Can anyone comment on regular "animal" permaculture" versus "veganic" permaculture ??

Vegan permaculture
Vegan permaculture (also known as veganic permaculture, veganiculture, or vegaculture) avoids the use of domesticated animals.[8] It is essentially the same as permaculture except for the addition of a fourth core value; "Animal Care." ....Vegan permaculture recognizes the importance of free-living animals, not domesticated animals, to create a balanced ecosystem.[8]

Permaculture and Veganism – The Basics

Permaculture Without Animals?

Not all permaculturists or permaculture projects are vegan, and I’ve often been asked whether a completely animal-free permaculture is even actually possible. My response is, of course not, and neither would it be desirable. For example, how would we fence out the earthworms that build our soil and maintain its fertility, or the bees that pollinate our fruit trees and vegetables, and why ever would we wish to? In fact, we actively design in features that are intended to attract wildlife: ponds for frogs, toads and dragonflies, and flowering plants to bring in the ladybirds and hoverflies that keep populations of potential pests like slugs and aphids in check, and are essential to maintaining healthy productive ecosystems. What we don’t include are those ‘system components’ that we believe perpetuate exploitative relationships with our non-human Earth co-citizens, such as pigs, goats and chickens, whose primary function is the production of meat, milk and eggs.

The Naturewise forest garden in north London is one example of an edible landscape that is ostensibly ‘stock free’, although in actuality members of several of the Kingdoms of Nature work together here for mutual benefit. Deep rooted comfrey plants mine nutrients like nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous from the subsoil, making them available to fruit trees and bushes. Birds and bees buzz around the canopy layer, whilst insects and arthropods patrol the undergrowth and leaf litter, checking and balancing pest populations and playing their role in the cycles of growth and decay. Fungi and bacteria continue the process. These break down dead matter into rich humus and minerals that are exchanged with plant roots via associations with mycorrhizal soil networks in return for sugars and carbohydrates manufactured by photosynthesis. Based on the structure of natural woodland, the forest garden is a complex web of which humans too are an integral part. Aside from a bounty of apples, pears, figs, grapes, strawberries, currants and edible leaves, one of the most important yields of this mini-woodland is the sense of community that the space offers to the volunteers that spend time here. And being situated in a school playground it also acts as an open air classroom where children of many ethnic and cultural backgrounds are able to interact with nature, an opportunity that is often all too rare in the inner city.

John Saltveit wrote:The wikipedia page is not accurate. (This is not the first time.)

Vegans don't eat animal products. Many vegans have pets. My wife is a vegan. Most vegans love animals and don't want to eat them.

You can have a herd of animals, treat them well, and be disturbed about CAFO animal operations and still be a vegan. Vegans can bury their pets and animal herds. Also wild animals can eat members of their herd if they die. Being a vegan doesn't mean that you don't allow animals on your farm. Vegans take care of their animals and don't abuse them for profit.

Being a vegan is probably more sustainable because you can provide food for so many more people on plants than you can on meat. I eat meat and animal products, just not very much. Countries like India and Thailand where most people are vegetarians can provide healthy food for people way more cheaply and sustainably than we can in the US because they include the animals as valuable members of the society.
JohN S
PDX OR

Bethany Dutch wrote:My thoughts are... I have a difficult time considering a vegan lifestyle sustainable, because the world's ecosystem in itself works with both plant and animal matter and behavioral patterns. manure's a big one. The grazing habits of herbivores are another big one. Even chickens eating insects, bees pollinating the plants, etc.

If you completely remove the animal from the picture, I don't see how that is sustainable, not at all. So while I agree that there is nothing wrong with a vegan practicing a completely animal-free permaculture, I always go back to the sustainability of it. Kinda like, I've never met a vegan (who has been a vegan for a long time, like 10+ years) who didn't have to rely on supplements and/or imported foods for their health. That's not sustainable, IMO.

Because, my goal is to get to a point where I could theoretically sustain my family via my land. Permaculture is my path to do so.

I can tell you right now there is absolutely no way I could do so without using any animals, whether it be my chickens that turn eat bugs, fertilize the soil, and lay eggs for me in the process, the goats that (someday) will graze my woodland and provide both food and fiber in the process, or the honeybees that pollinate. And then, there's my dog and cats - a whole different section, but one I wouldn't want to live without. My dog keeps the other critters safe FAR better than I could, even if I had the world's best fence ever, and my cats keep the rodent population down which is invaluable when you consider that's less gophers eating tree roots, less mice to get into stored food, etc.

I've never met a vegan (who has been a vegan for a long time, like 10+ years) who didn't have to rely on supplements and/or imported foods for their health.

bruce kline wrote:Tyler Ludens ... who or what are you disagreeing with?

I've never met a vegan (who has been a vegan for a long time, like 10+ years) who didn't have to rely on supplements and/or imported foods for their health.

You can meet me... hello.

i grow about %20 to %30 of my food needs (depending on season)

You can meet me... hello.

Ben Stallings wrote:I'm not opposed to the use of livestock, but the majority of people now live in cities where keeping livestock is not practical. If we insist that permaculture requires livestock, we are excluding the majority of the world's population from practicing permaculture, which seems a shame.

Bethany Dutch wrote:

You can meet me... hello

Hi Brad - nice to meet you! My question is - not that I don't also go out and buy a lot of my food since I'm still getting established, but I go back to my personal goal, lifestyle wise - I want to get to a point where I can provide for my family's needs using my land. So my question for you is - do you think it would be possible to provide for a family, 100% (and just food, we'll not go into leather, etc) using zero animal inputs, with just your own efforts, on a consistent basis?

If there was some kind of apocalyptic event and you were all the sudden bereft of all civilization's benefits, would you still be able to continue a vegan lifestyle for the rest of your life?

i think it is much easier to do as a vegan
as i mentioned, there is much less work taking care of livestock
there is much less work in providing those animals food and water and space.

2 scenarios...

1) grow a plant and eat it.

2) grow a plant, feed it to an animal, butcher it, and eat it.

not only is there more work involved in scenario 2, but, its very inefficient.
you have to feed that animal much more food in calories, than you will ever get back out of it.

Bill Mollison said (and i am loosely paraphrasing)
its all about inputs and outputs.
You have several things coming in... sun, water, wind etc...
it is your job to get the most out of those things, in the most efficient manner possible.
and hold the energy as long as possible.

I'm not going to go into debating of the lifestyle - I've done enough dietary experimentation to know what works for me - but I think that's what I keep going back to, is that it seems to me that the whole idea of permaculture is to emulate Mother Nature. Mother Nature uses animals - so I don't see how we could fully emulate nature without using them as well.

i had squirells and butterflies on this land 1000 years ago
they are still here (to a degree)... actually, all i did was add trees, and give them a better habitat and food.

For those of you who say veganic permaculture can and does use animals, but not domesticated ones... how does that work? I mean, our forest is full of deer and critters, but it isn't like they stick around to do much benefit on my little part of the woods. It was my impression that the word vegan means zero animal anything, right? If you are saying that veganic permaculture can allow for animal herds that are cared for and have a job to do, but just don't get eaten - well, I can understand that and I would agree that it would work just fine. Animals don't have to provide food in order to be useful on the land.

this is the first ive heard of the term veganic permaculture.
i dont like boxes.
i can say this (not speaking for veganic permaculturalists)...
American indians grew veggies, corn etc...
i dont think that large herds of buffalo had anything to do with the way they did this.
they probably had deer, fox, and other animals visit here and there. i dont see their inputs as very significant.
Although, it is part of nature, and more life is usually a good thing.

I would say that raising animals in cages/pens for slaughter is living MUCH LESS in harmony with nature IMHO.

.

And yes - animals require housing and space, but most of the time the good outweighs the bad.
I have a bunch of brushy forest, so next year I'll be getting milk goats who will help me clear out all this brush and turn it into food for me.
They will be 100% on pasture, and while I'll have to buy hay for the winter, the benefit they will provide for me outweighs the negatives.

of course any work you get from an animal has to be taking into account.
if a horse runs on a treadmill 24x7 providing you electricity, sure, its part of the overall picture.
Personally, i dont like caging animals, or making them do work for my gain.
i also dont see myself suckling the teet of a goat, when i have perfectly good mango to eat.

Years ago i endeavored on a path to learn who i was.
i learned about empathy to a degree i had not known before.
i cant see myself kill an animal, when i know i can survive without doing so.
but i guess thats just something we all have to decide for ourselves.

Are cows the cause of global warming?
http://timeforchange.org/are-cows-cause-of-global-warming-meat-methane-CO2

Gassy Cows Emit More Methane than Oil Industry
http://news.discovery.com/earth/global-warming/gassy-cows-emit-more-methane-than-oil-industry-140710.htm

Tyler Ludens wrote:

I've never met a vegan (who has been a vegan for a long time, like 10+ years) who didn't have to rely on supplements and/or imported foods for their health.

You can meet me... hello.

i grow about %20 to %30 of my food needs (depending on season)

This implies you import 60 -80% of your food.

Brad Mayeux wrote:

but then i have to ask, what does imported food, have to do with being vegan ?
do most meat eaters rely on "imported" foods in this context?

It goes back to my original comment that I'd never met a longterm vegan who didn't have to rely on imported foods and/or supplements for their health,
which makes me question the sustainability of the diet.

The massive amount of work it would take to raise 100% of my diet and to feed my children based on veganic principles is mind boggling.

I understand you don't agree with keeping animals - I get that. But that's not what we're talking about here, we're not debating the merits of a vegan lifestyle vs meat eating lifestyle. We're discussing permaculture itself, the standard (including animals) vs. permaculture with zero animals or insects. I just don't see permaculture without animal or insect input to be nearly as efficient as permaculture that includes animals and insects.

I mean - look at chickens themselves. They eat bugs - the same bugs that would be eating your crops - and they turn them into a potent fertilizer. The amount of work it would require for a human to manually deal with all those bugs would be a whole lot more.

Brad Mayeux wrote: papaya ... banana.... avocado

bruce kline wrote:> All that said the examples of making a desert not a desert anymore have utilized animals. But i havent seen many.

Yes, that is what I was getting at. Vast areas of the world are becoming desert. People say it is not man's fault, but
odd that it happens or happened the most where there was the most human development and civilization and is
moderated somewhere where people have had to live and become civilized and cooperative to survive.

The context in which I am asking this is not necessarily for food production, but rather habitat rebuilding, but seems
like it might be done as the Native Americans did things, where they consciously or unconsciously created what we
think of as permaculture food forests by reinforcing the plants and animals they liked and used.

What would the effect be if areas of desert were brought back, would we be able to slow and reverse global warming,
and judging from the speed and the lag of the CO2 already in the Earth system fast must be done whatever we do.
It seems a win if it can be natural.

Levente Andras wrote:

I recommend you see John Liu's film on re-greening China's Loess Plateau (amounting to reversing desertification). One of the cornerstones of the plan was to stop all grazing ! Because grazing had been a key contributing factor to desertification, in that particular setting...

bruce kline wrote: I am not expert, but I think you are generalzing
from a position of little data that conflicts with what other experts actually have
said.

bruce kline wrote:I think there is a difference between grazing and over-grazing. China has an
amazing history of these huge projects that some big-shot in the communist
party gets convinced is a good idea, and then they do it and throw whole
areas of the country or the economy out of whack for decades or longer.

As to your experience with sheep, perhaps sheep were not best suited for your
needs. I think sheep or goats are better used for short times on certain areas
or better used in scrub areas. I am not expert, but I think you are generalzing
from a position of little data that conflicts with what other experts actually have
said.

I am learning about veganism/vegetarianism and permaculture too, a whole
world is opening up for me late in life but I also see that as there are biased
voices for the processed food industry it's the same with everyone and one has
to be skepitlcal and avoid quick emotional arguments and try to qualify things
with facts, because there is a lot of imprefect data on both sides of these debates.

John Saltveit wrote:These are some valuable discussions. I agree that the term "regular permaculture" is a bit biased. I think the point is not that the vegan permaculture is substandard. To me the point is that if you leave the land alone, animals will come onto it. You get to decide to a certain extent what kind of animal, but it would take an amazing amount of work to try to keep all animals off a large parcel of land. If you don't want worms or microbiology, use a lot of synthetic pesticides, fertilizers, and glyphosate. Some want domesticated animals, which are all different. Some just want squirrels and hawks. Some like deer, and some hate deer. Some love deer for dinner. There are of course wild bunnies and domesticated, and they all have different work/benefit profiles. In almost every case that I've heard, adding animals improves fertility cycles.
John S
PDX OR