02011 Food First!
If you're afraid of butter, use cream. — Julia Child
People taking personal responsibility for lifestyles committed to the permaculture ethics of caring for the planet, caring for people, and caring for the future are a movement that will heal the Earth and create a more sustainable, just, and resilient way of living upon the land. Our iPermie goal is to help you catch the leading edge of this epic transformation that will change humanity and its relationship to the planet forever.
In other words . . . now is the time for practical plans to realize our dreams and visions of a better future.
The planet needs more people willing to take personal responsibility for creating a better future than the one that we see coming at us because of our millennia of bad choices. The world changes one person, one household at a time, as people decide to BE the change they want to SEE.
This is an ethical decision that each person must make for himself or herself. Parents can teach their children a better way of living. They can’t make this intentional decision for them. What we can all hope as parents is that we can give our children the knowledge and skills they need to make their own informed ethical decision about taking responsibility for their lives upon the land.
Every journey has a starting place.
This transition seems complicated, but everybody has to start somewhere.
Permaculture tells us to "start at your doorstep." For most of us in urban areas, the "doorstep to permaculture" is the kitchen.
People have more control over their food than almost any other area of life and work. This is true even of college students eating in dormitory cafeterias.
It is the most easily accessible and understandable place for people to start.
The kitchen provides great short-term rewards for time invested in learning and work.
The permacultured kitchen offers an accessible way to make lifestyle changes that have major (and multiple!) beneficial impacts on the environment, create social justice, and limit the damage we do to the biosphere. The beneficial changes propagate outwards and may impact people and ecosystems many hundreds and even thousands of miles away. Everything connects!
Kitchen permaculture increases family, household, and community food security, and is an essential adaptation to the cardinal threats of peak oil, global climate instability, political criminality, and economic chaos.
Bad Food Habits Abound Everywhere
The sad truth of modern life is that many of us have formed bad habits with our food. Our over-processed, chemicalized, mechanized, just in time convenience food system isn't a free lunch. High blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, all these are just the beginnings of sorrows. The way that conventional agriculture grows supermarket food ravages the earth, destroys the fertility of the soil, and poisons the land with chemicals.
The supermarket agriculture system destroys the quality, variety, nutritional value, and TASTES of our foods. We're paying more, doing more, and getting less. Here is a better idea — do MORE with LESS. More joy, more beauty, more wisdom — less pollution, less chemicals, less destruction of the natural environment. We got into this situation one bad decision at a time and we will get out of it by one good, better, or best decision at a time.
This is not just about money. It's about the quality of your life and who controls your life. We’re talking about fun, convenient, healthy and tasty meals. You can discover new tastes and food treasures, better ways to do food — ways that really are fun and easy to learn! Once you get used to them, they are convenient & easy. A better way of eating cares for people, cares for the planet, and has a care for the future.
Even so, kitchen permaculture design is for everybody!
Simple, sustainable, and frugal living is for everybody — rich and poor and everyone in between. People who let the food industry's tricks tell them what to do pay more money than is necessary and get a lot less than they should for their money. We say: spend your money differently and you can have more quality. Imagine that.
Permaculture is holistic.
Permaculture is a holistic design discipline that looks at all aspects of your ways and manners of living. It’s a big field of study, and covers a lot of territory. Every journey has to start somewhere. Because we have such control over our personal and household food decisions and those consequences carry so much ecological weight, I say “FOOD FIRST!”
While food isn’t everything, it is something that we all can understand.
It is one step in the direction of economic security. It provides instant rewards too — good food and better health!
Wisdom, daydreaming, and risk-taking can introduce you to options that you never felt possible. Welcome to this journey!
A special note for college students. . .
If you live in a dorm and eat at a cafeteria, you may think you don’t have much control over your food since you don’t have your own kitchen and prepare your own meals. You have more control than you think.
You buy food outside of the cafeteria all the time. Stop making bad food choices and start making good food choices when you buy food. There’s no good reason ever to buy cheap trashy junk foods, soda pop, and bottled waters.
You can eat with the season. Don’t load up on fresh green salads during the winter months, when those fresh greens come across perhaps thousands of miles. If imported from poor countries, eating such foods is the moral equivalent of stealing food from the mouths of hungry children.
Don’t waste food. Take only what you can eat. If you aren’t sure you will like something, take only a small portion.
Avoid all soft drinks.
Support your local food system. Visit your local farmers market and buy some food there regularly. If you eat out, support locally owned fast food and sit-down restaurants. Avoid the national chain stores like the ecological plague they are. When you shop at a regular grocery store, avoid the national chains and patronize local and regionally owned supermarkets.
You have influence over your cafeteria administration. Schools compete to get and keep students. One way they do this is with the quality of the foods offered in their cafeterias. Demand that your school administration to support a local food system and offer organic foods. Be persistent in your demands.
You won’t be in a college dormitory forever. It just seems that way. When you get out, you’ll need to know how to shop and cook. The information you need for that is in this section.
So here is a great place to begin your permaculture design journey — with your food.