Manas Arvind

Manas Arvind will be a speaker at the International Permaculture Convergence in Thailand (IPC16), in November, 2026

Manas is a communication designer turned permaculture practitioner and food-systems designer whose journey has evolved from shaping ideas and enterprises to regenerating living landscapes and communities. After more than two decades working across communication design, hospitality, and entrepreneurial ventures, he began questioning industrial models of food, education, and development, leading him toward agroecology and permaculture as integrated responses to ecological and social imbalance.

He is the co-founder and key organizer of the Gurgaon Organic Farmers Market (GOFM), a long-running citizen-led initiative that builds direct farmer–consumer relationships and hyperlocal clean food ecosystems. Through this work, he has helped strengthen farmer livelihoods, promote chemical-free agriculture, and demonstrate how community markets can become living laboratories for resilient local economies and food culture.

As a permaculture and regenerative systems designer, Manas works with farmers, educators, resorts, and grassroots entrepreneurs to design farms, learning spaces, and agri-enterprises rooted in ecological wisdom and local context. He is also a co-founder of the Farmversities Alliance, an international effort reimagining education through farms as living classrooms — connecting training, knowledge sharing, storytelling, and technology to support regenerative futures.

Alongside his ecological work, Manas continues his practice as an exhibiting photographer and documentary storyteller, exploring humanity’s relationship with nature and inner transformation. For him, permaculture is not only a design methodology but an ongoing inquiry into how humans can live with awareness, reciprocity, and dignity within the larger web of life.