What does a permaculture practitioner eat?
Vegetarianism isn’t part of the “standard” permaculture taught by Bill Mollison, David Holmgren, and others who follow in that tradition. Permaculture builds ecosystems to meet human needs, and animals are one of the driving forces of an ecosystem. For example, chickens are used to control insects, till soil, heat greenhouses, produce fertilizer, as well as provide meat and eggs. It would take a human many hours to pick as many insects as a chicken, and humans have to control the chicken population somehow. In my part of the world, deer are overpopulated. They will leap a six foot electric fence to get to a garden. The only way to have a garden is to control the population, which also provides meat. Ecosystems contain predators, and predators are one of the main factors that regulate the system. I think that keeping livestock and hunting wildlife are integral to permaculture. I also believe that squeamishness about our role as predators is a symptom of alienation from Nature.
