Being a Graphic Designer and running my own business as a visual brand communication company based in Mauritius. I have been thinking about this for some months before taking my PDC and Internship at Zaytuna Farm, PRI Australia in April 2012.

THE WAKING UP:

How do any of us know what is normal? I didn't even know what was normal for me. All I knew is that at the time normal was not what I was. We desperately fight all of our lives in this endless rat race just to enjoy the simple things. People have told me life is unfair that way. I am inclined to agree. Life is incredibly unfair this way, and if you are fragile for any reason, you can't escape it.

I sometimes believed that my "illness" was not caused by my past, but it's just a symptom of this so called "modern life". Running after time: We wake up, get ready for work, arrive at work, deal with any issues at work locked up behind walls in front of a computer all day, do your job as best you can, maybe work late (maybe work late a lot), spend nearly 3 hours of your day on the road in traffic jams and road pollutions, get home, do chores if needed, with almost no family time left (quality time), go to bed, (and then the best part), START ALL OVER AGAIN, every day of your life, like a very straight line of constant monotony.

Now… when you start questioning yourself, you realise, (it is like a waking up)...
Your eyes opens to our societies' biggest problems: Economic collapse and complete unequal distribution of financial resources; Peak oil: Petroleum has powered the modern world for almost 100 years. Today, many industry insiders say that we may be reaching a permanent peak in oil production. Global water crisis, extremely high levels of pollution, and natural resources running out, or being degraded. Massive species extinction, soil degradation and rapid climate change. Madness has its own dynamism. It just goes on…

Populations are migrating from rural areas to the urban cities. Our crops comes courtesy of Monsanto, our livestocks lives in factories...
Many politicians, and business leaders have called this "progress" in the name of economic growth. Constantly increasing the capacity of an economy to produce goods and services, compared from one period of time to another. From one year, to the next... indefinitely. But then, where does it ends on a finite planet?? We grew up in this vicious endless loop of materialism and massive consumerism, blinded by the medias, massive advertising, aggressive marketing strategies, which unconsciously are cutting us away from our natural ecosystems, to which, in reality, we are all so intimately part of.

If we settle for the ultra-urban life, if we allow all wilderness to be compromised and hand our farming over to industrial chemists then, quite simply, the world will fall apart, as it is doing already. So it isn't simply sad that we, as a generation, are so cut off from nature. For the future of the whole world, it is a very dangerous state of affairs.
We human beings need to stay in touch with nature for our own sakes. Many studies such as ecotherapy, shows how much better people feel when in sight of trees, and working the lands. And yet even more to the point, nature itself needs us to stay in touch.

In reality, nature will always be beyond our ken and way beyond our control, except here and there, but we do have the power to destroy vast swathes of it. But whether or not, we ourselves survive, and in what numbers ? and in what state ? depends on how well we look after the rest. In the end, the fate of all our fellow creatures, their habitats, and ourselves, depends largely on our attitude towards the environment. For our sake as well as theirs we need to give a damn. But how can we give a damn if we spend our lives indoors, locked in this rat race of the "modern world"?

DISCOVERING PERMACULTURE:

All these personal thoughts, lots of research, and a major awakening brought me to take action by completing my PDC and 10 week internship program at the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia, where I discovered the following statement from my teacher Geoff Lawton:

"You can fix all the world's problems, in a garden. You can solve them all in a garden. You can solve all your pollution problems, and all your supply line needs in a garden. And most people today actually don't know that, and that makes most people very insecure." (Geoff Lawton)

We have to rethink our lifestyles, and what agriculture is really for, and why, and why conservation matters to us, as well as to other creatures. Changes of strategy begin with attitude and attitude begins with awareness.

TAKING ACTION:

So now... I shifted my career orientation, and converted my company "Rain Media Agency Ltd." to "Terganic Ltd", a company now offering sustainable living and agro-ecological solutions as consultants who follows the ethics, concepts, and technics of Permaculture.

THE ACTUAL PROJECTS:

We mainly have our own family Permaculture farm and homestead project on a 27 acres property we just recently took ownership of. A farm site we have named "La Meule" meaning " The Grindstone" in french. A name we have chosen from the past history of the property related to the local villagers working since decades, in the sugarcane fields of the area.

The Farm being completely off-grid will sustain ourselves with its vegetable gardens, main crop fields, food forests, animal husbandries, water harvesting systems, energy systems, and other appropriate technologies. The farm acts as a permaculture research center, in collaboration or partnership with compatible local businesses, wildlife foundations, and potentially, governmental units, working towards the same goals. We implement on site our positive results, sustaining us and feeding ourselves from our produce, selling all surplus to visitors, and the local markets.

In line with its daily sustainable living activities, the farm will be an integrated ecological demonstration platform offering site visites, and short to longer term accommodations, open to local citizens, local and international WWOOFERS (Willing workers on organic farms), and other foreigners or tourists willing to discover any ecological systems they might be interested in, and see it there, in action, on the site.

From there, the farm has an educational program in which we will, sooner or later, offer courses and workshops to anyone interested in developing those systems for themselves, or elsewhere. Just to name a few, those courses and workshops would include:
A Permaculture organic gardening workshop,
Compost soil biology, and natural fertilisers workshop,
Plant propagation technics,
Seed saving and bio-intensive gardening,
Pond building and its ecosystems,
Aquaponics systems course,
An introduction to permaculture,
And the 72hrs Permaculture design course (PDC)...

We have numerous projects on the stove, including setting up a PRI Mauritius at La Meule Permaculture Farm with the help of local NGO's, Permaculture friends around the world, like minded local people, and the support of PRI Australia.

Our awareness and educational strategies are communicated through our local trade name "Tierra Organica" which represents the company as a promoter for environmental awareness, community developments with non political views, and provides informations on materials and strategies for green renos, plus articles, explanations, insights, on the present social and ecological situations, and how we can improve the efficiency, sustainability, and wellbeing of our lives together.

We use our website:
www.tierraorgica.org

and our facebook page: www.facebook.com/la.tierra.organica