Three-Month Site Transformation of Degraded Land (Bangalore, India)

It all began with my visit to Australia last September and visiting Crystal Waters eco-village and then streaming through many videos and articles on permaculture put out by permaculturenews.org. Those videos and the articles inspired me to visit the Panya Project and do a course in December 2012 and a PDC in May 2013.

It further inspired me to visit many permaculture sites before I returned to Bangalore, India where I live.

The Art of Living Foundation (AOL) gave me an opportunity to put up a demonstration site in their 7 acres of degraded land adjacent to their premises. It was opportunity knocking on my door.

I met Christian Shearer and the Panya teachers and it was the beginning of developing a permaculture site to restore this totally degraded and overgrazed land in Bangalore, India. Along with Brecht and Nick we created a permaculture design in July 2013 and began implementation from August 2013 with Troy and Brian joining us to implement the design.

In the last 90 days, there has been a tremendous transformation of the degraded land by applying principles of permaculture — digging swales on slopes and designing raised garden beds and planting hundreds of fruit trees in the many zones created in the design, and now on to creating a small but sustainable structure made of bamboo and mud.

I have compiled the pictures taken of the land before we began the permaculture implementation, so you can see the transformation that has happened only from August this year until the end of October 2013. The picture story shows how the swales have helped fill the existing dry ponds in the land and how the land is looking green!

I am just interested in inspiring farmers in India to join this movement and take advantage of permaculture techniques to bring sustainable farming back to life.