Each doomed chicken is a sentient creature, capable of fulfilling its natural life, feeding, scratching, socialising and raising young. Am I doing a Beatrix Potter in regarding the chicken this way? Being overly sentimental or anthropomorphising? Or is this the 'attitude of reverence' towards Nature that is urged upon the green spirit seeker? What is the point anyhow? What can I do besides being shocked, and maybe writing a protesting letter to someone?

But the sick and dying Asian bird I am empathising with is no worse off than any one of the 700 million broiler chickens reared each year in the UK, very few of which are 'free range', or have any sort of a natural and healthy life(2) . I can claim 'not guilty' of that bird's suffering, for I do not eat meat, and the eggs I do eat occasionally are from free range hens, usually those organically fed. But surely what I should really do is help change the world so that every chicken is happy and fulfilled.

One can criticise the economics behind factory farming, pointing out the high energy costs of production, transportation and waste disposal. Maybe consumers can be urged to pay that little bit extra for a more wholesome product than (reconstituted, taste-engineered, frozen, battered and fried) chicken nuggets. One can lobby for regulation and reform. But there is an inevitability about the workings of capitalism, the 'hidden hand of the market' wondrously working such that supermarkets and fast food outlets are bursting with affordable food, however flawed its production methods or nutritional value.

It has long been my contention that you cannot reform capitalism to benefit every human being, let alone every chicken, though I am glad that there are good people who keep up some reforming pressure. Capitalism is production for profit, not directly for meeting human needs. Capitalists seek to minimise their costs, especially for labour, and jobs are insecure and as poorly rewarded as employers can get away with. Those who lack purchasing power try to survive on marginal land, illegal activities or handouts. If capitalism cannot be reformed, what is needed is revolution, and not merely social revolution which historically has always resulted in new forms of exploitation. What is needed, I believe, is a revolution in land use, and the potential for starting this off exists in the grassroots movement known as permaculture.

'Permaculture' stands for 'permanent agriculture', because it is based on the natural model of a diverse mature ecosystem. This is in contrast to conventional agriculture which is based on the perpetual pioneer ecosystem, whereby the land is divided into a patchwork of monocultures, dug over or ploughed and re-seeded every year. Permaculture was invented in the 1970s by two Australians, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, arriving in Britain 21 years ago. The Permaculture Association of Britain has established a register of permaculture groups and projects worldwide, and currently there are more than 500 of these on record, in over one hundred countries. The approach has proved particularly successful in the 'majority world' where people find permaculture can give rise to productive and sustainable agricultural ecosystems, even on marginal or degraded land, providing techniques to conserve water and rebuild degraded soil.

Permaculture has an ethical basis, expressed as: 'care of the earth: provision for all life systems to continue and multiply'; 'care of people: provision for people to access those resources necessary to their existence'; and 'setting limits to population and consumption: by governing our own needs, we can set resources aside to further the first two principles'(3). Significantly, Bill Mollison, co-founder of the permaculture movement, says 'the second and third arise from the first' - care of the earth is primary, a sentiment green spirit seekers would surely agree with, although they would put that in an explicitly spiritual context, which Mollison does not.

The permaculture ethical principle of ensuring care of the earth and all life systems implies that the needs of everyone and everything need to be considered. This requires careful observation and analysis, and means that permaculture in action is first and foremost a process of design. No two places or bioregions or ecosystems, and their communities of people, plants and animals, and the opportunities and challenges they pose, are going to be the same.

The formulation of a permaculture design is based on ecological principles, which are challenging and thought provoking as well as practical. David Holmgren, the other co-founder of permaculture, has recently reformulated these principles(4). The first begins by saying that good design depends on a free and harmonious relationship to nature and people, in which careful observation and thoughtful interaction provide the design inspiration, repertoire and patterns. The twelfth and last principle is about stability containing the seeds of creative change, and science having shown us that 'the apparently solid and permanent is, at the cellular and atomic level, a seething mass of energy and change, similar to the descriptions in various spiritual traditions'. Clearly there is common ground here with topics that interest green spirit seekers.

I took up land degradation as a particular campaigning interest twenty years ago, recognising agriculture as having caused terrible damage, even long before the advent of modern machinery and chemicals(5) . Natural systems worldwide have been ravaged by land clearance for agriculture, leading to soil erosion, salinisation, climate change and loss of wildlife habitat. So it is disappointing that permaculture in Britain has not yet become widely known and is still restricted to a relatively small number of pioneering projects and sites. To some extent activists have been diverted into a form of permaculture redefined as 'permanent culture', with an emphasis on 'people care' and design goals that are concerned with community building, local economies and Local Agenda 21 involvement. This is very worthwhile stuff, but feels to me to be a distraction from the real promise of permaculture. This may be because land use issues do not seem so urgent in 'developed' countries like ours, where we have privileged access to produce from the best land worldwide delivered to our supermarkets. But the widespread injustice, poverty and unrest this creates cannot continue forever. I believe that permaculture has the potential to revolutionise human society so that we can live in ecological harmony. So what might inspire more people to take up the permaculture ecological revolution in a wholehearted way?

Green spirituality appears relevant because it goes deeply into the need for changing human relationships with the earth in radical ways, but it can seem more about ideas and insights than about practical action. Some time ago I wrote a pamphlet entitled Cultivating Confusion, about the potential for radical change in agriculture that permaculture offers. I gave a copy to a disciple of Matthew Fox's 'creation centred spirituality', who responded to the challenge posed in my essay: 'I have yet to move from a concern with people and their needs for self-realisation, to an ecological involvement that is more than theoretical.'(6) This seems to be a concise statement of the green spirit path: spiritual insights and self-realisation, followed by radically revised attitudes and hence actions and reactions. But wouldn't that inspirational energy be wasted if all it leads to are increased glass and paper recycling, using low energy appliances and watching the 'food miles'? Trying to change the world that way is frustratingly slow, and may be futile anyway, given the unchallenged power of capitalism to exploit people and natural resources.

I have had high hopes of permaculture being adopted by green spirit seekers, given its ethical basis and focus on earth care. Encouraged by my enthusiasm, a friend of mine who is a member of Greenspirit recently attended a permaculture introductory course. She came away with very mixed feelings, and also perhaps an important lesson for permaculture advocates, which takes us back to the subject of chickens.

Keeping chickens on a permaculture plot is a favourite subject with permaculture teachers. What people can get from chickens includes eggs, meat, feathers, fertiliser, warmth (to heat a greenhouse, perhaps), bugs and windfalls eaten up, soil scratched over and readied for cultivation, and entertainment (chickens being 'funny'). What chickens need is: food, shelter and protection, ground to scratch over, dust to bathe in to discourage mites, and social interaction including mating and rearing their young. The permaculture approach aims to meet humans' and chickens' needs efficiently, with minimum energy input and waste output. Of course this is in stark contrast to industrialised battery chicken units, which involve lots of fossil fuel energy and pharmaceuticals, generate much waste and pollution, and keep the inhabitants in wretched conditions. But for my green spirit friend, the focus - with the permaculture approach as much as with the industrial system - seemed to be on exploiting the chickens, not on honouring them as fellow creatures, respecting each individual, and recognising her equal right (with us) to lead a dignified existence.

Most existing permaculture advocates would feel that such a principle is implied by the ethics of 'earth care', but we should not use language that implies a continuation of human dominance, or that we are giving 'people care' priority. If designers and teachers can be persuaded of the importance of adopting this principle, will Greenspirit members recognise permaculture as in accordance with their philosophy, and a route they could follow in the direction of world change?