Permaculture Pioneers: Stories from the New Frontier Tapa blanda - 2011

Kerry Dawborn is a permaculturist with post-graduate qualifications in Social Science, Environmental Urban Planning and Secondary Teaching. She has worked in both sustainable and conventional agriculture and in the organic produce retail industry. Kerry is passionate about ecological economics, small-scale sustainable farming and land-use, community food security, social justice and related public policy and education issues. She has been a university tutor, researcher, permaculture teacher and political candidate. Living in the Yarra Ranges with her three dogs, her chickens, muscovies, fruit trees and veggie garden (when she has time), Kerry looks forward to a world in which humans understand and honour their place as part of a diverse, healthy and biologically rich earth community, and in which access to healthy, sustainably produced local food, and vibrant, connected human communities, are a right, and not a privilege, for people all over the planet.

Dr. Caroline Smith is a teacher, permaculturist and organic farmer who was born in England and lived for some years in South Africa. Caroline is passionate about local food production and operates an organic box scheme with her husband Aidan in the Dandenong Ranges just outside Melbourne. Caroline has worked as an agricultural scientist, secondary teacher and teacher educator, and currently teaches at the National Centre for Sustainability, Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne. She is also a member of the editorial committee of EarthSong journal. Caroline has published widely in the area of sustainability education, and her PhD thesis explored personal empowerment through learning permaculture. She has two grown-up children, a cat and a horse.