Permaculture. The future for a sustainable food production?
10 April 2018 (Revised 21 May 2018)
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By Michel Steinecke & Victor M Angulo
In this second article of our blog we discuss the transition to a more sustainable socio-technical system of food production. Our strategy goes towards the protection and empowerment of the niche represented by Permaculture movement as an alternative for a new systemic paradigm of sustainable food production and consumption. For that, we build upon the theoretical framework of Strategic Niche Management (SNM).
The production of food has changed a lot in the last centuries. From the early days of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century to the new technologies implemented in agriculture in the 1960’s, technology developments generated within the socio-technical system (STS) of food production have enabled a dramatic increase in the productivity of agriculture, leading to lower prices of food, widespread access to nutrients and, as a consequence, to a population growth without precedents in history. Technological innovations that facilitated this process, such as industrial fertilizers or pesticides, developed in alignment with the path-dependency of the STS, offering the stability of food supply necessary to cope with the demand of a population in constant growth. However, the STS of food production have also its dark side and, in recent years, some critics have raised concerns about the sustainability of the current STS of food production. According to Everson & Golin (2003), researchers point out environmental impacts of intensive agriculture, such as degradation of the soil, pollution caused by chemicals, biodiversity loss and extensive use of land. In addition, researchers have raised the awareness about the socioeconomic impacts of the current STS of food production. In that sense, there is a big disparity between the socioeconomic benefits perceived by developed countries and the ones perceived in developing countries (Evenson & Golin, 2003; Elliott, 2012).
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With that in mind, in order to find solutions for the problems related to the current socio-technical system of food production, we need to change the current STS. However, rules, structures and social networks that are locked-in within the current regime, reinforce the position of the current socio-technical system, making it difficult to transform.
As a consequence, a transition to a more sustainable food production implies a long-term and complex process, aiming to produce a shift in the technologies, institutions, practices and other elements that configure the dominant regime where food production is embedded. However, to produce that regime shift, first it is necessary to count with an alternative to challenge the dominant regime. For that purpose, in this second blog post we discuss the potential of permaculture movement as an alternative to the current regime of food production, analyzing also the process of designing a transition strategy. The aim of this strategy is to facilitate the disruption of the incumbent regime of food production and, for that, our focus is the role of the niche conformed by the permaculture movement in that disruption. In order to achieve that, we use the framework of Strategic Niche Management (SNM) to analyze this transition.
Today there is a growing interest in agriculture practices that focuses not only in productivity, but also in the environmental, social and economic aspects of food production (Bernard et al., 2014). In that sense, some concerns about negative impacts of products and processes within the STS of food production (degradation of the soil, pollution caused by chemicals, biodiversity loss and extensive use of land) have caught the interests of customers, creating awareness about the risks of the current intensive agricultural practices within the STS of food production (Elliott, 2012). In addition, large-scale agriculture increases the distance between the food production place and its consumption, having implications not only on the transportation of the products, but also in a lack of connection between people and the food they consume (Carvalho, 2006).
Therefore, we consider that the movement of permaculture is relevant when discussing how the incumbent regime of food production can be challenged and transformed. To argue that, we need first to discuss what permaculture entails.
Permaculture, coined by merging ‘permanent, agriculture and culture’, refers to a system of agricultural design principles that focus on a central idea: gaining knowledge from the patterns of nature and, then, follow those patterns. For that, it is necessary to collaborate with the natural patterns instead of fight them, understanding any human activity performed in the environment as integrated within a complex ecosystems. In addition, the permaculture perspective of food production is based on three principles: First: a healthy natural environment is required for the development of human life. Second, provision of resources for people should be done without damaging the environment and, third, there is a limit to population and consumption. Furthermore, when there is a surplus of production , it should be shared in the community (Akhtar et al., 2016).
With that in mind, the permaculture movement can be considered as a niche initiative with high commitment on food production with low impact and emphasize on living in balance with nature. However, to understand the relation between the current STS of food production and the niche of permaculture movement, we need to explain the concept of niche and how to manage it.
Is the current socio-technical system of food production that bad?
Permaculture movement: What is that?
Strategic Niche Management (SNM)
The development of sustainable innovations, being complex long-term processes, can find support in strategies of protected spaces in order to increase its chances of success. A main element of these processes is the concept of niche, which can be defined as a protected space for experimentation that facilitates the changes towards sustainability in a socio-technical scale (Schot & Geels, 2008). In our case, the niche works as some sort of incubator, where the niche innovation of permaculture movement can develop while being protected from the selection environment, represented by the market rules.
As we discussed earlier, we need to create a transition strategy to facilitate that the niche represented by the permaculture movement, can disrupt the existing regime instead of existing just as a parallel agricultural practice.
The motivation for choosing this strategy is that SNM focus on creating a protective space for sustainable niches, allowing them to develop until they get enough power to disrupt the regime. The work of Smith & Raven (2012) is especially relevant, focusing on the role of shielding, nurturing and empowerment as critical processes for an effective protection and development of niches in a selection environment. However, it is relevant to say that those critical processes are not phases to be followed in a rigid order. Instead, they should be considered as analytical processes that, in some cases, can even happen at the same time.
Shielding
Shielding refers to the protection that separates the innovation from the pressure that exists in the market environment. These shields can be passive, when they are existing structures used as protection for its defensive potential, or active, when they are strategic designed and created for the purpose of protecting the radical innovation from that pressure (Smith & Raven, 2012).
Nurturing
The nurturing processes are those who facilitate the development of the radical innovation. In that aspect, two approaches are presented: The strategic niche management (SNM) and the technological Innovation Systems (TIS).
SNM, based on the work of Schot & Geels (2008), establishes that technological niches are not isolated but, instead, they are linked to external processes happening outside the niche. These processes play a role in the generation of regime change that is equally important to the role of internal processes occurring within the niche. The internal processes happening in a successful niche are related to three main aspects: A clear and specific vision or shared goal to ground a path or direction for the process of learning within the niche, in order to offer some visibility and legitimacy. A second aspect is the creation of a wide and solid network that includes not only the relevant stakeholders, but also actors situated beyond to enable a provision of resources and the generation of second-order learning, crucial to gain access to additional sources of investment. The last aspect the learning and knowledge collection needed to change the cognitive frames and assumptions that exist in the current regime.
For the analysis of the external processes in the development of technological niches it is useful to refer to the MLP or multi-level perspective (Geels, 2002) that introduces a three level approach to analyze socio-technical systems. In this approach, niches are situated in the micro-level, having in the meso-level the different elements within the socio-technical regime (regulations, routines and beliefs). The last one is the macro-level or socio-technical landscape, which includes all the elements that are beyond the radius of direct influence of the niche or the actors in the regime.
In that sense, the micro-level is represented by the niche of permaculture, the meso-level is represented by the current practices, regulations and narratives of the current agricultural regime of food production and the socio-technical landscape level is represented by aspects such as, alternative consumption practices or climate change.
MLP could be useful generating an understanding of transition as a non-linear processes that take place between the different levels (niche, regime and landscape). This long-term process starts with a bottom-up disruption in the system: a radical innovation is produced in a niche, growing until reaches a market niche and it is able to challenge the current regime, spreading until a regime shift is produced in a de-alignment and realignment process (Geels, 2005).
However, the multi-level perspective (MLP) has raised numerous critics, such as being mostly technology oriented or some debate generated by the category of socio-technical landscape, seen as an space to accommodate elements that are considered residual in the socio-technical system (Geels, 2011).
Our field of research is the transition to permaculture as a new systemic paradigm. In this context, and based on Hoogma et al. (2002), we establish our approach to SNM which is not as focused in the technology embedded in the niches as the original approach of Schot & Geels (2008) but, instead, in the niches as entities that can generate radical changes in technological systems, their regulations, materiality and preferences.
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“Ecological restructuring of production and consumption patterns will require not so much a substitution of old technologies by new ones, but radical shifts in [...] technological regimes including a change in consumption patterns, user preferences, regulations, and artefacts” (Hoogma et al., 2002; page 5).
The other approach to nurturing is the TIS or Technological Innovation Systems, based on the work of Bergek et al. (2008) and Jacobsson & Bergek (2004). This approach has two different stages: The first one is denominated as formative and it is characterized by long time development, poor performance and volume of production, unstable demand and ambiguity. The second is the growth stage, where a change in the focus of the niche is produced to expand and reach the bigger markets.
Empowerment
Smith & Raven (2012) establish two forms of empowerment: Fit-to-conform and stretch-and-transform. In the first form, the empowerment process develops the innovation niche in a way that it adapts to the existent selection environment. This could promote the risk of transforming the radical innovation into a incremental innovation, losing power and diffusing.
The second form, stretch-and-transform, is the one that adapts the selection environment to the innovation niche through the application of protective measures. However, this can also cause a protectionist effect in the innovation, losing competitiveness.
To show the risks of the empowerment of protective spaces, we build upon the experience of organic food as a niche that attempted to challenge and disrupt the current agricultural socio-technical system and its practices (Smith, 2007). In that sense, we can argue that the organic movement “fit-and-conform” in the selection environment of the current STS of food production, since did not manage to change consumption habits of people, but instead, managed to adapt to the selection environment, introducing organic products into the existing socio-technical system of production and consumption of food. So, as a consequence, people still get their groceries from a supermarket, but now they have also the choice of purchasing organic products (Smith & Raven, 2012). Analyzing this example and applying it to our study case, we can state that permaculture should avoid to fit-and-conform the selection environment of the current STS of food production to keep its nature as radical innovation and facilitate the disruption of the STS.
With all this in mind, in our design proposal, we suggest a shielding in a passive protective space for permaculture farming, which means that these forms of production and consumption should not compete with supermarkets, but rather focus in the production and consumption of their own local crops and trade of the surplus with local permaculture farms. This will lead to a local nurturing environment, based on the SNM approach, having in mind that the Permaculture central concept is to keep the production of food in a local and community level. Finally, the empowerment should be produced in a stretch-and-transform protected space because in order to succeed as a niche, the permaculture movement needs to keep its essential characteristics, challenging the current food regime and adapting the selection environment to the radical innovation niche that the permaculture movement represents (Smith & Raven, 2012).
Conclusion
The purpose of this blog has been discussing the potential of permaculture movement for disrupting the current regime of food production and, for that, we have been building upon the perspective of Strategic Niche Management (SNM). In that sense, our strategy have used shielding, nurturing and empowering to facilitate a supportive process of permaculture as a niche able to disrupt the current regime, transforming it into a more sustainable, linked with nature, local and more community oriented socio-technical system of food production and consumption.
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In the next post of our blog, we will present the design for a sustainable transition strategy for a more sustainable agriculture system, this time based on Transition Management and contextualized in the labelling of organic food.
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References:
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