Starhawk - "Permaculture and Paganism"

For a number of years now Starhawk has been intensively studying permaculture techniques and philosophy.
Recently she talked about what she has learned with Nancy Vedder-Shults of Tikkun Daily in the interview and article: Permaculture and Paganism 



Starhawk video interview continued

"...Permaculture began as a way to imitate the relationships found in nature in order to design human communities and agricultural systems. As Star tells us in this interview, two Australians — Bill Mollison and David Holmgren — discovered many of the principles of permaculture while studying the Tasmanian rainforest. Their interest began when they started to ask questions like “Why is the rainforest thriving when no one is pruning it, spraying it for bugs, or fertilizing the soil? How does it care for itself? And why couldn’t we grow food for humans in the same way that the rainforest provides for itself?”...

...The type of agriculture that permaculture promotes requires an adjustment in our farming patterns, Star told me. But that doesn’t mean that all of us need to change. It just means that we have to shift away from factory farming. But doing this, Star noted, would actually solve another one of our current problems — unemployment. Today in the U.S. we have an excess of unused labor. We lack meaningful work that allows people to feel good about themselves and gives them fulfilling lives. Star believes that if we teach people permaculture skills and reward farmers who build soil with their practices rather than destroying it, we will be on our way to solving at least two problems at once. In order to accomplish this, however, we need economic and political change to happen." ...(Cont.)...