Living in the Bay Area, I have convenient and easy access to any food I can think of. It is in my nature to think of food seasonally and locally, but it is also easy to forget that not everyone enjoys the luxury of choosing healthy food, like I do. And even though I benefit from our local and organic food economy, I am a consumer, completely dependent on our food system. With peak oil, wayward national politics, and earthquakes in the forecast, it is becoming increasingly clear that our amazing and abundant food system could be threatened just like it was in Havana, Cuba less than two decades ago.

Before 1991 almost no food was produced in the city of Havana, not unlike most modern metropolises. Up to 57% of Cuban caloric intake was derived from imported food. Domestic food was grown outside the capital city on state run farms that used industrial agricultural methods. Almost all food in Havana was channeled through a state operated distribution system and all residents were insured regular commodities, such as rice, beans, sugar, coffee, and poultry or other meat. With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, however, agricultural inputs such as pesticides, fertilizers, and animal feed, were reduced by 80%, and fuel and tires for tractors and other agricultural machinery were cut by 50%, leaving the country without the means for industrial food production. Cuba was facing a food security crisis.

In response, the Cuban government established a series of urban agriculture programs and resolved to create a link between the people and the land, as a means of promoting self-sufficiency. One of the first steps that was taken to help feed a hungry Havana was the implementation of a community orchard program, in which citizen “cultivators” would participate in the reforestation of their concrete city. Initially 5000 community orchards were approved and established in unconventional spaces within the city, including patios, rooftops, balconies, and plots of undeveloped or abandoned land. Where there was no soil, raised beds were planted. In the words of the former head of the Cuban Ministry of Agriculture (MINAGRI), Mario Gonzalez Novo, “the program has the simple objective of reversing the silent disaster of the city’s deforestation by operating on the basic premise that no space should remain where a tree can be planted.” A quantitative goal of the program is to plant 18 million fruit and timber trees in Havana.

The MINAGRI was created to support the urban cultivator in increasing crop health and productivity. Not your typical government agency, the MINAGRI researches and disseminates information and resources for sustainable food production, covering topics such as intensive farming and gardening, integrated pest management, composting, seed saving, and food preservation. The department runs seed banks, and supports locally organized gardening clubs, where people share knowledge, tools, and other resources. The decision to allow any unused space to be officially recognized and utilized for the purpose of food cultivation resulted in over 26,000 community garden plots in Havana. Until 1994, however, most of the food produced in these gardens was still out of reach to most citizens.

Then, the Cuban government legalized farmer’s markets. This eliminated the need for a fruit and veggie black market, equating to more equitable distribution, lower prices, and greater access to more food. Now, with a thriving food economy, over 22% of the city's population works in urban agricultural production or research. In 1998, 30,000 people were employed in over 8000 agricultural production collectives in the city of Havana alone.

Outside of the city, the super-sized national farms were also reorganized into cooperative production units. The state, in effect, gave control of its large, industrialized farms, which comprised 80% of Cuba’s agricultural land, to the people. The land is provided to government approved, micro-managed groups of citizens, including families, or “production units” rent free. The producers typically have contracts with the state, which still runs a national distribution program, but they are allowed to sell their excess produce and to keep the profits.

Within five years Cuba had recovered from their crisis. Today, with a bustling small producer agricultural economy, over 30% of Havana's food is being grown in the city. We learn from Cuba's strategy that it IS possible, in an urban center, to ensure an equitable distribution of food by promoting self sufficient production. And Havana is not alone, there are other examples of abundant urban harvests, some right under our noses.

At Village Homes, in Davis, CA, the community is touched by urban agriculture. The planning of fruit and nut trees, irrigation canals, and communal garden plots in the neighborhood design has provided village homes with a year round food harvest. Other benefits are greater economic stability and higher property values. People's Grocery in West Oakland, has established a network of urban micro-farms that nourish a hungry community. The next time I think about a sustainable harvest I will Imagine, instead of the farmer's market, walking outside and picking seasonal fruit year round on Dolores, Hayes, Polk, and Arguello. On Chestnut, Brannan, Webster, and Market.

Since the "green revolution" of the 1970's our food system has shifted from one of local production around and for cities, to a massive business of industrial agriculture which uses chemical and mechanical inputs to produce high yield crops of a single variety. Due to an ever expanding global economy, foods are often transported across countries, continents, and oceans before arriving at our table. Based on the marvels of science and engineering, the dominant food system, inaccurately labeled "conventional agriculture," has put small scale, local farmers out of work in the face of insurmountable competition and artificially low prices. Other side effects of industrial agriculture and agribusiness are environmental problems such as increased usage of pesticides and fossil fuels, loss of biodiversity, water pollution, and depleted topsoil. Then there are social consequences, such as exploitation of farm workers, social disconnect from food, endemic obesity, diabetes, and other health risks and diseases. For every problem, however, there are solutions: People in the Bay Area, and across the globe, are awakening their senses, minds, and mouths to the alternatives to large scale agriculture. This article highlights just some of the ways growing masses of people are getting involved in creating local food systems that counter the ills of industrial agriculture.

Organic and Sustainable

A truly sustainable food system promotes biodiversity, uses no chemical and few mechanical inputs, and does not incur long distance transport. The underlying assumption of sustainable food production is that it is healthy for the farmer, worker, consumer, economy, animals, and the environment. It is important to realize that sustainable and organic are not necessarily interchangeable terms: crops grown without chemicals are organic, but can only be part of a sustainable system if they are produced locally. Increased energy efficiency and minimal processing are the additional elements required of a sustainable system, but not of organics. While commercial food production focuses on single crops and controlling higher yields, sustainable food production operates in a system of natural interaction and is inextricably linked to other issues such as environmental protection, human health, and social justice.

In his new book the Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (Penguin Books, 2006), author Michael Pollan discusses the problem with what he terms "industrial organic", that is, the co-opting of the label organic by large scale agriculture. Many of the mega-marketers of agribusiness have picked up on our growing concern for eating healthy food and have gone into the organic business, while their products remain part of the industrial system, producing foods that are heavy in mechanical inputs and often highly processed. Pollan takes this idea further, exploring industrial, sustainable, and native food chains in detail. By tracing the lineage of four meals he lays out what our food choices really mean, to our society, our health and the environment.

Community Supported Agriculture and Farmer's Markets

According to Local Harvest (www.localharvest.org), a national group that supports local food economies, "Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a way for the food buying public to create a relationship with a farm and to receive a weekly basket of (farm fresh) produce." By making a financial commitment in advance to a local, sustainable farmer, consumers can invest their food dollar in healthy produce and become members or shareholders of the farm. This community support allows farmers to raise the capital needed to produce more food, and lowers their risk by guaranteeing purchasers will pay a fair price for what is grown. In community supported agriculture there are no middle-men, i.e. produce wholesalers, whose goal is to get the lowest price for the farmer's goods, and grocery stores, which pass their operating costs to the consumer. Produce is delivered fresh to the subscriber's door, or to a drop off site, and transportation costs are drastically reduced. The community's investment ensures the success of the farm and the health of the community. Some CSA farms have programs where members work a small number of hours on the farm during the growing season, fostering a connection between the consumer and producer, between you and the food you eat. A CSA season typically runs from late spring through early fall. An ever expanding movement, the number of CSA farms in the United States was estimated at 50 in 1990, and has since grown to over 1000.

Another direct connection between consumers and farmers are Farmer's Markets, of which there are at least a dozen in the Bay Area. Cultures around the globe employ these markets, to sell anything from produce and meat to handicrafts, flowers, jewelry, and textiles. Several recent experiments with Farmer's Markets allow formerly marginalized groups to grow and sell food directly to the public, with profits going immediately back to the seller- a social justice innovation. Programs are underway in such diverse places as Chicago's Cabrini-Green housing project and Curitiba, Brazil. Locally, San Francisco Food Systems, an agency that works with the Department of Public Health, has advocated for food stamps and WIC to be accepted at all Farmer's Markets including the Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market, which showcases the city's best selection of sustainable produce and meat, and the Bayview Farmer's Market, which brings farm fresh produce to a neighborhood with a proliferation of liquor stores and few grocery stores, benefiting both the community and the farmer. Supporting local Farmer's Markets means tipping the scales of social and economic justice in your favor.

Eating Seasonally, the Locavore Challenge, and the Hunger for Connection

Of course, eating directly from a farm or Farmer's Market means that many of the products we are accustomed to having, at any time of the year, are not always available to us. Eating farm fresh, while connecting you to the farmer, also connects you to the earth and the seasonality of fresh foods. No tomatoes in the winter, and no pumpkins in the summer. Eating with the farmer means taking risks and giving up dependencies on certain food luxuries, but the trade off is healthy, sustainable food and connection to that food.

A group of concerned Bay Area citizens have presented consumers with the ultimate challenge: to eat locally, exclusively, for the month of May 2006. The Locavores Challenge (www.locavores.com) is another grassroots effort to support local food economies by eating food grown within 100 miles of home. In comparison, the average distance food travels to your table in our industrial system is 1500 miles, contributing both to our society's dependence on oil and taking accountability out of the food production process. Being a Locavore means no bananas, mangos, coffee, chocolate, coconut milk, nor many of the other products that we are accustomed to finding year round on our grocery shelves. While this might be a difficult challenge or what seems like a mission impossible, at the very least it encourages us to think about where the food we eat comes from, what it takes to bring it to us, and how we can affect change through our choices.

Locavores co-founder, chef, and food activist Jessica Prenctice recently published a book, Full Moon Feast and the Hunger for Connection (Chelsea Green, 2006), in which she explores our innate desire for connectedness to the land and to the food we eat. She ingeniously describes the cycle of food in relation to the thirteen month lunar calendar, traditionally used by agrarian societies, drawing on native nutrition and Farmer's Almanacs as resources. The result is an excellent and informative read which describes her personal history with food, and details which foods correspond with each month or moon, according to age old wisdom. This amazing knowledge base is linked back to the industrial food system, explaining both our disconnection and our desire for re-connection, and is interspersed with healthful, seasonal recipes.

The Slow Food Movement

Slow Food is an organization which has attracted people the world over who eschew not only "fast food" but a fast-paced existence. The emphasis with this group is three-fold: first, a return to locally produced, seasonal food; doing so preserves local economies. Slow Food also puts great emphasis on the ability of people to actually enjoy the food they are eating; pleasure, tradition, and artisanal foods are valued more than efficiency in production. Finally, the group strives to educate food eaters in an "ecologically aware consumerism," so that people know where their food comes from, what it took to produce and deliver it, and how much healthier their food choices can be, for themselves, local farmers, animals, economies, and the environment. While this initially seems rooted solely in food, the Slow Food movement is really about a return to sustainable systems of living in a world obsessed with industry and efficiency. What better and more pressing place to start than in food systems, without which humanity cannot survive?

Vote with your forks!

People who are interested in supporting and becoming involved in sustainable food systems will have many alternatives to consider; first and foremost, what feels most comfortable for them. This often means convenience and price are primary concerns. More and more people are discovering, however, that CSA programs and locally produced foods are often less expensive and just as convenient as large food retailers. Being connected to our food means we care to investigate all of the associated concerns, such as how and where the food was raised, how much it has been processed, how it impacts human and environmental health, and whom it benefits economically. The value of shopping, producing, and eating locally, in terms of social, economic, and environmental health, is evident. Many people opt for labeled organics, but what should be emphasized and made clear is whether the organic products we buy are truly sustainable. What we choose to eat and consume is a highly political decision. So vote with your forks for the kind of food systems you want, and for the equitable allocation of resources to accommodate those systems.

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This article was co-authored by Hillary Strobel

Ever wonder why humans chose to settle in San Francisco? Perhaps it was the views of the Pacific and the Bay, the temperate climate, or the gold in them thar hills. Another not so obvious answer is that San Francisco is sitting on a wealth of water, from underground aquifers, to rivers, lakes, and creeks. While our local watershed has long since been paved over, this priceless resource still flows, trapped beneath the concrete that supports our steps.

Through time immemorial human animals have settled near water. Traditionally, out of necessity, we have followed the water that cycles the earth; evaporating from the oceans, captured in the clouds and rained onto land, settling in reservoirs, rivers, lakes, soil, and below-ground artesian streams. Where water falls life springs forth, soil becomes fertile, plants grow and animals gather to eat and drink. Where water falls is the watershed, and like all things sustainable, watersheds are local. Brock Dolman, local water expert, explains that a watershed is a “basin of relationships” between the earth, plants, and animals --a bio-region. Perhaps humans settled in San Francisco because of its water resources.

But if watersheds are local, then why does 95% of our water come piped in from the Hetch Hetchy reservoir, 165 miles away in Yosemite National Park? It seems logical enough, knowing that San Francisco is surrounded by salt water and has a short rainy season. Is it not necessary to get our water from the dammed Tuolumne River, whose water fills what once was the Hetch Hetchy Valley, described by John Muir as equal in beauty to the Yosemite Valley? If we consider that humans have lived here far longer than Hetch Hetchy has been a reservoir, the mystery of our local watershed becomes more poignant.

In 2004, Joel Pomerantz documented the politics and the history of the San Francisco watershed in an article entitled “A Clean Little Secret”. Pomerantz cites numerous creeks, multiple lakes, and even a river that run through our city. The following description is a hint of just one of the many water resources that we walk upon today, but know little about:

On April 5, 1776, Juan Bautista de Anza's party rowed up Mission Creek from the bay to establish a mission. April 5 is the feast day of Our Lady of Sorrows (Nuestra Señora de los Dolores)—thus the name Mission Dolores. The creek they entered wound through marshes to a tidal lagoon and then into a flowing freshwater lake, called Laguna de Manantial. The creek probably spanned a width of forty feet or more and, at 100 to 200 cubic feet per second, offered enough current to require real effort in the arms of the rowers. The water was sweet and excellent for drinking (as it still is today).

For hundreds, and perhaps thousands of years, the humans that lived in the geographic location we call San Francisco drank from the flowing creeks of Mission, Islais, San Souci, and Lobos; from Lake Merced and Lake Manantial; and from the Hayes River. There was no need for Hetch Hetchy because, in fact, there was a natural system of navigable, fresh water that flowed down the slopes of the Presidio and Twin Peaks and settled in basins throughout the city.

We now live in an era of globalization and under a prevailing mentality that large scale solutions will solve local problems. It could be this attitude that allowed a project like Hetch Hetchy to reallocate local watersheds. As a society, we are frightfully disconnected from nature. Whether we are talking about food, energy, or water, we have been programmed to believe things are the way they are for a good reason, period. Resources appear to be available to us without limits, so why should we be concerned to preserve them?

To add more clarity to the picture, we should think not only of the long distance that water travels to our taps, but also what happens to it once it goes down the drain. Our city is for the most part impermeable, covered in asphalt and concrete. Almost all of the rain that falls locally goes directly to the “storm drain”, a.k.a. the sewer, the same place that our showers, sinks and toilets drain. According to Pomerantz, over 2.5 million gallons of potable water flow weekly from the Hayes River into the Powell Street Bart station, where it is pumped by the transit authority, also into the sewer, to prevent the subway from flooding.

It isn’t feasible to unearth our watershed by tearing up the city, but looking outside of our reality, it is easy to see why as individuals we should do something to correct the problem and lead more sustainable urban lives, especially where our seemingly limitless water is concerned. If we take for example the fact that for the last 3 months much of the North American continent has been suffering from a severe water shortage, our perception of water abundance is changed. If we consider that women in Africa and other parts of the world walk miles to a water source and carry the heavy burden home, we can imagine another water reality. Yet another water reality surfaces, in Yemen, where families are obliged to spend up to half of their daily income on water sold at markets.

To really understand what we are doing wrong, though, it helps to know how water works and why our current patterns of water consumption are unsustainable. First, we should know that the natural flow of water is to take the path of least resistance, winding in sinuous, meandering patterns, with the flow of gravity. Water, much like tree branches, or plant roots, or our own nervous and digestive systems, flows in circuitous paths. Realizing this, we understand that to pump water up from underground pipes or in straight lines is unnatural and inefficient. Why not capture rainwater from roofs and let it flow downward?

Next, we should understand that water is the fundamental compound necessary to life. Our bodies are composed of 60% water. The earth is 70% water, but of that only 3% is fresh water and another one percent is locked under the earth’s surface and in glacial bodies. Most of the fresh water streams, lakes, and rivers that wind through our planet are polluted by the industrial processes that facilitate our modern lifestyles. The reality is that water is a scarce resource and not the limitless elixir we often take it to be.

If we still don’t get it, we might consider that water is responsible for 70% of the world’s illness. Scholar and engineer Luna Leopold said that, “the health of our water is the principal measure of how we live on the land.” To prevent waterborne disease, our tap water is treated with toxic chemicals, in our case chloramines, to kill pathogens before they can harm us. Chloramine kills pathogens, fish, and birds, but decision making authorities have decided that it will protect us. Go on, have a drink of some of your clean, clear San Francisco water, but remember Leopold was right.

Now when we consider the under-use of our local watershed and the miles and miles and miles of pipes that bring us water, it becomes evident that our water resources have been disrupted and redirected in an over-engineered system that not only can’t sustain itself, but is also bafflingly wasteful. From this understanding, we can take action to re-localize our watershed. For examples, we can look to communities like Village Homes in Davis, CA, a community designed to produce zero net runoff, that is no storm drain. Instead, greenways, gardens, and food producing trees absorb runoff. Contoured swales form creeks that flow below pedestrian bridges. Water cools the community and is cycled back into nature. Or we can turn to groups like the Oakland based Greywater Guerrillas, that believe we should all disconnect from the sewer and stop throwing our water away. Or the Surfrider Foundation that sponsors projects supporting the removal of impervious surfaces, such as parking lots, and replacing them with planted driveways that can absorb runoff and pollutants. This is the mental shift that will lead to sustainable water usage.

Erin's Permaculture Garden and Its Chickens 

Erin Bullock is a permaculture consultant based in San Francisco. Living adjacent to the University of San Francisco campus, her backyard is literally spilling over with verdant growth. She embraces numerous varieties of plants.

Touring the garden, chickens enthusiastically greet her at the fence. In a major urban environment, they seem a bit out of place. They demonstrate a unique side of permaculture to urban neighbors.

It is perfectly legal for residents in the city to own up to four chickens without a permit. It’s a refreshing surprise to learn our feathered friends can thrive in a city known for its lack of yard-space.

“Our two Plymouth Rock hens lay eggs everyday,” Erin says, as her cat, approaching her, stops by the fence--eye to eye with gentle curiosity.

"They eat all our snails and slugs, as well as our food scraps." Chickens are great at returning nitrogen to the soil and keeping it cultivated. In addition, they have become conversation pieces with neighbors; a young boy next door peers into the coop from a ladder placed on his side of the fence.

A landscape architect by training, she is establishing her own niche as a permaculture consultant in San Francisco. Erin began her career designing landscapes for corporate campuses. Soon disillusioned about the conventional methods used to serve its clients, she learned about alternative and sustainable practices by living on an organic blueberry farm where she grew to appreciate the agricultural community.

Erin took a permaculture immersion training at the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center, in Occidental, CA. It was there that she became mindful of the fundamental importance of permaculture to all people and how it connects all aspects of healthy communities.

She applied her training--with organics in mind--by working for a landscaper in Marin. Recently she struck out on her own with Urban Earth, a design/build landscaping business focusing specifically on permaculture designs for clients. She currently lives in a vegetarian cooperative house.

The richness of plant diversity comes into full bloom in the yard itself. Loquat and fig trees, ground cherry, raspberry, and flowers—perennials mainly—and lots of vegetables. Examples include artichokes, fava beans, Jerusalem artichokes, scarlet runner beans, oca, yacon, mashua (from the Andes in South America), Red Russian kale; a number of herbs have medicinal properties, too. Walking through the back door, she is greeted with seedlings spilling over eagerly, waiting to be transplanted.

Erin explains that permaculture is a philosophy of life that focuses on living in concert with natural systems. New to most people, it is actually firmly rooted in the ancient traditions of native peoples around the world. Though the idea of planting various species in seeming disarray goes against the grain of our sense of neatly planted rows, it can be graceful.

One can begin living this life quite simply. For example, by composting vegetable scraps, one is helping “close ecological loops” by preventing the unnecessary expenditure of fossil fuels in transporting garbage. "Composting in any form, whether you have a worm bin, chicken manure, or you're sheet-mulching with cardboard and newspaper, builds healthy soil, which is what everything green depends on," she says. By so organizing one’s garden, a natural synergy emerges; pests and disease tend to decline, and a surprising abundance of food can be grown.

Erin emphasizes that one should focus on what resources are available. In SF, plenty of these are there for the asking. For instance, businesses of all sizes offer residents free compost materials. “You can get used coffee grounds from cafes—even Starbucks.” she adds. These are great for producing rich humus.

Although the art and science of the practice requires some study, it can be easily learned by experimenting in a small plot in a community garden.

Erin is one of the few with the opportunity to witness the abundant growth of luscious avocados here in the City. Her neighbor’s established tree is chock full of them, and is happy to share. "Every San Franciscan with a backyard should have an avocado, lemon, or apple tree. Fresh-picked fruit grown locally just tastes better than stuff that has to be shipped in from Mexico or New Zealand," Erin points out.

She recently offered a workshop on urban foraging at her community garden on 7th Avenue. To her surprise, thirty people showed up at 9:00 am to participate. She plans to conduct more in the future. Harvesting seaweed along the Sonoma coast and acorns as the Native Americans once did are some ideas.

She is clearly excited about the prospects of permaculture in our urban environment. It points towards a future solution in a land challenged by the full spectrum of environmental issues we hear about in news and in movies such as An Inconvenient Truth.

Contact Erin Bullock at urbanearthgardens@yahoo.com.

Three Stone Hearth Mission Statement:

We heal our community, our planet, and ourselves by building a sustainable model for community-scale food preparation and processing that honors culinary traditions and provides nutrient-dense foods for local households and beyond.

The Three Stone Hearth is a Community Supported Kitchen (CSK) with a powerful mission. The business is a new model for healthy and sustainable food production that is like Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)...with a twist. Each week a box of gourmet, nutritional, artisanal prepared and preserved foods made from organic, local, farm fresh ingredients, is delivered to the kitchen's supporters, or subscribers. Members select staples from a weekly menu that contains items such as chicken coconut milk soup, North African vegetable tajine, sourdough crackers, herbed cultured cream cheese, lemon verbena sparkling cooler, Italian style pickled vegetables, and multi-grain porridge. Just like CSA, subscribers directly support the business, in this case the kitchen. The kitchen directly supports local sustainable farms, providing a connection between the farmers and the community and providing an alternative to store bought food. The Three Stone Hearth is a prototype for a sustainable kitchen that grows and nurtures community.

Sound impressive and intriguing? It only gets better. The business, which began delivering food boxes in July of this year, is a worker-owned collective. Of the five founding worker owners four are Bay Area chefs (and restaurateurs, authors, and activists); Porsche Combash, Jessica Prentice, Misa Koketsu, and Catherine Spanger. Larry Wisch, the fifth collective member has decades of experience in urban ecology, horticulture, and marketing. To understand more about the kitchen and why the five worker owners have chosen this business structure and model, I sat down with Larry to discuss the brand new collective and how it evolved from an idea to a reality.

According to Larry, the idea for the CSK was the brainchild of Jessica, as is much of the written message behind the business. The Three Stone Hearth CSK is guided by three poignant principles, or Hearthstones: Health, Earth, and Heart. These three Hearthstones are the foundation of the business and are a symbolic tribute to ancient hearths, used to cook food and warm people, that were made by forming a triangle with three large stones. With a pot on top of the stones and a fire below, the Three Stone Hearth fuels human relationships with each other and the earth. This year Jessica also published a book and helped create a Bay Area local food wheel (www.localfoodswheel.com). These are just a few of Jessica's projects in nutritional justice and her words describe the group's collective vision of a sustainable business. The meanings behind Health, Earth, and Heart have everything to do with everything the CSK does and everything it represents.

Health- is about human nutrition. The CSK follows the dietary wisdom of thousands of years of humanity and builds upon the research of the late Dr. Weston A. Price (www.westonaprice.org). In the 1930's Dr. Price travelled the world to study the diets of fourteen non-industrialized cultures from the Caucus Mountains, to Swiss villages, to South Seas Islands. He found commonalities such as cultured dairy products, fermented vegetables, sprouted grains, animal fats, organ meats, and other pro-biotic, nutrient dense foods in all of their diets and linked these characteristics to nutrition and physical health. The CSK is devoted to preparing the finest whole foods in this tradition of native nutrition.

Earth- is the commitment of the Three Stone Hearth to environmental justice, ecological stewardship, and urban sustainability. This principle is manifested in the conscientious way they conduct business: They package their foods in reusable glass containers (which are returned to them), use local ingredients from sustainable farms, conserve water and energy resources, minimize transportation costs by encouraging community drop off locations, and minimize waste at every opportunity.

Heart- means building community and relationships. From the farmers they partner with for sustainably raised animals, to the artisans that supplement them with cheese and breads, to the subscribers, the CSK is all about providing a transparent, learning, respectful community that unites people of diverse backgrounds on the common ground of healthy nutritious food. Subscribers are encouraged to work in the kitchen, volunteers and interns are welcomed, and monthly feasts are hosted to link people and ideas and to perpetuate relationships. In this kitchen recipes, methods, and ingredients are not secrets, but shared information, a way of strengthening heart.

With such a deep and moving doctrine guiding the Three Stone Hearth, it is no surprise that the founding members have chosen to become a democratically run collective. Larry says that it was the natural choice for their vision of a sustainable and replicable CSK. Neither is it surprising that Larry comes from a lineage of cooperateurs. He was raised in what is now the country's oldest housing coop, in the Bronx, "the Amalgamated," (www.amalgamated-bronx.coop) and recalls childhood memories of equity, justice, chicken soup, and cooperation. The CSK, like the housing coop, is a platform for cooperative ideals such as democratic governance, shared responsibility, constant education, and mutual respect. Impressed by the positivity and vision in the collective model, I asked Larry if there were any drawbacks. While admitting that it takes more time to come to collective decisions, he notes that there is depth and vision added by the diverse personalities involved. Larry summed up his experience with the CSK by stating with a grin that, "my search for right livelihood has brought me into a world of incredibly conscious people."

For start up capital the collective relied on a base of community supporters for small loans, which earn 7.5% interest over a period of five years. Additionally, advance subscriptions, $1100 worth of product for $1000 cash, allowed the CSK to pay farmers up front for raw materials. Even ceramic crocks for pickling vegetables were lent by the community to ensure that a batch of fermented vegetables would be ready in time for the first delivery . The Three Stone Hearth community includes of members of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture, Center for Ecoliteracy, Berkeley Farmer's Market, and San Francisco Food Systems, among other organizations and affiliations.

A bright new face in the sustainable community, the Three Stone Hearth is a learning company, a prototype for a new kind of collective, the Community Supported Kitchen. It is their goal to see this model perpetuated in other locations by other people, with boxes of healthy prepared foods supplementing wise households everywhere . The Three Stone Hearth is a re-solution for social, environmental, economic, and nutritional justice. Visit threestonehearth.com for more information about this evolutionary food production collective.

Permaculture… What is permaculture…? It is a term coined in the 1970s by a man named Bill Mollison, a citizen of Australia. Let’s look at the historical and cultural context of his fascination with permaculture (“permanent culture”) before we go into applying it to our own lives.

Bill, like many of us, is a transplant in a country that he is not “native” to. And, let me pause before I continue and make a brief announcement. Much of what I will say will be assumptions and generalizations, so bear with me. Further, opinions that I hold will definitely shine through the text as well.

Bill lives in a country that was populated and inhabited by aboriginals about 40,000 or so years before his arrival. During the 1780’s groups of people from England sailed down and inhabited the island. These people from England had been evolving in their European area of the world for hundreds of thousands of years.

So, what happens when two cultures from two completely different places collide (and one having developed intense hierarchies, weapons, domesticated crops and animals, etc)? The British with its protestant, righteousness intertwined with good will and philanthropy, did not know what to do with these aboriginals. What they did know was that in order to survive as they did in England, the island would have to change drastically (of course, THEY wouldn’t change!). They needed domesticated animals (dairy, meat), they needed their governmental organization, they needed clothing, they needed their typical British homes and buildings, they needed many things that the aboriginals did not need and had evolved without. Of course, they shipped much of these items from the England.

The British culture brought with them all of their cultural baggage. This can be very heavy stuff! They brought their religion, technology…essentially – their way of life.

This is where permaculture can come in as I just mentioned the key words – “way of life.” I suppose Bill Mollison was keenly aware of the impact of his culture on the island continent of Australia.*

Mollison started experimenting with his life! Indeed, he started farming in zones (something like Von Thunen’s model of agricultural location). What was close to Mollison’s home was the most perishable and needed more attention (such as vegetables). What was further from his home needed less attention and was not as perishable (such as fruit trees and native plants). Thunen’s model concerned a group of people such as a village, while Mollison’s model mostly concerned an individual home. In this difference, we can even see why Mollison’s modern application of Thunen’s agricultural model has been altered for the individual and not for a group or village.

Mollison’s model makes apparent a modern paradigm that we are experiencing. People are interested in Thunen’s agricultural model based around village patterns of land use. However, we are not in villages! If you look at our land use patterns in Western lands and Western colonized lands, they are either a rural home amidst fields of crops isolated from neighbors or the urban single-family home amidst intense zoning laws and regulations that sets land aside for enterprising industries and not urban agriculture plots. People want sustainability, but we are almost forced to approach it individually and with great exhaustion – because the dominant culture has set our world, the United States, up that way (and Australia, for that matter).

Where do we begin? Gasp… Wheez… Sigh… Where do we begin?

I think that if you are reading this article, you know exactly where to begin. I believe that most of you have already begun looking at your world in a new way. Many of you have already started with the bare bones of sustainability: eating in a healthy way that suits your body type and your local foodshed, learning about herbal remedies, finding a comfortable pace of life, planting some greens in your garden for food, finding a work place that allows you to be creative and compassionate, finding some kind of inner peace, forgiving family members or friends, paying back your loans and debts, bartering and trading items with your friends or neighbors, understanding your place in the natural world, and/or connecting with the natural world.

These are all aspects of permaculture. A friend of mine once said after a permaculture training in the city of San Francisco (and, it was free!), “you know, I have been doing permaculture for some time and didn’t know what to call it!” I am sure most of you can relate. If you have been doing some of the items above, you have already been doing permaculture.

However, for the sake of ending this article with some tangible, palpable, chewable, take-home ideas… check out a few quick suggestions in the "Sustainability Tips" section below.

I wish you the best on your journey and I hope that you find your village.

(*No, I am not going to go on a rampage against the British here. There are actually quite a few cultures and ethnic groups that have caused great harm to other people, animals, and other life forms throughout history. However, the British of Western Europe – have a modern reputation that is appropriate for this article. In my opinion, it is the framework and the rubric of living (based on Western economic and social systems) that has pitted people against people and against nature for some time.)

“No people should allow themselves to be vulnerable to the disruption of their food supply due to natural disasters or wars elsewhere, or to the political manipulation of food exports by foreign governments.”

-- Frances Moore Lappé and Joseph Collins, Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity

When Lappé and Collins wrote these words in 1977, the world of post-Katrina New Orleans was 29 years in the future. In this world, people in the richest country on the planet have had lack of access to proper food and water supplies in any number of situations: grocery stores flooded and looted; Superdome evacuees trapped for days without food or water in crowded and unsanitary conditions; post-flood neighborhoods still without running water or sewer systems one full year after the storm; box-store grocery chains opting to close down outlets in flooded neighborhoods; emergency funds being denied small business owners attempting to re-establish corner grocery stores. These issues tend to be inextricably linked to factors of race and income level in the city: predominantly poor and Black neighborhoods are those that have suffered worse, not from the flooding itself, but from the economic and political systems that make food insecurity an epidemic.

Indeed, the level of catastrophe unleashed upon the southern United States in the summer of 2005 has been experienced by many peoples the world over in varying degrees, and it was these experiences that Lappé and Collins were describing, predominantly in the so-called Third World. In the face of many overwhelming case study situations, it may be tempting and easy to dismiss food security as just one more situation for the “experts” to deal with, and for the poor to bear without mercy. What is the solution in a city such as New Orleans, and indeed for any city in the world faced with rebuilding itself from the ground up? Who will take up the task of developing a food security policy that assures equitable distribution and access to healthy, safe, and culturally appropriate food?

In New Orleans, that call has been answered by groups such as the New Orleans Food and Farm Network (NOFFN), working in conjunction with the national organization Community Food Security Coalition. NOFFN (www.noffn.org) works with local food producers, consumers, and retailers, such as the Crescent City Farmers Market, as well as larger groups such as the Sierra Club, The Urban Conservancy, Local Harvest, Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group, Federation of Southern Cooperatives, Farmer’s Legal Action Group, The National Family Farm Coalition, and World Hunger Year to ensure that food security is attainable and realized. Recently, NOFFN hosted a public forum on the topic of food security and unveiled its plans to help develop a food policy council that will present a comprehensive and community-voiced charter to the city’s planning commission, in which food security will be addressed systematically and with equitability as its main goal.

In the mid 1960’s, a functional definition of food security was developed by policy groups: Food security means that community members (in this case, all residents of Orleans Parish) have access at all times to nutritious, affordable, culturally appropriate foods, through food systems that are ecologically sustainable and socially just, in ways that build household, community, and regional self-reliance. Explicit in this definition is the integration of community development in the process of becoming food secure. Again quoting Lappé and Collins: “Food self-reliance depends on the initiative of the people, not on government directives. [Moreover], food self-reliance based on popular initiative presupposes group solidarity and therefore equality.” This is the goal of the intended development of New Orleans’ food policy charter.

In order to understand the future of development and rebuilding in New Orleans, including the creation of a food policy charter that gives voice to community members across the board, a brief summary of the proposed Master Plan is necessary. The city planning commission, down to 9 members from a pre-Katrina number of 24, has decided to entrust the rebuilding planning process to a local non-profit group, the Greater New Orleans Foundation, which has structured the re-planning process on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis, rather than a comprehensive city-wide basis. According to the New York Times, “On Aug. 1 the foundation opened a series of public meetings in which groups representing more than 70 neighborhoods would begin selecting [private] planners to help determine everything from where to place houses to the width of sidewalks. Armed with a $3.5 million grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Greater New Orleans Foundation has chosen 15 planning teams who will develop designs for the various neighborhoods. Groups of neighborhood residents, many of them still displaced, met directly with the teams for five hours to get a sense of which ones they may want to work with. (Not surprisingly, the more affluent neighborhoods have been the best organized.) Eventually the proposals will be woven into a single citywide master plan.” While this represents good intentions- putting the development process in the hands of the people- many fundamental elements are being left out, including updating zoning requirements, reducing the city’s ecological footprint, integrating neighborhoods, dealing with infrastructure development (because that is a city and regional issue, not a neighborhood one), and importantly, the development of sustainable food systems.

As such, NOFFN has stepped into that void to help develop a comprehensive food security plan, and of course, a plan for food security in disaster situations. What this looks like remains to be seen: it’s a vision for the future in a city that is essentially a blank canvas. The recent “Food for Us” forum lasted two days and brought together individuals from high school students hoping to create edible school yards at Frederick Douglass High School to organizations such as the Second Harvest Food Bank, which is developing an emergency food bank and distribution system, Common Ground Collective, and the Renaissance Project, which plans to revitalize the formerly thriving St. Claude Avenue in the Upper Ninth Ward through community development and participation. Additionally, the forum included panelists from the Wayne State University Planning Department in Detroit, Project Jubilee in rural Eastern Tennessee (which has created a sustainable community kitchen and farmers collective), and Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group. Incredible examples of initiatives created across the United States were presented and discussed, including Growing Power of Milwaukee (www.growingpower.org), People’s Grocery of West Oakland (www.peoplesgrocery.org), the Toronto (Canada) Food Policy Council (www.toronto.ca/health/tfpc_index.htm), and Focus: HOPE, one of the nation’s longest running and most organized food security programs based in Detroit (www.focushope.edu). Each represents a model of sustainability and hope in the realm of food security, and each can be replicated and tweaked to fit any household, community, and region. For example, Growing Power has seven greenhouses, a kitchen, indoor & outdoor training gardens, an aquaculture system, an anaerobic digester, and a food distribution facility, worms, fish, rabbits, bees, goats, chickens and ducks, all within Milwaukee city limits. Additionally, the organization offers intensive training for anyone interested in duplicating the program or just learning more about worms. There is no reason why this project, livestock and all (legal in Orleans Parish), can’t be replicated.

A highly stressed and much lauded strategy is to USE EXISTING RESOURCES. Corner stores, usually associated with Cheetos and Coca-Cola, can be enhanced with fresh produce sections (a technique used with great success in places such as West Oakland and Boston); networks of interested people can create community kitchens (see last month’s article on Three Stone Hearth Community Supported Kitchen); school yards can be turned into gardens providing healthy produce for the cafeterias as well as teaching children where their food comes from and how it is grown; abandoned plots of land can be turned into community garden space; and of course, supporting local agriculture through Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs and farmers markets is essential for keeping your food system local and economically viable. The Crescent City Farmers Market, with two markets running on Saturdays and Tuesdays, brings $4.5 million dollars in revenue to the city of New Orleans each year. This is a tremendous impact- imagine the additional revenue of more markets serving each neighborhood. Additionally, two New Orleans neighborhoods, Mid City and St. Roch, are currently in the process of developing food cooperative grocery stores that will sell locally grown, fresh food to their constituencies: poor, predominantly Black residents.

One of the largest resources that New Orleans has is its people, a group of folks fiercely dedicated to this city, who are interested in developing solutions themselves after the government turned its back. The field suddenly seems wide open. While the rebirth of New Orleans remains an overwhelming and massive task, this growing movement of dedicated residents, non-profit organizations, institutions such as the Ashé Cultural Center- an “incubator for the creative and cultural community” in flood-ravaged Mid City, planners, partiers, umbrella groups such as the NOFFN, volunteers, parishioners like the highly organized Vietnamese community in New Orleans East (who are hoping to open a farmers market in that area featuring culturally appropriate produce grown in the city), young and old alike, are taking control of the rebuilding process, including developing food systems that are equitable, ecologically sound, and socially just. They are not waiting for the government or FEMA to do it for them.

“Self-reliance does not exclude planning but uses it in a way that sets into motion a process of diagnosis by local people formulating practical proposals for action.” --Lappé and Collins.

The music is loud, but not too loud for conversation between strangers. Often the folks behind the counter are singing along with Bob Marley: "The Babylon system is a vampire!" It's infectious, and soon the customers are singing along as well. Everyone has a plate of beautiful food, lovingly crafted in the slow food way, in front of them, and a steaming mug of homemade chai or fair-trade coffee. Vegan chocolate cake tempts those in the mood for dessert. There is no end to the people streaming in: little old couples, young people with their shining organic babies, neighbors, friends, employees of the nearby grocery co-op Other Avenues, beach combers; in short, everyone.

This is the scene at Feel Real Café, located at 4001 Judah (at 45 th Avenue), near the terminus of the N-Judah train at Ocean Beach. Open for just over one year, the café serves a 100% plant and grain-based, organic menu; everything from the salads and beverages to the main dishes and desserts are vegan, and they are delicious. Often a meal takes upwards of half an hour to make, in fine Slow Food tradition- on my first visit, shortly after the café opened on April 20, 2005, I ordered a salad called "Mystic Journey to the Center," and it showed up on my table 30 minutes later. This is a style choice, according to Feel Real's proprietors, Tim and June: "We talk to the people, find out what they like, what mood they are in, and we make their food especially for that." I came to find out that a Mystic Journey salad varies entirely from person to person, started from scratch and added to based on personal taste. And it was well worth the wait.

June, the chef often singing the loudest and dealing with cooked food- from potato pancakes and steamed greens to hand-made veggie burgers served with homemade mustard- talks about the Feel Real menu being soul food. How did Feel Real's food come to be this way? Slow Food means that time is taken to understand the food needs of the person eating, what they like or dislike, whether they are vegans or omnivores; additionally, the origins of the food are carefully taken into consideration, to ensure optimum health and taste; and of course, the food is prepared with care and attention to detail. As Carlo Petrini says in his book Slow Food: The Case for Taste (Columbia University Press, 2001), the making of slow food is a craft, and this craftsmanship gives pleasure, for the producers, the chefs, and the consumers. This process often means that a relationship is built between the food eater and the food maker, and between the food and people; hence the soulfulness of the Feel Real menu. As June says, "Food represents life."

Feel Real seems to operate largely on this premise. The structure of the business reflects the dedication of June and Tim to an egalitarian way of working with each other and providing nourishing food to their customers. According to Tim, "everybody works together to make it one. There's not an 'owner.' It takes these certain people to make this happen... It's not really a 'business' then, because we don't have ownership. Even calling ourselves a co-op is too structured. We are very loose and flexible; since we are in the early stages of development, we have to have lots of flexibility to work. It's going to be changing in the future- our business is growing, in baking, in this, in that- so we need to be able to change. Maybe in the future we'll settle into a system." Indeed, on my latest visit, to interview the boys, I ended up taking orders and answering the phone. They have had a changing cast of co-workers over the past year, people who have dropped in to help, or who accentuate the high quality of Feel Real's food, including their vegan pastry chef, Phoenix, who makes yummy cakes, cookies, and pies. The food, the atmosphere, and the camaraderie are part of what makes life soulful.

This view also extends to the way Feel Real charges its customers for the food they eat. When the cafe opened, there were no prices listed next to the dishes on the menu. People were asked to pay what they thought it was worth for the food. "After all, price is an arbitrary number," say June and Tim. Initially, this presented a problem for a few customers- they were unsure of how to handle the money situation. So a compromise has been struck: a price range. All dishes are now priced in a range, for example, from $7-$10 for steamed greens, grains, and grilled tempeh or tofu, and people pay what they feel the food is worth within that range. It usually works to an advantage for Feel Real, as people will often pay a good sum for the food, which is another indication of how much people enjoy its taste and preparation.

Most of the food that Feel Real purchases and uses in their cooking is provided by one of two Bay Area organic produce suppliers, Earl's Organics. (The other is Veritable Vegetable.) So why not buy directly from a small local farm? "One small local farm couldn't provide enough for the volume of food that a restaurant needs. So small farms go to distributors and sell. For one single farm to be able to supply restaurants, they go to Earl's in order to make sure they can make a profit." These distributors then do business with many Bay Area restaurants to provide a whole range of produce, fruit, and grains. On the other end of the spectrum, a large farm's costs are too high to provide produce to a small scale restaurant like Feel Real. Tim pointed out that a collaborative of local, organic restaurants could make it worth a large farm's time to provide produce directly, but until that happens, "a middleman is necessary." Feel Real also purchases food items such as herbs and spices from Mountain Peoples, and items that it doesn't need in bulk, such as a single cucumber for a Mystic Journey salad, from the nearby grocery co-op Other Avenues (located at Judah and 44 th Avenue). Often, they will also purchase items from Rainbow Grocery as well.

Coffee and tea are provided by Café Mam and Té Tea, respectively. According to Café Mam's website ( www.cafemam.com ), "Café Mam is grown by fair-trade cooperatives of native Mayan farmers living in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico. The growers, primarily of the Mam, Tzetzal and Mochó peoples, are organized according to egalitarian democratic ideals that stress responsibility to the co-op, hard work and high standards. Their programs provide countless benefits to outlying native communities." Té Tea's website ( www.teteas.com ) states that "Té Teas offer an exclusive selection of unrivaled loose whole-leaf teas from the world's most privileged single tea growing estates." Additionally, chai tea is hand-made all day long at Feel Real.

What about Feel Real's place in the community? They have made their mark as a place to meet and greet; strangers will gather at the large front table, which seats up to ten people, and leave as friends. The beauty of the space, the bright minty-green floor, the murals and sculptures made of salvaged tree branches, the constant music (records only) and occasional spontaneous live shows by customers, make Feel Real as comfortable as your living room. Tim and June have worked out any number of deals that amount to bartering with people for food, time worked in the kitchen, and taking care of the food scraps produced, which end up in a neighbor's compost bin. With a twinkle in his eye, Tim says of the compost Feel Real produces, "It's organic. It's in demand."

On a typical cold, blustery day in San Francisco's Sunset District, I have stopped into Feel Real for some food and company. I have a cold. I have brought some rosemary from home and my droopy state of being. I sit at the front table, surrounded by people I haven't met before. I say to June, "I'm sick... What can you make for me?" and I give him the rosemary. Twenty minutes later, I have a potato pancake, steamed greens, and rosemary in front of me. I've already had several conversations with the people sitting around me, and by the time I'm done eating, I feel quite a bit better. I leave, full, healthy, and satisfied, knowing that I will return, as I have every week, for more of that soulful food and company.

Details:

Feel Real Café, 4001 Judah @ 45 th Avenue
Open Tuesday through Saturday, 11am - 3pm and 5pm - 9pm
Open Sunday 11am - 5pm
Cash only, Catering Available

What do we think about when we turn the shower on? Do we think about the water flowing out of the showerhead, or where it comes from, or where it is going? Or do we think of what it means to be able to take a hot shower at any given time, with clean water? Do we think, “water is part of a cycle,” as we step into the tub and the small part of the hydrologic cycle with which we have daily contact as urban dwellers streams over us and washes us?

“Greywater is water that flows down sink, shower, and washing machine drains, but not the toilet,” according to the Guerrillas’ soon-to-be-released book Dam Nation: Dispatches from the Water Underground. Laura is hopeful that the book will be available within the next year. This book is the extension of the popular zine that the Guerrillas published for roughly two years, featuring a history of Bay Area water politics which led to the damming of the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite that provides San Francisco with its urban water supply. The loss of the Hetch Hetchy Valley is considered by many to be an ecological disaster, reducing a once mighty water system to a concrete conduit which stretches hundred of miles from source to city. A side effect of this type of water transportation mentality is the utterly wasteful sewer systems that many cities have constructed. Greywater is thoughtlessly mixed with black water (water from toilets) and sewage, rendering a potential resource useless. The Guerrillas address this in their zine as well: included are detailed drawings of DIY plumbing alterations and self-build composting toilets, all designed to run greywater independently of the sewer system, and back into the soil.

“Greywater contains nitrates and phosphates from household cleaning products. If released untreated, these compounds pollute rivers and groundwater, but to garden plants, they are valuable nutrients. The easiest way to use greywater is to pipe it right outside and use it to water ornamental plants or fruit trees,” write the Guerrillas in their book. The group has two greywater systems in their own urban backyard in the East Bay. One, connected to the kitchen sink, is indeed a simple system: a long hole was cut in the house’s siding and a large drainpipe and bark-chip filtration box were installed which diverts tap water to a bathtub full of reeds, cattails, and bulrushes. The roots of these plants feed on organic compounds, removing them from the water itself, so that by the time the water flows out of the bathtub, it is clean enough to be reused. “The bathtub is attached to a perforated hose that is buried in this bed over here,” Laura says, indicating a large flower bed where the water from the kitchen sink flows. Grease from the sink is caught in the bark-chip biofilter before it gets to the tub. Grease becomes stuck to the chips as it pours over, while water is allowed to filter through. It is literally as simple as placing bark chips in an open topped box and letting the grease get trapped in the porous material. Every so often, the greasiest chips may be removed and composted, while fresh ones are put in the filter.

Recently, the Guerrillas hosted a workshop around the installation of their newest constructed wetland, in their backyard, which harvests water from their showers and diverts it to another bathtub, and which then flows to their bountiful vegetable crop and herb spiral. “We usually do a workshop at someone’s house whenever they want a greywater system installed,” Laura says, emphasizing the nature of performing several tasks at once for maximum benefit. The Guerrillas have installed around 15 systems around California, Seattle, and Detroit. While greywater may seem to many a natural and preferred method of dealing with waste water, installing wetlands made from salvaged bathtubs and reused pipes isn’t exactly standardized in building codes. The California Greywater building code, according to Laura, is much more expensive to follow, and more regulations apply: “Hence the word ‘guerrilla’ to describe what we are doing.”

Greywater “connects you personally to your own water use and the water cycle. When you use greywater in your house, then your house becomes more of a system too, and it becomes a really water aware place,” says Laura. This means not only being more aware financially about the benefits of reusing your water, but of the processes of cleaning greywater with nature’s own filters (roots and bark chips), and watching it flow from one system (the kitchen sink) to another system (a constructed wetland in a bathtub) to yet another system (a vegetable patch). A greywater system can be as simple as disconnecting your sink drains and placing a bucket under the open pipe. Once the bucket is full, use it to flush your toilets, or perhaps use it on your houseplants. Simple solutions such as this are excellent for apartment dwellers who do not have the space for wetlands. Of course, greywater systems can be as large and biologically complex as the wetlands at Heron’s Head Park. Either way, greywater use is an important and necessary way of preserving and respecting one of Earth’s resources.

For more information about the Greywater Guerrillas and upcoming events, visit their website at www.greywaterguerrillas.com.

The story of permaculture and its founder, Bill Mollison, is profoundly human and profanely inspiring. After spending 28 years studying natural ecosystems in Australia and becoming full fledged in the institution of academia, Mollison had a revelation. What he was observing in nature and studying in books had little practical application in real, human life. In fact, the systemic interactions that he saw occurring in nature were being destroyed, defied, and ignored by human civilization. Massive amounts of energy were (and are) being used to grow and transport food, to transport humans, and to live in modern cities. At the same time global decision makers were proclaiming that the Green Revolution would feed the world, he saw that this industrial agriculture "solution" was actually destroying the soil and perpetuating hunger. From this perspective, Mollison modeled the practice of permaculture -permanent agriculture- an integral design theory for human activity and prolonged existence, that very simply puts nature to work by combining maximum productivity with minimum expenditures of energy and resources.

Based on the intricate relationships in forest eco-systems, Mollison began creating food forests, of nuts and fruits and other perennial plants. His vision was of food production and human settlements that do not expend energy each season, but rather produce surpluses of it. In a forest system, layer upon layer from the canopy to the understory, to shrubs, flowers, and roots are utilized to create a "guild" or symbiosis of plants, each connected to the other and comprising a complex whole. There is no rotating of crops, fallow land, nor plowing of fields. The relationships in a forest regulate and thrive off of each other. This is nature at work. By intensifying land use, rather than trying to conquer nature, permaculture attempts to understand and design natural relationships that maximize energy and resources in order to minimize work and waste. Permaculture design builds a permanent framework that reaps continued harvests.

With the publication of his first book, Permaculture One ( 1978, co-authored by his student David Holmgren), Mollison unleashed an idea, of logic in design and respect for nature, that has become an unstoppable worldwide movement. Permaculture has expanded from its agricultural roots to express "permanent culture", designing and building culture and community that feeds and fuels itself. In Mollison's words, "permaculture is urging complete cooperation between each other and every other thing, animate and inanimate." From agriculture, aquaculture, and horticulture; to water, energy, and waste; to building, transportation, and community, permaculture is a design philosophy that can be applied to each and every human activity, in any setting.

While it deals with complex systems of interaction, permaculture is governed by a set of simple ethics: Care for the Earth, Care for People, Distribute Surplus, and Reduce Consumption (or reinvestment in the first two ethics). In the words of Scott Horton, editor of Permaculture Activist magazine, "Care for the Earth and Care for People have an implicit balance between them". By reducing consumption and distributing surplus we are caring for ourselves and other people, all of us components of the earth system. This set of ethics is what makes permaculture universal to any human activity, land use, or place and why we see it being taught and perpetuated in parts of the world as diverse as remote villages in Africa and South America, where permanent settlements have replaced foraging and hunting cultures, and dense urban centers, that are typically enveloped in energy consumption and dominance of nature.

In addition to ethics, permaculture is guided by a dozen or so design principles that emphasize the importance of the relative location of each element, in a garden, home, or community, and that strive to maximize their functional connections. If every element in a design has multiple functions, and each is related to every other element, then efficiency and productivity are increased, and resource and energy consumption are decreased. Taking the time to think about each component of a design and its cycle of life, and then utilizing every possible connection in that life flow, is what permaculture is about. Claude Genet, of Green Mountain Permaculture, uses the example of a kitchen to describe the logic of permaculture design. In a kitchen your sink, stove, and refrigerator are all located relatively close together, along with countertops, knives, bowls and other tools for preparing food. It would be inefficient and illogical to have these items in different rooms, but in a garden this is often precisely the case.

To apply permaculture to a garden is to recognize the value of every element, whether plants, ponds, greenhouses, or compost piles, and then place them in relation to each other. A keyhole or spiral formation is often used in planting. These are intensive design patterns that both benefit the gardener's expenditure of energy and foster symbiotic relationships among the plants. For example, the Native American combination of corn, beans, and squash provide a natural synergy; the corn forming a pole for the beans to climb, the beans fixing nitrogen in the soil, and the squash forming a ground mulch layer. There are endless similar beneficial relationships between plants, that thousands of years of human survival have uncovered and science has explained. This is permaculture design: ethically applied science that benefits from the logic of nature. The same concept of recognizing the intrinsic value in every thing can be applied to community or city design. Where homes are oriented in relation to the energy of the sun; where people are located in relation to food, transportation, and work; and how water and waste are cycled, are all questions that can be addressed in urban permaculture. Intentional communities that apply this design logic are operating in the Bay Area and all over the world, in urban and rural settings, and in climates from the Arctic to the Sahara.

Our fair city of San Francisco is currently hosting its first ever permaculture design course at Strybing Arboretum in Golden Gate Park. A guild of seasoned veterans from around the world is teaching the three month series of classes, sowing permaculture concepts and sprouting design ideas in fertile minds. Inevitably, those learning now will in turn propagate what they have learned and teach more teachers. Uncannily, people that learn permaculture are inspired to action and activism. It is in this infectious way the permaculture movement has spread and spanned the globe.

A final important thought on permaculture is that it is a revolution without a center, a paradigm shift from consumption and capitalism to an ethical philosophy void of politics, government, and hierarchy. It is not anarchy either, but rather complete and utter cooperation, between humans and the environment. As Bill Mollison says, "You can't cooperate by knocking something about or bossing it or forcing it to do things. You won't get cooperation out of a hierarchical system." Permaculture is building intentional communities, of plants and people, that sustain themselves over time. It is a dismissal of conventions and a reworking of values. As the idea of permaculture spreads among individuals, to their friends and their friend's friends, a collective conscious is being formed and a subtle revolution is underway, right before our eyes.