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Encyclopædia - Permaculture

Uses patterns found in nature to design / construct human environments.
Integration of landscape and people.
Providing food, energy, shelter in sustainable way.
Conscious design and maintenance of agricultural ecosystems with diversity, stability and resilience of natural ecosystems.
Emphasis on integration and relationships between community building, human habitats, food production, human dwellings, microclimate, annual and perennial plants, animals, soils, water into stable, productive communities.
Economic and social structures that support evolution and development of more permanent communities. Co-housing projects, eco-villages.
Integrated farming, ecological engineering, cultivated ecology.
Design system for creating sustainable human environments.

Contraction of Permanent Agriculture / Permanent Culture.
Word coined by David Holmgren in the mid-1970s. Holmgren a young Australian ecologist.

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