The modern PDC is a seventytwo instruction-hour course, introducing topics regarding permaculture principles and ethics, food, waste, energy, water, and shelter. Students engage in design practice and some hands-on implementation activities of selected permaculture elements. The amount of time it takes to complete a PDC varies greatly, meaning the 72-hours of instruction time may be completed in one week or three months, and the details of the instruction often cater to the local climate and social norms. As more communities emerge with or adopt lower standards for competence, the permaculture movement may grow in population, but it is unclear if it is an effective model for increasing permaculture’s impact on the world.Like agroecology, permaculture also has a set of limitations – a lack of diversity, a lack of size and impact, a lack of precision in practice, and high barriers to entry, as described in the previous section. Permaculture farm operators in North America are predominately middle class, white, and male , nursery pots thus it has not significantly increased the diversity of farm operators in the US agricultural system as reported by the United States Department of Agriculture – i.e., 96% white , 70% male , and 62% middle class or higher .
However, permaculture farmers are younger and newer to farming than average, and more are first generation farmers compared to farm operators in the traditional US agricultural system . Although permaculture attracts those from a high standard of living seeking to live more moderately, it lacks appeal to those who are struggling to meet their basic needs. However, these issues of diversity may be slowly changing as permaculture is adopted in urban areas that have seen economic decline or natural disaster, like earthquakes in Haiti . For example, in 2013, the city of Detroit, Michigan filed for bankruptcy following a decades-long financial decline propelled by the decline of its automobile industry . Today, it still has a poverty rate of 39.4% . In addition to empty lots and vacant homes, Detroit is now also characterized by urban agriculture . The people of Detroit have used permaculture and other urban farming techniques to grow food, rehabilitate contaminated soil, restore forest habitat, and create businesses . These acts have provided residents with a socio-ecological connection with their community, which may have a positive effect on mental health and crime rates . More recently, however, local journalist Tom Perkins argues the exemplary Detroit urban farming movement has been challenged by colonialism as white people attempt to start large projects that give away free food in predominately black neighborhoods. Perkins questions, “Should [the Detroit urban agriculture movement] aim to improve food security, strengthen local economies, provide jobs, and empower longtime residents? Or is it about giving away free food?” At PV2 I observed the permaculture community’s energized discussions about the necessity of introducing more people to permaculture.
One central argument for making an effort to introduce permaculture to a wider audience was that the permaculture movement and its participating communities would not make a significant impact on the world without more participants . The conference publicized projects demonstrative of permaculture’s success, such as Geoff Lawton’s Greening the Desert project in Jordan and Paul Wheaton’s permaculture homestead education center and community, Wheaton Labs, in Montana. The conference also showe cased projects that align with permaculture but do not necessarily call themselves permaculture, such as the Global Village Construction Set and Stamets’ work on fungi for bioremediation and medicine at PV2. The movement believes that increasing the number of people participating will lead to more projects, and thus more success and social acceptance. Permaculture has not traditionally followed scientific methods nor engaged with scientific research. Unafraid of experimentation, permaculture practitioners show a huge amount of creativity and develop novel solutions to unusual problems. Unfortunately, sometimes these experiments can lead to unintended adverse effects, such as unknowingly introducing an invasive species to an environment. Consequentially, the permaculture movement has been criticized for being too idealistic and a “pseudoscience” . More recently, however, Ferguson and Lovell attempts to bring in the strengths of the agroecology discipline and permaculture movement together to address areas where each is lacking , such as encouraging permaculture to adopt norms of formal social learning such as more rigorous evaluation and feedback, and engagement with other agricultural disciplines.
In the next chapter, I will be discussing my experiences in two permaculture communities and the challenges the communities faced when engaging in a range of sustainable agriculture practices.Throughout this dissertation I discuss two participating communities. Both communities were in the United States, one in the humid subtropics of the Southeast coast and the other in the Mediterranean climate of the Southwestern coast. To protect the privacy of these communities and the participants in this research they will be referred to as the Live Oak and Manzanita communities, respectively, after prominent trees from the local ecology. I also refer to these communities’ geographical locations as Live Oak and Manzanita, however, these are not the true names of these geographical locations. Both permaculture communities were forming when this research began. People typically explored their interest in permaculture by attending an annual introductory course on permaculture design . The people interested enough in permaculture to attend a PDC or otherwise engage in the community were either members of the established, though not formally organized, grassroots sustainability communities in their local areas or newcomers to both. They came from a variety of backgrounds including college students, farmers, restaurant owners, medical professionals, landscape designers, computer scientists, parents, and school teachers. However, they were unified in their interest in learning how to live and lead more sustainable lives and particularly interested in exploring sustainable agriculture from the perspective of permaculture. The first phase of my research was with the Live Oak community during the 2011 PDC, henceforth known as Live Oak PDC-2011. I engaged in Live Oak PDC-2011 as a student. I engaged as a participant or volunteer in other community activities, such as planting community gardens or tabling at city festivals, concurrent to attending the 2011 Live Oak PDC season. The second phase of this research occurred in 2012 including the Fall 2012 Live Oak PDC . During the second phase I was a participant of an on-going apprenticeship, a volunteer for many community activities, and a facilitator of Live Oak PDC-2012. The third phase of this research was in 2014 with the Manzanita community, including their Spring 2014 PDC , during which I was a facilitator. The fourth phase was primarily a requirements inquiry and occurred 2015-2018 during which time I served as a volunteer and participant for community activities, but no longer a facilitator in the PDCs. The Live Oak and Manzanita communities were unaffiliated and outside of my involvement in these communities, they do not, as far as I am aware, share members.The Live Oak permaculture community existed within a larger metropolitan grassroots sustainability activism community, along with a local food cooperative, an organic grower collective, a simple living institute, a holistic medicine school, a university arboretum, and several small sustainability-oriented businesses. The permaculture faction did not contain a distinct member group from the rest of the sustainability community.
Devoted members of the permaculture faction, often selfdescribed as “permies,” were often involved in other Live Oak sustainability activism. “Permie” is a term informally used throughout the permaculture movement to distinguish full participants from the peripheral, plastic planters and sometimes uncommitted, participants in a permaculture community. The permaculture community founder participated in the local food cooperative as a farmer. Some permaculture participants and students were also students of the local holistic medicine school. Sometimes these interactions were partnerships. For example, the permaculture founder hosted workshops at local businesses, such as a rain barrel installation demo at nearby a sustainable food restaurant. Participants of the greater grassroots sustainability community supported the permaculture faction even though they themselves were not participating. For example, a local farmer waved admission to his workshop about raising chickens for students in the permaculture course. The permaculture community was initially centered around the founding instructor of the local PDC. The community was approximately one year old, having started the previous year with a PDC, when I became acquainted. In the following years, the once pupils of the founding instructor practiced and became new instructors or service providers for the community. They moved from peripheral participants to full participants with knowledgeable skills, a development that Lave explains is difficult to achieve . Lave explains that becoming a full participant is hinged on empowering socialization of the participant by the old timers and the willingness of the participant to adapt his or her perspectives to those of the community. By 2013, the Live Oak permaculture community grew to over fifty full participants. A few of the full participants started consultation LLCs, and permaculture installments began popping up in the local area. Some participants focused on establishing home permaculture gardens. Some of the more complex implementations, both residential and civic, became community demonstration sites for using specialty systems in permaculture, such as grey water reclamation, rainwater catchment, and aquaculture. One participant created a permaculture-based elementary-school curriculum and garden. This permaculture community also partnered with other permaculture communities. In 2012, several members of the Live Oak permaculture community worked with a community in another South Eastern state to revamp a permaculture garden at an eco-hostel – a lodging destination that supports ecotourism. In late 2012, the Live Oak permaculture community partnered with another regional permaculture community on an excursion to South America to build bamboo structures at another eco-hostel. In 2013 and 2014 this community hosted the statewide permaculture convergences .This sustainability community is located within a predominately affluent suburban area within a greater metropolitan area. One previous resident explained that a small permaculture community had existed five to ten years earlier. Although a number of permaculture members from this era remained in the area, they were either autonomous or focused on their own sustainability oriented, but not permaculture branded, organizations. When the previous leader left, the previous resident explained, the local permaculture community of practice fizzled out – a result of when too few peripheral participants become full participants and none desires a leadership role . Lave and Wenger characterize the success of communities of practice as groups of people that have “reproduced” by engaging newcomers in apprenticeships in which newcomers learn through legitimate peripheral participation of a practice that is happening in its normal context . More specifically, a newcomer engages in the practice alongside a full participant, thus being able to observe the full participant’s practice and learn from it. At first newcomers engage in simple tasks, but as they observe and work alongside the old-timer they take on more advanced tasks, until eventually they become full participants of the community . The sustainability education center that I partnered with re-initiated the effort to establish the permaculture community of practice. It did so by offering a PDC for four consecutive years. Despite more than forty-five students attending PDCs over four years and the collaboration of other permaculture communities, the permaculture community continued to struggle to foster the transition of newcomers into full participants. Although I cannot definitively explain why this was the case, there are a few conditions that I believe contributed. First, many students were often transient, many leaving the region right after their PDC for work or school-related reasons, and so they were not able to engage in legitimate peripheral participation in the permaculture practices beyond the short-term PDC education. Second, several students in each PDC were employees or established volunteers at the hosting sustainability education center and concentrated their participation in the context of that organization and the larger grassroots sustainability community ratherthan continued legitimate peripheral participation in the permaculture faction. Third, although the education center offered the PDC, “permaculture” was not part of its branding, and so the leaders were not focused on providing continued education specifically for permaculture. Fourth, many instructors were guests from other, somewhat distant, communities, introducing distance as a barrier for newcomers to engage in legitimate peripheral participation outside of the sustainability education center . In the time since the fourth PDC in 2016, a permaculture community has formed beyond the sustainability education center, which has increased the opportunities for newcomers to transition to engage in legitimate peripheral participation.