Last week was by far my favorite class so far in the semester. I have been working on my Program II proposal for weeks about the importance of studying the future of agriculture and how it will, and currently does, depend on design thinking to become more sustainable and still supply large populations. When I sat down in class and got to watch Inhabit: A Permaculture Perspective, a film that so brilliantly expresses everything I want to learn about and ways I can go about doing that, I was stimulated with passion. One of the parts that really struck me was when our complicated human relationship with nature was explained. Humans are a keystone species which means we are integral to our ecosystems, and yet we have an extremely flawed understanding of our relationship with nature. We view ourselves as separate from nature’s processes, which leads us to take advantage of the power we have from being the most cognitively advanced species by making the earth serve us instead of developing a give-and-take relationship and living withthe environment. Our current large-scale corporate agricultural practices illustrates this distinctly because we have created this system solely to serve humans. We use techniques that kill almost everything that is beneficial to the land and that other organisms rely on in order to grow food to feed our own mouths. Once we realize the land cannot offer what we need it to anymore (a consequence of our selfishness) we search for more land to farm and continue to destroy that area as well.
One of the reasons permaculture is so promising for our future is due to the principles the practice is rooted in. The fourth principle in permaculture practices is “Apply Self-Regulation and Accept Feedback.” This is arguably one of the most important principles because it reminds us that global warming is a human issue; We started it, we are perpetuating it, and we will be the reason the planet reaches its limit. The principle acknowledges that the current ways we are interacting with nature are “inappropriate,” and stresses the importance of human habitual change. We need to resist temptations to feel almighty and live in the most lavish luxury and let go of holding a know-it-all mentality to realize that what we are doing is hurting everything around us and ourselves. Permaculture, if listened to and adopted by farmers around the world, could truly make a difference in reducing food insecurity and slowing climate change, and it is a concept we need to continue exploring.
“INHABIT.” Accessed April 16, 2018. http://inhabitfilm.com/.
