What You Can Achieve
-
Design your living ecosystem - with food forests, roots, grains, beans, and vegetable gardens and create a green home powered by rainwater, energy, and waste recycling systems.
-
Grow your own supermarket at home - raise chickens for eggs, care for honey bees, and master 50+ recipes, from balanced farm-to-table meals to pantry staples like flour, chocolate, vinegar, oil, and ferments.
-
Grow over $10,000 worth of food yearly - or thousands from just 100m².
That’s using local supermarket prices - the real value of homegrown organic is much higher. -
Feed a family of two+ from just 2,000m² (½ acre) or adapt our plan to a smaller garden or community space.
-
Maintain your homestead with just 4 hours of work per week - using regenerative, low-effort methods.
- Get the proven system that has trained over 1,000 students worldwide - now available online!
Who This Course Is For
-
Anyone interested in growing food in the tropics - from backyard beginners to serious growers.
-
Food forest enthusiasts & gardeners who want food systems that thrive in tropical climates.
-
Homesteaders and landowners - ready to turn their land into productive, low-maintenance abundance.
-
Permaculture designers — looking to sharpen their tropical design skills and tools.
-
Community leaders and organizers - bringing food security and resilience to their regions.
-
Sustainability consultants - adding tropical, real-world solutions to their practice.
Gain the skills and tools to transform your life from consumer to producer!
What Makes This Course Different
More than a Gardening Course - The Complete Guide to Self-Sufficiency in the Tropics
-
Built to guide you at every stage - from your first garden bed to a thriving long-term homestead
-
Field-tested over 15+ years on real tropical land
-
Designed for the tropics - humid, wet/dry, and savanna zones
-
Filmed on Finca Tierra’s off-grid homestead - real soil, real systems, real results
-
Custom tools + bonus modules - nutrition charts, garden templates, planning tools, animal care, natural pool & solar dehydrator building, and more
-
Teaches to grow and cook a balanced diet - proteins, fats, carbs, greens, and fruits (not just vegetables), 50+ recipes
-
Builds real integration - food, water, energy, and waste cycles in harmony
-
Continuously evolving - with updates and new tools over time
-
Join a global tropical community - exchange tips, seeds, resources, and region-specific advice with others
Hear What Our Students Are Saying
All You Need to Live Sustainably in the Tropics
"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!
Now, their online course is the most comprehensive guide out there. If you know Ana and Ian, you know they’re total nerds about this stuff—in the best way.
They’ve spent 15 years researching how to live sustainably in the tropics: from building your home and growing your food to natural energy systems and even a natural swimming pool. If you dream of living sustainably in the tropics, this course really has it all.”
— Elizabeth Couse
Designing and Building My Off-Grid Home and Food Forest
“I attended the on-site Permaculture Design Course and recently signed up for the Online Course. I'm so glad I did both!
The on-site course was life-changing and the online course has been invaluable as I design and build my off-grid home and food forest. It’s perfect for beginners, but also great for going deeper or revisiting details, as I start from scratch on my land.
The community forum has been incredibly helpful for niche questions. I highly recommend it for both novices and experienced growers!”
— Sky d’Almeida
From Planning the Garden to Cooking What You Harvest
“I absolutely love Finca Tierra’s Online Permaculture Course. It’s detailed and gives you everything you need to start your tropical garden and live a self-sustained life.
What stood out to me were the amazing garden templates and how the course goes from planning to planting each crop—even to cooking delicious meals.
The videos are excellent, showing everything in detail. You can feel Ana & Ian’s incredible knowledge throughout.”
— Lea Imboden
A Practical Model for Growing Food and Strengthening Local Economies in the Tropics
“As an organic farmer and environmental economist, Finca Tierra’s course stands out as a practical, hands-on manual for growing food in the tropics.
But it’s not just about growing food, it’s about designing a resilient, self-sufficient system that supports you and your community.
This course offers a replicable model that can strengthen your economy, local food systems, and resilience, not only in Costa Rica, but across the tropics.”
— Irene Burgues
What's Inside the Course?
Diet Design - Create a complete, nutrient-rich diet using easy-to-grow tropical staples.
Example Garden with Crop Area & Nutrient Charts - Plan your self-sufficient mini-farm on 2,000m² - or adapt it to any space.
Permaculture Design - Design a thriving, low-maintenance tropical homestead from the ground up.
Food Forest - Mimic natural ecosystems to produce abundant food with minimal effort
Mini Farm - Grow grains, tubers, vegetables, beans, honey, and eggs - naturally and sustainably.
Homestead Infrastructure - Solar energy, rainwater systems, nutrient cycling, cooking, and more.
Crop Profiles - Master 60+ essential tropical crops - how to grow, harvest, and use them with confidence.
Wellness Kitchen - Turn your harvest into powerful meals, flours, oils, preserves, and more.
Meet Your Instructors
Ana Gaspar A.
Costa Rican human rights lawyer specializing in Indigenous rights, environmental advocate, community organizer, co-founder of Finca Tierra, and founder of the BioRegional Plan for Talamanca. She is passionate about integrating sustainability and food sovereignty into law, politics, economics, and education, transforming bioregional and national systems to serve people and the planet while empowering local cultural identities. At Finca Tierra, she’s the heart behind the Wellness Kitchen — leading nutrition and diet design research, transforming harvests into farm-to-table recipes for vibrant health.
Ian Macaulay
American artist, permaculture designer, and consultant with over 15 years of experience in tropical homesteading. He is the co-founder of Finca Tierra, where he teaches practical systems for food forests, mini-farms, and off-grid living, and also co-founder of SEED Ecovillage. At Finca Tierra, he leads hands-on research and design, constantly experimenting to develop low-cost, efficient, and modern systems for sustainable living. Ian is especially focused on creating regenerative food systems that support the family nucleus — yet are fully scalable to serve communities and bioregions.
7-Day Money-Back Guarantee — Join Risk-Free
We’ve poured years of tropical permaculture experience into this course, and we’re confident it will transform how you grow food and design your life. If you don’t feel 100% excited and empowered within the first 7 days, just email us — we’ll refund your full purchase.
Turn Your Land into a Living System- Fast Track Productivity
Join the Tropical Permaculture Online Course to build your food forest, regenerative systems, and grow food, resilience, and abundance in the tropics.
Our Journey to Self-Sufficiency
In 2008, we began our journey into permaculture, initially inspired by the idea of building an energy-efficient home and growing our food. We wanted to eliminate rent, electricity, and water bills and produce a food forest to replace our grocery expenses. Ultimately, we envisioned creating something beautiful, low-maintenance, and cost-effective that would give us the freedom to share time with our loved ones and enjoy life—a system that would transform us from consumers to producers to heal our lives while helping to regenerate the planet.
Eventually, we founded the Finca Tierra Permaculture Education Center, where we still teach our immersive, hands-on two-week Permaculture Design Certificate Course (PDC). More than 1,000 students from around the world have since joined us to gain real-world experience in sustainability. Along the way, we’ve also launched and supported community projects that help others reconnect with land, health, and self-reliance.
For 15 years, we’ve dedicated our lives to experimenting, documenting, and refining this system, always focused on sustainability and economics. We aimed to be as self-sufficient as possible, minimizing off-site inputs and maximizing the dollar-per-hour value of our work.
After many years of living off-grid, we achieved a super efficient, productive ecosystem with a green homestead, food forest, and gardens that produce a complete diet. And we want to share it with everyone interested in becoming self-sufficient in the tropics!
In this course, we’ve documented everything you need to make it easy to replicate. It’s the transformative step-by-step guide we wish we had when we started!
If you live in the tropics and want to build resilience, reduce your grocery costs, or create an economically and environmentally sustainable lifestyle, this course is for you. Whether you're seeking to create a garden that produces literal tons of food in a few hours a week, hoping to build resilience against economic issues or job loss, or enjoy the satisfaction of gardening and connecting with nature, this course offers a blueprint for success.
Transform your relationship with nature and the land—join us and fast-track your journey toward a more efficient, resilient, and sustainable life!
Want to Stay Connected?
Join our community list for course updates and discounts from Finca Tierra.
