Permaculture and agricultural mechanization

This'll be a meandering post with several questions. I'm thinking out loud.

I've worked on a few permaculture farms, am currently shopping for my own. Most of the work is done with hand tools or power tools. When I talk to conventional farmers, they couldn't imagine farming without tractors, combines, etc., and history books celebrate the mechanization of agriculture as progress.

I don't think that permaculture ethics require us to say "Machine = bad", although there are often workarounds that avoid the heavy footprint of using machines.

* Tilling. Here I'd say permaculture ethics do say machine=bad. You can do a lot more damage to the soil with mechanized tilling than a hoe, and there are plenty of workarounds, like aerating the soil with daikon radish, suppressing weeds with cover crops or goats, etc., so mechanized tilling is unneccesary

* Seeding. I guess the classically permaculture alternative to machinery is using seedballs, but can seedballs really do everything seed-drills can? Can't the seed-drill be more precise in depth?

* Harvesting. This is the big one. It seems dumb to harvest fruit and grains by hand when it can be done in seconds. I've never met anyone who harvests grain-crops with a scythe; maybe the Amish do it. Is there any way to avoid non-mechanized harvesting of grains being insanely labourious? Or is the alternative just to avoid grains, use things like potatoes instead? But even potatoes are harvested mechanically nowadays.

I know one reason people want to avoid machines is the association with monoculture. Machines work in big, open fields, and permaculture likes small varied patches. A possible workaround would maybe be to farm in strips, the width of your combine header, with trees etc. in between the strips.

The Rodale Institute isn't exactly permaculture, but is mechanized agriculture with earth-care. They use machines for weed-suppression

What do you think? Are there ways to farm at scale (especially grain crops) without using machines? Or should we embrace the machine and mitigate the problems it brings?

I think the whole "machine = bad" makes no sense.

Bicycles make transportation much more effective, looms allow weaving cloth within a reasonable time, and without computers we could not share ideas and thoughts.

I am currently in Morocco and agriculture here is happening on a much smaller scale with grains and vegetables growing between olive trees. The trees are far enough apart to get in between with a small tractor.

For me the scale matters. How far do tree roots reach? Can the machine operate between trees without damaging the roots? Can the user adapt to changes in the soil or terrain? With a large machine it is only possible to operate in wide rows.

What is the driving factor?
I get the impression that in some of the US and Europe, the machines are the most expensive part and everything else has to change to make the most use of the machine.
Where as in Permaculture, the question is how to use the land best. The machines have to adapt to what is needed.

Hi Alan,

Welcome to Permies.