permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lflj@intrex.net>]

Suraj Kumar wrote:

> Hello!
>
> I'm relatively new to permaculture and I'm pretty new to this list as
> well (joined about a week ago). Infact, I haven't even been able to
> read in depth about permaculture except through wikipedia and such
> online resources. I've just placed an order for Holmgren's
> Permaculture book from Amazon. Besides that, I can only say I'm fairly
> worried about the future given the multitude of crises humanity as a
> whole is facing on this planet (warming, energy crisis, resource
> depletion, etc.,.). I'm from India and permaculture seems to be a
> thing of the 'past'. Yes, of the past. I can find news items on the
> web about permaculture-related stuff from the past but I see none at
> present. Nor do I know of anyone who is interested / practising
> permaculture.
>
> So, the purpose of this mail is to see if there is anyone from India
> out here talking / doing permaculture.
>
> Secondly, I recently read about a practice called 'Zero farming'
> which, given the lack of information about what it exactly is about,
> makes me think its very similar to Permaculture. Maybe not 'as
> inspired by nature' as Permaculture, but quite close in practice.
> Here's an article I found related to this:
>
> http://www.theacademyofnaturalfarming.com/Zerofarm.html
>
> I'm planning to buy some farmland (2 or 3 acres) down south in India
> (Tamil Nadu) and keep buying additional land as I save up more money.
> To begin with, I plan to stay employed the way I am employed because I
> need a regular salary and have the land taken care of using a friend's
> friend who has been a farmer for generations. The idea is to gradually
> become less dependent on my salary and be able to smoothly transition
> to doing agriculture (permaculture :) ) on this land.  So, short term:
> I'm trying to devise ways to reduce my time spent in my current job
> and gradually start visiting this land and thereby understand
> agriculture.  Given I'm going to buy land, is there any specific /
> general piece of advise that pops up in your head? If there is anybody
> out here from India (I'm in Bangalore) who would like to experiment
> permaculture on a small portion of my land, I'd definitely welcome you
> to join me in the experiments :)
>
> I'm hoping to learn from the collective knowledge of this community :)

Welcome to the permaculture list, Suraj. Your goal to become a small farmer practicing permaculture and sustainable 
agriculture is admirable. Many people all over the wprd have done this successfully.

Tamil Nadu is in Sri Lanka (Ceylon) as I understand it. What kind of climate 
will you have there and what type of soil
and what access to soil amendments?

Would there be any hope of getting the Tamils interesting in sustainable farming and permaculture and area-wide 
marketing and production networks, to relieve the current war crisis there?

Here's what I have done on my land in North Carolina:

http://venaurafarm.blogspot.com

Cheers,

Lawrence