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It seems scandalous that so many small family farmers around the world experience poverty and hunger. This is not the natural order!
FAR supports farming communities in co-creating their own local solutions to improve yields, with the focus on achieving better livelihoods without resorting to unsustainable practices that bring short-term benefits at the expense of long-term costs. Problems that typically result from following conventional farming advice include, for example, degraded soil and water resources, and growing debt to meet the escalating costs of expensive inputs.
A credible body of research shows that small farmers can achieve equivalent improvements in yields and livelihoods through agroecological farming methods without incurring these long-term problems. Many thousands of permaculture projects around the world are demonstrating the practical application of systems thinking to the design of sustainable and regenerative food systems. These skills can help to build resilient communities that can survive and prosper despite the shocks of disease, pestilence and adverse climate events. There are permaculture training centers actively teaching these skills all over the world.
FAR started its permEzone pilot program back in 2017. Our first project with in Asumbi, Kenya trained and supported 10 farmers who went through the entire 2-year program and built a network of 250 farmers in their community working together to solve common problems and make best use of their local resources. Our 2nd pilot in Sanje, Uganda is due to ended in April 2021, with 20 lead farmers and over 400 farmers in their local network.Our 3rd pilot project in Kisa West, Kenya ended in December 2023, with 30 lead farmers recruiting nearly 600 local farmers into their communities of practice.
We are now building on the pilot to develop our capacity to share information and experience about regenerative farming – ways to grow abundant food crops while improving biodiversity and the health of natural resources. Each project is delivered by an existing permaculture training center, training and supporting family farmers as they learn about the design of sustainable and regenerative food systems. These lead farmers design and create model farms, and build communities of practice to share knowledge and experience with other members of their community through farmer-to-farmer extension work.
The evidence of wide-scale land degradation and freshwater depletion and pollution all over the world, which is mostly associated with the adoption of intensive monoculture farming, tells us that changing the way we grow food is one of the fundamental imperatives of our time. To meet the challenge of feeding current and future generations without further destroying biodiversity, we need to re-evaluate our relationship to the natural world. Permaculture is one way of doing this, of moving away from agriculture as a war on nature, towards farming that learns from nature and integrates with and regenerates complex ecosystems.
As with so many of the complex and interconnected problems associated with the breaching of planetary boundaries, it has become abundantly clear that grassroots action is the only effective option available to slow down and reverse the steady degradation of these natural resources; resources that current and future generations will depend on.
Please help us to build the momentum to keep this remarkable program growing. Show your support for our efforts to take action on these urgent issues by signing up for the free newsletter now.
