Permaculture Design Courses & The “Free” Labor Problem
What’s the best way to engage people on these subjects?
It seems like:
- People running farms really do need help
- Labor really can be quite expensive
- Conversely: labor has value
- Volunteering is a time-honored way to learn through direct-experience
For my part, I’ve always had trouble with Permaculture Design Courses where participants perform x amount of hand-labor on the personal property of whomever is hosting the course. And on completion of that course, the “fruits” of those peoples’ labor remains on the property of the land-owner.
It would be one thing if such courses were given on an exchange basis: so that the labor imparted by participants/learners is paid for with the room and board and teaching components. But, most commonly, it appears that this is not the case. The typical PDC (full disclosure: I’ve never taken the course), seems to require not only obligatory “volunteering,” but in most cases hundreds or perhaps more than a thousand dollars to pay for one week or so of communally-cooked meals and camping in a tent and maybe shitting in a bucket if you’re lucky.
One has to wonder, where does all that money go to?
