> So why is it not the dominant method of agriculture yet?
Define dominant?
I'll note that permaculture does not have an army of lobbyists, sales people, marketers, lawyers, pushing this into public policy, beating its drum across media, using threats of prosecution to lock people into expensive seed / fertiliser / herbicide combinations, and so on.
It's a bit like free software competing with lower-quality non-free software, or fresh fruit competing with plastic-wrapped highly processed fast food - the product is demonstrably better for the consumer and the planet, but the disparity in advertising budgets dictate which is more popular.
Apropos whatever you like ... Bayer is worth around 130B euro - having picked up Monsanto for USD $60B five years ago.
In contrast, you can go do your permaculture design course for around US$1k, or pick up the original - Permaculture One - in ebook format for around AU$30.
Anyway, I've assumed by dominant you mean pervasive or popular, rather than merely superior.
> And yet, they're a basic part of most humans' diet. How many people actually get _all_ their food from permaculture?
I think you're asking some interesting questions, but perhaps coming at it from the wrong angle.
I mean, it's fascinating why it is that we're still using the same handful of grains that were chosen about 12k ya at a time when health & longevity weren't major concerns, and obviously weren't strong evolutionary factors.
Grains are far from great, and arguably the move from hunter gatherer to fixed / agricultural settlements was a backwards step in terms of individual health, but you'd certainly live long enough to propagate genetic material on a diet of mostly grains, so in that sense you could say 'it worked'.
Back to the thrust of your question - how many people actually use Debian rather than Microsoft Windows?
Does this mean the latter is two orders of magnitude better, or just two orders of magnitude more dominant?
> Anyway one of the things Monbiot talks about in his book are new perennial versions of wheat and rice that have decent yields, so maybe they can become part of permaculture.
You should probably read some books on permaculture, because 'growing a better monoculture' is entirely not what it's about.
If you're stateside, Toby Hemenway's book is well regarded. (He once intimated to me that my reliance on metric meant I couldn't be as good a designer as someone familiar with both metric and imperial / customary / archaic
but nonetheless.) The original Permaculture Designer's Manual (600 pages) is hefty and dense, but definitely the canonical work.
I mentioned Joel Salatin earlier - he doesn't identify as a permaculturist, but his integrated approach to farming definitely aligns with some of the permy principles. I've only read his 'folks this ain't normal' and 'everything I want to do is illegal' but he's got an abundance of books, as well as some great videos available on youtube. He's the chap that featured in Michael Pollan's 'The Omnivore's Dilemma'.