Learning Permaculture

So, you want to learn permaculture?

In this post, I will share a brief history of the Permaculture Design Course (PDC), and discuss some different ways in which permaculture can be taught and learned. After that, I will introduce a debate about institutionalization, quality control and freedom of information. Thereafter, I will share an outline of the content I co-taught in a PDC in early 2017 so that you may gain an idea about what PDCs are about. Finally, I will introduce what I call a ‘happy medium’, or compromise solution between different models of instruction. In this way, you will be able to decide what sort of permaculture learning methods are best for you to pursue.

A Brief History of Permaculture Education

In 1979, a university lecturer named Bill Mollison taught the first Permaculture Design Course to 18 participants, based on his paradigm-shifting book, Permaculture One, that had been published the year previously. The course was three weeks long, and held in a small hotel in a fishing village in the Australian island state of Tasmania. He soon realized that most people didn’t have three weeks to spare in their busy schedules, so he shortened the duration to two weeks.  This became the standard and most common form of PDC that is now taught. A minimum requirement of this course is that it contains 72 hours of instruction, and Bill recommends that it lasts at least 12 days long, so that it doesn’t result in 9 or 10 days of cramming in information, but that there is some time to integrate what has been learned.

Another possible format of the course model is for it to be taught over six weekends, which allows participants who work conventional hours to join. This model tends to be more appropriate for city dwellers, and allows more time to integrate the information. However, one disadvantage is that this model does not create the feeling of a ‘community’ of people in the same way that a full-time two-week course does. In this way, the ‘paradigm shift’ purpose of the course could potentially be compromised, as it is less immersive.

Finally, it is also possible to take the course online. This is perhaps the cheapest and most flexible option because it can be done from home, and it allows you to choose the instructor you most favor, rather than being limited to an instructor from your local area. The best-known teacher for an online course is Geoff Lawton, who has taught 15,000 students since he first took his course from Bill Mollison in 1983. The online course format suffers from a similar limitation to weekend courses in that the sense of an in-person community forming around the subject is lacking. During the pandemic of 2020, with more people becoming comfortable with online learning, it is likely that the number of options for online permaculture courses will increase.

Quality Control and Teacher Certification

Bill Mollison designed the course so that any person who had completed the course could call themselves a ‘permaculture designer’, and would have no legal obstacle to teach the material to others. This is simultaneously a positive and a negative aspect of the course. The term was never legally copyrighted, although something of an ‘ethical copyright’ agreement seems to be kept by the majority of practitioners, where only those who have completed a course based on the original work use the term ‘permaculture designer’.

On the positive side, this freedom of transmission prevents the information from becoming overly institutionalized and available only to a privileged few. On the negative side, it may be low on quality control, because a relatively inexperienced amateur may even in perfectly good faith teach the course, but end up teaching information that is out of date, irrelevant, or worst of all, wrong because it is based on an incorrect interpretation of the original work.

Nowadays, there are institutional bodies that instructors can voluntarily become a part of. The best-known international one is the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia (PRI). When I co-taught my first PDC, in April 2017, I took on the role of Teaching Assistant for Mr. Ezio Gori, who is a member teacher of the PRI.

In order to become an accredited teacher in this institute, one could apply on their site. The requirements are:

• to have held a PDC of one’s own for a minimum of two years
• to have taught or co-taught a minimum of 50 hours in Permaculture
• to have a reference from a PRI-accredited teacher and 3 learners
• to have implemented two full-size permaculture designs
• to have written a full set of teacher’s notes, comprising at least the outline of Mollison’s original Permaculture Designers’ Manual 
• to pay the institute AU$ 330 once-off and AU$ 220 annually.

As you may gather from the web page linked above, there is not an explicitly prescribed curriculum for Permaculture, as your teacher notes need only comprise the outline of the original coursework.  I believe that this is in accordance with Bill’s wishes not to institutionalize the curriculum itself. Bill and others recognized that information is dynamic, and that the foundation of good permaculture knowledge is an understanding and appreciation for the land and the Earth. 

The Effect of Climate on Changes to Course Material

In East Texas, where I lived in 2018, the land is flat and the climate is warm, humid and wet, with rain falling year-round, but especially in June, July and October. Year-round rain is a strong factor for a non-brittle landscape. Meanwhile, Cape Town in South Africa, a city I stayed in for eight years, is mountainous, warm, dry and has vastly different rainfall, with 78% of the year’s rain falling between May and September.  This makes Cape Town a brittle landscape. Brittleness describes how likely an area of land is to become desert, if otherwise unmanaged.

I also stayed briefly in the United Kingdom in 2016 during late spring and early summer, where the region was receiving up to seventeen hours of sunlight per day. Despite all the extra sunlight, the profusion of rain and its even distribution throughout the year means that the UK has no risk of desertification. It follows that differing temperatures, rainfall patterns, sunlight hours, proximity to the oceans, altitude, and landform shapes should all give rise to very different permaculture information and techniques being relevant and applicable to your given situation, wherever you might reside.

We understand, then, in order to gain a strong understanding of permaculture theory, you would need to study parts of conventional natural sciences, such as biology, geography, physics, chemistry, geology, and climatology, among others.

These considerations above make each permaculture course different, especially if it is taught with the theme of a local area. Since Permaculture is both a global and a local movement, it is beneficial to teach local climate patterns in a regional course, but is also arguably important to teach climate patterns of other parts of the world too, so that the student may become aware of the influence of climate science. One recommended way to approach this can be to teach the concepts of biomes and climate science broadly, then teach in detail about the local area the course is being held in, and end the section on climate science with a compare-and-contrast process, where the student examines two additional climate zones that are unlike their own.

While I am not yet ready to decide to become a PRI-certified instructor myself, I would like to share an example of a day-by-day curriculum as taught by one of my mentors, the aforementioned Mr. Gori.

1.  Foundations of Permaculture Design
2. Design Inspirations
3. Sustainability Worldview
4. Regenerative Agriculture
5. Soils and Plants
6. Farming Systems
7. Waste Water and Sanitation
8. Built Environment
9. Energy Descent Planning
10. Building Sustainable Communities
11. Integrate Sustainability
12. Closure and Networking

This particular course features plenty of information about our modern understanding of sustainability, and particularly addresses the challenge of how we might actually continue to survive on this planet if we keep destroying our environment and ecosystems. This is both meant to ‘wake one up’ to the magnitude of the troubles we face, and empower one to come up with solutions to the environmental difficulties of modern times.

To Standardize or Not to Standardize?

I have shown that there are many differences between various permaculture courses on offer, owing to a deliberate lack of outright standardization. One aspect that tends to be common to all courses is that at the end of the course, all students are meant to complete an individual or group design project that they present to the class. This project is typically visual in nature, resembling an architectural drawing and a map.

It follows then, that a requirement of ‘graduating’ the course and being awarded a certificate is to work in a team or individually on a design plan, which typically consists of a map with a base layer detailing the site as it presently stands, a sector layer, a zone layer, and a layer with design elements that show how the site can be improved in a way aligned with the Permaculture Ethics. The group or individual must then present their design plan to the instructor and the rest of the class, and will usually receive feedback in-class, which benefits not only the students presenting, but also the rest of the audience.

Overall, I would say that there are a multitude of ways to host a Permaculture Design course, and plenty of good courses available. The field is filled mostly with well-meaning practitioners who offer courses in good faith. That said, it is always recommended to research the background of and experience of an instructor before joining a paid course. Ask the lead instructor key questions about the field such that you may find in this article, or other articles linked herein.

Is the PDC Worthwhile?

Over the years, I have seen a number of posts on the Facebook group called ‘Regenerative Agriculture’, with a member count of 30,600 at the time of writing, asking about PDCs and whether they are worthwhile. Since I consider this a thought-provoking question, I shall do my best to answer it below. Afterwards, I will link you to some other discussions on this topic that others in the permaculture world have written.

My own experience of PDCs is that I attended my first PDC in 2013, completed a Gaia Education 4-week Ecovillage course in Scotland in 2016, and co-taught the PDC with Mr. Gori in April 2017. Since then, I have facilitated 75 hours of permaculture-related course material to adults and children, and worked for some 250 hours on various farms, interspersed with my career as a schoolteacher.

From this experience, I will be able to suggest ten advantages and twelve disadvantages of PDCs as I see them. After listing the advantages and disadvantages, I shall share my own experiences of the points listed.

Advantages

• The PDC can be a very inspiring course, especially for beginners.
• The curriculum covers a thorough overview of modern issues in agriculture and farm design.
• Many different scientific disciplines are covered, which promotes interdisciplinary and holistic thinking.
• The course attracts people who tend to have a positive attitude and want to change things for the better.
• The course can help participants to meet people and form networks, or possible even to find people with whom they might want to live in community.
• The course can help to promote a healthy lifestyle, especially to make better food choices – such as eating less meat and more vegetables, and eating food with less pesticide poisoning.
• Students are invited to criticize some aspects of conventional agriculture that may be ordinary in areas they live, such as monoculture (growing a single form of crop in a given area, typically year after year), pesticide use, genetically modified plants, fossil-fuel based fertilizer use, and soil ploughing, among others.
• Students are allowed to understand the beginning of how we might respond as a species to climate change
• Teachers can be knowledgeable and teach you things you’ve never heard of or never thought of.
• If done well, the course should shift one’s paradigms of thinking about the environment, ecology, farming and design.

In my own experience, I felt inspired by all the courses I have taken. I feel that I am better informed about modern farming issues, and feel more empowered to act about climate change. I met many interesting people, some of whom are still my friends today. I improved my diet to eat less meat than I did before. I often buy organic produce for foods such as strawberries and tomatoes, because those have thin skins and could easily be penetrated by pesticides. I learned that all life follows spiral and fractal patterns, the same way that galaxies move through the universe and water runs across a landscape. I never would have thought to ask any teacher about this, because I wasn’t even aware of these being fields of knowledge.

Overall, I can certainly say that my PDC experiences shifted my paradigms of thought.

Disadvantages

• The courses can end up being very expensive.
• Some may consider 2 weeks to be a long time investment, or be unable to obtain two weeks off work. To be considered a PDC, the course must contain at least 72 hours of instruction.
• Owing to the high price of some courses and the investment of a minimum of 72 hours of study, these courses are sometimes accessible only to economically privileged people, and are therefore not sufficiently revolutionary or radical as they currently stand.
• Related to the above, courses are seldom held in locations with high concentrations of economically disadvantaged people.
• Permaculture courses are unspecialized, and do not adequately prepare students for a career in agriculture.
• The course is theoretical, offering limited practical experience by itself.
• If students seek practical experience, and then try something like WWOOFing (volunteering on organic farms), they may find that such programs are often unsupervised and unsupported, and that they tend not to learn much beyond the tasks they are asked to perform. Essentially, their role is that of a volunteer laborer, rather than a student. Students may end up making mistakes, and become disappointed.
• A few permaculture teachers have been known to want students to work on their property, without providing a sufficient educational component in return. (Done well, this is typically sold as an internship, at a greatly reduced price from the full-time course, and has 90 minutes of instruction or more per day included).
• Some permaculturalists are overly idealistic and may sell the course as being able to have a greater impact than it actually can. A common story from graduates is that they leave the course not knowing where to start, even if they feel inspired and excited to do so.
• Some permaculture educators do not know the subjects very well, and are amateurs. As suggested above, don’t forget to research the background and experience of anyone before signing up for a paid course.
• If you leave the course and find that you feel inspired to start a new garden or project, you might then discover that you cannot afford the necessary equipment and supplies for it.
• Some participants may feel that the ‘community’ created around the course is an artificial construction that helps people ‘feel good’ together, without putting them in truly challenging conditions as communal living is guaranteed to do. Essentially, a two-week course is not an accurate simulation of the real challenges of living in a community.

My first PDC could be valued at the equivalent of $ 550 for two weeks including accommodation, which is an outright bargain considering the excellent instruction I received (in South Africa). However, the Gaia Education course would have been $ 1,685 for four weeks (in Scotland), and this included a youth discount I received – it would have been $ 2,366 otherwise – at the ‘lowest’ priced level on the sliding scale. This was very expensive on my budget at the time, and I definitely felt the strain of affording it.

After the course and to this day, I still feel that I have only an amateur’s level of experience with gardening and agriculture. I don’t feel confident and ready to advise people about what to do on their site.  I don’t feel that I can presently afford the capital outlay to design a garden that I’d truly feel proud of.

I also feel that some of the people I’ve met have been idealistic but not that practical, such as a group of people I knew who wanted to start an eco-village, but who seemed to lack the financial understanding, willingness, and ambition to operate a business in the economy in question.

In addition, I’ve met some people who are overly inclined to believe what they are told, and been guilty of this myself. What I’m saying here is that permaculture communities, being small and somewhat insular, can coalesce around identities and ideas that are in opposition to mainstream thought, which, as suggested before, has both benefits and drawbacks.

For example, I don’t believe there is any solid evidence that consuming GMOs makes people infertile. While it is certainly suspicious that the same company that makes the pesticides makes the GMOs, and I would generally advise others to be careful of such obvious self-interest in an industry that purports to feed the world, that does not mean that the technology itself is malignant – until it is proven to be so. Is it possible that the food is benign if the genes have been engineered to survive a long drought? I don’t know – and I’m happy to admit that I don’t know, and I don’t believe anyone does conclusively know the answer to this yet.

Currently, I would suggest that taking an approach of humility and admitting that there is much that we do not and cannot know is a strong antidote to the groupthink and cult-like mentalities that can sometimes form around insular movements. Permaculture is not a conspiracy theory or fringe movement, but there are cases of such ideas being present in those who teach it.

Futher Reading about the Value of PDCs

Amy at Tenth Acre Farm: How to choose the right permaculture course

Permies.com:  What is a PDC? This page features submissions from Paul Wheaton, Toby Hemenway and Jack Spirko – all well-known in the permaculture world.

Jack Spirko: What exactly is a PDC?

John Kitsteiner: Why I will not teach a PDC… for a long time

Milton Dixton: Is taking a permaculture course worth it? 

The Weekend Workshop: A Happy Medium to the Dilemma?

If you’re looking for a happy medium between expensive design courses and long hours of labor as a volunteer, then I might suggest a compromise – the Weekend Workshop model.

In my opinion, the Weekend Workshop combines the best of all worlds.

The permaculture weekend workshop:

• Is short, lasting one or two days, and self-contained – it is distinct from taking ‘course modules’ serially on weekends
• Contains a mix of practical work and instruction
• Is typically quite affordable to attend
• Tends to be located in or near a city
• Attracts quite a mixture of participants, varying substantially in skills and experience
• May encourage people to bring and share food, rather than being professionally catered for
• May often cover or focus on a specific topic or skills – I shall give some examples below
• Tends to be semi-structured with a flexible timetable, allowing participants’ interests and questions to take more time than they might in a formal course
• Promotes engagement, participation and peer-learning

The format is not without its disadvantages – for example, one has to be feeling ready to socialize in order to get the most out of these events, since you don’t so much study the material, as actively engage in learning the material in groups, and you won’t learn nearly as much by standing in the background or avoiding participation. I myself am fairly introverted, so I have some days when I do not feel like participating in the foreground and other days when I am perfectly in the mood to learn in this way. On occasions where I do feel in the mood, I have had some truly joyous interactions with people.

In the words of Josh and Imraan, the founders of Cape Town-based workshop hosting company Guerilla House, “In the urban context, humans are a major and critical part of the ecosystem. This is why we love our weekend workshops so much – we get to foster connections with so many incredible humans”.

My Experiences of Weekend Workshops

In Cape Town, South Africa, I would often attend weekend workshops, such as those hosted by Guerilla House, to keep my permaculture knowledge up-to-date and to add skills to my repertoire. At other times, when there were community events being held, I would present on topics that I knew well.  In this way, audiences can form around topics of interest and get to know other people in their surrounds who had similar interests.

Using weekend workshop models is a great way to get a good number of people interested in permaculture, and such events tend to be more inclusive than full courses, being inexpensive, held on weekends, and not requiring an extended time commitment. This allows people from disadvantaged backgrounds to participate fully, which is an extremely important consideration in economically unequal Cape Town.

I can say that weekend workshops that I have attended have been co-creative, participant-driven experiences, in which not only the organizers of the event are responsible for the learning, but that everyone who came has had something to contribute. On occasions that I was feeling shy, I would sometimes leave early – but overall, I would rate the experiences as joyful and educational, and a good use of the money I spent on attending the events.

Some examples of permaculture-themed workshops both practical and theoretical that have been held in Cape Town so far, include:

• Introduction to Urban Gardening
• Square foot gardening
• Composting at home
• Plant Propagation and Nurseries
• Grow your own Mushrooms
• Herbal Medicines
• Community Conflict Resolution
• Community Decision Making
• Household Water Conservation (particularly important as Cape Town recently underwent a prolonged, severe drought)
• Build your own Geodesic Dome (a good place to house chickens or start a nursery)
• How to make fermented foods at home
• Making your own soap
• Introduction to permaculture theory
• Plastic upcycling
• Aquaponics systems
• The theory of ecovillages
• How to curate your own weekend workshop

From the list above, you should see that, with a sufficient imagination, the list of possible workshop topics could go on and on.  Some of the courses, such as gardening and propagation, tended towards the highly practical, and others, such as those themed around ecovillages and permaculture education, were mostly theoretical.

Another clear theme that emerges from the list above is that the skills are based around our own households and local communities, rather than grand, idealistic plans that permaculture may otherwise be known for. The interventions described above tend to be low-cost and require a relatively small amount of time invested. Even aquaponics (a combination of aquaculture and hydroponics), perhaps the most expensive direct project on the list, does not require a particularly huge capital outlay.

In Cape Town in early 2018, I designed hosted my own type of weekend workshop called the Site Design Workshop, in which I blended some of the theoretical themes of permaculture (ethics, sectors and zones, design elements, ecological succession, community agreement processes), some practical methods (site observation, sheet mulching, site measurements), and began a design process using drawing implements with the group. Tickets were priced at the equivalent of $ 70 for this twenty-hour-long course.

A final point of relevance is that each skill you pick up that is related to permaculture can help you on a journey to self-sufficiency, which in turn promotes saving money, and may even assist you in finding a new hobby or passion.

Conclusion

From an article of this length, you can see that the options for permaculture education are multitudinous. Hopefully, you have an idea of where you would like to go next in your own permaculture journey! I’d love to read your comments – which types of courses do you think would be right for you, and why? If you would like advice in where to go next in said journey, contact me through e-mail, and we can set up a chat!

It’s a wonderful world out there – let’s go exploring!