preview

Advantages And Disadvantages Of Permaculture

Decent Essays

2.3 Output benefits

There is a myriad of outputs in permaculture, which probably represents its greatest strength. As stated in the previous part, outputs of one element in the system are to be efficiently matchep up with inputs of another element.

Figure 4: Functional interconnections between elements

Bill Mollison, in Introduction to Permaculture, described the functional interconnections occurring in a permaculture system. Chickens and fish eat the dropping fruits of the mulberry tree. In return, chickens can fertilize the pond and the tree through their droppings, which will provide more biomass to the pond to the benefit of fish and seaweeds. Duckweeds will then flourish on the top of the pond and will be eaten by chicken, offering them higher protein content that will help then to produce better quality eggs. The tree will …show more content…

All of this is doable because the elements are placed right next to each other, making then possible the access to the other elements’ outputs that will serve as their own inputs. Thus, it is crucial to perform a profound observation of what happens in nature and natural ecosystems to figure out what outputs can be a good match for inputs. In that way, the system can gain more profitability thanks to relative location and smart interactions. With the food web growing and becoming more complex, there is less waste and more products, ultimately boosting the profit.

What we have to keep in mind is that humans in permaculture are fully incorporated to the system. The outputs of humans, similarly to chickens for example, can fertilize the plants, and reciprocally, humans get their food from the abundance of plants (abundance coming from a high

Get Access