“Who would be designing the land if I find myself unable to visit?”

The designs would be done by permaculture teachers as part of design courses, with the students, and in co-operation with investors. That would be very relevant to PDC students, because they would have a similar situation in their work later. Satisfying the landowner is a crucial skill.

The students benefit from the practice, and the fact that the teacher is in charge of producing the plan guarantees it will be ok. In addition, the initial earthworks and preparation would be done as part of a course, so setup costs would be minimal. Both sides benefit from this.

The ongoing work would be done by locals, trained at the centre and with the professional oversight of the qualified designers at the centre. these would initially be from outside the area (Australia, Britain…), but the aim is to train up locals to run the whole thing.

“Would I be provided with maps, a layout and the design?”

Maps and layout would be by email. Also google earth has very good coverage of the area now, so we could pinpoint it by GPS and you’d be able to see individual trees even. I am setting it up so that we are the agent, with no long-term contract, so that we have to satisfy our ‘customers’ and everything is transparent. If enough investors were unhappy with our work, it would be trivial to get together and send someone over to appoint another agent. I realise things can change over time, and I thought this was a good way to keep people on their toes, and stop any power base from emerging.

We can’t really start until the building is done, but I’d like to iron out all the issues beforehand, so that we can do it immediately after that. I’m aiming for before the end of this year, maybe in the late Autumn.

Planting: This would mostly be part of the courses, and a nursery would be started at the centre too. Other work including more planting would be done by paying locals at around 25 euros a day.

Foreigners: From what I saw, there was no resentment. There’s a huge area and we would keep it below a certain percentage of any given area. Once that percentage was reached, we could go further afield (e.g. the land in the video above is about 20 km away, and an ideal place to buy a large plot for maybe 5 or 6 investors and cut costs even more) The idea is for this project to help the overall restoration, not to take it over. The land bought would be the marginal land, and mostly would be like a zone 4 or 5 if you imagine the region as a single large permaculture project. The ‘valuable’ land, which is already farmed, wouldn’t be affected, only beneficially through increased presence of water.

I have talked about this with people from there, and they see no problem. The most likely negative reaction is that we are mad to be interested in that land, but they’ll take our money anyway!

This would only be part of many different things, the aggregate of which is like one huge permaculture project.

Questionable History: hehe! look for the transaction before the first one on any title deeds, and there you will find the crime. But this is tribal land, up in the mountains, worthless to big business. Ownership is like a patchwork of small plots, handed down over the years and split up by the various families. Sometimes selling a patch of ‘useless land’ some distance from your actual farmhouse can enable a new house to be built, or better facilities to be added.

Still I’ll bear this in mind and find out more. We definitely don’t want to spark off some simmering family feud.

This would be an integral part of an overall plan including the permaculture centre, school, valley restoration, internet and various small businesses where the locals can form a co-op to sell their produce to the towns without middlemen. Also exporting low-weight, high value commodities such as spices and music, both to shops in europe and directly to people anywhere via the internet. The idea is to restore the ecology and the local economy, but without involving people in repetitive tasks like in a monoculture, by seeing what they do already and using that as a starting point.

The main thing I noticed is that nobody there does just one thing. What I have in mind is many different small enterprises, which all support each other in an interlocking and organic system based on local traditions and skills. Permaculture is the only thing I know of that doesn’t come along with a pre-conceived plan, and thus is ideal to fit in with the community.

Having said that, their traditional methods have led to the desert, and that there will be some upset along the way as a new system is introduced, however by teaching the locals and involving them with the project from the word go we hope to enable them to change and create a food forest, and by doing it ourselves and showing them, it shows our respect, rather than imposed laws à la WWF and UN.

Please let me know anything else this brings up, or email me. I really want to make this happen, and I can see it is very possible, but needs some attention to the details.

How do the locals feel about foreigners buying up their land? Or is there any questionable history about how this land became available?
Sorry for the barrage of questions! These were just some things that came to mind.