So
It's always nice to smell the life in the soil.
C.S.
Lewis, the English author, said, what saves a man is to take a step and then to take
another step.
A thriving, sustainable life is like a well-balanced equation where people get to enjoy a nourishing,
delicious, abundant food supply, and the planet thrives too.
This is what you might call a win-win situation.
Balance means biodiversity is maintained, which is critical to the survival of all ecosystems.
We need to remember that we are part of the ecosystems globally.
Our choices and actions contribute to the challenges and the solutions.
Sustainable food security is possible.
Knowledge of the grow bio-intensive method of growing food is a powerful tool for being
part of the solution, and it's available to everyone.
With many hands, the work can be light, the harvest can be abundant.
My good friend, Mary's Ella Child, is 81 years old.
She and I have been working together with ecology action for 23 years.
With a keen sense of what needs to be done, clear focus, and a loving heart, Mary writes
funding proposals that set waves of momentum in motion, rippling out across the world.
One of Mary's gifts is her ability to focus her whole attention on solution-oriented thinking.
In light of the huge challenges facing the world today, Mary has said, this is the time
I was born for.
Can you imagine?
I was a suburban housewife with four children, and so that seems long, long, long ago.
It was a long time ago.
But no, this seems like something all on its own, you know, separate.
You know, if I was looking at my life, here would be this, and this, and this, and this,
and then there would be this.
I was going to retire, you know, back in 1996.
It's so exciting and inspiring to be part of what's going on.
I think it's going to be a matter of getting very strong at the local level.
I really feel like I have something to give to this job, and it's helped me know what
I have to give, which is very nice.
In Kenya, six out of ten people go to bed hungry every night.
Samuel and Parisen dare to receive training in grow bi-intensive farming methods at Manor
House Agricultural Center in western Kenya.
They immediately recognize the potential for canyons to do much with little through biologically
intensive practices.
Now they run their own training center about an hour north of Nairobi for men, women, and
children.
Daily, they witness proof that it is possible to break the cycle of hunger and poverty.
The ability to farm is being able to turn straw into living gold.
This food creates health, health as wealth, not just in Kenya, but everywhere.
And when you have healthy people, communities thrive.
I grew up and was born in a family of nine people, rather poor.
When I was young, we would go for a day without food.
Most of the times, we slept hungry, waking up in the morning to go to school without
food.
That was the life.
Looking at my past, I thought that it was good for me to really help the poor of the
poorest.
This project was started by my wife and myself.
She works with women.
You want to teach one woman, you are teaching the whole country.
Most parts of the country receives relief food.
These people don't need relief food.
You have tried to teach this community.
If a farmer produces their own food, people will be eating healthy food and they won't
rely on the food that is produced where they don't know.
We want our farmers to adopt proper intensive and organic methods.
Our farmers were producing very good food many years back.
But today, look at what we are producing.
Bad food, junk food, chemically produced foods.
So we want our farmers to produce the way they were producing them before, indigenous
food.
GBIAC is a small organization that specializes in farmer trainings, in growing intensive
and other community development solutions.
Growing intensive is a method of growing food with minimal resources that the farmer has.
We have been able to train more than 5,000 farmers and we are trying to hail our country.
Juan Manuel Martinez-Faldes is tireless, wise and exceedingly knowledgeable.
He lives north of Mexico City and worked for many years as an employee of the Mexican government
with the Ministry of Social Security.
Since then, Juan has dedicated himself to building a training network that has branched
out to 22 countries across Latin America, transforming the lives of millions of people.
Juan chose to act on his understanding of the common denominator that we all share, the
fundamental need for healthy food.
Every day, Juan witnesses firsthand people who are eager to create better lives and can
attest to the incredible fuel source that lies within every informed individual, especially
when motivated by love for family and community.
I believe that, as a direct result of Juan's efforts, Latin America could lead the world
as an example of achieving sustainable abundance.
Can you imagine that sustainable abundance for the world?
Juan Manuel Martinez-Faldes has a lot of success to hail the peasants in his place of origin
because the problem of the field has always been food.
If there are no food for the family, the head of the family has to look for them.
Generally, in the United States, or he goes to the city to look for work.
So, with this method, those who accept it and dedicate themselves to working with it,
they have a way of feeding their families in a dignified manner and they hail.
The main obstacles are, first of all, the lack of nutritional education, because no one
has taught us how to eat.
We all eat as we can and, basically, we have been victims of this lack and of the excellent
advertising campaigns of the companies that industrialize food.
On the other hand, governments are focused on large agronegations.
They do not think about agriculture on a small scale.
They want them to look for organic food to export, not to feed the people.
These are the big obstacles that we face at the moment.
There are no resources, no funds for this type of agriculture currently.
My conclusion now is that the solution is very difficult for us to get up, it will have
to start from below, we will have to work horizontally.
It is more difficult, but it is safer.
I always say that organic agriculture is a state of consciousness, because, first of all,
we have to start, as Jimo says, by double-scoffing our minds.
I call my goals dreams, but dreams with the feet on the ground.
And my dream for Latin America is that everyone has enough information for the one who decides
that they can cultivate their own food and, in that way, be independent.
Grow biotensive works.
You don't need much space to begin.
You don't need much time.
You don't even need to be an expert.
You only need to take the next step, the first step.
To get started, visit the beginning series at johnchevins.info and growbiointensive.org.
Grow food.
Start now.
Eat well.
Go hope wherever you are.
Go to johnchevins.info
