The Jeavons Center Mini-Farm Report
The IPCC's Address to COP24 (www.ipcc.ch/2024) stated: "Climate change is no longer an abstract threat for a distant future. It has been unfolding in front of our eyes. In the 12 months since the last COP ... people across Asia and in the Sahel have endured extreme temperatures; communities in the Americas have fought against devastating wildfires; and flood defenses were put to the test in Central Europe when confronted with intense rainfall, not to mention more recent events in Valencia. These are only a few examples. Many people have lost their homes, their livelihoods– and their lives. Communities have been shaken to their core. And global warming is unequivocally caused by human activities, through emissions of greenhouse gases that arise from unsustainable energy use, land use and land-use change, and lifestyle patterns [emphasis mine]. The extremes we are witnessing have been aggravated by human- induced climate change. This is the new normal. Imagine what is in store in the coming decades, if we do not act swiftly and decisively." We have an ongoing challenge to the stability of our global food web. Other factors include subsidized industrial agriculture, widespread soil depletion, food exports draining local food webs, and an economic paradigm built on inequity. The result: rising prices and food access limited by income, which creates a downward spiral that can lead to poverty, hunger, despair, and conflict. Contemplating this tangle, I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes from Abraham Lincoln: "Ere long the most valuable of all arts will be the art of deriving a comfortable subsistence from the smallest area of soil. No community where every member possesses the art can ever be the victim of oppression in any of its forms." This is such an apt statement for our modern world. As generations of small-scale farmers everywhere have been dispossessed by industrial agriculture, they have lost the food-growing and land-management skills of their ancestors—skills that could help build resilience, and abundance. If reawakened, these skills could literally make the difference between life and death for those living in extreme poverty. What is needed are simple, sustainable, accessible, whole-systems solutions that empower everyone, everywhere, to grow soil, food, community...and a better future. Ecology Action’s primary purpose is to address these challenges by creating a Biologically-intensive food-raising safety net, empowering people to meet their food needs locally by (re)learning the necessary farming skills before global agricultural, financial and environmental challenges become insurmountable. As the world situation intensifies, we are growing our programs to help spread GB even quicker and to more people. Our goal is to catalyze people everywhere to be proactive in growing their own soil, food, and thriving and resilient ecosystems. Our role is to be a source of inspiration, information, technical assistance, and quality assurance to the growing, global, GROW BIOINTENSIVE Family. Our publications, classes, workshops, internships, apprenticeships, online training resources, and global outreach focus on fulfilling this goal. If you're struggling and need some guidance in the garden, you don't have to figure everything out alone! We've been doing this for over half a century and are happy to share what we know! I encourage you to take a workshop, or to explore our compendium of over 50 Self-Teaching Mini-series booklets. They cover a huge range of topics learned over decades of hands-on field research. Growing in a drought? Try Booklet 35, Growing More Food with Less Water. Wondering if it's possible to grow wheat in your back yard? Try Booklet 33: Growing Your Own Grains. Curious about herbs? Try Booklet 27: Growing Medicinal Herbs in as Little as Fifty Square Feet. Seed prices too high? Booklet 13: Growing to Seed has you covered. Confused about compost? Booklet 32: Composting and Growing Compost Materials will help you get started. All of these and many more are available in print and digital download formats (growbiointensive.org/ePubs), with most available in both English and Spanish. My own recent contribution, published in 2024, is Booklet 45: The Negative Tolerance Buildup Effect and a Positive Transformation, which explores imbalances in our system, and outlines how GB provides the seeds of a solution to five major challenges we face in soil, water, energy, nutrients, and overpopulation. Our GB Farmer's Mini-Handbook by Margo Royer-Miller is so popular we've translated it into 9 other languages (French, German, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, Korean, and Nicaraguan Miskitu): you can download them from growbiointensive.org/ePubs, for free. In closing, I would like to share a bit of joy I was honored and touched to receive in the form of a note from a donor who really stated perfectly what I hope with all my heart that Ecology Action can provide in our world: "In these uncertain times, it gladdens my heart to see people around the world learning to "grow biointensive" and prospering thereby. Keep growing!" Yes! Keep growing! Start small, start scared, but start..and then keep going. I don't have all the answers, or even most of them. But I know that if we all tend to our part of the earth—our gardens—we will be making a good start, right where we are. Grow Hope Grow Abundance Grow Biointensive!
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Seeing the mini-farm waking up to sunshine and
blue skies after a long, wet winter, and looking
out over the Willits valley cloaked in the verdant
green haze that is spring in Northern California,
it's easy to feel that all is right with the world.
And in many ways, in many places, there is a lot
to be happy about: reports that come across my
desk from GROW BIOINTENSIVE (GB) practitioners
around the world show me that positive change
is not only possible, but already happening in so
many places, one garden at a time. But feeling joy
about what's going right doesn't mean ignoring
what needs to be fixed:
