I have watched a program today in Aljazeera news channel called Earthrise which featured your project in Jordan. I found your work on Permaculture extremely interesting and believed that your will benefit millions of lives here in Nigeria, especially northern Nigeria where there Sahara encroachment, water scarcity and the majority of people here are poor, not educated and there means of livelihood is farming.
I am wondering if you and your group have done any project in the northern part of Nigeria in the past, if not I would like to urge to consider doing a project here as it will touch millions of lives. Project here can

I see that you have taught a few classes in Louisiana. I was hoping you could help me get connected into the already existing permaculture network here in Louisiana. I have some experience but I am ready to work hard and learn as much as I can. Any way that you could help point me in the right direction would be greatly appreciated. Please email me back at jbantuelle@gmail.com.

Thanks,
Jordan Bantuelle

I am very much inspired by your food forest video and I think that with some guidance from you we could develop this vision and wisdom in this semi-arid zone of Rajasthan.

I have been developing the production of vegetables, herbs and the propagation of native trees here over the last 10 years and still have not established a good compost supply or succeeded in a great deal of diversity. We stick to seasonal vegies and I basically listen to the locals. I can now see what can be achieved if we start to step out of the norm and experiment a bit and so today we planted in a small area a combination of millet, lucerne grass, ashwagandha, roquette, European paprika, tomato and basil, psyllium and lavender – all of which pretty much have the potential to do well mid-monsoon. We have a dam here – talab as it is locally called but it has not been full for 3 years now and is close to empty now. We have been in drought for 3 years.

I wonder if you would ever consider visiting us out here. It is primarily a yoga ashram under construction since 1992 and there is a great deal of potential development for landscaped gardens and forested areas – especially in the area of fruit orchards.

Summer temperatures get higher each year – 49 celsius in June and so we do lose alot of trees each year. Acacias do well and some local types. Neems are our number one.

In addition,if you know anybody who would or could come out on a volunteer basis with some experience and the desire to experience a quite and gentle atmosphere that would also be great. I suppose you must meet 1000s of greenthumbs owing to your mission whereas I feel quite isolated here in that respect. Many of the European guests are even fearful to come to the gardens because they are sure that they we meet cobras and scorpions!

Thankyou for the inspiration. I share your ideals and really feel that children need to be learning basic horticultural skills from KG class these days. It is the need of the hour and surely the greatest joy. My teacher often says that agricultural is the best culture. Perhaps it is also the most ancient.

Sincerely yours

Puspa Devi

Harmonizing with landscape and water harvesting on contour to grow combinations of extremely hardy desert trees creating shade, condensation, wind buffering by close spacing and organic matter supply support for climax production tree species establishment.

To start this process any mulch which is not allopathic will help and if your design is good quite quickly become redundant as the system will provide its own organic matter.

Herds as grazing animals are a natural and integral part of a healthy natural dry land environment but they do need to be very carefully managed by numbers and regular movement. In this way they are a great asset in recovering the fertility and diversity of drylands and assisting in reforestation.

Geoff Lawton’s demonstration of swaling in Jordan’s rapid results seems to be down to the heavy mulching and trickle drip kick started the mycorrhizal fungi in the beginning. I wondered the local communities involved with Salt Water Farming should be presented with alternative uses for the outputs such as using chipped mangrove thinnings as a mulch for Swale gardens. Would the mangrove chip need to be inoculated with fungi to get the same result as crop waste.

Though it is respectful to listen to local communities desire for meat production, perhaps they don’t yet know of the other alternatives. offering the option of less intensive animal husbandry and luscious fruit and vegetable gardens might be appealing especially if it recharges their ground water and fills their wells.

At last the questions: How to inform communities involved of the more sustainable use of sea water farming outputs as inputs into establishing fresh water farming?

How to support them in negotiating a percentage of outputs for more local sustainable initiatives even if they are not as immediately profitable to foreign investors?

Oh yes and does the chipped mangrove thinnings mulch require inoculation to work as well as farm waste?

So called “global warming” is altering systems that can be designed. Also, what of major spiritual, foundational qualities of humanity? Have you seen some of the work by Scot Aaron. He works with time and space a bit differently looking at the “spiritual food” — Here is a copy and paste

learn how to intimately connect with
1] God through the mystical Enlightened Consciousness in foundational core powers of World Religions
2] the meta of physics, in each of the atoms [extended through core energies in all minerals, food and bodies ] through the symbolic, biochemistry [real energy relationships in molecules, enzymes, amino acids, chains of sugars, macromolecules, chromosomes, DNA, Virus, Bacteria, Cells to material objects like semiconductors, microwaves in communication, transistors, drugs, neurochemistry etc. ], through
3] biology and human reality including plant potencies and animal kingdoms to
4] our Celestial Map where we circulate consciousness in a Spectrum of Light and “Involve” all of existence.

[source page – http://relativitycreationismcosmology.com/

great work Geoff, – you are a visionary
Govinda

I’m interested in your thoughts about the use of recycled railway sleepers, as evident in the Peregian Beach Community Garden.

Some have commented about past preservative practices with this form of timber, and the use of herbicides whilst ‘in situ’ under rail track, and the risk of contamination of food grown locations using such sleepsers.

Do you have any concerns?

Best wishes,
Dr Peter Heffernan
Flinders
Victoria

Where can I get or read those PERMACULTURE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL articles?

Thank you,
Ricardo