Welcome back to the Port Pearls Almanac. This is Andy. And today we're joined by Eric Tonesmeier.

Now, Eric Tonesmeyer was a pioneer in the permaculture movement here in the United States.

He's known for a couple of his books on perennial crops, which are linked in the show notes.

And in this episode, we discuss his evolution of what he considers permaculture

and the idea of what our role is as leaders in the alternatives

to conventional agriculture movement and what our goals should be focused on. We talk about

perennial vegetables and other crops and how they can help bolster global food security and

improve diets. We also explore the nutritional depths and availability of these incredible plants and how they

can transform food systems to tackle things like malnutrition and nutrient deficiencies

worldwide.

We talk at length about our evolution from permaculture as we've both had and the importance

of things like credibility and this idea of

what post-permiculture looks like, and the pitfalls of these systems that over-promise and under-deliver,

whether permaculture or regenerative agriculture. In this episode, we talk further about the

complexities of modern farming, trying to

balance conventional and sustainable practices, and what the potential is for a more democratized

plant breeding system, and what accessible gardening methods look like. This is a really great

episode. Eric was a huge influence on me when I was younger, so it was great to sit down with him and chat at length about what the future of this type of movement looks like.

So I think you'll really enjoy this conversation, and we're going to jump right in.

Eric, thanks so much for coming on.

I'll say this is kind of fun because your old books from the early

2000s were really influential on me. Then I got to have you to have a commercial on my podcast.

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