Links and resources for tropical farmers

For those of you who are beginning a sustainable tropical Permaculture farm, here are some links and books titles which will help you on your project:

(BTW: We offer none of this for sale, so you’re on your own finding hard copies)

Our website is: http:EveningRainFarm.com/   (see our nursery)

Here is the local Hawaii island forum website:  http://sensiblesimplicity.lefora.com/
Start by browsing their forum topics. You can find all sorts of informative conversations about sustainability issues, and many of the members are on the Big Island and connecting with each other by organizing get-togethers and sharing resources with each other.

For a solid resource of many major tropical fruit trees, you can view the entire text of “Fruits of Warm Climates” on line.
I think bound copies can be had for $70.

http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/index.html

The 3 volume “Permacopia” by Hunter Beyer and Franklin Martin. We reach for these books more than any others. the set is upwards of $60.
The author lives on island, and sells copies locally:

http://www.permacopia.com/

You really can’t go wrong with this classic, hefty volume: “Permaculture: a Designer’s Manual” by Bill Mollison. A brilliant man, brilliant theories and practices. You can also purchase 47 hours of recorded lectures on disc, as Bill Mollison teaches an entire Permaculture design course.

http://permacultureplants.net/

Try Craig elevitch’s site:  www.agroforestry.net
In particular, download his document: www.agroforestry.net/pubs/Hawaii_Homegrown_Start-Up_Guide.pdf
This article has many other links for the beginning tropical gardener, including: http://www.hawaiifruit.net/
Craig has gone far in promoting agroforestry in the tropics. He has written some valuable books, and he has made much of his writings available for free on line.

Also try http://echonet.org/content/agriculturalResources    for “Echo Development Notes” which are excellent documents
these can be purchased bound as “Amaranth to Zai holes” and “Echo Development Notes #52-Present” (a great browse!)
and then in particular, find: echo technical notes: “selecting the best plants for the tropical subsistence farm” by Franklin Martin
Echo used to sell tropical seeds as well, but we recently had no response from them.
Their seeds are particularly suited to the tropics, though some of them are adapted to dry tropics.

http://www.tradewindsfruit.com/   has descriptions and some photos of some of the more obscure plants. A good browse, and they sell seeds as well.

For loads more details, Volunteers in Technical Assistance (VITA) has published thousands of pages of documents concerning simple technology and food production in the third world. They can be downloaded for free.

http://www.journeytoforever.org/farm_library/VITAlist.html

If you still need more books and links, see Karin’s “Links We Like”

Have fun with this stuff!