PERMACULTURE FUND

The Permaculture Fund will not award grants in 2023. Please check back in 2024.

Created in 2018, the Permaculture Fund was established to support innovative ecological, community building, and sustainable living projects that strengthen cultural connections to the land and nature for people of all ethnicities, ages, and walks of life.

In 2022, New Mexico Foundation granted $81,000 to the following organizations for their Permaculture projects: 

Cruces Creatives (Doña Ana County) – $8,470 

For the Seeding Regenerative Agriculture Project, so farmers and ranchers from Valencia, Bernalillo, Sandoval, Santa Fe, Taos, Mora, Rio Arriba, and Doña Ana counties can share locally successful sustainable practices and form new, cooperative business partnerships with their neighbors. Participants will attend “field days,” which will operate almost like barn raisings for sustainable agricultural techniques. 

Mandy’s Special Farm (Bernalillo County) – $10,000 

For the AgrAbility Apprenticeship Program, which provides farmers with disabilities access to hands-on education in sustainable growing techniques in preparation for a career in agriculture. Program apprentices complete a year-long learning phase designed to prepare them to work on an existing farm or start a farming business of their own. The program serves farmers from Bernalillo, Sandoval, Torrance and Valencia counties. 

Reunity Resources (Santa Fe County) – $15,000 

For the Root to Fruit Farm Tours, to invite and educate farm visitors through free weekly tours that will introduce them to the cycles and principles at play on the farm. The tours are multi-sensory, outdoor urban farm experience in the heart of Santa Fe, demonstrating regenerative agriculture and what’s possible in our harsh, high desert growing environment. This project serves Santa Fe, Taos, Mora, Bernalillo and Torrance counties. 

New Mexico Earthlings Youth Collaborative (Rio Arriba County) – $15,000 

For the Headwaters Youth Conservation Project, which engages high school students from Escalante Middle High School, Mesa Vista Consolidated Schools, Abiquiu Public Schools, Dulce Independent Schools, and Española Public Schools with a local land restoration project. Designed as an internship, students are given a stipend to participate in the program, which trains them to implement valuable earth stewardship practices and ecological principles, as well as professional and life skills.  
 
Rocky Mountain Youth Corps (Taos County) – $15,000 

For the “Si Se Puede” Garden & Permaculture Project, a partnership between Rocky Mountain Youth Corps members, Van Buren Middle School in Bernalillo and the Friends of Valle de Oro National Wildlife Refuge. The project will develop the garden as a source of local, fresh and organic foods for students and the neighborhood. Corps members will participate in life-skills training while they learn valuable workforce development during the completion of the project.  

Mother Nature Center (Rio Arriba, Bernalillo, Santa Fe, Quay, and San Miguel counties) – $15,000 

To partner with 12 rural, urban and tribal organizations in the county in the research and regeneration of soil. The project will help to create 19 Johnson-Su Biologically Enhanced Agriculture Management Bioreactor compost systems that will generate approximately 200 pounds of compost (per reactor). The study will include the genetics of co-evolution of bacterial, fungal and plant material over the 18 months of incubation, and the capacity for a high diversity of crops grown.