Note - I am trying a new way of dynamic posts so one post covers a total topic. Instead of writing new posts I will update and print in red the new sections
Food crisis?
Every day far more energy than we need falls as sunlight. Plants convert this energy into carbohydrates by breaking down the water and extracting carbon dioxide from the air. As long as we have water, there will be an excess of energy food.
But in our inert, triple plastic food system, we are short of food for our intelligent control system - our gut brain. This deficiency is the underlying cause of the modern epidemic of non-infectious diseases.
The prime aim of this web is to create a social movement to create a fundamental change in our food system. Please join or email me. But in the short term, you can learn how to grow your own gut-brain food.
Preface
We have, at the most, fifty years to change our food system from one based on exploiting our natural resources to one based on recycling.
We may go to the Supermarket and see the shelves stacked with food from around the world, we are producing and shipping at least two billions tons of food every year. It is difficult to believe that there could be a problem.
But we can’t wait for forty nine years and then make the switch from exploitation to recycling.
We are already experiencing the effects of a failing food system. It lacks critical nutrients and biota to feed our gut-brain. Our intelligent control system senses this deficiency and sends out hormones making us hungry so we overeat.
The wrong fat in the wrong place is the underlying cause of the modern epidemic of chronic diseases - obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.
It is a here and now problem and we need to act.
Our Governments will play a critical role but in a democratic society, they are controlled by public opinion.
The first aim of this web is to inform the public of the dangers of doing nothing and explain how we need to change so they can influence our Governments.
The second aim is to explain the changes we have to make. We have the technology right now but we have to apply it.
I have been writing about this for years and if I am realistic there are so many articles that it is confusing so I am trying a new tack for the information age - a dynamic web which I will change regularly to give a condensed version.
I have called this Thrive and Survive but I will keep archived versions of all my articles available for those who want to go deeper.
We live in the virtual world of fake food
It is making us fat and sick and killing us
Our food system is on the brink of collapse
Soon millions of starving refugees will be
crossing boundaries causing chaos
It does not have to be that way
Join me in the world of real food
Live a long and healthy life
Thrive and survive
Let me show you how
Thrive and survive (Summary)
At the start, the earth was just a dead inert rock. Then the microbiota appeared, we don’t know from where, but they broke down the rocks making the nutrients in the rocks bio-available creating soil. Plants grew capturing energy from the sun, then animals and life on earth exploded.
Humanoid creatures appeared but they were small and puny. They developed a gut, full of trillions of biota which communicated with each other to provide intelligence, just like a modern computer, which regulated what and how much they wanted to eat and also taught their immune system.
They learned to manage fire and cook which led to massive brains and they started to invent things - spears, bows and arrows, followed by agriculture which led to city states.
Living close together and with poor hygiene many died from infectious diseases but they used their big brains to develop sewage and clean water systems and medicines and the population size exploded.
To feed this increase in population they refined their agriculture using chemicals to fertilise the soil and toxic chemicals to protect their plants from weeds and pests. It was highly in successful producing plenty of food.
But there were fewer microbes to make the nutrients in the soil bio-available and power the intelligent control system which regulated their bodies so people overate and got fat and sick creating a new modern epidemic of non-infectious diseases - obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.
The infectious diseases had been swapped for non-infectious diseases.
But worse this system relied on mining and the exploitation of the earth’s natural resources with the threat of global famines, mass starvation and the collapse of their comfortable civilisation.
But ever inventive humans realised they needed a new technology and learned to breed beneficial microbes which out competed and out bred the harmful microbes something they had learned by studying nature and they called Eco-balance. Just manage the condition so the beneficial microbes win.
And they learned to do this using organic waste so the nutrients came from recycling rather than exploitation.
This is what we call the Gbiota technology
But people had to accept this new technology which meant a paradigm shift in how they thought about food.
But they had also invented what is probably the greatest innovation of all times - the Internet - where people can access information from across the world.
But sadly the internet had become saturated with misinformation so people were sceptical about what they read on the internet. So they said it is no good just telling people we have to show people that this works for real so we must ask innovative people who care about the future of their species to set up Gbiota boxes and beds and show people that this works.
And that is why we invite you to join the Gbiota social movement and help change the world for the better, we call it Thrive and Survive.
Life on earth
Gbiota is a technology for growing healthy food sustainably.
It is based on the principle of Eco-balance.
The first living creatures on earth were microbes. They broke down rocks to produce soil with bio-available nutrients which allowed plants, then animals, including us humans, to evolve. We are totally dependent on microbes.
But there are also harmful microbes which make us sick or kill us. We have developed an array of chemicals, many toxic, to provide nutrients for our plants and to protect them and us from these harmful microbes, but these have also killed off the beneficial microbes which are essential for life.
Eco-balance is the technology of creating the conditions that suit the beneficial microbes so they out-compete and out-breed the harmful microbes.
We know how to do this, it is a simple technology which is readily applied.
Technology should work for the benefit of the community but that is not the way it currently works. Technology benefits a very small minority of people making them obscenely wealthy.
If humanity is to survive the food crisis we need a few entrepreneurial thinking people to take the initiative and demonstrate to the world that this is the way humanity will thrive and prosper.
Words aren't enough
I have written hundreds of articles about sustainable and healthy food production, some are my attempts to treat a serious subject with humour others technical which may only be appreciated by someone with the right background.
But words won’t avoid the food crisis, that takes action.
So all I ask is for you to set up your own Gbiota beds or boxes, start incorporating plants with essential minerals and beneficial microbes into your diet and if you find that if you feel satisfied so no longer want to keep on eating just tell a friend or two.
That way will avoid the looming food disaster which won't be solved by big business or government but by people dedicated to making the world a better place.
This will also save you money, this is not a solution just for the rich, to work it must be available to everyone.
Gbiota - the essence
Gbiota may appear to be about growing plants, and it is true we do grow plants but that is just a means to an end.
We all have an intelligent control system which regulates our bodies, its main purpose is to regulate what and how much food we eat, decide how much food we need to eat for energy and to replace our body parts as they age and wear, but it also controls our immune system.
This is a combination of our head and gut brains. Our guts have trillions of cells which communicate with each other just like in a computer. It starts learning about food from the first suck on mum’s breasts and continues throughout our lives.
For our intelligent control system to work we need the right sort of microbes in our gut and we have to feed them.
If we do not feed them we may overeat and get fat and sick. The underlying cause of the modern epidemic of non-infectious disease is that we are not feeding our gut-brain as our modern food system is lacking the critical minerals we need and is sterile lacking the fresh microbes.
Gbiota breeds the beneficial microbes in the soil which enter the plants that we eat. But we need to control the conditions carefully, if it is to dry the microbes and the plants will not grow, if it is to wet harmful microbes will breed and we will get sick. We need to have just the right moisture level - Goldilocks moisture.
With this Goldilocks moisture the microbes will breed and break down the minerals we add to the soil to feed them and us the essential minerals and create the right conditions in our gut for the beneficial microbes to breed and our intelligent control system to work properly.
Thrive and survive
Growing food - my thing
Everyone has their thing. My thing is in how to grow food sustainably that will enhance health.
It all started in WW2 when I was a toddler and was used as child labour to grow food.
My job was to dunk pots into a brew of chicken manure, flood and drain - that is the basis of modern-day flood and flush.
There are two aspects to this, short-term and long-term.
In the short term modern food is deficient in critical microbiology and minerals. Our bodies have an intelligence, sense this deficiency and sends out hormones to make us hungry so we overeat.
Fat in the wrong place is the underlying cause of the modern epidemic of non-infectious diseases, overweight, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.
This is going to be resolved by changing the food growing system rather than a medical approach which may relieve the systems but does not address the underlying cause.
In the longer term, we are facing food challenges from climate change and degradation of our soils. It is based on the exploitation of natural resources rather than recycling and we only have fifty years left of key minerals such as phosphorous.
We have to change from a system based on exploitation to one based on recycling. If we don’t make that change the comfortable civilisation which we currently enjoy will be under severe stress from hungry and angry people moving within and across national borders.
I have spent the last thirty years developing technological solutions to these twin issues.
The real threat - marketing bullshit
It is my job to try and solve these two problems. It is not easy but it can be done.
The real problem is differentiating between the real world and propaganda (or marketing).
I am a dull boring engineer, I solve problems. You may like to read my article Smart Young Lady.
I know how we can substantially reduce the eight million amputations a year that diabetics suffer.
This is going to be resolved by changing the food growing system rather than a medical approach which may relieve the symptoms but does not address and resolve the underlying cause.
The longer-term problem of a collapse of our food system from climate change and degradation of our soils is more challenging but still soluble.
As a dull boring engineer, I can look at the amount of energy falling on the earth each day. It dwarfs all the energy used by mankind. Fortunately most of that energy is reflects back out to space for the benefit of some little green men in some faraway galaxy or we would all be burned to a cinder.
That energy can be used by plants that extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, break the bonds in water to form energy-rich carbohydrates we use as energy food.
OK, we need other foods to replace our body parts as they age and wear but that is soluble by recycling.
Dull boring articles
As a dull boring engineer, I write long dull boring articles on how we can solve these problems and naturally I want to tell the world about these solutions.
But I like everyone have a range of capabilities and marketing is not one of those, as a marketer I am a pretty good engineer.
So I do the sensible thing and seek the advice of marketing experts thinking naively that in this information age of the internet that this will be simple.
But the marketing experts advising me cringe in horror at my ignorance and do their best to inform this dull boring engineer.
Many people are complaining about the cost of food. They may not realise that the cost of producing food is only a small proportion of the cost we pay in the Supermarket, often as low as 20%. The rest of the cost in other other activities - particularly marketing and packaging.
They need to do that so we buy food which is intrinsically unhealthy.
What a wonderful world we live in.
The virtual world
They explain there is now two worlds, the virtual world which is fun and happy with nubile young people frolicking in waterfalls and just enjoying their virtual existence and the real world which is where all the horrible things happen.
They tell me that if I want to use the Internet to solve the problems of the world I must adopt the rules of the virtual world and not talk about bad things like people having their legs amputated from diabetes or masses of hungry, starving, angry people flooding across borders.
In the virtual world people just want to hear about happy things and no one will want to hear about bad things and if I persist I will probably find my access blocked.
A bit of a worry
For me, this is a bit of a worry. I watch the news and see people killing each other all over the world and ask myself why. I understand full well that humans are the dominant creature on earth for two reasons - we are intelligent and naturally cooperative.
In my younger days, I used to drive out to some remote regions, if you got bogged and you were lucky enough that someone came along there is no way they would leave your there and would pull you out of the bog.
We are naturally a cooperative creature, it is built into us (or at least most of us).
So why is there so much violence in the world? For thousands of years, aggressive leaders have whipped up anger in their tribes to attack and kill humans in other tribes (and steal their women).
But the advent of the Internet and the virtual world has changed the scale, so what do we do about it?
I am not being insensitive when I say stop worrying about those eight million people a year who have a leg amputated or those many millions of starving people who will be flooding across the borders.
There will always be some dull boring engineer who will find technical solutions.
The real threat is not seeing the difference between the virtual and real world.
Finding the solutions
So how do we solve these real-world problems?
We have to change from a system based on exploitation to one based on recycling. If we don’t make that change the comfortable civilisation which we currently enjoy will be under severe stress from hungry and angry people moving within and across national borders.
I have spent the last thirty years developing technological solutions to these twin issues.
That is what dull boring engineers do - find solutions to real-world problems.
Experimenting with growing food sustainably
I have been experimenting for over thirty years to find better ways of sustainably growing plants to improve health. The result is the Gbiota technology.
There is a lot of research on what are the best foods for health and also a lot of research on the best way to grow plants for maximum production but how to grow plants for health is a neglected area yet the quality of our food is very dependent on the soil it is grown in and what is known as the horticultural protocol.
Microbes and fungi play an important role, they process minerals in the soil to make them bio-available to the plants and enhance our gut health when we eat the plants.
The latest research shows just how important gut health is for our overall health not just physically but our mental health and feeling of well being.
But it is one thing to develop the technology, it is even more of a challenge to persuade people to change their eating routines. This is even more difficult in this information age which is saturated with manipulative advertising focused on profit rather than community health.
I was a pioneer in Computer Aided Engineering developing technologies which changed the industry for which I was recognised by the Institute of Engineers as one of the country’s leading innovators.
The company I created became the leading exporter of technical software from Australia and was a world leader in its particular area.
But this did teach me about the process of getting new technologies accepted.
It is simply no good running major marketing campaigns, particularly in this modern era of disinformation, people just don’t believe what they read online.
The key to the adoption of any new technology is to find the social entrepreneurial people, who see the critical importance of a secure and sustainable food system, and are prepared to try the technology themselves to show it works.
These will be the sort of people who won’t be taken in by the marketing bullshit but will try it and test if it works for them.
If it works they will tell others and then the technology will gain acceptance.
Fortunately, it is obvious that it is working as people feel satisfied and are no longer craving food.
How to get new solutions accepted
But this did teach me about the process of getting new technologies accepted.
It is simply no good running major marketing campaigns, particularly in this modern era of disinformation, people just don’t believe what they read on-line.
The key to the adoption of any new technology is to find the entrepreneurial people who are are prepared to try the technology.
These will be the sort of people who wont be taken in by the marketing bullshit but will try it and test if it works for themselves.
If it works they will tell others and then the technology will gain acceptance.
Fortunately it is obvious that it is working as people feel satisfied and are no longer craving food.
My current aim is to attract the interest of these entrepreneurs to form a team to take this technology to the eight billion people on this planet.
Ask yourself these questions.
Which is more important - the profits of a handful of Neo-monopolist mega corporations or community health?
Are you prepared to spend a bit of time learning about flood and flush (the key technology behind the Gbiota system), make your own Gbiota bed or box, eat fresh Gbiota food for a month and if you see real benefits tell your friends?
If so just have a good read then drop me an email.
It is easy to get emotional about mega food companies making profits by supplying food that leads to us having our legs chopped off with diabetes and Governments that take no action, is all that true? I am a dull boring engineer and what matters is the end result. So what are the facts?
We live on a little ball spinning around our sun. Every now and again a meteorite comes from outer space but the mass is minute compared with the mass of the earth so we can say it is negligible and the minerals on the earth are fixed.
We cannot say the same thing about energy. Every day the sun delivers a huge amount of energy. It is not well understood how much energy comes from the sun but it is huge in comparison with the amount of energy used in all ways by humans and totally dwarfs the energy that powers our bodies.
Fortunately, most of that energy is reflected back into outer space or else we would all be fried to a cinder.
When the earth was formed some four billion years ago it was just dead rocks but after a billion years or so microbes which appeared from somewhere started to break down the rocks or form soil in which plants started to grow.
These plants collected a huge amount of energy from the sun which was made more soil and plants and then animals - an explosion of life which eventually led to humanoid creatures about a million years ago.
We ate plants but then we discovered how to use fire and cook which made nutrients more digestible and we changed dramatically - our guts shrank and we developed huge brains and started to invent things. At first spears, then bows and arrows, then fibre for clothes and fishing lines.
We were pretty puny creatures in comparison with some of the other creatures that roamed the earth and to survive we had to form tribes for protection.
Tribes had leaders which we were happy to follow, it was a simple question of life or death. This tribal characteristic still forms part of our nature which is why we seem to be so aggressive to members of other tribes killing them was seen to be a virtue.
Then we developed agriculture which led to the formation of city states, people lived in relatively close proximity and became very prone to diseases which kept the population numbers low. Three out of five babies would die before the age of five and another in their teens. But if you reached the age of thirty then you could expect to live a lot longer and die of old age.
Food was an issue but there was plenty of land and despite deaths from famines we managed to struggle through despite the high death rate.
Then we used our big brains, we improved both medicine and hygiene so we stopped dying from infectious diseases at such an alarming rate and the population exploded.
This is not something out of the history book it has happened in little more than my lifetime where the population has tripled.
All those extra mouths had to be filled so we got our big brains out of the cupboard to develop better ways of growing food and we were spectacularly successful in increasing our food production far faster than the increase in population.
We were extraordinarily successful in harvesting the energy that fell from the sun producing energy food to provide us with energy.
Let us not be rude to the nutrition scientists but it really does not matter what food we use as fuel, it is just fuel and the bulk of the food, about 80% we just burn off as fuel.
But like many good things there was nasty side effects. The problem was not what was in the food, it was all good energy food but what was missing from the food, specifically the beneficial microbes which power our gut brain and the minerals and phytonutrients which are needed to feed both us and the microbes.
Our intelligent control system, which regulates our bodies, particularly our appetite, (but also our immune system) detected these deficiencies and so sent our hormones so we felt hungry and overate leading to an epidemic of chronic non-infectious diseases such as obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.
We had swapped infectious diseases for non-infectious disease.
That is what motivated me to develop the Gbiota technology, and the solution turned out to be very simple. Simply create the conditions that favour the beneficial microbes so they out compete and out breed the harmful microbes.
This breeding is done in organic waste which solves another problem, it is replacing the extractions of the minerals which we are exhausting by recycling waste.
This is the way we will thrive and survive.
We do not have to replace our existing food system which generates some five billion tonnes of food each year just supplement it with living Gbiota food.
It is simple, and inexpensive so any one can do it.
But we live in an era where the internet is saturated with fake information. The solution to that is for people who understand this to set up their own Gbiota beds at home, show it works which is easy - just see if the food cravings are reduced - then tell other people.
This is what the Gbiota social movement is all about.
The big threat
If you asked me what is the biggest threat facing humanity what would you expect me to say?
If you knew that one of my earliest memories was Mum digging up the lawn to grow food in WW2 and since then, for some 84 years I have been studying how to grow healthy food sustainably you would expect me to say sustainable food production.
And you would be dead wrong. We know how to grow enough food to feed the entire population of the world so we can thrive and survive, now and well into the future.
That is not the problem, the real problem is what is probably the greatest technical innovation of our generation - the Internet. Well not the internet itself, it still amazes me that most people can now access the world’s information.
The problem is the way the Internet has become so saturated with dubious information and manipulative marketing that people now believe you can solve any problem, however complex and challenging, like feeding ten billion people with food that will keep them healthy, with a thirty second scan.
Well, the world does not work that way, we can provide the world with food that will keep them fit and healthy but not with a thirty second scan and a cute slogan. Read my story of the smart young girl.
All I can do is provide the information, people, that’s you and me, decide what we put in our mouths, not big business or Governments.
Three action steps
We need to change from exploitation to recycling. Recycling is not a new concept - it has been the way the world has worked for the last few billion years. The patents have well and truly expired.
We tend to think of recycling as microbes composting and that works but it is not the way that most natural system works.
Microbes certainly recycle but there is a bigger army of recyclers, worms in the wet conditions, ants in the dry and a whole range of beetles and also birds.
That pigeon clearing up under your trendy city cafe table is doing a great job of recycling, even if does poop on your shoe.
This wide array of creatures may do some of the crunching but much of the final processing is done in their gut biome, which often resembles ours. This is particularly valuable as their poop enters the soil, then the plants and finally reinforces our gut biota, which is what Gbiota is all about.
But how do we make use of this to save our world from collapsing.
There are three steps we can take.
Grow food at home in Gbiota boxes.
The first is easy, just persuade people to start growing some of their food at home in Gbiota boxes. This is cheaper and much healthier than buying from the supermarket - we just have to get the message out.
This is what I have been researching for many years now.
Manure
Next, we can persuade our farmers to reprocess out waste, particularly both animal and human manure.
But we need to develop a bit of technology hear as we don’t want to just spread this on the surface. We are fighting a continues battle between the good bugs and the bad bugs, so not this way shown.
We need to develop some machinery with an auger and slurry tank so the manure is buried deep in the soil where the beneficial microbes can process it safely. Not difficult for any farm machinery manufacturer.
This should not be such a challenge as it is cheaper than the ever increasing cost of fertiliser.
Urban farms
If we are going to have a nation of people with a healthy gut biota we need to change our city planning to allow for local growing of some plants. This way people have have plants which are harvested and eaten without delay, which is the greatest weakness of our modern food system.
Fresh means living - not gone rotten. An important difference.
This worked spectacularly well in Cuba during the sanctions where they developed an effective system of urban agriculture when under political stress.
We have a different stress now from chronic diseases - we just have to recognise the harm of our modern food system.
My plea
So my plea to these entrepreneurial types is simple. Don’t believe all the marketing bullshit or even what I tell you.
Set up some Gbiota boxes, start incorporating some Gbiota grown food into your diet and just monitor how you feel. Nothing complex, no special tests just ask yourself the simple question “Do I feel satisfied and am no longer craving food?”
You can do some scientific test if you like by measuring how much weight you have lost or how often you go to the toilet (sorry but your use of toilet paper will increase - just buy yourself a bidet).
And if the answer is yes then just tell other people. This is the way we will avoid all those amputations from diabetes and those hoards of starving people crossing borders in search of food.
Woke green activist
You may get called a woke green activist. People try and insult me all the time with that phrase, I take it as a compliment and feel good that I am a woke green activist and so should you. You are making the world a much better place for you and your great-grandchildren.
Not a bad feeling.
There is them that do and them that follow - if you are a doer join me - do it for yourself or do it for your grandkids
We are a social movement to change our food system so we thrive and survive. Why not drop me an email and tell me about your interest in food and health first.
There is a nice story about a smart young lady who stalled her ageing car on a busy road.
Try as she might she could not get the car started and soon there was a monster traffic jam. The man in the car behind started to blow his horn in a furious rage, she did not know what to do so she went to the car behind and said very politely “Excuse me, sir, would you like to try and start my car while I sit in your car and blow the horn”.
But let me make a sequel, a quiet, dull, boring engineer a couple of cars back, came along, lifted the bonnet and went through a series of checks, taking out the sparking plugs - yes there was a spark, was the fuel getting through - yes there was fuel.
So he diagnosed the carburettor was flooded, spun the engine a few times, put the spark plugs back and brrm brrm the car started and everyone drove off, very relieved.
Now why do I tell this story? Because we are facing a far worse crisis than a traffic jam - the future failure of our food system. We have just fifty years’ supply of some critical minerals, like phosphorous, remaining which will certainly cause a collapse of the food system - that is unless climate change and degradation of our soils have not already caused collapse.
I am not a noisy type, I don’t march in protest movements or climb tall buildings to hoist protest flags, thats me I am a quiet, dull, boring engineer, but I can work through problems systematically to find solutions that work.
I was a toddler in the Second World War when food was critical to survival. I watched as women (the men were away), dug up the lawns, nature strips and common land to grow food, and it worked.
Later in life being a quiet, dull boring engineer, who plodded through difficult problems in a step-by-step way, turned out to be quite useful. I was selected as one of the leading innovators by the Institute of Engineers for my pioneering work on computer-aided engineering.
But then I asked myself what was the biggest problem facing humanity? The answer was simple. How are we going to feed the ten billion that will inhabit the world in a sustainable way.
Working through the problem in a step-by-step way gave some reassurance.
Every day, for the last four billion years, the sun has delivered vast quantities of energy to the earth. Numbers with so many 000 that it is difficult to comprehend and vastly in excess of all the energy used by all humans.
Fortunately, most of that energy is reflected back into outer space or both you and me would be dried up cinders, so we are safe, at least until we stop reflecting that heat.
Plants use this energy, by photosynthesis, they take carbon dioxide from the air and water from the soil, breaking the carbon and hydrogen bonds to produce compounds, such as carbohydrates, which contain large amounts of energy that we can use as food.
We can expect that this will continue for many more billions of years, so we can stop worrying about energy food.
But there is a sting in the tail. The bulk of the food we need to eat may be energy food but like a car needs more than just energy fuel, we need a whole array of complex chemicals and microbes to be fit and healthy.
Our bodies need replacement food to rebuild our body parts as they wear or age.
And this is the sting, we are running out of these minerals. To survive we need to change our food system from one based on exploitation of our natural resources to one based on recycling.
So for the last thirty years, yours truly - this quiet, dull boring engineer - has been experimenting with ways of growing food sustainably. This involves experiments with compost, bugs and waste entirely appropriate for a quiet dull, boring engineer.
The result is the Gbiota system, a growing system which will keep us fit and healthy in a sustainable way.
But we can’t just wait for forty-nine years and in fifty years take action.
Right now we are seeing the harmful effects of a diet with a poor balance between energy and replacement foods. Our bodies are intelligent and can sense the lack of replacement foods so it sends out hormones to make us feel hungry so we eat more.
The net result is we overeat and get fat and sick. The underlying cause of the modern epidemic of non-infectious diseases (like obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia) is the wrong fat in the wrong place.
We cannot just sit around for forty-nine years saying there is plenty of food in the supermarkets. Of course there is, but it is missing what keeps us fit and healthy.
So this quiet, dull, boring engineer may have the solution but solutions are no use unless they are applied for the benefit of the community.
There was a time when the Internet was an amazing way of getting important information out to the public.
Unfortunately, the Internet has now been largely taken over by the internet marketers who run a standardised sausage factory where success is achieved by the latest marketing gimmick rather than the importance of the content. People now only believe what they hear from someone they trust.
To create awareness of the need to change our food system we need people who are not quiet, dull and boring.
We need people who are willing to start using the Gbiota system, see for themselves that they are no longer craving food but feel satisfied and then go out and tell their friends how they can be fit and healthy by eating food grown sustainably.
So if that is you please pick up the torch and go out into the world, tell people that there is more to food than energy - they need replacement food and this is the way we will not just survive but be fit and healthy for generations ahead.
Just look at the way that plants are generally grown. Hydroponics are popular and they don’t use any soil, just chemicals. Even with common farm production of plants the soil is just a way of supporting the plant and the nutrients come from chemicals.
Modern foods are deficient in key nutrients and living microbes. A common phrase is:
Overfed and undernourished.
Our bodies are intelligent and sense this deficiency so stores excess fat and the wrong fat in the wrong place is the underlying cause of the modern epidemic of chronic, non infectious diseases.
Gbiota Inputs – Organic Waste, Manure and Rock Dust
Now look at the Gbiota system. Our basic inputs are organic waste, manure and volcanic rock dust. All cheap, readily available and sustainable.
The microbes, particularly the fungi, break down the rock dust making a whole spectrum of minerals bio-available while also enhancing our gut health.
This is all embedded in the soil blood which is full of a broad spectrum of both minerals and living creatures. If allowed to become stagnant this would soon become a stinking mess full of harmful pathogens.
But the system of flood and flush with pulsed irrigation ensure that this always remains fresh and applying from below and allowing the soil blood to wick up means that the soil where the plants roots are growing never becomes saturated, just moist - Goldilocks moisture.
What Is Soil Blood?
I start by collecting all the soil blood that has drained out from the boxes. I call it soil blood as it does the same job for plants that blood does for us, transport nutrients and cells to where they are needed.
It is dark brown and if you look at it under a microscope it is full of the weirdest creatures.
I collect this up in a box and add water.
Flood-and-Flush Irrigation Cycle
I then twist all the swivel tubes into the up position.
I then calculate out how much liquid to apply by diving the size of the box by ten. Most of my boxes are 30 litres so I know I need to apply about 3 litres.
Typically I water twice a week, my be less in winter but at least once a week.
I pour my diluted soil blood into the compost tube which flushes the soil blood and any lose compost particles into the base of the bed so it floods.
It can’t flood higher than the height of the swivel tube so any excess liquid just overflows out of the swivel tube. This sometimes happens when the plants are very small. Soil blood is valuable so I may put a container to catch any overflow.
The liquid will now wick up to the plant roots so they are kept moist not wet.
This is the key to the Gbiota system. We want to breed beneficial microbes but if the soil is too wet we will breed harmful microbes.
When I flood the base of the bed all the stale air in the base is expelled.
I wait for a period for the liquid to wick up to the plant roots, at least one hour but a day is not too long.
I now rotate the swivel tube into the down position and catch the soil blood in a bottle.
If the plants are growing fast and I have not watered for a while there may not be any water draining out.
This process is called flood and flush. Flushing is important so I now know that I need to water more frequently. If I water twice a week this rarely happens but I like to check that I am getting the flushing action.
This is how I breed beneficial microbes without breeding the harmful microbes so when I eat the plants I am enhancing my gut health.
I can tell it is working as a healthy gut is intelligent so sends out hormones to make me feel satisfied so I don’t want to keep on eating.
Foliar Spray
I have a big problem with insects attacking my plants.
I have used pyrethrum sprays which do work but I really don’t want to use any toxic chemicals. Just because a chemical is natural does not mean it is harmless, there are lot of things in nature that can kill us or our gut microbes.
I am running trials by taking the soil blood I collect, just adding a drop of bio-degradable detergent and spraying onto the leaves of the plants.
This does two things, the dilute detergent washes the wax of any creepy crawlies and so they die and the the soil blood is teaming with microbes which can now enter the plants through the foliage as well as the roots.
I am still in trial mode but this seems t be working well, so I mention for people who want to try.
Wickimix is simply a growing medium – soil teaming with life and nutrients – and is central to the Gbiota system.
It has been produced in Wicking beds by a technology which is now well-matured and stable and is described in numerous articles which I can supply on request – just email me at colin@gbiota.com.
But while straightforward it does involve pumps and various irrigation technologies which are well suited to an experienced grower who could supply Wickimix as a growing medium, in clean skin boxes ready for planting or even better as in boxes with plants grown to the stage where they are ready to be harvested.
It is still our aim to establish a network of growers but right now there are many people who want to take advantage of the Gbiota technology but there is no local grower, so in this article I describe how people, even if they are living in an apartment, can produce their own Wickimix.
Gbiota is about breeding living, microbe-rich soil at home – whether you have a garden bed or just a balcony box.
Making Wickimix in a Garden Bed
I start with a section for people who have access to at least some garden, even if small.
The big advantage is that natural soil already contains the soil creatures on which Gbiota depends.
It is simple and anyone can do it even if it means getting back to nature.
Step 1 – Decide the Size of Your Bed
First decide how big you want to make your bed, it can be quite big but I would not recommend going above ten metre in one bed or very small, the bed I describe here is only a metre long and little more than half a metre wide.
Step 2 – Prepare the Base and Sump Box
Simply clear the topsoil into a pile. Just dig down to where the soil get firm, what is often called the B horizon.
Then dig a bit deeper for the sump box, any old plastic box will do.
If the soil is reasonably firm with a good content of fines (eg clay or silt) simply bang with a hammer to make it firm. If is is really sandy you may need to import some clay to form a base.
It is best to check out the levels by pouring some water onto the base to make sure it all flows into the box.
Step 3 – Install the Ag Pipe and Inlet
Now cut a piece of ag pipe to fit along the base of the bed and over the sump box.
You can bend the ag pipe to make an inlet but I prefer to use a larger pipe (eg 100mm PVC pipe) which makes a large inlet.
Step 4 – The Leaky Dam
Now comes the smart bit – the leaky dam. If the pipe was horizontal the water (or soil blood) would flow straight into the sump without wetting the soil. So raise the pipe just before the sump so it is at least one diameter higher than the base. This will force the water out into the soil.
But we don’t want to have stagnant water in the base of the bed so we make a leaky dam which will allow the water to slowly drain out. I use grass clipping for the leaky dam, they do rot down after a bit but I lift the pipe and add a few more grass clippings.
I usually line the whole bed with grass clippings so the water can flow across the base of the bed, but the real reason is that I have plenty of grass clippings but run short of organic waste. Before I started I seemed to have plenty of kitchen waste but now it has become a valuable item. (Move over gold, the value for the future is kitchen waste).
Step 5 – Building the Wickimix Layers
Next, I spread the kitchen waste over the base of the bed aiming for a depth of at least 100mm. It will soon drop down.
I now make the second layer with the nutrient mix which is a mixture of manure (whatever is available but chicken manure is good and readily available), rock dust, dolomite (to balance pH) and blood and bone.
Now I make the third layer by shovelling the topsoil from the pile. Initially, this may be poor quality soil with little nutrients or living creatures but this will soon change. But the action is on the surface of the soil particles so a soil with a bit of clay is best. Most soils have adequate fines but if sandy you will need to find some clay to give it body and a high surface area.
Smooth this top layer out ready for seeding.
Step 6 – Wetting and Seeding the Bed
This is really a Wicking Bed so the surface will be relatively dry which is not good for germination. I have found the best way is to totally wet out the surface, I mean really wet. Just go to ‘rent a kid’ from your local Kinder they are experts in making mud pies or if that does not work try your local mud wrestling team of whatever, but make sure it is really wet and sloppy.
Now sprinkle the seed mix on the surface.
Feeding and Breeding the Microbes
The real aim is to breed the beneficial microbes in the soil and they need to be fed. Just like us, they need energy and some of that will come from the organic waste but in a balanced Eco system, which is what Gbiota is all about, much of the energy will come from plants, that is what plants do – capture energy from the sun.
They create sugars which they exude from their roots to attract the various fungi and micro-organisms. Each species of plant exudes different sugars so to attract the right species we need a broad spectrum of species.
Gbiota is not about breeding some single magic species, it is about breeding a broad spectrum so you need to have a broad spectrum of plants. It will end up with the beds looking a bit of a mess but that is the way nature and Eco-systems work. You won’t find rows of neatly planted trees in nature, after a few billion years of evolution it has shown that a broad spectrum of living creatures works best.
But I will also add some sunflower seeds. Of all the plants I have experimented with Sunflowers are best for attracting mycorrhizal fungi.
Worms play a critical role, if there are no worms I suggest you go and buy some, red wrigglers are widely available.
I will now irrigate as described in my article on Eco-systems.
Irrigate, wait around three months, and let the worms, fungi and soil creatures transform waste into living Wickimix.
It is now just a question of irrigating and waiting for three months or so for the worms, creatures of the soil and the fungi and microbes to do their thing and bingo you will have some beautiful Wickimix full of beneficial creatures and nutrients to grow plants that will keep you healthy.
I have to add more to the post to show how you can make Wickimix in a Gbiota box. I will do that as soon as get a round tuit. But in the mean time you can email me at colin@gbiota.com.
But first my next job is to write and article on how to schedule the irrigation which is at the core of the Gbiota system.
No Wickimix – What Now? (Making Wickimix in a Gbiota Box)
Ok I have found my round tuit so heres how to make Wickimix in your Gbiota box.
Well I have now got my round tuit so I can talk about how to set up a Gbiota box if you don’t have a garden and probably live in a flat with just a balcony.
The big advantage of a gbiota bed with soil is that it is likely to have the myriad of creatures that live in the soil but if all you have is a balcony then you just have to look for a viable alternative.
Basically everything is the same as I have described above and you just have to make your own version of Wickimix. But that is OK because as long as you keep on topping up the compost tube and you have worms the soil will gradually improve over time.
There is a lot of chemistry happening in a Gbiota box and this occurs on the surface of soil particles, clay is actually great as the particles are so small they have a huge surface area but a silt or just regular soil you should be able to buy that from any good gardening supplier.
You could also buy some Vermiculite which is great for growing but more expensive.
As I am into serious recycling I may use old coffee from the local coffee shop.
But what you do need is some Vermicast (worm casting) and some worms.
I suggest you use a 50/50 mix of Vermicast and whatever soil you decide to use.
Regeneration
Now comes the process of upgrading your soil over time.
As you will have guessed by now I am a bit of a compost enthusiast but it is important to recognise that labile or young compost is not good for growing plants in.
It often contains growth inhibitors as plants are in a state of stationary warfare and generate compounds in their battle against competing plants and insects.
You certainly do not want to be putting this labile compost onto the soil surface.
In the Gbiota system we start with three zones, compost at the bottom which act a bit like a sponge to hold water, then the nutrient layer which contains manure to supply nitrogen which will help the compost to decompose and the Wickimix where the plants are seeded.
By the time the roots have reached the bottom layer the compost will have largely decomposed.
Compost Tube
You can move the compost tube to a new position by just digging down to make a new hole, lifting the compost tube out while pushing down on the compost so it stays in place, filling with raw compost as it becomes available and using the soil you have dug out to top up the upper layer (which will have dropped as the original compost decomposes.
You can easily get six new positions for the compost tube which gives plenty of time for the compost to break down.
This would typically done when reseeding which occurs on average every three months depending on what you are growing.
Inter-sowing
In my seed mix I will have a wide spectrum of plants, some fast growing other slower. This means I can pull out the plants that have done their thing and replace with fresh seeds. I don’t use compost for this but will use whatever version of Wickimix I have available.
I find the easiest way if to use the soil from the new hole I have just dug when moving the compost tube.
Flipping
At some point in time I may want to rebuild the box entirely but I will try and keep the layer of top soil intact. I just put a lid on the box and turn upside down. That’s the easy bit.
Then I will clean out the base and pipes and flip the old contents back into the refurbished box. This is a bit like tossing pancakes , sometime I get it right and sometimes I miss but it does not really matter, just put the soil back into the box.
It is well known that our gut biota plays a major roles in our health. Many researchers, such as Tim Spector, Professor at Imperial College, London explains this in his book Food for Life.
Microbes breed and die incredibly fast. Within twenty minutes a new microbe will start to breed but will die after maybe seventy hours. The population continues but the individual microbes die.
You can have a faecal transplant and that works but is a sophisticated medical procedure with limitations.
But I cannot send you out a packed of beneficial microbes which you can buy on the internet and expect them to be still alive when they arrive - that’s life.
But I can teach you how you can create the conditions where beneficial microbes can breed so successfully that they out breed and out compete the harmful microbes which are always present. This is simple, practical and inexpensive.
Admittedly this requires more effort than swallowing a pill but is based on a system which has been proven to work - until we changed our food system.
Our super computer
The trillions of cells in our gut biome communicate with each other to form a super computer which regulates our bodies.
This behaves in the way that Artificial Intelligence operates, monitoring every piece of food we eat and seeing its effect on our bodies then deciding what and how much we want to eat.
Our gut brain is highly sophisticated.
There are thousands of different species in our gut brain, which originate in the soil and are transferred to our gut when we eat plants grown in that soil.
The soil, the microbes in the soil, the plants and our gut form an interconnected Eco system which changes according to the conditions.
The Gbiota technology controls these conditions to give us the Eco system which we know from observations of the real world lead to us having the healthiest gut and life style.
Fortunately this is a very easy technology to apply, home gardeners can change the microbes in their soil, even people living in apartments can create soil for growing plants in pots.
The main inputs are recycled organic waste, rock dust and inoculants making it a very inexpensive process - cheaper than buying food from the supermarket.
How many technologies lead to a longer health span and lower costs?
My role, in the Gbiota movement is to teach members how to enhance their soil by controlling the conditions.
Gbiota Hello
We need to feed our gut brain which is the intelligent control system for our bodies.
Our modern chemical industrial agriculture and highly processed foods simply does not feed our intelligent control system so we need to modify our food system.
People react in different ways.
Some people see this as their mission to change the world for the better for their grand kids.
Other people are not bothered about going on a mission and just want to have good food for themselves and their families and are prepared to go to the trouble of growing some of their food.
Others think this is all too much work but still want to buy healthy food.
Your all welcome
Let me tell you that you are all welcome to join the Gbiota movement. Even if you just start eating healthy food and feel better in yourself and your friends see this - then this is the best promotion we can have for the cause.
Being healthy should be fun - not an ordeal
But let me tell you that this does not have to be some ordeal.
There are diet enthusiast who will lead you to believe that just one meal of chicken and chips followed by a good hunk of cheese cake will mean you are sacrificing you life and will back this up with a list of long chemicals names to convince you that your life is somehow doomed.
Out bodies are not that wimpy.
Most of the food we just burn off for energy - its just fuel.
You can have a steam engine which can run on coal, gas, wood or even old furniture and it works fine. Our bodies are like that - give us food and most (about 80%) is just burned off as fuel.
But our bodies are also very clever and they use our food to replace our body parts as they age and wear. This does required a variety of minerals and nutrients, some with very long and impressive chemical names but are just part of a regular diet (may be 15%).
Only a small part (may be 5%) of our food intake needs to be specifically to feed our gut brain - but it is vital for our health.
Our gut brain is super smart
But our gut brain is our intelligent control system which regulates our bodies, deciding how much and where we should store fat.
It is smart, sensing what we eat and its affect on out bodies and learning, like artificial intelligence how that affects our bodies. Once learned it gives us a strong preference for certain types of food.
This is totally critical for our bodies, not feeding our gut brain makes as much sense as having a drunk at the wheel of a Lamborghini.
This may only make up 5% of our food intake but is totally critical for our health.
Chicken wings, chips and cheese cake still on the menu - but
So you can still eat chicken wings and chips and a hunky slice of cheese cake and still live a long and healthy life.
It is just that your gut brain will tell you that you have had enough chicken wings, chips and cheese cake so you just call a halt naturally.
Welcome
So whatever your scene - join the Gbiota movement, change the world, grow your own healthy food or find someone who will grow it for you - and welcome.
Currently you can join for free and read all the articles on how to grow gut brain food, but you need to sign up with a valid email address and click the box on any post saying notify me of new posts. We publish a new post about once a week, but we do not email members, you have to go to this web to see them.
We are not in the business of selling stuff, (although we help other people supply gut brain food) our role is to teach people how to grow gut brain food and if you want to learn you need to join the Gbiota movement.
Colin
Grow gut brain food
A few hundred thousand year ago a puny creature that barely survived took a world changing decision - to use an existing technology, fire to cook food. This gave it the energy to grow a huge brain which led to intelligence and cooperation so this creature became the dominant creature on the planet - us.
What we ate changed us as a species.
Two brains
Actually we developed two brains, one in our head the other in our gut. They may be separate but they work together so we can call it our gut brain.
The brain in our gut is made up of trillions of cells which communicate with each other, just like super computer providing an intelligent control system which naturally regulates our bodies.
Smarter than AI
Our gut brain is really smart making modern artificial intelligence look like a dumbo
Throughout our life it is monitoring what we eat and what our body needs.
Is continuously manages our appetite so we eat what is healthy for us totally naturally.
If we are short of say B12, very common in modern society, and we eat some brewers yeast flakes, which is full of B12 then over time we will learn to really like yeast flakes.
For our gut brain to work properly we have to feed it gut brain food. It needs fibre, which comes from plants so existing microbes can flourish and breed and a fresh supply of microbes, preferably with a broad spectrum of species.
For hundreds of thousands of years we ate plants grown in living soil full of nutrients so had a healthy gut brain.
The big goof - we stopped feeding our gut brain
Then we made one of the biggest mistakes mankind has ever made, we stopped feeding our gut brain - we became fat and sick and our health span reduced as we started to eat highly processed food which was inert, dead like Monty Pythons parrot, and lacked essential nutrients and minerals.
This is easily solved by feeding our gut brain, which is easy, costs less that buying highly processed food and recycles waste organics which would otherwise be contributing to green house gases.
The plan
But how do we do this? We need a plan.
Concerened thinkers
My plan is to start by creating a social movement of concerned thinkers, anywhere in the world, who understand the importance of a healthy gut brain and are prepared to grow their own gut brain food and show to their friends and contacts that this really works.
Seeing is believing
In the second stage many more people will see the benefit of growing their own gut brain food and even though they have no garden or garden experience start growing their own gut brain food.
Commerial growers
In the third stage there will be a demand for gut brain food which will encourage local commercial growers to supply gut brain food.
My job is to show people how to grow gut brain food - that is what this web is all about.
First you have to join which you do here. For the next three months this is totally free. Over this period I will be writing many posts to show how to grow gut brain food. You should click the button to notify me of new posts at the bottom of any post and you will have to login to access these posts.
If you have any questions of issues just contact me at colin@gbiota.com
Watch videos of Gbiota boxes being made and regenerating with fresh microbes and nutrients, watch time under 3 minutes
People are becoming very aware of how enhanced gut biota can lead to a longer health span.
Real food over pills
We live in the age of the hype machine promoting some magic pill which will instantaneously give them a healthy gut.
This is a fictitious world - the gut brain is one of the most sophisticated devices on the planet.
Our gut brain is the intelligent control system which regulates our bodies and keeps us fit and healthy throughout our life.
We don’t get fat and sick simply because we eat too much, we get fat because our gut brain senses our diet it not right and sends our hormones to make us hungry - then we get fat. The solution is to feed our gut brain the food it needs.
Natural sophistication
It is highly sophisticated - the product of millions of years of evolution and is one of the wonders of the world.
From when you take your first gulp of milk from your mum to your very last meal your gut brain is learning what food is good, makes you feel satisfied and provides all the nutrients that you need.
I study the natural process of how our gut brain works and try make this information available to as many people as possible so they can enhance their gut brain.
Living soil over dirt and chemicals
I show how the natural process works from the microbes in the soil making insoluble rock particles in the soil into bio-available nutrients, how different species of plants will exude different sugars to attract specific species of microbes which will enter the plants and we will eat to form our gut biota.
I explain how you can create soil teaming with beneficial microbes and nutrients, which can grow plants which enhance your gut biota and the chances of a longer health span.
We cannot guarantee it will work for everyone, genetics and epigenetics (gene expression) means everyone is different.
Yes it will take more effort than buying some magic pill - but it a natural process that has evolved and been tested over millions of years.
Recycling food waste to grow plants which are natural pre and pro biotics - extends health span - saves money - is more sustainable - anyone can do it - everyone should.
Our gut brain, made up of trillions of cells or thousands of species is like a super computer, monitoring everything we eat and the affect on our bodies and learns, over time, to regulate our appetite - how much and what we want to eat.
If we feed it the right food, the beneficial microbes will work to give us a long health span free from chronic disease.
On the other hand, if we feed it the wrong food it is likely to lead to us becoming fat and sick.
We learned this from experiments with mice. We could make them fat or skinny simply by what we fed them.
We learned that humans are the same from using faecal transplants with slim people becoming fat.
We decide what we want to feed our gut brain.
It is our choice.
Virtually anyone can grow beneficial gut brain food at home starting with organic waste so it cost less than buying food from the supermarket.
There are literally hundreds of articles and videos on growing gut food which may be of interest to the technically curious but can be a bit overwhelming for those people who just want to grow gut brain food, but if you just follow Newposts you will soon get the latest information, as I publish new articles on my experiments regularly.
Our gut brain controls our body - feed it gut health food
Plants take energy from the sun and carbon from the air, they exude sugars and eventually die to feed the soil biota
Given the right moisture levels beneficial Biota breeds in the soil and the guts of creature that live in the soil
The biota enters the plants roots and we eat the plants to create trillions of cells which act as a second brain
Which decides what and how much we eat, replaces cells as they age and hosts our immune system
The Gbiota social movement
I talk to a lot of people about gut biology and the importance of eating fresh food grown in biological active nutrient rich soil. Virtually everyone I talk to recognises that this is something they should - in principle - be doing.
Yet most still go to the Supermarket and buy a cabbage which is probably grown in inert soil using chemical industrial agriculture and at minimum is a week old - or more.
The nutrient values of plants deteriorate rapidly after being picked, I have read that the level of some critical nutrients will drop by half within twenty four hours.
Really fresh food simply tastes better so it would not be surprising if it also had more nutrients.
How do we get really fresh food for a healthy gut?
There are thousands of people who grow fresh food in their own gardens - it is nice to mess about in the garden.
But there are some eight billion people on earth and every one of them will have a gut that needs feeding gut food. Maybe there is some tycoon who has delusions of setting up some monster global corporation with captive local farms across the globe delivering really fresh food everyday.
Fresh gut food cannot be supplied by mega corporations with centralised production - chemical industrial farming is great for producing energy food but simply cannot produce gut food with the essential living Biota - that needs local production managed by skilled local growers.
But let me tell you I am fed up with global corporation telling me how I should live my life - better than living under a dictatorship - but not much. But what I can do is to help local growers set up their own viable local businesses to supply gut food.
We can create a global gut food industry based on independant and profitable local growers.
That’s practical - but there is an even better way - get the local growers to grow soil full of beneficial biology and essential minerals. This special soil can then be put into Gbiota Bioboxes so people can grow their own gut food regardless of whether they have growing skills, space or time - just a balcony or window ledge will do.
It is a simple but important change, instead of buying a cabbage from a super market that was probably grown in inert soil and was harvested over week or more ago people can buy a plant still growing in soil rich in biota and nutrients and harvest and eat whenever they want and it will still be genuinely fresh.
Even more potent is the growing of micro greens and tipping as descibed on this web - fresh every day.
This is a far better system than having some mega global corporation dictate what we eat - that is the cause of our current problems.
But there is good news and bad news.
The good news is that there are plenty of growers who are already convinced of the importance of soil and are applying regenerative farming techniques already. Gbiota beds are just a form of regenerative growing but focused on gut biota.
The bad news is that it still costs some money and time to set up Gbiota beds to grow this soil and growers will only go to the trouble and expense if they see there is a market for supplying Gbiota Bioboxes.
You can solve this problem right here. Just click on this registration link here so we can contact you directly and in confidence. We can then produce a geolocation map showing where there are clusters of keen consumers waiting for local growers to supply them with gut food.
This costs nothing and there is no commitment but when there is enough people signed up in a local area it is then straight forward to find local growers in the local area.
I am a real person – not some computerised zombie I am lucky, I have had a long and good life and seen many changes in the world.
When I was a kid a had a weekend job on a chicken farm – bluntly shovelling shit – but I earned enough to buy a bike. But I learned that our food system was based on manure.
Take a fat mouse and feed it the pooh of a skinny mouse and it too will become fat. Take the pooh of a skinny mouse and feed it to a fat mouse and it will become skinny too.
And it works with humans too.
It is not just about being fat or skinny - our whole body and temperament changes with gut biology.
In the wonderful world of food the established paradigm, based on chemistry, has been incredibly successful. In my life time, we have increased food production by a factor of 4.3 – just totally stunning. At the centre of this success is nitrogen – we learned how to capture nitrogen from the air to make fertilisers and whoom! food production just went through the roof.
Feeding our gut brain by eating plant grown in natural wild biologically active nutrient rich soil is not new - we have been doing it for millions of years so is well tried and tested.
The Gbiota technology is based on studying the natural process and learning how to apply the lessons in a modern setting - see overview of Gbiota Bioboxes here
A million years ago the first humanoids appeared, they had a food Eco-system based on eating plants from living soils. These microbes bred in the soil, protected them and they thrived and became us.
Then we changed our food Eco-system, started eating sterile food, we felt unsatisfied, overfed but undernourished, stressed and angry.
I developed a way of growing a soil, called Wickimix, teaming with beneficial microbes. I am now 84 fit and healthy from eating food from an Eco-system of this living soil. I show how to make Wickimix so everyone can benefit from food grown in living soil.
Food not pills.
.
The choice is yours.
- live in the world of fake food, with skyrocketing prices as we exhaust the natural resources of the earth coupled with manipulative dis-information - “buy two for the price of three, special offer, buy now before prices rise”
or
- join the group of people that support real food with nature’s recyclers the worms, beetles, soldier, flies, microbes and fungi that regenerate the soil.
But it is more than recycling to provide a sustainable food system, vital as that is.
Regenerative growers get a fair price for their work selling to their local community without being screwed by the mega-corporations that dominate the current food industry.
Plants grown in regenerated soil are teaming with the beneficial microbes that lead to a healthy gut which leads to a longer health span and avoids the modern epidemic of chronic diseases, like obesity, diabetes, heart attacks, and dementia.
Gbiota technology provides the underlying technology but it is much more, it is a social movement to ensure an ongoing supply of food by recycling as the earth’s resources are depleted.
We welcome regenerative growers to join the movement and get a fair deal but we also welcome the thinking consumers who are supporting the regenerative growers by buying from them.
Working together we can avoid the ever-increasing spiralling cost of living and have a sustainable food system which keeps us healthy.
You will decide right now - you can skip this website and look for that special offer or you can start to learn about the Gbiota movement from the following articles and finally, whether a regenerative grower or thinking consumer join forces in the Gbiota social movement and create a future for our grandkids.
Do you want to live in a world where we all get fat and sick so mega-corporations can make massive profits by getting us addicted to sugary fatty foods?
If that is the way you think please move on, you are not welcome in the Gbiota club.
But if you want to make the world a better place to live in and share our belief that all people should have ready access to food at an affordable price and you are prepared to devote a bit of your time to our cause then please consider joining the Gbiota club.
We are a community benefit organisation based on the understanding that we all have a subconscious control system which regulates our bodies. Our gut is an integral part of this control system which decides how much fat we need to store.
If we have a healthy gut we increase the chances of living a long and healthy life, but an unhealthy gut is the underlying cause of the modern epidemic of chronic diseases, obesity, diabetes, heart attacks, and dementia.
Our modern food system does not feed our gut-brain, we need to create a new industry growing healthy gut-brain food.
If you are interested in helping create this healthy gut-brain food, industry either as a customer or grower, we suggest you start by reading these articles about why gut health is so important and then sign up to join the Gbiota social movement.
Ever think about what food is doing to your body? There are foods for energy, replace parts as they age and wear and to feed our gut.
There is more than enough energy food in our modern diet, replacement food is marginal but gut food is seriously lacking yet is the most important.
Let me tell you a story.
Food, fossil fuels and tobacco
Tobacco
Once upon a time, there was an industry called the tobacco industry which was making a lot of money. However people were beginning to think that smoking was the cause of lung cancer which made the tobacco industry worry that their massive profits could be at risk.
So they found a 98-year-old man who had been smoking twenty cigarettes a day for decades and they said look smoking does not cause lung cancer.
However scientists said this is just a scam and Governments said we must educate the public that smoking is bad.
Fossil fuels
Then the fossil fuel industry, which was making even bigger profits realised that burning fossil fuels was causing global warming. But they were smart and said we must try the tobacco scam and on the first cold spell they said look the earth is not warming - it is just the green woke activist making trouble.
Again the scientist said that this was just a scam and the engineers developed solar panels and windmills but the Governments did not take much interest.
Then a little school girl thought that this global warming was a big problem so she made a cardboard placard and stood outside the parliament and other young kids said they said ‘yes this is a big problem’ and they had protest meetings and brought their mums and dads (who could vote) along and the Governments realised they better act.
Food
Then people going to the supermarket saw that most of the older people were getting wobbly bums and tums and there were a lot of people who had a leg chopped off and they began to worry.
But the food industry ran campaigns saying how healthy their food was, full of energy that people needed. There advertising was very clever so they sold energy bars and other energy foods by the ton.
The scientists who studied food and health were worried but they had to agree that people needed energy food. However other scientists who studied the gut realised that this energy food was not feeding the microbes in the gut.
Intelligent gut
They thought about how computers worked and realised that the trillions of cells that lived in the gut could talk to each other, just like in a computer so the gut had real intelligence. It knew they were not being fed properly so they sent our signals - hormones, to make people feel hungry.
That worked - people were not satisfied and ate and ate but the only food they had was energy food so people got fatter and sicker.
Then an engineer, who liked messing around in his garden (yours truly), said I must work out how to grow gut-brain food that will make people feel satisfied so they stop eating when they had eaten enough.
The natural pig
And it worked, before he was a natural pig, he just loved eating and stuffed himself at every opportunity. He grew gut-brain food from plants growing in living soil, full of beneficial microbes and nutrients to make a green smoothie every morning.
Success! he felt full and no longer wanted to stuff himself. He is now 84 and still fit and healthy despite being a natural pig.
Recycle for sustainability
And the great thing about this system was that it was based on recycling food and other organic waste so was not only inexpensive but was sustainable.
That was important as he understood that the world was depleting its natural resources so the future lay in recycling.
But how was he going tell people that if they wanted to be fit and healthy they should start growing and eating gut-brain food?
Greta
So he thought back to the little school girl who convinced thousands of other young people that climate change was a real problem and decided he had to learn from her and show thousands of young people how to grow gut-brain food so they were fit and healthy.
He was a great-granddad and he knew that his granddaughter wanted her two kids to grow up fit and healthy so he thought there must be thousands of other young girls who want to be fit and healthy themselves and have kids that are fit and healthy.
So he said I must go to the internet and make a web to teach them how to grow gut-brain food.
And that is where you are right now. Click here to enter the web site, sign up, learn how to grow gut-brain food and when you find it works and you feel satisfied then tell you friends, real or virtual so we can live in a world where people thrive.
I normally drill with a regular hole saw. I used to heat up a suitable size socket from my tool kit, which melted rather than cut the plastic and left a ring of plastic that was stronger. That may be better for mass production, but drilling is easy if done gently.
The grommet and tube are pushed into the hole.
If you have watched previous videos you will see I laid a length of ag pipe along the base and up to provide a filler pipe. I now use the compost tube, so I just lay a length of ag pipe along the base. I often cut a second piece of ag pipe which I use like a telescope so it fits neatly.
Gbiota boxes – making and filling
In the past I have promoted that consumers should link up with a grower who can provide either Wickimix (the growing medium in Gbiota boxes) or pre-prepared Gbiota boxes as clean skins (ready to plant out) or with mature plants ready for harvesting.
I am now finding that many people want to do everything themselves, so I have simplified the whole process, including the preparation of Wickimix (the most difficult part of the process), and am publishing a series of articles on each stage.
I want to emphasise that Gbiota is more than just growing vegetables; it is about breeding beneficial microbes in the soil which will enter the plants growing in the soil and then our guts.
The plants are just a way of packaging the microbes – a lot better than plastic.
First job is to select a suitable box. The type of box is not critical. Depth is the most important. About 200 mm is fine for growing small, rapid turnover plants such as baby greens, while 300 mm is more suitable for larger plants. There is not much point in going deeper, as water will only wick up to about 300 mm.
I typically use a box with a height of 250 mm as that is the height of most readily available storage boxes and they work fine.
I prefer to use a number of smaller boxes. It allows a wider selection of plants and they are not too heavy to lift. A typical size would be about 400 mm by 500 mm with a total volume of around 30 litres, which is about as heavy as can be easily managed.
Foamed polystyrene boxes can often be got from local greengrocers for free and give good insulation, but they are a bit fragile.
Clear plastics are fine if they are UV stabilised. If not, they will go brittle and crack in the sun.
Regular tote boxes are quite fine and cheap.
First job is to drill and install the swivel tube. I use a standard hole saw of the same diameter as the grommet (in Australia 19 mm).
Drill gently, as it is easy to crack some plastic boxes.
Push the grommet into the hole.
Apply some oral lubricant and wriggle the straight-through connector into the grommet.
The standard connector has a small and large rib; the small rib goes into the grommet.
Fit the swivel tube onto the connector. Make sure the 90° bend rotates easily. I usually put some grease or Vaseline as a lubricant. You do not want the grommet to rotate as eventually it will leak.
Cut a length of ag pipe to snugly fit into the base of the box. You can always use a telescopic extension so it fits nicely (or if you cut the ag pipe too short).
Fill the base of the box to about one-third full with organic waste. When I first started this project I seemed to have plenty of kitchen waste, but I now use it faster than we make it, so I collect from local restaurants. Coffee grounds are great, but I still don’t have enough, so I use grass clippings from mine and the neighbours’ lawns.
I place the compost tube, usually in a corner of the box. I find the compost tube method really works great, so I have stopped using separate filler tubes as described in previous posts and videos.
Now I add about 10 litres (a bucket full) of the nutrient mix. I make up a bulk mix of about 1.5 cubic metres of manure (chook preferred), 0.5 cubic metres of volcanic rock dust – volcanic rock dust is the best as it contains a broad spectrum of minerals, but use what is readily available – plus 20 kg of dolomite to balance the pH (chicken manure can be very acidic) and 20 kg of blood and bone which contains a broad spectrum of trace minerals.
I then add another bucket of Wickimix which contains both microbes and soil creatures, particularly worms. Microbes are already breeding in the soil, but the soil creatures are recyclers and have a gut like we do, which is where the bulk of the breeding occurs.
Wickimix is full of worms and if I see any on the surface I pop them into the compost tube so I don’t hurt them when I press down the soil.
Worms are essential for the Gbiota system to work.
Germination is always an issue with Wicking beds (and Gbiota beds are just a type of Wicking bed) as the surface is (or should be) dry.
I find the best way is to really saturate the soil (so it is really soggy) before seeding. If I see any worms I pop them into the compost tube.
I then just sprinkle the seed mix onto the surface. I have a separate post on seeds.
I cover the seeds with a layer of either Wickimix or Vermiculite. The big advantage of Vermiculite is that it is very light, so I can put a thick layer on and both the small and larger seeds will still germinate.
I don’t water from the surface again until the plants have put down roots and are stable (otherwise all the seeds end up in a corner of the box).
In my next post I will talk about irrigation scheduling.
Learn how living soil supports human health. Discover how beneficial microbes, nutrient-dense food, and simple growing methods can help you improve your gut microbiome and overall wellbeing. Explore the Gbiota resources, videos, and community.
At the start, the earth was just a dead inert rock. Then the microbiota appeared, we don’t know from where, but they broke down the rocks making the nutrients in the rocks bio-available creating soil. Plants grew capturing energy from the sun, then animals and life on earth exploded.
Humanoid creatures appeared but they were small and puny. They developed a gut, full of trillions of biota which communicated with each other to provide intelligence, just like a modern computer, which regulated what and how much they wanted to eat and also taught their immune system.
They learned to manage fire and cook which led to massive brains and they started to invent things - spears, bows and arrows, followed by agriculture which led to city states.
To feed this increase in population they refined their agriculture using chemicals to fertilise the soil and toxic chemicals to protect their plants from weeds and pests. It was highly in successful producing plenty of food.
The infectious diseases had been swapped for non-infectious diseases.
And they learned to do this using organic waste so the nutrients came from recycling rather than exploitation.
But sadly the internet had become saturated with misinformation so people were sceptical about what they read on the internet. So they said it is no good just telling people we have to show people that this works for real so we must ask innovative people who care about the future of their species to set up Gbiota boxes and beds and show people that this works.
We know how to do this, it is a simple technology which is readily applied.
I have written hundreds of articles about sustainable and healthy food production, some are my attempts to treat a serious subject with humour others technical which may only be appreciated by someone with the right background.
So all I ask is for you to set up your own Gbiota beds or boxes, start incorporating plants with essential minerals and beneficial microbes into your diet and if you find that if you feel satisfied so no longer want to keep on eating just tell a friend or two.
Gbiota may appear to be about growing plants, and it is true we do grow plants but that is just a means to an end.
If we do not feed them we may overeat and get fat and sick. The underlying cause of the modern epidemic of non-infectious disease is that we are not feeding our gut-brain as our modern food system is lacking the critical minerals we need and is sterile lacking the fresh microbes.
Gbiota breeds the beneficial microbes in the soil which enter the plants that we eat. But we need to control the conditions carefully, if it is to dry the microbes and the plants will not grow, if it is to wet harmful microbes will breed and we will get sick. We need to have just the right moisture level - Goldilocks moisture.
Everyone has their thing. My thing is in how to grow food sustainably that will enhance health.
There are two aspects to this, short-term and long-term.
This is going to be resolved by changing the food growing system rather than a medical approach which may relieve the systems but does not address the underlying cause.
We have to change from a system based on exploitation to one based on recycling. If we don’t make that change the comfortable civilisation which we currently enjoy will be under severe stress from hungry and angry people moving within and across national borders.
It is my job to try and solve these two problems. It is not easy but it can be done.
This is going to be resolved by changing the food growing system rather than a medical approach which may relieve the symptoms but does not address and resolve the underlying cause.
As a dull boring engineer, I can look at the amount of energy falling on the earth each day. It dwarfs all the energy used by mankind. Fortunately most of that energy is reflects back out to space for the benefit of some little green men in some faraway galaxy or we would all be burned to a cinder.
As a dull boring engineer, I write long dull boring articles on how we can solve these problems and naturally I want to tell the world about these solutions.
They explain there is now two worlds, the virtual world which is fun and happy with nubile young people frolicking in waterfalls and just enjoying their virtual existence and the real world which is where all the horrible things happen.
For me, this is a bit of a worry. I watch the news and see people killing each other all over the world and ask myself why. I understand full well that humans are the dominant creature on earth for two reasons - we are intelligent and naturally cooperative.
I am not being insensitive when I say stop worrying about those eight million people a year who have a leg amputated or those many millions of starving people who will be flooding across the borders.
So how do we solve these real-world problems?
I have been experimenting for over thirty years to find better ways of sustainably growing plants to improve health. The result is the Gbiota technology.
Microbes and fungi play an important role, they process minerals in the soil to make them bio-available to the plants and enhance our gut health when we eat the plants.
I was a pioneer in Computer Aided Engineering developing technologies which changed the industry for which I was recognised by the Institute of Engineers as one of the country’s leading innovators.
The key to the adoption of any new technology is to find the social entrepreneurial people, who see the critical importance of a secure and sustainable food system, and are prepared to try the technology themselves to show it works.
But this did teach me about the process of getting new technologies accepted.
Ask yourself these questions.
It is easy to get emotional about mega food companies making profits by supplying food that leads to us having our legs chopped off with diabetes and Governments that take no action, is all that true? I am a dull boring engineer and what matters is the end result. So what are the facts?
We cannot say the same thing about energy. Every day the sun delivers a huge amount of energy. It is not well understood how much energy comes from the sun but it is huge in comparison with the amount of energy used in all ways by humans and totally dwarfs the energy that powers our bodies.
Tribes had leaders which we were happy to follow, it was a simple question of life or death. This tribal characteristic still forms part of our nature which is why we seem to be so aggressive to members of other tribes killing them was seen to be a virtue.
Food was an issue but there was plenty of land and despite deaths from famines we managed to struggle through despite the high death rate.
Then we used our big brains, we improved both medicine and hygiene so we stopped dying from infectious diseases at such an alarming rate and the population exploded.
Let us not be rude to the nutrition scientists but it really does not matter what food we use as fuel, it is just fuel and the bulk of the food, about 80% we just burn off as fuel.
That is not the problem, the real problem is what is probably the greatest technical innovation of our generation - the Internet. Well not the internet itself, it still amazes me that most people can now access the world’s information.
We need to change from exploitation to recycling. Recycling is not a new concept - it has been the way the world has worked for the last few billion years. The patents have well and truly expired.
That pigeon clearing up under your trendy city cafe table is doing a great job of recycling, even if does poop on your shoe.
Next, we can persuade our farmers to reprocess out waste, particularly both animal and human manure.
If we are going to have a nation of people with a healthy gut biota we need to change our city planning to allow for local growing of some plants. This way people have have plants which are harvested and eaten without delay, which is the greatest weakness of our modern food system.
So my plea to these entrepreneurial types is simple. Don’t believe all the marketing bullshit or even what I tell you.
There is them that do and them that follow - if you are a doer join me - do it for yourself or do it for your grandkids
Try as she might she could not get the car started and soon there was a monster traffic jam. The man in the car behind started to blow his horn in a furious rage, she did not know what to do so she went to the car behind and said very politely “Excuse me, sir, would you like to try and start my car while I sit in your car and blow the horn”.
Now why do I tell this story? Because we are facing a far worse crisis than a traffic jam - the future failure of our food system. We have just fifty years’ supply of some critical minerals, like phosphorous, remaining which will certainly cause a collapse of the food system - that is unless climate change and degradation of our soils have not already caused collapse.
Plants use this energy, by photosynthesis, they take carbon dioxide from the air and water from the soil, breaking the carbon and hydrogen bonds to produce compounds, such as carbohydrates, which contain large amounts of energy that we can use as food.
Right now we are seeing the harmful effects of a diet with a poor balance between energy and replacement foods. Our bodies are intelligent and can sense the lack of replacement foods so it sends out hormones to make us feel hungry so we eat more.
Unfortunately, the Internet has now been largely taken over by the internet marketers who run a standardised sausage factory where success is achieved by the latest marketing gimmick rather than the importance of the content. People now only believe what they hear from someone they trust.
It is now just a question of irrigating and waiting for three months or so for the worms, creatures of the soil and the fungi and microbes to do their thing and bingo you will have some beautiful Wickimix full of beneficial creatures and nutrients to grow plants that will keep you healthy.
I have to add more to the post to show how you can make Wickimix in a Gbiota box. I will do that as soon as get a round tuit. But in the mean time you can email me at 
It is well known that our gut biota plays a major roles in our health. Many researchers, such as Tim Spector, Professor at Imperial College, London explains this in his book Food for Life.
A few hundred thousand year ago a puny creature that barely survived took a world changing decision - to use an existing technology, fire to cook food. This gave it the energy to grow a huge brain which led to intelligence and cooperation so this creature became the dominant creature on the planet - us.
We live in the age of the hype machine promoting some magic pill which will instantaneously give them a healthy gut.
It is highly sophisticated - the product of millions of years of evolution and is one of the wonders of the world.
I show how the natural process works from the microbes in the soil making insoluble rock particles in the soil into bio-available nutrients, how different species of plants will exude different sugars to attract specific species of microbes which will enter the plants and we will eat to form our gut biota.
We learned this from experiments with mice. We could make them fat or skinny simply by what we fed them.
The shops are full of food. Currently we are growing enough 
I talk to a lot of people about gut biology and the importance of eating fresh food grown in biological active nutrient rich soil. Virtually everyone I talk to recognises that this is something they should - in principle - be doing.
- live in the world of fake food, with skyrocketing prices as we exhaust the natural resources of the earth coupled with manipulative dis-information - “buy two for the price of three, special offer, buy now before prices rise”
We welcome regenerative growers to join the movement and get a fair deal but we also welcome the thinking consumers who are supporting the regenerative growers by buying from them.
Do you want to live in a world where we all get fat and sick so mega-corporations can make massive profits by getting us addicted to sugary fatty foods?
But if you want to make the world a better place to live in and share our belief that all people should have ready access to food at an affordable price and you are prepared to devote a bit of your time to our cause then please consider joining the Gbiota club.
We are a community benefit organisation based on the understanding that we all have a subconscious control system which regulates our bodies. Our gut is an integral part of this control system which decides how much fat we need to store.
If we have a healthy gut we increase the chances of living a long and healthy life, but an unhealthy gut is the underlying cause of the modern epidemic of chronic diseases, obesity, diabetes, heart attacks, and dementia.
Our modern food system does not feed our gut-brain, we need to create a new industry growing healthy gut-brain food.
Ever think about what food is doing to your body? There are foods for energy, replace parts as they age and wear and to feed our gut.
Once upon a time, there was an industry called the tobacco industry which was making a lot of money. However people were beginning to think that smoking was the cause of lung cancer which made the tobacco industry worry that their massive profits could be at risk.
Then the fossil fuel industry, which was making even bigger profits realised that burning fossil fuels was causing global warming. But they were smart and said we must try the tobacco scam and on the first cold spell they said look the earth is not warming - it is just the green woke activist making trouble.
Then people going to the supermarket saw that most of the older people were getting wobbly bums and tums and there were a lot of people who had a leg chopped off and they began to worry.
They thought about how computers worked and realised that the trillions of cells that lived in the gut could talk to each other, just like in a computer so the gut had real intelligence. It knew they were not being fed properly so they sent our signals - hormones, to make people feel hungry.
And it worked, before he was a natural pig, he just loved eating and stuffed himself at every opportunity. He grew gut-brain food from plants growing in living soil, full of beneficial microbes and nutrients to make a green smoothie every morning.
And the great thing about this system was that it was based on recycling food and other organic waste so was not only inexpensive but was sustainable.
So he thought back to the little school girl who convinced thousands of other young people that climate change was a real problem and decided he had to learn from her and show thousands of young people how to grow gut-brain food so they were fit and healthy.