Photo: Aranya

Scale - Small is Beautiful

We also aim to design at an appropriate scale & not take on more than we can cope with. 'Work out from well managed areas' is one little permaculture saying that sums this up well. Small intensive plots are a lot more productive & far less destructive than large agricultural fields.

The heavy use of fossil fuels is all that enables large scale agriculture to remain economically viable & in the meantime tractors & heavy farm machinery do untold damage compacting the soil. A tractor can only safely plough a field up & down a slope, but this practice allows rainwater to wash huges quantities of topsoil into our rivers. And this loss of fertility means that foods grown this way are less nutritious than they once were.

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