Introducing the Gbiota technology
The smartest creature on the planet?
We humans think we are the smartest creatures on the planet – and we are but we are dependent on the smallest creatures.
For the first few billion years the earth was just a barren, inert rock then some billion years ago microbes appeared, we don’t know from where but we think an asteroid.
The microbes broke down the rocks to release nutrients so they are bio-available to make soil. Life exploded with the most amazing and massive creatures.
Eventually, quite recently humans appeared but they struggled and died young from diseases. But they survived and developed technologies such as medical advances that enabled them to largely overcome these diseases so they lived longer.
The soil built up to massive depths, many metres in some places so there was an abundant supply of beneficial microbes but then humans developed a concept called money which deluded humans into thinking they could borrow wealth from the future and the past for immediate benefit.
This they did on a massive scale, they changed the climate and destroyed much of the soil but the costs lay in the future so, at first it was not an immediate worry. There was always time and the possibility of some new technology which would solve any problems.
But it turned out that the microbes which came from the soil did a very important job for the humans. They entered their gut and communicated with each other to create an intelligent system which regulated their bodies keeping them fit and healthy.
But without these beneficial microbes, there was no intelligent control system for humans. Hence they got fat and sick and died from an epidemic of non-infectious diseases like obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.
This was not a cost in the future this is a ‘here and now’ problem with three out of four people dying from these non-infectious diseases.
Of course, they tried all sorts of solutions from sophisticated pharmaceuticals and complicated surgery but it never resolved the root cause of the problem – a lack of the beneficial microbes in their guts.
Of course, there was a simple solution that was so simple that it was just dismissed as too simple and that was to breed the beneficial microbes in the soil, then grow plants in this soil and eat the plants.
But there were just two snags that prevented this simple solution from working.
Snag number 1 the silo dwellers
The first snag was that they needed to breed the beneficial microbes in the soil without breeding the harmful microbes which causes so many problems with infectious diseases.
Microbes breed very easily but how to breed the beneficial microbes without the harmful microbes? The solution to that is simple – just create the conditions that favour the beneficial microbes so they out-compete and out-breed the harmful microbes.
This was given the name Ecological balance which while it works very well sounds a bit too much like coming from the green lunatic fringe for the specialist reductionist scientist living in the techno-silos.
But that is not so serious as if ideas work they are eventually adopted despite the initial reluctance to adopt.
Snag number 2 Microbes die fast
The second snag is more difficult to overcome. Microbes may breed like crazy but they also die fast with a very short life span.
We may see the same species of microbes but they are not the same microbes, they are the grandchildren of the microbes we saw a few days ago – a situation we call dynamic equilibrium.
It is like a big city, always teeming with people but not the same people.
But there is an easy solution to this.
Find local growers who can be trained to breed the beneficial microbes in the soil.
Take a container, like a supermarket basket with plenty of holes and drop it into a hole in the soil so the creatures of the soil can easily enter the basket.
Then grow plants in this living soil.
When ready lift out the basket and supply to a customer who just has to water and when ready pick and eat the plants while they are still fresh.
When the plants are all eaten swap for a fresh basket.
Any more snags?
Yes, we have to show that such a simple solution works. That is easy, persuade a number of people to try incorporating Gbiota plants into their diet and see if food cravings stop and they feel satisfied.
People overeat because of deficiencies in their diet, remove the deficiencies and the food cravings go away and people feel satisfied.
Then we have the problem of making people aware that this simple and inexpensive solution is available in an era of mass disinformation where no one believes anything they read on the internet.
This can be solved by the ancient process of people talking to people they trust.
Wickimix
The Gbiota technology breeds beneficial microbes in a special soil called Wickimix. Plants are grown in Wickimix and when eaten the beneficial microbes enhance our gut biota which regulates our appetite and hence wards of chronic of non-infectious diseases overweight, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.
This website describes how our intelligent control system works and how to prepare Wickimix.
If you want to study this process then follow the links on this site. If you just want to buy plants growing in Wickimix in Gbiota baskets all you have to do is to link up with a licensed grower who can supply you with the Gbiota baskets.
As the beneficial microbes have a short life this only works with living plants so you need a supplier who can supply living plants on a regular schedule.
To link up with a grower please complete the registration form here or below and enter ‘customer’.
If you are interested in becoming a licensed Gbiota supplier then enter ‘local grower’.
Why are some people fat while others are skinny, why do some people enjoy a long and healthy life while others are fat and sick?
We know from the study of twins that genetics play a part, but it is just a part, it is what we eat that matters the most.
We all know the old adage, eat less and exercise more but what really matters is what we eat rather than how much.
If we eat the right sort of food we feel satisfied and simply feel satisfied and naturally want to stop eating. If we don’t eat the right sort of food we get food cravings and overeat.
Our modern food system is high in energy food – fats and sugars but low in essential minerals and vitamins but above all low in the beneficial microbes which live in our gut and control our appetite.
The right sort of food comes from eating plants grown in soil full of beneficial microbes that reinforce our gut biota and break down the minerals to make them bio-available.
Microbes are easy to breed, they are naturally a randy lot, the skill is in creating the right conditions so the beneficial microbes out compete and out breed the harmful microbes.
This is a process of creating an Eco-balance to favour the beneficial microbes and is the key to the Gbiota technology.
The soil produced this way is called “Wickimix”.
It is not that difficult, an experience grower can learn to do this however for most people it is simpler and easier to buy a Gbiota box loaded with Wickimix and seeded so a spectrum of plants are already growing.
But buying Gbiota boxes is more than just buying a box from a store, it requires linking up with a grower who can provide a regular supply of Gbiota boxes on a swap over basis so the boxes are continuously replenished with fresh Wickimix which has a finite shelf life.
To link up with a grower you can sign up for free here.
If you are interested in becoming a Gbiota grower, either just for your own use or to provide a beneficial and profitable service for your local community you should email me here.
Why develop the Gbiota technology?
Most of us now live in towns and cities. We buy our food from the local supermarket wrapped hygienically in plastic which we throw into the bin and it dutifully disappears.
The same with our human waste which we flush away without further thought.
We live in the age of technical marvels, we can video chat with a friend from the other side of the globe, we can search the internet for any obscure piece of information we desire, we can buy almost anything on line and have it delivered to our door.
If we are sick we can expect a pharmaceutical pill or a complex operation to cure us, and without doubt the advances in medical science is one of the wonders of the world.
We have also devoted the same technical expertise to developing the technologies for killing other humans on a mass scale. Why is one of the puzzles of this complex creature?
We can even jot down a few notes and have it turned into a polished article of any style we wish using AI. But not this article, this is written with human passion by me, a fellow human – but why?
Because, despite all our sophistication we are still are an animal and dependant on the Ecosystem. We will all die at some point so we, as a species, survive by breeding, which we have been doing with great success for the last million years or so – despite the lack of medical instruction manuals.
If we are to survive as a species we have to accept that we are an animal – maybe a highly intelligent animal – and the future of our species is dependant on us accepting that simple fact and coming to terms with the need to be in balance with the Eco-system on which we depend.
As a great grand farther I want to see by great grandchildren thrive and survive and indeed my species to thrive and survive way into the future.
That is what the Gbiota technology is all about, learning to adapt to the Ecosystem which supports us.
Welcome to Gbiota: Revolutionising Health through Soil and Gut Microbiome Science
Developed by Colin Austin, One of Australia’s Leading Innovators
At Gbiota, we’re pioneering a healthier future by reconnecting humans, plants, and soil through cutting-edge technology.
Recognized by the Institute of Engineers as a trailblazer in innovation, Colin Austin has crafted a system that enriches both the soil and your health.
How It Works
Our Wickimix soil is teeming with beneficial microbes and nutrients, developed through a sustainable process that transforms organic waste into life-giving earth. Plants grown in this nutrient-rich soil become a natural source of gut-supporting microbes.
When consumed, these beneficial microbes enhance your gut biota, a key player in your body’s intelligent control system. This helps you regulate hunger, feel satisfied naturally, and avoid unhealthy cravings.
Why It Matters
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A Different Approach: Forget restrictive diets that leave you hungry. Our method supports long-term health by tackling the root causes of chronic diseases, obesity, diabetes, heart conditions, and dementia.
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Healthy Fat Distribution: Proper gut health promotes balance, helping you achieve sustainable well-being.
Explore Two Paths to Better Living
Learn for Free: Dive into our knowledge hub, where articles about diet, gut health, and longevity are available under the Creative Commons license. Share, re-publish, and spread the word.
Grow and Thrive: For growers and entrepreneurs, learn to create Wickimix soil and produce Gbiota Boxes. These can be used for personal health or as a community-focused business. Subscriptions include technical support to ensure your success.
Be Part of the Solution
The journey to better health begins with the soil beneath our feet. Join us in creating a world where nutritious food supports thriving gut health, intelligent eating, and a long, healthy life.
We are living longer, thanks to major advances in medical science.
The big question is why does our intelligent control system decide we need to store more fat?
There is no disputing that calorie balance is an essential requirement for storing excess fat, this is just obeying the fundamental laws of conservation of mass and energy so it is not in dispute – this is what I call the “how” we store excess fat but it does not explain “why” we store excess fat.
The first problem we have to overcome is the modern phenomenon of busy work.
When I suggest that we store fat because our intelligent control system decides that we need to store fat I am not suggesting that we can think ourselves thin.
We have even less idea what is happening in our gut brain which is not even us.
We have known for a long time that we can make fat mice skinny and skinny mice fat simply by feeding them the pooh from the other mice.
Both the babies and the plants now have a common situation – they are both starting to grow and need more food or water.
d compare this with what I eat and other events.
When I used to write software for intelligent control systems I looked at graphs which would tell me how well (or otherwise) my software was working.
Sometimes I get tired and just want to relax so watch videos with music and youngsters dancing.
Not so long ago, our gut health thrived naturally.
When Colin’s wife, Xiulan – a dedicated medical doctor – faced a dire health crisis as her diabetes spiralled out of control, leading to a threat of amputation, Colin knew something had to change.
The smarter way? Training your body’s intelligent control system—your gut-brain connection—to work with you, not against you. This means fueling yourself with the right kind of food that addresses deficiencies in today’s diet.
What’s happening in the real world? By middle age, many of us face the consequences of poor health choices – weight gain, illness – and only then attempt to undo the damage with calorie-restricted diets.
Through the creative use of herbs, spices, and innovative cooking, we can turn these plant-based foods into exciting, delicious meals.
We can see our intelligent control system in operation, moving fats from long term storage to sugars in our blood by monitoring our blood sugar levels.
This epidemic causes untold suffering and costs to our health system that we should focus on preventing.
We have an intelligent control system which regulates our bodies, particularly our appetite. If it decides that there is a need to store more fat it sends out hormones so we are hungry. With determination we may be able to override that for a short time, but not for long.
We can understand the intelligence in our gut from swarm intelligence which we can study in many insects, birds and slime moulds. The trillions of cells in our gut communicate with their neighbours provide this swarm intelligence.
The controls system will only send out signals to make us feel satisfied so we want to stop eating if it senses that all these three types of food are available.
Humanity is approaching a period of massive disruption, maybe not annihilation, but certainly disruption on an unprecedented scale.
We know how to avoid this massive disruption, our technology and understanding have increased on a scale which would have been unbelievable even a few decades ago. See 
Our technologies give us the potential to solve these problems as long as we take action. We can produce all society’s needs in a couple of days work,
While the worst is yet to come the chronic disease train is already at the station. Chronic or non-infectious diseases, overweight, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia are largely man-made, here now but avoidable, as long as we take action. See 
People get fat and prone to chronic diseases because our modern food system is deficient in gut-brain food so we never feel satisfied, overeat, get fat and so are prone to chronic diseases.
Two-thirds of the population are overweight, the wrong fat in the wrong place is the root cause of all chronic diseases.
A shortage of beds leads to Ambulance ramping.
Prevention is not just a medical problem, we need medical expertise but essentially it is a societal problem, creating a society where people can live a long life, fit and healthy to the end.
Chronic diseases that reduce our health span are caused by the wrong fat in the wrong place.
Understanding what determines that set point is the most important issue in managing chronic disease.
The mechanics are simple. In the millions or so years of humanoid existence, we have had to cope with a single feature of human nature. Our children take far longer to mature than any other animal.
Chronic diseases require a life style change, they cannot be cured by pills or injections. You have to make the effort.
What will life be like for my great grandchildren? Long, healthy and happy I hope.
The conventional wisdom or paradigm is that we get fat and sick because we have turned into little piggies.
Let me confess, I am not a medical doctor, micro-biologist or bio-chemist. I am an engineer which may seem totally irrelevant to the human body.
I understand how control systems, my first real job was working for a company that made control systems for power stations. Later in life I was a pioneer of Computer Aided Engineering and wrote software which led me to be recognised by the Australian Institute of Engineers as one of Australia’s leading innovators.
Typically we have a simple target and we can operate in a narrow band, in a more complex situation like driving a car the target is continuously changing.
In a relatively simple case we can get away with measuring the error between the target and actual and this is important, the rate of change of error.
More recently we have developed intelligent controllers which can learn to deal with the unexpected.
But engineers may have been caught out initially but they soon worked out the problem and developed an intelligent solution.
It also understand that I have different loads at different times of the day.
As an engineer I know full well the laws of conservation of mass and energy but these are not the driving force that is the cause of the modern epidemic of chronic disease which makes us fat and sick, it is our intelligent control system which is the driving force.
We are a singularly peculiar creature, we are naturally intelligent and naturally cooperative which has led to us becoming the dominant creature on earth.
From the moment we are born, it is learning and adapting to the current conditions, as described in more detail later.
I look at my blood sugar reading and it is fine.
Beneficial microbes, the good bugs, in our gut control our appetite and immune system leading to a long and healthy life.
People often think our bodies are dumb and we get fat and sick because we eat too much.
As soon as you see the blood sugar levels rising both you and your body’s intelligent control system start pushing the down button to bring the blood sugar level back under control.
I used to write intelligent control software which had self-learning and anticipatory functions. Our intelligent control system seems to have these capabilities built in.
We know how to breed the beneficial microbes, the good bugs. Just collect organic waste, mix with soil and volcanic rock dust, add inoculants, grow plants and eat them while fresh.
DIY breed your own gut bugs? Your immediate reaction may be no thanks I am not a microbiologist.
You don’t need to be a microbiologist to tell what species of bugs are inside people.
If you have the conditions that benefit the good bugs they will out-breed and out-compete the not-so-good and bad bugs.
Our bodies have an intelligent control system which regulates our bodies, particularly our appetite and immune system.
We don’t eat rocks to get our nutrients, we need microbes and fungi to break down the rocks into nutrients we can digest.
We call this swarm intelligence and it is what regulates our bodies which controls our bodily functions particularly our appetite and immune system.
Over millions of years, nature has evolved a system with trillions of microbes and many thousands of species but with the right conditions so the beneficial microbes preferentially out-compete and out-breed the harmful microbes, we call this ecological balance and it is how we exist today.
Our health depends on the dynamic equilibrium of the microbes in the soil and in our gut biome. Our modern food system, centred on chemical industrial agriculture and highly processed foods is lacking these beneficial microbes which has led to a global epidemic of chronic diseases, overweight, diabetes, heart attack and dementia.
Modern food, backed up by a multi-billion dollar highly sophisticated advertising campaign, may claim to be healthy but is making us fat and sick and killing us from man-made chronic diseases, overweight, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.
One based on Maximising Money by Manipulative Marketing.
Food – we love it. But it is making us fat and sick and growing it is destroying the soils and planet on which we all depend.
Our bodies have evolved to have an intelligent control system which says stop eating when you are full.
The web is full of magic solutions with very clever marketing strategies, all you have to do is wave your credit card, money will disappear from your account but you will still be prone to chronic disease.
The global mega-companies that dominate the food and drug industries benefit greatly from the current system – profits before community benefit.
I look at my blood sugar reading and it is fine.
If you want to know more I am happy to chat, I can set up video calls, but you have to 
Why are we all so busy and not revoltingly rich?
We are busy because we live in the information age and big companies need to sell things to people who don’t need or want their products.
Have you ever thought why, when you go to the shopping centre there are so many wobbly bums and tums and people hobbling around with a foot chopped off?
A bunch of humanoids were sitting around their campfire when someone asked ‘What’s for breakfast?’
Feeling hungry they worked out a plan on how they could kill a Mastodon, it worked and humans became addicted to ideas, in this case cooperating was better than no breakfast.
If you want agreement never invite the loosers to the decision making process.
One of those less good ideas and in my opinion terrible ideas is that the sole role of companies is to make as much money for their shareholders and in the case of the food (and tobacco and fossil fuel) industries who cares about the collateral damage of people getting fat and sick and having their legs chopped off from diabetes.
I can’t change the world, I am just one old man so if Greta struggled to change the world on climate change then what hope do I have with food? My name is not Greta Foodberg.
Gbiota is the technology of breeding beneficial microbes in organic waste under controlled conditions such that they outbreed any harmful microbes using the principle of Ecobalance.
Gbiota is a community benefit organisation. We beleive the idea that company’y sole responsibilty is for shareholder profits is a great failure of modern society.
The second is to create a better, more human-orientated and stable society.
The opposite is true for a multi-national company where the directors are under pressure to maximise returns by whatever means possible.
If you are like me, lucky enough to have a technical background and old with the time to spend hours each day reading technical papers you will see that it is not a technical problem. If you don’t have the time then you can read the articles on the web.
If we have the technology to fix it then why has it not been fixed?
I created this web to tell the story of food that will make us healthy. It is devoid of clever marketing gimmicks and we don’t sell magic pills that don’t work, we just tell the story about the world’s food system as it is and more importantly what you can do about it.
The first step is to understand the issues, for example, why is it that people in the blue zones live to a ripe old age, fit and healthy to the end with only a basic health system while we in so-called high technology countries with a sophisticated health system get fat and sick and die well before the age of natural death?
None of the popular magic slogans ‘like eat less exercise more’ and instead gets down to the underlying causes of the modern health epidemic and yes it will take a bit of time and thinking.
We are in the midst of an epidemic of chronic diseases, overweight, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.
The social challenge, however difficult it is to create a paradigm shift from the calorie balance paradigm to the intelligent control paradigm.
I would rate climate change as the biggest existential threat to humanity and food and the epidemic of chronic diseases as the second.
It is not just rich countries, poor countries have suffered far more. In these countries, when fed using their traditional agriculture, there was no major issue with chronic diseases.
This is the classic technique used in manipulative promotion.
For the best part of fifty years, we have followed the calorie balance approach and every year the epidemic of chronic diseases has increased. Yet we say that it is because people are not trying hard enough and they need to eat even less and exercise even more.
We have come a long way since the days of Adams Smith and his perfect market philosophy.
Modern highly processed food may be hygienic but is devoid of beneficial microbes. Traditional food is full of microbes, some beneficial some dangerous leading to sickness and death.
Recycling organic waste is sustainable, while modern chemical agriculture, based on the exploitation of natural resources is not.
Let me be clear here, we do not need to replace the entire food industry – that is just ridiculous.
I need to make this message clear to my fellow humans. This is why I put so much emphasis that Gbiota is a social movement, we have to change the way society works. That is more important than profits.
No this is not gibberish in some weird language but an issue at the core of health.
When we saw the possibility of growing plants ourselves, particularly seed plants like wheat, corn and rice which could be stored we jumped at the opportunity – and why not?
Then we learned how important hygiene was so we built water and sewage systems, invented the modern bed and adopted regular washing.
Then came Norman Borlaug, and the green revolution and we increased food production, all with the best of intentions but which led to yet another population explosion.
Pick up virtually any book on diet or weight loss and you will be presented with the idea that we get fat because we consume more calories than we burn.
Calorie imbalance is not the cause. It is how, or what I like to call the enabling factor.
So, dear Jenny, read the warning label. I and no one else really knows how our intelligent control system works, but we can observe it in action.
So when you read on please understand that there are no absolute truths here.
If the soil is too dry nothing happens, the plants don’t grow and the bugs won’t breed.
Water is weird but very friendly stuff, it loves itself so water molecules are attracted to other water molecules which gives it tensile strength, which is a bit weird for a liquid, but it is also a bit like a teenager, it loves some things and hates others – what we call hydrophobic and hydrophilic.
These two together are how plants work, osmosis means that water will enter the root system as long as the solution in the plant’s roots is stronger than the solution in the soil.
You may agree with the Goldilocks water approach, not too dry, not too wet just right and think it is so simple – just water a little bit.
The surface tension forces are much larger in a small pore than in a big pore (it has more surface area) so the water will move from large pores to small pores and then stop.
But all soils have a range of pore sizes and if the soil is hydrophilic, (water-loving), the forces attracting the water in the small pores are higher than in the large pores so water will move from the large pores to the small pores until there is a balance and flow will stop.
independent of how much water is applied. If you apply more water it will just go deeper into the soil.
If we change either the nature of the soil, so it is more or less hydrophilic, or change the pore size we will change the equilibrium level.
With Wickimix, which we make from organic waste, rock dust and a bit of soil (preferably with a small particle size like in clay to give a large surface area) there are plenty of nutrients.
But let us not forget the beetles, larvae, nematodes and all those creepy-crawlies found in good soil.
The other part of Gbiota technology is flood and flush. Instead of applying the water from above, which reduces the air content and seals the surface, we apply the water, at least most of the water, from below and let wicking action take it up to near the surface so the plant roots can grow in Goldilocks moisture.
For those keen gardeners who understand that labile or fresh compost can be full of growth inhibitors, I should point out that this is separate from the soil in which I am growing plants.
But after we have saturated the base of the bed we are left with all this saturated soil which is ideal for breeding all those nasty bad bugs.
People who know me understand that I was a toddler in WW2 and was brought up not to waste anything.
The idea that ‘greed is good’ has to go. It is absurd to have a society where billionaires are taking joy trips to space so they can see for themselves if the world is round or flat, executives of food companies fly around in private jets when people are having their legs chopped off from diabetes or living under railway bridges.
What drains out from the swivel tube or leaky dam is not just water, it is full of nutrients and weird creatures. I look at them under my microscope and they make the monsters from Aliens look tame.
I admit that I pour some soil-blood onto the plant leaves as this is another way the plants can absorb the beneficial microbes that we need.
Radishes must be the easiest plant to grow so it is with shame that I admit that they do not grow that well in normal Gbiota boxes.
I haven’t answered Jenny’s question about how long the soil blood can be left.
Evolution keeps on trying out different designs and keeps on increasing sophistication until it finds the simplest that works.
This current design may seem overly complicated but it works.
I have come to an arrangement with my body that I use it as part of the experimental process and as part of the deal, I guarantee it a reserve stockpile of toilet paper, which fortunately is only needed occasionally.
I typically irrigate twice a week but if I have any suspicion that the soil mix is getting a bit overripe, (using my nose), I will run a flood and flush cycle.
So Jenny there is a very long answer to a very simple question. Keep the question coming they help make the total system better and don’t forget that this is a social benefit movement as well as growing a few veggies so help spread the word.
We see the blue zones where people live to a ripe old age, well into their nineties or hundreds and are fit and healthy.
I am no drongo, I wrote a simulation of hot plastics flowing into a cold mould which involves solving coupled non-linear partial differential equations. I set up a company Moldlfow from my back bedroom which became the leading exporter of technical software from Australia – a multi-million dollar international company and I was recognised by the Institute of Engineers as one of Australia’s leading innovators.
We live in a world of instant gratification but you can’t cram thirty years of experimentation and thinking into a three-word slogan like ‘eat less exercise more’.
The Gbiota process of breeding beneficial gut microbes starts in the soil where the conditions are controlled so the beneficial microbes out-breed and out-compete the harmful microbes.
The tragedy is that our modern food system is so hygienic and it takes so long from when the plants are harvested to when we eat them that these life-giving microbes have died.
The physical reason for this epidemic is the wrong fat in the wrong place. This is not simply that we overeat. Our gut brain decides that we need to store more fat, this may be because of the wrong microbes in our gut-brain or there is a genuine deficiency in our diet. It sends our signal to make us hungry and we overeat.
Take a hydroponically grown lettuce, it is grown without soil, just relying on synthetic chemicals for nutrients and protection from pests, it looks perfect, not a blemish and there are no bugs so the risk of getting E-coli is perceived as minimal.
Gbiota is a community benefit organisation focused on healthy food. We operate like any other business aiming to earn enough money to pay our bills.
We are such a wasteful society, it is unsustainable. The Earth’s resources are finite, at the current rate of consumption we will run out of essential ingredients, like water and phosphorous within fifty years which will be a catastrophe for the world.
The result is a society where the bulk of the people will die from a non-infectious disease such as obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.
But there is no money in educating the public about the importance of gut-brain health.
If we have the wrong microbes in our gut we overeat and get fat and sick, maybe have a leg chopped off from diabetes or die young, if we have the right microbes we can look forward to a long and healthy life.
I was a pioneer of Computer Aided Engineering, I started a company from my spare bedroom which became the leading exporter of technical software from Australia and was eventually sold for $Au500 million. But I sold out well before then to work on what I saw as the biggest problem facing humanity – the sustainable production of food.
We are talking about a paradigm shift – changing the way we think. That is one of the most difficult things to do.
The current paradigm is we go to the Supermarket and toss a load of food that the Supermarket wants to sell us because it makes them money, into our shopping trolley.
The paradigm shift is for us to start eating food which contains these beneficial microbes so they out-compete and out-breed any harmful microbes.
This is where I learned about paradigm shifts. I travelled around the world telling people about my simulation and how at times it was better to make the flow channels smaller.
What is needed is just a small number of entrepreneurial eaters to start growing and eating gut-brain food, see for themselves the change in their appetite and to go out and tell their friends and contacts and in a figurative blink of an eyelid we will have the needed paradigm shift.
This reached a peak with the black death in 1347 which wiped out 50% of the population in seriously affected areas and even higher is some cases.
The main non-infectious diseases are obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.
The technology is developed, so the issue is how to get this widely accepted when the internet is saturated with disinformation and marketing hype.
The global food crisis is not some threat for the future, it is here right now, it is not just about poor people starving in some remote country it is about people in rich countries suffering from chronic diseases, such as obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.
It is not a simple shortage of food, it is about the wrong balance of foods and that is not what you may expect so it takes quite a bit of explaining.
The basic facts are simple but unexpected. We need food for energy and that comes mainly from the sun. The amount of energy coming from the sun is vast in comparison with all man’s use of energy. There is no absolute shortage of energy.
We may think we are the same person that we were a few months ago but we are not, we are continuously replacing our body parts as they age and wear and that requires a complex array of chemicals which largely comes from the soil via plants.
Unlike the mature sciences of biochemistry and microbiology, we really have no idea of the coding that drives this supercomputer but we know that it starts learning from the first suck on Mum’s breast until when we die.
But we also know that our gut brain is like a city, the city lives on over the centuries but the individuals are continuously breeding and dying, but the microbes have a life span measured in days rather than decades.
I do breed beneficial bugs, I do this in a Gbiota bed or box. I fill just the base with any organic waste I can lay my hands on, mostly kitchen scraps and grass clippings. The upper layer is filled with Wickimix, a really nice soil where I grow my plants.
When I flood I expel all the stale air, I wait and let the soil blood wick up to the root zone of the plants growing in the Wickimix. Then I drain the base of the box which sucks fresh air into the box.
Now I train my gut-brain by eating all sorts of different foods so it learns what foods work for me and what don’t.
The Earth has been spinning around the sun for four and a half billion years and we can expect it to be still spinning for a few more billion years.
In our modern world we are all part of a teratribe. Part of this tribe can cut down forest in Brazil and that may lead to flooding in New York or Delhi.
Is food security real or hype? This is what I examine here first and later and more importantly what to do about it.
But let us start breaking this down. We are a thermodynamic machine and we need fuel for energy. That comes largely from the sun. The amount of energy falling on the earth from the sun is huge, far greater than all the energy used by mankind in all ways. No need to worry?
If we were to adopt a plant-based diet there would be more than enough energy food, the biggest threat would be fresh water. We are already draining global aquifers for irrigation which are running dry while climate change will increase total rainfall but clump the rains together causing flooding and periods of drought with no usable water.
We are rapidly exhausting some of these basic minerals, particularly phosphorous which is serious but even worse our system of modern agriculture is destroying the microbes and fungi which process these basic minerals into nutrients into the food chain.
But there is a third function of food, to power the intelligent control system which regulates our bodies. This may be only a very small proportion of our food intake but is critical, in the way the pilot of a plane is only a minute proportion of the energy used by a modern airliner but it is absolutely vital for the smooth and safe operation of the plane.
This is a problem demanding immediate attention, fortunately we know how to resolve this, at least technically, the solution is simple and savesmoney.
Let’s start with the cat test.
To feed this increase in population they refined their agriculture using chemicals to fertilise the soil and toxic chemicals to protect their plants from weeds and pests. It was highly in successful producing plenty of food.
And they learned to do this using organic waste so the nutrients came from recycling rather than exploitation.
We know how to do this, it is a simple technology which is readily applied.
I have written hundreds of articles about sustainable and healthy food production, some are my attempts to treat a serious subject with humour others technical which may only be appreciated by someone with the right background.
This is going to be resolved by changing the food growing system rather than a medical approach which may relieve the systems but does not address the underlying cause.
We have to change from a system based on exploitation to one based on recycling. If we don’t make that change the comfortable civilisation which we currently enjoy will be under severe stress from hungry and angry people moving within and across national borders.
This is going to be resolved by changing the food growing system rather than a medical approach which may relieve the symptoms but does not address and resolve the underlying cause.
As a dull boring engineer, I can look at the amount of energy falling on the earth each day. It dwarfs all the energy used by mankind. Fortunately most of that energy is reflects back out to space for the benefit of some little green men in some faraway galaxy or we would all be burned to a cinder.
As a dull boring engineer, I write long dull boring articles on how we can solve these problems and naturally I want to tell the world about these solutions.
They explain there is now two worlds, the virtual world which is fun and happy with nubile young people frolicking in waterfalls and just enjoying their virtual existence and the real world which is where all the horrible things happen.
For me, this is a bit of a worry. I watch the news and see people killing each other all over the world and ask myself why. I understand full well that humans are the dominant creature on earth for two reasons – we are intelligent and naturally cooperative.
So how do we solve these real-world problems?
I have been experimenting for over thirty years to find better ways of sustainably growing plants to improve health. The result is the Gbiota technology.
Ask yourself these questions.
We cannot say the same thing about energy. Every day the sun delivers a huge amount of energy. It is not well understood how much energy comes from the sun but it is huge in comparison with the amount of energy used in all ways by humans and totally dwarfs the energy that powers our bodies.
Food was an issue but there was plenty of land and despite deaths from famines we managed to struggle through despite the high death rate.
So my plea to these entrepreneurial types is simple. Don’t believe all the marketing bullshit or even what I tell you.
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”.
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.
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.
It is well known that our gut biota plays a major roles in our health. Many researchers, such as Tim Spector, Professor at Imperial College, London explains this in his book Food for Life.
A few hundred thousand year ago a puny creature that barely survived took a world changing decision – to use an existing technology, fire to cook food. This gave it the energy to grow a huge brain which led to intelligence and cooperation so this creature became the dominant creature on the planet – us.
We live in the age of the hype machine promoting some magic pill which will instantaneously give them a healthy gut.
It is highly sophisticated – the product of millions of years of evolution and is one of the wonders of the world.
I show how the natural process works from the microbes in the soil making insoluble rock particles in the soil into bio-available nutrients, how different species of plants will exude different sugars to attract specific species of microbes which will enter the plants and we will eat to form our gut biota.
The shops are full of food. Currently we are growing enough