Clea Chandmal

Clea Chandmal is a permaculture consultant based in Valpoi, Goa. Her own teaching account describes her as an ecologist, permaculture designer, farmer and educator working in the Western Ghats of India, with thirty years behind her. She divides her time between a home in Candolim and Foyts Farm, a ten-acre food forest in Valpoi.

She holds a masters in plant breeding and another in plant molecular physiology, along with a PhD from Cambridge University. That scientific training sits alongside a deliberately low-intervention approach on the land. National coverage of permaculture in India reported that she leaves her farm untended even during the monsoon, potentially the most damaging time of the year for crops.

In the same coverage she argues that agricultural science today has had the unfortunate outcome of separating the farmer from the soil, which is the life source for any plant, and that trees support several soil-dwelling organisms while providing valuable services that contribute to soil and water conservation. Permaculture, on her account, allows farms to weather harsh conditions just the way forests would. She has also said that the system is powerful in her experience, but that its future depends on factors other than science, because this is an industry with political and economic implications.