A Malaysian farmer who learned abroad, and came home.

Gene Eu is an artist and farmer focused on sustainability and conservation. For the last 15 years, his background in permaculture and animal husbandry has gone into one question: how can farming make room for nature instead of pushing it out?

He grew up in Malaysia surrounded by animals, and in 1996 his parrot breeding earned recognition. He later spent a decade running his own small farm in North Carolina with very little outside help. The animals did much of the work: chickens turned the compost, goats and sheep mowed the pastures, and his working dogs guarded the livestock while their puppies brought in a good income.

In 2020 he came home, bringing 16 working farm dogs from the USA. He has since crossed them with local dogs to breed guardians with the right temperament in bodies suited to Malaysia's heat. Over the years he has run similar crossbreeding programs for chickens, goats, dogs and cats with climate change in mind, including work with remote mountain communities.

Gene is also a painter. Since 2019 he has developed a dry-brush style that reads like a charcoal drawing, and it has become his signature. That artist's eye shapes his farm designs too: his knowledge of livestock, wildlife and plants gives him a far broader palette than most landscape designers, and lets him weave free-ranging wildlife into a working farm so it feels like a garden.

Today he lives on a jungle property in Malaysia with his partner and a large family of dogs, cats and geese. Visitors usually meet the animals before they meet Gene.