It was a rainy summer day in Kyalami, Johannesburg. As we drove, the whiff of the horse dung was unmistakable. A pungent reminder nature plays a big role in this animal loving neighborhood; more so in Carmen Nottingham’s backyard.
Nottingham has her own Garden of Eden – it is also big business.
Climate change is a threat to the business of food. Agricultural entrepreneurs need to innovate and feed 8.5 billion mouths by 2030, according to the United Nations.
“Climate change is a big problem today. We need to look for new ways to counter it and feed ourselves and permaculture is a very reasonable solution,” says Nottingham.
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Permaculture advocates for care of the earth in search of greater yields. Nottingham has been doing it for 23 years.
“It is about using our resources, harnessing all the rainwater that we can from everywhere like the roof and the road. I don’t allow any water to go out of my property. I use all my grey water from the sinks and the bathrooms on my crops too. We don’t farm crops but the soil. We need to make sure it is always healthy,” she says.
Nottingham has turned her rubbish dump to a backyard dam for irrigation.
“We don’t want water run offs, you should harvest it from the roads and build counters to make sure the water stays in the property. This means no water is wasted and most importantly the birds come and drink from it and also dispose on my yard. A healthy soil also provides an environment for microorganisms to thrive, which in turn will help your plants to flourish.”
“In a continent like ours, water is scarce and we have evaporation rates. We need deeper and narrower water sources and as many trees around them as possible,” she says
Nottingham diverts bathroom and kitchen pipes to a mini-wetland, and makes smelly kitchen and toilet water clean enough for her vegetable garden, using the waste to fertilize the soil.
“Nothing is waste. We can use all these natural things back on the soil.”
Nurturing earthworms is her greatest hobby and earner.
“They produce microorganisms that are the life of the soil. They eat any dead or decaying matter and regenerate that into life.”
She says permaculture increases her yields by 40%, especially when combined with bee pollination.
Permaculture is all about the design and using the earth’s resources to our advantage, says agriculture entrepreneur and permaculture expert Edward Gaybba.
“Everything that has once lived can live again in permaculture if you allow it to. The problem with modern day farming is we stop that from happening. We kill everything that we can with chemicals. We try to keep away what we consider pests but in the process we kill the important things as well,” he says.
Gaybba says the goal is to use ethics and principles to transform from a dependent consumer to a responsible producer.
“Our forefathers couldn’t read or write but they were smart. We need to go back to the roots and follows some of the tricks they used in agriculture. We should use such techniques like growing potatoes in tyres to maximize space,” he says.
Permaculture supporters say it is not against technology, but rather it favors the appropriate use of technology.
“Modern agriculture requires costly input resources so as to maximize yield, permaculture centers around using the natural resources at your disposal. Although your yield will not be as high, your ROI will be significantly greater as your input costs are much lower. Using what resources you have available around you is infinitely cheaper than importing resources at great cost. Nature wastes nothing. Why should we?” says Gaybba.
AgriSA agricultural economist, Wandile Sihlobo, says new farming methods and technologies are needed and welcome.
“We have a lot of problems in the sector, so the more food that is available the better. We should also note that things like permaculture and other forms of farming may pose challenges when we try to apply them in a large scale. For grains, for example, in South Africa it would be 2.6 million hectares of land which may be a challenge. Things like crop rotation work well on a large scale,” he says.
Undeterred permaculture fanatics have found a way of making money and they’re not going to stop.
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