Reviews…
The Prole Models Ministries podcast: important questions, dubious claims
I TOOK THE ADVICE of someone on the Evidence-Based Permaculture facebook and tuned into the The Prole Models Ministries podcast on permaculture. The Ministries is a left-leaning podcast which plans a series around permaculture.
This is the blurb introducing the podcast:
The first episode of our new miniseries entitled “The Prole Models”, we decide to get into the tough content of the complex history of permaculture, the problems with its history, the evolution of permaculture in modern agriculture, and how it can frame up some of the questions regarding land back, indigenous culture, and the role of white people in this potential solution to the problem of climate change.
The podcast is a little over an hour in length and consists of two guys in dialog. Listening to it I couldn’t help but put on my past-times radio producers hat from the distant days when I did radio documentary and current affairs. I found their podcast on permaculture to be a rambling and recursive conversation that could have been made shorter and more to the point were it better constructed. It could have done with the services of an editor.
Those are production values. It is the meat in the podcast sandwich that is the main thing. How did that come across? Well, let me just say that is was interesting, that important points were raised, but it was also error-prone and repeated allegations about permaculture that we have seen rise and subside over the decades.
These are general impressions. Let’s get more specific by thinking about what I see that they got wrong. Before that, let me establish my credentials for making this critique by saying that I have been involved in permaculture since 1984 (I first encountered it in 1978 while living in Tasmania) when my partner and I did Australian permaculture educator, Robyn Francis’ first Permaculture Design Course (PDC). We went on to teach the PDC and introductory courses through the 1990s, including at TAFE. I also served on Permaculture Australia’s board of directors and have written on permaculture as I followed its evolution.
Reading, assessing and responding to critiques is a means of applying the practice of ‘kaizen’ — making continuous improvement in what we do. The outcome is a better, more relavant permaculture design system. Kaizen is another motivation behind this review.
Not the complete story
So, what did they podcasters get wrong? Let’s go through them one-by-one…
1. People make a lot of money from the Permaculture Design Course
This is a common misconception that has resurfaced through the years. People look at the cost of the design course and assume all the money goes to the teacher. It doesn’t. The teacher has to pay for public liability insurance, promotion of courses, catering, guest teachers and sometimes for the venue where the course take place. Preparing teaching materials takes a lot of time that is seldom factored into the cost equation. These costs of running courses add up and offer a different take on whether courses really are too expensive
There is more, and some years ago I wrote a piece to look at the question of whether courses are too expensive, which comments show they are for people with limited financial resources.
2. The originators put permaculture together, trademarked and sold the idea
The podcasters producers really got their wires crossed on this one.
Permaculture was “put together” by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren over the latter years of the 1970s in Tasmania. Its first public expression was as the book, Permaculture One, in 1978. That was followed by Permaculture Two the following year, a further development of the idea.
Permaculture was not trademarked but there was an attempt to trademark certain expressions used in permaculture. Bill at one time thought copyright offered protection similar to trademarking, however copyright only protects the expression of ideas. It does not protect the ideas themselves (Copyright Act 1968). Anyone can write a book about permaculture using existing ideas.
In the 1990s the Permaculture Institute, the organisation started by Bill Mollison at the time that permaculture was getting going, attempted to trademark terms like ‘permaculture design’ and similar combinations. The result was a controversy. The trademark application lapsed. A successful application would have extended intellectual property rights to specific applications of permaculture, potentially affecting permaculture educators and designers and giving the Institute a lot of power and control.
The podcaster’s claim that permaculture was then ‘sold’ is ambiguous. Sold, in what way? As courses? As books? As people setting up small design business? Guilty on all charges. Contrary to an early idea that permaculture might become a franchise, it set off on its development as a social movement and has evolved as that ever since.
3. Permaculture is male-dominated
This is something else that comes up over the years, coming mainly from people with a gender or identity politics agenda.
Speaking of permaculture’s development in Australia, the design system has had a significant number of female practitioners and educators from its early days. Internationally, a survey conducted between June 2015 and July 2016 by the Next Big Step, an attempt to set up a global permaculture entity, disclosed that both males and females were well represented in the movement.
I think the male-dominance belief is a perception stemming from the dominance of permaculture’s two charismatic authorities — Bill Mollison and David Holmgren (I’m borrowing the term from sociology educator Terry Leahy’s 2021 book, The Politics of Permaculture and (here-a review). My own perception over the years, especially in the Sydney region, is of a rough gender equality in permaculture education and activism.
4. Permaculture commodifies and packages nature, suggesting humans live outside it
I’m unsure what the point of this claim is. Are they talking about concepualising nature and packaging the concepts into permaculture courses or into permaculture literature?
My impression is that virtually all permaculture educators, activists and writers recognise that humanity is closely-coupled to natural systems and can be regarded as an expression of nature itself, of the planetary system. I think the attitude of most align with what scientist and speculative fiction writer, David Brin, wrote in his book, Existence: “We aren’t a curse upon the world. We are her eyes. Her brain, testes, ovaries… her ambition and her heart. Her voice. So sing.”
5. A lot of permaculture agriculture doesn’t work in practice
Okay, what is this “permaculture agriculture”? Defined as ‘permanent agriculture’ it was the first conceptualisation of permaculture that came out of Bill and David’s thinking about perennial species cropping and tree crops in the seventies.
The podcast does not define what they mean by it. Is it organic agriculture? Small scale farming? Farming systems like Australian farmer, Charles Massey, has developed? Regnerative agriculture? Biodynamic farming? Farming as practiced by US rightwing ‘Christian libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic farmer’, as Jo Salatin described himself at his appearance at a Sydney tour some years ago. What, then?
Open this box and out spills a whole range of approaches to farming. There is no ‘permaculture agriculture’ as such because growers using permaculture ideas adopt a range of production methods. Permaculture is a design system that is a synthesis of approaches, not a farming system. So how can something so difficult to pin down and define be said not to work? Then you have to develop the criteria you use to define how you assess whether it works. The claims are assumption, not science.
6. Globally, there were 300,000 Permaculture Design Course (PDC) graduates by 2018
How would they know this? Nobody in permaculture knows. There never has been a count of the number of PDC graduates. Counting in Australia stopped in the late-1990s when the Permaculture Institute closed its register of graduates. It counted only those who had complete the Institute’s courses offered by its certified teachers. There were courses outside their system.
The only way to estimate the number of graduates is to ask all permaculture educators in the world for their tally of students. Did the podcast producers do this? I doubt it. They didn’t back up their figure with any evidence to support it, nor did they disclose any source. Maybe the figure is their guestimate. Without any source cited it cannot be regarded as credible.
7. There is much opportunity to make money in permaculture
Can someone show me where so I can get rich?
Am I right in assuming they are bringing up the hoary old get-rich-quick-scheme of teaching permaculture design courses? Interesting that all the permaculture teachers I have known over the years display no sign of riches. But wait. They are also advocates of simple living and critics of conspicious consumption. So to maintain their frugalist veneer maybe all their wealth is hidden in offshore accounts in Vanuautu or Panama. Yeah.
The producers cite YouTube videos on permaculture as a source of permaculture money-making. I had a little think about this and couldn’t turn up any examples. Most YouTube productions I have encountered have been free access productions posted in the spirit of open access to knowledge. Maybe there are videos limited to students of paid permaculture courses. I’ll leave that question for someone who knows to answer.
It is “young white rich white dudes without responsibilities who do courses… college educated white dudes who want to get in touch with nature”, the podcasters claim. Sure, there is some veracity in this claim because, as veteran permaculture educator and international refugee worker, Rosemary Morrow and others have pointed out, permaculture is predominately a middle class social movement. But, “rich”?. Where? Affluent in some cases, for sure. Also poor, and people of limited financial means.
Then there’s the “white dudes” allegation. The podcasters are American and we know that ethnicity plays a huge part in US politics and that ‘white’ has become one of those throw-around terms added as an adjective to other trigger terms (that is a comment on the language of politics and does not downgrade the reason people use the term). It plays a role here in Australia, too, but here it is more nuanced. Given that permaculture grew out of the social setting in Australia in the late 1970s, a time before the politics of Aboriginality played the role it plays today in national politics (although it was there, gaining strength, and had been for some time), that permaculture came from a couple well-educated white folk and spread through a culture then comprised overwhelmingly of people of European decent should come as no surprise. Incidentally, not all that many know that Bill Mollison researched and published a genealogy of Aboriginal Tasmanians.
A main goal in permaculture is making money such as through teaching, the podcasters claim in saying that permaculture teaching is a pyramid scheme. They go on to allege that it is of no use for any job and that it offers an unaccredited certification lacking third party verification that graduates have knowledge. It is “system designed for gatekeeping — only people with resources can do it.”
There is an element of truth in a couple of these claims. Yes, the PDC is only accessible to those with the financial and time resources, however there are free PDCs available online. Yes, there is no accredited certification for the PDC by itself. Many educators regard it as equivalent to a formal course with a ‘certificate of completion’ certification. There is, however, the Accredited Permaculture Training developed by Permaculture Australia and available through TAFE and accredited private educators.
A lack of knowledge of PDC graduates without relevant complementary qualifications or knowledge is something I have seen, and it is something I am sure other practitioners have witnessed. The risk is that they take what they learn from their teacher and treat it as a template. An example? A just-graduated student of a local permaculture design course who visited a large garden on an intentional community in northern NSW and asked the gardener why there were no swales (a swale is a water retention trench excavated along the countour to irrigate adjacent crops). The gardener replied that swales are not needed on account of the climate, rainfall and soil. The gardener also happened to be a lecturer in landuse at the local university. Equating swales with permaculture landuse design was something the person picked up at his permaculture design course.
8. Permaculture is like a pyramid scheme. People get training then get people to do their courses, who then go out and get people… you get the picture
Now, I’ve seen this allegation before, and more than a few times. It is worth pointing out that pyramid schemes are illegal in Australia.
Some in permaculture have said that people do their PDC then start teaching their own courses because teaching is the most accessible of the few work opportunities available in permaculture. Were permaculture education a pyramid scheme, students would go out and offer their own courses and pay a fee to their teacher, as would their students to them. We can see that the market for permaculture education would soon reach saturation and the livelihoods of teachers crumble. Teaching after completing a course and with no other relevant professional or experiential qualifications did happen, however it has declined as people realised that a lot of experience and additional knowledge is necessary to teach the PDC and offer a quality product. Most apply their learnings to their own projects after completing courses.
One reason that permaculture is not a pyramid scheme scam is that there are multiple avenues to follow in applying permaculture after completing a PDC. Pyramid schemes have only one — selling the same scheme further along the food chain of gullible customers.
9. People without real authority add to the design course content and their addition “becomes canonised into the permaculture community. There is no assessment of the knowledge coming in”
One result is the “cultural fettisation of old wives tales, of how things were done in the past, and there is no scientific evidence that it works”.
Yes and no. Yes, some dubious things have sometimes been included in design courses and there continues a backroom struggle around whether spiritual content can be included. The statement is also true in saying that ideas lacking scientific verification (the application of scientific method is the only reliable means we have to ascetain whether something is likely to be true or not) appear in permaculture from time to time. There continues a struggle between rationalism, belief, hearsay and assumption.
Old ideas do have currency in permaculture as do modern ideas. I go by Bill Mollison’s take on drawing ideas from the past: “The past is a useful source of information but never as a substitute for my own fresh thinking.”
10. Permaculture is rehashed indigenous knowledge
If you prowl the twisted corridors of permaculture social media you will surely encounter this one.
The widespread belief betrays a simplified and selective understanding of what permaculture is. Read Bill’s works and you find that indigenous and traditional systems have influenced permaculture and, just like the present-day incorporation of indigeneous ideas like landscape management using low-intensity fire in modern land management, elements of traditional systems were incorporated into permaculture practice. Usually, their origin was acknowledged. Traditional systems from European cultures have likewise made their way into permaculture, and scientific ideas also form a large part of the design system such as soil science, ecology, hydrology and so on.
Permaculture is best thought of as a mashup of some traditional and select indigenous ideas blended with modern science and the present-day understandings that form the bulk of design system. It has been described as a ‘design science’. Permaculture is far from being rehashed indigenous knowledge.
11. Permaculture is about rugged individualism and homesteading and this is “super problematic”. It is “primarily white talking to the right” and permaculure has “become a placeholder for rightwing ideals”
This is a bag-full of allegations that are far from universal in its typifying of permaculture practitioners, however it does contain a significant element of truth.
Take homesteading. The practice of homesteading is linked in the popular imagination with rugged individualism. We can trace its popularity back into the years immediately preceding permaculture when magazines like Mother Earth News and Earth Garden popularised it. Permaculture inherited the ideology of the homesteader.
Homesteading is practiced by a number of permaculture people, David Holmgren being the most promoted. The producers say that doing permaculture means owning land. Do they say that this is super problematic because homesteading is a way of life unattainable for the great majority? Especially the younger practitioners being pushed out of the property market by real estate prices whose rapid rise is taking home and land prices almost as high as low-earth orbit? They are unclear, and that is a pity because the position of homesteading in the permaculture imagination is a topic worth exploring as it does not represent a viable lifeway for people without a separate income stream or who can make a living in intensive market gardening or orcharding. Like a lot of stuff in this podcast, the allegations are not adequately explored. Some of them could be the theme of separate podcasts were their nuances to be sufficiently investigated.
As to the associated notion of self-sufficiency that the podcast producers allege is tied into permaculture, sure, that was an element in early permaculture that stemmed from its links with the 1970s counterculture/back-to-the-land movement, and it was not achieved by the participants in that movement. Self-sufficiency is a myth because no one can produce all they need. We are all reliant on the work and knowledge of others to meet our needs. Sometimes, people who say they are self-sufficient are only talking about self-provisioning in food. That is a limited thing, however. The tools they use to produce their food are probably made by somone else, perhaps some corporation, and the knowledge they use to grow their food probably comes from the books of others. Humans are social producers. We rely on others to produce and share what we use. The notion of self-sufficiency was long ago replaced with the notion of community self-reliance. As I see it, this remains the prevailing notion.
Rugged individualism is one of those American imports that sound good but that are not what they appear. It is an ideology linked with the notion of self-reliance, small government or no government at all — libertarianism, in other words. What we find are rugged individualists who minimise their taxes but still rely on government services for medical treatment, education, communications, pensions, income support, infrastructure and the rest that are paid for by other peoples’ taxes. Their tax avoidance becomes parasitic of the system just as much as does any big corporation that avoids paying their tax. Their individualism turns out not to be so rugged after all.
The producers talk about “hyper individuality”, how “self-sufficiency disregards community”, and make claims of “hard-leaning rightwing permaculturists” engaging in “rightwing traditionalist farming” and who rail against government. I think they overdo the association with the political right. It does exist within permaculture but it is often inadvertant. People hear of some idea from the far-right that sounds reasonable or attractive and parrot it without looking at the aganda of those it originates with. Some adopt far-right ideas deliberately. We saw this during the pandemic and I have seen it in a few, a very few, permaculture practitioners who are global warming deniers. I doubt there is a conspiracy of far-right activists trying to capture permaculture, they have done with other social movements, or engaging in ‘elite capture’ by recruiting, perhaps without their knowledgde, the leadership of the movement.
In summing up
While these are miscomprehension or part-truths, they are worth the time of permaculture practitioners in mulling over because the podcasters are far from the first to make the allegations. They are sure to resurface again at some time, perhaps from PDC students, perhaps from people outside of but interested in permaculture.
Some would say that spending time discussing permaculture and the ideas that permeate it is a waste of time, that it detracts form those ‘out there doing it’. This is a sometimes-heard put-down of the intellectual side of permaculture. Thinking about and discussing ideas in permaculture is as much ‘out there doing it’ as digging a garden or planting a fruit tree.
How could the podcasters have done better? By interviewing people who have made the allegations about permaculture and then getting alternative takes from permaculture practitioners—by exploring their allegations, that is, to see if they are real or are assumptions based on scanty evidence. Less verbiage and waffle would have been good too. They could have fitted those interviews in and recap the main points at the end in a summing-up. An hour of listener time is a valuable commodity to both producer and audience. These are serious allegations about permaculture and deserve a more-focused, more investigative, less waffly and more nuanced approach than they were given.
My impressions of the podcast? If you have an hour to spare I think there are better podcasts to listen to.
