit from it if we can get more involved with it. Thanks again.

Thanks, Paul.

Thanks. Bye.