Is Permaculture a pyramid scheme?

I’ve come across this argument a lot recently, sometimes as comments on my articles about ‘open price’ courses. In my opinion some of the people who maintain that Permaculture has become a pyramid scheme are raising some interesting and important points. They maintain that Permaculture courses merely teach people to go on and run Permaculture courses. The people pay the teachers to attend the course and then become paid teachers themselves and so on ad infinitum.

So here is my position on the subject.

Permaculture in itself is a design system, or as I prefer a form of engineering. If someone follows a course and then goes on to lead courses then that’s down to them. Denigrating Permaculture as a whole because, perhaps, some people do this is to misunderstand what Permaculture is.

In Europe since the 1990’s we have run a ‘diploma’ system. This entails following a full Permaculture course and then going on to do 2 years of tutor and peer supported work/study. At the end of this period the student presents their portfolio of designs to two qualified and experienced designers and a group of their peers. If the standard of their work is good enough they the receive a diploma in APPLIED Permaculture. Having got their diploma said person can, if they wish, lead full design courses but not before.

This means that someone who is leading a design course has at least 2 years of hands-on design experience. Thus they are teaching from this experience and not from some Youtube tuto. It also means that you can’t just do a course and then go teach another one straight away.

Most Permaculture teachers I know are full time designers. This may be a self-selection process or confirmation bias but everyone I teach with spends most of the rest of their time either designing/installing for other people or are full on with installing the design they did for their project.

What do the students do a design course for? Yes we do ask! The majority come to learn how to design and install their own projects, urban and rural. Others because they want to change their lives and get involved with a project and some because they want to become professional designers. I’ve never actually encountered someone who came along because they want to be a Permaculture teacher. If they did tell us that then we would most likely suggest they went elsewhere for their course.

Teaching Permaculture is part of the process. When I design for people I will have to explain the why’s and how’s of the design. This is made much easier if they have already learned some of the basics of Permaculture design. It also means that they can be much more interactive with the design process, I’m designing ‘with’ and not ‘for’. In the end a part of the design process for a client is teaching them about Permaculture.

Teaching Permaculture is a strategic way to ‘spread the word’. Imagine a country in which Permaculture is unknown, how can we get things going? One way is to bring in a teacher or two to run a design course and train local people up. They then gain experience and set up courses and training centres so it all ripples out. The original teacher quickly becomes redundant as the locals take over.

A strategy for societal change. Permaculture designers have generally taken to heart the old ‘think globally, act locally axiom. Going from global to local is a design strategy. Let’s say we have a farm to design, During the design process we will zoom in and out from global to local. We will explore the farm’s production, markets, market niches and the wider socio-economic context. We will also zoom in and focus, for example, on the buildings, or on a guild (which plants/animals go well together and how they interact etc).

In a wider sense a Permaculture designer is part of a global movement (small m). Yes, hundreds of thousands of people globally are trained in Permaculture design. We also try to link in as much as possible to other people who are trying to improve our societies. This is a fundamental part of our wider aim to restructure our socio-economic systems.

Running courses to train people in Permaculture is a fundamental part of this social change. This has always been my approach, here in France I have run a lot of courses over the years. My objective was to try and ensure that every neighbourhood, village and hamlet has access to an experienced designer. These designers work with their neighbours to work out how to transition their local area in order to eliminate all forms of poverty, pollution, inequity etc. This means redesigning water systems, sewage treatment, energy reduction/production, buildings, the local economy, food production systems and all the rest.

Market forces. It takes time but eventually it becomes harder to attract people to long courses, we can arrive at market saturation. We get the classic S curve, plenty of people wanting to learn, lots of people proposing courses. Then fewer people wanting courses and as a consequence fewer people proposing them.

Market forces also encourage a selection process. People will tend to choose to do courses with experienced designers. These designers aren’t interested in teaching people to be teachers, they want them to be designers.

It’s difficult to earn a living just by teaching courses. Yes there are a very few designers who have managed to get themselves a really good reputation and demand for their courses is high. For most people it’s takes more effort to find potential students. And then of course there are people like me who lead ‘pay what you want’ courses which also tends to limit demand for ‘pay what we tell you’ courses. The people who co-teach two courses a year with me get decently compensated for their time but it’s not enough to live on for the whole of the year! They take time out from their projects and design work to come and teach, it’s the former is the ‘cake’ and the Permaculture courses a little ‘cherry on the top’.

We also value the interactions we have with the course participants, they are often fun, stimulating, challenging and good people to be around. So maybe there are two cherries on the cake!