Gerardo Ruiz Smith

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Gerardo works as a permaculture consultant and educator through Mexico and Latin America. For the last 5 years he has been a member of the Wixarika Research Center, a non-profit that works to preserve the culture and the natural heritage of the Wixarika (Huichol) people in Mexico through regenerative development and permaculture. He co-founded PLANTUM, a small permaculture design studio in Mexico and is part of NuMundo a global network of permaculture and holistic centers.

He integrates his background in engineering with his passion for ecology and holistic thinking through permaculture. He obtained his first PDC with Kevin Bayuk and David Cody at the Urban Permaculture Institute of San Francisco. He is also certified by Gaia Education in Ecovillage Design.

Apart from his work as a consultant he is currently involved in a few projects ranging from the development of a community forestry and agroforesty program with the Wixarika (Huichol) communities in the Sierra Madre of Jalisco, to working with youth at risk to stablish the two first public funded urban permaculture centers in Mexico.

He is also working with a group of colleagues to kick-start the Center for Regenerative Agriculture, a Mexico-based non-profit organization, aiming to make Holistic Management, Permaculture and Keyline Design accessible and affordable to the people who need it the most, the small-scale farmers and indigenous communities in Mexico, as ways to adapt to changing climatic patterns while restoring degraded land, sequestering carbon and strengthening local food sovereignty.

2015 Convergence Panel: Permaculture: An International Lens