Himalayan Permaculture Centre (HPC)

HPC's "toolbox" of technologies contains state of the art innovations from all fields of appropriate technology: from more scientific models and also from farmer-developed, grass-roots experimentation and practice. The technologies have been developed with participatory methods such as Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) and Appreciative Inquiry (AI) where stakeholders themselves "pass" the technology on its merits, and frequently will improve and adapt them to their local situation and needs. These are then re-learned by HPC for broader distribution, and are often taught direct from farmer to farmer in areas where HPC has not even been.

Technologies include:
* ways of improving hygeine, diet & nutrition
* fuel-efficient smokeless stoves
* hay-box - cooking without fuel
* pit latrines
* kitchen gardening/vegetable production
* waste-water management
* integrated pest management
* various types of plant nursery and propagation methods
* beekeeping
* compost making
* livestock management
* seed saving
* green manures
* SRI rice-growing
* agro-forestry
* fruit tree production (grafting, budding, etc.), orchard design and management
* own-built drinking water systems (non-cement)
* soil/land cnservation and regeneration
* afforestation and forest management
* hydro-mills for flour, oil pressing and electricity

Technologies are designed to improve domestic household productivity and self-reliance using primarily local resources, either by increaing production or reducing costs of production (saving time and labour). This may mean better health through improved diet (growing more vegetables) and hygiene, increased staple grain productivity through better composting, soil management and/or seed saving, or time saved gathering firewood due to agro-forestry. Each technology has a part to play in the whole picture of domestic life.

These technologies and more are described in the Farmers' Handbook which, as well as being a technical support document is also designed to be used in literacy education, with large script and lots of diagrams and photos. It can be viewed and downloaded in PDF format here.