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Integrated Farming Systems

What is the Problem? Global warming is a threat to our way of life. As temperatures rise, species become dislocated, storm and drought intensity increase and sea levels rise. Construction and infrastructure costs continue to spiral making well thought out development particularly difficult in emerging markets. Global economics continues to crush smallholders who barely eke out an existence at the lower levels of society while corporate middlemen profit handsomely. Solutions tend to focus on a piece meal approach to solving problems that tends to fixate on symptoms rather than root causes.

Description: The Integrated Food and Waste Management System (IF&WMS) has been developed by the Zero Emission Research Initiative (ZERI) as a biointensive agricultural system. The IF&WMS functions as an "organic engine" that combines industrial technologies with ecological principles and understandings. It takes in organic waste materials (that would otherwise be regarded as trash) and recycles those materials into value added products. It has eliminated many inputs typically associated with agricultural production. There are numerous IBS projects around the world including Mauritius and Namibia in Africa. The IF&WMS utilizes anaerobic digesters to turn waste into value-added products mushrooms, algae, feeds, compost, fish, crops, fruit trees, etc. Anaerobic digesters are ideal for rural villages in the developing world.

The Integrated Food and Waste Management System as developed by the Zero Emissions Research Initiative can process organic byproducts of primary industries such as farms, forestry operations and value added byproducts from factories that produce foodstuffs as well as working with municipalities to develop sewage sludge, municipal solid waste and compost reclamation programs. For small scale and pilot demonstration projects location is not an issue. For medium to large scale production, integrated Food and Waste Managements System would have to be within proximity of major highways for transport, major power lines with excess load capacity and close to the facilities that produce the excess waste biomass that is otherwise land filled or burned.

Unlike most biomass systems they would not burn the feedstocks but rather run the biomass through a digester extracting methane gas with a series of useful byproducts that will add to the efficiency of the integrated biomass system. The methane produced by the digester will be held in a tank for use as fuel for onsite vehicles and a fuel cell system. The fuel cell will produce several byproducts that will be particularly useful for this type of ecovillage themed project.

Explanation of Process: In the IF&WMS there are many combinations as everything is interacting with everything else just as we would natually expect in nature. However human management of these systems to maximize their points of synergistic interaction enables the design of sustainable systems that actually offer superior performance to existing unsustinable ones. For example fish can be eaten, algae can be used as feed, worms from the vermi-culture gin can fed to the fish and fast growing plants like Napier grass can be added which is fowl are added to the pond ecosystem. Excess water in the pond percolates into the surrounding berms providing both irrigation and fertilizer for the crops growing on the berms. Aeroponic greenhouses can be added in the more advanced stages as well as combined heating and power systems that burn clean and allow the exhaust to be used to create greenhouse enriched enviornment that dramatically increase plant growth.

Vision: Create integrated built environments that are highly efficient in the use of natural and human resources that promote the manifestation of socially just and sustainable societies throughout the globe. Integrated Farming and Waste Management Systems) surrounding urban areas and other lands will also include land cultivated with permaculture methods that bring back the primary role of tree crops, while the vast portion of the land will be able to be return to wilderness for wildlife restored in all it's natural biodiversity.

Vision of IF&WMS Ecovillage: Our work to prototype the IF&WMS we will not be limited to agricultural production and will many aspects seen as Songhan Farm in Benin. The overall plan is to develop an integrated whole systems approach to development that will lead to creation of ecovillages based on IF&WMS/ZERI methodology. The integrated biomass system will enable the development of a variety of value added products and services including electricity for export.

Target Groups/Regions/Markets: The target application area is developing regions. One example of a potential market region is Lake Victoria in Africa. There are water problems on Lake Victoria the water in the lake is filling with sediment and organic matter and so water hyacinth a finding a rich environment for growth. While local people see this as problem, this is a potentially a highly nutritional food source for an integrated biomass system. We are looking at Waterfield Farms as one model. In this scenario the water hyacinth will be ground, down dried and then pelletized for fish food. The fish poop will then be used to irrigate plants in an aquaponic system.

Sustainability, Security and Social Preservation - These projects by providing agricultural and nutritional security as well as business opportunities help to increase community self-confidence eliminating fears about starvation, malnutrition and famine. Not only is food security no longer an issue in these systems but their design by its multi-use function and cascading feedback loops allows for a much higher level of productivity which translates into more time to do the things we want to do live and me time growing and processing food and dealing with waste