Rarely do people ever think about where their food comes from or how much energy it takes to produce, however every chicken nugget or lettuce leaf you eat adds to your ecological footprint and plays a role in the devastation of our environment. However far from doing nothing and accepting this fate, it is our job to not only maintain but rejuvenate our environment. This idea of rejuvenation is the basis for permaculture and the idea of “do-nothing” agriculture.

As shown over and over again throughout our modern society, human intervention has caused a lot of our modern problems. As stated in The One Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka, “Humanity knows nothing at all. There is no intrinsic value in anything and every action is a futile, meaningless effort”. This idea is clearly contrary to everything that modern civilization holds true and dear. As a modern civilization, we seek to develop better techniques and more advanced technology in hopes of bettering human life on this earth. However, in reality, they are merely trying to return the earth to its once natural state, a state which they had initially destroyed with their tampering. Fukuoka gives the example of a scientist who “pores over books night and day, straining his eyes and becoming nearsighted, and if you wonder what on earth he has been working on all that time -it is to become the inventor of eyeglasses to correct nearsightedness”.

However why do we as humans not see this destruction before it becomes a problem? Why do we not create a solution as soon as we see a problem? This is because we are too set in our own ways and our own path that unless there is something to force us to change, we will resist it with everything we have. This can be seen when Fukuoka spoke out against chemical pollutants in a conference organized by the Agricultural Management Research Center. This conference met with the purpose of discussing pollution, however, when Mr. Fukuoka stood up to discuss his method of permaculture without the use chemicals, fertilizer, or machinery, he was shut down and told he was “upsetting the conference with his remarks”.

Therefore, while permaculture is a good idea, the first step to making the world a better place is from the government down and to first create an infrastructure in which ideas like permaculture can grow before calling for farmers to resort to permaculture.