I don’t know if I should have done this, but I did. After watching the film and taking notes multiple times, I went to… wait for it… the internet.
I mentally revisited things that, although noted while watching, I essentially shrugged off previously. “It’s a movie, they can’t include everything.” I thought.
What are these things?
Well, first, they do not reference “permaculture” as a term. This omission comes despite demonstrations of Nature’s interconnected relationships, and even more specifically, plant guilds are featured throughout.
They call what they are engaging in, “traditional farming,” which is so ambiguous it loses meaning.
Their mentor, Alan York, was a superstar in the field of “biodynamic, regenerative farming.” They zip right by this.
To a certain extent, who cares?
I’ve written previously there’s “no such thing as the permaculture police.” These are all just words and who wants to have a debate around semantics anyway?
BUT, and I think this is a legitimate criticism (which I read and it resonated with me). By not acknowledging these fields of study, John (subconsciously or consciously) gives little deference to those before us.
At first, I sort of chuckled to myself in agreement with the criticism, but the more I thought about it, the more irksome it became.
The critique cites a specific example, in explaining their “observation, followed by creativity” approach. In discussing the relationship between ducks and snails, he essentially says the solution was derived by watching a duck eat a snail one day. Subsequently, they “unleash the ducks” in their fruit tree orchard and their snail problem is quickly ameliorated.
Did that really happen? Or did they educate themselves by relying on centuries of wisdom from the agricultural community. Who can say, really?