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  • LIV: Welcome, everybody.

  • I'm Liv. I'm a cook here.

  • And I'm just honored today to be here with John Jeavons and

  • to introduce him to you.

  • If you care anything about what your food tastes like, if

  • you've dug a fork into food, you really care about digging

  • a fork into the Earth.

  • And that's my whole connection to all of this.

  • You care about not just the quality of food, but whether

  • food is going to feed everybody on this planet,

  • which is one of the main questions we have to answer

  • these days--

  • enough food, enough nutritious food for everybody.

  • When I was assigned to China as a reporter a few years ago,

  • for me, the most heartbreaking thing I saw was in the

  • countryside to see these dense concentrations of farmers who

  • were asked to leave the land that they had farmed for

  • generations and put in densely populated living conditions no

  • longer close to their land because

  • land was that precious.

  • And the government wanted to develop it.

  • And here, I saw people who knew the art of farming--

  • and it is indeed an art, growing food

  • and growing it well--

  • who had been through chemical industrial farming who were

  • told that some of the land that they farm was now too

  • toxic, over-fertilized, and over-chemicalized for them to

  • do any more, but who still in their genes and just one

  • generation back knew how to grow food in mainly a

  • sustainable way.

  • And to me, I brought that home with me.

  • And to me, it's the overriding question for this age

  • and for all of us.

  • So from the time I was an immigrant that arrived in this

  • country, I'd heard about double digging.

  • I'd heard about biointensive.

  • And today, for me to meet John and realize that he is this

  • complete visionary who isn't just a farmer, but is thinking

  • about food for all of us and for the future of this planet

  • is indeed an honor.

  • So please welcome John.

  • [APPLAUSE]

  • JOHN JEAVONS: Thank you, Liv. Take the

  • lights down on the screen.

  • They got me lit.

  • Before we begin, I'd like to make one

  • reflection to set the tone.

  • What Liz said about China in some way reminded me of it.

  • In 1995, we had an intern come and train with us in Northern

  • California for six months.

  • And he shared with me that the cost of farmable soil in

  • Monterey, Mexico, was $4 a pound.

  • Do you realize that gasoline only costs $50 a pound

  • currently at the pump?

  • $50.

  • Oh, there we go again.

  • We're going to have to redo this one.

  • Do you realize that in Monterey, Mexico, that

  • farmable soil, if you go to purchase it, costs $4 a pound,

  • where gasoline at the pumps today costs $0.50 a pound.

  • So they have their priorities right.

  • They realize the preciousness of the soil.

  • And they realize that the soil is worth eight times gasoline.

  • Wow.

  • That's really hard to wrap our minds around, I think.

  • Even for me, it is, and I've been working

  • with this for 41 years.

  • So now let's go and look at our presentation for today,

  • Food for the Future Now.

  • To know, challenge, and hope.

  • To feel, relieved and empowered.

  • And to do, act where you are.

  • Creating a new and better world.

  • Creating a new and better world.

  • This is going to be the only thing we need to focus on.

  • The joy of the process, it's really a lot of fun.

  • You can see the happiness in my daughter's face.

  • And even manual food-raising, which is really

  • skill-intensive, not

  • work-intensive, is a lot of fun.

  • The Earth needs our help now.

  • You probably know that already.

  • But this is literally the Earth that's underneath our

  • feet needs our help right now.

  • Let's grow soil.

  • It's not about farming it.

  • It's about growing it.

  • Every time we eat a pound of food grown with regular

  • food-raising practices, an average of 6 pounds in the

  • United States, 12 pounds in developing countries, where

  • 90% of the world's people live, and 18 pounds in China,

  • where 20% of the world's people live, and 24 pounds of

  • farmable soil in California are lost due to wind and water

  • erosion because of the types of practices being used.

  • In contrast, over here on the right, you can see

  • Biointensive Sustainable Mini-Farming has the capacity

  • to build, to grow, to create up to 20 pounds of farmable

  • soil per pound of food eaten--

  • not deplete 6 to 24 pounds per pound of food eaten, but to

  • build up to 20 pounds of farmable soil, soil we need to

  • feed people.

  • I don't think anyone realizes the number of people that are

  • born each day, really.

  • It's 216,000 people net.

  • That's births less deaths.

  • It's like Motel 6, and the light's on all the time.

  • This is enough to repopulate San

  • Francisco every three days.

  • Wow.

  • Costa Rica every 17.

  • Mexico City, the second largest city in the world, 3.5

  • times a year.

  • And Beijing, China, 8.6 times a year.

  • What does this mean?

  • It means--

  • and this is even more important than those

  • population statistics--

  • it means that 34,000 additional acres of farmable

  • soil need to be found or built daily to feed these people.

  • It's not happening.

  • It's probable that organic farming indirectly results in

  • the loss of three to five and a quarter pounds of farmable

  • soil per pound of food eaten because of the needs of inputs

  • in the form of compost, manure, and organic fertilizer

  • which are taken from other soils.

  • So we may have our perfect organic farm.

  • But we're depleting a soil somewhere else

  • in order to do it.

  • We don't need to.

  • But the pattern we're using now does.

  • Organic farming is a good start.

  • It's a great start.

  • It's a major positive step towards more sustainable

  • agriculture.

  • Yet, we need to take at least three

  • more major steps forward.

  • We need to go beyond organic.

  • The planet is becoming increasingly urbanized.

  • Something that's incredible is India's already 91% urban,

  • China 90% urban.

  • That's 40% of the world's

  • population virtually urbanized.

  • One of the results of this urbanization is that we're

  • losing our farming literacy.

  • We don't really know how to farm.

  • As a result of all these factors, agriculture, as it

  • is, population growth, the loss of our farming skill

  • base, most of the world's soils have become

  • significantly demineralized, compacted, and contain little

  • organic matter unless all these

  • elements have been imported.

  • This isn't a pretty picture.

  • Though, I think the art here is very pretty.

  • You can make a case that the entire planet may be

  • desertified in as little as 69 years.

  • I'm 70 years old.

  • That's in less time than I've been here on the planet.

  • | don't know how long you've been here.

  • But that's a short time.

  • What to do?

  • We need to make farming truly sustainable on as much of a

  • closed system basis as possible.

  • It is possible.

  • We need to grow our own organic matter inputs on the

  • soil we cultivate and recycle all the nutrients--

  • all the nutrients--

  • contained in the crops we grow back into the soil.

  • The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has

  • noted that 13 years from now, in the year 2025--

  • that's soon--

  • about 2/3 of the world's people, 5 billion people, will

  • probably not have sufficient water available for food

  • growing to live a life with reasonable

  • nutrition if at all.

  • We don't have to wait for 2025 for that to happen.

  • We're going to see that happening in just three years,

  • the effect of this.

  • This means a situation of peak water and peak food.

  • 70% to 80% of all the water used by people in the world is

  • utilized in food production.

  • There is some hope.

  • We'll get to that soon.

  • You can also make a case that as little as 49 years of

  • farmable soil remains on the Earth.

  • This is partly because as the soil quality is depleted, the

  • rate of depletion increases more rapidly.

  • So we have a situation of peak farmable soil.

  • And it's here now.

  • There's also a major different kind of peak energy crisis.

  • The peak energy crisis really is between these two points

  • and these two points--

  • our will, the will to face these things and make a

  • positive difference.

  • And I wouldn't tell you these things if we couldn't make a

  • positive difference.

  • Feed your dreams and your fears will starve.

  • So in the future, as you begin to be overwhelmed by

  • challenges, and there's a good chance that we will all have

  • that feeling some of the time, feed your dreams. And you'll

  • find that the dream that you're envisioning will begin

  • to manifest.

  • And the reason that we can dream these dreams is because

  • there are realistic solutions.

  • We need to utilize our skillful will.

  • There are psychologists who have studied the different

  • forms of will that we have. And the most important one is

  • skillful will, the ability to make and fulfill our choices

  • with the greatest efficiency and least effort necessary.

  • I think Google is dedicated to this concept.

  • What we need is a transformational paradigm

  • throughout many areas, including food-raising.

  • Growing food was actually the original green.

  • And it can be again.

  • In fact, 10,000 years ago--

  • this is unbelievable if you really sink into

  • this and feel it.

  • This next thing is just totally

  • unbelievable and wonderful.

  • 10,000 years ago, early Stone Age farmers raised 100% of

  • their calories per person with just 20 hours of labor

  • annually, growing the first spelt wheat.

  • These people were farming literate.

  • I often give participants in our workshop a handicap, a

  • fivefold handicap.

  • And I challenge them to learn how to grow all their food in

  • 100 hours a year during the following three years.

  • We really can do it.

  • We don't believe we can, but that's where the problem is,

  • here and here.

  • In 1911, China grew complete diets on 3,600 square feet.

  • And China, Japan, and Korea used biologically-intensive

  • farming successfully for four millennia until the 1950s when

  • current practices began to be adopted.

  • The Chinese used to call their farmers living libraries.

  • And if you want to read about this type of farming, there's

  • a book out by F.H. King called Farmers of Forty Centuries.

  • I recommend you read it.

  • It's published by Dover Press, and it's not expensive.

  • In the Philippines, the illiterate Hanunoo Stone Age

  • culture have a 200-crop, 5-year rotation with 40

  • varieties of rice grown annually.

  • So no matter what the climate, hot, cold, wet, or dry, they

  • achieve a sufficient quantity of calories.

  • They are living libraries too.

  • There are no agricultural universities that I know of in

  • the world that have any kind of rotation system that's as

  • sophisticated, or as complex, and uses so many varieties as

  • this one does.

  • And these people don't know how to read

  • and don't use computers.

  • Oh my god.

  • And it's even worse because they spend 80% of their table

  • conversation at meals talking about farming.

  • And their children, if they were in inner city schools,

  • you'd have to disassociate yourself from them because

  • they play farmer.

  • When other cultures around them were fading, the Mayan

  • culture thrived with neighborhood--

  • there's documentation on this--

  • neighborhood biologically-intensive

  • food-raising.

  • Why did the Mayan culture eventually dissipate?

  • No one knows.

  • There's maybe five or six possibilities.

  • But one of them no one has listed.

  • They may not have been farming with biological intensivity in

  • a sustainable way.

  • You can deplete your soil really fast if you don't do it

  • sustainably.

  • Biosphere II, where they locked six people up in a

  • two-acre greenhouse for two years, grew complete diets on

  • about 3,300 square feet with

  • biologically-intensive practices.

  • In fact, one of our interns trained the basis for that

  • food-raising.

  • Ecology Action, Grow Biointensive, registered

  • trademark, Sustainable Mini-Farming, feeding the

  • world one garden at the time.

  • We began relearning, teaching, and researching--

  • relearning, see, because we didn't know anything, and

  • we're still learning.

  • We began relearning, teaching, and researching

  • biologically-intensive food-raising in the Stanford

  • University Industrial Park over 40 years ago in 1972.

  • We developed a systems approach.

  • Because I'm really interested in patterns.

  • You can learn more faster with patterns.

  • And the systems approach enables people to learn

  • faster, teach more effectively, and take more

  • efficient action.

  • One intern from Latin America told us that after his first

  • four weeks in our six-month intern program that he'd

  • learned more than he'd learned in six years in the university

  • in his country.

  • He didn't learn more information.

  • He learned more of a pattern and a system which enabled him

  • to put the data bits and the information into the most

  • effective places.

  • Grow Biointensive is now used in over 143 countries in

  • virtually all climates and soils where food is grown.

  • It's taught at tours, classes, three-day and five-day

  • domestic and international workshops, two- and six-month

  • internships, and three-year apprenticeships.

  • This year, we have a new program.

  • Our two-month internship is especially for college

  • students that during their summers can come and get a

  • taste of farming and decide if they want to get into it.

  • It's exciting.

  • We've had three times the number of applicants than we

  • have positions for.

  • And it's not just limited to college students.

  • We have one person who is from Uzbekistan who

  • will be taking it.

  • And she'll be going back and teaching people in all the

  • -istans in the former Soviet Union.

  • This information is learned also from over 250 how-to

  • books, booklets, and information sheets, and even

  • videos on topics such as how to grow complete nutrition and

  • soil fertility in the smallest area.

  • This is what's motivated me for over 40 years.

  • In the 1970s, I wanted to know what's the smallest area that

  • you could grow all your food, all your clothing, all your

  • money, and all your other agricultural products from in

  • an environmentally sound way and an equitable way.

  • So that if everyone in the world used that technique or a

  • similarly effective technique, that everyone could live well.

  • We now know that you can grow all your seed for next year in

  • 3% additional area.

  • And we have a booklet out called "Growing the Seed" that

  • shows you how to grow all your seed in the smallest area

  • while preserving genetic diversity.

  • It used to be that in order to design a diet, you needed to

  • read our booklet number 31, "Designing a Complete Grow

  • Biointensive Sustainable Mini-Farm." And there's just

  • lots of pages and charts in there.

  • And the result is growing all your food in

  • 4,000 square feet.

  • In the United States, it takes 30,000 square feet.

  • It's not the same food, but all the nutrients are there.

  • Well, it takes a lot of time to fill out these forms and

  • understand them.

  • But now we can teach you from your heart how to make choices

  • in five minutes, so you can design your own diet and one

  • that will produce all the composts for the diet of the

  • microbes in the soils in less than an hour.

  • So this is the kind of simplicity that grows out of

  • the systems approach.

  • How to Grow More Vegetables Than You Ever Thought Possible

  • on Less Land Than You Can Imagine has increased to and

  • Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains, and Other Crops.

  • The title just got longer.

  • Imagine.

  • It's in eight languages, including Braille, and now

  • going into four more languages.

  • The fully revised, updated, and expanded eighth edition

  • has just been published.

  • We're teaching in the field and on the web.

  • There are five training sites in the US, four of them in

  • California.

  • Next year, there'll be one in North Carolina in addition to

  • the one that's in Ohio this year.

  • We have international partner training sites in Latin

  • America, Africa, and Asia.

  • Ecology Action's website has a self-teaching section where

  • you can download a 12-page How to Grow More Vegetables

  • equivalent for free.

  • It has eight training videos that you can download from

  • YouTube and use for free.

  • We also sell the DVD.

  • So you can have all of it right there.

  • Our international mail order service can be found at

  • bountifulgardens.org.

  • Our website is growbiointensive.org.

  • Our garden supply and education center can be

  • located right here in the San Francisco mid-peninsula Bay

  • Area in Palo Alto, California.

  • And you can go online to commongroundinpaloalto.org.

  • There's some cards at the back that you can get more

  • information about all of these initiatives.

  • My site, johnjeavons.info, includes a special section

  • that I really encourage you to look at called "The World of

  • Hope." It has eight segments to it.

  • And I recommend that you read one a day and absorb the hope

  • that's contained in it.

  • Onward, to help meet the world's challenges, Ecology

  • Action has developed a proposal to train a half

  • million African farmers in six countries in four and a

  • quarter years at a cost of only $9 a person.

  • In a world that has economic challenges, this is a great

  • opportunity to make a difference.

  • I don't know if you know, but there are a billion people in

  • Africa, and 1/3 of them are on starvation track.

  • We want to meet that challenge.

  • We're also developing a similar proposal to train

  • 500,000 Latin American farmers in all 22 countries.

  • It's exciting.

  • We can't wait.

  • We're working with the US Department of Agriculture

  • currently to catalyze four Grow Biointensive teaching

  • mini-ag centers and soil test stations to monitor how the

  • soil quality improves, stays the same, or whatever in the

  • Sudan, where 4 to 7 million people are at risk for

  • malnutrition and/or starvation.

  • Our international partners, Samuel Nderitu from G-BIACK in

  • Kenya, who helps us in so many ways, will be doing the

  • initial trainings there next week.

  • We've discovered that this method, Grow Biointensive

  • Sustainable Mini-Farming, has the capacity to produce higher

  • yields and increased income per unit of area and use as

  • little as 33% to 12% the water.

  • We've been down as low as 3% the water.

  • Use as little as 50% to 100% less purchased nutrient and

  • organic fertilizer form.

  • And use as little as 6% to 1% the energy in all forms,

  • compared with practices normally used per pound of

  • food produced.

  • Grow Biointensive builds soil.

  • According to a master's thesis from the University of

  • California at Berkeley in the soil science department there,

  • Grow Biointensive has the capacity to build soil up to

  • 60 times more rapidly than in nature.

  • What does this mean?

  • Up to six inches of farmable soil can be built in as little

  • as 50 years.

  • Remember earlier I noted that in as little as 49 years,

  • there might be no farmable soil left.

  • So we might as well begin now and avoid the rush.

  • We could be in time.

  • On the average around the world and in the US, it

  • doesn't take 50 years to build up 6 inches of farmable soil,

  • the depth of soil you need in order to grow food.

  • It takes 3,000 years to do this.

  • And in California, because of the natural geologic

  • formation, the climate, and other factors, it takes 12,000

  • years to build up 6 inches of farmable soil.

  • Do you realize that the 3,000 years of farmable soil that

  • we've built up in the United States, that we've depleted

  • 75% of it in the last 250 years?

  • We depleted 2,250 years' worth in 250 years.

  • And the rate at which it's being depleted is increasing.

  • We don't have to do that.

  • With Grow Biointensive higher yields plus a better

  • understanding of nutrition from a farming point of view,

  • it's possible to grow diets plus all the compost materials

  • needed for sustainable soil fertility on as little as

  • 4,000, 2,500, 1,800, or even 1,000 square feet or less

  • depending on the diet.

  • You could even do it in the yard on your

  • suburban home lot.

  • Frightening, the responsibility is.

  • It's true that the foods eaten are different.

  • But all nourishment for world standards is met in all of

  • these small diets.

  • How does Grow Biointensive do this?

  • Deep soil structure creation for

  • quadruple nutrient cycling.

  • Compost for microbe nutrition.

  • Soil, water retention, and soil antibiotic development.

  • Plants don't get sick if you have enough microbes in the

  • soil because they have their own pharmaceutical thing going

  • on down there to keep the plants healthy.

  • And if the plants are healthy, insects don't come because the

  • amino acid mix in the plant tissue is such that the

  • insects are not interested.

  • But a sick plant, the amino acid mix changes.

  • And the signal goes out to the insects, and they come for

  • their feast.

  • Close plant spacing for improved plant environment and

  • water conservation.

  • Companion planting, putting plants together that like each

  • other and stimulate each other--

  • like the people you choose for your parties or your dinners--

  • for crop enhancement and pest minimization.

  • 60% growing area in compost and calorie crops that produce

  • large amount of compost materials, plus a significant

  • quantity of calories, such as wheat,

  • oats, corn, and amaranth.

  • But there are many others.

  • 30% of our growing area in special root crops-- and in a

  • moment, you'll see how important that is, it's very

  • important--

  • such as potatoes, garlic, and leeks that can produce 5 to 20

  • times the calories per unit of area per unit of time.

  • Using easily available seeds.

  • And using the whole system.

  • It doesn't work well if only some of its elements are used.

  • If you prepare the soil shallowly and put all the

  • plants close together, you stress the soil.

  • And the system may even become unsustainable.

  • The solution to sustainable agriculture isn't the system.

  • It's you, and me, and how we use it.

  • Taking into account all the preceding, scarcity can be

  • transformed into abundance.

  • The transformation of the situations of peak water, peak

  • farming energy, and peak farmable soil into situations

  • of more than enough.

  • We don't need to be facing the scarcity that

  • we're looking at globally.

  • We can be looking at abundance instead.

  • In a way, it's not all that challenging.

  • You may feel overwhelmed right now.

  • But let's go to a quote from Voltaire in his book Candide,

  • on the last page.

  • Candide says, "The whole world is a garden, and what a

  • wonderful place it would be if each one of us just took care

  • of our part of the Earth, our garden."

  • It's not complicated.

  • It's simple.

  • It's not someone else who needs to take the

  • responsibility.

  • We can.

  • And it's a pleasurable responsibility.

  • Gandhi, "To forget how to dig the Earth and tend the soil is

  • to forget oneself." Grow Biointensive is

  • skill-intensive, rather than labor-intensive.

  • As you can see here, there's as many lettuces in the upper

  • area as in the lower area.

  • The amount of work, if you know how to Aikido double

  • dig-- which actually, you don't do the work.

  • Gravity does the work.

  • The amount of energy it takes to double dig that in a very

  • quiet, simple, easy way is the same amount of energy that it

  • is to single dig two of those row areas.

  • So it's less work.

  • It's less water.

  • It's less weeding.

  • It's less compost. It's less nutrients in organic

  • fertilizer form.

  • It's skill-intensive.

  • Don't work harder.

  • Think smarter.

  • Small is bountiful.

  • And there truly are economies of small scale.

  • Remember how much less water and nutrient we use?

  • Those are economies of small scale.

  • And we need to become farming literate.

  • So what does this mean for us in our own backyards?

  • And what does this mean for our communities?

  • Assuming intermediate Grow Biointensive yields, one

  • mature apple tree can produce one pound of apples for each

  • day in the year for three and a quarter people.

  • In addition, you can graft 9 additional varieties on the

  • tree for a total of 10 producing varieties.

  • Luther Burbank had 30 varieties of plums grafted on

  • one plum tree in Santa Rosa, California.

  • You can go still see the tree.

  • It only has 10 varieties on it now because they didn't want

  • to keep up with that complexity.

  • But wouldn't it be wonderful to go have that kind of a

  • choice right at home?

  • Also assuming intermediate Grow Biointensive yields, you

  • can grow one 1-pound loaf of bread for each week in the

  • year in just 300 square feet of wheat, two good-sized bowls

  • of oatmeal per week in another 300 square feet

  • using hulless oats.

  • You can experience that primordial waves of grain

  • feeling right where you are.

  • Now all crops are not equal.

  • This is really important.

  • And if you get the new edition of How to Grow More

  • Vegetables, the last three pages also of the compost

  • chapter describe how all compost is not equal.

  • Here, what we're going to see is we have wheat, which is a

  • winter grain crop.

  • And the calories produced per month set our index of one

  • unit of productivity.

  • If instead we use flour corn, which is a summer seed crop,

  • we have five times the productivity and

  • calories per month.

  • And if instead we use potatoes, a 65-day maturing

  • variety, we get nineteen times the calories per month per

  • unit of area.

  • Powerful.

  • If you read the material on compost, you'll find that

  • instead of just having a bucket of compost that you

  • dump into an area where you're growing, that bucket of

  • compost can be one unit of compost power, two units of

  • compost power, and up to eight units of compost power.

  • This is what 41 years of research, teaching, and, most

  • important, learning by Ecology Action is making possible for

  • everyone in the world on a simple basis.

  • But the final question really is, what kind of future do you

  • want to create?

  • Because it's really up to each of us.

  • There's applications here for localization of food growing,

  • including public toolbraries of small-scale food-raising

  • and cleaning tools.

  • You could thresh your grain right at your local library.

  • Seed exchanges with growing collection and

  • preservation classes.

  • Demonstration orchards with a wide spectrum of heritage

  • fruit and nut trees.

  • There's hundreds of varieties to choose from.

  • Mini-ag centers for learning, training, and growing food.

  • More local farms for foods, including green belts and

  • business parklands.

  • Smaller, more income productive microforms growing

  • specialty crops.

  • Do you realize that the average income for the average

  • US farmer is about $6,700 for a half million dollars of

  • capital investment?

  • It's about a 2% return on investment.

  • And the farmer has to work, he or she has to work, to get the

  • other $33,300 a year needed to live on at an off the farm,

  • non-farm job.

  • With small-scale, sustainable, biologically-intensive

  • farming, you can make up to $50,000 and more on a quarter

  • of an acre net.

  • There was a man who did this in

  • Berkeley, California already.

  • And there are other people beginning to do it.

  • One of the exciting things is more and more women are

  • getting into farming.

  • Another thing that we can include in our localization

  • possibilities are two-acre, complete diet,

  • community-supported agriculture mini-farms. This

  • is where a family farm could grow enough food for complete

  • diets for 20 people and make $40,000 a year.

  • Most important, grow a community attitude.

  • We must be the change that we wish to see in the world.

  • And last but not least, we can grow new

  • kinds of living contexts.

  • A land trust sustainable mini-farming community is

  • where you have three 33-family neighborhoods

  • in a 130-acre area.

  • And each family has a half-acre farm in which they

  • can grow all the food for their three- to four-person

  • family and grow $40,000 a year or more.

  • Now this quote from Abraham Lincoln was given in 1857.

  • And how did this man know?

  • He was busy and occupied with a few other topics.

  • "Before long, the most valuable of all arts will be

  • that of deriving a comfortable subsistence from the smallest

  • area of land." It's going to be the only game in town for

  • most of the world's people and already is for many of them.

  • Working together, we can build a better future.

  • To keep it simple, what's one tiny thing that each of us can

  • do today to create a better world?

  • It truly only takes a smile exchanged with another person

  • to cause a ripple effect that will change the world.

  • And we can begin today.

  • We don't have to wait.

  • Thank you.

  • [APPLAUSE]

  • LIV: Thank you so much.

  • JOHN JEAVONS: You're welcome.

  • LIV: So I'm feeling guilty for the bags of compost that I

  • bought and the irrigation system that I have.

  • JOHN JEAVONS: We all have to start somewhere.

  • LIV: We do.

  • So let's go straight to what you said.

  • What should Google do?

  • We just feed people all three meals every day.

  • JOHN JEAVONS: I think it would be wonderful if Google could

  • be one of the pace setters for the world.

  • I think they could have a green belt farm right out in

  • this area, somewhere not too far away.

  • They could support the new type of farmer who's more

  • efficient, using fewer resources, and produce all the

  • food that you need to feed everyone here, the 15,000 to

  • 20,000 people that you feed daily, which is incredible.

  • But think of the kind of jobs that you can make.

  • And a lot of these can be really small farms that are

  • supporting the re-education of our population in farming.

  • Most of the world's really illiterate in farming.

  • And it's pretty scary.

  • If this whole room were a football field, and there were

  • 625 people in it, and one person in the middle had a

  • green cap on, and a green hat, and green pants, that's the

  • token farmer.

  • That's the person who is raising the food for himself

  • and the other 624 people.

  • And that person generally knows how to grow a few crops.

  • And the soil that he's growing it from, or she's growing it

  • from, is being depleted really rapidly.

  • But we need to not discount these farmers.

  • They really love farming, and they care about us.

  • And they want to feed us.

  • And they're going bankrupt.

  • Can you imagine?

  • Just to feed us.

  • And so we need to give them some help

  • with some new patterns.

  • And I think Google is uniquely in a position to consider, in

  • a small way, having a pilot for that.

  • LIV: So tell me, let's get in depth.

  • What does that look like?

  • How big should the green belt be?

  • Where do we gather the literate farmers that we want?

  • And how big is each unit for each farm family?

  • JOHN JEAVONS: Well, that's a good question.

  • First of all, we have to not only grow soil.

  • We're going to have to grow farmers.

  • And that takes some time, and everybody isn't going to be

  • perfect the first time out.

  • Many people in the world get out of farming because it

  • depends on weather.

  • It depends on soil and the fluctuation of markets.

  • But if you were to grow enough farmers

  • to feed all of Google--

  • we're talking about thousands of farmers--

  • how about starting with 5 or 10?

  • LIV: OK, all right.

  • Let's do that.

  • JOHN JEAVONS: And then if the pattern works, and the farmers

  • are happy, and they're making more money than they've been

  • making otherwise, I don't think you're going to have to

  • do a whole lot to get it to spread.

  • LIV: OK, so five farm families, two acres each?

  • Is that what I was getting?

  • JOHN JEAVONS: It depends on which of the

  • patterns you choose.

  • You can choose one that's growing complete diets.

  • You can choose one that's growing mainly high-end

  • vegetables, which we all in California like

  • to eat a lot of.

  • You can have others that are growing seeds.

  • And if you grow seeds and those farmers become their own

  • seed company, you can make a lot of money with seeds.

  • So I would suggest at least those three types of

  • approaches, the ones that are complete diet, the ones that

  • are mainly high-end vegetables, and another that's

  • growing seeds.

  • LIV: And the soil growing, we can get the first generation

  • going in six months?

  • JOHN JEAVONS: Well, when we began at the Stanford

  • University Industrial Park, all the top soil had been

  • scraped off of the area that was donated to us.

  • And all of the subsoil had been scraped off in the

  • construction process.

  • So we were growing our crops in a mollisol clay that

  • normally takes at least 500 years in nature to make one

  • inch of farmable soil out of.

  • And we got fairly good results to begin with.

  • But you get better results over time.

  • One thing that I want everyone to understand is to build up a

  • soil in a temperate zone and to have a good soil, you need

  • 4% to 6% organic matter in the soil.

  • Most of the world's soils are only 1% organic matter.

  • And you can only, in a stable way, build up a soil in

  • organic matter 1/20 of 1% a year.

  • So to build up from 1% organic matter soil to 4%, the minimum

  • to have a really good soil, it's going

  • to take us 60 years.

  • So it involves a responsibility, a commitment,

  • and a relationship.

  • We know how difficult relationships are.

  • But this one's with the soil and with the planet.

  • And to be a farmer of the future, what we're going to

  • have to do-- this is going to be really hard because

  • nobody's going to want to do it.

  • I promise you.

  • You have to leave half of your farmable soil in wild because

  • what we're growing is we're growing a planet.

  • We're not growing food.

  • We're growing soil.

  • And we're not growing just soil.

  • We need to grow ecosystems. And if we take all the

  • farmable soil and we grow food with it, the natural cycles of

  • plants and animals are just going to tank.

  • LIV: Is there a way for me to tell my gophers to stay on the

  • wild side and not come into my garden?

  • JOHN JEAVONS: There are, but we can't talk about that here.

  • LIV: OK.

  • Yes, please, questions?

  • AUDIENCE: Hi.

  • Could you speak to whether--

  • there's a lot of other systems out there.

  • There's no-till.

  • There's food forest. There's the biodynamics people,

  • biochart enthusiasts, the permaculture folks, the soil

  • food web, creating natural farming, IMOs.

  • There's all these alternative agriculture systems out there.

  • Could you speak to your

  • organization's relation to them?

  • Do you think you're an alternative?

  • Or you incorporate ideas from them all?

  • Or how does that work?

  • JOHN JEAVONS: OK, I think the first thing I'd like to

  • describe is that the bottom line is the soil.

  • And I have evaluated what's happening to soils in other

  • systems. And generally, the soil's being

  • depleted fairly rapidly.

  • So I don't need to specify which systems. I'd

  • just as soon not.

  • Because the goal here isn't for how so much that we're

  • different, or whether we're better or

  • less good, or whatever.

  • The real goal here is how do we build the soil.

  • And so if each one of us, whether we're

  • permaculturalists, whether we're biodynamic, whether

  • we're Fukuoka culture, which there's a tremendous amount to

  • be said for, the important thing is what is it

  • doing to the soil?

  • So our teaching units, which are a minimum of 4,000 square

  • feet of plantable surface, because you can easily do a

  • complete diet for yourself and for the microbes, they're not

  • only called mini-ag centers.

  • They're also called soil test stations.

  • And they're not going to test your soil or my soil.

  • They're going to monitor their own soil so that we can see.

  • Is it getting better?

  • Is it getting worse?

  • Is it staying the same?

  • And we have a new program that we're

  • developing that's actually--

  • already, we have a very, very small grant--

  • in Africa, in Kenya, where we're doing it.

  • But we're going to begin to list key points around the

  • world where the soil's been tested.

  • And we're going to say the altitude, the longitude, the

  • soil type, and the climate for each one of these nodes.

  • And then we're going to show online these 24 soil

  • nutrients, and relationships, and aspects, how they were

  • tested out, what they were missing, what was done to

  • improve them.

  • And then we're going to show yield levels for

  • five years or more.

  • So that you won't need, I won't need Ecology Action.

  • What you do is you go online, and you'll educate yourself

  • about what someone in a similar situation did.

  • So it becomes a big chat room in a way even though it won't

  • have that capacity.

  • Does that answer your question?

  • AUDIENCE: Pretty much.

  • Thank you.

  • JOHN JEAVONS: OK.

  • AUDIENCE: Hello.

  • Can you talk a little bit about sustainable ways to

  • harvest and utilize water?

  • JOHN JEAVONS: OK, sustainable water use?

  • AUDIENCE: Yeah.

  • JOHN JEAVONS: Sure, I'd be glad to.

  • First of all, if you want to reduce your water consumption

  • per unit of calorie produced, a really good

  • crop to grow is potatoes.

  • It produces a lot of calories per unit of

  • water per unit of time.

  • Another crop that's fairly efficient is carrots.

  • I was surprised.

  • I thought, carrots are succulent.

  • They're crunchy.

  • But they're really water efficient.

  • There are a number of crops in the world in the grain seed

  • area that are called C4 crops.

  • They have a special genetic pathway.

  • And this enables them to produce more calories and more

  • carbon with less water.

  • But I'll give you an idea of what this method that we're

  • using and learning about does.

  • In the Stanford Industrial Park, when we began in 1972 in

  • Santa Clara County, where you are right now, they were using

  • 20 gallons of water for 100 square feet per day in

  • agriculture.

  • When we began, we were too.

  • After five years, we were down to 10 gallons of water per 100

  • square feet per day.

  • And after six, we were down to 8 gallons of water.

  • But the yields that we were getting were two

  • to five times higher.

  • So really, we would end up using, to make a long story

  • short, 1/8 the water per pound of vegetable produced.

  • Now how do we do this?

  • And that's what you're asking.

  • First of all, we have a new booklet out.

  • It's called booklet 35.

  • It's name is "Growing More Food with Less Water." So I'll

  • tell you the three ways that this method enables you to use

  • so much less water.

  • What it means is that those people, the 5 billion people

  • who don't have enough water very soon to grow their food,

  • could have enough water to grow their food.

  • The first way is that if you build up the organic matter in

  • your soil, you can reduce the amount of water you need to

  • grow food by as much as 75%.

  • That's huge.

  • Secondly, if you put all the plants close together that the

  • deep soil preparation allows you to do, you get a

  • mini-climate.

  • And it shades the ground.

  • And you can reduce the amount of water you need by an

  • additional up to 50% less.

  • Now we were already from 75% down.

  • So we're at 25% of the water being used because of the

  • organic matter.

  • So now we can get it down to 12 and 1/2% the water being

  • used by the shading of the ground with the mini-climate.

  • And last, but not least--

  • and this one is just a mind blower to me--

  • but I always thought plants drank water in order to stand

  • up and get water turgor, right?

  • Well, that's not untrue.

  • But the main reason they drink water is to get food.

  • And if there's enough nutrients in your soil, when

  • they drink the water, one gulp, and they get enough food

  • for a long time.

  • And they don't have to drink more water right away.

  • So you can then reduce by as much as an additional 75% the

  • amount of water you need.

  • So you can take it down.

  • We were at 12 and 1/2%.

  • You can take it down to as little as 3% of the water.

  • And we reached that in the Stanford Industrial Park with

  • a crop that you'll laugh at, zucchini.

  • So that's how we do it.

  • LIV: So you're actually answering one of the questions

  • I wanted to ask you most, which is what does this food

  • taste like.

  • And when you're telling me it's nutrient dense, I know it

  • tastes great and it's really good for you.

  • The two are the same.

  • JOHN JEAVONS: Yeah, we grow tree collards in our garden.

  • They are indigenous to Africa and/or the Gurney Islands just

  • off of England.

  • And they're green milk.

  • And not only do they taste good, but one of the exciting

  • things you may not realize is if this room were all growing

  • alfalfa, and we fed it to a cow, and you drank all the

  • milk from that, the alfalfa that went through the cow, you

  • drank the milk that it produced, and instead, you had

  • tree collards planted in this same area, you'd get four

  • times the protein and eight times the calcium from the

  • tree collards.

  • And it's been tested with Mexican schoolchildren.

  • And it's been found to work as well as milk or even a little

  • bit better.

  • So there's marvelous possibilities.

  • The one that I like the best in nutrition that just makes

  • me smile is parsley.

  • Now in India, there's 200 million children who have

  • brain damage and eye sight damage because they didn't get

  • enough Vitamin A and iron during their early life, the

  • first six years.

  • In 25 square feet, a five by five square foot plot, they

  • can grow with parsley all the missing Vitamin A and iron

  • that they didn't get.

  • And so they could take care of their own issue, which

  • shouldn't be their issue.

  • But they could intervene.

  • And one of the things we found in Mexico is that often, the

  • adults won't do manual food-raising.

  • So the kids do it.

  • And the kids eventually teach the parents

  • how to get into it.

  • It's a mind blower.

  • This happened in the first project in Mexico at Vicente

  • Guerrero, 200 miles southeast of Mexico City.

  • Two Quakers from Palo Alto, Eric and Kaki, went in for two

  • years to teach biointensive.

  • And no one would do it.

  • So the kids did.

  • And I have photographs of them with pick axes

  • prepping the beds.

  • And it worked.

  • So after the first year, the families had family councils.

  • And they all said, it works.

  • And the father said, mamasita, you do it.

  • So the next year, the children and the mothers did it.

  • And they continued to be successful.

  • And Kaki and Eric were supposed to leave at the end

  • of the second year.

  • But they realized it wouldn't continue.

  • There wasn't enough momentum yet.

  • So they stayed a third year.

  • And they picked out the best mothers.

  • And they taught them to be managers of the program.

  • And it continued.

  • So you'd be surprised about kid power.

  • And people tell us in Africa that people with AIDS won't do

  • this because it's manual, and they don't have enough energy.

  • Well, let me tell you, they do it.

  • They love doing it.

  • It gets them more food, and it stabilizes, in many cases,

  • their AIDS.

  • It doesn't cure them, but it alleviates it.

  • And so it's more like we, from developed countries, can't

  • imagine somebody doing manual gardening, especially if

  • you've got AIDS.

  • And we have a photo of a blind person in

  • India double digging.

  • Can you imagine?

  • You can't get people with sight to double dig sometimes.

  • So it gets more and more fun as you learn more and more.

  • AUDIENCE: I've just been beginning to brainstorm as to

  • how to maybe pull this off.

  • If you have a customer like Google that needs 20,000

  • people a day fed, you've got all these people like us that

  • have backyards.

  • There's even a book you mentioned,

  • The Apartment Farmer.

  • There's people here from the permaculture group, Chris

  • Burley, Hayes Valley Farm.

  • All these folks could be growing this kind of stuff.

  • Maybe we could take a boot camp course in biointensive,

  • so we could get up to speed real quick and get the

  • hundreds of farmers that we'd need.

  • So now you have people that could have

  • all this spare income.

  • You could maybe get it down to a few hours, like you say, a

  • day or a month in terms of tending the farm.

  • So you do something before you go to work.

  • Come back, put a little more water on it.

  • Then on the weekends, you go down to the farmer's market.

  • And Liv is there picking up stuff for the Google kitchens

  • or something like that.

  • The pieces are there if we can just figure out

  • how to put it together.

  • JOHN JEAVONS: And Cliff, I don't know because the mic

  • didn't seem to be picking it up fully.

  • So I'll try to paraphrase.

  • And you can correct me if I miss something.

  • Cliff is suggesting that maybe having a boot camp for Grow

  • Biointensive Sustainable Mini-Farming for people

  • connected with Google could enable them in window boxes

  • using the techniques in the two editions of The Apartment

  • Farmer by Duane Newcomb and other techniques in other good

  • books to do it in window boxes, or barrels, and

  • containers.

  • Also, he indicated, as he and I have talked about, it's

  • possible to grow all the vegetables for one person for

  • all year in this kind of climate in 200

  • square feet or less.

  • And it actually would probably take you something like 30

  • minutes a day.

  • And maybe people could do it before work.

  • Actually, it's an invigorating thing after work.

  • But I'll have to let people experience that themselves.

  • It's a big mental jump to make.

  • I feel more invigorated after double digging than before.

  • And if I don't double dig every three days, I feel

  • withdrawal.

  • So that may not be true for you.

  • Then Cliff suggested that the food from these 100 square

  • foot, 200 square foot gardens, window box, and barrel

  • gardens, some of it could be then given to the food bank,

  • or the farmer's market, or even the restaurants of the

  • wonderful cafes here at Google.

  • It really is, in the future, going to take all of us to

  • make the difference in the world.

  • That's why we have the self-teaching

  • section of our website.

  • And even if there weren't the global challenges that there

  • are-- and there really are--

  • it's not just a story.

  • It's there.

  • But even if those things weren't there, we'd be doing

  • it because it's a lot of fun.

  • And it's good exercise.

  • Your food's going to be fresher.

  • It's not going to have pesticides in it.

  • And you're going to be building soil.

  • Can you imagine?

  • It's going to be as if you have geological power.

  • Why not?

  • LIV: Thank you so much.

  • JOHN JEAVONS: You're welcome.

  • [APPLAUSE]

LIV: Welcome, everybody.

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