International Permaculture Convergence (IPC) 2017 in India: What We Loved

Well - talk about an inspirational way to spend a week. The International Permaculture Convergence 2017 was hosted by Aranya Agriculture Alternatives (fuelled by the never-ending energy of Padma and Narsanna Koppula) and brought over 500 delegates from around India and the globe together to discuss and demonstrate best practices and new approaches from the front lines of the permaculture movement.

We packed up the tent, left the farm under the watchful eyes of some neighbours, and set off for Polam Farm. We've been heavily influenced by the philosophy and practices of permaculture since taking a 14 day Permaculture Design Certificate in June 2016 at Aranya Farm. We’d fantasized for weeks & months about the potential life and farm changes that attending the IPC would bring. We’re glad to say - it did not disappoint.

Below we’ve listed the sessions that we attended (there were just so many to choose from!) that touched us the most.

Tropical Permaculture Guidebook & Permaculture School Gardens in Timor-Leste

Now this is the kind of shit that gets us excited! Because permies love to share knowledge, we have acquired a nice stack of resources over the months - but the trouble is, that many books are out of the price range of the people who need it most. The Tropical Permaculture Guidebook is available for download on a sliding scale of payment so its accessible to everyone!

Its beautifully illustrated and covers a huge range of topics - from using bamboo, seeds, nursery - everything you need to get a permaculture project up and running. Check it out at http://permacultureguidebook.org/

Composting with Kristoff Schneider, Permaculture School

Everything you thought knew about composting is wrong!

Well, not totally, but Kristoff’s extremely passionate presentation, coupled with hard science research from Austria, totally shifted a lot about what we thought was true. He was a big proponent of cold composting - suggesting that the nutritional quality of composts go down when they are allowed to get hot - basically burnt. He advocated for keeping buckets of soil in your basement, and mix in kitchen waste regularly. Would hear this guy speak again in a heartbeat - we did actually go twice to his presentation!

Handing Spinning Cotton

A meditative artform, being rediscovered and promoted by a small youth-led team, was a highlight of the tradition village skills demonstration area at IPC. A problem we often face at the farm is completing the cycle - bringing harvests to their final useable product. Knowledge about methods used to hand-process various crops is fading from mainstream society with the oppression of indigenous people's culture and a corporate focus on cheap, mass-produced products. Learning a low-tech method for spinning the future harvests of our perennial cotton trees was a great way to spend some spare time during the convergence. A simple metal spinning top with a long, thin, spindle and small hook at the end is the only equipment needed. Concentration and breathing is the really hard work! We won’t call ourselves experts yet, but our guides recommended 1 hour of spinning a day - just 2 cotton plants will produce enough string to make a shirt.

Climate Change Adaptation in Central-East India with Arendhu S.C. from DRCSC

This was the meat of the convergence for us- some real examples of layered planting patterns in the Indian context! We swooned at the idea of using fast-growing species such as moringa and sesbania grandiflora as living trellis posts for growing gourds, pumpkins, and cucumber among the swales in our little food forest. By pollarding (cutting at about 6ft height) these trees, you’ll keep the sun flowing to the vegetables and have ample organic matter to use for mulching. Coupled with taro & tumeric as your groundcovering species, its a super-functional little system.

Since sesbania grandiflora doesn’t mind the wet habitat of a rice field, it also makes a great solution for a green manure - we’re also now planning to use it as a live trellis for annual veg like tomato and brinjal (eggplant) too.

Arendhu had lots to say about using bamboo as a base for stacking multiple functions around ponds. He swore by the row intercropping planting pattern of 3 rows - using plant height and date of maturity as a basis for deciding what to grow next to each other. Different heights of plants mean different depths of roots - so this type of planting reduces root competition among species. It increases food security if your harvest period lasts as long as possible.

Morning Walks with Narsanna

On the days when we managed to face the chilly mornings and join Narsanna’s 6am dash around the farm, we realized how Polam farm came a long way in about 18 months - vegetable beds, orchards, field crops, and lots of new compost toilet facilities for all the convergence participants. As always, we scrambled to keep up with the pace and tried to absorb as much as we could about using native plant species in our designs!

This is absolutely not a comprehensive list of the amazing speakers & demonstrators that shared their knowledge and experiences on the fields of Polam Farm, but after making the tough choice of choosing what parallel session to take in when so many were running at the same time - these are the most meaningful ones for us.

See you in Argentina in 2020!

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