This article reflects on more than four decades of work exploring technology, soil, water, food systems, and health. It explains how early work in computer modelling led to irrigation innovation, wicking beds, and eventually a focus on diabetes and gut biology. The central idea is simple but profound: while we can produce enough food to feed the world, declining food quality and damaged gut biology now threaten long-term human health. Restoring biologically active soil and gut bacteria may be critical for our future.
Looking Back After 21 Years
This website is now more than twenty-one years old. Over that time the focus has evolved, but the underlying concern has remained the same: how do we survive and thrive as a species? In recent years my attention has centred on improving gut bacteria by growing plants in biologically active soil. Earlier work focused on diabetes, wicking beds, intelligent irrigation, and subsurface watering systems. All of these threads are connected by one idea—systems thinking.
Early Technology and a Turning Point
Back in 1974 I realised that computers were going to change the world. This was in the era of punch cards, long before touch screens and personal devices. I taught myself programming and wrote software called Moldflow. Using numerical methods, it solved problems that conventional mathematics could not, such as predicting how hot plastic flows into a cold mould.
Today this sort of modelling is common, but at the time it was new territory. The software took off, and my company became one of Australia’s leading exporters of technical software. Despite the success, we were still a small operation competing with global multinationals. To survive, we had to keep innovating.
The Zig-Zag Approach to Research
I discovered that true innovation rarely follows a straight line. Instead, it comes from speculative research—exploring ideas that look strange or even foolish at first. Most fail, but a few lead to breakthroughs. I called this the “zig-zag” approach to research.
After nearly twenty years running the company, I began to feel uneasy. While the business was successful, I was no longer convinced I was working on the most important problems. The question that kept returning was not how to optimise manufacturing, but how humanity would survive the challenges ahead.
A Shift to Soil and Water
I sold the company and redirected my energy toward what I saw as the real limiting factors for our future: soil and water. That decision marked the beginning of this website. Food, after all, comes from soil and water. If those systems fail, no amount of technology can compensate.
The Irrigator’s Dilemma
One of the first problems I tackled was irrigation efficiency. If you apply a small amount of water, it wets the surface and is quickly lost through evaporation. If you apply too much, water drains past the root zone, taking valuable nutrients with it. The challenge is delivering just enough water, exactly where plants need it.
I explored two main solutions. The first was subsurface irrigation, which delivers water below the surface. The second was intelligent irrigation scheduling, where the system “learns” how much water plants use and applies only what is needed to reach the base of the root zone.
From Failure to Insight
I developed working systems based on these ideas, but they did not achieve commercial success. They were effective, but too complex for widespread adoption. However, zig-zag research often produces unexpected results. While working on these systems, I realised that placing a plastic film beneath the root zone solved many problems at once.
This barrier prevents water and nutrients from draining away. Scheduling becomes simple: fill until full. Experts warned the water would become stagnant and putrid, but experiments showed that if the water was cycled, the system worked extremely well.
The Birth of Wicking Beds
Although this approach did not take off with large commercial growers, it led directly to the development of wicking beds. These beds spread rapidly and are now used around the world. Unfortunately, many imitations ignored the importance of soil biology. Using inert materials such as stones and fabric reduced performance and missed the core principle.
Soil biology is not optional. It is central to nutrient cycling, water efficiency, and plant health. Numerous articles on this site explain how wicking beds work best when soil life is supported rather than sterilised.
A Personal Turning Point: Diabetes
My work took another major turn when my wife, Xiulan, was diagnosed with diabetes. At that point, my focus shifted from abstract questions about humanity to the very concrete task of helping someone I love. Diabetes forced me to confront food quality, not just food quantity.
The world is capable of producing enough calories for everyone, now and into the future. The problem is quality. Mass-produced foods are often high in carbohydrates and sugars because they are cheap to produce at scale. They are frequently low in essential minerals and phytonutrients—complex compounds made by plants that support human health.
Insulin, Resistance, and a Simple Trap
Our bodies have a powerful mechanism for dealing with carbohydrates and sugar: insulin. When sugar intake is high, insulin rises to move glucose out of the bloodstream. Over time, chronic excess insulin can lead to insulin resistance. This is the pathway to type 2 diabetes.
On the surface, the solution seems obvious: reduce sugar and refined carbohydrates and eat more nutrient-rich food. If it were that simple, a third of the global population would not be diabetic or pre-diabetic. Something else is clearly at work.
Diet Alone Is Not Enough
Changing diet is essential, but it is often not sufficient. The missing factor is gut biology. We are only beginning to understand the complexity of the gut microbiome, yet we already know it plays a central role in health.
Gut bacteria produce essential vitamins, help unlock minerals from food, interact with the immune system, and manufacture hormones that influence mood, appetite, and behaviour. In many ways, the gut acts as a second brain.
Why Willpower Fails
If your gut biology is sending strong signals to eat certain foods—such as sugar or rich desserts—it is extremely difficult to resist over the long term. This is not a failure of character. It is biology. Appetite and cravings are regulated by chemical signals that evolved to keep us alive, not to cope with modern processed food.
The New Focus: Changing Gut Biology
This reality has shaped the current focus of my research. If we want lasting change, we must improve gut biology itself. That means providing the gut with the diversity of organisms and nutrients it needs to function as a stable control system.
Growing plants in biologically active soil is one part of this solution. Plants grown in living soil carry beneficial microbes and higher mineral content. When combined with practices such as fermentation, they can help reintroduce diversity and resilience into the gut ecosystem.
Connecting the Threads
Looking back, the path from computer modelling to irrigation, wicking beds, diabetes, and gut health is not as strange as it seems. Each step involves systems that must be balanced and adaptive. Computers need feedback loops. Irrigation systems need control. Soils need living biology. Human health depends on internal ecosystems working as intended.
Why This Matters for the Future
The survival of our species does not hinge on producing more calories. It depends on producing food that supports long-term health and functional biology. As chronic disease rises, we face limits not of technology, but of biological resilience.
If we continue to degrade soil biology and ignore gut biology, we will spend ever more resources managing disease rather than preventing it. Rebuilding these living systems may be one of the most important challenges of our time.
Moving Forward
The articles on this site explore these ideas in detail—from soil and water systems to diabetes and gut health. The work continues, guided by the same principle that has driven it from the beginning: real solutions come from understanding how systems work as a whole, not from chasing single fixes.
