here are a few more:

http://nmag.soton.ac.uk/tf/permaculture/

There’s one on Wikipedia that’s not yet listed. Plus you might want to listen to the agroinnovations podcast and an ABC News interview with Bill.

Many things he wrote suddenly make much more sense if one hears him explain the underlying rationale.

I think it is a good idea if *everyone* does a bit of gardening, just because you do want people to have at least some clue about food. The present situation is displayed very nicely by e.g. this comment:

http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1230871&cid=27928185

“Vitamins don’t grow on trees.” (Shake head… Incredible…)

In other words: Do we really think people will make well-educated decisions about the question whether to go all-out GM or not if pretty much no one actually does know anything about growing food anymore?

But apart from that, I really don’t see why regional self-reliance should go beyond everybody growing, say, between 5% and 50% of their own food, and a certain percentage of regional market gardeners (say, 10%-25% of the population) providing the rest.

This interview with Bill Mollison I find very useful:

http://www.seedsofchange.com/cutting_edge/interview.aspx

Let me quote him directly: >>>Mollison: I remember reading a book rather like the Nearings’. It was made in England . . . I’ve forgotten the guy who did it . . . and I thought it was a lesson in rotten hard work for very little result. It was sort of like a ground-down peasant primer. (laughs heartily) Just what I didn’t want. I grew up like that, I grew up on farms on which you worked 18-hour days, hard work, and I thought, there’s got to a better way. I ignored this in Scott Nearing and John Seymour. He wrote a book, in which you’re trying to do everything. He called it practical self-sufficiency. (John Seymour’s books “The Forgotten Arts” and “Forgotten Household Crafts” have recently been republished in one volume by DK Publishing as “The Forgotten Arts and Crafts.”)

First of all, I think that’s a terrible concept: self-sufficiency. You make your own cheese; you skin your own pig; you make your own gloves from the pig’s ears, you know, it’s a shocking idea. We are absolutely interdependent. I want somebody else to be making my boots while I feed them, you know. And somebody else again to make my fishing rod, car, bike. Self-sufficiency is a stupid idea. You can go a long way to feeding yourself or perhaps all the way, but beyond that, it’s pretty stupid really. You have to have something to make money: photography, writing books. Me, I write books. That’s my income. But I can easily feed myself.<<>> My grandmother had chickens and she feed them with a handful of wheat every day and had a little shed that she’d close some of them up in and got the eggs. She got two dozen eggs every day without fail. One day, I said to her, “How many chickens do you have, Grandma?” She said, “I don’t know, about 25 I reckon.” She didn’t know. So, I set out one evening with a notebook and made notes of all the chickens I could see. By the end of the evening, I knew she had a lot more than 25 chickens. They never came in for that handful of grain, that was all. So, I set chicken traps, big wire cages with funnels in them, with lots of wheat in the funnel and I caught 68 chickens. I wondered . . . these chickens aren’t eating one handful of wheat, that’s not going to do it. She had them running in amongst two plants: one was called Coprosma, it’s a New Zealand shiny leaf creeping plant immune to sea winds and things, and it has crop after crop of berries during the year; it’s always got green berries or ripe berries or new berries or something. Each berry has two seeds that you could easily mistake for two grains of wheat. So it’s a continual wheat producer as far as chickens are concerned; they think it’s wheat and they eat it. So even one Coprosma bush was feeding dozens more chickens than my grandmother. And the other plant she had planted because of the sea winds was in the Solanum family. It’s got huge thorns. It’s called African Box Thorn. It’s a Lycium. It’s a frightfully thorny thing. But in cool climates it doesn’t spread; you put it in and there it grows; it grows to about 15 feet across and 15 feet high. It’s a dome, and it stops there forever. We’ve had hedges of it for more than 200 years in northern Tasmania. It always has flowers, green berries, and ripe berries and the chickens love it. It’s in the Solanacae so there’s like millions of little tomatoes falling all the time. When a chook (chicken) is going to lay eggs and rear chicks she walks in underneath the box thorns, makes a nest, lays her eggs and sits under the box thorns because nothing, no hawks, no dogs, nothing can get her in there. Then come the chicks and they don’t leave that shelter because the berries are the perfect size for little chickens. They eat them until they’re quite well fledged, and out they come in the open air and then hawks get one or two of them. If they’re in trouble, they run into the box thorns, so it’s ideal food and shelter. <<<

another comment on “the economics of permaculture professionals”: There indeed unfortunately are certain (few) “black sheep” that capitalize on Permaculture by selling it as a New Evangelium – pulling in lots of money from books, videos, and pricey fees for visits to their remote site. This money they then use to obtain a substantial part of their own needs from the consumerist economy. But to the very largest extent, people are actually aware of that problem, and designed their own rules in such a way that this prevents them from falling into such a trap.

I think it is perfectly reasonable to use PDC course fees e.g. to pay for those things you are effectively *forced* to pay for (like, your radio license, wastewater bills, trash collecting fees etc.) – as long as you work towards eliminating these forced dependencies in a responsible way. There is, for example, (at least?) one guy in Germany, Carl Rheinl”ander, who went to 100% recycling like a religious zealot and actually went to court to fight for his right to not pay for trash he does not produce:

http://www.restmuellnet.de/

(@Craig: Might actually be quite interesting to ask him for an article on his lifestyle…)

But at the same time, I’d say it is a very good idea to have some sort of “firewall” in your books that separates money generated from educational activities from money generated from, say, your “demo system” primary production core business. Wouldn’t it he highly questionable to run a demo system that is economically viable only through the attached “buy our DVD & other stuff” promotional effort? Many Permaculture businesses actually do have such a “firewall”, precisely to prove that what they show can stand on its own feet, and does not rely on money generated from visitors.

Theoretically, it might be possible to run a permaculture business that does nothing else but selling books, DVDs, and courses, and has just one business model to offer to those who want to join: to also sell books, DVDs, courses. That, then, would amount to nothing else but a pyramid scheme. Now, it certainly is expected that practitioners who set up a business that is in alignment with the Permaculture core ethics do a bit of promotion, and also make money from that, as having multiple income streams is considered a good thing. So, the question is: what actual “substance” is there once you subtract the merchandise? Those who make a honest effort with their business (the vast majority, I would say) don’t have to fear that question.

One issue where the Hemenway Pamphlets perhaps create a somewhat distorted image is that it is absolutely not expected that all PDC graduates eventually become Permaculture Designers making money chiefly from their design consultancy business. There are a zillion other “right livelihood” alternatives. Ever noticed how many dry places there are in the world that actually don’t collect rainwater? Do the math, show to people where they are economically plain stupid not utilizing rainwater, and set up a business specializing in rainwater tanks and greywater systems that helps them to save money. That’s permaculture. Ever noticed how many technically sophisticated devices are thrown away due to minor breakdowns? See if you can make a repair service business viable that extends the lifetime of such goods. etc. etc.

There are thousands of other business ideas. Friends of mine just recently set up a small solar electricity (mostly PV) business in Israel to make people less dependent on bought-in electricity. This DVD might give you a number of ideas:

http://www.permacultureplants.net/Audio/pdc83.htm

The key principle always should be: What can I do help people to become more self-reliant, i.e. how can I help them to save money?
Note that this runs contrary to presently prevailing business logic, which is based on the question: “What can I do so that my customers become dependent on my continued services?” As Bill says, “if you sell self-reliance, the money you make on something is a measure of your degree of non-success.” Being successful means that people ultimately no longer need you. But this then means that you, like a pioneer species, must keep on moving. If people’s most pressing problem is that they spend too much money on X, help them so they no longer do. Once that’s accomplished, move over to the next thing Y they spend too much money on. Repeat until you eliminated all artificial dependencies that *force* people to earn money. Note: *having* to earn money just to live is a bad thing. (I.e.: we need to make a conscious effort towards reducing “the costs of living”.) But *earning* money of course is *not* a bad thing.

Let me say it in Bill Mollison’s own words: “If you try to become self-reliant, council will do everything in its power to prevent that. Because once you are, *you* are king, and they are not.”

An interesting thought, actually. I’ve seen it so often that mostly-self-supporters get attacked by “properly employed people” as if they were saboteurs of the collective effort towards a more prosperous future. Actually, indications are it’s pretty much the other way round…

Craig: I would like to know your estimation about how much the average permaculture teacher earns via course fees vs doing actual consulting/planning for individual propery owners. A big part of that Hemenway 1980s course notes piece is devoted to how to be a good design consultant. It seems to me that earning money by providing that service would be a surer bet than selling education via coursework. After all, information wants to be free, as they say. But there is no substitute for an experienced designer working out the unique details of your own land.

I will listen to Dan Hemenway’s course, I’m sure there is valuable insight, even if a little conceptually incomplete, I’m sure I will get a lot out of it.

It is hard to think on balance that there will not be a global solution, or rather the momentum we would like all like to see, at the level we would like to see it, until the capitalist system fails completely. I hope this is not the case, and I have yet to make up my mind either way, many thoughts to ponder.

Clearly you’re right Craig about these questions all being part of the learning curve. My somewhat simplistic view is probably largely due to my relatively comfortable personal position of very low overhead living. Although we live a debt free, minimal spend lifestyle now, it has not always been the case, but it has clearly framed my thinking.

I recently learnt there is an organisation working to provide an open source PDC in the near future, if this comes off, and the resource can be fully utilised by local NGO’s and PC groups via technology, I’m sure it will help achieve the global awareness required.

I am not despondent, just not very far up a steep learning curve!

Many thanks,