There was a time when we marked the seasons by the food that was available then: strawberries and stone fruit in summer; apples in the fall; butternut squash and potatoes in the winter. But now you can eat strawberries from California in Juneau in February, and asparagus from Mexico year-round. In fact, the average fruit or vegetable in your neighborhood supermarket travels 2000 miles to get from field to table.

Of course we notice that winter cantaloupe from Chile may be a little more expensive than the stuff we buy locally in season, but even so, we reason, we like cantaloupe, and it doesn't cost that that much more. Yet, if the sticker price factored in the real cost of producing that melon—not just the seeds and man-hours of labor that went into growing it, the fertilizers and pesticides, the machinery for plowing and planting and harvesting, then processing and packaging, but also the materials and energy that went into making the steel to manufacture the tractors, and the trucks necessary for shipping, and the fossil fuels required to make the trucks run—the cost of that cantaloupe suddenly becomes prohibitive.

And this doesn't even take into account the cost to the soil, itself. Increasingly, agribusiness has become the model for food production in the west—a system that seems highly productive in the short-term, but is ultimately unsustainable precisely because it does not recognize the interdependence of all things.

A Tough Row to Hoe

Modern agricultural practice tends to isolate crops—corn in this field, potatoes in that—and rely on fertilizers to replenish exhausted soil and pesticides to control pests. However, this system completely ignores the way things really are. In nature, you will never find acres of land organized in orderly rows; left to its own devices, nature is far less tidy and far more efficient. Imagine, for a moment, some patch of wilderness that is growing back after having experienced a devastating fire:

First come the weeds: their roots soften the soil, draw nutrients, and hold moisture. Next, second generation growth arrives—alders and shrubs for example—that fix nitrogen in the earth and continue to build up the soil. These species, in turn, give way to third and fourth and fifth generations of flora until, at last, the soil is prepared for "climax species"—the more long-lived pines or birch or oaks—that prevent erosion, offer habitat to animals and insects, provide shade and produce oxygen. Eventually even these mighty trees will die and become nurse logs to new vegetation, and so the loop continues, each element in the system coming into existence with minimal effort and contributing to the health and well-being of all the other beings around it.

Now imagine several hundred acres of commercial farmland dedicated to crops. First comes the plow, which oxygenates the earth. This in turn activates certain oxygen-dependent bacteria in the soil to begin decomposing the remains of the previous year's harvest. Decomposition is a necessary part of building up good healthy top-soil, but if it goes on too long, then particles become so broken down there's nothing nutritious left. In a natural ecosystem, oxygen trickles down slowly from the surface, and when the aerobic bacteria use it all up, they stop. The lack of oxygen then activates anaerobic bacteria which produce etholyn, a substance that suppresses parasites in the soil that might otherwise infect the crops. But in a plowed furrow, the anaerobic bacteria never get a chance to start; meanwhile, like the Energizer Bunny, the aerobic bacteria just keep going and going until they deplete the soil. The farmer responds by adding chemical fertilizers—which just whips those aerobic bacteria into an even greater frenzy of decomposition. And so it goes with mainstream agriculture expending tremendous effort for an ever-diminishing return.

This agricultural model is based on a deeply ingrained western idea of hierarchical relationships between humankind and the rest of the world. In this view, we are the masters, and the earth's resources are here exclusively for our use. It is also deeply mechanistic in its reliance on the heavy lifting of technology—biogenetic modification, chemical pesticides and fertilizers, etc.—in order to accomplish what healthy ecosystems do naturally. Like the missionary-minded Rose Sayer in The African Queen, American agribusiness seems to believe that "Nature is what we were put on this earth to rise above."

What Would Buddha Do?

But what alternative is there to this veritable vegetable samsara? In a word, Permaculture.

Permaculture—short for "Permanent Agriculture"—is a new word for a very old concept. At its heart lies three principles: • Take care of the earth (because all living things have intrinsic worth); • Take care of the people; • Reinvest all surplus, whether it be information, money, or labor, to support the first two ethics.

Permaculture Design was founded in the 1960s by an Australian named Bill Mollison. Though Mollison was not a Buddhist, per se, he based his approach to agriculture on close study of how healthy eco-systems work in nature; the correlations between the three principles he outlined and the six paramitas, or perfections, are strong: • voluntary sharing of materials and wisdom (dana), • precepts or conduct (shila), • patience (kshanti), • vigor or effort (viriya), • meditation (dhyana), • wisdom or awareness(prajna).

Like the drowning sailor who eventually surrenders, just as he is, to the buoyancy of the ocean, practitioners of permaculture stop working so hard to make things grow and instead trust the elements to do what they do naturally. This requires seeing nature as it really is: a highly complex network of interdependent relationships in which each individual (the tomato plant, the chicken, the farmer) is not paramount—rather, it is the connections between them that count.

Instead of dividing out plant life into neat rows of corn and beans and squash, for example, the permaculturist mixes his squash and beans in with the corn so their vines can climb up the stalks, which, in turn, shelter them from being burnt by the sun. Meanwhile, he lets his chickens wander freely, fertilizing the earth with their droppings and eating slugs and weeds. If he is a dairy farmer, he lets his cattle roam freely, but plants bamboo between his pasture and the river, because bamboo soaks up the nutrients from manure that would otherwise pollute the water. And he remembers that in nature everything serves multiple purposes—so he always leaves some part of his property "wild", where weeds can grow with impunity (and incidentally provide habitat for the predatory insects that kill the aphids and other bugs we would otherwise need to control with pesticides.) And as all these intermixed species die and go back into the earth, their diversity creates a deeper, richer topsoil that nourishes the next generation of crops without expensive and potentially toxic fertilizers.

Urban Permaculture

Okay, you say; it sounds great in theory, but I'm an accountant, or a teacher or a lawyer, not a farmer—I live in a city. I have a small yard, or maybe no yard at all. I have a black thumb. I have a career. I don't have time to spend growing my own food. There's nothing I can do to change the way the food I eat is produced.

There are a million reasons why permaculture is an impossibility for most of us—until we open our eyes and see things as they really are:

• Even people living in a studio apartment in Manhattan can plant herbs in a window box, or some wheat grass on the balcony. • Even the tiniest backyard in St. Louis could support a grapevine or a small tree. Such plants provide habitat to helpful insects, clean the air, reduce heat, slow wind and absorb noise. • And even a person with the blackest thumb can still compost his or her kitchen waste instead of sending it to the landfill. Maybe you've converted your backyard to an asphalt basketball court, but someone in your neighborhood could use the compost in their garden.

Instead of buying flavorless vegetables and fruits from Chile and sending your money to some supermarket chain's corporate headquarters in Del Rio Texas, why not join a CSA (community supported Agriculture)? These are smaller, locally-owned farms which sell "shares" of their produce in advance. You pay a flat amount per year, and in return receive weekly shipments of whatever is in season at that time. The vegetables are fresh, and seasonal; the eggs come from healthy, happy chickens, and you have become part of a system that supports your local farmer and sustainable agriculture.

And for those of us who enjoy gardening, the principles of permaculture can easily be integrated into our own back—or even front!—yards. Plant chives around those rosebushes—they protect against pests. Want to do some landscaping with shrubbery? Why not plant blueberry bushes, or sage? They're not only beautiful, they're edible as well. The truly ambitious will get rid of that water-hogging grass on the parking strip entirely and replace it with a variety of plants that both nourish the body and feed the soul. You need sun, exercise and water anyway, so why not garden instead of pay for a membership at the gym?

Each step we take to practice and/or support healthy, sustainable agriculture, no matter how small, expresses the principle that stands at the heart of Buddhism: that each of us is just one element in a greater whole—an interdependent network of forces that existed before us and will continue after us, and that shape and support us physically, socially and spiritually throughout our lives.