Permaculture!

I've been doing a lot of research lately and have come across a "language" that applies to the lifestyle that I have been looking for. Issues surrounding the health of our environment, bodies and sources of food can be improved through a concept known as Permaculture.

Here is a little history (thank you Wikipedia):

"In the mid 1970s, Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren started to develop ideas about stable agricultural systems. This was a result of rapid growth of destructive industrial-agricultural methods. They saw that these methods were poisoning the land and water, reducing biodiversity, and removing billions of tons of topsoil from previously fertile landscapes. They announced their permaculture" approach with the publication of Permaculture One in 1978.

The term permaculture initially meant "permanent agriculture" but was quickly expanded to also stand for "permanent culture" as it was seen that social aspects were integral to a truly sustainable system.

After Permaculture One, Mollison and Holmgren further refined and developed their ideas by designing hundreds of permaculture sites and organizing this information into more detailed books. Mollison lectured in over 80 countries and taught his two-week Design Course to many hundreds of students. By the early 1980s, the concept had broadened from agricultural systems design towards complete, sustainable human habitats.

By the mid 1980s, many of the students had become successful practitioners and had themselves begun teaching the techniques they had learned. In a short period of time permaculture groups, projects, associations, and institutes were established in over one hundred countries. In 1991 a four-part Television documentary by ABC productions called "The Global Gardener" showed permaculture applied to a range of worldwide situations, bringing the concept to a much broader public. Excerpts are available online through YouTube."

I became interested in these issues when I was an undergrad at UC Davis and took a class on Environmental Sustainability. My goal is to someday grow a garden, open a café somewhere and feed people the delicious, organic, sustainable, healthy foods that so many of us are missing out on. Because I'm still in school this won't happen for a while, but until it does, I will be researching, learning and cooking myself a life.