Retrofitting Permaculture

Critiquing a 21st century Vision

This piece is a collaborative effort with Hydric and I’d highly recommend folks who enjoy this analysis as well as native plant research subscribe to their substack as well here!

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We’ve spent some time to this point discussing how the fundamentals of permaculture are framed on fundamentally poor grounds and how this provides a breeding ground for a rational ‘naturalist’ framework for race supremacy, misogyny, ableism, and more. Fifty years in, there’s no doubt that you can find bad actors in any global movement’s history, so it’s worth looking at the most recent work from one of the movement’s founders, Dave Holmgren. In his most recent book, RetroSuburbia, published in 2018, we can see how Holmgren envisions an ideal world. I invite you to hold this question in your mind as we delve into the work: “What defines a dangerous text?”

The first thing we can see in his updated edition, released in 2020, is an inclusion about making the book available as “pay what you feel” online as “communities everywhere adapt to the new realities triggered by the COVID-19 global pandemic”. There’s much to say about wrapping the jacket of the book with an anticapitalist radical message, especially given his position on the Covid vaccine (more on this later). But this highlights the challenges of critiquing a movement that is both built on breaking down the walls blocking the free flow of information, while simultaneously building them back up with multi-level marketing-esque schemes (*cough* PDC’s *cough*). Much like wrapping the book in this false promise of a radical lens, he signs the cover with, “David Holmgren, PhD”, despite his PhD being an honorary doctorate, which, like much of the movement, is more about flash than substance and ignores the framework in which honorary degrees are applied.¹

RetroSuburbia, for context, is the culmination of decades of research, reworking, and developing what Holmgren believes is the way society can best organize given the current material conditions— what he describes as “part manual and part manifesto”, and backs his preface with the argument that his vision is “widely discussed by urban planning academics and activists”, the proof he cites for this claim being a study where 12 participants (intended reflect the population of Melbourne) grew their own food.²,³

Ecology & Food Production

Holmgren argues that ‘patterning’ is the basis of permaculture, referencing the definition of patterns first coined in Christopher Alexander’s The Timeless Way of Building and A Pattern Language, written in 1976 and 1977. This book attempts to break down architecture and civil planning into a series of common problems that can be solved with common solutions.

For example, urban centers can suffer from feeling impersonal and sterile, and cafes can fail without clientele. To solve both problems, we can design cafes to have a series of specific traits (such as an outdoor sitting area the public can use to wait for a bus, a large open entryway that allows free comings and goings, and a variety of chairs for congregating) which encourage the public to socialize while also spending money on refreshments.

We outlined A Pattern Language extensively in our permaculture piece. Still, the short of it is that Holmgren applies this concept of universal patterns to permaculture. By using a set of patterns (and thereby a fixed set of solutions) we can transform society for the better — everything from our cities, relationships, food systems, can be re-created into something far superior than what we have now in our broken world.

It’s no surprise that Alexander’s work was so influential on Holmgren and Mollison— it entirely ignored historical context and cultural complexities. The ‘objective best choice’ doesn’t have to wrestle with historical precedents of cultural erasure — both for humans and the landscape itself. Our world has been shaped by countless socio-political influences which must be understood if they are to be improved.

Without context, any person with the right education can create systems to address large-scale problems without ever having to step foot there, without ever having to speak to the people who live there or who have historically stewarded that landscape— and this is something that is often seen with permaculture consultants, some of who travel globally to give ‘insight’ into best practices without any depth of understanding of historical context.

We can go on and on regarding these same themes, but it’s worth diving more specifically into the details in which Holmgren frames the future communities and what they should look like. In the book, he decries the loss of community, comparing how neighborhoods organized and knew one another in the 1950s and 60s versus the 2000s. He paints optimistic stories of neighborhoods coming together and integrating food systems into their community— greenhouses built behind homes, the cutting of oversized trees for home heat, and the feeding of animals through overgrown bushes around sidewalks. It’s a beautiful image of communities building together and learning to become interdependent; but what is consistently and conspicuously absent in all of these stories is where the materials come from— the greenhouses that are constructed and the medicines that are rarely— but still used— when everyone is home growing food and bartering for basic goods with their neighbors. He briefly describes the idea of industrialized work being segregated from family life, and this begins to give way to some more interesting ideas which we’ll touch on shortly.

While there are many points in the book where broad ideas inaccurately describe the application of techniques and technologies (passive heating, for example), I want to focus specifically on the foundational elements that influence how we see the permaculture movement impact human relations. The most obvious is the book itself; he offers the book as a solution for community resiliency, and much of it is still fundamentally designed around individual management and adding more layers to our current lives, from outdoor processing kitchens to water storage to greywater filtration through our backyards. All of these are intimately personal and attempt to maintain similar lifestyles at the cost of more work per person while not systemically creating communal solutions that ALREADY EXIST or have existed— whether it be community canning centers or underground spaces where a winter’s worth of food is supposed to be stored or wastewater management.

Another example is around shared items— in his long dialogue about Australians having ‘too much stuff’, he suggests that communities do better to share, without suggesting scalable, systemic suggestions that remove the individual ego of who you choose to share with. While the language is constantly about building community, replication at the nuclear level continues to be the foundation of the movement— no different than the homestead-esque focus of the permaculture movement’s food forests over the past 50 years. This is no more obvious than early on in the book where Holmgren discusses ‘Do-it-ourselves’ rather than ‘Do-it-yourself’ to “emphasize the household and community aspects of the process.”

Part of the book explores the most sustainable ways to build & heat homes, the best way to organize to reduce community energy, and so on. While I think these are worthwhile subjects to discuss, I tend to find myself becoming more concerned when folks with large audiences (in his case, global and in the millions) begin to write as though an expert in all subjects. In general, there’s an extensive overview of the basics of off-gridding. In this sense, the book is unsurprisingly beige— the content is not particularly unique or worth mentioning in detail.

What does stand out is the framework in which he delivers these arguments. For example, he argues on the subject of humanure that “water & sewerage authorities tend to see on-site treatment as a direct threat to their business model, especially in areas already serviced by sewers. Authorities are even concerned that too much conservation of water leads to higher maintenance costs in flushing sewer blockages.” When discussing the obvious health risks of humanure, Holmgren takes extensive liberties stating that “Environmental Protection Authorities tend to be more positive about on-site treatment,” a comment that is delivered uncited. The EPA instead assesses that composting hosts the highest amounts of remaining bacteria, viruses, and parasites compared to air drying, aerobic digestion, and anaerobic digestion.⁴ Further, because of the high loads of these dangerous organisms, the effectiveness of composting human waste requires precise time & temperature management and still doesn’t address the long-term risks of pharmaceuticals and PFAs found in human waste.

Holmgren also makes the case that "if you are a hermit living in the bush, you might as well shit in a hole in your garden, because all you can get (in the way of disease) is what you already have." This borders on the culpable in terms of misunderstanding the myriad of risks from human waste; Dr. Waltner-Toews argues that in fact “Our own cells produce waste that could kill us if it were not carried away in the blood and then out of the body through urine, shit, bile, sweat, and breath.”⁵ Examples of this include Clostridioides difficile, which is fine in some parts of the gut but not other parts, and if untreated can kill you. This isn’t to say you cannot use humanure, but providing such suggestions, uncited, is dangerous.

The lack of care about waste and parasites is reinforced by his arguments to “convert part of a garage space into a chook (chicken) deep litter house”, ignoring the risk of disease and the obvious challenges of manure sitting in enclosed spaces which may share unventilated (insulated) air with people and animals (based on the images shared in the book). As it stands, estimates suggest less than 60% of homesteaders have good livestock hygiene practices as it is, without sharing walls with livestock and potentially inviting other animals such as rats and more into their homes.⁶

Holmgren also dives into greywater and rainwater catchment in typical homesteader fashion. What’s largely absent in the book is any science suggesting that the practice is safe or unsafe— safety seems to be defined by survival. Recent studies have pointed out that 30% of rainwater harvest from rooftops is contaminated with PFAs. This included statistically significant concentrations of various fluoroalkyl substances, above the US EPA Lifetime Health Advisory levels, which increases the risks of several cancers, reduces reproduction, and can cause significant health problems for children.⁷ Even non-potable water from rooftop collection can come with risks; high levels of fecal indicator bacteria (FIB) in one assessment points to several potential opportunistic pathogens in tank water that can cause illness even if not consumed through drinking.⁸ That’s not to say rainwater collection is objectively unattainable— researchers have found ways of using low-tech solutions to significantly reduce certain chemicals from rainwater that are simple and replicable.⁹ However, these nuances are all largely absent from his book.

Unsurprisingly, Holmgren takes time in the book to criticize native plant restoration, stating that:

I have long been sceptical about the push to prioritise the planting of local Indigenous species in our residential landscapes… [i]f we give a priority to native plants we will dramatically reduce our space, sunlight, water and nutrients to produce substantial food and if we include too many large evergreen trees we can dramatically reduce our ability to use the sun to heat our houses, grow food or dry clothes and thus save fossil fuels.

He further makes the argument that “indigeneity should never be the sole, or even main, criterion in selecting trees in and around human settlements”. We’ve outlined at length the problem of this position, and I’m likely to adopt Doug Tallamy’s position on the role of suburban yards— that we are far more impactful by providing a half-acre of native habitat than we are by trying to grow food (which doesn’t materially or immaterially shift how much production international conglomerates are growing). This doesn’t mean don’t grow food, but much like our discussions of organics and biodynamics, placing that decision within a more accurate framework of the intended goals is particularly important.

Holmgren also argues that species are considered native after 100 years of becoming naturalised, and cites the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. The thing is, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence of this argument from the UN. They offer several definitions, but none of them are framed within a specific figure like 100 years.¹⁰ What he’s likely referring to is the consensus that a naturalized species is likely not going to become an invasive species after 100 years. The reason why I’m bringing up a seemingly innocuous point is that it highlights the poor methodology that makes up a vast portion of the book’s more jarring positions.

Of course, the food production topics are what one would expect to be covered under the permaculture brand. What’s particularly interesting, however, is his supplemental reader to the book, “Feeding Retrosuburbia”, which he refers to, arguing that 50% of food production will come from urban centers— which to Holmgren includes fish, greens, sprouts, mushrooms, ferments, as well as dairy, eggs, and “main crop” (which I assume means caloric-rich staple crops).¹¹ His source for this argument is the output of organopanicos of Cuba (which we have covered in the past), although he ignores a few significant details. The first is that Cuba’s organopanicos produce roughly 25% of caloric needs; the second is that Cuba’s weather patterns allow for year-round cultivation (doubling their capacity), and third is that the density of Cuba is significantly less compared to urban areas of places like the United States and Australia (consider that Havana - the largest city in Cuba - is 7,500 people per square mile, compared to the small city of Boston Massachusetts with a population of 14,000 people per square mile, or NYC which is close to 30,000 PPSM).¹²

The Social Arrangement

Where Retrosuburbia showcases its roots is around how society should be organized. Holmgren rightfully criticizes eco-villages for operating as playgrounds for the affluent instead of tackling the discomfort of these communities and the difficulties of re-learning to live with shared space. To build ‘agrihoods’, Holmgren recommends community members buy their home and rent out rooms, or even buy the home next door where they can “choose tenants who will be good neighbours in strengthening your own efforts at self-reliance and resilience” (again, we got the topical focus on community resilience, but after the novelty, the language reverts to the class 'individual’). Scaleability is never an enemy to landlords, and leveraging these rentals to fund moving to cheaper locations offers permaculturalists a way to move as debt-free gentrifiers into poor rural communities.

The focus on individuality continues to ring through his discussion of what our communities look like and constantly refers to the pre-Great Depression as a time of “self-reliance behaviors and skills” that have been since lost. While I don’t disagree about the skills lost, The communal aspects continue to be ignored, and it becomes more and more apparent that the permaculture vision is less about a radical new understanding of society but rather early-industrialized society with better social politics. For example, he writes that “the rewards in freedom and joy from being more frugal and resilient have always been worth the discipline required. As the cosy comforts of life in the mainstream increasingly constrict freedom, more and more people are breaking out of the straightjacket before the drip feed system runs dry”. This quote sounds eerily like the early leaders of the organics and biodynamics movements, who were largely fascist and fascist-sympathizing (and very similar to John Hershey’s rare political musings).

These skills lead to individuals who will, in Holmgren’s words “be jacks-of-all-trades and a master of one”. This makes sense, given his focus on the individualist, where the home is (in his words, repeatedly), a “castle”, but again, reflects an individualist mentality that falls on community only when necessary, instead of the inverse.

Other more trivial points are blatantly incorrect (his analysis of agriculture production and how/why prices fluctuate would send Chris Newman into a rage) such as how he points to noted grifter Curtis Stone as an example of successful urban farming in the United States (and that Curtis operates Canada, not the US). He provides some financial guidance, some of which is reasonable enough and others which leave me, someone with a Masters degree in Accounting, scratching my head. His solution to police violence under state crackdowns? “Being on good terms and even helpful with kindly gifts to local police when no issues are at stake is just sensible building of rapport and understanding in a local communtiy.”

His thoughts on how society functions don’t stop at simply how we financially or socially arrange ourselves, but extend to how we exist as humans in our bodies. For example, he states that he supports vaccination, but links vaccine-denialist Dr. Judy Wilyman in his book and implies that there have been no “large scale trials” with regards to vaccines (despite the fact that 1.8 million people trialed the polio vaccine, for an easy example). He states that “It seems unlikely that the authorities will fund serious double-blind trials of vaccines because any significant evidence of adverse impacts could lead to a wholesale unraveling of the system that they fear would open the floodgates for return of many infectious diseases.” He further argues that vaccines may create problems in the ‘energy descent future’ where they are no longer available, and humanity experiences a catastrophic loss. His line of thinking regarding vaccination isn’t accurate, although that is out of the scope of this piece, but more concerning is how this line of thinking is applied to the most fundamental component of human existence— birth.

Holmgren writes that:

What is almost never discussed is the long-term consequences of more and more intervention in birth over successive generations. A narrow interpretation of the Hippocratic oath combined with ecological ignorance by the medical profession, promises control over nature that cannot be delivered, but will instead result in greater misery and pain in energy descent futures.

Evidence of animal breeding and common sense tells us that fitness for natural birth can be destroyed in a handful of generations through genetic regression, lifestyle dysfunction and intergenerational loss of confidence.

Genetic regression is perhaps the most difficult of these issues to grapple with; if a woman who cannot give birth without significant intervention passes on her genes, her descendants will likely need this intervention too, making them vulnerable in a future where such intervention may no longer be available. Nobody is suggesting that we should let individual women or children die in childbirth if this can be prevented; however we question the wisdom of passing on this genetic predisposition…

Holmgren offers some thoughts on how to “build the culture” to create better birthing health in the future, including:

• independent research of the facts by prospective fathers, grandfathers, or others close to the mother

• having babies at a younger age before higher education or an established career.

Aware that his final point wouldn’t be taken well, he argues that:

It is well accepted that younger women have fewer problems with first births than older women. It is less acknowledged that an established career, especially at a professional level after years of university, can be a psychological setup for experiencing birth and motherhood as overwhelming and out-of-control. More traditional models of life where women have children young and come into their power in the community in later years may be a better pathway for health and happiness than an established career followed by a late response to the ticking time-bomb of instinct.

I quoted these sections in full as they’re among the most repugnant ideas in the book. When an author makes a ghoulish claim, the reader is justified to carefully re-assessing other seemingly acceptable claims. Permaculture’s socio-emotional draw and Holmgren’s celebrity appeal make practitioners shy away from this critical gaze. But it’s important we take a beat and consider what this crack in the armor of Retrosuburbia means for the body of his work in totality.

Stepping Back

The list of Retrosuburbia’s flaws go on and on— it’s beyond the scope of our knowledge to examine each of the questionable points he makes, and that’s the point. The takeaway of the book should be clear— that no one person is qualified to write a “how society should function at a granular scale.” What’s more concerning is the platform Holmgren has, and how easily his words are taken as objective fact. The framework itself which has given Holmgren this platform additionally deserves further critique— and there are two points to this.

Now, when reading work like permaculture, it’s important to identify how certain linguistic choices are used as a tool to frame dialogue outside of the reach of criticism, what Amanda Montell in her book Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism describes as “cultish”— that is, the repeated, intentional use of certain types of language. This isn’t necessarily used by only cults— we see it around positivity gurus, CEO-esque business optimization consultants, and so on. Montell describes this as the “crafty redefinition of existing words (and the definition of new ones) to powerful euphemisms, secret codes, renamings, buzzwords, chants and mantras, ‘speaking in tongues,’ forced silence, even hashtags.”¹³ Obviously these don’t all apply to permaculture, but when we hear phrases like “pattern language”, “Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share”, “zones”, and various quips that are universally applied (“you don’t have a slug problem, you have a duck deficiency”) and so on, it should give pause.

Why is this all so important? Once new language is established, which changes how we relate to the world around us, it’s often the last thing to go when leaving cultish situations. The same way vocabulary can open our minds to new ideas, restrictive in-group jargon can mold our minds to a reality defined by the group rather than by our own experiences.

In his book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism ¹⁴ psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton deconstructs his interviews with Korean-war POWs, to to discern how prisoner’s opinions and personalities were intentionally changed by their captors (commonly known as ‘brainwashing’). The tactics defined by Lifton have since been used to describe how cults warp their members into true believers.

Of the so-called ‘Eight Criteria for Thought Reform’, one criterion focuses specifically on language:

The group interprets or uses words and phrases in new ways so that often the outside world does not understand. This jargon consists of thought-terminating clichés, which serve to alter members' thought processes to conform to the group's way of thinking.

Within the context of permaculture, we should be carefully attending to novel jargon. These terms can ‘thought-stop’ - curtail our curiosity, critical thinking, and autonomy.

While I’m not at the point of putting the ‘cult’ in ‘permaculture’, folks continue to use permaculture jardon to communicate with others in the broader sustainable agricultural community. The stickiness of the language, and how it slows our rational assessments (Do ‘dynamic accumulators’ actually do anything!? Does ‘layering’ even improve yields!? What constitues ‘Earth Care’!?) makes the movement itself prone to compounding thinking errors affecting broad swaths of our community. This becomes increasingly dangerous as permaculture begins to exit the sphere of hobby gardening.

As described by Holmgren, the values of permaculture— permaculture ethics— aren’t just for agriculture but should be applied to the design of buildings, tools, and technology. The universality of permaculture ethics and the in-group jargon points to the ease at which these ethics can be coded to mean so many things and at the same time nothing (which we’ve already talked extensively about). This is what allows Holmgren the capacity to deliver increasingly incorrect and problematic positions on several subjects and still stand outside of the firing zone of critique. In many ways this makes Retrosuburbia the culmination of the failings of permaculture— it is the natural conclusion of compounding though-stopping errors hiding shoddy logic, intended to make the reader feel like a savior outsmarting the traps of the modern capitalist systems.

Aside from the language itself, the actual content of this text is far more nefarious. This is not a critique of Holmgren himself, but rather of how radicalization occurs across communities.

The Engine Behind Radicalization

In evaluating potential dangers in media, the reader often looks to authorial intent to discern whether the text itself is worthy of caution. For example, Mein Kampf is not typically assigned as a reading in history class without significant scaffolding to explain the context and ensure the students don’t naively begin to agree with Nazi ideology. We know there is an inherent risk of radicalization when reading texts intended to radicalize.

There is a critical weakness in this simplified threat assessment— radicalization can occur through consuming media that either does not or claims to not have any intent to radicalize. Consider the ‘edgelord’ online communities and their culture of controversial memes and jokes. Look at how fast these communities were co-opted by the alt-right and neo-fascist movements. ‘Just asking questions’ and ‘looking at both sides’ are a mirrored rhetorical technique found in more mainstream establishment media. These offer extremists the opportunity to advertise their beliefs without claiming responsibility. By avoiding triggering viewers’ intellectual defenses by overtly claiming an ideological stance, both the disaffected youth on imageboards and our boomer relatives watching Fox News have begun swallowing alt-right talking points and shifting into extremist positions little by little. This often happens without the viewer being aware of the cognitive manipulation they’re experiencing.

In the case of Retrosuburbia, Holmgren has similarly lined up readers to be without cognitive defenses. Consider the very first paragraph:

The purpose of this book is to help those planning or engaged in a retrofit of their homes, gardens and lifestyles to be more self-reliant and resilient within the household and local neighborhood. This promises both a more fulfilling life and multiple benefits for society and the environment

Anyone opening this book is led to believe they’ll be learning about resilient eco-friendly living. Those fearful of climate-change-driven collapse will be looking for hope in a dismal world. This open optimistic framing is one where our cognitive defenses are lowered — why would we assume extremist content would be found in a book about vegetable gardening? Would we even want to find a flaw if we’re desperate for a livable future?

With this framing in mind, let’s jump back to the section on childbirth we touched on before. Holmgren specifically highlights the dangers of ‘genetic regression’ if those with difficulty giving birth continue to do so. The freedom of any person to have children is a risk— note that it’s not a risk of too many children, but a risk of the wrong children.

He softens this claim by mentioning that of course no child or parent should be left to die — we should just consider what’s prudent for passing on as a genetic legacy. This softening is akin to the ‘just asking questions’ thought-stopping cliche — it discourages the reader from considering the potential real-world applications or reasoning behind their words.

Genetic regression implicitly encourages careful management of human breeding to produce a healthier and superior human race. Sit with that idea for a moment. Where have you heard it before?

A recent news story comes to mind as an immediate counternarrative — a Neanderthal child with Down’s Syndrome from 200,000 years ago was lovingly cared for by their community. Even before we were human, we were welcoming the medically fragile into the world as inherently whole worthy people. Attempting to refine the human population like cattle breeders is in opposition to our ancestral legacy. But among certain extremists, it’s considered natural, healthy, the way evolution works.

When we pair this suggestion of population-level reproductive control, with Holmgren’s advice for early pregnancy (notably not parenthood, but pregnancy itself), a frightening picture begins to emerge. I’m not saying anyone should die, we should just consider if them living is really the best idea. Women should be free to make their own decisions, but is it really good for them to be getting educated and employed instead of pregnant?

Reproductive freedom is the backbone of women’s empowerment. It enables any individual who can carry a pregnancy to decide if and when they ever do — encouraging self-determination and autonomy. This radically reduces the rate of intimate partner violence.¹⁵

What groups believe that only certain kinds of children should be born? That women maybe shouldn’t be focused on career or education instead of family? We know them well — it’s the neo-fascist movement.

Fascists believe that in a long-lost golden era, natural selection and traditional values produced their ancestors, the ubermench. Modernism wiped their accomplishments away, leaving us a world of degenerate corruption. Suddenly everyone is queer, crime is on the rise, and drugs are everywhere. A return to tradition, bringing back the arm of science and natural selection to strengthen the human line, is the only way to fix what’s been broken.

Flawed fascist-adjacent texts are often more dangerous than outright inflammatory content. As we described before, they lead the reader sleepwalking into ideas they wouldn’t have otherwise considered fit for polite company. The author does not need to believe the extremist ideology to serve its goals, or shuttle people along the pipeline of radicalization. I doubt Holmgren is aware of the ghoulish ends of these ideas —I can’t imagine he’d support a Nazi’s perspective on the potential applications of the text. Instead, I suspect he’s a flawed old man, writing about topics he doesn’t fully grasp, without the humility to consult experts. But manslaughter doesn’t require intent to see blame. We need to arm ourselves with skepticism when approaching dangerous texts, even more so when they do not loudly proclaim themselves as such.

Conclusion

Retrosuburbia is not all bad. Holmgren makes some good arguments and does lay some groundwork for a more communal relationship with folks around you— the idea of community living and sharing backyards are good starting points for many people who fall far to the right of Holmgren. The underlying beliefs of permaculture similarly contain numerous beneficial concepts — like closing nutrient loops and making room for ecological functioning in agricultural production.

But, the book is a stark reminder that permaculture isn’t revolutionary or radical. It’s been developed within the lived experiences of white men who have been able to do whatever they want without consequence. Their seemingly progressive nature manipulates thinking, stopping thoughts, and enabling more white men to also do what they want without consequence. The constant thread is ignorance of historical context or legitimate understanding of how and why community functions, fundamentally centered on the individual who does not need to deeply challenge their ignorance. Retrosuburbia (and permaculture more broadly) lacks a critical gaze to contextualize the ideology, encourage skeptical analysis, or limit the application to the domains in question (WHY is a book about sustainable agriculture explaining how siblings should bathe together through adulthood!?).

With this retrograde critique-less self-admiring content, It’s easy to see how retro-suburbia has found a home across many right-wing ever increasingly fascist homesteaders across the globe.

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1. https://holmgren.com.au/news/david-holmgren-honoured-launch-graduate-diploma/

2. Holmgren, D. (2018). Retrosuburbia: The downshifter’s guide to a resilient future. Melliodora Publishing.

3. Zainuddin, Z., & Mercer, D. (2014). Domestic Residential Garden Food Production in Melbourne, Australia: A fine-grained analysis and pilot study. Australian Geographer, 45(4), 465–484. https://doi.org/10.1080/00049182.2014.954299

4. https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-04/documents/control_of_pathogens_and_vector_attraction_in_sewage_sludge_july_2003.pdf

5. Montell, A. (2021). Cultish: The language of fanaticism. Harper Wave.

6. Waltner-Toews, D. (2013). The origin of feces: What excrement tells us about evolution, ecology, and a sustainable society. ECW Press.

7. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357063571_Measurement_and_characterization_of_PFAS_and_organic_contaminants_in_citizen_scientists'_roof_harvested_rainwater

8. Hamilton, K. A., Ahmed, W., Palmer, A., Sidhu, J. P. S., Hodgers, L., Toze, S., & Haas, C. N. (2016). Public health implications of acanthamoeba and multiple potential opportunistic pathogens in roof-harvested rainwater tanks. Environmental Research, 150, 320–327. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2016.06.017

9. Lay, J. J., Vogel, J. R., Belden, J. B., Brown, G. O., & Storm, D. E. (2024). Water quality and the first-flush effect in roof-based rainwater harvesting, part II: First Flush. Water, 16(10), 1421. https://doi.org/10.3390/w16101421

10. https://www.cbd.int/invasive/terms.shtml

11. https://retrosuburbia.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Feeding_RetroSuburbia_eBook.pdf

12. https://sagemagazine.org/urban-farm-fed-cities-lessons-from-cubas-organoponicos/

13. Somphou, P., Takano, T., & Nakamura, K. (2008). Cohabitation with farm animals in urban households with and without occupational farm work: Associations between participation in educational activities and good hygiene practices in at-risk households cohabiting with Farm Animals. Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine, 13(6), 322–331. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12199-008-0046-9

14. Lifton, R. J. (2012). Thought reform and the psychology of totalism: A Study of “brainwashing” in China. UNC Press Books.

15. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-link-between-a-lack-of-reproductive-rights-and-domestic-violence