Permaculture projects in Bali?

[adrian]

hey,

my partner and i will be in Bali in august and september this year as we've lined up a couple of clients and have some friends in some villages in the central mountains area (where we'll be staying) we're planning on helping introduce some more sustainable practices to their farming.

we're very interested in checking out any interesting permaculture or similar projects and/or volunteering (as much as we can with what will then be our 6 month old daughter in our arms) on interesting projects.

if anyone has any leads, speak up.

[ho-hum]

Adrian,

It would be worthwhile taking over some heirloom seeds with you. Often village folk lack access to seed banks [past what they have saved] and you may give them a technological advantage. Just a word of note, don't take anything like corn or rice. I would hesistate before playing around with their staple crops.

I would go to the markets in Denpasar and find out what foods are being imported eg. snowpeas, french type beans, beetroot etc and send home for them. This type of thing could provide valuable cashflow for struggling subsistence farmers.

Some villages have been given things like generators and plumbing with no idea how to source things like filters or even thread tape.

You can positively impact with very little cash input. If you go to the FAO site and look at animal husbandry for the tropics you will find hundreds of pages of information, none of which is available at village level. There are dozens of articles on tropical pig/fish/rabbit/duck and chook feeding systems using available resources. All of the information is presented with extensive research information.

You may wish to introduce the concept of squab production to a village. Indonesians eat a lot of pigeon but are indiscriminate with age and breeding. Squab production could lead to a village breaking into the tourist belt restaurant trade.

Hope this helps,

floot