LAC Countries Take Action Towards Ending Hunger by 2025

3 March 2016: The 34th Session of the Regional Conference for Latin America and the Caribbean of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) adopted a number of measures to achieve the region's goal to eradicate hunger by 2025, five years ahead of the deadline agreed in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Goal 2 is End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture, and the Goal's first target calls to, "by 2030, end hunger and ensure access by all people, in particular the poor and people in vulnerable situations, including infants, to safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year round."

The LAC conference focused on three priorities: consolidating regional efforts towards eradicating hunger and malnutrition; promoting family farming, inclusive food systems and sustainable rural development; and the sustainable use of natural resources in the context of adaptation to climate change and disaster risk management.

In his address to the Conference, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva commended the region's advances in combating hunger, and said LAC countries have an opportunity to be the first region to achieve SDG 2. He said FAO will continue supporting key activities such as the Hunger Free Latin America and the Caribbean initiative, and the Food Security, Nutrition and Hunger Eradication Plan of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).

Conference delegates decided to develop a priority regional initiative on the sustainable use of natural resources in the context of climate change adaptation and disaster risk management, which will focus on climate change adaptation in Latin America's Dry Corridor, a region experiencing more frequent and erratic droughts caused by climate change. Other outcomes include: agreement with the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) to support implementation of the second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2), which took place in 2014; agreement with Consumers International on strengthening action to reduce obesity in the region; and a new initiative to support family agriculture, inclusive food systems and sustainable rural development.

The FAO Regional Conference for Latin America and the Caribbean takes place every two years to coordinate efforts in eradicating hunger and establishing FAO's regional priorities. The 34th session took place from 29 February to 3 March 2016, in Mexico City, Mexico. [FAO Press Release, 25 Feb] [FAO Press Release, 1 Mar] [FAO Press Release, 3 Mar] [Conference Website] [Video Coverage (in Spanish)] [Hunger Free LAC Initiative] [CELAC Plan for Food and Nutrition Security and Eradication of Hunger 2025] [IISD RS Story on 2016 CELAC Summit]

related meetings:34th Session of FAO Regional Conference for Latin America and Caribbean

read more: http://larc.iisd.org/news/lac-countries-take-action-towards-ending-hunger-by-2025/

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© Climate War Room

Permaculture Design for International Development

Here is the announcement for Quail Springs permaculture design certification (PDC). course for International Development at Quail Springs this May.

We just heard there is a chance that Steve Gliessman, the grandfather of Agroecology, may be able to teach. We will get confirmation in April as to whether he will be able teach here this year.

www.quailsprings.org

Permaculture Design Course for International Development

Quail Springs Permaculture

Southern California, USA

May 9-22, 2016

For More Information

© Climate War Room

El Niño dries up water in Honduras

Although there is no official estimate, it is expected that about 170,000 children under 5 are facing malnutrition and disease due to the lack of clean water in Honduras.

So far this year, El Niño has affected 1.4 million Hondurans, or 16 percent of the total population, according to the Permanent Commission of Contingencies (COPECO).

"The drought is so intense in southern Honduras that surface water in many places are deepening and groundwater reserves are depleted at a faster rate," said Javier Mayorga, Project Coordinator of Water and Sanitation World Vision Honduras .

Without enough water, children are susceptible to disease and both children and their mothers spend more time fetching water from distant sources.

In some communities, near Choluteca, in southern Honduras, natural water sources have almost dried-up completely, creating a crisis that is affecting children and their families, animals and eventually the land, which is losing some of its production potential. The drought is also increasing the demand for health services due to the upsurge in cases of dengue, chikungunya, diarrhoea and the Zika virus. More

 

© Climate War Room

Turning Yards into Gardens & Neighborhoods into Communities by Food Not Lawns & Heather Jo Flores

Bring the author & founder of Food Not Lawns to your town to teach workshops, plant gardens & build community.

Lawns are the Worst!

Americans spend over $30 billion every year to maintain over 40 million acres of lawn. Yet over 40 million people live below the poverty level. Even if only ⅓ of every lawn was converted to a food-producing garden, we could eliminate hunger in this country.

Lawns use more equipment, labor, fuel, and agricultural chemicals than industrial farming, making lawns the largest (and most toxic) agricultural sector in the United States. Lawnmowers burn more fuel every year than all industrial oils spills of the last twenty years, combined. Growing Food Not Lawns is a beautiful, responsible and empowering step towards finding real solutions to the major problems we face as a global society.

Grow Food, Not Lawns!

When the original chapter of Food Not Lawns started in 1999, in a tiny space behind a park in Eugene, Oregon, our vision was to share seeds and plants with our neighborhood, to promote local awareness about food security, and to learn about permaculture, sustainability and organic gardening.

Our project blossomed. We received a Neighborhood Improvement Grant from the City of Eugene, and conducted a low-cost permaculture design course for the neighborhood. We transformed most of the neighborhood lawns into lush organic gardens. We hosted annual seed swaps. Soon, we started to get mail from people around the country who were starting up local Food Not Lawns chapters of their own, and a movement had been born.

In 2006, co-founder Heather Flores published Food Not Lawns, How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden and Your Neighborhood into a Community (Chelsea Green.) The first half of the book is about gardening in the city, with no budget and on shared land. The second half is about working with people to build community around shared food and resources.

The book sold over 25,000 copies, and now there are more than 50 affiliated Food Not Lawns groups in the United States, Canada, and the U.K.. The original Food Not Lawns collective just hosted its 16th annual seed swap, and the meme, "Food Not Lawns," has taken root in the mainstreamconsciousness.

We need your Support!

Stickers, T-shirts and Yard Signs help spread the message

This campaign is a tool to raise funds for outreach and education, and every donation comes with a Reward that helps everyone.

Starter kits help you establish and expand your local Food Not Lawns project.

Website sponsorships connect people to your work (we place your logo on our website) and support the expansion of the long-standing website, www.foodnotlawns.org, into a user-generated network for sharing skills, knowledge, photos, events and other resources.

Consultations with Heather Flores help you get creative with your garden design and/or community project.

"50 ways to Grow Food Not Lawns," a new audio handbook from Heather Flores, gives a fun overview of urban permaculture and lawn-transformation techniques.

Workshops in your community will help jump-start new gardens and strengthen local networks by bringing people together to share seeds, resources, tools and knowledge about permaculture, sustainability and organic food.

Food Not Lawns Workshop Tour

This is the main focus of this campaign, and if funding is successful, Heather Jo Flores will travel all over, teaching workshops and helping people turn lawns into gardens and neighborhoods into communities. Please note that all events on this tour will be booked through this Kickstarter campaign, as premium rewards. If you want your town to be on the tour, pledge $500 or more. You can sponsor the event yourself, collaborate with a local nonprofit or university, or sell advance tickets to workshop participants. Funding deadline is March 21 and at that time tour schedule will be confirmed and announced.

Hosting Heather Jo Flores in your community means so much more than just hearing her talk. Heather literally wrote the book on Food Not Lawns, and as one of the founding members, she has had her thumb on the pulse of this movement since the beginning. She emphasizes friendship-based learning, and her events always incorporate a heavy dose of community interaction and team-building play. Specific curriculum will be tailored to meet the needs of your community.To learn more about workshop details, visit foodnotlawns.org/events.html.

It's Not Just About Gardening!

Food not Lawns is not just about gardening. It's not just about food. And it is certainly not just about social media. We are about building neighborhood-based, friendship-driven communities, on the ground, in person, and for real.

FNL has always maintained a very simple approachWe help each other turn yards into gardens;

We host events to share seeds, plants, skills, tools, land and information;

And we educate and advocate for communities that want to take back control of their food from the corporate profiteers.

These actions, when combined, build empowered local networks, and help foster a strong sense of community-wide security, stability and sustainability.

Remember, if we don't reach our goal of $10,000 by March 21, we don't get any of the funding!

This means no tour, no t-shirts and no audiobook! We really want to share all of this with you, so please help us make it happen.

We Love you! See You Soon! More

 

 

 

 

 

 

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China Experiment in Permaculture Offers World Hope

China is the most populous and possibly one of the most diverse nations on the planet, with a population of over 1.3 billion people and 56 ethnic groups.

What each one of those people shares with the rest of the world, regardless of political, linguistic, economic, and existential differences, is the complete and utter dependence on the ability to find food. In China’s Loess Plateau, sustained generational farming had depleted the soil, leaving in its wake a textured landscape of dust. When winds came, the dust blew into cities, compromising air quality. In the rains, it washed down the valley, depositing more of the silt that gives the Yellow River its name. In 1995, scientists and engineers surveyed the land of the Loess Plateau in an attempt to determine what was causing the once fertile belt to be a thorn in the country’s. The results of their study led to an experiment in permaculture in China that offers hope to the world.

John D. Liu, Chinese American ecologist and documentary film-maker, documented the project in an award-winning film called Hope in a Changing Climate. In the film that Liu narrates, he reports that the first thing that the scientists discovered was a causal relationship between ecosystem destruction and human poverty. Where environmental degradation is severe, the population becomes trapped in a downward spiral. Because they needed to eat to survive, generational subsistence farming had stripped the land bare in the Loess Plateau. In search of food for themselves and their flocks, farmers and their families continued to deplete the fertility of the surrounding ecosystem, further impoverishing themselves.

When scientists developed the plan to restore the ecosystem in China’s Loess Plateau, generational farmers had to be convinced that not farming was critical for their families’ long-term survival. To get buy in from the locals who did not understand how their families would eat if they were not allowed to farm, the government subsidized them and taught them how to do the work that would restore their land from a scarce dirt pit to a thriving ecosystem.

Around the world, populations are living a scarce subsistence lifestyle similar to the one that the citizens of China’s Loess Plateau used to live. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) states that besides fleeing for personal safety, the basic need for food and shelter is the primary motivation for people leaving their homes and becoming displaced. If there were a stable food supply and supportive ecosystem, then the motivation for the world’s most vulnerable populations to move, would decrease. The UNHCR reports that competition for scarce resources triggers violence. If there were a way to restore resources so that people had food and a sense of power in their lives, the fuel for much of the world’s violence would be spent.

The permaculture experiment in China indeed offers hope to the world. Working with scientists, the local population terraced slopes, they planted trees, and they penned their herds so that the trees could grow without being eaten. Soon they found that their hillsides were green. Instead of letting the rains sheet off the mountains, the terraces collected the water and fed the delicate new roots systems, transforming the arid land into a booming garden. Liu reports that since he first visited the area in 1995, the people have seen a threefold increase in income and a profound sense of hope and empowerment. More

 

© 2014

Can GM and organic farms coexist?

Writing for the Guardian, Australian Research Council future fellow Matthew Rimmer said the ruling raised the prospect of "biotrespass" laws to protect organic farmers.

The decision in Marsh v Baxterwill no doubt reignite the debate over GM crop liability. A number of scholars have argued that there is a need to revise liability regimes in respect of biotechnology. Professor Jeremy de Beerfrom the University of Ottawa has argued that there is a need to adapt the legal principles of trespass to accommodate recent developments in biotechnology, nanotechnology, and synthetic biology. He has called for the creation of a cause of action for "biotrespass".

No doubt the agricultural biotechnology industry would resist such efforts at law reform. From their perspective, GM crops should be subject to the same liability regimes as other forms of farming and agriculture.

At an international level, there will be further debate over the position of GM crops in the sweeping regional agreements under negotiation – including the Trans-Pacific Partnership. There is an intense struggle between organic farmers and the biotechnology industry at a number of levels in these international agreements.

The Marsh's lawyer, Mark Walter, said the case would have ramifications for Australia's organic industry and raised the possibility of appeal:

"This is a disappointing result for Mr Marsh and leaves Australia’s non-genetically modified food farmers with no legal protection against contamination from nearby properties ... We will closely examine the judgement of this complex and unique case and advise our client of his legal options, including his right to appeal."

The Safe Food Foundation, which helped bankroll Marsh's case, said the future for organic food in Australia was now "uncertain". The Foundation said the judge had erred by criticising Australia's organic food regulators for stripping Marsh's organic status.

The court in its judgment stated the decision by NASAA (National Association of Sustainable Agriculture Australia) to decertify Steve was erroneous. Given the extent of the contamination of Steve’s farm we fail to see how NASAA could have taken any other decision. Certainly 100% of organic consumers would support the NASAA decision.

Because the court did not recognise the NASAA decertification the court did not recognise the economic loss Steve suffered, and dismissed the case that Steve had brought for negligence and nuisance.

Foundation director, Scott Kinnear, said:

“This is a huge setback for organic and Non GM farmers and their choice to remain GM Free. This has been an important test case, of interest to many parties, locally and globally.

“We also call on our legislators to work on finding a solution to this vexed issue. State and Federal governments have continuously stated that the solution to any GM contamination events is common law. This has clearly failed today and demonstrates that the law has not kept up with new technologies such as GM.”

NASAA general manager Ben Copeman said the decision highlighted the need for legislative change for the sector and that it had opened up a "Pandora box" of conflict between the GM and organic farming sectors.

“We found GM canola growing on organically certified land. The court found that there was no risk of GM contamination. While tolerance thresholds for GM contamination are governed by the Federal Government under the National Standard for Organic and Biodynamic Produce, it is not a legislated standard and is not recognised by the courts." More

 

© 2014

Corporate stranglehold of farmland a risk to world food security, study says

The world's food supplies are at risk because farmland is becoming rapidly concentrated in the hands of wealthy elites and corporations, a study has found.

Small farmers, the UN says, grow 70% of the world's food but a new analysis of government data suggests the land which they control is shrinking every year as mega-farms and plantations squeeze them onto less than 25% of the world's available farmland, says international land-use group Grain. These mega-farms are less productive in terms of amount of food they produce per area of land, the report argues.

"Small farms have less than a quarter of the world's agricultural land – or less than 20% excluding China and India. Such farms are getting smaller all the time, and if this trend persists they might not be able to continue to feed the world," says the report which draws on government statistics and calls for a stop on land grabbing by corporations.

The report suggests that the single most important factor in the drive to push small farmers onto ever smaller parcels of land is the worldwide expansion of industrial commodity crop farms. "The powerful demands of food and energy industries are shifting farmland and water away from direct local food production to the production of commodities for industrial processing," it says. The land area occupied by just four crops – soybean, oil palm, rapeseed and sugar cane – has quadrupled over the past 50 years. Over 140 million hectares of fields and forests have been taken over by these plantations since the 1960s – roughly the same area as all the farmland in the EU.

"What we found was shocking," said Henk Hobbelink of Grain. "If small farmers continue to lose the very basis of their existence, the world will lose its capacity to feed itself. We need to urgently put land back in the hands of small farmers and make the struggle for agrarian reform central to the fight for better food systems."

Big farms have been getting bigger nearly everywhere with rising numbers of small and medium-sized farmers going out of business in the past 20 years, say the authors. Belgium, Finland, France, Germany and Norway in western Europe have each lost about 70% of their farms since the 1970s while Bulgaria, Estonia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia each lost over 40% of their farms from 2003 to 2010. Poland alone lost almost 1m farmers between 2005 and 2010.

"Within the EU as a whole, over 6m farms disappeared between 2003 and 2010, bringing the total number of farms down to almost the same level as in 2000, before the inclusion of 12 new member states with their 8.7m new farmers," says the report , released with international peasant organisation Via Campesina.

But the concentration of land ownership is seen on every continent. Argentina lost more than one-third of its farms in the two decades from 1988 to 2008. Between 1997 to 2007, Chile lost 15% of its farms with the biggest farms doubling their average size, from 7,000 to 14,000 ha per farm. The United States has lost 30% of its farms in the last 50 years. Here, the number of very small farms has almost tripled, while the number of very large farms has more than quintupled.

In addition most farms have been getting smaller over time due to factors such as population pressure and lack of access to land. In India, the average farm size roughly halved from 1971 to 2006. In China, the average area of land cultivated per household fell by 25% between 1985 and 2000. In Africa, average farm size is also falling.

The authors say land reform is urgently needed if enough food is to be grown to feed everyone. "What we see happening in many countries ... is a kind of reverse agrarian reform, whether it's through corporate land grabbing in Africa, the recent agribusiness-driven coup d'état in Paraguay, the massive expansion of soybean plantations in Latin America, the opening up of Burma to foreign investors, or the extension of the European Union and its agricultural model eastward," says Hobbelink.

"In all of these processes, control over land is being usurped from small producers and their families, with elites and corporate powers pushing people onto smaller and smaller land holdings, or off the land entirely into camps or cities," he said.

The takeover of small farmers' land is now accelerating, says the report with nearly 60% of this land use change occurring in the past 20 years. The report estimates that 90% of all farms worldwide are "small", holding on average 2.2 hectares.

The report also found that small farmers often twice as productive as large farms and are more environmentally sustainable. "Although big farms generally consume more resources, control the best lands, receive most of the irrigation water and infrastructure ... they have lower technical efficiency and therefore lower overall productivity. Much of this has to do with low levels of employment used on big farms in order to maximise return on investment.

"Our data [suggests] that if all farms in Kenya had the current productivity of the country's small farms, Kenya's agricultural production would double. In Central America and Ukraine, it would almost triple. In Hungary and Tajikistan it would increase by 30%. In Russia, it would be increased by a factor of six," the report says.

"Beyond strict productivity measurements, small farms also are much better at producing and utilising biodiversity, maintaining landscapes, contributing to local economies, providing work opportunities and promoting social cohesion, not to mention their real and potential contribution to reversing the climate crisis."

The most productive farmers in the world are possibly found in Botswana, the report argues, where 93% of the farmers have small patches of land but together they grow all the country's groundnuts, 99% of its maize, 90% of the millet, 73% of beans and 25% of the sorghum on just 8% of the farmland. More

 

© 2014

Allan Savory: How to fight desertification and reverse climate change

"Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert," begins Allan Savory in this quietly powerful talk. And it's happening to about two-thirds of the world's grasslands, accelerating climate change and causing traditional grazing societies to descend into social chaos.Savory has devoted his life to stopping it. He now believes — and his work so far shows — that a surprising factor can protect grasslands and even reclaim degraded land that was once desert.

Allan Savory works to promote holistic management in the grasslands of the world.

© 2014

Permaculture PDC in Palestine in September

Marda Permaculture Certification Course, Register Now!

Join us in SEPTEMBER for an exquisite opportunity to learn about permaculture principles and techniques whilst experiencing the culture, food and traditions of beautiful Palestine! And much more! Check out: Permaculture Design Course, 25 September – 10 October 2014

For more information click here

 

© 2014

Into the Fire: Food in the Age of Climate Change

Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute, points out that earlier civilizations often collapsed because of food shortages brought on by unsound agricultural practices.

The Sumerian civilization sank because their soil was ruined by rising salt levels, the result of a design flaw in their irrigation system. The Mayan empire fell due to soil erosion, caused by excessive land clearance to feed their population. We now stand in a similar position, facing an acute threat to our own food system, and the immediate danger comes from a changing climate. But there is a major difference between our civilization and earlier ones: we have a clear scientific understanding of the roots of the crisis and are thus in a better position to respond to it. Collapse is not inevitable. The big question we face is not a “why” but a “whether”: whether we will act effectively before it’s too late.

Brown also says, in the same context, that economic and social collapse was almost always preceded by a period of environmental decline. This indicates that there is generally a margin of time in which we can pull back from the brink. We’re now in that phase of decline, and the need to act promptly and decisively to preserve the world’s food system cannot be overemphasized. We’ve already delayed too long. At present close to a billion people suffer from chronic hunger and malnutrition. If the food system fails to produce enough food to feed the planet, millions more, mostly children, will be consigned to a life of perpetual want, even to death by starvation. In countries stricken with food shortages, social chaos will erupt and food riots will break out. Migration will increase from poor countries to more affluent ones, triggering a backlash of resentment. States in the poorest regions will totter and fail, perhaps unleashing more waves of violent terrorism.

Avoiding such a fate requires rapid changes to our energy system, a transition from an economy driven by fossil fuels to a leaner economy powered by benign sources of energy. At the same time, we must promote greater equity between the global North and South in a collaborative effort to end hunger everywhere. Such changes, however, could not be easily implemented on the basis of our present scale of values, which exalts profits and economic expansion even by ripping apart the natural systems on which the economy depends. Our culture will have to change in its fundamentals: from one that celebrates luxury, power, and consumption to one that honors sufficiency, generosity, social justice, and the integrity of the biosphere.

The problem of food security is exacerbated by the projected rise in global population from 7 billion to 9.3 billion people by 2050. A growing population exerts more pressure on the world’s food supply not only because there will be many more mouths to feed, but also because more of those mouths will be eating higher on the food chain. As people in developing economies rise in social status they choose a diet rich in meat and dairy over one based primarily on plants. Since it takes several pounds of grain to produce a pound of meat, grain stocks that would otherwise go to feed hungry people would instead be used to feed livestock in order to provide meat and dairy for the affluent. According to a recent report from the World Resources Institute, unless the affluent restrain their demand for animal products, worldwide food calories will need to increase by about 60 percent from 2006 levels if we’re to feed everyone adequately.

But while agriculture must be empowered to feed a larger population, it will have to employ methods of cultivation that minimize its negative impact on the environment. Modern industrial agriculture harms the environment in at least three ways: (1) by the degradation of ecosystems, particularly through deforestation and loss of biodiversity; (2) by its demands on the world’s sources of fresh water, 80 to 90% of which is used by agriculture; and (3) by emitting massive amounts of greenhouse gases, which aggravate climate change. At present, agriculture accounts for about 25% of greenhouse gas emissions. These include methane from livestock, nitrous oxide from fertilizer use, and carbon dioxide from machinery, transport, and land use change. Meat and dairy production emits far higher amounts of greenhouse gases than crop cultivation, ranging from 16 times more for beef to 4.6 times more for chicken. This provides another strong argument for reducing consumption of meat. More

 

The Refractometer - An Indispensable Monitoring Tool

The Refractometer - An Indispensable Monitoring Tool. from NTS Health on Vimeo.

 

United Natures

United Natures is a documentary movie on the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, permaculture, philosophy, spirituality and a neo-indigenous future for humanity.

103 minutes. Release June 1st 2013.

Featuring a stellar cast of top international thinkers and activists including Starhawk, Dr. Vandana Shiva, David Holmgren (co-originator of permaculture), Father Bob Maguire, Polly Higgins (ecocide), Rosa Maria Ruiz, John Seed, Cormac Cullinan and many others.

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbw-0VDhGhU

Website www.unitednaturesmovie.com

Like our FB page: www.facebook.com/UnitedNatures

Supported by Permaculture Magazine

www.permaculture.co.uk

International Permaculture Day May 5th 2013

www.permacultureday.org

Permaculture Design Course for International Development & Social Entrepreneurship

June 24 – July 7, 2013

Convened by Quail Springs Permaculture and True Nature Design

Lead Instructors: Warren Brush with Quail Springs and True Nature Design and Joseph Lentunyoi of the Maasai people, Permaculture Research Institute of Kenya and Nyumbani Village

Guest Instructors include:
Jeremiah Kidd, Global Permaculture Designer and Educator
Cathe’ Fish , Founder of Practical Permaculture Research Institute
Lyn Hebenstreit, Co-Founder of Global Resource Alliance
Tara Blasco, Co-Founder of Global Resource Alliance
Loren Luyendyk, Co-Founder of Surfer’s Without Borders
Alissa Sears, Global Betterment Director at Christie Communications
Jeannette Acosta, Indigenous Permaculture Designer and Educator
Daniel Parra-Hensel, Permaculture Designer and Educator
Brenton Kelly, Principle Farm Educator for Quail Springs Permaculture
Tom Cole, Principle Agricultural Advisor with Save the Children

“My learning journey at Quail Springs helped to nurture my presence of mind to be a better and more active listener – a vital trait for the international development professional. The coursework was incredibly pertinent to my work in Uganda and without a doubt made me more aware, more compassionate, and more focused in my role as a project manager and human being.” - Grant Buhr, Project Focus, Quail Springs’ PDC graduate

Permaculture is an integrated design system that provides a framework for consciously designed landscapes that provide diversity, stability, and resilience for individuals and communities. Permaculture is in 160 countries with many thousands of grassroots projects on-the-ground.

This course will assist you and your organization with integrating into your projects:

• Increased Food Security
• Community-Based Development
• Waste Cycling
• Sustainability Education
• Clean Water and Drought Proofing
• Health and Nutrition
• Sustainable Vocations & Enterprise

Topics include: Integrated Design, Composting, Water Harvesting, Compost Toilets, Waste Cycling, Earthworks, Rocket Stoves, Design Priorities, Ecological Building, Aquaculture, Bio-Sand Filtration, Broad Acre Applications, Food Forestry, Bio-Engineering, Resilient Food Production, Greywater Systems, Livestock Integration, Soil building, Watershed Restoration, Integrated Pest Mgmt, Biomimicry, Appropriate Technology, Peacemaking, Conflict Resolution, Community Organizing, Drought Proofing Landscapes, Rebuilding Springs, Refugee Camp Strategies

During this specialized course we will be offering the participants direct hands-on learning experiences that include:

• Making a simple and effective solar cooker
• Creating a thermophyllic compost system
• Building a BioSand water filter
• Building a water harvesting bio swale
• Constructing an earthen rocket stove

This course is designed for people who work with non-government organizations or government agencies, community organizers working in international development and/or social entrepreneurship, as well as volunteers and students with dedicated interest in the subject matter.

View of Download COURSE CURRICULUM OVERVIEW here

View or Download COURSE BROCHURE here

Teaching Team

Our instruction team is comprised of a diverse mix of special guest instructors led by Warren Brush and Joseph Lentunyoi.

Warren Brush is a Permaculture designer and teacher as well as a mentor and storyteller. Warren is co-founder ofQuail Springs Permaculture, Regenerative Earth Farms, Sustainable Vocations, Wilderness Youth Project, and his Permaculture design company, True Nature Design. He works in Permaculture education and sustainable systems design in North America, Africa, Middle East, Europe, and Australia.

Joseph Lentunyoi is from the Maasai tribe, and is co-founder of the Permaculture Research Institute of Kenya, to which he brings extensive practical knowledge of sustainable farming as well as teaching experience. Joseph is the Sustainability Director for Nyumbani Village, where over 900 children live who have been orphaned by HIV related diseases, alongside teaching and designing with permaculture techniques extensively in East Africa.

Registration

Cost includes instruction, certification, catered meals, and camping accommodations.
Cost: $1,650 (a deposit of $300 reserves your space with the full balance due by June 10)
Early Bird: $1,450 for payment in full by April 15

Discounts
Early Bird – $200 discount, course payment in full by April 15, 2013
PDC Refresher – $200 discount, participants with a previous 72-hr Permaculture Design Certification
Couples – $300 discount, applies to your joint total for couples registering, paying and traveling together
Check or Money Order – $25 discount, payment by check or money order

How to Register

1. Fill out Online Pre-Registration – Click Here
2. Receive confirmation, orientation, program and payment details to your email address
3. Make payment to formally reserve your space

Contact with questions: Kolmi Majumdar – email info@quailsprings.org, phone 805-886-7239