The man who would feed the world

As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle

On a visit to the University of California Santa Cruz’s Farm and Garden a few years ago, I met an apprentice who was trying to grow an entire year’s food supply in one small corner of the farm. He planted wheat, corn, beans, potatoes and a variety of salad crops.

Although it would be several months before the first harvest, he had already put himself on a diet consisting only of the food growing in his garden. He looked skinny, but not malnourished, on his diet of bread made from wheat he ground himself, dried beans and canned tomatoes.

“The only thing this diet lacks,” he told me, “is a good source of vitamin B12. It’s hard to get enough B12 from vegetables.”

I pointed out that his diet was also deficient in chocolate, decaf lattes and fettuccine alfredo, three items I considered essential to my own health and well-being. He just laughed, shrugged his shoulders, and went back to sowing beans.

I didn’t know it at the time, but this earnest young apprentice was a disciple of John Jeavons, organic gardening expert and author of “How to Grow More Vegetables Than You Ever Thought Possible On Less Land Than You Can Imagine.”

For more than 30 years Jeavons has been preaching the benefits of small- scale, sustainable farming. Now, on a farm just outside Willits, Jeavons operates the nonprofit Ecology Action and teaches his methods to gardeners from as far away as Siberia, Africa and Latin America.

Sitting in his kitchen one afternoon, Jeavons shows me snapshots from those workshops.

The students stand in a circle around him while he demonstrates his soil preparation technique. He is a distinguished fellow of 60-something who manages, in his trademark tweed coat and cap, to make digging in the dirt look elegant.

In fact, he looks more like an Ivy League professor than an organic gardening visionary, and it is easy to see how he could be effective in both worlds: He recently presided over a worldwide food and soil conference at UC Davis in which farmers and scientists came together to address the looming food shortage that is the focus of Jeavon’s work today.

Jeavons sets the photographs aside and recalls the question that led to the development of his farming techniques.

“In the early 1970s, I went to the San Joaquin Valley, where approximately 30 percent of the food in the United States was being grown at the time, and I asked farmers this question: “What is the smallest area you can grow all your food and income on?’ And they said, “Well, we don’t know, but if it’s a good year, if you have a thousand acres of wheat, you’ll be able to pay your bills. ‘”

“I realized that if I wanted to know the answer to my question, it was ‘tag- you’re it.’”

By 1972, Jeavons had formed Ecology Action and was farming nearly four acres in Palo Alto. Alan Chadwick, pioneer of the French intensive/biodynamic method of farming, came up from Santa Cruz to teach classes. The first edition of “How to Grow More Vegetables” was published two years later. At last, Jeavons was finding answers to the question he’d been asking farmers for years.

“It takes about 15,000 to 30,000 square feet of land to feed one person the average U.S. diet,” he says. “I’ve figured out how to get it down to 4,000 square feet. How? I focus on growing soil, not crops.”

Jeavons took the best of Chadwick’s intensive farming techniques, including double-digging, composting and closely-spaced planting, and added a few ideas of his own.

An organic farm should be a closed system, he reasoned. Off-the-farm inputs like manure, bagged compost, alfalfa meal and liquid kelp all require additional land, water and resources to produce. That, in Jeavon’s view, is hardly sustainable agriculture.

“We have an opportunity to grow very high yields using a fraction of the resources. One of the ways we do this is by growing all the organic matter that we need in the garden, or on the farm, that’s producing the food.”

This closed-system concept is the hallmark of Jeavons’s Grow Biointensive method, a term he registered as a trademark in 1999. It allows farmers to grow large quantities of food with few expenses beyond seeds and manual tools.

And Jeavon’s method is about more than dirt-under-the-nails farming; he has 30 years’ worth of data to back him up. Each edition of “How to Grow More Vegetables” contains more statistical data than the one before: In the latest edition, for instance, you can calculate the precise number of beet seeds you’ll need to grow 30 pounds of beets, along with the protein and calorie content, space requirements, and the percentage of the harvest (i.e., trimmings and inedible portions) that can be returned to the soil as compost.

While this approach may be an interesting experiment for a university student, it could be a matter of survival for people all over the world.

Conventional farming practices, Jeavons explains, deplete the soil of nutrients and lead to wind and water erosion. In the face of increasing populations and a dwindling supply of farmable land, he sees his approach as a sustainable, soil-friendly way to feed the world.

“So we’re talking not just about this fantastic technique for raising really tasty fresh food with only a fraction of the resources, but we’re talking about rebuilding soil. With our methods, you can actually build up to 20 pounds of farmable soil for every pound of food eaten.”

Jeavons gets up from his kitchen table and leads me outside, where we walk down a sunny slope to the mini-farm he and his apprentices tend.

He moved Ecology Action to this site outside Willits in 1982. The nonprofit’s Common Ground Garden Supply store is still located in Palo Alto, but it is here, in Willits, where he teaches most of his workshops, conducts research, and oversees the day-to-day operations of the Bountiful Garden catalog business.

Farming conditions in Willits are far from perfect, but Jeavons sees a benefit to the difficult site. In the new edition of “How to Grow More Vegetables,” he writes that the “heavy winter rains, prolonged summer droughts, short growing season, steep slopes, and depleted rocky soil are similar in many ways to those in countries where Ecology Action’s work is having its most dramatic impact.”

We stand on a rise above his terraced farm. Nestled in the center is a familiar sight: a large circular garden planted with all the crops that would be required to feed one person for one year.

I have begun to recognize the typical Jeavons garden: It is densely planted with carbon crops like corn, wheat and millet that are important food sources but also produce plenty of high-carbon scraps for the compost pile.

Over half of the garden is devoted to these seed and grain crops. Another third is given over to high-calorie root crops like potatoes, parsnips and turnips. These crops store well and produce a large amount of calories in a relatively small space.

That leaves only a few small beds for the vegetables that occupy most ordinary gardens: tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, peppers, lettuce and broccoli.

Still, Jeavons tells me, thanks to closely spaced plantings and compost- enriched, double-dug beds, these smaller beds produce enough vitamins and minerals to sustain a person for a year.

It’s late in the afternoon. All this talk of food production has made me hungry. Back at his office, Jeavons has stacks of research papers and pages of statistics to give me. But for the moment, we are two gardeners in early spring, looking down on the beds of young fava beans, onions, lettuce and herbs. And like any other gardener, Jeavons is eager to show off his work.

“Come down to the garden,” he says. “There’s a few things here I want you to taste.”

EIGHT STEPS TO GROW BIOINTENSIVE GARDENING

• Double-dug, raised beds. Loosening the soil to a depth of 24 inches allows roots to penetrate more deeply and creates a raised bed effect. John Jeavons’ video “Dig It” demonstrates an Aikido-style movement that makes double-digging almost effortless.
• Composting. A healthy compost pile is key to replenishing the soil.
• Intensive planting. “Ignore the spacing instructions that come with your seeds,” Jeavons told me. Plant seedlings so close that when they are mature, the leaves touch. This keeps soil moist and prevents weeds from sprouting.
• Companion planting. Green beans love strawberries, corn provides shade to cucumbers, and fast-maturing radishes grow well in between slower-growing carrots.
• Carbon farming. Corn, millet and oats, along with other seed and grain crops, make up an important part of the diet and provide plenty of high-carbon additions to the compost pile.
• Calorie farming. Growing a year’s food supply means focusing on high- calorie, space-efficient foods like potatoes and parsnips.
• Open-pollinated seeds. Special hybrids aren’t needed in healthy soil, Jeavons says. Using open-pollinated seeds like the ones offered in his Bountiful Gardens Catalog helps preserve genetic diversity.
• Use the whole method. Jeavons emphasizes that high yields come from using all Grow Biointensive components together.

Karuna

On 25th November, five of us from WM PermaNetwork (West Midlands Permaculture Network) visited Karuna, a few miles south of Shrewsbury. Karuna is an 18 acre site, overlooking Long Mynd and has been owned by Janta and Merav and their two children for a year or so. Since taking over the land, which had been used for horses and sheep over the years, they have planted over 5,000 trees.

Amazingly, some of the local people don’t seem to like trees and continue to cause problems for Karuna. I despair when people look at monocultural fields all planted with a single type of plant, or a field of sheep and say that is nature, or consider it to be the natural landscape! The natural landscape of the UK is trees and shrubs, and whilst mankind needs fields to grow food to survive, we should be working towards restoring as much land as possible to it’s original wooded state.

Due to suspected poisoning of some of the newly planted trees at Karuna, Janta took the decision to move onto the land and is currently residing in a former showman’s trailer, without any mains services. Janta and his family are living lightly on the land, but are under the threat of a planning enforcement notice (unauthorised ‘change of use’ for the land, from agricultural to mixed agricultural and dwelling) which, if enforced, would mean they have to leave their home.

The text below was written by Janta and Merav as an introduction to Karuna and their motives for developing it.

Plant Karuna for the Planet
(true sustainability for Shropshire)

Karuna is a Sanskrit word meaning compassion. In “Island” a novel by Aldous Huxley (his last novel) Karuna was a place where people are kind and happy, they have equally without mediocrity, compassion as well as intellect and science side by side with art. Islands happen to be our favourite places.

Karuna is located within an area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB) at Picklescott, on the lower slopes of the Long Mynd, it faces out towards stupendous far reaching open views of the Stretton Hills and surrounding countryside.

The soil at Karuna is fertile, the area was once covered in trees, it is now naked compared to what it once was. Being lovers of trees and the land we have a desire to restore a small part of it.

Trees are one of the most important assets on the planet, contributing to the solutions of many of the problems that challenge humankind. Trees make a positive impact on the environment, playing a vital role in the battle to reduce global warming; they take in carbon dioxide and give out oxygen, they offer a means to meet the needs of an exploding global population from the finite resources of the planet; maintain water supplies, check soil floods and soil erosion. As trees are permanent crops, their cultivation does not require regular ploughing which damages soil structure. Life on our planet could not exist without trees and yet vast tracts of forests across the globe are being destroyed!

It is not enough to criticise the felling of tropical forests – we should all be working to restore our own forests, take positive action towards a sustainable future, by working with nature rather than against it.

At Karuna, an 18 acre site, three separate woodlands (approx 9 acres) of over 50 species were planted in the winter 2006, this year there has been additional planting, including many traditional fruit trees, nitrogen fixing trees, plants and herbs, thus laying the foundations for agroforestry and forest gardening using permaculture and natural farming techniques/principles for production of fruits, nuts, vegetables and medicinal plants, based on interaction between different life forms in order to stimulate and support one another (symbiosis).

The project exists to demonstrate that sustainable land management is the only way forward if the present climate crisis is to be reversed. That is if there is to be any future for our children.

We know, from studying the rocks of our planet, that there was once a time when life did not exist here. Man, in seeing himself separate from nature and taking from it as he pleases is destroying all forms of life as he goes. If he does not change he will soon destroy himself.

Karuna possesses deep mystical magic in its soil, it has great potential, it gives out signals and speaks to those who are receptive to its almost forgotten language. The land is calling out to be healed and be given the opportunity to heal. These two exist side by side. We have chosen to respond to the calling of “the one” at the particular energy spot in order to share our love of the natural world, especially with our children.

Traditionally small wooded areas were often managed on the outer edge of the village, not simply for their raw materials and medicines. Trees offer us the opportunity to recognise inner peace and understanding when we place ourselves quietly amongst them. Developing and raising awareness of sustainability, climate change, wildlife conservation, holistic healing and art are the projects deepest concerns.

There is no better way to reach others than by example, and to offer the opportunity for all of us to develop through direct experience and serve human ends harmlessly while creating conditions conducive to all life.

The positive impact upon wildlife at Karuna is already apparent, Hawks gather in greater numbers to feed upon the increased mice population, due to the long grass between the newly planted woodlands. Threatened species like the once common sparrow also feed from the grass seeds. Hares too take advantage of this valuable situation, the tufts of grass offer herbs a protective environment to thrive in, out of the wind. There is a priority to develop sustainable biodiversity awareness at Karuna and links with local schools and educational groups are being made.

We need to get back to our heritage – our birthright – the land. Karuna aims to fulfill the opportunity for people to lovingly care for the earth which brings us into life, nourishes and sustains us, and ultimately takes us back again.

Agriculture is the very basis of our existence and is likely to go on being so, if we are to survive at all. Even agricultural ‘experts’ can now see and admit that the present system of agriculture in the west is unsustainable. It depends entirely on oil. There is now an agricultural depression, and this industry completely hooked on sophisticated machinery and huge chemical inputs is finding it very hard to carry on. We can make better choices!

The project embraces permaculture techniques, especially temperate Forest Gardening. Robert Hart, Shropshire’s own world famous pioneer in Temperate Climate Forest Gardening, is a great inspiration to us and is held dear in our hearts. Forest Gardening supports the Raw Food Diet (the original diet of humankind). This diet is radically environmentally friendly, any minimal waste created through it is easily recycled into compost. Through adopting this natural diet we save on energy that gets wasted through cooking, a process which robs us of our food’s nutritional value. Eating raw fruits, vegetables, and other plant foods is a major solution to world pollution. Landfills are filled with products directly or indirectly related to cooked and processed foods, such as: packaging, wrappers, bags, old stoves. microwaves etc. The supply system is also dependent at every turn on massive use of motor transport (oil) which poisons and pollutes the environment we live in, the air we breathe.

We hope that the community will benefit from fruit and vegetables organically grown on a small scale at Karuna and sold at the local farmers market in the not too distant future and possibly serve as an additional top-up for existing organic box schemes in the area. We are informed that there simply isn’t enough local organic fruit and veg supply.

The project demonstrates… A) How people can take responsibility for themselves by producing some of their own food, and B) that food they aren’t able to grow is best grown as locally as possible, with no harmful chemicals in its growing or storage.

Buying food that travels unnecessarily funds the polluting , poisoning process that is destroying the quality of our children’s future. Example: an apple flown from South Africa and consumed in Britain puts 600 times more pollution into the air we breathe than an apple grown and eaten in Britain. Apply this logic to all the food transported unnecessarily and the environmental damage is obviously horrendous… beware of food miles!

Karuna is neither politically nor religiously biased as we hope to cross these artificial divides. The project does no have a fixed idea about the multitude of ways it can serve small groups and individuals within the local and broader community.

Karuna is oriented towards the experience of change. We are simply sowing seeds and what is the seeds destiny? We know that any real solutions must embody a change of heart – an emphatic connection with the fullness of life. All of us who preserve the future of life on earth are ‘Bioneers’. Together we are creating an age of restoration, guided by the shared values of interdependence, kinship, cooperation, community and mutual aid. There is a dramatic urgency for us to share ingeniously effective solutions with the widest possible audience, inspiring them to join in this sacred and global work. Your support is needed with advice and assistance in fundraising, practical garden work (aftercare of trees, herbs and shrubs), materials, web site development, constructive creative ideas for new directions within the project etc.

We welcome people who share similar dedicated sympathetic nuturance of nature, and have some vision of creativity. You are invited to offer suggestion as well as participate.

Plant a tree today

The Power of Tesco

I have a weekly organic vegetable box delivered by Flights Organic Orchards. The little newsletter in today’s delivery caught my eye with it’s comments on Tesco.

It says;

“I was just listening to the radio on the way in and they had the Tesco director of finance on as Tesco have announced their profit for the last quarter and as per usual they were very good! The interviewer asked how Tesco managed that, especially given the food has risen by 23% over the last 6 months – the Tesco director rebuffed this proudly saying that they had lower food inflation than last year at less than 1%”

“This shows Tesco’s power over suppliers to keep prices down in a season where there really is huge pressures/needs to return higher prices to growers. The effect of not paying enough for food and businesses not being profitable is the way that they go out of business, and it tends to be the smaller ones that disappear which leads to fewer, bigger suppliers. Tesco’s only have one packer for all their organic potatoes and they are huge – they have to be to work on small margins! They are based in East Anglia and pack about 400t per week of potatoes, we (Flights Organic Orchards) pack about 4t per week at the moment. Fewer and bigger suppliers leads to more food miles, larger suppliers, more mono culture and so on. It can be a vicious circle.”

I was thinking about this and the recent review by a government body (the competition committee I think) of whether the ‘big’ supermarkets need tighter controls on their monopoly in order to achieve fairness to the consumer (which strangely came to the the conclusion that they didn’t really need more regulation, but did need the planning laws relaxed so it was easier for them to build new shops as that would increase the competition between them!). It’s clear to any rational person, that viewed holistically, smaller farms are better for people and environment than bigger mono-cultural farms (whether organic or not), so why doesn’t the government step up the pressure?

It then dawned on my cynical mind that not only don’t the supermarkets want regulation, neither do the big farms, and neither do the suppliers to the big farms – yes, the agri-businesses, peddling their chemicals, fertilizers etc etc. They are extremely effective lobbying groups, and that’s probably why, in the face of all the common sense in the world, supermarkets get their way.

Or maybe I’m just being too cynical?