|
|||||||
|
|
|
|||||
|
|
|||||||
|
|
|
"There are probably a billion people in the world who are malnourished. The Jeavons' (Grow Biointensive) approach could enable that segment of the population to feed itself adequately for the first time ever. That would be a remarkable development in this world, and would do more to solve the problems of poverty, misery, and hunger than anything else we've done."
--Bob Bergland, Former Secretary of Agriculture
As citizents of one of the richest nations in the world, where food is abundant and where dieting is the preoccupation of millions, it's difficult to imagine that food could become a scarcity in our lifetime. Yet John Jeavons, internationally renowned researcher, developer, teacher, and consultant of small-scale food production techniques using Biointensive culture, offers disturbing evidence to support this scenario. Jeavons warns that by eroding our soil and depleting its nutrients, we jeopardize the very source of life--our supply of food.
What we need, suggests Jeavons, director of Ecology Action in Willits, California, is to start making "growing soil" a priority. In order to grow soil, says Jeavons, who has devoted the past 26 years to the development of Biointensive techniques, we must grow crops which replenish the earth's carbon and other nutrients. By implementing a variety of growing procedures that use grain and crops such as taro, cassava, parsnips, garlic, sweet potatoes, and sorghum, and by emphasizing the use of endangered seeds, this method can be used in both large farms and small family gardens.
Currently, he warns, the U.S. has depleted 75 percent of its soil base in only 220 years by using traditional farming practices. Because it takes nature 500 years to build up one inch of farmable soil, and it takes six inches of farmable soil to grow good crops, we are experiencing a soil deficit that will produce devastating results if it continues.
Jeavons' three-day workshop, offered in Fairfield October 15-17, will explain the rationale behind his fascinating food-raising methods as well as instruct participants how to implement them in home gardens as small as five feet by four feet. By starting with a small area, says Jeavons, one can successfully master growing all of the crops needed to feed oneself or one's family. Then gardeners can use these principals to grow more food in larger beds. Gardening this way is what Jeavons calls "truly sustainable agriculture."
The author of the best seller How to Grow More Vegetables (Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine), Jeavons has received numerous awards for his work, including The World Food Prize in both 1993 and 1995. His high yielding, resource-conserving approach is used in more than 100 countries and by such organizations as the Peace Corps, Children's International, and UNICEF.
Jeavons believes that we must make radical changes in our approach to agriculture in order to avoid dire food shortages in the future. While the population of the world increases by 250,000 daily, the earth's soil is being rapidly depleted due to environmental stress, rendering it less and less productive. Current farming practices are eroding and depleting soil at alarming rates. Yet Jeavons claims that by following Biointensive practices such as double digging, composting, planting crops closely together, encouraging bio-diversity, and other soil-enhancing techniques, we can begin a process of restoring the soil and transforming scarcity into abundance.
Imagine, says Jeavons in one of his lectures, that the earth is an organic apple. Cut away three-fourths of the apple, which represents the earth's oceans. The remaining one-fourth is land. Now cut away two-thirds of that land, which is desert or under ice. The one-twelfth remaining is the land we live on. Now, from this one-twelfth of the earth, cut away three-quarters. That is how much of the farmable soil has been eroded due to wind and water erosion. We farm on one-forty-eighth of the earth.
It's difficult for us to grasp the fragility of our ecosystem or to comprehend the extent to which we affect this vast planet and it resources. The earth seems immense and formidable, invincible and bountiful. Yet Jeavons offers a perspective of earth that is deeply impacted by human actions. Looking out of a car window, driving along Highway One through the prairie that has been called the "corn belt" and "the bread basket of the world," we may feel that things could never change. Yet news of droughts and other weather extremes in our farmlands reminds us that we depend upon a balance of nature to sustain us.
A 1988 PBS documentary about Jeavons and his work called "Circle of Plenty" emphasizes that this method offers a way for growers to work in harmony with nature by both nourishing the earth and growing food for people. Jeavons does not preach doomsday, but rather calls us to action. "If I didn't have the good news," he says, "I wouldn't be telling you the bad news."
He paraphrases Candide: "The whole world is a garden, and what a wonderful place it would be if each one of us took care of just our part of the earth, our garden."
To register for the three day workshop "Grow Biointensive," call Ecology Action at (707) 459-5958. For more information, call Billy or Dawn Hunter at (515) 472-9941.
