Natalie Topa

Background

About Natalie Topa

Natalie Topa is a global expert in regenerative design and resilience, with 20 years of experience restoring landscapes and designing agroecosystems to support climate adaptation, food security, water security, soil health, and seed sovereignty. Trained as an urban and regional planner, she began her international work in 2005 in South Sudan, where she witnessed ecological collapse—nutrient loss, hydrological breakdown, and degraded soils—as a root driver of humanitarian crises. This realization shaped her life’s mission: to help communities heal the natural systems that sustain them. Natalie trains farmers, pastoralists, and communities to implement practical, land-based solutions—such as passive water harvesting, large-scale half-moons, bioswales, earthen dams, and integrated stoneworks—to rehydrate soils, slow erosion, restore biodiversity, and buffer against drought and flood. Her designs span homesteads, farms, infrastructure, and full watershed systems, grounded in circular systems thinking and deep ecological ethics. She is also deeply committed to breaking chemical dependency in agriculture and advocating for seed sovereignty. Natalie promotes the use and distribution of locally adapted, open-pollinated seeds that can be selected, saved, and shared by farmers. She conducts a wide range of hands-on trainings in biochar production, composting, biofertilizer fermentation, vermiculture, and passive ecological design to help communities restore fertility and rebuild their landscapes without harmful petrochemicals. Outside the field, Natalie is an avid chef and culinary explorer, through courses at the Culinary Institute of America, and all over the world. She studies traditional foodways wherever she travels, using cuisine as a lens to explore agricultural heritage, indigenous crops, sacred grains, and forgotten ingredients. She recreates regional dishes from around the world and believes that restoring watersheds and feeding people are her love languages—acts of resilience, regeneration, and cultural memory.