The promises of many permaculture proponents, are close to a scam.
Basically, the claim is establish a working ecological system - and then it runs by itself, while producing lots of yield. Permanent Culture.
But in reality, wild nature takes over quite quickly, if you don't do anything. A fruit tree does usually not have benefits by making big red apples for example. Small ones are good enough for wild reproduction. But we want as many apples as possible, which means pruning, etc.
And a vegetable garden ... they like care, but if you don't tend to them, they will remain tiny and soon displaced by weeds.
So what I have seen in my experiments in my garden and on other permaculture farms - is that the result looks nice, but it is a lot of work and low yield. Some ideas like fruit forests are a nice additionm but all in all I doubt permaculture can feed the world. (I have not seen one permaculture farm, that could feed itself)
I have never seen a permaculture designer, or anyone, make such a claim. We aim to reduce maintenance by design, using methods that overlap with Lean Manufacturing and other process study, but it would be absurd to claim that it’s possible to reduce gardening to zero maintenance. Fukuoka was more extreme than many permaculture specialists by quite a large factor but he put his maintenance right in the title of his signature work: “one-straw revolution”.
Not in my experience.
The promises of many permaculture proponents, are close to a scam.
Basically, the claim is establish a working ecological system - and then it runs by itself, while producing lots of yield. Permanent Culture.
But in reality, wild nature takes over quite quickly, if you don't do anything. A fruit tree does usually not have benefits by making big red apples for example. Small ones are good enough for wild reproduction. But we want as many apples as possible, which means pruning, etc.
And a vegetable garden ... they like care, but if you don't tend to them, they will remain tiny and soon displaced by weeds.
So what I have seen in my experiments in my garden and on other permaculture farms - is that the result looks nice, but it is a lot of work and low yield. Some ideas like fruit forests are a nice additionm but all in all I doubt permaculture can feed the world. (I have not seen one permaculture farm, that could feed itself)