A Primer on Integrated Farming Systems (A.K.A. Permaculture in a Box)

Present industrial farming practices are more like mining than agriculture. Exploitative farming methods remove the life giving properties from the soils. The response is to inject the soil with chemicals to revitalize the soil, but this is rapidly reaching a point of diminishing returns. Nutrients rapidly ooze out of corporate mega-farms, becoming pollutants in the surrounding ecosystems. What is left is severely degraded soil, which does not produce food of high nutritional content and is of limited quality in terms of taste as well.

As people have become aware of the negative aspects of conventionally farmed foods, they have opted for alternatives such as getting more of their food locally at farmers markets, through community supported agriculture (CSAs) and health food stores. There are now 3,137 farmers markets today up from 1,755 in 1994 (U.S. Department of Agriculture). Socially conscious consumer activism has enabled innovative farmers to experiment with new and more environmentally sustainable methods of food production, developing successful business models based on the cultivation of organically grown crops. However, the truly sustainable solution is not organic farming alone but the more radical realization of the sustainable farm integrated with all the aspects of sustainable design. While many farms are now growing organic food and much of this is finding its way into mainstream store shelves, the reality of the sustainable farm is still more dream and theory than reality.

Sustainable agriculture
Sustainable agriculture is by its nature a complex creature. There are many considerations such as the ecological and social impacts of food production. Sustainable farming requires a holistic approach that can be broken down into four main groupings.
1. Types of inputs used in growing food such as pesticides and fertilizers
2. Energy inputs
a. Production of Crops
b. Transporting supplies for growing
c. Processing
d. Transport of crops to market
e. Transport for workers
3. Construction of the infrastructure—embodied energy
4. Types of crops grown (for example a diet heavy on grains and meat is less sustainable than a fruit, nut, legume and vegetable based diet)
While all organic farms must conform to the first criteria, few commercially viable organic farms presently qualify in all four categories.

Sustainable Development
A study conducted under the auspices of the United Nations, widely dubbed the Bruntland Report on Sustainable Development provides the most widely used definition of sustainability or sustainable development, ". . . development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." The authors of the report add, “The habitation of any community or village can be viewed as a natural system with inter-related economic, environmental, and social sub-systems.” Sustainable development should promote economic development and growth and social cohesion with minimum damage to the environment. The energy, water, transport, and agriculture systems are integrated to maximize use of local resources to the greatest extent practical, including the use of waste streams from these systems.

Biomimicry
The process of integrating technologies in efficient and overlapping systems is still very much lacking in modern design. Janine Brynus was a featured speaker at Paradox III in September of 2001 at Arcosanti. Her book Biomimicry describes the process of using natural processes as a solution to human design problems. Ecological designer John Todd of Ocean Arks International is well known for his visionary thinking but also more practically his “living machines,” are installed in locations all over the world including chocolate plants and other facilities providing all over the with a small taste of how a sustainable society might work. Ethel M's Chocolate Factory in Las Vegas uses Todd’s Living Machines design to treat the concentrated wastewater from confectionery production. The systems designed and constructed by Living Technologies incorporates a series of large tanks hosting a diversity of organisms which work together to digest and break down organic pollutants. The company reuses the water for onsite truck washing, toilet flushing and watering the cactus garden (Environmental Solutions, November 1996).

Halford House, a water quality specialist with the North Carolina State University designed a self-contained water treatment plant for an office building that utilized an approach to similar to Todd’s (Jan Licking "A Water System for every Office Building" Business Week 1/22/01).

Why throw away wastewater? Why call it wastewater at all, when it is loaded with valuable nutrients that need only be reclaimed and redistributed? We can extract the phosphorus and nitrogen and use them as fertilizer, purifying the "wastewater" in the process and ready for reuse. Nature reuses and recycles its resources without creating toxic dumps or polluted waterways. By imitating nature, we can learn to recycle our wastewater relatively inexpensively, with minimal distribution costs, and the bonus of reclaimed resources ready to feed our fields or fish, or flush our toilets and water our lawns.

Dennis Reinhardt--a Harvard educated biologist—who is working with oneVillage to promote ecological design and sustainable development uses the term “permaculture in a box” to describe these integrated, closed loop farming systems. Green Fuse, an eco-consulting firm he was working with attempted to market an integrated waste management package that utilized both BioSystems Solutions' composting and vermiculture chambers with Hydrologic Solutions' permeable storm drain piping system. In 2001 entrepreneur, Paul Troy Wright proposed using Arcosanti as test bed for his Synergy Farm proposal, an integrated agricultural system. Wright was an admirer of Paolo Soleri’s Arcology teachings and so felt that his design complemented Soleri’s approach stressing the whole systems approach to designing the built environment. Unlike the chocolate factory and office park designs, Synergy Farm seemed less concerned with removing waste flows and more focused on creating synergy between overlapping systems maximizing the productivity and therefore the viability of more sustainable and locally rooted economic structures.

Aquaponics
One company following this approach located its facilities in a low-income area that was in a special economic enterprise zone. Phoenix Foods was then able to get a 300000 low interest loan to begin operations. There is a similar project in Amherst MA called Waterfield Farms, which is run, by Tracy and John Hightower. oneVillage has discussed with them the possibility of developing a program to develop a prototype of their system in Kenya. Like Phoenix foods, Waterfield raises Tilapia, Basil and other crops in an integrated aquaculture-hydroponic (aquaponics) that uses fish waste as fertilizer for the hydroponic gardens. Aquaponics uses aerobic bacteria to transform fish waste, which is mostly ammonia into nitrogen a plant nutrient. The plants remove the nitrogen from the water before it flows back into the fish tanks. Tilapia grows quickly and is a hearty fish, while Basil is a warm weather crop that has a short shelf life, making a viable crop in urban areas. At Phoenix Foods, plants float on raft systems made of pumice that allow roots of plants to grow through them into the water below. The basil has a 17-day growth period that is ½ conventional growing times. No pesticides used. The greenhouse remains pest free through the work of fish, nematodes and beneficial insects.

This symbiotic relationship between plants and fish is common in nature and it is vital to maintaining healthy ecosystems, yet this is still an alien concept in human society. Symbiosis is an ecological term, which describes the living together of two dissimilar organisms in mutually beneficial relationships yet in industrial ecology, it describes how two different productive systems can complement each other referring to a process of cooperation between two companies or production lines that trade byproducts with each other. The reintroduction of nutrient cycling and symbiotic processes featured in the Kalundborg industrial ecology in Denmark, in projects like this around the world are helping to transform sustainability away from academic theory and towards something tangible and economically feasible.

The natural gas cogeneration system that powers the greenhouses at Phoenix Farms runs only at peak demand during the day, selling excess electricity to the utility. At night, the lights go on to allow 24 hour/365 day plant growth, using grid power when it is cheaper to use than the micro-turbines. Heat exchangers capture the waste heat from the micro-turbines and then circulate it into radiant heat tubes under the fish and plant tanks. This integrated strategy substantially reduces energy and resource inputs, and this means less money spent on feed and energy costs. A permaculture in a box is a system features a series of already existing technologies such as bioreactors, animal husbandry, greenhouses, permaculture and aquaponics and configures them in an efficient, integrated and synergistic way minimizing inputs as well environmental impacts.

Gaviotas and ZERI
Paulo Lugari, along with two hundred Gaviotians have committed their lives to one of the most extraordinary and inspirational experiments of our time actually putting into practice the grassroots vision of sustainability that was superbly outlined in EF Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful in the rural Columbian frontier of all places. Former NPR commentator Alan Weisman after doing radio report on the community was inspired to write the book Gaviotas: a Village to Save the World.

Gunter Pauli who has been to Gaviotas three times, including one time in which he completed a documentary about the project describes why Gaviotas is a success:

Paolo Lugari had a vision that went beyond all this marvelous set of breakthroughs. It was not enough for him to set several concrete cases, time had come to demonstrate that sustainable development was not only feasible, it is the only way to secure long term success for any economic, social and environmental initiative. Paolo decided to merge several agendas, which each in their own right and with their own agenda would not have provided sufficient results, and if any were achieved, these would depend on the continuous flow of subsidies. Success depends on an integrated approach and the capacity to generate value added in the process. The clustering of agenda, the conglomerates of activities and the creation of value are critical components of the zero emissions philosophy.

Pauli is an environmental pioneer who as president of Ecover (an environmentally oriented cleaning products company) heavily promoted Soap products made from palm oil plantations in Indonesia. He recalls with regret about how he realized that what seemed like an ecological solution for Europe turned into an ecological problem for Indonesia, because of the waste created from the processing of the palms for their oil. However, there is a silver lining to this story, because what emerged from this was the development of a comprehensive global plan for sustainable development. What emerged from this was founding of the Zero Emission Research Initiative an organization dedicated to promoting sustainable technologies. This global strategy for sustainable development is expressed in his book Upsizing The Road to Zero Emissions, More Jobs, More Income, and No Pollution and through the ZERI network. He now travels lecturing and teaching seminars about the ZERI approach to economics. Pauli sees ZERI as an outreach program to promote the concepts that Lugari has developed into a practical demonstration of sustainable development to the rest of the world.

The Night Soil Phenomenon
Dr George Chan of ZERI is an environmental engineer who is pioneering the development of a remarkable and exciting approach to agriculture called the Integrated Biomass System (IBS). He spent several years studying the ancient integrated oriental agricultural systems that are still place in many low-lying areas of China and Vietnam where they are most ideally suited. The Chinese have long understood that the proper arrangement of organisms can make waste into food without little need for complex machinery. However, the IBS does incorporate technologies that increase the production and utilization of biomass while only marginally increasing energy and resource inputs for infrastructure and construction such as bioreactors, greenhouses, basins and engines.

Soil is thousands of years of biomass accumulated through the life and death of countless organisms, and breakdown of geological features in what is called geomorphology. Bio-intensive agriculture systems are more productive than conventional agriculture because they are design to complement and synergize naturally occurring processes. This maximizes the uptake of gases (mainly carbon and nitrogen) from the atmosphere. This then creates a surplus that allows for the production of agricultural goods. So long as an ecosystem is fully functional, a certain amount of biomass can be exported from that ecosystem to another part of the world without depleting or degrading the vitality of the ecosystem. So long as we do not exceed that threshold, we exist in a state of sustainability.

Biowaste feedstocks are first used to generate energy through the stimulation of anaerobic bacteria, in an airtight reactor which can then be used for electrical generation and heating. The Longju sustainable village plan was the result of a brainstorming session between leading American sustainability think tanks such as the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems and the Rocky Mountain Institute. This plan for South China complements the ZERI approach, promoting an integrated sustainable village model that uses bio-solids from feedlots and feed barns as a feedstock for bioreactors that they produce methane that can power fuel cells and produce electricity and heat for the village. Algae and other microorganisms then feast on the remaining effluent in the fishpond or fish tanks, which the fish then eat thus preventing eutrophication and the degradation of the living machine system. Inflow effluent becomes nutrient loaded pond water, which then irrigates crops in a variety of methods from berm agriculture to aquaponics.

Restorative Economics
The Integrated Biomass System is almost completely self-reliant, eliminating the need for many expensive inputs typically associated with conventional agricultural production such as feed and fertilizer. Lower overhead costs for small farmers in developing countries helps to make farming more viable in these regions. Existing economic models link development with the idea of disposing of biomass as waste in landfills. The undervaluing of biomass is related to the patterns that emerge are those in which marginalized rural regions are being rapidly depleted of their natural resources to perpetuate this very unsustainable cycle of treating biomass as trash. It is not only an extractive economy but also an exploitative one that is rapidly deflating the value of natural and human systems in these regions to fuel unsustainable economic growth.

OVF’s strategy is to capitalize on the undervaluing of waste byproducts that result from unsustainable agricultural, industrial and residential activities in conventional society and convert what society sees as a waste into value-added products—within an integrated and highly productive agricultural system. Our goal is not simply to create a sustainable economy but a restorative one that regenerates and rebuilds the integrity of ecological systems.
Integrated biowaste processing systems mimic nature, addressing problems of conventional wastewater treatment facilities in a way that is more ecologically as well economically sound. This makes them a key set of disruptive technologies for the development of decentralized village based sustainable economy. ZERI has been active in promoting these alternative technologies to the developing world. There are now numerous IBS systems functioning in countries throughout the world, such as Namibia, Benin, China, Vietnam, Sweden and Fuji to name a few. Anaerobic digesters are ideal for rural villages in the developing world.
1. A major culprit behind global warming is methane (biogas) gas.
2. Anaerobic digesters are a low cost solution to mitigate global warming by reducing methane emissions into the atmosphere.
3. Biogas can function as fuel creating power in any number of configurations from providing energy with relatively low-tech devices such as boilers internal combustion engines to more complex and state of the art micro turbines and solid oxide or molten carbonate fuel cells. The waste not digested by the Anerobic bacteria and made into biogas becomes either liquid fertilizer or compost growing a variety of crops.
4. A community with an IBS or similar sustainable technology could receive money for the scale of carbon and methane sequestration. Gaviotas actually received 2 million dollars from a Japanese fund and this money helped them to plant 36,000 acres of pine trees, but from the forest sprang a business exporting colofonia, which is needed to make natural paints, in Columbia.

Where does Holistic ICT fit in?
A bottom-up integrated approach to sustainable development mandates a “holistic ICT approach” that not only involves education but monitoring, networking, information analysis and database access for research. In relation to the oneVillage network, we can see the need for consultant services that threads together every aspect of the built environment such as green architecture, sustainable agriculture, and industrial ecology (design of productive systems) and biomimicry (design of products). In relation to integrated agricultural systems, specifically what is needed is an effective process of coordinating all the components needed to promote the maximum replication of sustainable technologies and approaches that work particularly well. ICT services help in developing environmental scans of surrounding regions, soil inventory analysis and life cycle modeling to balance sustainability with financial viability. For example, an IBS would be certified for carbon credits, by using ICT to determine and compare the offsets of both production and construction activities and the resulting greenhouse emissions and this would be subtracted from the estimated amount of carbon captured by the system. Effective and easy to use information and communication technologies will be vital to developing more holistic measuring and modeling tools that include the collection of site data, GIS, and the modeling of lifecycle analyses that is accessible and understandable by the grassroots.