“With all that science, can you tell me how light enters the soul?” –Henry David Thoreau

Regards John McDonagh

The examples he uses to prove his point are stories from the tabloid media who regularly run their crop circle hoaxing stories. The story of Doug and Dave has been widely discredited, they only ever actually proved that they had made a handful of circles, the ones they made for the media were rubbish. Randi’s arguments are astonishingly flimsy, based on heresay and not addressing any of the phenomenon’s more baffling characteristics. Laughable, if that is put up as a through scientific debunking.

I agree with you absolutely that we need to be more rigorous, that we need to prove our arguments, and that particular sections of the green movement are just as guilty of ignoring that or selecting data to prove their points. My concern is that we throw the baby out with the bathwater; that if we take Randi’s position of sitting smugly behind a desk, picking newspaper articles of dubious provenance to argue a case he has already decided the outcome of, that serves no-one (apart from Randi).

Permaculture breaks new ground and tries new things out. It acts outside the constraints of the mainstream farming research establishment, and due to this has been able to be very experimental. Yes, it would of course be much stronger if it documented, tested and reported its work and finding. Of course. My concern is that the scientific establishment which your original piece so lauded too often takes the Randi approach rather than the permaculture one. If it got out from behind its desk more often and asked “what if” a bit more, as permaculture does, we might find insights into things that would otherwise elude us. By linking to Randi, you have offered a great insight into all that is worst about science, rather than offering a paragon of scientific practice.

Presumably some of the posters here have strong opinions on biodynamic horticulture too, as this uses both astrological and homoeopathic principles!

One thing that troubles me here is that there seems to be a dearth of scientific evidence that permaculture ‘works’. Or am I missing something?

Is permaculture it a science or does it simply aspire to becoming one? What about statements like (found in the Permaculture bible, sorry Handbook) ‘work with nature rather than against it’? How exactly does one define ‘working with nature’? Or ‘working against’ nature for that matter? Or how does one define ‘nature’? Is this a scientific term?

One suspects that it would take trials lasting a number of decades to ‘prove’ what ‘works’ and what doesn’t, particularly ( for example) with regard to speculation about as yet untested new /introduced varieties or species. Take walnuts and sweet chestnuts. It is well proven they crop well in the extreme south of Britain and Ireland, but entirely speculative that new varieties will perform well in more northerly parts of these islands, and in particular in the northern areas which also have high rainfall.

The answer of course is to do trials, and full credit to people like Paul and Jacinta at Woodkearne Nurseries in Co. Cork for their dedicated work on nuts. However, it will be a long time – decades – and will require trials in many places before it is clear whether new varieties can significantly overcome previous barriers of latitude and climate. It would be prudent to sound a note of caution. Unfortunately research being carried out in places like Devon and Cork may not provide clear indications of the potential for growing nuts in climates more representative of the average for Britain or Ireland

One of my criticisms of the Permaculture handbook was that it didn’t spell out clearly enough the limitations of chestnuts and walnuts as potential food crops. The yields quoted were taken from high yielding regions of the world (I checked) and should be viewed as best case scenarios or simply unachievable in locations like Britain or Ireland. Realistic yields might be as little as one tenth of the quantities quoted, even in locations where regular harvests occurred. Elsewhere, yields might well be zero.

A quick examination of European (Eurostat) data on the yields per ha of hazelnut/cobnuts illustrates the massive difference in yields in producer countries. The differences would be even more pronounced with chestnuts and walnuts.

I say this as a very enthusiastic ‘nut man’ … I planted named varieties of walnuts and many varieties of cob and filbert on land in Antrim in the mid 1980′s long before the word ‘permaculture’ became common currency. I would however tend to put my money on the Corylus (hazel) species, not ealnuts and chestnuts as potentially significant food crops in my own climatic zone and location ( coastal, mid- west of Ireland).

I would have a real difficulty with anyone attempting to pass off the section on nuts in the Permaculture Handbook off as ‘scientific’.

Of course one swallow does not make a summer but it is shows how important it is to distinguish between enthusiasm and hard data when the aim is to inform and educate.

I see no point in permaculture attempting to pass itself off as ‘scientific’ unless it is prepared to adopt the same stringent trials and tests as those demanded (by some posters here) or carried out on biodynamic horticulture, water divining etc, and to use accurate information.

Otherwise the arguments expressed against ‘unscientific’ practices might just look like begrudgery.