Permaculture Thailand

Our Beliefs

At Rak Tamachat we believe that everyone – regardless of where they are from, their background, social standing, economic circumstances, education, etc. – have basic rights as humans. We understand that sometimes these people do not know or understand that they have basic rights, as the conditions they are in or were brought up under do not allow for them to believe they can have these. We do understand that everyone has these rights and, further, that it is our responsibility to speak up for or defend them. We feel that, at the most basic level, people have the right to prosper. They have the right to raise their family in peace and harmony. They have the right to live a healthy life free of war, famine, chemicals, slavery. The unequal distribution of resources is the real source of most people’s problems at the bottom of the economic pyramid. The inability for the poor to have access to land and resources, such as water and seeds to plant and grow their own food, forces them to become economic slaves to a system designed to create wants and desires, which makes them rats in a maze they do not know how to escape from. We feel that we have the obligation, as persons who have had the education and upbringing to understand the problems and the solutions, to show and teach the less fortunate how to break out of the cycle that is enslaving them to the corporate systems.

• We believe that everyone should have the right to economic freedom, to provide a basic life for themselves and their family;
• We believe that everyone has the right to food security;
• We believe that everyone should be allowed to have a place to grow food for themselves and their family;
• We believe that everyone has the right to be happy and that the environment to provide that happiness is a right;
• We believe that everyone has the right to raise their family in social harmony and peace without undue economic stress;
• We believe that everyone should be afforded the right to earn a living to provide for themselves and their family;
• We believe that every family should have a home without the burden of a mortgage;
• We believe that education is a right.

Our Choices

At Rak Tamachat, we know that the choices we make will drive our outcomes. We know that some of the things being told to us by the main stream are not right. We can feel that there needs to be some changes but don’t see the answers to these concerns being promoted by our governments, or large businesses. While we fully support the green movement in business to promote renewable resources and recycling, we also realize that the goals of making the most money severely hampers the effectiveness of these operations and slows the development of these much-needed industries. We know that we have the choice to wait and hope the “fats cats” can fix the problems they created, or we can choose to limit our consumption of their products, or in some cases stop using them altogether. We make choices every day at Rak Tamachat, by limiting our consumption and thus reducing the waste and destruction of nonrenewable resources, not allowing the use of chemicals in our gardens and thus working to break the chain of chemical agriculture. As westerners, we choose to live our lives closer to Nature, so that local Thais can see not all western people are what they are shown in the movies. We limit our lives to share with others; we choose a different path to show that the consumerism promoted through the media is not the only way.

• We choose to grow our own food without chemicals;
• We choose to use natural building in our habitats;
• We choose to build our habitat without mortgages;
• We choose to live together in community and foster social harmony with each other and Nature;
• We choose to corporate with Nature instead of fighting against it;
• We choose to share our knowledge and abundance with others;
• We limit the consumption of meats to only what we grow ourselves on our farm in a humane manner, assuring our animals full lives and a humane deaths;
• We choose to limit the consumption of scarce resources such as fuels by sharing our transport and appliances, living in a communal way;
• We choose to eat locally when buying vegetables or other food stuffs from outside Rak Tamachat;
• We choose to cook and share our meals together to reduce the waste from cooking;
• We choose to follow the Ethics and Principles of Permaculture.

Our Goals

Goals Articulation Statement Summary:

• The farm will be a thriving Natural Living Education Center full of activity, providing inspiration to locals and international visitors, while allowing the educators to share and expand their knowledge base.

• The farm will provide a dynamic and abundant life for the local family, resident community, guests, interns, and students while providing a safe haven for learning and expanding one’s horizons.
• The farm will serve as a model of profitable Permaculture Design in action and Regenerative Agriculture, showcasing the power of Integrated Sustainable Farming Systems utilizing Holistic Management Techniques with diligent Animal Husbandry Practices.

• The activities on the farm will require less economic and fossil fuel inputs over time, as an outcome of the Integrated Sustainable Farming Systems following Permaculture Design Principles and Ethics, utilizing Regenerative Agriculture and Holistic Management Techniques with diligent Animal Husbandry Practices.

Goal 1: The farm will provide a dynamic and abundant life for the local family, resident community, guests, interns, and students while providing a safe haven for learning and expanding one’s horizons.

• The environment of the farm provides an ideal place to raise children, with a wide variety of stimulation and activities which help them have a strong physical and mental development and to stay healthy.
• The farm promotes respect for each generation and is home to meaningful activities for everyone, such that all participate in creating the abundance of the farm.
• There is an atmosphere of encouragement and engagement in the social and productive activities of the farm for all.
• Production from the farm and gardens provide the residents with a wide variety of delicious and healthy food, free of any chemical inputs.
• The Food Forests are perennially producing and have an ever-changing variety of fruits, nuts, fibers, fuel, and timber, while also providing habitat for many wild animals as well as our holistically raised chickens, goats, pigs and cows.
• The gardens have an overabundance of fresh food coming from them year round, providing a stable source of healthy food allowing for reduced stress from food insecurity.
• All of our meat and fish needs are supplied on-site through our holistically managed humane animal husbandry systems, while producing the fertilizers from their wastes to feed our gardens and thus ourselves.
• The aquaculture systems provide an abundance of fresh fish and an emergency supply of edible tubers, for the nourishment of the community, while also providing habitat and food sources for our integrated animal systems.
• The farm produces enough timber and bamboo for all the natural building needs of the community.
• The surplus produced on the farm earns us enough income to pay for the day-to-day needs of the residents and the upkeep of the farm in a subsistence manner.

Goal 2: The farm will be a thriving Natural Living Education Center full of activity, providing inspiration to locals and international visitors, while allowing the educators to share and expand their knowledge base.

• The farm hosts Natural Living Education Courses, to share our knowledge and systems with as many people as possible, running on a break-even cost structure based on providing a living wage for the resident teachers and offsetting the lost agricultural revenue to the farm for the area utilized by the center, throughout the year.
• The farm is a thriving community made up of the local family, farm staff, resident educators, guests, interns, and students.
• The farm allows for the many residents to participate in the rewards and abundance of their work.
• The farm is part of a larger worldwide movement, both here in Thailand and beyond, to promote sustainability through Permaculture Principles while demonstrating that a community of like-minded people can live in harmony with the land and each other, and prove that they can do so in an economically efficient manner.
• The farm’s systems continue everyday to evolve and become more efficient and interconnected with the local and world communities.
• The systems on the farm provide the residents with endless opportunities for creativity and invention, they joyfully and playfully utilize these opportunities to find new ways to increase efficiency, beauty and sustainability on the farm.
• The farm utilizes a Permaculture Master Plan – which is a living document, easily updated and revised – enabling the farm and its residents to adjust the plans to ever-changing natural conditions.
• The farm has a steady stream of passionate people, who bring ideas of their own and who take with them valuable experience and inspiration when they leave.
• The residents of the farm interact with the local community in a way that respectfully invites them to learn Permaculture Farming Techniques and ideas about successful permanent agricultural practices.
• The farm gives the residents the opportunity to feel thankful and to share our good fortune with the local community.
• The farm provides low-cost Natural Living courses to the local Thai community and international students from around the world.
• The farm and its actions help the people that live in our village, and throughout Thailand, to view us with respect and camaraderie.
• The residents of the farm work together to create social systems that promote individual growth and group strength.

Goal 3:  The farm will serve as a model of profitable Permaculture Design in action and Regenerative Agriculture, showcasing the power of Integrated Sustainable Farming Systems utilizing Holistic Management Techniques with diligent Animal Husbandry Practices.

• The farm is able to reach break-even after five years on the invested capital for the Regenerative Agriculture and Permaculture Techniques utilized in its transition from a commercial corn and rice farm to an Integrated Sustainable Farm.
• The farm’s systems provide the world with another real example of Integrated Permaculture and Regenerative Agriculture systems utilizing Holistic Management and Animal Husbandry as being economically feasible.
• Through the implementation of an Integrated Permaculture Master Plan, the farm has reduced costs, improved quality, and connected with new markets.
• The Integrated Permaculture Master Plan helps guide the farm, allowing it to be well-managed and focused on the future. In the short term, medium term, and long term, the Integrated Permaculture systems implemented on the farm are practical and easily replicated by the local communities.
• The farm connects with the Worldwide Permaculture Community and shares what we have done and what we have learned through our website and movies.
• The farm experiments with different agricultural techniques utilizing proper scientific methods, and construct and builds them with a thorough understanding of the engineering behind the projects.
• The farm is a demonstration center of Permaculture Systems and Natural Building practices for the local and international communities, where people can come to see and learn how these systems work, and how they can implement them on their farms, promoting “Action Learning”.

Goal 4: The activities on the farm will require less economic and fossil fuel inputs over time, as an outcome of the Integrated Sustainable Farming Systems following Permaculture Design Principles and Ethics, utilizing Regenerative Agriculture and Holistic Management Techniques with diligent Animal Husbandry Practices.

• The farm will shift from energy intensive activities, like conventional tillage agriculture, to more progressive modes of passive production, like perennial crops and aquaculture.
• The farm will experiment with, and implement, different alternative energy systems. These systems include solar, wind, biogas and farm-made bio-fuels to work towards the goal of sending power back to the grid in order to offset our energy cost.
• The residents constantly refine and re-evaluate the farm’s techniques to become even more efficient and effective.
• By abiding with the Principles of Permaculture and Integrated Farming, the farm’s systems have become much more synergistic.  This synergy helps to ensure the health and abundance of the farm and reduce waste, thus producing a larger overall return on each system.
• Every element of the farm is benefiting the system in multiple ways, the residents work to make the interactions as efficient as possible.
• The farm strives to mimic Nature in her diversity, stability, fertility and productivity.
• The “waste” from one element fits seamlessly into the needs of another. Throughout the farm, we are reducing waste and improving the health of the overall system.

Our Community

Rak Tamachat is made up of a group of international people who have come together to work to change their lives and the lives of others by choosing to follow a different path than the one laid out by the consumer economic driven global economy. We currently have 12 residents living on the farm together full time and a constant stream of Guests, Interns and Students forming our larger community. We wish to live our lives in a more natural way, closer to nature and respecting life. We feel the Thai Culture is close to the way we see the optimal lifestyle revolving around raising our own food in peace. We strive every day to build the environment we need to keep our lives at a basic level by providing for our food, shelter, medicine and clothing. Once our base has been established, we can then work to help others to learn the techniques, ideas and practices we use to make our desired lifestyle possible. We know that, through our combined hard work, we can share in the bounty that Nature was designed to provide for its people. We take care of nature and rest assured that we will thus, in turn, be taken care of.

Communal Living

Once you make the lifestyle you want a reality, you free up your time for the things that really matter: relaxing with your friends, sharing good food, discussing life while you wait for the trees to grow!!!! We enjoy spending our time:

• Having Pizza parties in our Adobe Oven
• Making Natural Products
• Seed Saving
• Playing Cards and games together
• Playing a relaxing game of pool
• Swimming in the Pond
• Bar-b-que’s (Both Thai and Western Styles)
• Day Trips to local attractions
• Reading in the Library
• Watching movies for education and entertainment
• Practicing Yoga
• Practicing Meditation
• Going for runs around the rice fields and local villages
• Biking around the local villages
• Playing drums and music together
• Relaxing in a hammock
• Just discussing life, while we wait for our seed to grow

Natural Homemade Products

We really like to make soaps, mosquito repellents, organic fertilizers and pesticides. These products allow us to both save money and the plant at the same time. If you would like to learn any of these skills, read further to see if our lifestyle is a good fit for your personal motivations.

Fair Share and Equality

We believe and practice many Permaculture Principles associated with communal living, such as communal cooking, communal gardening times, communal cleaning of common areas, but especially Fair Share and Equal Value. Put simply, Equal Value means that we value everyone’s work equally. On any given day at Rak Tamachat, you may find instructors teaching in the classroom, people working in the garden, community members creating delicious meals in the kitchen, students constructing natural buildings, managers or interns conducting email correspondence, or Thai members of our farm community involved in daily farm and family tasks. In all honesty, we learn about gardening, building, and farm lifestyle from our Thai family members just as much as we would by practicing solely on theory learned from books or trial and error. When we have questions about how or if something will grow under certain soil and climate conditions, we always seek out our Thai brothers and sisters for advice.