Ben Jones, founder and Executive Director of the
Virgin Islands Sustainable Farm Institute (VISFI), on the island of St. Croix, USA, cultivates a lot more than organic produce on his 140 acres of gardens, pasture and tropical rainforest. For the last seven years, he has led the growth and development of VISFI as a working farm, sustainability education and research center, and permaculture demonstration site. Ben’s passions for farming met his desire to do university-level inquiry, research and documentation in his Gaia University master’s work, which was focused on developing VISFI as the Gaia University Regional Center,
Gaia Island.
VISFI’s roots trace back to Ben’s first business venture in 1993. As a young, international business major looking for some real-world experience, Ben and a friend formed a partnership and planted five acres of habanero peppers. Despite the hard work and little pay, he fell “crazy in love” with farming.
In 1997, Ben founded
Whitestone Farm on a piece of land near Atlanta, Georgia, USA, which had been in his family for over six generations, but had deteriorated into little more than a junk yard. Ben set about restoring the ecological health of the land and slowly transformed it into a thriving organic farm.
In 2000, Ben attended the Rocky Mountain Center for Botanical Studies where he completed a design for an institute that would “give students the opportunity to learn problem-solving techniques through hands-on farm project facilitation. I wanted to help people reconnect with the sacred aspect of food and medicine and offer jobs and educational opportunities that would enable future farmers to start and run a sustainable farm.”
Soon an opportunity presented itself that would allow the full scope of his vision to come to life. On a visit to St. Croix, Ben’s parents saw the island’s need for an institute like the one they knew his son aspired to create, and suggested that he explore developing his project there. Ben found a piece of land in dire need of restoration and up for sale. In 2003, the land was purchased and the work began.
With the support of his parents and many dedicated interns and apprentices, Ben converted the neglected pasture into a shining example of permaculture design and holistic land management. The next step was to begin to build a formal program. Although he knew of several universities that offered credit to students for doing sustainable agriculture research and training in the field, Ben wanted to connect to a school more closely aligned with the ethics of permaculture. When he learned that Gaia University was actually founded upon permaculture’s ethics, he initiated a dialogue with Gaia University’s Co-presidents, Andrew Langford and Liora Adler, that ultimately resulted in Ben’s enrollment in a GU master’s program in
Organizing Learning for EcoSocial Regeneration (OLE).
In the course of his learning journey, Gaia University provided Ben and his staff the opportunity to design an accredited degree program in parallel with the development of his residential farming training program,
Ridge to Reef. He was also given tools and resources that helped him reflect on and learn from this experience, which in turn provided him with essential insights into how to run a Gaia University regional center. Ben’s outstanding work has become a valuable resource for many other associates developing centers through the OLE program.
In December, 2009, Ben and his staff hosted a Gaia U orientation that was a joyous celebration of Gaia University’s vision and community. VISFI’s breathtaking location and its successful modeling of sustainability education proved inspirational to associates embarking on their own degree pathways. Ben celebrated his graduation at the culmination of this orientation and has since received Gaia University’s blessing to launch Gaia Island. In addition to the continued work of developing Gaia Island, Ben now serves as a main advisor for Gaia U associates.
Associate's Work 
