How to Grow More Vegetables : And Fruits, Nuts ... - Shroomery

xxiv AN HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION
excellent, and there are indications that their nutritive value
can be higher than that of commercially grown vegetables. This
method is exciting to me because each of us becomes important
as we find our place in relation to nature.
One person annually consumes in food the energy equivalent
(in calories or British Thermal Units) of 32.6 gallons of
gasoline. 8 In contrast, the most efficient economy car will use
that much gas in a month or two of ordinary driving. Imagine
the fuel consumed by a tractor or industrial machine in a year!
People are not only beautiful, they are very capable and efficient.
We believe GROW BIOINTENSIVE can produce more net
income per acre than commercial agriculture. With GROW
BIOINTENSIVE we help provide for the needs of the plants
instead of trying to dominate them. When we provide for these
real needs, the plants bounteously provide more food. In
striving for quality gardening, a person will be able to provide a
diet and income more than sufficient for his or her needs. The
effort will produce a human renaissance and a cornucopia of
food for all.
Our work grows out of a personal concern about worldwide
starvation and malnutrition. If we could determine the smallest
amount of land and resources needed for one person to supply
all of his or her own needs in a sustainable way, we might have
a personal solution. What if a person could, in a tiny area, easily
raise all the crops that would supply all food, clothes, building
materials, compost materials, seeds, and income for an entire
year? We asked whether others knew the smallest area required
to do this, and no one did—so we began our 30-year quest to
help settle an ongoing problem and make possible a better
quality of life.
Generally, the challenges of world hunger, soil depletion,
and diminishing resources seem so overwhelming that we
tend to look for big solutions, such as massive grain shipments,
breeding high-yield miracle crops, or establishing infrastructures—bank
loans, machinery and fertilizer purchases, markets,
and roads. These solutions create long-term dependency.
What is so exciting about a personal approach is that it seeks to
answer the question: “How do we enable ourselves to take care
of our own needs?” Personal solutions will have as many varied
applications as there are people, soils, climates, and cultures.
Our work is one way for people to begin to develop those
solutions.
proper humus content after a 5-year development period. The data are a qualitative projection
and have been assembled during a 3-year period of tests performed on root and leaf crops
(except brassicas) grown by hand cultivation in the Santa Barbara area with its 9-month
growing season. (The 1/100 figure does not include the energy required to get the soil system to
the point noted above and does not include unproductive plants that constituted 10% of the area
under cultivation.)
8. Michael Perelman, “Efficiency in Agriculture: The Economics of Energy,” in Richard
Merrill (ed.), Radical Agriculture (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), p. 86.