Permaculture principle 3: Obtain a Yield

Our efforts to work with Nature must bear fruit. Humans are a part of the system, play a crucial role, and must be cared for just like the rest. In a system where humans have a very important role they have legitimate claims to the yields of their ecosystem.

A system that can not produce a harvest for its cultivators is of little use in the short term no matter how productive it is imagined to be in the long run.

yield is an expression of surplus in an ecosystem. It is the same as a business creating a profit. The two terms could be interchangeable if so desired. Individual elements can be said to have yields. Chickens lay eggs and provide meat and fertilizer. Trees put off fruit, create biomass, and can be harvested for timber.

It is important to remember that yields always arise at the culmination of energy cycles and transfers. A tree can only give a yield after a seed has germinated, grown, and photosynthesized over a period over several years. Although we may be most interested in its fruits, it can produce many other yields that can be obtained and used productivity.

We must use creativity to find and implement all of an elements yields as well as recognize what yields are surplus and what should be left to feed the next cycle of energy.

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Wheat:

• Used as Building material (see straw-bail houses)

• Animal bedding: after being enriched with manures can be returned to the field as fertilization.

• The stubble left over from harvest can be left to harvest snow and rain, preventing erosion as well as feed soil organisms as they break down.

• Hunters take yields from fowl that glean grain from the fields.

• grain can be left as seed for next years crop

• cereal

• bread

• Animal Feed

• Mash can be created and turned into beer whiskey or fuel

• Can be traded for goods or money
  
  
  

  
  
  

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Each time energy cycles or transforms another recourse is created and another yield is possible. Our job is to imagine those yields and design systems, relationships, and technologies to realize those yields

In our wheat example we would decide which of these energy pathways will produce the highest yields and generate the most cycles.

As feed the grain can be transfered into wool, meat, milk and manure. As mash it can become alcohol, then substrate for mushrooms, then fish food, then meat. The alcohol can become gifts, medicine, or fuel. And so on.

By harvesting, we cycle the wheel of energy and are capable of increasing the onset of abundance.