My name is John Douglas. I am on a mission to share with farmers everywhere the knowledge that I have acquired about farming practices that can easily produce abundant yields without insecticides, herbicides, or expensive fertilizers. And yes, I said easily-that’s why I’m called “The Lazy Farmer.”

I came to Panama in 2001 as a Peace Corps volunteer. They trained me to teach farmers how to grow organically, but the techniques were frustratingly complex and labor intensive . That frustration was the seed of a journey that ultimately I hope will help transform world agriculture. I want everyone to join the wonderful Permaculture farming revolution to create abundant yields of healthy crops, grown without poisons and without slash and burn practices. And farmers will earn more money from less work to boot!

The average small farmer in the world is underpaid and overworked. He is exposed daily to dangerous agricultural chemicals and his livelihood is always at the peril of the weather. He supports the world´s needs and gets very little in return.

In the beginning, I started trying to help farmers from a place of wonderful ignorance-this wasn't blissful ignorance but it did leave me with a curiosity to try new things. While most farmers were using herbicides to kill weeds (and the life sustaining microbes, incidentally), I found plants that would naturally shade out the weeds.

I also found that I could suffocate the weeds by putting newspaper or cardboard on them. Newspaper and cardboard will protect the soil from the drying sun and rain erosion, and also turn into nice fertilizer for the crops.

This Multi-use of things is a super powerful, lazy technique. Your weeds will die, the crops will be healthy, and McDonald's will thank you for getting rid of their cardboard.

I was also told that I needed to use chemical fertilizers. Ding! Ding!-another revelation when my right-hand man Marcelino planted 10 plantains and one grew spectacularly, while the rest produced very little. The reason? The larger plantain had bagaso (spent sugarcane) thrown on the ground around it. Whoopee-what does spent sugarcane cost? Nothing! Farmers consider it "trash" and burn it or throw it in the river.

So, along comes a highly paid agricultural engineer and he let me know that, "Bagaso is not fertilizer." I replied that “I understand. You went to the university and learned that bagaso does not contain nitrogen, potassium or phosphorus. But I've got a problem-the plantain did not go to the university. So would you please explain that to my uneducated plantain, because it loves the stuff!”

I started to get really inspired when my neighbors changed bagaso from trash to treasure. And so I began inviting other farmers to try these methods and to setup their own lazy gardens. Now these "more from less" Permaculture techniques are spreading nicely throughout Panama. All it takes is an open mind and a willingness to try!



