Matthew Drewno

“Another world is possible. It is a call to return to the farm, to manual work in dialogue with the mountains, the harvests, the weeds, the animals, the sound of the stream and the whisper of the wind among the pines, the full moon and the waning, the constellations and brother sun. That is to say, it is the manual work of the gardener or farmer with spirituality, a call to the alchemical language of the gardener who understands the language of the birds, the continuation of the work of God: to live in harmony with neighbor and nature.”
Mario Mejia Gutierrez, National University of Columbia, Palmira

Since 1972 Ecology Action, a 501(c)(3) non-profit has been researching, demonstrating and teaching the GROW BIOINTENSIVE (GB) Method: a biologically-intensive form of agriculture that uses simple, low-tech methods based on a best-practices approach of sustainable food production. The method is designed to be simple and accessible, easy to put into practice and is low-cost, non-polluting, maximizes agricultural yields, builds soil fertility and minimizes inputs of water, energy and fertilizers.

In the four-and-a-half decades since its inception, Ecology Action has initiated programs worldwide to help secure food sovereignty on a local-global level. We have worked with people in over 150 countries in virtually all climates and soils where food can be grown. Our programs are creating a new paradigm where individuals are trained and supported to empower themselves to increase their own health, as well as that of their families and their communities while protecting the environment and creating a “close-loop” organic approach to sustainability.
More than ever, the GROW BIOINTENSIVE Method is proving that a new future is possible when communities are united in peace and sustainability, through our training in simple and accessible sustainable food production techniques.

We are hosting 2 summer programs that run concurrent with our 8-Month International Internship:

- 2-Month Summer Internship for students, farmers and gardeners interested in full-immersion in the GROW BIOINTENSIVE Technique. Our interns live on-site at one of our 3 Northern California research gardens and experience day-to-day life on a mini-farm, gaining practical hands-on experience as well as classroom instruction in sustainable agriculture.

- 9-Part Summer Course Series for those local to Northern California taking place on Saturdays from June 3rd-July 29th from 9am-3PM. Learn all aspects of the GROW BIOINTENSIVE Method through
hands-on, guided practice from our expert mini-farmers and certified teachers.
We invite you to join us this summer to explore the GROW BIOINTENSIVE Method at our research, education and demonstration mini-farms in Northern California. We are each a vital part of the solution and together we can change the world!

Application Materials and Information can be found at www.growbiointensive.org. The application deadline is May 15th, 2017.

The poop situation is especially frustrating when you are working with degraded land- every bit of OM and nutrient helps! Ive seen a few gardens/mini-farms incorporating cured humanure into their soils and im a bit jealous....i get the feeling that almost all nutrient fertilizers and inputs are substitutes for cured humanure. I can't wait to see the day when its more culturally accepted as an essential component to a sustainable food-soil system...Mr hanky almost turned the boat around for us- maybe we need a new south park episode about humanure.

Travis Schulert wrote:

They CAN be separated as long as the person doing it understands what they are doing and not just skipping steps and cutting corners. There is no discovery in this world without experimentation.

I myself do not like following someones system to a T. Because what works for them on their land and in their trials is not always whats going to work for everyone else. You can also measure the organic matter in your soil through a lab and know for sure if you are depleting it or not. With only adding a half inch of compost on each bed my first year with Bio-Intensive, I gained almost 2% organic matter. That was due largely in part to the amount of composting roots in the soil.

I preach to everyone to experiment wherever they can, and learn what works best for them.

I no longer make big compost piles on a weekly basis, or turn on a regular basis as bio-intensive would have you do. I instead compost most material in place on the bed as a sheet mulch. I also source as much compost material as I can from other parts of the farm. I do make compost piles but thats mostly for the chickens and for my compost tea.

Fermented plant extracts are something Bio-Intensive does not touch on, but using those methods with nettle, mullien, horsetail, etc etc you can add mass amounts of nutrients to your soil and plants by utilizing the growing tips of local weeds growing in the margins of roads and around the farm.

Fermented plant extracts make the plants bigger, that means more roots and material to compost without having added compost to make them bigger in the first place. Now thats my kind of nutrient cycling lol

Glad you are having good success with Bio-Intensive. I have noticed huge improvements in my soil with these methods, and also the methods of many other natural farming systems, not just bio-intensive. I use a lot of straight bio-dynamic methods that John does not include in his book also.

Travis,

I love your thoughts on experiments! Our system is not designed to a T, it is quite flexible actually. It is a set of basic principles that can be applied anywhere. When you take a look at where we are likely to be in about 25-50 years from now, you might come to the conclusion that close-system farming is the only game in town...people might actually be fighting over compost and water! Therefore, I like to think that even though our system scares some people off because it does imply a pattern to help people achieve sustainability, I am confident that someday our methods will be used quite widely.

Your garden sounds like it is thriving!

I also wanted to make a note that I dont turn my compost piles unless I have to, and in fact consider that to be a critical reason why our organic matter has risen so sharply. More and more our work in biointensive is pointing towards the benefits of not turning your compost. The only real advantage turning offers is faster compost, and faster isnt always better. Turning a pile introduces a lot of oxygen and brings the pile back to that "beginning point" where a lot of carbon is burned off in that decomposition stage. If you let a pile age as it goes, and allow it to experience a complete maturity on its own, you are left with a qualitatively different substance. It like to think of it as a good cheese or wine- let it age for a while and it will taste better In addition, I get more quantitatively out of my piles if I do not turn. I keep good records on my piles, so this I am confident of. Also, the type of materials you include in the pile, namely more structural lignins and such will also go a long way to increase longer term soil organic matter...food for thought!

Tyler Ludens wrote:

Matthew Drewno wrote:Unfortunately I live in a location where composting my own humanure is not an option

I'm wondering about that. Do you actually have "poop police" who make sure you aren't composting human poop? It might be impossible to get a permit for a composting toilet, but it's difficult for me to imagine living in a place where people are so intrusive they look at your compost heaps to make sure there's no human poop in there. We have a composting toilet outhouse on our place, but one can only get a permit for septic systems, as far as I know. My big personal rule of behavior is "Don't flounce." So far I've never been prevented from doing something because someone wouldn't give me permission to do it. Just sayin'

Tyler,

I dont have a poop policeman looking over my shoulder, but an ecoresort has given me the land to run a garden on- they have a restaurant, and are CCOF Organic Certified and I make the decision to leave poop out of the equation for now. And I wouldnt advocate putting poop in a compost pile...i would compost it separately, off to the side and let it go through its process on its own- you can leave it sit longer which is just safer overall...

But, man do I hate flushing the toilet....

I am farming on a 1/4 acre degraded site once a road, then under cover of eucalyptus trees, overgrazed for 70 years by sheep and llamas and I have seen a sharp increase in the productivity of our land in the 5 years since the use of biointensive techniques. When I started there literally was no topsoil. I have seen several other biointensive farms which have had similar beginnings. Our inputs have been limited to a one-time compost input of 1/4" over each of the 100 sqft growing beds 6 years ago, as well as a few mineral inputs over the years including a little potassium sulfate, manganese, magnesium, hi-cal lime sulfur and gypsum. Our goal is to balance the soils asap, and then close the loop. Unfortunately I live in a location where composting my own humanure is not an option, so there is a major portion of the loop that remains open.

I just wanted to chime in about biointensive practices depleting soil. On our site we have seen soil organic matter increase 3.1x faster on a per year basis than a USDA NRCS no-till study. There may be many reasons for this, but I do believe that a big part of it is our emphasis on carbon farming, close plant spacing and composting.

The 8 elements of biointensive must be used together, if they are separated the system can become the opposite of what it is intended to be. For example, we typically reach 2-6x the yields of conventional, organic and GMO agriculture per unit of area. That means we can deplete our soil 2-6x as fast. If one is importing compost, they are strip-mining another soil to get their nutrients and organic matter. For those who have met John Jeavons, you might have become familiar with his "in the world of the future" line- well, in many places, that world of the future is now. In the next 50 years we will be running out of soil and water in a big way. That said, the art of growing your own soil and reducing your resource useage through the microscaling of agriculture is a good one to go for.

Goal of Biointensive: Understanding that agriculture is responsible for the majority of loss in habitat, destruction of ecosystems, use of resources/fossil fuels, environmental contamination/pollution, greenhouse gases; microscaling agriculture has the potential to reduce the human impact on the environment and allow for the restoration of functioning ecosystems. Therefore, our aim is to develop a system which functions on a pattern understanding which can be applied to any growing region around the world, including the US (which, in my opinion, is probably the most difficult place to teach it because we have become so disconnected from the soil and our communities in this culture). Therefore, the following 8 principles have been developed as a pattern to grow a complete diet, in the smallest space possible, using the fewest resources necessary while giving as much back to Nature as we can.

The 8 principles of whole systems sustainability taught in biointensive are:
1. Deep Soil preparation
2. Close plant spacing
3. Composting
4. Carbon Farming
5. Calorie Farming
6. Companion Planting
7. Open Pollinated Seeds
8. Whole Systems Perspective


An example of where this can go in the wrong direction is if you prepare the soil deep, plant things close together, but dont add compost. You will drain your soil pretty quick and yields will suffer significantly.

I hope this helps better understand the dynamics in a biointensive system which can lead to soil depletion, and which if practices correctly can increase soil significantly leading to higher yields with less weight on the planet.

Feel free to contact me for specific questions, as I cant get to the forum as often as Id like!!
Take care,
Matt