Bill Mollison

Permaculture Institute – Australia

Bill Mollison (1928-2016) was an Australian researcher, author, scientist, teacher and biologist. He was a co-founder of what we now commonly refer to as “Permaculture.” He also founded the original Permaculture Institute, established in 1979, to teach the practical design of sustainable soil, water, plant, and legal and economic systems to students, worldwide.

Permaculture (“permanent agriculture”) is an integrated system of ecological and environmental design which Mollison co-developed with David Holmgren, and which they together envisioned as a perennial and sustainable form of agriculture. In 1974, Mollison began his collaboration with Holmgren, and in 1978 they published their book Permaculture One, which introduced this design system to the general public.

Mollison founded The Permaculture Institute in Tasmania, and created the education system to train others under the umbrella of permaculture.^[4] This education system of “train the trainer”, utilized through a formal Permaculture Design Course and Certification (PDC), has taught hundreds of thousands of people throughout the world how to grow food and be sustainable using permaculture design principles.

Originally intended as a contraction of permanent agriculture, Mollison quickly realised it was a system for permanent culture, as without a productive landscape, a healthy ecology and a circular economy, no culture would survive. Permaculture began as both a positive concept – open to new information – and a practice that could integrate the knowledge about sustainable, ecological techniques from all parts of the world.

Soon after permaculture was first introduced and then put into practice by the public, Mollison recognized that permaculture principles encompassed a movement that included not only agriculture, horticulture, architecture, and ecology, but also economic systems, land access strategies, and legal systems for businesses and communities.

“Self-reliance in food is meaningless unless people have access to land, information, and financial resources. So in recent years it has come to encompass appropriate legal and financial strategies, including strategies for land access, business structures, and regional self-financing. This way it is a whole human system.“

Books: Permaculture One, Two

Video 1) : In Grave Danger of Falling Food 
Video 2) 3 Phases of Abundance

Website: Permaculture Institute