The theoretical model for our little farm is a living organism of one kind or another. This model includes the subsystems that make up the whole organism, as well as the supersystems into which the organism belongs. Examples of supersystems include biotic communities or human societies. In whole systems agriculture, we are most concerned with how things are organized. The words organism, order, and organization all have the same root meaning.

Whole systems agriculture looks to the new sciences of the 20th Century for guidance and inspiration and the practitioner learns about this organization by observing an orderly universe and applying these observations to her work. The new sciences include relativity, quantum theory, chaos theory and general systems theory.

In following the whole systems model, one of the main goals is self-organization; getting the farm system to do much of the management and work that might otherwise have to be done by the farmer. We attempt to realize the goal expressed by Masanobu Fukuoka of being “know-nothing, do-nothing farmers”. Readers interested in pursuing the theories behind all this may do well to do some Googling. However, detailed academic knowledge is certainly not a requirement for success; in fact, much academic and conventional agricultural knowledge may actually get in the way since most of it is built on the old sciences rather than the new sciences, describing a quite different, and apparently contradictory, reality.

Just as a skunk needs no understanding of ecology to live well in a woodland, a whole systems gardener needs only know a little about systems to have a great garden. Systems are always with us whether we like them or not--want them or not--or know anything about them or not; no matter how we might try, there is no way out. The whole systems gardener serves her garden just as the hands serve the human being. By knowing she is not an end in herself, she endlessly becomes herself.

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Whole Systems Agriculture ~ Madera, California ~ ©2005
www.wholesystemsag.org
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