International Permaculture Conference 2017, Hyderabad India:

  Revitalizing Traditional Indian Agricultural Practices tract

Freedom and Raya aim to provide an overview of ancient Indian agriculture while sharing an expanded perspective of how humans and plants interact. India’s literary tradition of agriculture has techniques similar to Permaculture and other natural practices for garden care.

They first look at references in the spiritual literature and then explore the ancient Sanskrit treatises on plant care. They next explore an anthropological perspective of traditional Indian farming practices which show sustainable methods of plant care and seed protection that cannot be found in texts.

Raya will share aspects of what she has been learning from her years of working in rural India. Freedom then introduces plant-āyurveda, called Vṛksāyurveda, which is used to treat plant pathology. Attendees learn a new perspective on plant care that they can begin experimenting with.

Freedom and Raya conclude by looking at how Āyurveda for humans is similar to plants and contemplate what we can learn from this.