The Caribbean Agroforestry Institute (CAI), is based on a 35 acre off grid farm and homestead in Camuy, Puerto Rico. Stephanie and Dan started CAI in 2020 after falling in love with the island. They are passionate about off grid living, permaculture, biodynamics, clean water, regenerating soil, growing healthy food, cultivating healing herbs and sharing their passion with others.

Caribbean Agroforestry Institute’s (CAI) mission is to research, demonstrate and educate in the fields of agroforestry and other ecological practices in support of people, pollinators and plants.

We are an agricultural educational nonprofit that offers technical courses to train students to design, implement and manage diverse agroforestry systems in the tropics and across the world. Some of our programs equip students to transform their home gardens and farms into abundant food producing landscapes, while other programs are designed to train students to manage commercial farms for themselves or their employer.

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We utilize over a dozen other local instructors in our classes. To learn more about our teaching team, click here.

Stephanie Syson

Co-Founder & Director

Stephanie Syson, co-founder and Director of Caribbean Agroforestry Institute, spends the days with her hands in the soil and her heart with the plants.  She started down her Permaculture path in 2001 with an internship at Punta Mona in Costa Rica.  After visiting and living at multiple Permaculture communities in Latin America she was hooked!  Stephanie lived within and managed the Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute for 4 years.  In that time she started the Basalt Seed Library and the Basalt Community Food Park as well as opening an herbal Product line called Dynamic Roots.  After many years of farming and running her herbal product business, she decided to devote herself fully to farming medicinal herbs.

Stephanie partnered with Sustainable Settings Ranch in Carbondale Colorado and opened Biodynamic Botanicals in 2015.  She is a full-time farmer and educator.  She has recently started 35 acre farm in Puerto Rico that combines her love of medicinal herbs, agroforestry, subsistence farming,  tropical climates and ocean life with teaching and rural, large scale Permaculture Design.

​Stephanie is a Certified Permaculture Designer, an educator in the fields of  Greenhouse Management, Seed Saving, Food Forests, Biodynamics, Herbalism and more. She has presented at conferences such as the Boulder Bioneers, the North American Permaculture Convergence, the American Herbalists Guild and the Biodynamic Association. She works with groups of all ages to further their knowledge of these topics through regular public workshops such as CRMPI, Colorado Mountain College, The Grow Network, and the Denver Permaculture Guild  as well as co-hosting the Living Permaculture Show, a monthly radio show on public radio KDNK. Stephanie is committed to community service through education and demonstration of herbal self-care and sustainable farming practices.

Daniel Whitney

Co-Founder

Daniel, co-founder of Caribbean Agroforestry Institute, has his foundational roots in sustainable energy design with experience in mechanical systems including water, energy, and manufacturing. An engineer by education, he enjoys a diverse amount of creative endeavors to sharpen his skillset. Through design, manufacturing, machine repair, construction, irrigation techniques, sustainable systems designs.

With a Bachelors of Science degree from Colorado State University, Daniel has been active in Engineers Without Borders, working with water distribution projects in San Salvador, El Salvador, and a water filtration project for a community of 3,000 people in rural Tanzania. Through PhD level coursework in Energy Systems Manufacturing, Daniel worked in developing a thin-filmed photovoltaic manufacturing process at the Next Generation PV Center & the High Energy Physics and Plasma Engineering Lab of the Engineering Research Laboratories in Fort Collins, Colorado.