Farming for Health Podcast #33: Amanda Harris

In our final episode of Farming for Health, permaculture designer and teacher Amanda Harris shares her experiences and philosophies with listeners—with her story starting several years ago. At that time, Amanda was already applying permaculture principles in Nepal (where she was staying with families), but she didn’t yet have a name for what she was doing. 

Amanda then earned a permaculture design certification in 2013 at the Mesoamerican Institute of Permaculture in Guatemala. She also earned dual masters degrees in global environmental policies from American University in Washington, D.C. and in national resource management and sustainable development from the United Nations-mandated Universidad para la Paz in San Jose, Costa Rica in 2015. 

Nowadays, she promotes regenerative agricultural businesses in microsheds in Mexico by applying permaculture (or permanent agriculture) principles—which she defines as a blend of modern science, technology, and resources with traditional knowledge that can get lost over the generations. This could include weaving palms or planting the three sisters (corn, beans, and squash) in ways that use the best of today’s knowledge with the traditions of yesteryear.

The result? A regenerative, resilient, adaptive production system. 

Here’s what else needs to be woven into permaculture: the invisible structures of social and economic elements of a region. It’s crucial to know, for example, who the players are in a community. The goal is then to empower local communities to solve their own problems through a combination of transferred knowledge and skills with resources and leadership training. 

Amanda is the permaculture manager for Playa Viva hotel in Mexico. There, the hotel is surrounded by large amounts of farmland where principles of the permaculture philosophy are leveraged in all the choices they make. Function stacking is an important principle as they use elements that serve multiple functions and consider generations of the future with each action they take. They look to close system loops with an eye on longevity. 

Amanda shared some of her insights about Playa Viva at Roots Conference 2023 in a panel discussion titled “A Sustainable Future for Food: Exploring Farm to Table.”

You can also discover how Amanda uses these principles in her own life and more in the last of our thirty-three long series Farming for Health: Permaculture, Regenerative Tourism, and Regionality. 

Past Episodes of our Farming for Health Podcast

If you’ve missed any of our previous episodes, you can find them here:

• Episode One: Keto, Cruciferous Vegetables, Salt and Your Mindset
• Episode Two: Cooking, Conviviality, and Preserving the Harvest
• Episode Three: Ferments, Food Insecurity, and Wasted Food
• Episode Four: Anti-Cancer Diet, Food as Medicine, and Vegetables
• Episode Five: Plants, Happiness and Mindful Neglect.
• Episode Six: Whole 30, Sustainable Habits, and Loving Vegetables
• Episode Seven: Iodine, Egg Yolk Enzymes, and Miso
• Episode Eight: Fungi, Bitter Foods, and Food Extinction
• Episode Nine: Understanding Food, Nutritional Healing and Farming
• Episode Ten: Enjoying the Process, Connection and Soup
• Episode Eleven: Monica Geller, Community and Limiting Salads 
• Episode Twelve: Nourishment, Creativity, and Full-Spectrum Health
• Episode Thirteen: The Joy of Cooking, Fermentation, and Seasonality 
• Episode Fourteen: Cauliflower, Potlucks, and the Joy of Food
• Episode Fifteen: Time Savers, Pickled Raisins and Cooking With Creativity
• Episode Sixteen: Romanticizing Food, Seasonal Eating, and Shamed Spinach
• Episode Seventeen: Being Present, The Eat In Method and Food as Fuel
• Episode Eighteen: Regenerative Grazing, Monarchs and Voting with Your Dollar 
• Episode Nineteen: Childhood Injustice, Soil Health, and Relationship with Nature
• Episode Twenty: Yoga, Climate Changes, and Creating a Livable Future
• Episode Twenty-One: Understanding the Soul, Flow State, and Finding Your Purpose
• Episode Twenty-Two: Regenerative Food Systems, Food Sheds, and Resiliency 
• Episode Twenty-Three: Leaning In: Culinary Trends and the Power of Teaching
• Episode Twenty-Four: Mentorship, Self-Care, and Hospitality
• Episode Twenty-Five: Community, Self-Care, and Mindset Tools
• Episode Twenty-Six: Sustainability, Koji Coffee, Being Intentional 
• Episode Twenty-Seven: Finding Your Passion, Picky Eaters, and Cooking for Levi
• Episode Twenty-Eight: Creativity. Brining Vegetables and Family Pasta Night
• Episode Twenty-Nine: Triathlons, Eat to Nourish, and Be Bold With Your Cooking
• Episode Thirty: Ben’s Friends, Community “WE,” and Taking Action
• Episode Thirty-One: Bread, Celebrating Community, and the California Approach
• Episode Thirty-Two: BIÂN, Holistic Health, and Filling Your Tank