My $30,000 Farm is Falling Apart | Thailand Permaculture

Please leave a comment and let me know if you want to continue following this Permaculture story! This trip to Bangkok was a big step for me. As a self-confessed ‘amateur tree killer’ struggling on my own small farm, walking into a meeting with the committee for the International Permaculture Convergence (IPC 2026) felt like jumping in at the deep end. I was surrounded by visionaries and pioneers, and honestly, I was wrestling with a serious case of imposter syndrome. I hope I made a good impression and that, through this video, I can help connect you to the incredible work they’re doing.

It all started back on my farm, staring at what I’ve come to call my ‘$30,000 tree graveyard.’ My own permaculture dream is having a few issues, and the evidence was piling up. So when an unexpected invitation arrived to meet the minds behind the 16th IPC in Bangkok, I knew I couldn’t say no. It felt like the universe was offering me a lifeline. I packed my best Hawaiian shirts and headed into the concrete jungle, searching for answers.

My first stop was Khlong Toei Market, the colossal stomach of Bangkok, a monument to the staggering success of the industrial food system. It’s a system that helped win the war on hunger and feeds millions daily, a feat we can’t ignore. But as I stood there, I couldn’t help but see the disconnect between this world of logistics and profit, and the permaculture world of small-scale, nature-inspired homesteads. It’s a system that speaks in the language of spreadsheets and acronyms (ESGs, SDGs), a language that feels a million miles away from observing patterns in a quiet garden. How can these two worlds ever have a meaningful conversation?

That’s when I met Noo. She became my guide, a translator between these two seemingly opposing worlds. With a background in high finance, she now dedicates her life to bridging the gap, demonstrating that the principles of permaculture aren’t just for rural farms, they’re a design blueprint for a more sustainable and profitable urban future.

She showed me something I never thought I’d see: a permaculture-inspired circular economy thriving on the forgotten rooftop of a shopping mall car park. Here, food waste from the restaurants below is transformed into rich compost, which then grows fresh produce for local supermarkets and customers. It’s a closed-loop system that proves sustainability can be financially viable, with a payback period of just 2.5 years.

Our journey culminated at the stunning Centara Grand hotel, on a literal ‘Farm in the Sky.’ Here, Noo laid out her vision for translating permaculture into the language of the boardroom: the “triple bottom line” of People, Planet, and Profit. This isn’t about optics or greenwashing; it’s a concrete business model that tackles waste management, creates green jobs, improves food security, and boosts a company’s brand image.

This entire experience has reshaped my understanding of what’s possible. It has shown me a path where grassroots movements and corporate structures don’t have to be adversaries. They can, and must, learn to work together to face the monumental challenges ahead. The conversations happening in preparation for the IPC are about finding this common ground. Nu’s final words resonated deeply with me: “Everyone should practice permaculture.”
I’ve come back to my farm not with a sense of failure, but with a renewed sense of hope and a very expensive education. I want to be a translator too, sharing the stories of these incredible people. Please join me on this journey.

CHAPTERS:

00:00 – My Expensive Hobby: The $30,000 Tree Graveyard
02:09 – A Tale of Two Cities: Arriving in Bangkok
03:04 – The Belly of the Beast: Exploring Khlong Toei Market
04:15 – The Corporate Disconnect: Two Worlds, Two Languages
06:07 – Meeting the Team: Arriving at the IPC Committee Meeting
07:36 – A Grassroots Solution: Discovering Moradok Heritage
09:58 – My Guide to a Different World: An Introduction to Nu
10:37 – Case Study 1: The Rooftop Farm in a Shopping Mall
17:40 – Translating Permaculture for the Corporate World
19:42 – The Farm in the Sky: A Tour of Centara Grand’s Rooftop Oasis
22:48 – The Final Pitch: Why These Two Worlds Must Meet
26:21 – Homeward Bound: Final Thoughts and Reflections

#permaculture #thailand #urbanfarming #ipc2026 #internationalpermacultureconvergence #sustainability #bangkok #regenerativeagriculture #circulareconomy #sustainabledesign #foodwaste #composting #socialenterprise #greenbusiness #LGBT

I’ve discovered an expensive new hobby. Killing trees. So when the permaculture experts invited me, the amateur tree killer, to a meeting in Bangkok, I of course said yes. My imposter syndrome is about to go professional. …the compost… Back on the farm however, the evidence for the prosecution was extensive. It’s an issue, because the price tag for this collection is $30,000. Let’s for a moment just review the invoice. Five years ago, we decided to assemble a permaculture-inspired farm from scratch, which left us with a shopping list. The land is worth roughly $10,000. Then we spent 3,000 for an excavator to carve out a lake, 1500 for a solar pump, about 12 and a half for a house, Big windows were a good idea. Yes, beautiful! and three for a couple of animal enclosures. But the thing about a project like this is that $30,000 is just the entry fee. What it doesn’t include are the years of ongoing costs. The plants, the animals, and the endless experiments. It’s not a business plan, more of a lifestyle choice. It’s money that, let’s be honest, I’d otherwise be spending on something equally frivolous, like expanding my wardrobe of Hawaiian shirts, or a collection of expensive Lego sets that I could have claimed were a financial investment if I hadn’t ripped open the box. However, the most significant cost of all is time. We’ve poured years of our lives into this land. These trees have been growing for over four years, and that’s why this is so worrying. When your expensive, time-consuming hobby starts failing right in front of you, and the prime suspect staring back from the reflection in the pond is you, what do you do? Then the universe decided to intervene. I got a phone call inviting me to meet with the committee planning the 16th International Permaculture Convergence being held in Thailand for the very first time. So, I nervously packed my finest Hawaiian shirts, business casual, and braced myself for the concrete jungle. As much as I love living in the middle of nowhere, I have a soft spot for Bangkok. My night train dropped me off before sunrise, and with the city already humming and some time to kill, I found myself on a busy overpass where the true scale of the permaculture problem really hit me. This isn’t just a crossroads in Bangkok, it’s a turning point for the future of farming. Behind me, a system that feeds millions every day. A modern marvel that helped win the war on hunger, but at a huge cost to our planet’s health. And just over the road are the seeds of what comes next. Later today, I’m due just a few hundred meters down that road to meet with the committee. But to understand their plans for the future, I wanted to pay my respects to the current system. I went to visit the city’s colossal stomach, Khlong Toei market, one of the largest wet markets on the planet, open 24/7, feeding millions every single day. Now, in a previous video, I was pretty critical of industrial agriculture, and some people rightly pointed out I wasn’t telling the whole story. So, let’s do it. The Green Revolution changed farming forever. With its high-yield crops and synthetic fertilizer, it is estimated to have saved over a billion people from starvation. A market like this is a monument to that staggering human achievement. But acknowledging a victory doesn’t mean ignoring its long-term costs. It was the perfect solution for the 20th century, but now that we’ve seen the damage it’s doing to our soils, what’s the solution for the 21st century? The permaculture world, with its small scale homesteads and its fierce devotion to natural diversity, feels a million miles from this organized chaos. It has the ethics, but looking at this place, does it have the scale? Can permaculture find a role in this huge machine? The question is, is this the moment a grassroots revolution begins to lose its way, or the moment it finally gets the power to change the world. To even begin to answer that, you need to know who’s pushing this whole thing forward. This incredible system runs on a logic of pure efficiency and profit. And that logic has its own unique language, one spoken in boardrooms, not barns. It’s a language of growth and shareholder value. Even when forced to talk about sustainability, it’s an alphabet soup of acronyms like ESGs and SDGs. That’s a fundamental disconnect. How does a philosophy like permaculture, which talks about patterns in nature, start a meaningful conversation with a system that only cares about spreadsheets? Ooh, that all sounds terribly serious. It’s crucial I don’t get distracted. And the easiest way to get distracted is on an empty stomach. So, time for breakfast. This place isn’t just a monument to an agricultural system, it’s a testament to its workforce. And the engine that fuels Khlong Toei market runs in large part on Burmese workers. A timely reminder that international cooperation will be central to the upcoming permaculture event. Okay, thank you. And handily for me, wherever there are Burmese workers, there will be exceptional Burmese food. I was told the second floor of one of these buildings was the place to look. Would you like to try chicken curry? Okay. Yes. Prawn? Uh… ooh. This one? Ah… okay. Yeah, yeah. This one? This one, and Tea leaf salad. And uh, rice? A small rice? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Distracted by food. Honestly, it might be the overarching story of my life. Feel free to chisel that on my gravestone. With a full stomach and a clearer head, it’s time to meet the team. This is the Queen Sirikit National Convention Center where I was due to meet the committee. But the meeting wasn’t for a few hours, which gave me the opportunity to get lost in this parallel universe. It’s hard to describe the delightful madness of a Bangkok exhibition hall. It’s part trade show, part science fair, and part fever dream. Strolling past grand cultural performances, cartoon mascots, and fashion choices even bolder than my Hawaiian shirts, I had to wonder, how on earth do you bring a philosophy based on observing a quiet garden into a world like this. On several of the big corporate displays, I saw those acronyms I’d been thinking about. Specifically, the SDGs. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. The corporate world loves an acronym. It’s their native tongue. And there’s a nagging feeling that it’s a bit hollow. The big criticism is that it’s greenwashing. The sentiment is lovely, but the substance is debatable. And then I found the most heartbreakingly ironic exhibit I could have hoped for. A totem of our time. SDG number 12, responsible consumption and production, individually wrapped in its own single-use plastic sleeve. It’s so perfectly wrong, it could have been a piece of modern art titled Late-Stage Capitalism. A nice idea, completely lost in translation. Sticking with this exact example of producing a sustainable bag, what would be the right way to do it? Hello, I am Mark. I am the COO of Thai Moradok International Company. ‘Moradok’ is the Thai word, in English we call heritage. and our work is the basketry. Our material based natural materials, such as bamboo and lotus stalk. This is bamboo and the lotus stem. Actually, lotus, normally farmer they cut lotus flowers, and they cut lotus leaf to sell, but still have lotus stem left over. agricultural waste in the local community. I see mountains of lotus stem. and then they burn it for destroy, and it’s very easy to manage. We turn from the waste to product. Please follow Moradok in a Facebook page or Instagram. M-O-R-A-D-O-K. Moradok. Absolutely nailed it. The Moradok team looked at a problem, a mountain of agricultural waste being burned, and saw a resource. So, how did a group of young entrepreneurs pull this off? It turns out, it helps to have a good teacher. One of their university professors also happens to be on the IPC committee. And finally, I got to meet them. Okay, meeting time. Must act normal. Don’t say anything stupid. Appear interested and competent, and do not under any circumstances mention your tree graveyard. Or Lego. When we had the convergence in 2016, one of the permaculture teachers said, Oh, this is the best example of permaculture that he’s seen, but Loong-choke never studied permaculture. That’s Michael Commons from Green Net. Basically a legend in organic agriculture, and he’s the one that brought up the idea of taking permaculture out of the homestead environment and introducing it to the rest of the world. I’m surrounded by visionaries. So, apologies for the limited footage of the meeting. I was a little bit intimidated. My desire to not impose, combined with a healthy dose of imposter syndrome, meant I mostly kept the camera off. But I did make sure to sit next to the most talkative person I could find. It’s a good strategy for an introvert. Find the extrovert and let them do all the hard work. And that person was Noo. I found out she’d been involved in securing funding and sponsorship for the event. A translator between two worlds. I had no idea then, but that short conversation was about to lead us on a two-day adventure across the city. Have you tried riding the bus in Bangkok? Ah long time ago, yeah, – I haven’t done it in a while. It’s on journeys like this, rattling through the city, that you get to go beyond the job titles. Noo told me about her background, how she started in the world of high finance before dedicating her life to building bridges between the corporate world and grassroots NGOs. Our destination was Victory Monument. She led us inside Center One shopping mall, not exactly where I expected my permaculture masterclass to begin, but I was learning that for Noo, the entire city is her classroom. Can you imagine this place? I helped myself to a delicious plate of Thai red pork, and she explained things to me in the simplest terms. Business has a lot of knowledge and also resource and also some capacities in making the social movement moving forward more effectively But at the same time, business that doesn’t have enough knowledge about social issues and environmental issues, why don’t these two sectors work together? When they have different strength and work together, what does it mean? The resource have been effectively leveraged. And at the same time we can really ensure that everyone will be on board to make some change. So my organization was established 20 years ago as as a volunteer organization between NGO and business who has the same idea. when we start moving corporate social responsibility onward in Thailand. With that, we continue to have a very strong dialogue about the social and environmental issues. And at the same time, the business helps NGO to improve their capacity in terms of finance. So, these two force boost any project to move forward very, more effectively. What’s the name of the organisation? The Network for Sustainable Development Association Well, uhm I’m full, I can’t finish my food. What should I do with this? Oh, you can walk to the food waste bin. Noo explained that for her, the principles of permaculture shouldn’t be limited to farms. They’re a design blueprint for anywhere. She struck a deal with the mall owner. Instead of trucking their waste to landfill, it would all be coming upstairs. I found a permaculture-inspired solution in the most unlikely of places: the forgotten roof of a shopping mall car park. Overlooking the chaos of Bangkok, Nu laid out how it all began. After reading about permaculture over that time, I just feel that Bangkok need a lot of soil, need a lot of compost fertilizers, in order to make it possible to grow vegetable. And Bangkok has a lot of issues on waste… on space. When this car park building was built, the rooftop is no way no one comes to park on the rooftop because it’s too hot. The space become empty. The problem is in the past, managing 200 kilograms of food waste a day is very difficult Eventually, we think that okay, let’s turn it into compost then. 200 kilograms a day, can you imagine in one year, how many tons of compost we have? And we don’t have enough space to really wait for two months for the compost to be ready. Eventually, we get the funding from Innovation Agencies to invent the auto-compost machine. We have to invent it by ourself if we go to buy the auto composter, it costs a lot. For 50 kilograms, it can cause like 1.5 million baht. When we built it ourself it’s, we build it a hundred kilogram, it costs us only like 500,000 baht. All in all, our machine answered my problems, like we don’t have space, we cannot wait for too long and then eventually it’s cheap. So it’s economical. So yes, we have a quick look at the machine? The machine is the first prototype, the new one has not yet been commercialized, we planned to promote it by the end of the year. You put all the food in already? Not yet, we were waiting for you. Ah, so… put the rest of the food in. So, we are going, for this machine is aerobic machine, we have to put the food waste, the maximum capacity is 150 kilograms. Leave it here for 14 days, it will turn into this kind of compost. And keep on spinning. Yeah. turn on the machine every day once a day. So we cannot really afford to buy 30 machines because we have 200 kilograms a day. We need to do some kinds of operational and management We use this as the mixer. Mixing machine, and then… you put it into this basket. for a few days, then we turn it back to that machine in order to spin, in order to create oxygen in it. And that is what permaculture design looks like when you take it off the homestead and bring it to the city. She didn’t just add a garden to a roof, she redesigned the entire space as a system. Standard composting is slow, and space here is at a premium. So, look at this design. The garden beds are raised, which not only saves your back when you’re harvesting, but it creates a sheltered workshop underneath. All these baskets of maturing compost are protected from the rain, allowing for perfectly controlled moisture levels. It’s a classic permaculture concept, every element should have multiple functions. Here, the garden beds are both the growing space and the roof for the compost factory below. With the soil production solved, the final piece of the puzzle was what to do with the produce. The food court below uses far too much volume for a garden this size to ever supply them directly. This wasn’t designed to be a closed loop for this mall. This rooftop was the prototype to prove the system worked. So to make it financially viable, Noo had to find other customers. Before we decide what vegetable we have to grow, we are talking to our customer, what kind of vegetable they would like to have. The salad is the option they want us to grow, and they said that if you grow salad, I’m going to buy it from you. This is a kale that we grow for sell it at the Villa Market. And also the rosemary we grow it for Villa Supermarket. And also over there is Thyme and Oregano that we grow it for the market. Other than the supermarkets, who else do you sell to? Actually, we people who come to buy it from the farm, they come and with a basket and then they harvest it by themselves. And also some of them pre-order we announce it on Sunday that what kind of vegetable available and they can come and pick it up on Wednesday. This place is, is amazing. How do you then go and convince a CEO of a bigger company about how they can implement this kind of thing on a larger scale? We have a lot of things that I have to explain to the business it’s quite challenging in terms of how to prove to them in terms of numbers. on the return on investments, and also the return on social and environmental investment. Let’s go to the another farm and then you will see by yourself how the return can be translated. I was excited to see the next step. Our first stop, W Hotel. From the outside, it’s this beautiful traditional Thai building, dwarfed by the glass and steel of the city. And inside, it’s not the world of permaculture, it’s a chic design, craft cocktails, and meticulous brand management. We was introduced by the bartender here, his name is Marco, he is the one who are very creative and innovative person he trying to marinate the cocktail with vegetable, from there on, they said that “I have to convince my boss… to have my own farm on my rooftop.” The staff were polite, bringing us complimentary tea while we waited. Unfortunately, the answer on filming upstairs was a firm but gracious no. You can’t just enter this world with flip-flops and a camera, there are procedures. It wasn’t a definitive no, just ‘come back with the right paperwork’. The manager was even kind enough to give us an off-camera tour of their rooftop farm and it was amazing. Hopefully, we can return one day. But for my camera, the only thing on the menu was this excellent and bittersweet tea. Lesson learned, next on the list, the Pullman Hotel. This time we called ahead, another very pleasant conversation that also ended with a polite refusal. This corporate world is surrounded by an invisible moat. And I, the scruffy farmer, did not have the right key for the drawbridge. Noo said to leave it with her and we’d see what tomorrow brings. So I headed back to my own, more moderately priced hotel. Bangkok accommodates for every budget, mine was about $20 a night. And the decor certainly made an impression. It felt like it was designed by a committee of anime fans, ancient Egyptian historians, and a nightclub lighting technician. I absolutely loved it. Five stars. The next day, Noo worked her magic. She made the calls, spoke the language and the gates to the castle were opened. The Centara Grand. Towering over the famous Central World mall, right in the heart of Bangkok. The journey to the top feels like leaving the world of agriculture further and further behind. And this is what you expect to find on a Bangkok rooftop: a beautiful pool, a cocktail bar, and an oasis of urban luxury. But then you turn a corner and you find a completely different kind of oasis. Here it was, the culmination of Noo’s work. A fully operational, large scale farm in the sky. And Nu began by explaining how it all worked. What is the substrate? It’s like coconut husk or something? It’s coconut husk, to absorb the moisture, and at the same time to make the space for all kinds of microbes, earthworms, millipedes to stay and help digging out, making the soil more healthy. To do the urban farming, it’s quite a new things for Bangkok people and in particular Thai people, we rely on agricultural products from the rural area, but in Bangkok, we have this situation where there are 9,000 tons of waste in Bangkok daily and at the same time, 65% of the 9,000 tons are food waste What we can think about how we turn all the food waste into something valuable, treasure, it’s… the compost. And at the same time we are helping the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration to reduce their expenses on waste management. Now with a full understanding of this closed loop system, the conversation shifted. We know the sustainability benefits, but what about the practical, hard-nosed financial incentive? This is how she translates permaculture for the boardroom. This circular urban farming is the model offered to the business to tackle the triple bottom line: people, planet, and profit. It’s the concrete solution that all the business can feel feel that the money that they would like to invest on developing this kind of farm is worth it for them. At the same time, they can help this planet and they can help the people in the community to create more green jobs. This kind of farm, we target the payback period is about 2.5 years. And at the same time, they can reduce their their food waste and then they help create the nature positive solution. So for this kind of farm is helping the business to make a quick decision to say “Yes, please do it”. Create the green space, have more access to food safety and at the same time, it helped the business in particular the hotel, and they can boost up the image and reputation to draw more clients, more guests to the hotel. So she’d cracked the code. She had a system that was good for the planet and good for the profit margin. But I had one last question, the entire reason I was here in the first place. Do you think this approach can influence the international permaculture committee to try and go down that more corporate route? Everybody right now, the people in the urban area, people in the rural area, has encountered the same disasters, the global warming, the climate change. We are in the same boat. If we are going to hold this space only for the permaculture practitioners, we ignore the impact of doing permaculture everywhere, in all walks of life, with all sectors. we are losing our hope in making this world more peaceful Nu’s vision doesn’t stop here. It’s the beginning of a much larger initiative called ‘Voice of Resilience’. Reading through their strategy, it’s incredibly ambitious. With her own prototype and several hotels already on board, they’re targeting entire districts: Silom, Rama 4, Sathon. The goal isn’t just a few gardens, it’s to transform the whole of Bangkok’s skyline, manage waste at the source, and build a more resilient food system for millions. It all sounds perfect. Maybe a little too perfect. I couldn’t shake the image of that tiny little bag, that symbol of good intentions lost in translation. This is the disconnect that makes people cynical. So what does Nu, the ultimate pragmatist, have to say on the matter? Permaculture is considered more of like a grassroots movement from the bottom, and then things where you work in the corporate industry are seen more as a top down. There will probably be people within the permaculture community that are a little bit skeptical. Yesterday I went to one of the exhibitions and I found, this, it’s one of the SDGs printed on a bag number 12, “Responsible Consumption and Production”, and they were all individually wrapped in little plastic bags. For some people they think that the top down concepts are more about optics and distraction rather than real action. So for the people that are worried about corporate sponsorship, how would you answer them? What do you think of these kind of things? I think for the business side is a journey for their learning It was very difficult for me 20 years ago when tried to promote this to corporations. because they had no clue, what is global warming? What is climate change? But now recently, the flooding, high temperatures, its a real thing. People feel it and people are afraid of it. Whoever is trying to walk the opposite road ti business, I think you’re gonna have a limited world for yourself. But if you think another way around, people has the same… want… sitting on the same horizon of disaster, and we have no more room to help ourselves. business has a lot of room for improvement. And they have the willingness now. It’s not 20 years ago. and it’s time now for all of us to walk with them. Everyone should practice permaculture in my opinion. Her words stuck with me. Everyone should practice permaculture. Not in a dogmatic sense, just practice. It’s easy for a cynic like me to mock and dismiss these things as corporate fluff. But when you see a father taking a moment to teach his daughter about these big complicated ideas, it isn’t perfect, but it’s an attempt, a good start. And then I thought about the rest of the team I’d just met. On this occasion, I followed a single thread of this story, and it was incredible, but every single person in this picture has a story just as inspiring. I hope they’ll let me continue to tell all their stories, so please leave a comment if you’d like to see more. I was leaving Bangkok feeling tentatively hopeful, convinced that trying to bridge these worlds, despite all the complexity, was a conversation worth having. And with this profound, uplifting thought, the universe sent me what I initially believed to be a cynical metaphor. Look at that, a heartless system literally confiscating joy from a small child. The smile wiped clean off their face. Brilliant. Come on, kid, cry. A powerful image of “The Man” winning again. Oh, they’ve got uninflated replacements. Okay, so it’s less a heartless system and more a mildly inconvenient, but ultimately well-prepared system governed by health and safety. The villain is… administrative foresight? That’s not quite as punchy. No easy answers then. No clear-cut moral, just a slightly confused child holding a limp balloon. I guess I’ll just head back home with the exact same expression. I hopped on the night train back to the farm, to my collection of organically produced sticks. But the trees don’t feel like a failure anymore, they feel like an expensive education. And now I have a few more numbers in my phone. I’ll make a follow-up video about what I think happened to these trees, but hopefully some new friends can help me understand too. I’ve come back from Bangkok with a new job. My role, I hope, is to also be a translator. My contribution to this amazing group of people isn’t going to be agricultural expertise. I’d be happy just to share their stories. Hopefully without too many rambling sarcastic asides, but no promises.