In 2016, the Global Nature Fund started to participate in the real,- Advisory Board Permaculture. Since 2015, the company is extending its range of permacultural fruits and vegetables. The aim of the advisory board is to push the topic within the trade system and therefore support an ecological, sustainable and environmental-friendly agriculture in general.
Permaculture – never heard about it? No wonder – the concept is not very common, even though it was already designed in the 1970s as an alternative to industrial agriculture. Created by the terms “Permanent Agriculture”, permaculture is setting up a form of ecological agriculture that aims to create and sustain cycles that are close to natural ones and therefore work in the long-term. In the permacultural concept, healthy soils and humus formation are key principles. To realize them, organic fertilizers and natural microorganism in the soil are being supported as well as beneficial animals like insects.
“In the permacultural production cycle we often use even less plant treatments than allowed and applied in ecological agriculture. For that reason, the skin of the fruit or vegetable can sometimes have marks or different colours. The strength of these products can be found inside: they are full of minerals and vitamins and through their form of being produced hey increase soil fertility and biodiversity”, explains the cultivation advisor Marion Buley.
Raphael Kennerknecht, manager of lehman natur GmbH, completes: “Permaculture provides products like nature makes them. We want to create a connection between the nature and consumers and thus enclose the consumer to quality and taste of nature-grown products.”
Additionally, original or ancient varieties are commonly used within permaculture. Therefore, optically they cannot be treated as “top goods”. Often these products are refused by the traders because they have optical defects or small eating traces. Farmers estimate that a third of the products has to be sorted out and is not even delivered to the traders, which is economically almost not bearable for them. An aim of the advisory board is to find solutions to this problem.