020, Stacia Nordin: Permaculture in the Developing World

Soul Soil: Where Agriculture and Spirit Intersect with Brooke Kornegay

In today's episode, Stacia Nordin shares her experiences assisting the Malawian government with food insecurity and nutrition through a permaculture lens. The open-door policy at her education center/homestead located in a village near the capital is real-world demonstration of the Garden of Eden Malawi can actually be.

Stacia Nordin is a Registered Dietitian working on issues of environment, agriculture, food systems and healthy living for optimal nutrition. With a background in nutrition education in the States and Jamaica, she and her husband moved to Malawi in 1997, where they still live and work today. Stacia has studied hundreds of locally available foods, which she and her family have collected, multiplied around their home and shared. Working with World Food Programme Malawi, she compiled a Sustainable Nutrition manual, which is used in homes, schools and churches around the country. Stacia has worked with the Malawi Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Agriculture on Nutrition, Food and Agriculture projects and programs. She is now on a 5-year USAID Feed the Future project led by University of Illinois to support Malawi’s Ministry of Agriculture to strengthen Agricultural Extension Systems for improving income, food security and nutrition.

To realize the vision of a just and equitable world, we need to make the shift to systems thinking...thinking in cycles...while valuing the land and all of its people.

In this episode...

• How Stacia and husband Kristof got involved in international food security work

• How listening and observing needs and resources at the village level led to the work of using permaculture principles and ethics to address water and food insecurity

• Purchasing land and beginning a permaculture homestead in the middle of the village

• Cultural diet challenges and effects on nutrition and health

• How nutrition education, markets, agriculture, and seed availability are all connected in the move toward healthy bodies, soils, and ecosystems

• Major barriers to food security are seed supply (or seed-saving education/legality), and land ownership (so the soil healing can begin).

• Envisioning a healthy, robust Malawi

• Nature is always moving toward healing

Resources...

• The Kitchen Garden by June Walker

• http://www.neverendingfood.org/

• The Sustainable Nutrition Manual

• Frances Moore Lappe