Smart young girl

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.