Part 2

Where These Ideas Come From

16 lessons · about 440 minutes of reading, plus the fieldwork.

  1. 01The Deep History of AgricultureFarming is at least ten thousand years old and arose independently on several continents; every permaculture idea has a pre-industrial owner you can name.22 min
  2. 02Mesopotamia and the First SalinizationThe first irrigation civilization is also the first salinization collapse. What it teaches about watering a field without draining it.24 min
  3. 03Hesiod, Xenophon and the Greek FarmThe oldest farming manual in Europe and the first estate-management dialogue. Fallow, green manure, plough design and reading the soil, written down over 2,400 years ago.25 min
  4. 04Cato, Varro, Columella and the Roman FarmThe Roman agronomists wrote down composting, green manure, legume rotation, manure pits and the olive's needs. Compost and cover cropping are 2,000 years old.27 min
  5. 05Pliny, Theophrastus and the First Natural HistoryTheophrastus founded botany and wrote down grafting and manure rankings. Pliny compiled the first encyclopedia. Observe-and-record is 2,300 years old.25 min
  6. 06The Geoponica and Byzantine FarmingA 10th-century Byzantine compilation of a hundred older writers, including dozens of compost recipes and a ranked manure table. The medieval bridge from Rome to the manor.26 min
  7. 07The Arabic Agricultural RevolutionVarahamihira, Ibn Wahshiyya and Ibn al-Awwam wrote down grafting, seed treatment, irrigation and the moving of plants between regions. The part most courses skip.28 min
  8. 08Medieval European HusbandryThe Capitulare de villis, Walter of Henley, Fitzherbert and Tusser built the closed-loop manor. Seed saving, dung economy and rotation, mandated in a charter.28 min
  9. 09Crescenzi and the Italian VillaA 1305 estate manual already treats the farm as one interdependent system and lists the manure, the pipe grade and the living hedge as working design.25 min
  10. 10Terracing in the HighlandsTerraces from the Andes to Ifugao and Yemen hold soil and water on slopes, and their engineering, drainage, upkeep and labour cost are documented and repeatable.30 min
  11. 11Water Harvesting in the DrylandsFrom Persian qanats and Nabataean runoff farms to Sahel zai pits and half-moons, dryland people have caught runoff for millennia, and the swale is a renaming of their work.30 min
  12. 12The Milpa and American PolycultureThe milpa is a measured, productive maize-bean-squash system, and eastern North America had its own domesticated polyculture a thousand years before maize arrived.30 min
  13. 13The Commons and Traditional KnowledgeOstrom's field evidence shows shared resources are governed by workable rules, Netting shows smallholders are efficient, and Scott shows crop choice can be refusal.30 min
  14. 14The Alternative Agriculture LineageFrom Howard's compost work and Steiner's 1924 lectures to Fukuoka, the Rodale plots, Cuba and Latin American agroecology, here is what each actually showed.30 min
  15. 15What Did Not WorkIrrigation salts, plowed grassland and a single potato variety all failed, and the famous collapse stories are messier than the versions repeated to make a point.30 min
  16. 16The Attribution ProblemPermaculture draws on indigenous and peasant systems, names them too rarely, and the erasure is both a land-justice problem and a working problem.30 min