The Permaculture Research Institute of Australia

Paul is available for on-farm consultancies or teaching events, he teaches vital soil management including specialist composting for repairing degraded soils, soil microbiology as a way to restore soil vitality and reduce dependency on water and fertilisers. Paul has worked extensively teaching at PRI with Geoff Lawton and through the Federally funded FarmReady Program with RegenAg.com here in Australia. Paul is available to teach 2 to 5 courses almost anywhere needed, he has taught and worked in may countries over the past 30 years including Australia, USA, New Zealand, India and the Middle East.

We are now working with some larger projects including waste management and 'waste to wealth' where we use agricultural and municipal waste to make specialist compost for repairing degraded land. The Bio-Vital(R) approach to composting is spceific as we use the compost medium to grow a large diversity of beneficial microbes that help to repair degraded soils. We can now use agriculture as a way to regenerate degraded soils rather than a way to degrade soils. This is the good news, unfortunately we cannot build soil fertility and soil carbon when we are relying on high inputs of chemicals because we kill many beneficial microbes and we need these microbes to form mutualistic relationships with our productive plants. The microbes are needed to succeed in nutrient cycling, sequestering carbon, building soil structure, for pH management, and ensuring the you build plant available nutrient in you soils that won't wash out with heavy rain or irrigation.

Our next project is 'food for free' using local resources to make our own bio-fertiliser (see RegenAg.com and the work of Eugenio Gras) and compost from local waste to grow our food for free. We will have more information upcoming on this project on our website www.trustnature.com.au. For more information drop paul and email on paul@trustnature.com.au

Paul has been an organic farmer and has extensive experience with returning non-productive soils back into profitable systems for more than 30 years. He's the managing director of Trust Nature Pty Ltd as well as a former certified SFI soil biology advisor and Permaculture consultant.

He is an energetic, easy to understand speaker with a wealth of practical, hands on knowledge, promoting the practical understanding of beneficial soil microbes as the basis of a productive management system. He has taught in Australia, New Zealand, USA, the Middle East and India over the past three decades.

He was raised on an organic farm in the 60’s and 70’s near New York City, in the 70’s Organic Farming became "all the rage" in North America and in many parts of the world, and there were very few people who actually had much organic farming experience. In 1972, at the age of 24, Paul bought his first farm in Tennessee, a cheap, worn out, old tobacco farm and restored it to productive health in less than 3 years using techniques and knowledge learned from his grandfather and the general skills learned while growing up on the farm.

The success of re-establishing the degraded farm was a novelty in the area and also provided an opportunity as a business, Paul began sharing his ideas and skills in the local area and bought up several badly degraded and abandoned farms and restored them to productive health. Over the next decade, he restored over 20 degraded properties using only organics and his inherited knowledge of compost and cover cropping.

In 1981 Paul moved to Hawaii where he continued to work with organic agriculture, even though he was considering moving to Hawaii permanently, he took a trip to Australia on an invitation to dive the Great Barrier Reef.

Almost from the day he arrived in Australia, he was introduced to Bill Mollison's Permaculture and quickly became involved in the movement, he embraced Permaculture as a basis of sustainable design and management. While living near Noosa, he met a fellow Permaculturist Geoff Lawton (permaculture.org.au), and they quickly began working together focusing on food forests and earthworks design. At Geoff’s urging, Paul finally completed his Permaculture Design course with Robyn Francis in 1992.

In 2003 Paul was introduced to Dr. Elaine Ingham of the Soil Food Web institute and attended her training in soil biology and "Compost Tea" at Southern Cross University, as a result of this he became a certified SFI advisor, designing and promoting "compost tea brewers" and the science of soil biology. Soil biology became as an integral part of the systems of biological farming and Permaculture design that he already knew. The teachings of Dr. Elaine Ingham was one of the essential missing links required to complete the puzzle and be able to promote a holistic system of sustainable agriculture and sustainable land use.

With the help and support of Geoff Lawton, Paul became increasingly committed to the vision to “do good work” in an increasingly troubled world, he continues teaching and consulting, promoting Permaculture sustainable systems, compost, compost tea, and biological farming. Paul is now the managing director of Trust Nature pty ltd a privately owned company that is dedicated to promoting sustainable organic systems through education and consultations.

The educational program is focused on anyone who is interested in sustainable design, productive systems of soil management, specialist composting, and profitable production.

Using the multiple disciplines of Permaculture, biological farming, soil biology, compost and compost tea, Paul can excite and empower those interested in sustainable production to use "sustainability" as a successful platform for productive land management. The key to this system is that it empowers the landowner and their families to manage and understand sustainable principles thus “returning the life back into their soils and the profits back into farming”.