How to Use this Publication: An Inventory of Commonly Cultivated Plant Species in Permaculture Farms in the Philippines (2022)

Mixed cropping at UmaLeng Organic Farm in Dumingag, Zamboanga del Sur

We often rely on social media and anecdotal evidence when it comes to identifying which types of crops are being grown by permaculture practitioners in the Philippines. But now we have this data from at least 12 sites in Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao.

The crop inventory can be useful for gardeners/farmers who want to practice permaculture and don't know which crops to plant. This is also useful for researchers monitoring how the diversity of crops change through the years. These crops are also used for subsistence, not just agriculture, so it can also be an indicator of how diets and food preferences change over time. 

A word of caution though. The study doesn't say that these are the ONLY crops that can be planted in a permaculture design. This is merely a presentation of what was found in those specific sites at that particular time period (2018). Practitioners can use this as a foundation and research on their own which crops are most suitable for their environment and appropriate for their daily needs.

Link to the publication (pp. 212-229): https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-16-7699-4_10

How to Use this Publication: "Documenting Permaculture Farm Landscapes in The Philippines Using a Drone with a Smartphone (2020)

The motivation behind this publication was to encourage people to use the Ryze Tello drone for research and landscape monitoring. But let us clear up some things first:

1. The Ryze Tello is a toy drone created by the company named Ryze. The drone has DJI and Intel technology in it and it is sold and distributed by DJI. That's why sometimes it's called DJI Ryze Tello or DJI Tello.

2. As mentioned earlier, the Tello is a lightweight, budget-friendly toy drone made for kids and beginner pilots.  

So why did we use this drone for research? The main reason is the budget. We needed an affordable drone with a good camera to take aerial photos of our study sites. We also didn't have experience flying expensive drones so we won't spend money on those. Thankfully, the Tello was born right before we did our fieldwork. 

In the chapter that we wrote in the book by SEARCA, we described in detail how to use aerial photos in monitoring permaculture landscapes in particular. But the methodology is flexible enough to be applied in other landscapes as well. 

In developing this methodology, we assumed that the researcher, student, or farmer, only has access to a smartphone, a notebook, and the Tello. No computers or laptops necessary!

Basically, the methodology teaches people what to look for when monitoring a landscape, especially a consciously designed landscape like that of a permaculture site.

If you're interested in using the Ryze Tello drone as a flying camera for your research, you can watch this webinar organized by the Pampanga State Agricultural University. You can view the video here: (timestamp: 23:19)

Link to the publication (Chapter 5, pp. 71-86): https://www.searca.org/pubs/books?pid=472 (free download)

Are We Doing Enough? Not a Positive Blog

The landscape of Los Banos still has a lot of vegetation but on a larger scale, rapid urbanization is happening.

Our fourth publication on the topic of permaculture was released this month by Springer Nature. To those new here to the blog, our team has published in 2017, 2020, and 2021. So far we are on a 3-year mini-streak. There's still a few papers lined up for writing and revision, so hopefully we can release a new journal article or book chapter by 2023. It really depends on my motivation to write. But this got me thinking. Are we making an impact with these papers? Are we really helping the planet? And who reads them?

As I reflect from a posture of frustration, I came to realize that the people and places that we studied were way ahead in preparing themselves for self-sufficiency. We have these tiny patches of private lands scattered all over the country in which the values of the designer are evident on the landscape. It's like "this is what I want the world to be like but the world does not understand me, so I will just do this in my own space." I can relate because that's how I feel when I'm in the garden. We're making our own environments. Our own microclimates. Our own safe spaces. Our personal healing places. And there's a lot of these as we've seen on the permaculture map. But is it enough to reverse climate change? Is it enough to prevent another pandemic? Is it enough to restore our ecosystems? No, it's not enough.

There's a long list of solutions but permaculture is something very personal to me because it's a toolbox or a mindset that is accessible to everyone. And it produces results.

I stumbled upon Esri's World Imagery Wayback Archive on LinkedIn last month. Basically it's a satellite image timeseries from 2014 onwards that you can save as a GIF. Out of curiosity, I checked how our landscape in Los Banos has changed since 2014. Well, it's not good news, as expected. I did the same for our research sites as well (check out our Instagram account) though I haven't finished all of them yet. You can see from the satellite images that the permaculture sites really stand out from the rest of the landscape. I think there's no question about that. But the larger scale is what concerns me. The landscape is degrading.

I look at my garden and tell myself: "This is the only environment I can control."