This site exists because I believe we have a responsibility to future generations to rethink how we use soil, water, and food systems. Modern wealth has been built on short-term thinking that ignores long-term environmental costs. Through wicking beds, soil regeneration, and practical innovation, I aim to share ideas that improve nutrition, restore soil, and store carbon. These are not commercial ventures but tools to help people grow healthy food and build resilience in a changing world.
Thanks for the Prompt
I recently received an email from Marianne Kambouridis in Ballarat, telling me about the work she is doing on sustainability in her school. That email gave me the nudge I needed to finally write down what I believe, what I am trying to achieve, and how others can support these aims.
This site has grown over time, and people arrive here for many different reasons. Some are curious about wicking beds. Some are interested in soil, water, or climate. Others simply want practical ways to grow food. It is worth explaining why this site exists at all.
Grandfather’s Syndrome
I suffer from what I jokingly call grandfather’s syndrome. Instead of spending my remaining years enjoying myself in the way sensible people might, I find myself thinking about the world my grandchildren will inherit, and in turn the world their grandchildren will inherit.
The global population is currently around seven billion people. By the time my grandchildren reach maturity it will be closer to nine billion. More importantly, lifestyles will change. Today most people live modestly in developing countries. In my grandchildren’s lifetime, many of these people will enjoy greater wealth and purchasing power than those of us currently living in the affluent West.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. Rising living standards are something to celebrate. But they come at a cost, particularly if they follow the same resource-intensive path that wealthy nations have taken.
The Limits of Short-Term Thinking
Our capitalist system has been extraordinarily effective at creating wealth. However, it is also very effective at ignoring long-term consequences. Profit is measured over quarters and years, while damage to soil, water, and ecosystems accumulates over decades and centuries.
The natural environment is not an externality. It provides our food, clothing, shelter, and quality of life. It also provides something less tangible but equally important: the ability to enjoy the natural world itself.
When these systems are degraded, the costs eventually return to society in the form of health problems, food insecurity, and environmental instability.
What Can We Actually Do?
It is easy to feel powerless. Wars, political conflict, and global inequality are largely beyond the influence of individuals. I cannot solve those problems, and neither can you.
What I can do is work in areas where I have experience. I am an engineer. I spent many years working in science, technology, and innovation. I understand how innovation happens, how ideas are tested, and why most fail before a few succeed.
I am no longer interested in innovation for profit. But I have always been interested in growing plants, and in the essential roles that soil and water play in sustaining life.
Food as Something Normal
Growing food has always felt normal to me. Perhaps that comes from my childhood experiences. When I was young, food security was not something to take for granted. I learned early that soil and water matter, and that without them everything else becomes irrelevant.
That understanding has stayed with me throughout my life, even while my professional work took me into other fields.
Soil and Water as Foundations
Over several decades I have worked on ways to regenerate degraded soils and use water more effectively. These are not abstract ideas. They are practical technologies developed through experimentation, failure, and refinement.
Wicking beds were one of the outcomes of this work. More recently, BioPacks were developed to address the deeper issue of soil biology and trace minerals.
These developments are not hobbies in the sense of idle pastimes. They cost money rather than making it, at least for me. But they are intended to have a wider benefit by improving food quality, water efficiency, and soil health.
Worshipping Money
In my lifetime our capacity to produce goods has increased beyond anything I could have imagined as a child. Science, technology, and capitalism together have delivered unprecedented material wealth.
We are now watching this same system spread rapidly through developing countries. Living standards are rising, and rightly so. But this expansion places extraordinary pressure on the natural systems that support us all.
Western governments often behave as if the profit motive alone will solve environmental problems, provided they adjust financial levers from a distance. The ongoing economic difficulties in Europe and the United States suggest there are limits to this approach.
Whatever your politics, it is difficult to deny that China’s more pragmatic interaction between government and the private sector has delivered different outcomes.
The Importance of Soil Carbon
Soil carbon is the second-largest carbon sink on the planet, after the oceans. Properly managed soils could absorb decades of human-made emissions.
This would buy time for the development of new energy technologies while simultaneously improving food security. I have written extensively about this in my books on resolving climate change.
This will not happen automatically. It requires deliberate action and government involvement. Soil regeneration is not something markets naturally reward in the short term.
Why I Keep Going
Because of my grandfather’s syndrome, I believe that soil and water technologies can play a meaningful role in creating a better future. That belief is what keeps me running this site, publishing newsletters, writing articles, and engaging in what is often frustrating dialogue with governments.
You can help by sharing these ideas, talking to friends, and using the reach of the internet to spread information.
Access to Healthy Food
I believe everyone has a right to a healthy diet. I do not believe in making money from people who lack the resources to feed themselves properly.
Any technology or information I develop is made freely available, without expectation of payment, to those who need it most.
From time to time I write booklets or articles and invite those who are financially comfortable to make a small contribution. This helps cover research and education costs. It will never make me rich, but it does make the work sustainable.
The Human Element
I am also human. Knowing that people value this work provides encouragement, especially when dealing with institutional resistance and slow-moving policy environments.
Innovation: Our Inheritance
Many people visit this site simply to learn how to build a wicking bed. That can be remarkably simple: an old vegetable box, a drain hole, a pipe, and soil.
But this site is about more than instructions. It is about innovation itself.
Animals can be intelligent, but humans are unique in our ability to create new ideas and pass them on. Innovation is cumulative. Each generation builds on the insights of the last.
Challenging Conventional Wisdom
Innovation means questioning assumptions. When I first began experimenting with wicking beds, the accepted wisdom was that drainage was essential and that stagnant water would make the soil putrid.
That wisdom turned out to be wrong. Properly managed wicking beds breathe. Rising and falling water levels draw air into the soil and expel stale gases.
Failure as a Teacher
Most innovation fails. I have experienced both success and failure. My work in computer simulation was successful and funded later projects.
Other ideas, such as subsurface irrigation systems and soil aeration pipes, were technically sound but too complex for widespread adoption. They were not wasted efforts. Each failure provided insights that led to simpler, more robust solutions.
Why Wicking Beds Matter
Wicking beds succeeded partly because they can be built cheaply from scrap materials. I remain delighted by stories of people repurposing old bathtubs and growing abundant food.
However, I worry that the deeper value of wicking beds is being overlooked. They are often treated as self-watering pots rather than as systems that create ideal conditions for soil biology.
When combined with mineral-rich inputs and healthy microbial life, wicking beds support plants that produce complex phytochemicals essential for human health.
Food Over Pills
Fresh, nutrient-dense vegetables and herbs are more effective than dietary supplements, and far cheaper.
More than half the world’s population now lives in cities. Wicking beds are well suited to urban life, fitting onto balconies and verandas.
They provide modest but critical amounts of high-quality food, recycle food scraps, and reconnect people with natural processes that modern life often obscures.
