Sepp Holzer is a farmer, author and international consultant for natural agriculture. Sepp is known as a "rebel farmer" for his experience, outlook, persistence and philosophy of dealing with wildlife.
Biography and beginning of activity
Josef (Sepp) Holzer was born on July 24, 1942 in the city of Ramingstein in the Austrian province of Salzburg (Austria). In 1962, from his mother and father, Sepp took over the management of a family farm located in the mountainous region of Austria at an altitude of more than a thousand meters above sea level. In the beginning, his conservative farming methods did not bear fruit, and Sepp's efforts were in vain. But Holzer comes up with a fundamentally new method of agricultural management - ecological or "permaculture" method.
Agricultural direction "Permaculture"
For more than 40 years, Sepp Holzer has managed to transform his family farm in the Austrian Alps into an eco-paradise, home to tens of thousands of fruit trees, shrubs, vines and highly productive vegetables. Here, at an altitude of 1200-1500 meters (about 5000 feet) in the so-called "Austrian Siberia", he created a single, well-coordinated, self-sufficient "living laboratory", on the territory of which many varieties of vegetables, fruits, nuts, mushrooms, fish, poultry lived., livestock. It uses a modern system of fertilization and soil irrigation.
From childhood, even as a child, Sepp observed wildlife and experimented with it. Later, he developed his own form of permanent culture, which today is the subject of scientific research by agricultural scientists around the world. The main thing, according to Sepp Holzer himself, is that nature should not be disturbed.
Permaculture presupposes a fundamentally new type of agricultural business, which is based on the relationships that exist in natural ecological systems.
Holzer skillfully uses ecological relationships, allowing nature to do the work for him with a minimum degree of labor and the most natural living conditions for the plants and animals themselves. Thus, he creates his own eco-paradise, which allows him to achieve maximum economic success from agricultural activities.
Sepp Holzer left his modernized and expanded family farm Krameterhof in 2009 to his son Josef Andreas Holzer. Since 2013 Sepp Holzer has been living with his family on his new farm Holzerhof in Burgenland, Austria. Today he conducts seminars on permaculture both at his Holzerhof farm and in other parts of the world.
Rebel Farmer
Sepp Holzer not only created his own, creative farming method based on observation and understanding of nature, known as the "Holzer permaculture". He is also constantly fighting for the right to practice and apply it on his farm. For many years, Holzer has been in litigation against the Austrian authorities, defending his right to remove all restrictions imposed by law on landowners and complicating their existence. So, despite the fines and threats of imprisonment, he did not cut the branches of fruit-bearing trees, claiming that uncut fruit trees withstand snow loads that could break the cut branches. And he turned out to be right: it was these conditions of care that were required for fruit trees and shrubs to survive the great mountain heights and harsh winters.
Sepp has created one of the best methods of using ponds as solar reflectors for use as passive solar heating of structures. He also developed a technique for using the microclimate that occurs in places where rocks emerge to the surface of the earth to effectively change the winter hardiness zone of grown plants.
His Krameterhof farm currently covers over forty-five hectares of forested gardens, including seventy ponds, and is considered the most consistent example of permaculture in the world. This famous farm in the harsh conditions of the Austrian Alps has become a symbol of the unity of man with wildlife and, at the same time, a place that attracts hundreds of visitors from year to year: farmers, scientists and simply tourists who want to see with their own eyes the result of the competent construction of an agricultural economy by Holzer.
Sepp advises a large number of agricultural projects across Europe and the world, including Scotland, Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil and Thailand, creating new croplands from depleted soils in harsh and difficult environments. Sepp Holzer's principles of permaculture are simple and can be applied even in the harshest climates, by anyone and on any scale, from small to large.
Sepp Holzer conducts "Holzer Permaculture" workshops on his farm and around the world, works nationally as a "permaculture" activist and internationally as an advisor on organic farming. He is also the author of several books and the plot of the film Agricultural Rebel.
