Food Security and Food Sovereignty

Food security and food sovereignty are ever increasing issues, we need to learn new methods for growing food for areas in need these include anything from the most remote islands or even inner city horticulture where we need to have food grow more community food in the community itself. Ultimately we should be able to recycle community waste as resource and ‘grow food for free’.

We have a project on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean which is designed to be a working model for community fresh food, especially in remote areas where it is prohibitive to have access to fresh food because of dependence on imported fertilizer’s and because of the cost of air freight to the island. At the moment and for many years the islanders have had to pay more for the air fright than the cost of the food itself. This means that the islanders have suffered from the lack of fresh food since 1900.

At Christmas Island we have a 50-acre site that is an old mining lease, Mark Bennett and I have been working on the site for more than a year and have recovered 10 acres for production. Firstly, we cleared the regrowth, then leveled the site and used the old mining pits to make the dams.

Trust Natures Bio-Vital System of soil recovery is the foundation for the projects fertility management program. We use all the tools in the box for this project, specialist composting, soil pro-biotic, a range of organic fertilizers made from island resources and of course, good soil management including cover-cropping.

These are all features of the upcoming course at PRI Zaytuna Farm in August. You will leave the course with the ability to make specialist compost, make and apply soil pro-biotic as ‘compost tea’ just like its made at Harvard University and make a range of organic fertilizers to become input independent. Biological agriculture taught as the Bio-Vital System™ is one of the very few management programs that meet the standard for ‘sustainable’ farming, gardening and horticulture where ‘we build soil fertility as we improve production and reduce inputs and labor’.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Join this 5-day dynamic learning experience where you will learn the foundations of biological land management including how to maintain and restore soil vitality, how to make organic fertilizers and how to grow more food for less cost and less effort.

We take the mystery out of the complex sciences of composting, soil microbiology and plant nutrition and learn how to manage and apply solutions in easy to understand easy to apply forms.

This course redefines ‘sustainable agriculture’ as ‘our ability to build soil fertility as we improve production and reduce cost and labor; very few systems are able to achieve this goal in an affordable achievable way.

For more Information or to book, please visit: https://www.permaculturenews.org/courses/living-soils-for-vital-food-with-paul-taylor-at-pri-australia/