The next morning Surya took me to his permaculture site and we spent the rest of the day there. On a mere postage stamp of land he was growing enough food to feed his family and he had enough left over to sell and make a decent profit. His permaculture project was a scant two years old. He was trying to achieve five “stories” of plants on the parcel of land which was not an easy task, even in a forgiving climate like Nepal's which promotes rapid plant growth.

His genius was that he knew which plants, which crops, would be beneficial to each other when they were planted close to each other in this multi-storied complex. In other words, the crops, herbs, shubs and trees, he selected needed to adapt to the site but also to each other so there was a synergy between them and the 'system" would be more productive than the 'sum of its parts". This means that the lower story plants had to be good producers in a shaded environment. The top story plants had to be adapted to full sunlight. They couldn’t cancel each other out.