Mineral Springs, Jungle Gardens and Permaculture

Rico Zook

www.i-permaculture.org 

Mineral Spring’s local name Dabai Pani, translated as medicine water, refers to a now lost spring with reported healing powers. Originally one of Darjeeling’s first tea estates, it was abandoned at the time of independence. When this happened the estate workers started occupying the land and farming. Slowly some tea bushes were removed for annual production, while some perennials of value, such as Orange trees and Broomstick, were added. Other plants from the surrounding forest naturally migrated in and were left due to their functional value as fodder, timber, medicine and the like. In this way, without any conscious design, a diverse and functional Food Forest, which easily and flawlessly blends into the natural forest, came into existence. 

In Permaculture a Food Forest, also known as a Jungle Garden in the tropics, is a created agricultural production system modeled after a natural forest or jungle. While predominately inhabited with perennial plants species, self-seeding annuals and patches used for annual production are often included. In this it is a complex 3-dimensional system with 7 layers. These layers are: Upper and Lower tree canopy, Bush, Herbaceous, Groundcover, Rhizome or Root, and Vertical (vining). In the tropics there is often an additional higher canopy layer creating 3 layers of trees, thus 8 layers in total and a different name. There are many examples of Jungle Gardens in different parts of India. Some of these have been created consciously with the concept of a Food Forest in mind. Others, like Mineral Springs, happened as a natural outgrowth of a farmer’s experimentations and awareness of natural processes. 

A mature Jungle Garden provides not only multiple crops and harvests (food, fuel, fodder, timber, craft material, human and animal medicines, etc.) it also does many services needed by a farm. The nutrient cycle is in full function as the plants drop all there organics, as well as the addition of manures from birds and many other animals living in the Jungle Garden. This supports a strong healthy living soil that is the foundation of productivity. Pests are minimal due to high bio-diversity, as well as the natural predation of other insects, birds, lizards, spiders, frogs and the like. The addition of water is low to nonexistent as a forest is both highly efficient at water harvesting and infiltration, as well as helping to maintain a high water table. Thus any work involved with a Jungle Garden is more about management rather than working to make things grow. In conventional industrial farming one has to till the soil, plant, add fertilizer, weed, and water in order to create a harvest. With a mature Jungle Garden almost all work is about light management (for solar access to the lower layers) via pruning and harvesting. All prunings are themselves harvests providing fuel, fodder, timber or organics for support of annual production. A Jungle Garden is likely the most productive and prosperous land-based agricultural production system created. 

In 1973 with the intervention of National Service Scheme, St. Joseph’s College, North Point and Hayden Hall Institute (all of Darjeeling) a dairy union was established in Mineral Spring, which also supported medical and adult education programs. The dairy union ceased to function once Hayden Hall withdrew in the mid-80s with the onset of the Gorkhaland Agitation for statehood. In 1996 with the support of DLR Prerna, a Darjeeling based NGO, the people of Mineral Spring initiated the Mineral Spring Sanjukta Vikas Sanstha (MSSVS, United Development Organization) with milk as its first product. This organization is a functional farmer’s cooperative that has expanded into other crops, as well as having other benefits for the village communities encompassed in its area. Of significance is that all the farms in the organization have been certified as organic under a single certificate. This means if one farm violates the organic standards every farm loses certification. This arrangement not only makes the certification affordable to the local farmers, the peer pressure to maintain the organic standards is by far the most effective compliance structure. 

Other economic crops currently grown by these farmers include oranges, broomstick (for soft broom), ginger, turmeric and tea. The tea has become particularly important as it is starting to develop an international reputation for superior quality. A tie up between MSSVS and Tea Promoters India (TPI, a corporate body) enables TPI to process and market MSSVS tea in the international market, as an exclusive, small farmer co-operative, certified organic fair trade labeled tea. In addition to the bi-annual bonus payment for each family, a portion of the fair-trade dividend goes into a fund to be utilized for community projects that are democratically selected by MSSVS. 

Today Mineral Spring, comprising 14 villages of over 460 contiguous farms, is a living example of how a strong functional agricultural base leads to prosperity. It is important to understand that prosperity is not about economic income, as so many today seem to think. To prosper means to flourish physically, to grow strong and healthy. This is what a healthy and strong agricultural base provides a community. In Mineral Spring the Jungle Garden provides for most of the communities needs, from building materials, to fuel, to craft materials, to medicines and for most of its food. It also provides a secure economic base from a diversity of market crops. And all of it organically grown. The cooperative framework the farmers have adopted further strengthens this prosperity, and is starting to extend past its original agricultural focus into address other issues facing the community currently.

PERMACULTURE AND AMPBOTAY
Currently Ampbotay village in Mineral Spring and DLR Prerna host an annual Permaculture Deign Certification (PDC) course. People attend this course from the Darjeeling Hills, India and Internationally. Participants stay in the home of a local farmer's family to be woken with a cup of morning chai, hand picked, dried, and brewed from the family’s tea bushes, to start the day. They walk to the classroom through the fully mature verdant and abundant Jungle Garden. It is usually harvest time for the orange crop, which adds a colourful tint to the walk. Darjeeling sits thousands of feet above this village, glistening in the morning sun as it nestles on the opposite ridgeline. The peacefulness is accented with birds singing and getting about on their day’s business. Our classroom is open sided so we are outside almost all day. The high Himalayas are seen down the valley, with Mt. Kungenjuga, third tallest peak in the world, standing above them all. The very special aspect of this course is that foreigners, Indians, Darjeeling locals, and villagers meet and interact on an equitable basis, an experience uncommon with most courses and travel. Evenings are often shared with the host family exchanging stories and experiences over another cup of tea or tungba, the local fermented millet beer. Friendships have been formed that continue well past this course. 

This year marks the Tenth (10^th) annual PDC, the longest running course of this type in India, and Asia as a whole. When the first Permaculture Design course was held here 8 years ago (the first two were at an organic farm outside kalimpong) the question was what did it have to offer an already prosperous community. The answer, as all good permaculture answers should be, was multi-fold. There was resource management beyond the agricultural, including better water management techniques. The introduction of some appropriate technologies to reduce fuel consumption and promote value added products. As part of the PDC course student design teams create a permaculture design based on a real life situation. Past courses have created designs for the Community Centre and an undeveloped piece of land. Currently each team is paired with a local farmer to help an already prosperous farm become more deeply regenerative. This can include integrating an aquaculture system, broadscale and structural water harvesting, greywater and blackwater systems, as well as more diverse kitchen gardens and herbal plantings around the house. Most importantly, this process acts as a learning opportunity for the farmer, thus very gently and directly helping them gain deeper understandings into permaculture and regenerative systems design. This is a very empowering process with long-term benefits. This is further compounded through the many permaculture based farmer trainings that Prerna has held in Ampobtay. Like the PDC participants, visiting participant farmers stay with local farmer families allowing for both the visiting farmers to see living permaculture examples, as well as the host farmer to directly share their personal knowledge, and that gained through their PDC interactions. 

The outcomes from this and the PDC is the community’s sense of self-value has risen. They have come to understand how they fit into the national as well as the global picture. They know that they have more then just great tea and citrus to offer the country and world. They are a living example of how a vibrant diverse organic agricultural base, when coupled with supportive community structures, lead directly to both a strong community and a healthy environment. It is a model that our world needs today.