Alex Blucher – The coffee country of Timor Leste is a world away from the birthplace of permaculture in northern Tasmania but it's taking off there in a big way.

The Timor-based NGO Permatil is working with the Timorese Government to train coffee bean farmers in permaculture, a self-sufficient and sustainable farming system.

Permatil is also raising funds to update its Permaculture Guide Book to suit farmers in developing countries growing produce in a tropical climate.

Northern Territory-based Permatil volunteer Emily Gray said permaculture is being taught by both government agronomists and in the education system.

"Government's started using the guide book...and they are giving it to all their farmer trainers," Ms Gray said.

"These books are being sent across the country and they are up-skilling trainers, they've just started introducing permaculture into the education system as a way of teaching about culture and farming.

"It's actually going into the national education curriculum, which is a step above Australia." Agriculture dominates the economy, accounting for about 25 per cent of the GDP and 75 per cent of employment.

But in 2011 the United Nation's Human Development Index ranked Timor Leste 147 our of 187 countries, and states that 37 per cent of the population live below the international poverty line of $US1.25 a day.

Also a community garden educator in Darwin, Ms Gray said permaculture's organic and low-input principles means local Timorese farmers don't need to buy expensive fertilisers.

"The farmers in East Timor really struggle financially and they get many pressures put on them to buy commercial fertilisers," she said.

"Permaculture and organic farming gives them a way to be able to afford to do it themselves in a way that's better for them and the land."

"Timor's soils are degrading quite considerably and the knowledge of organic farming is really quite low, so permaculture gives them a really easy simple way of improving their land and plant fertility."

One farm Permatil works with in Timor Leste set up an organisation selling coffee beans to Australia under the name WithOneBean, which partly funds updating and republishing the guide book.

"It's a 500 page book that has 2000 detailed illustrations that visually take illiterate people through the skills and the knowledge of permaculture. It's been used by Oxfam and Timorese Government to train people.

"We've decided to reproduce this book and refine it to make it appropriate for not just Timor but the tropical world, and so people in Fiji or Vanuatu or different parts of Africa can have really relevant information."

Some chapters of the book, which are free online have been downloaded more than 200,000 times.

Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-28/tch-coffee-timor-leste-permaculture/6809932?section=nt