Throughout the Bay, you may notice pockets of urban gardening, either in someone’s yard or in front of a school. From lemon trees in front yards and pomegranate bushes decorating walking paths to large gardens with rows upon rows of vegetation, growing food locally continues to crop up as one solution to food scarcity in the area.
Such plantings are an example of edible permaculture. The term “permaculture” was originally coined by Australian researcher Bill Mollison in 1981 to describe the harmonious integration of the landscape with people’s lifestyles.
Though permaculture is commonly understood as a method of farming or gardening, it is defined as the intentional design and maintenance of productive agricultural systems that are as resilient, diverse and stable as naturally occurring ecosystems.
As a form of sustainable and intentional design, permaculture is often used to meet essential needs of food and water, but it can also be used as a framework to meet other needs such as shelter and community. This can look like regulating agriculture, environmentally friendly building plans, managing or reusing waste, mitigating deforestation, among other applications.
Edible permaculture in particular utilizes plants like perennial plants, shrubs, vines and trees that work together in harmony in an ecosystem. A means of food production, it can take different forms ranging from raised garden beds on someone’s personal property to community gardens to large food forests.
Though permaculture remains far from popular in the Bay Area, there are multiple organizations located throughout the region working to educate residents about edible permaculture and make the practice more accessible.
The biggest benefit of permaculture? Everybody’s needs being met, says Kevin Bayuk. Bayuk serves as co-director of the Urban Permaculture Institute, a San Francisco-based self-directed partnership of worker-owned cooperatives that facilitates permaculture learning experiences and community-led climate adaptation planning and design. The organization facilitates community-driven resilience planning that aligns with the community’s priorities and also addresses climate adaptation objectives often held by incorporated cities, counties and states.
“[Permaculture] benefits include healthy, nutritious food for everybody, and water without destroying watersheds or creating flood risk,” he said. “So the benefits would be a safer and more beautiful world that is more permanent and prosperous for our children.”
Though permaculture has grown in recent decades, it remains a “fringe discipline” in the Bay Area. For a while, permaculture in the Bay Area seemed to hold an elitist bias, but founders of the Urban Permaculture Institute wanted to make permaculture accessible to everyone regardless of whether they had a car or property, wherever or whoever they were.
Edible permaculture holds an appeal to all those interested in community care.
“It’s for anybody who is appalled by the inequities in the world, and wants to take action by addressing them through their own actions and their ability to design solutions for their community,” Bayuk said.
Because of the high-cost of living in the Bay Area, many people are focused on paying for rent and food and just avoiding displacement. Time affluence is a privileged thing, Bayuk said. To ask someone to capture stormwater off their roof when they’re holding down two or three jobs while being a renter is a pretty tall ask.
Even when residents may find themselves with the time to get involved in permaculture and are highly motivated, there is a time and cost associated with getting involved. Though the Urban Permaculture Institute tries to keep costs as low as possible, there is a financial and time cost associated with trying to appropriate some skills. And because of the tenuous land situation, the ability to practice what one has learned is difficult.
“From our listening and understanding and effort, we’ve come to learn that the number one barrier preventing people from participating in permaculture is that most people in the Bay Area are very time-stressed,” he said. “It takes people time to learn eco-literacy and how to do things like make a compost pile.”
There are some limitations facing the Bay Area that can make permaculture difficult. Some restrictions on edible landscapes can come from homeowner associations. Another limitation is water: in a water-stressed area, there are ordinances relating to watering in the summertime and even the irrigation of fruit trees. Meanwhile, the average Bay Area resident uses between 70 and 120 gallons of water daily.
However, some limitations open opportunities to come up with creative solutions. One such solution is reusing gray water, the effluent of sinks, showers and washing machines. A group called Guerilla Gray Water Girls, interested in water reuse and wastewater treatment, found the California plumbing code “draconian” for its unnecessarily complicated regulations regarding the reuse of gray water, and created illegal gray water systems in their own homes to reduce their water use. They’ve since developed strategies for conserving and reusing household water.
But this issue pales in comparison to the real beast of the issue, which is the lack of site control as a renter and the power dynamic in relation to landlordship.
The good news is that edible permaculture is not limited to personal property, and multiple organizations in the Bay Area are working on edible permaculture projects for community spaces.
One such organization is Planting Justice based in Oakland, whose mission is to empower those facing social inequities with the skills and resources to cultivate food sovereignty, economic justice, and community healing. Especially in East Oakland, where the food desert can render food scarce, edible permaculture offers the opportunity to increase food options.
As of last year, the organization had built over 500 edible permaculture gardens in the Bay Area.
“At the end of the day, we’re working towards a better future, more respect amongst people and more respect for food systems,” said Randy Rivera, an educator with the program.
In partnership with Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, a women-led Ohlone organization, Planting Justice has a four-acre “food forest” housing 900 varieties of plants. Planting Justice also offers a landscaping service to help cultivate new edible permaculture sites.
A key part of Planting Justice’s outreach is their food justice education program which is aimed at schools, detention facilities, the food forest, at their two-acre nursery site in East Oakland, in partnership with community service providers, through local and regional bus tours, our internal workplace justice trainings, and sliding scale workshops for the general public. The program began at schools and prisons in an effort to target the school-to-prison pipeline, according to Rivera.
“Most of the schools we work at have a garden that has been built there using our landscaping service,” he said. “Then the education program taught people how to sustain those gardens, because you can’t give someone a garden and not teach them how to have a sustainable, well-growing garden.”
Planting Justice also teaches about land justice for Indigenous people and the land back movement, stressing that land back doesn’t mean to kick people out of native land but rather to repatriate the land so that land practices are respectful, sustainable and do not cause damage to the land. This mindset shift is crucial for their students.
“Nature is already reproducing itself, so we can hone that,” Rivera said. “There is abundance in nature and in planting.”
The organization works toward justice in other ways as well, providing jobs to people in their own communities and to formerly incarcerated people.
“Our curriculum does a great job of explaining food justice, environmental justice, permaculture, and making it enjoyable for students,” he said. “Oftentimes, these topics can be thought of as something depressing, but we’ve turned it into something beautiful.”
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Sarah Raza is studying international relations as a senior at Stanford University in California. Last summer, she was a breaking news intern for The Detroit Free Press. On campus, she is currently a desk editor for The Stanford Daily, and she has also been a beat reporter. Sarah is a student assistant for the Center for Human Rights and International Justice at Stanford and an Oral Communication Tutor at the Hume Center for Writing and Speaking at Stanford. Her hometown is Canton, MI.
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