How many PDCs have been issued

How many Permaculture Design Consultant’s are there?

I've been searching the web but can't come up with an answer to this question.

Someone surely has a ballpark figure on this.

Given there is no overriding organization that tracks this, I suspect it may be impossible to give a ballpark figure. All you need is a PDC to teach a PDC, right? So, I've seen people teaching them all over and who knows who's keeping track of that. The question of legitimacy is also at hand here, because you have a PDC, but then you have the "Official 72-hour PDC from Bill Mollison" or what have you, further complicating the issue. Sorry I couldn't help but you may be asking a question that can't be answered (aside from speculation.)

M.R.J. Smith wrote:...you may be asking a question that can't be answered (aside from speculation.)

I kind of figured that was the case but wanted to see if anyone had estimated it.

My question stems from a desire to design and create tools for designers. In putting together a business plan i would like to have some sort of number to place here. I know that Geoff Lawton alone has probably 2,500 to his name on the two online PDCs alone.

I guess i'm really just looking for the number of people interested in using permaculture design tools weather they have a legitimate PDC under their belt or not. 5,000? 20,000? Two Million?

Here's a question that could actually be answered.

How many Permies users are there?

I know that the most users ever online at the same time was 13,841.

Eric Platt wrote:I know that Geoff Lawton alone has probably 2,500 to his name on the two online PDCs alone.

My PDC certificate from Geoff's online course from last year is labeled #7523 and it has the official Tagari (Bill Mollison) logo which sort of makes it a 1st generation certificate. There could easily be 100,000 PDCs issued.

In that case, a good estimate might be looking at how many copies of certain permaculture design books have been sold. Since many people buy one of each, I'd just take the average of that number to get a rough estimate. I don't know if publishers release this info publicly or not.

Thanks for the input!

This is tricky business trying to figure that number out, because the PDC I am taking it says that all online teachers are supposed to be registered with the PRI in Australia and that all people who are certified are supposed to be registered through their teachers with the PRI.

However, there is- as with many things- little transparency for the users, and there have been a few cases where a PDC course provider was illegitimate. <-- discussion on that can be held in the Ulcer Factory

*So, yes, I am quite unsure how anyone would be able to know exactly the number of PDC people there are, and some people may be certified twice- if that is possible; some people like to take more than one PDC- one online, one hands-on, another through a different teacher. I, for one, definitely want to do a PDC with Geoff Lawton as a teacher, once I am on my own and finish college, and sometime after that, I would like to do a hands-on PDC, too. So, that would mean I want to do two more PDCs after I finish the one I am doing right now.