Is permaculture going over the hill? A young man's struggle to earn an income.

If were leveraging a loan, I'd try getting enough land to raise some cattle on.
Well, it depends on what my network is. Given that 60% of all beef sales in America is ground beef, we've got a real chance at taking out the CAFOs by focusing very strongly on out competing them (and improving herd genetics for pasture based systems). But chances are slim that I even get out to the country at all.

The downside is all the equipment for transport, control, processing. Then there is risk of death/injury. Land is a huge issue, but contract grazing is becoming more popular, and presumably you could make explicit in the contract to graze them correctly.

The contracts themselves are an interesting space, if there were a way for an agency to handle them for city dwellers. Not only would you be able to fund a herd- and thus improve genetics- but you would be creating more farmers. More folks with a schedule F, which makes an impression on politicians.

But trying to leverage a loan with a small backyard would mean an intensive system with a high dollar value yield. Most likely high value fruits and berries grown inside either a wire mesh cage (to keep birds, cats, etc- out) and/or inside a green house. This was mentioned in the permaculture manual, but I have not seen much of it online. I wanted to figure out if it could include quail.

The best promotion for permaculture is for individuals like you and me to be practicing it; to experiment with and learn from natural processes. People will see it and learn from our successes. We must not forget the very practical permaculture principle of obtaining a yield. This is the only thing that will really prove permaculture. None of us can be in two places at once to spread permaculture. As we practice good management in our part of the world, we are facilitating its spread all over the world an inch at a time.

Virgin Permie poster here

tough crowd on this thread; i hope y'all won't shoot me down while I offer Benjamin a true permaculture experience so he won't starve

the offer to Ben:

join me in transforming my desert land into a desert permaculture showplace, in return I will feed ya, keep you under roof and clean

the climate is nice and warm; 3-4 months of 100F, plenty of sand to play in, no shade yet, trees grow veeeeeeeeeeeeery slow here
got enough water though

the small details we can work out if you game Ben


MG Eggfief

charlotte anthony wrote:

Do any of all of you great permies out there see a way for him to continue to serve the earth and its people and get enough money to live on.

Change the schooling model. Internship on a profitable working permaculture farm is a proven business model and a proven education model as well. There is no need for students to pay 1000 dollars because they work for their education. It's a proven business model that has been going on even long before permaculture was a thing.

If he doesn't own a farm, then he could surely manage a farm with that education and experience. And this way he gets paid for management of the farm, and gets cheap labor from his student interns for a year or two. That makes both the farm more profitable, and also he provides them with certification.

Not much different than the business model Joel Salatin uses and his farm generates in the 6-7 figure range.

The rewilding thing though? He'll need a wealthy benefactor to make that into a career.

Honestly? Even though Joel Salatin isn't technically a permaculturist as far as I know, Ben should intern for Joel, and learn that business model. Then he could use that business model to repeat what Joel does, but with permaculture. They are not far apart actually.

I grew up with chickens, pigs, and goats and raising much of our food. I do some of the same now and my ecological footprint is pretty darn small. I run some small local permie and gardening groups and teach a lot of free classes and charge nominal fees for a few others but am working to get on the gravy train myself.

I am not going to attack the person but here are my thoughts on permaculture as someone who tends to be an outsider even in niche groups.

Permaculture is organized much as yoga and tantric practices are. They have guru's who make money certifying other people, keeping the supply limited to keep the value up. There is a local non-profit here that HOOVERS up money from cities for "urban farms" that are sterile and charges $3,300 to students for a part time eight month "education". They recently got a $40k grant from SCOTTS Fertalizer, (WTF?) and free land plust $30k from the city to create farms in urban food deserts but they don't bother with poor people other than as whitewash. What a great racket, beats working for a living!

If I was a bigger player (and had the income) in all this I would show off my skills by finding people in poor neighborhoods and bring volunteers in to to teach them to grow food, starting in basic ways like raised beds but working towards a bit of permaculture with some rubber stamp designs for fruit trees and various aspects of a bit of food forest. Then you can point to CONCRETE results when you go hat in hand to the sort of people who pay $MONEY for classes and who have real jobs that have the sort of money to pay for this stuff. I am currently running a core group of volunteers to do guerilla gardening on vacant lots and working to try and get some money and land from the city as well to do REAL community farms that actually help people other than myself or some overpaid group of board members of a "non-profit"

Too many see doing this stuff as an EASIER life, as a way of avoiding working and sorry but that only works as long as the buzz from your last hit lasts...

That sounds more bitter than it should but the reality of making money off of doing permaculture is that you need to learn to be both self promoting and a salesman. Not skills permaculture people tend to value, oh, and you need to live somewhere where you have people who can afford to pay you $BANK for your "how to live simply" classes! I live in California, near the SF bay area where people think nothing of paying (REAL EXAMPLE) a fee of $100 to learn how to plant tomato seeds!

Not everyone can move to some rural paradise and live on 10 acres, you want to make permaculture relevant, show people how easy it is to put in a single raised bed and grow all their herbs and green onions. In California, edible landscaping is going to become a huge thing as cities start rationing water, here where I live we get ONE day a week using sprinklers or unlimited drip for a garden. There is going to be money made doing the conversion AND a chance to spread a bit of permaculture wisdom but people are not going to go from green lawn to food forest overnight.

Most responses are either kicking the can back to him - (and can we get Weiss in on this thread?) - or semi-encouraging comments about how he could do it better.

This is a fraction of the issue. The fuller picture is, he's right. The Gini coefficient of the US - the measurement of inequality, from 0 being total equality, to 1 being one person owns everything - the Gini has been increasing.

Several differences for Weiss:

1) Immigration.
Starting in the 1970s, with a change in the quota laws expanding to encompass regions outside Europe, immigration expanded massively in the United States. Starting in the 80s, illegal immigration from Mexico, and the war on drugs picked up. Reagan gave amnesty for ~10 million, and it's continued now for 30 years. This has flooded the labor market for lower-skills labor, with millions competing for carpentry, migrant farming jobs, manual labor, food processing. It's been a boom for people who were in the position of hiring them, e.g. people with property, general contractors in housing booms, but a glass ceiling for anyone trying to go from being hired to hiring, especially if they were raised in a family without a hard-knock working ethic. The poor farmers in Mexico earn ~$12 a day. The middle class kids of American growing up in the 1980s and 90s with college educations will have a hard time competing with them.

Which leads to

2) California and the Greater Southwest
California diverted the Colorado River, and established Latifundia. The cheapest labor possible, with government-granted state-funded water supplies and transportation infrastructure, sending the lowest cost produce, nuts, milk across the nation, year-round due to the climate. If you removed this system, farming would become more profitable across the entire United States. Imported food from Mexican Latifundia and elsewhere would still be cheap, due to NAFTA, but the supply drop would help. There used to be black farmers, who, despite unequal access to credit, made a living in the South. It was a news story in the early 80s, that they were all being wiped out and selling their land for too cheap.

Were it not for this government-backed corporatist exploitative system, and the millions of central Americans brought in to work this feudal state in the American Southwest and in construction / low-skill jobs across the nation, an organic farm in Pennsylvania could turn a real profit. And Benjamin Weiss could probably earn his middle class income teaching, farming, doing garden designs for middle and upper class homes. He'd have to be willing to work with his hands, because he'd not be able to rely on hiring Guatemalans to do the "Manuel labor," but it'd be worth his effort.


Were I to be glib about it, I'd say, "use that college education to get a higher value job, that requires more education than farming and permaculture does." Or "go back and get a Master's degree." But he'd have to go into debt to do so, and, having done that myself, I can tell you that we also import a lot of talent on the high end. Go into any laboratory in the U.S., or engineering school, you'll find plenty of Chinese, Indians, and other foreign nationals. The Universities bring them in because it's easy money, they often work in labs, but have to leave once their green cards are up -- they're migratory labor for grant-funded labs, and help pump up the number of papers a University puts out, helping them stay Tier 1 or 2.

An ignorant person might misread Xenophobia in what I say. No! The blame is clearly at the feet of those who happily benefit from this system. Unfortunately, they also have a great deal of political power, so we've no chance of seeing them fall on their face - they'll be bailed out, they'll receive their government checks even if we have to pass inevitable bankruptcy on to future generations, they'll get to ride this system comfortably all the way down, to the day they pass away.



One choice Benjamin does have? Move to a developing nation!
Charlotte has.

Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
Calvin Coolidge
30th president of US (1872 - 1933)

Keep getting frustrated with not making money if you're smart enough and you get frustrated enough eventually you'll figure out how to get some and It will help you do what you want to do

Hi Preston,

I don't think that anybody is arguing that Benjamin is wrong in his assessment that there's an unequal distribution of wealth and opportunity between generations here in the US, as well as a widening gap between the rich and the poor. Those are facts. I also doubt that most people here are totally comfortable with that state of affairs and find it completely just and unproblematic.

I think that what most people are objecting to (or at least what I'm objecting to) is the sense of entitlement in Ben's post, the idea that the world owes him a living doing what he wants to do, and that other people are somehow obligated to pony up their money to subsidize his students in order to create a market for his services where one does not exist (to his satisfaction) today. This is especially galling since it reads as if he is very focused on teaching other people to the exclusion of actually practicing what he preaches. His proposed means of fixing the problem, which involve non-profits, institutional inertia, red tape, increased centralization, increased professionalization of permaculture, etc.--and subsidization by the relatively wealthy instead of a self-sustaining model--are distasteful to many who appreciate the decentralized, anti-authoritarian, small-scale aspects of permaculture. It also reads as if he wants to impose this system on other teachers and practitioners, as if they are somehow obligated or morally responsible to him. Most successful permaculturists I know are not exactly rolling in it, and those who are are already funneling much of their money into permaculture projects and education, as well as funding students and leaders from countries whose average income makes Ben's $10,000 a year look like unimaginable wealth.

Which brings me to my ultimate objection to Ben's post, which I alluded to in my earlier replies--the idea of bringing everyone in the US (or the world, for that matter) up to a middle-class American standard of living is an incredibly destructive idea, and not one I will ever support. We have about 5% of the world's population and use about a third of its resources, and we know that those resources are being extracted at rates far in excess of what the planet can support. If we want to talk about justice, let's talk about that, or the fact that Ben's income, which he finds utterly insufficient, is about three times the global per capita income. What with climate change, declining availability and ease of access for resources such as petroleum, various minerals and metals, clean water, air, topsoil, fisheries, etc. we are probably looking at a contracting economy and declining "standard of living" over the next several decades at least (unless you buy the idea that wealth and standards of living can increase for everyone forever without exhausting our natural resource base, which is not an idea not supported by history, to put it mildly). Actually practicing permaculture can mitigate these problems and injustices; demanding that other people provide you with a middle-class American income so that you can continue living like a king (in global and historical terms) while teaching other people how to do so will not.

People have less money now in America because the real economy of goods and services is tanking, as is our natural resource base. The financial economy, on the other hand, is out of control. It's not surprising that we have increasing financial inequality; that always happens when a bunch of fake wealth is being created, because relatively rich people are the ones with the most access to the investments by which the money is being hallucinated into existence, whereas the poor are stuck mostly buying actual things like food and cars and clothes. When the bubble pops, that inequality is likely to decrease, although absolute standard of living will most likely decrease for everyone. Scarcity is an ecological and human reality. Middle class Americans have come to believe we are exempt from it, but we're not. Ben got the short end of the stick by a standard that takes the American Baby Boomer generation as the yardstick by which everyone should be measured; he got the almost incomprehensibly long end of the stick by any sane measure of wealth and opportunity in global and historical terms, so I think a better response might be to learn to live within those means rather than demanding that they be supplemented without regard for what that means in a world of finite resources. I am not trying to pick on Ben--this is a common attitude, and the solutions he proposes are in line with the sorts of solutions that are often proposed--but I think that permaculture's great advantages come from its ability to be practiced on a shoestring, in adverse circumstances, using resources that would often go to waste and capturing yields that many would ignore, without placing undue burdens on others or requiring much in the way of consensus or permission. Ben's proposed solution strikes me as running counter to these themes.

Ben your future is your responsibility. Take your destiny into your own hands and realize yourself. It's good that you reached out to this forum it's a good start but now you have to reach to every person you know and every forum you know and present a case of a person with vision and determination. The world loves a confident person. You have to recognize your situation and confront it. That is what life requires. Well done for taking all this criticism most people would just cower in their apartment. YOU ARE YOUR FUTURE. It sounds cheesy but every great mind in our history espoused that they live by righteous virtues!

Hmm.. Im new to the forum, but I would like to make an observation about the Idea of Permaculture.

It seems to me that Permaculture is essentially a brand, with a particular brand philosophy.

Before you quote the luminaries, let me explain

What permaculture essentially IS, is a collection of different techniques, used together to create value added landscapes for humans to habitate. Permaculture is really not one thing. It isn't a science, as a science would have to have a very well defined set of methodologies which have been rigorously detailed as to their boundaries. Permaculture is not that.. in fact, most of the stuff involved is parts and pieces of different scientific approaches to horticultural and ecological engineering problems, energy problems, etc.

So, it is not a science, no matter what the luminaries name it, and no matter what we would all like to think.

It definitely does, however, have a Philosophy attached to it, which I won't repeat here but you all know the drill. I think it's a good philosophy.. one of plenty and diversity.. of harmony and cooperation.

To take a Philosophy into being as a Science requires rigorous definitions and boundaries which.. as I said.. do not exist for Permaculture. Honestly, I don't know if they can exist for as broad an idea as this.

So, it remains a philosophy. Which means the Permaculture name is a brand, applied to a Philosophy. Like Humanism.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a philosophy! Especially when it yields results. The term Natural Philosophy as an analogue for applying a broad view to the world through the scientific method is enjoying a mild renaissance these days as well, so.. there you go

Permaculture is a design philosophy which emphasizes harmony with nature and natural processes as a means to obtain plenty for humans.

To that philosophy we can apply all kinds of science like eco engineering, hydrology, horticulture, agro engineering, evo psychology, health and medicinal science, and much more. Whatever works.

So it seems that as a Design Philosophy it is a much more useful thing. But it ain't a science

Apologies.. I got distracted.. I actually do have something to say about the OP !!

I agree with the posters here who say "if its not making you money, and what you want to do is make money, you're doing something wrong'

It's not as if grade school teachers don't want to make 150k per year to do what they consider to be a very valuable job... the nature of our current World economy disproportionately rewards those who feed the most into the system of capital. THAT is what the system values above all else right now.

So, to make a good, legitimate living, you have to provide something that does precisely that.

OR you have to find a niche that allows you to skirt around it. Such as high quality food production, marketed in a novel way so as to avoid competing with large agro concerns.

OR you have to make a bunch of money at thing (a), then sock it away and invest it in capital and derive an income from it.

That's pretty much all there is.

I think Paul is 100% on the money (hee) when he says the best way to have a good living is not to spend money in the first place. I don't know if he actually said those words, but when he says a $15 house reeks of 'freedom', you know that's what he means.

So I think the biggest hurdle we have to living free... the toughest thing is buying land and paying taxes on that land and/or houses on the land.. perhaps complying with zoning laws. Everything else, literally everything else, can be gotten with sweat and intelligence.

I completely understand the notion that people want to make a living at teaching, but traditionally teaching has paid very badly, except in rare circumstances when a teaching interest coincided with capital (University systems and etc).

But apprenticeships.. now there you go. People talk a lot about interns here, and although I know they can be hard to manage, this is gold in the form of willing hands. You trade your knowledge and an opportunity for them to learn self sufficiency, as well as basic room and board, and you get back labor. If you can be creative with that, as well as your general projects, you'll be fine. I mean.. look at Sepp Holzer. He's 100% ok. And although he is a unique man, he is still a man, and any one of us could do what he does, and live a happy, fulfilled life.

All we need to do is figure out the land thing.

I am targeting 10+ acres, for 5+ people, depending on the local conditions, and I'm going to go from there. I wish you all luck in your journey! As for me, Im a big fan of tiny houses. I have some ideas as to how to conjoin resources so that it is essentially the same as one big roof. We'll see what happens when, as Paul puts it, I find out what crap the local Department of Making You Sad usually dishes out.

"science
noun sci·ence \ˈsī-ən(t)s\
: knowledge about or study of the natural world based on facts learned through experiments and observation"

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/science

Tyler Ludens wrote:
"science
noun sci·ence \ˈsī-ən(t)s\
: knowledge about or study of the natural world based on facts learned through experiments and observation"

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/science

Heh. Yes, that's the dictionary definition of 'Science'... that's not what is implied by saying Permaculture is a 'Design Science'. It is certainly "Scientific' in general, but that doesn't make Permaculture 'A Science".

I should have been more particular.. when I say 'A Science', I meant a 'Branch of Scientific Study', which would essentially put it on the same footing as eco engineering, Physics, etc. This is the 'Common Understanding' of what it means when you say something is:

'A Science"

I hope that makes more sense.

I think we just must have very different ideas of what the term "a science" means.

4
: a system or method reconciling practical ends with scientific laws

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/science

Yes Sir Tyler, I do believe you have hit the nail on the head

I suppose what concerns me about referring to Permaculture as a 'Science' is that it could dilute the idea.. there are quite a few folks who work in or are adjunct to the sciences that have the same sense of the word as I evinced above.

To me, calling it a Philosophy is a more powerful statement. A holistic design philosophy based on scientifically proven principles. drawing from many areas of ecological, horticultural and agricultural science.

Anyhoo.. I think I am guilty of major digression... I'll fade to black now

Thank you Timothy. I think I understand what you are saying. I'm just not willing to agree that Bill Mollison is wrong about the thing he invented. Personally I see permaculture as an applied science, like engineering. And sorry, everyone, for this digression.

It took me days to read this thread.

I will step in and revive this with my own experience.

During one phase of my life I studied art in college. I had already attained professional status and though it was harder to compete in competitions and shows, I dutifully did so. It was actually NICE to drop to amateur/student standing (for three years). The person I studied under (we were on quarters) gave you one quarter 'free' then as an integral part of your grades, you had to go sell your stuff at some show, sale, art fair, or even put up a cardtable in the student union and display what you did and let the great wide world sneer at your works. He said in four years you do your show, get your degree, and if you aren't making a living at it, you wasted your time, his time, and your money. You were there to learn to become an artist and do art. He made you face reality. I left after 3 years because he left, and the replacement was 'art for the sake of art' (he didn't care how it was made) and didn't care if nobody else appreciated it and if you were getting the idea of how to turn it into your living. He graded majors and non-majors differently and dictated what I should make if I wanted a grade (my style was not his style). In 11 years the only piece he 'sold' (fired clay) was a piece loaned to a show that got stolen while in the delivery trailer after the show. So the show insurance had to pay up for what he had it marked at. After the third quarter and the third intervention by the dean about grades, I left the program (I was at 'do my show' and graduate).

Later I did contract artist work, shows, fairs, etc. A third was fill the table/booth, a third was client contract (they told me and I made it) and a third was what I wanted to do. However I made a living at it. Not great and not a 9-5 job but I actually brought in money, paid overhead, health insurance and bills. I was in a tech and tourist town, and there was a foofle by someone that had a major blowout in media because they were doing things like a picture of Jesus crucified in a pan of urine, and was furious nobody wanted to buy his 'art' or give him money to make his art. He went for an Endowment for the Arts from the government and was turned down so he had a hissfit all over the news. Someone wrote into the editor, not me, and said: there are numerous shows and street fairs and other venues year around, there are 57 galleries listed in the phone book. If you can't sell your art, then don't expect someone to support you and give you money to do so. It's not your given right, it's your privilege. Many artists and artisans live here and DO make a living selling what they make. Either make art that sells or quit making art. Or go work somewhere to pay your bills and continue to put pictures in pans of urine. I certainly don't want your art and nobody can force me to pay for your art (the endowment he couldn't get, paid for by taxpayers).

Back to permaculture. You may have the goods others need, but. If you aren't getting money for it, the money you think you deserve (and true, it may truly be worth it, but), then you may need to rethink your entire plan and your life too.
I am 'doing' some practices that can be considered permaculture, and I am reducing my NEED for income which is an easier thing to do, than to generate MORE income. I provide for myself, THEN maybe I can do and show others. I can build a product someone wants. If it's not selling then I either need to change my product, how I'm producing it, and/or my market and marketing. Nobody owes me. I only owe myself. Yes I have a right to be paid for what I do. I have a right to make a living wage (however you define it) and I am in a country where I still can (despite some regulations, laws, ordinances, and neighbors) strike out and do so, or attempt to do so.

Nobody has to buy my art, my tomatoes, or my services. I sure want them to, though. That want and need to do so is what keeps me going. I will pay for good content, but. Sometimes it needs to be smaller chunks that are affordable to the one looking at it, or is so useful it is worth eating scrap soup for a month and putting another patch on the jeans to get it. (whether it is information, tools, seeds, etc)

And yes it's massively frustrating to get around some of the uninformed and clueless to provide what's needed while getting something in return. I had done many shows where I barely had enough to open the cash box and had nothing for food, lodging, or getting home...if I didn't sell I was starving and walking and sleeping under the bridge. I always managed. I also met many that were so business that they refused to do anything resembling a fellow merchant discount or anything less than full price cash. I always spoke 'barter' but not freely. Meet someone else that did, and it was usually the best dealings ever. Don't give away the store, but. I have many things that I use and treasure that I acquired that way and I hope they're still happy too with their half of the deal. Barter may not pay the rent but it did get me that slightly preowned and preloved tool that they didn't want, or food, or gas money (one event was very horrid weather and otherwise a bust and the fellow couldn't get home. I was local, so. I emptied my cash box, he sold me some stock he had, and he got home. We are still good friends a few decades later...)

We all want Permaculture to work for us, else we wouldn't be here. It's just making it provide for us that can be difficult. If your business plan isn't working you need to look at your business plan. If your market isn't there you need to look at your market and marketing as well as what you're offering. $3 a pound tomatoes aren't going to sell at the farmer's market when there are eight other booths with an abundance of similar product going for 50c a pound...

If $1000 classes aren't selling, you need to look for a different market, or offer a different sort of content, or look at the pricing. I have been known to be flat on my back in the ER, someone is sewing up my foot and the head end is talking to the nurses about the brooch on my coat they're admiring and handing out business cards... and selling the brooch to one of them.

That's my ramble. We should all be able to do what we love, and make a living at it. Just that getting the two to mesh can be more difficult than you think. And yes, I've taken on 10-20 year projects that it will take my blood, sweat, tears, and starving to get the payoff. It's hard sometimes to keep at it long enough to get the reward. I agree, it stinks. It's what happens.

August Hurtel wrote:It seems to me that if one believes the poor to be deserving, one presumably believes the wealthy to be undeserving, and thus one would find oneself severely incapable of making oneself wealthy, for to do so would mean making oneself undeserving.

i like this statement and i totally agree.
one should not think that the wealthy is undeserving. we all work hard for it, and if someone get rich by working hard, then he deserve it.
and i deserve it too if i work really hard and smart about it. i work hard on my soil, my land and my finance and i want to deserve what i work for =)

i believe strongly in doing what you love and the money will follow

I have difficulty with this concept, I love racing motorcycles and do it often, but to expect money to follow is extreme I believe.
But I am aware in my business, which I enjoyed working in, I became aware if I satisfied the needs of the customer, the money did follow.

Some times I think people confuse the difference.

Yes, I think we need to be creative about combinations of work and play/art.  I switched from one form of teaching, which had a solid income but was driving me crazy, to a different form of teaching, where I'm making much less, but happier about what I"m doing.  As a result, I have more time to do permaculture, skateboarding, baseball, hang gliding, sailing, etc.  My food forest will be a significant form of my retirement health plan, but it doesn't really make me money.  That's ok with me.  Many people get fruit trees from me and learn things about healthy lifestyles. I'm contributing.  Teaching permaculture as a way of making a living without running an actual farm and selling food for an income seems to be difficult. I'm not trying to do that.  We may need to have many people do like me and gradually let it be a big part of their life, before more people can make a living from permaculture farms and eventually, partly selling classes.  I like the person on this thread who works on solar and does permaculture. It's a combo-sort of like what I do.
John S
PDX OR