Wicking Bed Liners Explained: Are Plastics Safe for Growing Food?
People often ask what lining materials are safe for wicking beds, especially when plastic films are involved. In this newsletter Colin Austin…
The Vision for Wicking Beds: Origin, Purpose, and Soil Biology
Wicking beds are often described as a water-saving trick, but that misses the bigger point. Modern food systems are excellent at producing…
Wicking Beds: How Underground Water Storage Changed the Way We Grow Food
Wicking beds emerged from practical experiments aimed at growing food under drought conditions, first in Ethiopia and later elsewhere. The core problem…
The Wicking Bed Basket Scheme For Healthy Food
The wicking bed basket scheme was designed to make truly nutritious, fresh food available to almost everyone, including people with limited space,…
Scaling Wicking Beds: Large-Scale Adoption for Food, Water, and Climate Resilience
Wicking beds are usually seen as a backyard method, but they can also be scaled up to deliver major public benefits: more…
BioPack: Rebuilding Living Soil Through Biology, Fungi, and Practical Regeneration
BioPack is a simple, practical way to rebuild tired or degraded soils by reintroducing the biology that creates fertile structure. Each BioPack…
WickiMix: Turning Organic Waste into Living Soil Through Biology
WickiMix is a biologically active soil regeneration system designed to convert waste organic material into living, fertile soil. It works by combining…
Questions and Answers: Practical Wicking Bed Advice
This question and answer article brings together real conversations between growers and Colin Austin, addressing the most common practical issues faced when…
Soil vs Dirt: Why Soil Biology Matters for Wicking Beds
Older soil science focused on sand, silt, clay, and nutrients like NPK. Modern soil science adds the missing piece: biology. Biology is…
The Simple Mechanics Behind Climate Change: Why Global Warming Is Not a Mystery
Climate change is often presented as complex and mysterious, yet the basic physics behind it has been understood for more than two…
Adapting to Climate Change Through Water, Soil, and Biological Systems
Climate change and water scarcity are no longer future risks; they are present realities that demand practical, system-level responses. This article explores…
Queensland Water Restrictions: Why an Arid Climate Needs Arid Solutions
South East Queensland is often described as being in water crisis, yet the real issue is not a lack of rainfall but…
An Independent Water Think Tank: Innovation, Creativity, and the Future of Water
This page introduces an independent water “think tank” focused on innovation rather than politics or commercial interests. It explains why water management…
Watropy: The Paradigm Shift in Water Thinking
Watropy is a simple but powerful idea: water has value not only by volume, but by how long it stays useful. In…
The Phantom Water Crisis
“The Phantom Water Crisis” argues that the so-called water crisis is not mainly caused by a lack of rain, but by how…
A Sustainable World: Why Pragmatic Climate Action Matters More Than Perfect Solutions
Building a sustainable world is not just about cutting emissions. It is also about feeding a growing and increasingly affluent global population…
How Agriculture Can Capture Carbon and Help Resolve Climate Change
This research summary explains a practical, large-scale way to mitigate climate change by changing agriculture. The core idea is simple: plants already…
About This Site: Soil, Water, and the Search for Sustainable Solutions
This article explains the origins and purpose of this site. Colin Austin outlines how severe soil loss in Australia led him to…
Carbon Capture in Soil: Why Humus Matters More Than Total Carbon
Capturing carbon in soil is often described as a simple fix for climate change and poor soils, but it is not that…
Technology and Politics of Soil Carbon
This article explains why Kyoto-style carbon rules have struggled, and why soil carbon needs a different approach. Colin Austin argues that soil…
Resolving Climate Change III — How Science Can Fail Us
This article explains why climate change is real and urgent, yet so hard to solve. Colin Austin argues that modern “reductionist” science…
Resolving Climate Change II — The Eco-Corporation Model
This article argues that climate change is not only an environmental issue but an organisational and economic one. Colin Austin proposes that…
Resolving Climate Change I — How Innovation Can Help
We are not winning the climate change war. Emissions continue to rise, targets have been shaped by politics rather than physics, and…
The Gbiota Philosophy 4: From Subsurface Experiments to Microflood and Wicking Beds
In the mid-1990s, Colin Austin asked a simple question: are there better ways of applying water? Horticulture had become more efficient, but…
Irrigation Publications and Technical Guides
This downloads page provides access to key Waterright resources on water, irrigation efficiency, and practical solutions for growing food with limited water.…
How Microflood Improves Flood Irrigation Efficiency and Crop Yield
Microflood is a practical irrigation upgrade that turns traditional flood irrigation into a far more efficient system. It was recognised internationally with…
Solving the Water Crisis Video Series
The “Solving the Water Crisis” video series shares Colin Austin’s search for practical answers to the global water crisis. What began as…
Water Wit and Wisdom: How Innovation Can Solve Australia’s Water Crisis
Water Wit and Wisdom steps back from technical debates about water and instead examines how we think about water. It explores why…
The Future of Food Growing: Water-Efficient Food Growing for a Changing Climate
This presentation outlines why the future of agriculture must adapt to climate change and water shortages, and why co-operation is essential. It…
Publications And Topics On Water, Soil, And Irrigation
This page lists Colin Austin’s publications across water, irrigation scheduling, salinity, soil, climate change, and practical farm innovation. It includes books, manuals,…
Regenerating Soil Using Improved Flood Irrigation
This article explores how improved flood irrigation and wicking-based systems can regenerate soil, reduce water loss, and restore soil biology under increasing…
Water for Food: How Wicking Beds Build Climate-Resilient Agriculture With Less Water
Water for food is one of the defining challenges of a warming world. The wicking bed system appears simple, yet it represents…
Soil Carbon, Climate Change And Solutions For Australia: A Scalable Path Beyond Kyoto
Kyoto is now decades old, yet atmospheric carbon continues to rise. This submission argues that the real issue is not talk, taxes,…
Colin Austin Part 2: A Life Of Innovation In Water, Soil, And Sustainable Systems
Colin Austin is an engineer, inventor, and founder of Moldflow, a software company that helped shift plastics mould design from “gut feel”…
Colin Austin: A Life of Innovation in Water, Soil, and Sustainable Systems
This article tells the story of Colin Austin, an Australian engineer and innovator whose work spans advanced computer modelling, irrigation reform, soil…
Droughtproofing in Ethiopia: Low-Cost Irrigation Lessons for a Water-Scarce World
This article describes a practical droughtproofing project developed in Ethiopia to address food insecurity during severe drought. Invited by World Vision to…
Micro Flood Irrigation: A Low-Cost Manual For Using Water Better
Micro flood irrigation is a simple, low-cost way to deliver water to plants without chronic under-watering or over-watering. It was designed to…
Making the Most of Water: How Irrigation Scheduling Improves Crop Growth and Saves Water
Making the most of water is not about applying more or less by guesswork. It is about understanding how plants respond to…
Irrigation Scheduling: Measure Water Use, Control Irrigation Depth, Grow Better Crops
Irrigation scheduling is one of the cheapest ways to save water and improve plant growth. It is not just about avoiding wilt.…
WaterRight Irrigation Scheduling: Use Irrigation Depth and Evaporation to Save Water
WaterRight is a practical way to schedule irrigation using two simple measurements: how far water penetrates into the soil (irrigation depth) and…
Adaptive Irrigation Scheduling: An Easy Way to Stop Wasting Water
Poor irrigation scheduling is one of the biggest drivers of wasted water, and it can also cause environmental harm. Traditional “scientific” methods…
Anticipatory Irrigation Scheduling: Using Evaporation, Soil Depth, and Rainfall to Save Water
Anticipatory irrigation is a practical and commonsense way to use water better by working with rainfall, evaporation, and soil behaviour rather than…
The Gbiota Philosophy 2: Irrigation Scheduling That Saves Water
Poor irrigation scheduling is one of the biggest hidden causes of wasted water and reduced plant growth. Many growers apply too much…
The Gbiota Philosophy 4: Local Water Harvesting in Australia
Australia is often described as a dry continent facing inevitable water shortages, yet the reality is far more complex. On a per-person…
Irrigation Scheduling Using Crop Factors and Soil Water Holding Capacity
Good irrigation is not guesswork. It is about matching water supply to what your plants actually use, and what your soil can…
Soil Maker: A Practical System for Rapid Soil Regeneration Using Biology and Water
Healthy soil is the foundation of food, nutrition, and long-term resilience. Yet much of the world’s soil is being degraded faster than…
Water Salinity Solutions For Australia: Flushing Salt, Smarter Irrigation, Better Policy
Australia’s water debate is not only about drought. It is also about salt. Each year, millions of tonnes of salt are mobilised…
Micro-Flood Irrigation: A Low-Cost Way to Use Water Better
Micro Flood looks like old-fashioned flood irrigation, yet it can behave very differently. By splitting a long bay into short “micro blocks”…
Water, Soil, and Irrigation Publications: Two Decades of Innovation and Research
This page brings together a chronological overview of publications that document a long-term exploration of water, soil, irrigation, and sustainability. Spanning more…
Solving the Water Crisis: Why Australia Has Plenty of Rain but Still Runs Out of Water
This article introduces the Solving the Water Crisis DVD series, a practical and challenging exploration of how we think about water in…
Water, Salinity, and Irrigation Reform in Australia: Technology, Policy, and the Missing Link
This article explains why Australia’s real water crisis is not only drought, but salinity and soil sodification caused by how irrigation water…
Lessons for Australia: Rethinking Irrigation, Water Efficiency, and Basin Rehabilitation
Australia faces many of the same water challenges seen in parts of Africa, including unreliable rainfall, water scarcity, and recurring drought. This…
Sustainable Irrigation and Salinity: How Water Management Can Secure Our Future
This summary draws on lessons from the long history of irrigation to explain why many irrigation societies have failed and what can…
Innovative Solutions to the Water Crisis
This article explores a practical, innovation-led approach to solving water scarcity. It traces how unconventional research methods led from early engineering work…
Solving Australia’s Water Crisis: Why Systems, Not Rainfall, Are Failing Us
Australia is often described as “the driest inhabited continent”, yet the raw facts point to a different problem: we receive substantial rainfall…
Innovative Water-Saving Technologies: A Practical Path Beyond Dams and Drought
This article summarises Colin Austin’s practical, innovation-driven approach to Australia’s water challenge. It explains why “competence research” often produces incremental gains, while…
Micro Flood Irrigation: A Practical Way to Grow More With Less Water
Micro flood irrigation is a low-cost, high-efficiency way to water plants without the usual problems of under-watering, over-watering, salinity build-up, and nutrient…
The Realities of Global Warming: Why Soil Carbon and Water-Smart Farming Matter
Global warming is a risk we cannot afford to “wait and see” about. Even if we reduce emissions, fast-growing economies and a…
Global Warming: Are We Missing the Biggest Carbon Opportunity?
Global warming is usually framed as a problem of reducing human emissions, yet this overlooks the far larger natural carbon cycle. Man-made…
Global Warming and Soil Carbon: Practical Actions Communities Can Take Today
Global warming is no longer an abstract or distant issue. The real challenge is practical: what can individuals, communities, and farmers do…
Wicking Bed – A New Technology for Adapting to Climate Change
This article explains why global climate negotiations such as Copenhagen struggle to deliver real change, and why agriculture offers a practical path…
Climate Change: The Real Obstacles to Global Agreement
International climate agreements repeatedly stall, not because the science is unclear, but because economic structures, social realities, and political systems make coordinated…
Wicking Beds: A Practical Technology for Adapting to Climate Change
Climate change presents two linked challenges: reducing carbon in the atmosphere and protecting food production in a world of increasingly erratic rainfall.…
Innovation, Soil Carbon, And A Practical Plan To Tackle Climate Change
This article explains why we are not winning the climate change fight, and why “just cutting emissions” is unlikely to be enough…
Resolving Climate Change With Wicking Beds: A Practical Plan for Carbon, Water, and Food Security
This article explains why climate change is so hard to solve politically, and why soil and food security may be the most…
An Improved Agricultural System for Climate Change Resilience and Soil Carbon Capture
Climate change is already amplifying floods and droughts, placing growing pressure on global food production systems. This article explains a practical agricultural…
Resolving Climate Change: Why Soil Carbon and Innovation Matter Now
Climate change can feel distant until extreme weather turns up at your door. After Queensland floods sent water under my house, I…
The Doctor And The Water Crisis: Why Dams Fail And Decentralised Water Wins
This story uses humour and a sci-fi lens to make a serious point: Australia does not mainly suffer from a lack of…
Make the Most of Water: Practical Irrigation Methods for Maximum Growth
Water is often the limiting factor in growing food, especially in dry regions and disadvantaged communities. This article explains a simple, practical…
Watropy: A New Way to Think About Water Scarcity in Australia
Australia’s water problem is not simply “not enough rain”. It is that much of our rainfall has a very short useful life…
Alternative Water Resources for Australia: Water-Harvesting for the Future
Australia receives vast amounts of rainfall each year, far more than our population actually needs. Yet chronic water shortages persist. This article…
The Gbiota Philosophy: Local Water Harvesting in a Dry Land
Australia is often described as a country facing severe water shortages, yet the total volume of rainfall far exceeds what we actually…
Join the Revolution: the Fight for Human Health
This article introduces what I believe is the next major revolution shaping human health and survival: gut biology. While technology has transformed…
Shade Houses and Wicking Beds: An Easy Way to Grow Organic Vegetables
Growing vegetables through hot, wet Queensland summers is difficult because of heat, insects, weeds, disease, and heavy rain. This article explains a…
Vision for Food Security, Water Shortages, and Climate Change
This vision outlines a practical way to improve food security, reduce water waste, and address climate change by capturing carbon from the…
The Next Great Change: Soil Carbon, Wicking Beds, and the Future of Food
This article looks thirty years ahead and argues that the next major shift in society will be driven by environmental services rather…
Community Action on Water: Why Harvesting Small Rains Matters
Australia does not suffer from a lack of rainfall. What we suffer from is a failure to capture it. Most rain falls…
Harvesting Smaller Rains: Water Storage, Wicking Beds, and Anticipatory Irrigation
Droughts are part of Australia’s natural cycle, but we still waste the water that falls in the smaller rains. The volume is…
Anticipatory Irrigation: Using Timing to Save Water and Reduce Evaporation
Anticipatory irrigation is a practical, common-sense approach to watering crops more efficiently by working with rainfall, soil behaviour, and evaporation rather than…
The Origins of Wicking Beds: Lessons From Drought, Soil, and Water
Wicking beds did not begin as a backyard gardening idea. They emerged from practical work on food security during drought, where the…
Wicking Bed Soil vs Stones: Maximise Water, Nutrients, and Plant Growth
This article explains why using stones (or coarse sand) and cloth at the base of wicking beds — a common practice —…
Tips for Preventing Stinky Wicking Beds
This article explains why some wicking beds can smell bad and, more importantly, how to prevent or fix that problem. Stinky wicking…
WickiMix Manual: Practical Guide to Soil and Bed Management
The WickiMix system is a practical soil management method designed for wicking beds, sponge beds, and conventional garden beds. By combining living…
The Development of Wicking Beds through Soil and Water Systems
The Development of Wicking Beds through Soil and Water Systems This blog explains how wicking beds were developed and why they work…
Soils for Wicking Beds
Many people think wicking beds are just to save water; the most important feature however is creating a mini ecology with a…
How to Replenish Your Gut Microbes
The microbes in our gut are critical for our health but in an effort to feed the ever increasing population and avoid…
Soil for Wicking Beds: Biology, Minerals and Health
Healthy Plants vs Plants That Make Us Healthy The most common question I am asked is about soils for wicking beds. That’s…
Soil Biology: The Key to Healthy Wicking Soils
Soil biology is the key — my aim with WickiMix is to provide a concentrate and inoculant where people can create their…
Soil Journey: How Nature Creates Fertile Soil
Where to start regenerating soil? Well nature has been making soil for a few billion years so let us see what we…
Transforming Parent Soils for Healthy Wicking Beds
Parent soils, such as clay, sands and potting mixes can be transformed into soils suitable for wicking beds. Here we start by…
Types of Wicking Beds for Healthy Soil & Plants
Wicking systems rely on the attraction between soil and water so water (and nutrients) will rise up from a water storage to…
Energy and Regeneration in Wicking Beds
Food gives us energy and regenerates our bodies. Most commercial foods now contain a lot of energy or calories based on simple…
The Gbiota Story
The Gbiota Story
The Gbiota Mission
The Essence of Gbiota Breed beneficial microbes in living soil. Grow plants in that soil and eat them fresh so the microbes…
Changing the system
We all want to live a long and healthy life, free of disease. That depends very much on the food we eat. We need food for energy. Our modern food...
A compassionate society
Life is good, we are living longer and the supermarkets are full of healthy food. Sounds great but is it true? My daughter, when she was about seven taught me...
Understanding your gut-brain
We show the process of – breeding beneficial microbes in organic – growing plants in this soil using the flood and flush system so the soil breathes and soil blood...
Innovation is a funny business
Let us look at the story of food and health. In the past, and that means going back a million years to the first humanoids there was no epidemic of...
Good microbes
You can grow the good gut-bugs at home in containers, gbiota baskets – even if you live in an apartment with no garden and no growing experience. You grow plants...
Food Change
For the first few billion years the earth was just a barren rock. Then microbes appeared, they broke down the rocks and made soil which led to plants flourishing. Next...
Managing Change
The third mega-change If you think the world is going through a difficult period you are right. We are going through our third mega-change and managing this change is not...
hormones
Hormones that control our appetite
Superclinics
We are facing an epidemic of chronic diseases, obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia. In the real world people just carry on with their normal life until their health deteriorates...
Integration trials
Surely the aim for any community is for its members to live a long and healthy life. Yet we are not doing that well with well over half the population...
Ignobels
I have created this section for health professionals. This may seem a little odd as I have no medical qualifications apart from being married to a medical doctor, who became...
Health Professionals
Why is it that some people are fit and healthy, enjoy a long health span with hardly a visit to the doctor while despite the sophistication of modern medical research...
Health span or Epidemic
Why is it that some people are fit and healthy, enjoy a long health span with hardly a visit to the doctor while despite the sophistication of modern medical research...
Change for the better
Gbiota, at its core, is still about paradigm shifting but the scale of the battle is just so much bigger. Chronic diseases are the biggest health problem across the globe....
Intelligence
Our gut-brain comprises trillions of cells which communicate with their neighbours to create swarm or group intelligence which regulates our bodies – our intelligent control system. If our gut brain...
Taste, hunger and healthspan
Is humanity in danger of extinction? Probably not. Is our modern comfortable lifestyle in danger of extinction? Definitely yes and it is happening right now. Can we do anything to...
Gut health
There are trillions of microbes of thousands of species in your gut. Each cell can communicate with its neighbour to create swarm intelligence which controls our bodies, including our appetite....
The Health Myth
Across the globe people are getting fat leading to an epidemic of chronic diseases. Here is why and what we can so about it. In our gut, we have trillions...
Fake food
An Introduction to the Gbiota Movement for a Healthier Future With eight billion people on Earth, food production has dramatically increased, yet humanity now faces two significant threats: climate change...
Health Challenge
Ask around “What is the biggest health challenge?” no not dinosaurs, you are likely to get the very short answer “fat” for the simple reason that the wrong fat in...
Your choice
We are at a crossroads and have two options. In option one we can live in a society dominated by marketing hype, where we buy health bars full of sugars...
Gbiota introduction
What is Gbiota? Gbiota is a social movement that aims to create a thriving, sustainable society with a food system designed for long, healthy lives. It emphasizes recycling over depleting...
Organics save us
Modern food is that it may be hygienic, triple wrapped in plastics, but it is inert lacking the microbes which form our gut-brain which regulates our appetite so we overeat...
Introducing the Gbiota technology
The Gbiota technology breeds beneficial microbes in “Wickimix,” a specially enriched soil, for growing nutrient-packed plants that enhance your gut biota that supports natural appetite regulation, combats chronic diseases, and...
Welcome
Thrive and survive The microbes in our gut form an integral part of the intelligent control system which regulates our bodies and is vital for health. In the past, these...
Changing the Health Paradigm
We are living longer, thanks to major advances in medical science. In the past people died, often when young, from infectious diseases now we die predominantly from chronic or non-infectious...
Mind and body
We are living longer, thanks to major advances in medical science. In the past people died, often when young, from infectious diseases now we die predominantly from chronic or non-infectious...
Game changer
As a celebrated engineer recognized for his groundbreaking work in Computer Aided Engineering, Colin’s expertise in adaptive systems sparked a revolutionary idea: What if chronic diseases like diabetes, obesity, and...
Summary
Food is the key to health. Junk food is tasty, convenient, inexpensive but not healthy. Genuine organic food may be healthy but is very expensive. But there is a third...
Essence
Chronic diseases, overweight, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia are the major health issue of our time. They are caused by the wrong fat in the wrong place. Conventional thinking is...
The Trial
We know that the world’s biggest health issue is the epidemic of chronic diseases, obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia and that these are caused by the wrong fat in...
Healthy food – intro
Junk food is tasty, convenient, inexpensive but not healthy. Genuine organic food may be healthy but is very expensive. But there is a third type of food which is both...
Community Benefit
My wife Xiulan, a medical doctor and surgeon became diabetic, the professional medical advice given to us was that diabetes is an irreversible chronic disease, it will steadily get worse,...
Ecosystems
We must create an ecosystem, a food ecosystem in which humans can thrive. Charles Darwin taught us that creatures evolve to thrive in their local environment. Humans now have the...
Chronic disease
Gbiota is a community benefit organisation aiming to prevent the current epidemic of chronic diseases, overweight, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia. These are all caused by the wrong fat in...
Health paradox
Chronic diseases, obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia cause a great deal of personal distress and cost Governments billions of dollars. They are very difficult to cure but can be...
Prevention better than cure
Two-thirds of the population are overweight, the wrong fat in the wrong place is the root cause of all chronic diseases. Diabetes is the fastest-growing disease with half a billion...
Health – prevention first
Across the globe, we are suffering from an epidemic of chronic or non-infectious diseases. We know that these chronic diseases are caused by the wrong fat in the wrong place...
Society
Two-thirds of the population are overweight, the wrong fat in the wrong place is the root cause of all chronic diseases. Health systems are creaking at the joints with not...
Food – we love it
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. What has gone...
Prevention
Across the globe we are suffering from an epidemic of chronic or non infectious diseases. Three out of four people die prematurely from a chronic disease. The social and economic...
Friendly bugs
Our bodies have an intelligent control system which regulates our bodies, particularly our appetite and immune system. Our gut is an integral part of this control system. If we have...
Welcome to Gbiota
We teach how to grow plants as pre and pro-biotics. That is the easy bit, understanding and applying the science of breeding beneficial microbes in a special soil, Wickimix largely...
Community Health
We are in the midst of an epidemic of chronic diseases, overweight, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia. They say eat less exercise more but that does not work. Our gut-brain...
Jenny
Jenny, one of our Gbiota members asked a simple question. I am told that my answer is one of the most important articles on how to sustainably grow healthy food...
The plan
There are two problems. The short-term problem is that our current food system is deficient in the microbes which form our gut biome and essential minerals which have led to...
Riddle
Look around the world and back over time and you will see the great riddle of three communities. We see low tech communities with a poor food system, lack of...
Applying technology
With all our modern technology and automated production capacity, we should only need to work a couple of days a week to have everything we need and live a healthy...
Applying Technology
With all our modern technology and automated production capacity, we should only need to work a couple of days a week to have everything we need and live a healthy...
Technology
I do hold this belief that technology should work for the benefit of the community and it is not. It may be making a handful of people rich beyond imagination...
Become a Healthy Food Ambassador
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...
Serious think about food
Has the world gone mad? We have mega companies spending billions of dollars on advertising so we buy food that makes us fat and sick and die before our time....
Think smarter
I want to sell you a concept. It is free you don’t have to pay me anything but you do have to think seriously about it for five minutes and...
Thrive and survive
At the start, the earth was just a dead inert rock. Then the microbiota appeared, we don’t know from where, but they broke down the rocks making the nutrients in...
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...
Gbiota Soil Blood, Flood-and-Flush Irrigation, and Foliar Spray
Last updated 8th August with section on foliar irrigation Our basic inputs are organic waste, manure and volcanic rock dust. All cheap, readily available and sustainable. The microbes, particularly the...
Breeding Wickimix
Last updated 8th August with section on making Wickimix in Gbiota boxes Wickimix is simply a growing medium, soil teaming with life and nutrients and is central to the Gbiota...
Tim Spector
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...
Enhancing gut health
This was made as a page by a professional graphics designer, I am republishing as a post as I like the graphics
Food not pills
A million years ago the first humanoids appeared, they had a food Eco-system based on eating plants from living soils. These microbes bred in the soil, protected them and they...
Library
List of all articles
Real food
Ever think about what food is doing to your body? There are foods for energy, replace parts as they age and wear and to feed our gut. There is more...
Making a Gbiota box July 24
Update on how to make Gbota boxes July 24
Gbiota overview
Pick and eat plants grown in living soil – that is the way to feed your gut-brain which controls your appetite and how much fat your body stores. The wrong...
The essence
Describes the underlying principles of the Gbiota movement
My teddy
The heartless massacre of ordinary people by powerful militia and the possibility of World War 3 cannot go unnoticed. Neither can the waves of hungry refugees moving across the globe...
The Great Food War
Will the power of mega-corporations that control our food system reign supreme leaving the community fat and sick and destroying civilisation as we know it as the supply of essential...
Feed your gut brain
We need the right sort of microbes in our gut to be healthy. The microbes in our gut communicate with each other to form our intelligent control system which regulates...
Community benefit
My wife Xiulan, a medical doctor and surgeon became diabetic, the professional medical given to us was that diabetes is an irreversible chronic disease, that will steadily get worse, we...
Does it work
Overweight, diabetes, heart attacks, and dementia all have a common underlying cause – the wrong fat in the wrong place. This is not because we have turned into little piggies...
Getting started
How to grow gut brain food and live a long and healthy life
Making a Gbiota box
Here I extract the key points from the many previous points and collect into one spost
Save 100,000 legs from diabetic amputation
I have set myself the target of saving 100,000 people from a diabetic leg amputation before the end of 2025. I know how to do this, I am an engineer...
Food crisis
Food is one of the major threats to humanity, not an absolute lack of food – we produce more than enough energy food, carbs, fats and sugars, to feed the...
Your turn
How to reduce 8 million amputation
User posts
Enables users to make posts
Why we get fat
We get fat because our gut-brain says so
Not little piggies
We don’t get fat and sick because we are little piggies and stuff ourselves with chicken wings, chips and ultra-processed foods. We get fat because we have deficiencies in our...
Eco-balance
Humans have evolved to be naturally not fat – it is not good in the survival stakes. Our bodies naturally sense when we are full and our gut manufactures hormones...
Compost – Bin or Bury?
It is just a sad fact of life that our modern food system is not working the way it should, which means reduced health span (the length of time we...
Food, health and wealth for all
I present a plan that will lead to a better life so we and our grandkids can live a happier and healthier life – the plan is about future food...
Why we need to act
People across the globe are suffering an epidemic of chronic diseases, obesity, diabetes, heart attacks, and dementia. It is the biggest health threat facing humanity (See Survival). The underlying reason...
Gbiota boxes – made easy
Developing a simple Gbiota box for people living in apartments has been the focus of my development work – Why? The world is very different to when I was born....
Survival
Humans are the great survivors. We are the dominant species on Earth, spreading across the globe to every corner of the Earth that is vaguely habitable. Now we are under...
Map
This is a map of the site to direct you to the most appropriate posts
Newsletter 11 March 2024
“Colin, we know you are trying to persuade people of the benefits of eating healthy food full of living beneficial microbes, but we already know that, and what we want...
Innovation and managing ignorance
I recently wrote an article rethinking food and diabetes that described a simple and inexpensive technology which could dramatically reduce the eight million amputations that occur every year. You may...
Learning plan
There are hundreds of posts and videos on this site. This post arranges the key posts into a convenient learning schedule
Rethinking food and diabetes
We have known for at least twenty years that Diabetes gets serious when fat levels in the Pancreas increase preventing the Pancreas from making insulin. All the experts say the...
The Gbiota project
Overview of the Gbiota strategy
Growers and gut biota
Microbes breed in the soil, enter plants which act as natural pre and pro biotics which we eat to form our gut biota. This process is the result of millions...
Recycle to survive
Round and round it goes For some million years humanoid creatures have survived on this planet by eating fresh plants grown in living soil. The way it worked is simple....
Learning experience
Homeostasis Many of my readers know that I am a bit OCDish about how our food system is compromising community health. The medical facts are simple, everyone has an inbuilt...
Become a Gbiota supplier
The modern chemical industrial food system is highly productive producing large quantities of standardised energy food at economic prices. But the food is inert lacking the essential microbes to feed...
Help wanted with digital marketing
Help wanted with digital marketing Gbiota interest is how to grow gut brain food. Few people are going to Google ‘how to grow gut brain food’ and if they do...
Prevention better than cure
The gut is a highly sophisticated organ that does much more than digest food. It forms part of a real brain which controls our bodies, particularly our appetite, what and...
Support
I often say that the process of growing gut brain food is easy and that is pretty much true but not as easy as tossing things from the shelves into...
Solving the food crisis
The world is suffering a food crisis, not in quantity – we are actually producing more food than the world needs – but in the quality that will lead us...
The best pro-biotic ever
What is the best pro-biotic ever, in fact the only one that really works for sure? Answer human breast milk. Puzzled scientists For many ears scientist were puzzled about some...
Food matters
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...
Hello
Gbiota Hello Many people know that chemical industrial agriculture and highly processes foods are not good for us. People react in different ways. Some people see this as their mission...
Gbiota 101
Gbiota basics – collecting organic waste to make labile compost – starting a new box – regenerating an old box
Gbiota overview 2024
Gbiota is an evolving technology and when some new bit of technology comes along I write a new article to describe what is new. This has led to hundreds of...
Join help
Explains the various membership levels and how to join
Try it
Just try it – it is neither expensive or difficult I am proposing that you make your own soil from food and organic waste, add mineral and microbes to create...
True Brain
Our gut is a true brain with intelligence. All those trillions of cells are communicating with each other like some super computer. Unfortunately we have no idea of the code...