Online Tropical Permaculture Course
Grow Food That Actually Produces in the Tropics—Without Years of Trial and Error
Design and build a complete tropical food system—from soil and planting to harvesting, preserving, and cooking what you grow.
✓ Know what to plant first
✓ Know where to plant it and how much to grow
✓ Turn your harvest into practical meals
Built from 15+ years of real-world implementation at Finca Tierra
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Everything You Need to Build a Productive Tropical Food System
25+ hours of lessons
60+ tropical crop profiles
Complete 2,000 m² (½ acre) food system blueprint
Food forest & garden design templates
Crop area & nutrition calculators
Complete Wellness Kitchen: recipes, flours, oils, preservation & pantry planning
Private student community
Lifetime access with all future updates
Know What to Plant, Where to Plant It, and What to Do Next
Instead of piecing together conflicting advice from YouTube, books, and generic gardening resources, follow one complete framework designed specifically for tropical climates.
By the end of the course, you will know how to:
✓ Decide what to plant based on your climate, property, and goals
✓ Design where each part of your food system belongs
✓ Calculate how much to plant for your household’s needs
✓ Plan for year-round production
✓ Build productive food forests and vegetable gardens
✓ Grow staple crops for meaningful food security
✓ Improve soil, water, and fertility systems
✓ Integrate chickens, fish, and other productive systems
✓ Process, preserve, and cook tropical food
✓ Create a realistic, step-by-step implementation plan
Whether you are starting with a backyard or several hectares, you will have a clear framework for designing, building, harvesting, and enjoying your tropical food system.
Start with a vegetable garden or food forest. Expand into a complete tropical homestead whenever you are ready.
Why This Course Is Different
Most permaculture courses teach principles.
This course shows you how to apply them to build a productive tropical food system.
Every lesson comes directly from systems we've designed, built, tested, measured, redesigned, and refined through years of daily implementation
You'll learn what worked, what didn't, and, most importantly, why.
Instead of spending years experimenting, learn from the successes, mistakes, and lessons we've already lived through.
This is a tool you'll return to whenever you need clarity, not a course you rush to finish.
Imagine Your Property One Year From Now...
Imagine stepping outside your home and harvesting:
Fresh vegetables
Fruit from dozens of perennial crops
Staple foods that replace supermarket calories
Eggs, fish, herbs, spices, and medicinal plants
Imagine filling your kitchen with homegrown meals, tropical flours, teas, sauces, preserved harvests, and pantry staples made from food you've grown yourself.
Instead of wondering what to plant next, you'll have a clear plan and the confidence to keep building.
Finca Tierra Online Course Reviews
Invaluable for building an off-grid homestead.
“The online course has been invaluable as I design and build my off-grid home and food forest. The community forum has been incredibly helpful. I highly recommend it.”
— Sky d’Almeida
The most comprehensive tropical guide I've found.
“I took the Permaculture Design Course with Ana and Ian in 2018, and it completely changed my life. I ended up moving to Costa Rica because of it. Their online course is the most comprehensive guide out there… this course really has it all.”
— Elizabeth Couse
From planning to planting—and even cooking.
“What stood out to me were the amazing garden templates and how the course goes from planning to planting - even to cooking delicious meals. You can feel Ana & Ian’s incredible knowledge throughout.”
— Lea Imboden
A practical manual for growing food in the tropics.
“Finca Tierra’s course stands out as a practical, hands-on manual for growing food in the tropics. It offers a replicable model that can strengthen your economy, local food systems, and resilience.”
— Irene Burgues
Start Building Your Tropical Food System Today
One unsuccessful planting season can easily cost more than this course in wasted time, effort, plants, and materials.
Start building with confidence instead of spending years figuring it out alone.
Lifetime Access
$399 USD
✔ 25+ hours of lessons
✔ Complete course access from day one
✔ 60+ tropical crop profiles
✔ Complete 2,000 m² blueprint
✔ Design templates and calculators
✔ Wellness Kitchen and preservation
✔ Private student community
✔ Future course updates
✔ 7-day money-back guarantee
Secure checkout through PayPal. No PayPal account required.
Is This Course Right For You?
This course is a good fit if you want to:
✔ Build or improve a tropical homestead
✔ Create a productive food forest
✔ Produce more of your household’s food
✔ Design a resilient property
✔ Understand what, where, and how much to plant
✔ Learn from real tropical experience
✔ Avoid years of costly trial and error
✔ Connect food production with harvesting, preservation, and cooking
It may not be the right fit if you are looking primarily for temperate-climate gardening, a brief introduction to permaculture, or a certificate without practical implementation.
From Degraded Pasture to a Productive Tropical Homestead
When we began in 2008, the land was degraded, compacted clay pasture.
No fertility.
No shade.
No system.
Over more than 15 years, we designed, tested, redesigned, and documented the systems we now teach.
Today, that same land produces:
A diverse, nutrient-dense food supply
Year-round vegetables, roots, fruits, and perennial crops
Functional soil, water, and energy systems
Food from gardens, food forests, animals, and aquatic systems
Ingredients that move from the land into the kitchen
This course is the distilled framework behind that transformation.
Everything Inside the Course
PLAN → DESIGN → BUILD → PLANT → EAT
One complete framework for designing, growing, harvesting, processing, and living from your own tropical food system.
The entire course is available from day one.
Design a Complete, Nutrient-Dense Tropical Diet
Learn how to design a balanced tropical diet that fits your land, climate, and lifestyle.
You'll learn how to:
Plan for calories, protein, fats, vegetables, fruits, and staple crops
Decide which foods are worth growing and which are not
Choose crops based on nutrition, productivity, and efficiency
Maximize useful production from small spaces
Connect your land plan with your actual food needs
Complete 2,000 m² Food System Blueprint
Based on real production data from our homestead, you'll receive:
Complete 2,000 m² production model
Crop area charts
Nutrition and yield calculators
Planning tools for calories, protein, and fats
A scalable framework for properties of different sizes
Permaculture Design — Build a Functional Tropical Homestead
Learn how to organize your property so that its systems support one another and become more productive over time.
You will learn how to:
Assess your land
Place gardens, food forests, ponds, and water systems
Create efficient movement and work patterns
Build nutrient cycles
Develop an effective master plan
Implement the design in realistic stages
Tropical Food Forest Systems
Design perennial systems that become more productive each year.
Learn how to:
Select resilient tropical species
Build fertility naturally
Layer plants for long-term productivity
Reduce maintenance over time
Design for abundance and resilience
Tropical Vegetable Gardens & Staple Crops
Learn how to grow the foods that form the practical foundation of a tropical diet.
High-yield tropical vegetables
Roots and starchy staple crops
Tropical grains and beans
Cassava, sweet potatoes, taro, and other calorie crops
Compost, mulch, biochar, and fertility
Year-round planting and harvest planning
Integrated livestock where appropriate
Homestead Infrastructure Systems
Food production is only one part of a resilient homestead.
You'll also learn the fundamentals of:
Solar energy
Rainwater harvesting
Water filtration
Wastewater recycling
Compost systems
Food processing equipment
Master 60+ Tropical Crops
Each crop profile includes:
Best-performing varieties
Propagation
Planting
Fertility
Pruning
Pest management
Harvest
Storage
Preparation
Wellness Kitchen & Preservation
Growing food is only half the system. You also need to know how to use it.
Learn how to:
Cook with tropical ingredients
Turn harvests into practical everyday meals
Produce tropical flours, oils, teas, vinegars, and sauces
Preserve seasonal harvests
Plan a useful pantry
Use nutrition charts and weekly menu plans
Reduce dependence on purchased foods
Private Community Access
You are not working in isolation.
Connect with students from around the world to:
Ask implementation questions
Share designs and property plans
Learn from real projects
Discuss tropical crops and systems
Celebrate progress
Meet Your Instructors
Ana Gaspar A.
Co-Founder of Finca Tierra
Ana is a human rights lawyer, environmental advocate, and founder of the BioRegional Plan for Talamanca.
She leads the course's Wellness Kitchen, nutrition, food processing, preservation, and sustainable living systems, helping students connect food production with everyday life.
Ian Macaulay
Co-Founder of Finca Tierra
Ian is a tropical systems designer and educator with more than 15 years of hands-on experience designing and building productive tropical homesteads.
He leads the course's land design, food production, water systems, infrastructure, and production planning.
Explore the Framework in Practice
Not ready to enroll yet? Explore some of the systems behind the course:
• How Much Land to Feed a Family: A Complete Tropical Diet on 2,000 m²
• Tropical Food Forest: How We Design Perennial Systems in the Humid Tropics
• Tropical Vegetable Garden: How to Grow Abundantly in the Tropics
These articles introduce individual parts of the framework. The course brings them together into one complete, step-by-step system.
FAQ
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Whether you're just getting started or already have years of gardening experience, this course provides a practical framework for designing, growing, processing, and living from a productive tropical food system.
You can start with a vegetable garden, a food forest, or a complete homestead, the system grows with you.
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You'll receive lifetime access to:
• 25+ hours of lessons
• 60+ tropical crop profiles
• Complete 2,000 m² food system blueprint
• Garden & food forest templates
• Crop area & nutrition calculators
• Wellness Kitchen recipes, food processing & preservation
• Private student community
• Future course updates
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Yes.
Growing food is only half the system.
You'll also learn how to cook, process, preserve, and store tropical harvests through our Wellness Kitchen.
This includes flours, oils, sauces, teas, preservation methods, pantry planning, and recipes designed around tropical crops.
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Absolutely.
Many students begin with a vegetable garden or food forest, then expand over time. The framework is designed so you can build your property in stages, at your own pace.
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That's perfectly fine.
The course helps you design a food system that fits your goals. Whether you want to grow 20% or 80% of your food, the planning framework can be adapted to your lifestyle.
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No.
The course is designed for beginners and experienced growers alike. It provides a clear, step-by-step framework while also serving as a long-term reference for more advanced students.
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Yes.
No previous permaculture training is required.
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Lifetime.
You'll also receive all future course updates at no additional cost.
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The course includes more than 25 hours of lessons, but it's designed as a long-term reference, not something you need to finish in a weekend.
Learn at your own pace and return whenever you need it.
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Yes.
This course is designed specifically for tropical climates, including:
Humid tropics
Tropical monsoon (wet/dry)
Tropical savanna
Including regions such as:
Caribbean
Central America
South America
Southeast Asia
Hawaii
Tropical Africa
Northern Australia
Pacific Islands
If bananas, cassava, or papaya grow where you live, this course is likely a good fit.
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Yes.
You’ll learn how to build fertile soil using biochar, compost, mulch, support species, and natural nutrient cycles, without needing to replace your soil.
This is the same approach we used to regenerate degraded, compacted cattle pasture at Finca Tierra.
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No.
The framework scales from a backyard to a homestead, farm, or ecovillage.
Our 2,000 m² (½-acre) model shows how a carefully designed tropical food system can provide a diverse and substantial share of a household’s diet. The same planning method can also be adapted to much smaller spaces.
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Yes.
The 2,000 m² (½-acre) model is a complete, real-world example that demonstrates how the framework works.
The principles, crop-area charts, and planning tools can be adapted to small backyard gardens, larger homesteads, farms, retreats, and multi-hectare properties.
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YouTube and books are excellent for learning individual techniques.
This course gives you one complete framework.
Instead of piecing together hundreds of disconnected ideas, you’ll learn how soil, crops, water, food forests, nutrition, animals, processing, and homestead design work together as one tropical food system.
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Some results can begin within 4–12 weeks, especially with fast-growing greens, herbs, and vegetables.
Staple crops such as cassava, beans, taro, and plantain generally take several months or longer, depending on the crop and your climate.
Food forests develop more gradually and become increasingly productive over several years.
The course helps you combine quick harvests with long-term systems, so you can begin producing food while your larger design matures.
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No.
This is a specialized online course focused on designing and building productive tropical food systems. It does not grant a Permaculture Design Certificate.
Finca Tierra offers a separate, certified in-person PDC that includes the full curriculum, practical application, and on-site learning experience.
Grow Your Food. Regenerate Your Land.
Live From the Tropics With Confidence.
Stop guessing what to plant next.
Build your tropical food system with a clear, practical framework developed through real-world implementation at Finca Tierra.
Lifetime Access — $399 USD
✔ 25+ hours of lessons
✔ 60+ tropical crop profiles
✔ Complete 2,000 m² blueprint
✔ Design templates and calculators
✔ Wellness Kitchen and preservation
✔ Private student community
✔ Future updates
✔ 7-day money-back guarantee