This Is How You Grow 1 MILLION Pounds Of Food On 3 acres – No GMOs Required!

This Is How You Grow 1 MILLION Pounds Of Food On 3 acres – No GMOs Required!. Photo – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV9CCxdkOng

This astonishing Youtube video demonstrates a remarkable “closed loop system” by Will Allen’s Growing Power organization that uses aquaculture to grow an amount of food that is absolutely unprecedented using conventional agricultural systems.

One of the central arguments that is used by the pro-GMO lobby is that GMOs are “necessary” in order to increase yields, which is vital for the survival of the world’s growing population. These claims are controversial – with the Union of Concerned Scientists publishing Failure To Yield – which provides data counteracting claims of increased yields with GMOs and stating that they do not in fact increase yields at all.

What the people at Growing Power are doing completely blows all the tiresome pro-GMO industry-lobbying propaganda out of the water.

To give some perspective; conventional average agricultural yields across all crops are approx 4-15,000 lbs/acre, with some crops being a little higher such as Cali greenhouse tomatoes – 18,900 lbs/acre in 2010.

That means that Growing Power’s per-acre yields are of the order of 25x those of conventional systems.

Pro GMO proponents claim yield increases of a few percent, and one of their central arguments against organic is that they say it will reduce yields by 25% and starve millions of people in the third world. This proves that their arguments are nonsense, and if you look into the science and methodology behind it, you can see why.

It you take a step back and examine the closed-loop system that Growing Power uses, you can understand why it generates such high yields. The plants filter the waste from the fish tanks, keeping the water clean. The fish fertilize the plants. The compost is made from donated food waste from supermarkets and the warmth it generates keeps the greenhouses warm in winter, enabling an all-year round growing environment. The entire system yields food and what would ordinarily be waste outputs in conventional systems are utilized.

This system is beautifully suited to an environment where there is limited available space, but can also be scaled up in accordance with demand, resources and available labor.

High yields from small spaces are not unique to Growing Power and there are others demonstrating similar techniques. We featured an urban agroecology system that yielded 6,000lbs of organic food from 0.1 acres using urban farming techniques. The 0.1 acre plot feeds a family plus generates $20,000 per year in surplus food that is provided to local organic chefs. More – Watch How This Family Produces 6,000 lbs Of Food On 1:10th Acre

Learn more about the urban agriculture / aquaculture systems of Milwaukee’s Growing Power at the link:

Growing Power

Further reading: Permaculture: A Designers’ Manual by Bill Mollison. (Amazon link) You can use “look inside” to see parts of the book for free!