Examining Innovation for Sustainability from the Bottom Up: An Analysis of the Permaculture Community in England

Abstract

This article applies the transition approach to a novel food production context, via an examination of the food production side of permaculture. More specifically, it examines attempts by the permaculture community in England to interact and influence the Agriculture Knowledge System of the mainstream agro‐food regime. Strategic Niche Management and Communities of Practice theory are combined to examine the ways in which the permaculture community has evolved and has sought to develop its agro‐ecology message and influence the agro‐food regime. Evidence of second order learning and networking with stakeholders outside the community of practice is limited. A tension between internal activities that reinforce a boundary between the permaculture knowledge system and the wider Agriculture Knowledge System are evident. Some external activities designed to cross boundaries are noted. However, activities designed to translate permaculture ideas into mainstream agriculture have had limited success. There is some evidence of interaction and lateral linkage with sub‐regimes to enhance capacity but this is usually in individual capacities. Examining the evolution of radical niche innovations such as permaculture thus reveals the way that beliefs, values and epistemologies make the process of sustainability transition challenging and complex, particularly when different knowledge systems clash with one another.

The Multi-Level Perspective in Research on Sustainability Transitions in Agriculture and Food Systems: A Systematic Review

“…Likewise, documents that deal with changes in land use (see, multi-layer perceptron, MLP) without any direct relation to agro-food were excluded. In some cases, it was clear that papers address sustainability transitions in agro-food but not whether they use the MLP -niche term mentioned in abstract can also refer to other transition frameworks such as SNM (e.g., [47][48][49]) and TM (e.g., [50,51]); in these cases, a scrutiny of full texts was necessary. Therefore, a further step of the systematic review consisted in the analysis of 28 full papers to make sure that they meet all inclusion criteria.…”

Agricultural transition: Niche and regime knowledge systems’ boundary dynamics

“…Brunori et al (2013), for example, describe the niche-like learning and innovation networks for sustainable agriculture as alternative knowledge systems which develop patterns and infrastructures for communication, memories, access to and retrieval of information, intellectual property rules, validation of information and framing functions. Such knowledge systems, characterised by collaborative modes of learning, have been revealed in the analysis of transition towns (Seyfang and Haxeltine, 2012); organic farming (Smith, 2007, Morgan, 2011; agri-environmental action (Lockie, 2006), and Permaculture (Ingram et al, 2014, Maye, 2016, Veteto and Lockyer, 2008. In agriculture these niches are part of a wider ecological knowledge system which exhibits fundamentally different characteristics to those of the AKS (Roling and Jiggins, 1998).…”

The permaculture movement in India: a social movement with Southern characteristics

“…Permaculture aims at restoring ecosystems and improving the human habitats and lives of communities around them. Therefore, permaculture should not only be seen as a food production system but a 'community planning philosophy' (Maye, 2018) aimed at reconnecting humans with nature by regenerative means.…”