People over profits

We know that the dominant cause of sickness and death in 1900 was infections diseases and now it is non infectious diseases like diabetes, heart attacks, strokes and dementia.

The reason is simple, back in 1900 our food was full of beneficial microbes which was fine for gut health but also full of pathogens which made us sick.

We totally reversed that and now have powerful chemicals and high standards of hygiene which has made a dramatic reduction in infectious diseases but also killed of both beneficial and harmful microbes so we just switched from infections to non infectious diseases.

The Gbiota approach is to breed beneficial microbes in the soil but to control the conditions so that the beneficial microbes can out breed the harmful microbes – we manage the Eco-system.

This may cut down on input costs as our main inputs are organic waste which is intrinsically cheap and turns a waste product – which is a major cause of green house gases into something really useful.

But it is more labour intensive, which does not appeal to the automation focused mega companies that dominate our food industry. Even worse is the fact that the plants must be eaten fresh which in reality means people growing the plants at home to they can just pick and eat.

So we can be pretty sure that the Gbiota technology is not going to be picked up by the mega food corporations.

An even bigger problem is the vast amount of money that these corporations spend on advertising, over 4 billion dollars a year, and they are very good at it – they really know how to manipulate the public.

Now I am quite good at mathematics and I think I would have noticed if there was 4 billion a year coming into my bank account for me to launch a counter advertising campaign.

No when I tell people I am 83 years old they are surprised because I am fit and healthy and put a lot of energy into the Gbiota project. But let me tell you about being old, as long as you have enough money then money does not really matter, what is far more important is actually being a useful member of society and in my case creating a world where my great grand kids can live a decent life.

Every eight seconds some unfortunate soul has a limb amputated from diabetes (as nearly happened to my wife) if I can cut that by half my reward will be the feeling of actually doing something useful in this world.

You may think the world is going through a bad phase, with autocratic regimes, climate change, inflation and all those terrible stories on every news cast.

But let me tell you ,as on oldie, that life it far better now than when I was born. My first memory, which is still quite clear was being carried down to that air raid shelter and I dropped my teddy and they would not go back for it.

They may have been terrible times but people pulled together and created a far better world for their kids.

Despite all the troubles we see every night on the news we can still make the world a better place if we did what people did eighty years ago – just pull together and overcome the problems one by one.

So how am I going to cut the number of people have their legs chopped of from diabetes?

The frustration is we know how to do it – it is not a technical problem it is a social problem.

So that is why I set up my own social media site www.gbiota.club. This is where people who share my views can meet other people and form local communities to grow Gbiota food, some will be happy to be growers supporting their local community while others will provide support for the growers by actually paying these growers for their services for a fair price.

Charity only works so far – people must receive fair and just rewards.

So I ask you to join the Gbiota club, become active creating your own icon on the map so people know where you are and letting other people know what you need or can offer.

Don’t think in terms of money, think in terms of the number of limbs you avoided being chopped off.

Thanks

Colin