Permaculture in Commercial Agriculture

In this chapter, we present individual cases of sustainable (regenerative) farming with the intention to inspire and give food for reflection for local action. We consciously avoid a narrative of ‘feed the world’ imperatives and ‘faster expansion’ within the concept of an ‘ever growing population’ (e.g. Fróna et al., 2019). We intend to showcase what systems farmers have developed to lead ‘a good life’ and to get up every morning, motivated to face the ecological challenges and economic adversities of farming, far away from the business models of corporations linked up to financial markets and their ‘commodification’ of food (e.g. Rundgren, 2015). This chapter is also driven by the admonition to shun the use of biocidal contaminants from agriculture – and by that – from our food. These comprise synthetic pesticides (and antibiotics), including genetically modified (GM) seeds as part of the intellectual property-protected ‘corporate package’. Pesticides are believed by some scientists to create long-term risks to food safety and security and increase the risk of diseases with a long latency period to clinical manifestation. Ailments believed to be caused by pesticides on pandemic scales, such as some cancers or neurologic diseases, must not be a ‘collateral damage accepted with approval’ (e.g. Dorsey et al., 2020; Leu and Shiva, 2018; Pfrimer and Barbosa Júnior, 2017).