Permaculture Videos

I downloaded the following videos on permaculture. I am fascinated by the food forests. I really am. It is so simple, so back-to-basics, so anti-high-tech, so in tune with nature and it delivers fantastic results. A feast for the eyes, the nose and the taste buds. This is one of the things I want to get into and remain into during the next decade.

Establish Eden (Food Forest) With Love was produced in 2008 by Geoff Lawton in cooperation with the Australian Permaculture Research Institute. Wouldn't you want to have this in your backyard? It looks enriching. Just watching makes me feel good. Let's see how doing will make me feel. It gives a good introduction and explains how to build a food forest and how long it takes for the forest to take shape. After watching the video also check out the PRI site.

Permaculture - Synergistic Garden was produced by Emilia Hazelip in 1995. 1995! Wow, quite forward thinking. While watching I took many mental notes on practical tips for home gardening.

Permaculture Trio: Forest Gardening, Edible Landscaping and Urban Permaculture was produced by Iota Pictures in 2007. I especially liked the third part that showcases how a tiny backyard in an urban environment can be transformed to produce about 20% of a families food intake. Even in a city this concept shows success.

Permaculture - Harvesting Water with Love is from 2008. It is another video by Geoff Lawton. This time he focuses on how to build a dam or swale to use water to your advantage in synergy with nature.

Permaculture Visionaries - Small Solutions to enormously large Problems produced by 220Productions in 1989 for television. It discusses the basic concepts at a high level and refers to food and environmental issues in various countries. It is a little less practical but shows that most countries around the world, first or third world countries, can benefit from the permaculture concepts.

Permaculture in Practice is from Iota Pictures and from 2007. I haven't seen it yet, but the title sounds promising.

We need to get permaculture in sync and integrated with the high-tech proposal from Zeitgeist and the Venus Project. Permaculture is available and working here and today. In my opinion it must form a corner stone of future solutions, even if other aspects of live are high-tech. While communication systems (phone, internet, etc.), transportation (trains, cars, etc.), energy creation (biothermal, solar, wind, etc.) might be based on the latest technology, I'd rather live in a wooden log cabin with a wooden desk next to my garden than in the titanium-glass building of the 21st century as presented by the Venus Project.

I guess in summary I believe that anything should be as low-tech as possible, but not any more low-tech than necessary. Food production and water management as seen in these videos can achieve incredible results while being very low-tech.