Himalayan Permaculture Centre (HPC)
The Farmers' Handbook
HPC staff have years of experience working in remote mountainous
regions which led to the development of a wide range of appropriate
technologies and approaches aimed at increasing domestic farm productivity
and reducing its costs. Concrete and positive outcomes, such as a measured increase in crop production, vegetable consumption, and reduction in firewood
use, have been demonstrated. These techniques are published in the Nepali language “Farmers’ Handbook” which is also used for practical literacy education.
It was published in the Nepali language by
co-creators Chris Evans and Jakob Jespersen
in 2001 (7500 copies). In 2002 the handbook
was then translated into English and in 2009
made available for free download as
PDFs (click here) via the
Australian Permaculture Research
Institute’s website. In 2011 it was
released as a free e-book (click here)
by UK-based Permanent Publications,
publishers of the Permaculture Magazine,
via their Permaculture Market.
The English version is still in draft
form and the authors seek feedback
for improvement.
The Nepali hard copy finally sold out in 2011,
an update version of the Nepali FHB has been
reprinted twice more, with revisions and a few
additional techniques. See below for details.
To celebrate International Permaculture Day in May 2014 we announced a reprint of 1500 copies of the Farmers' Handbook in Nepali. Well it finally happened in January 2015 - better late than never! It was then reprinted again in May 2018 with a further 1500 copies, so a total of 10500 copies to date. The Book is being distributed by HPC via its partner Sunrise Farm from its farm in Kathmandu. The reprint has 5 new chapters/techniques in addition to the 40 plus it already contains: Hay box, SRI, Urine Collection & Use, Value Chain Marketing and Climate Change.
In 2002 a translated English version was made available on the World Wide Web via the International Permaculture Research Institute in Australia (and has had over 82000 visits), and later as a free e-book (which has had over 1000 downloads of each of the 5 Volumes) by Permanent Publications of the UK.
If your organization is working in Nepal and interested to purchase copies of the Nepali Farmers’ Handbook to distribute to farming groups and use in your programs, or can otherwise support this project, contact Sunrise Farm. If you are interested to support future printing, please contact to discuss details.