Ten thousand years of agriculture has devastated every ecosystem it has come in contact with. Horticultural societies point toward a solution, and permaculture can help us design a way to overcome agriculture’s deficiencies, preserve many of the best features of our culture, and create a horticultural society that has a good chance of proving sustainable. This lecture shows how we got into this mess, and offers a route out of it.

Presented by Toby Hemenway at PV1 in March 2014.

Toby Hemenway is the author of Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, the best-selling permaculture book in the world. His book on urban permaculture, The Permaculture City, was released in July 2015.

Toby passed away in late 2016 after a battle with pancreatic cancer.