Join the Gbiota Club

I am inviting you to join the Gbiota club. I can and do put forward the logical reasons to join: it is essentially community supported agriculture—buyers support growers and get nutritious food grown under carefully controlled, regenerative conditions, while growers have an assured customer base and can focus on improving their soils.

All of that is totally logical—and true—but it is not the real reason. The real reason is my grandkids, and their grandkids who don’t even exist yet.

We live in what is called the Anthropocene, where humans have a major impact on the earth. If I listed everything that is going wrong it would be deeply depressing: climate change, obesity, diabetes, soil degradation, social unrest, inequality—the list goes on and on.

The underlying reason is that many of our leaders focus on short-term benefits—profits and power now—for themselves.

But humans are smart and cooperative. If we work together, we can solve these problems. We—ordinary people—can do it. We can’t simply rely on our leaders; we have to become leaders and show them a better way.

We can start by growing food in a way that is both healthy and sustainable, by breeding beneficial biology in recycled waste and adding essential trace minerals.

For Our Grandkids

To be honest, I don’t really care about dollars and cents. I am 81 and have enough money to last the rest of my expected life.

But I do care about the lives my grandkids and their grandkids will live. So join me in the Gbiota club and help make the world a better place for future generations. Forget the greedy politicians and big-business tycoons—we can do this ourselves.

Taking Back Control

The Gbiota club is more than people buying healthy food directly from growers—although that is essential.

It is about what sort of world we, and our grandkids, live in.

We can be puppets controlled by profit-obsessed corporations, short-sighted politicians, or even by the technology that dominates our lives. Or we can take control of our food system and how our food is grown. We want food that will make us healthy, grown in a sustainable way.

I would make a useless politician, but I am an innovator. I have developed technology for growing plants that act as pre- and probiotics, and I can organise the communications platform so club members can decide among themselves what they want to grow and eat.

But I cannot do this alone. It is up to club members to take the initiative. The first step is to register and join the club.

Not All Cabbages Are the Same

Two cabbages can look identical, yet be completely different in terms of health.

One may have been grown in soil full of beneficial biology and essential trace minerals. The other may have come from tired soil, depleted in minerals and life, propped up by synthetic fertilisers and toxic sprays.

Unless you happen to have a mass spectrometer and DNA sequencer in your handbag, you have no way of knowing which is which—unless you know and trust your grower.

By joining the Gbiota club, we can ensure our food is grown in healthy soil, rich in beneficial biology and essential trace minerals. Healthy food starts in healthy soil. Gbiota beds grow food in nutritious, biologically active soil by breeding beneficial biology in organic waste and adding essential trace minerals.

Join the Gbiota Club

We have three types of membership:

• Customers – people who don’t have the time or land to grow their own food but still want to eat healthy food.
• Home Growers – people who want to use Gbiota technology to grow the best food for themselves and their families.
• Commercial Growers – growers who want to use Gbiota technology but need access to a regular customer base.

The Gbiota club does not buy or sell food. We provide the technology for growing gut-brain food and link growers and buyers together.

Soil Is Key

Health starts in the soil. Soil is formed as microbiology breaks down rocks and is continually renewed as plants grow, die, and decompose back into the soil. We can assess soil quality by the number of worms reworking the soil. Read more in Making Soil.

Gut Microbiology

We have evolved with this microbiology, which now forms an essential part of our gut.

Trillions of cells, made up of thousands of species, live in our digestive system. They are far more than a mass of dumb cells—they communicate with each other and with our head brain to form an intelligent control system that manages our bodies.

Our gut brain:

• controls our appetite so we have enough energy but don’t overeat,
• manufactures complex chemicals we need to replace body parts as they age,
• hosts much of our immune system and helps protect us from pandemics.

Modern industrial soils lack much of this essential biology. Many chemicals used in agriculture are advertised as safe for humans, but they can be devastating for soil biology. Read Feed Your Gut Brain and Our Gut Brain for more detail.

The Food Crisis

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. – Edmund Burke, 1770

There are about eight billion people on earth, with around 250 babies born every minute. How are we going to feed everyone—now and into the future?

Our modern food industry is staggering in its scale and productivity. We have huge areas growing staple crops like wheat, corn, rice, and potatoes, and we are continuously clearing forests to grow palm oil.

Much of this is fed to chickens in vast sheds, pigs in cages, and cows in feedlots.

Our production of chicken wings and chips (and similar foods) is simply stunning.

Right now we are producing enough food to feed a population of some thirteen billion people—more than half again the current global population—if it were equitably distributed.

Yet massive amounts of food are wasted and end up in landfill, creating greenhouse gases and losing essential minerals.

Does that mean we are healthy and sustainable? Simply, no.

Evolution and Soil

We humans are the result of millions of years of evolution, but our modern food is very different in two important ways from the food we evolved to eat.

The key difference is in the soil. Soil is formed as microbiology breaks down rocks and is continuously cycled as plants grow, die, and decompose. This process depends entirely on microbiology and soil creatures, particularly worms.

Gut Microbiology and Health

We have evolved with this microbiology, which now forms an essential part of our gut.

Trillions of cells, made up of thousands of species, communicate with each other and with our head brain to form an intelligent control system that manages our bodies and performs three vital jobs:

• controls our appetite so we have enough energy but don’t overeat,
• produces complex chemicals needed to repair and replace body parts,
• hosts much of our immune system to protect us from infections and pandemics.

Modern chemical-industrial agriculture often destroys this soil biology. Many of the chemicals used may not directly harm us, but they harm the soil life that ultimately supports our gut biology.

Trace Minerals

Early soils were rich in a wide range of minerals that both we and plants need. Plants are simpler than humans and require a narrower set of minerals. There is no economic pressure on farmers to replace many trace minerals that are essential for human health—such as chromium, iron, zinc, selenium, and iodine.

Chemical industrial agriculture largely replaces only the major nutrients (N, P, K) needed for plant growth. Without deliberate replenishment of trace minerals, our soils—and therefore our food—become deficient.

Our health depends on healthy soils, which in turn depend on regenerative agriculture based on recycling organic waste, adding trace minerals, and breeding beneficial biology—especially worms, which are a key indicator of soil health. Read more in Adapting to the Food Crisis.

Feeding Our Gut Brain

Our gut biota are temporary residents, constantly breeding and dying.

We simply cannot be fit and healthy without a healthy gut, and that means having the right species in the right balance. This depends on what we eat.

We can change the biology in our guts by changing what we eat—just as we can replace a graphics card or memory module in a computer to change its performance.

Modern Foods

Modern foods, full of sugars, fats, and refined carbohydrates, breed gut biology that makes us fat and sick. But we can change that biology by adding foods that help beneficial species thrive.

We know how to do this. There is a vast scientific literature on food and gut biology, and I have spent many years working out how to grow this kind of food.

The recipe is simple: breed worms by feeding them organic waste, add essential trace minerals, and maintain moisture at the “Goldilocks” level—not too wet and not too dry. This creates rich vermicast that supports beneficial biology.

This is a totally sustainable system, giving us a healthy gut by recycling waste.

This is the Gbiota bed system.

From Technology to Action

But how do we persuade people that they should be eating plants grown in vermicast—which is really just a polite way of saying worm poo?

The Post-Truth Era

We live in a post-truth era. Our media and the internet are saturated with catchy one-liners designed to manipulate us into buying something or doing something that powerful interests want. Many people have become deeply cynical about the modern information system.

Technology People Can Trust

The aim of the Gbiota club is to make Gbiota food—gut-brain food—readily available to all people at an affordable price. We need a different approach from high-pressure, manipulative sales techniques. We need a system that people can trust, based on real people seeing and feeling the benefits for themselves.

Fortunately, Gbiota beds are a simple and accessible way of growing gut food. Anyone with even a small patch of land can do it. It only takes a few weeks before the results become clear: the good bugs outbreed the bad bugs, food cravings settle, and we feel satisfied.

Those people can then tell their friends, who can try it and share their experience. Once enough people are interested, regenerative farmers—who want to farm sustainably—can begin growing gut food on a commercial scale so anyone can buy it and move towards better health.

You can start by reading The Gbiota Story to gain background on the project. You can learn how to make Gbiota beds in the “Growing” section of the website.

Right now, we are recruiting group leaders. I have prepared several documents about the club which you can read here: actionplan8june21, csa11june21, and battle.

These are detailed documents for club leaders. If you just want to be an ordinary member, simply register via the menu. If you have any problems (for example, a cache error), refresh the page—and if that does not work, contact me (we are working on a temporary technical problem).

Right and Wrong

This is not just about profit—it is about right and wrong. If COVID has taught us anything, it is that most people still have a sense of what is right and are willing to act for the good of the community, not just for profit or self-interest.

Of course, there will always be self-seekers—it is just a pity they often work themselves into positions of power in governments and big business.

Comments and questions are welcome: contact me here.