Jeavons’ new Common Ground Mini-Farm, as he named it, was an immediate success. Within 11 weeks after planting his first growing beds, he began to see his first set of crops and he never looked back. Thirty-seven years later, Jeavons and his long-time staff, with the support of his non-profit organization Ecology Action, has trained hundreds of interns and teachers from about 30 different countries, and there are now an estimated 7 million biointensive farmers around the world, as well as numerous indigenous training centers. Over the years there have also been hundreds of seminars and workshops at the Willits farm and elsewhere, and Jeavons has made countless Power Point presentations across the U.S., and in several foreign countries. The headquarters farm, along with a satellite farm nearby, is still active.
Jeavons’ system is based on using multiples of 100 square-foot growing beds (typically 5x20 feet or 4x25). Each one of these is carefully worked with a technique called “double-digging,” using tools like a D-handled spade and digging fork to prepare the topsoil and loosen the subsoil down to 24-inches, so that the plant roots -- as well as air, water, and beneficial microbes -- can grow much deeper. The plants also benefit by creating their own micro-climate when they are growing close together. With an investment of about 30 hours of labor per week, it is possible to produce enough food with Jeavons’ system to provide a complete, diversified diet on about 4,000 square feet of growing area (or 40 beds) – compared with the standard U.S. agricultural requirement of more than 100,000 square feet. And it can be sustainable for the long term.
Over the years, Jeavons has also done meticulous research and experimentation, along with careful record-keeping, which is distilled in his legendary book How to Grow More Vegetables. (The book’s quirky but memorable subtitle is “(and fruits, nuts, berries, grains, and other crops) Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land with Less Water Than You Can Imagine.”) Now in its ninth edition, Jeavons’ biointensive bible has sold more than 600,000 copies in eight languages – a phenomenal number for a gardening book. It has long since become an indispensable handbook and reference source for biointensive farmers, and many others as well.
I know, because our family developed and operated a 16-acre biointensive market farm on San Juan Island, Washington for a nearly a decade in the early 2000s as a post-retirement venture (with the help of a staff and many interns over the years, of course).
In theory, the biointensive farming system could feed the entire world, including especially the estimated 1 billion people who are currently undernourished or malnourished. More importantly, it could diversify our global food production (it’s readily adaptable to varying climates and soils), and it could help us to cope with the growing number of challenges to our vulnerable commercial farming system. Modern, high-tech industrial agriculture depends on huge inputs of capital, technology, low-cost fossil fuels, agricultural chemicals of various kinds, vast quantities of good topsoil, and an abundance of low-cost fresh water. (Some 70 percent of all the water consumed by humans currently goes toward irrigating our crops.) Not to mention having a stable growing environment and commodity markets with reasonably stable prices. All of these things and more are increasingly threatened as we go forward in this century.