The Need for Up to 99% Sustainability
At Ecology Action, we are investigating the components
of GROW BIOINTENSIVE as possibly one of the quickest,
most e:ective, most resource-conserving, and most
ecologically sound ways to replenish and balance soil
nutrients. Once the soil’s nutrient base has been properly
built and balanced, we need to learn how best to
maintain those nutrients in our gardens and mini-farms.
One promising approach is to grow all of our own
compost materials. If we grow su+cient quantities of
crops that produce material for compost, our goal is that
the resulting cured compost will contain as many of the
nutrients that the crops removed from the soil as
possible, as well as enough humus to feed the soil
microbes and prevent nutrient leaching. In this way, our
food-raising area becomes a source rather than a sink—of
carbon, nutrients, and fertility. (The net loss of carbon
dioxide, or “leakage,” from the system is a key concern.
Worldwide, the loss of carbon from our soils—and plants
in the form of harvested trees and their use for fuel—is a
situation causing increasing problems.)
Keeping the nutrients within the mini-farm, as well as
learning how to minimize the amount of nutrients we
need to bring in from the outside, are important tasks if
we are to grow all of our food, clothing, and building
materials on the 9,000 square feet (or about one- fth of
an acre) that may soon be all that is available to each