many years ago when I first started
growing a vegetable garden using my own
unique straw bale gardening method
instead of soil I had no idea how that
would transform backyard gardening for
millions and how I just may have set the
wheels in motion to one day help to end
world hunger hunger is still a major
problem here in the United States as
well as around the world but the reality
of hunger today may not be what you
think it is hunger doesn’t necessarily
mean that a population has nothing at
all to eat but instead it often refers
to malnutrition where people simply
aren’t eating anything close to a
balanced diet a lack of fruits
vegetables and leafy greens can be at
the root of many diet related diseases
but fresh fruits and vegetables require
a level of care and refrigeration after
harvest it simply isn’t possible in many
remote lands world food programs provide
shelf stable carbohydrate rich food
supplements usually made from peas beans
grains and soy certainly they fill
stomachs but they often exacerbate
diseases like heart disease cancer
diabetes even promote obesity it’s an
unfortunate fact that obesity in the
United States and around the world has
become far too common among people who
rely on food aid as their primary source
of nutrition the exciting news that I’m
here to share with you today is how this
revolutionary but simple method of
gardening is already providing a unique
and viable solution to this problem all
around the world it might surprise you
to know that the world’s farmers already
supply plenty of food to feed the entire
Earth’s population
the problem is in distributing that
harvest world food programs are their
biggest challenge today is in getting
some kind of food into the hands of
these 800 million hungry people every
day
before it spoils people in remote
locations often have limited access to
transportation and refrigeration so a
steady continuous supply of fresh fruits
and vegetables is really essential to
avoid that food spoilage and fill that
food security and nutrition gap without
spoilage the ultimate solution would be
for us to teach all of these hungry
people how to grow food themselves right
where they’re already located using only
the very limited resources that they
have available with zero outside inputs
now that’s a really really lofty goal I
agree but it can be accomplished history
tells us that most revolutionary ideas
at their inception are often considered
crazy and outlandish rather than
rational and effective straw bale
gardening was no different
origination of this idea this concept to
plant vegetables and decomposing bales
of straw took years to fully develop but
it’s since proven effective and it’s
been adopted by gardeners all around the
world the genesis of this idea was on
the farm where I grew up where we’d
spend a couple of days each summer
baling the oat straw after we harvested
the grain now normally farmers use straw
as livestock bedding because the dry
stalks have this amazing capacity to
absorb and hold moisture which kept the
livestock dry and healthy once ago I
would have a bale with a broken string
so it would get tossed against the bar
and shortly we get rained on and then
attacked by insects and worms and fungi
and mold eventually colonized by
bacteria the inside of the Bale would
begin to break down and it would become
what looked like early-stage soil I
would notice that the tallest healthiest
thistles on the whole farm were always
the ones that grew out of those
crumbling bales years later I went to
plant bought my first house and I went
to plant a vegetable garden but I
discovered unfortunately my property had
terrible soil so I thought about
building raised bed gardens instead but
at the time I didn’t have $4 much less
400
dollars to build proper raised beds but
what I did have was this recurring
memory of these giant thistles growing
out of these rotting bales back on the
farm so that’s when I began my first
experiments with what I started calling
my straw bale garden I quickly
discovered that growing vegetables in
bales means no weeding fewer problems
with insects and diseases and the raised
height less bending these bales had an
amazing capacity to hold moisture but
yet crops planted in the bales couldn’t
be flooded the bales would warm up in
the spring as they began to decompose
and that helped me plant earlier and it
made the roots grow more quickly because
there was no soil required for this
method of gardening this meant I could
set these Gardens up anywhere without
tools and because of the quick learning
curve most straw Bell gardeners were
harvesting within just sixty to ninety
days it’s no wonder this method spread
quickly people around the world in the
early days of social media began sharing
images of their straw bale Gardens with
towering tomatoes and cabbages the size
of small children now you might be
wondering how can a bale of straw
provide the nutrients that a vegetable
plant needs to grow it’s important to
understand that nothing grows well if
you plant it into a fresh bale of straw
the bales must first go through a short
period of cellular deconstruction more
commonly called decomposition before
they’ll support root growth insects
worms fungi mold and heavy lifter of all
the decomposers bacteria quickly go to
work metabolizing the straw bale keeping
the bales wet for that first two weeks
and feeding the bacteria what they like
to eat which is nitrogen usually from a
source of organic or traditional
fertilizer will encourage them to
reproduce they quickly colonize the Bale
and then they begin to break the stalks
of straw down into cells and those cells
down into molecules these charged
molecules are
idiot Lee available to be absorbed
through the roots and become part of a
new vegetable plant growing out of that
Bale this is a lot of science and a lot
of exciting biology but this next part
gets me really excited despite the name
straw bale gardening in fact these bales
they don’t need to be composed of straw
at all they could be made from baled
grass or sugarcane stalks or leaves or
grass clippings or lake weeds
essentially any organic material
gathered nearby which means anyone
anywhere on earth can gather leaves and
grass from their surrounding environment
for free compress that material into a
bale bind that Bale with a string or
wire begin the two-week preparation
conditioning process the Bale begins to
decompose releases those molecules
they’re absorbed through the roots of a
brand-new vegetable plant within 60 days
crops are being harvested from those
handmade bales this gentleman on the
left
his name is NARR nove he runs an NGO in
Cambodia called Ockendon they’re charged
with helping to mitigate disasters in
rural parts of the country if you talk
to a Cambodian farmer they’ll tell you
that the biggest disasters they face
each year are the floods and droughts
right after the rice is harvested the
monsoon rains begin most of the farmland
ends up covered with about three meters
of flood water when those floods
dissipate and the drought comes it
brings no rain and with no access to
irrigation water growing crops during
the drought isn’t possible either so now
they have this four to five month period
where there’s a food production gap and
malnutrition is rampant the solution we
proposed while it seems simple now this
was revolutionary to these farmers when
he brought them the idea first we would
dig a large pit on their farm we use the
soil excavated from the pit to build a
mound flattened out on top this plateau
was built to a height to exceed the
highest annual flood level we then used
simple wooden box to make bales and
compress the waste rice straw to make
bales put the bales up on top of this
plateau after the two-week conditioning
period these bales were then planted now
normally when the monsoon rains arrive
it saturates the soil and it kills the
roots of any vegetables planted in the
soil but because of the extraordinary
drainage capacity of these bales the
water runs right out the bottom of the
bales and lets air back in which allows
the roots of the vegetable plants to
thrive even during the monsoons when the
inevitable drought does arrive each of
these farmers has a large pit right next
to the garden which is still retaining
floodwater that they can now use for
irrigation enabling this year-round
production of vegetables is not only
helping to fill the food security gap
but it’s also giving another source of
income to these farmers because they can
sell any excess harvest during this
these lean months one of the other big
side benefits is this waste rice draw
now has value to these farmers who
traditionally believe it or not had
resorted to burning their fields to
remove the straw before the next
planting good ideas spread quickly
especially when they provide a simple
solution to fill an empty stomach straw
bale gardening since I was in Cambodia
for a short visit my friend and taught
my friend Nara this method straw bale
gardening has spread quickly there he’s
taught more than 3000 farmers how to
implement this method it’s also built
many demonstration gardens at schools
where the children take notes draw
pictures and then they go home teach
their parents and grandparents this
method because 75% of the population in
Cambodia is still involved in
agriculture it’s likely that these
children will one day farm the same land
face the same floods and droughts as
their ancestors did except now they’ll
have a skill that will enable them to
grow vegetables year-round and avoid
this malnutrition not far away in the
Philippines people also suffer from food
insecurity but their 75% of the
population lives in cities
rather than rural areas the urban poor
oh no land no tools they have very
limited access to water
they have little knowledge of growing
anything and no money to invest in any
type of gardening project my friend Joan
of epochal Barr is a young graduate of
an agriculture technology program in the
Philippines and she helped us set up
some demonstration straw bale Gardens at
her alma mater the University of
southeastern Philippines and at Asus
Polytechnic she also helped provide
assistance to several urban gardeners
who just wanted to start their own straw
bale Gardens so together they made bales
using waste rice straw at no cost and
then they position those bales very near
the participants home so it was very
convenient and secure because there’s no
money available to buy too often to buy
refined fertilizers to begin this
process instead many of these bales are
treated with mother nature’s most
available free 12 percent nitrogen
liquid fertilizer that each of us
produces a few times each day this
yellow liquid is perfectly sterile and
while it might give off a little ammonia
gas it’s very effective at feeding the
bacteria inside these bales Joanie Lee
also teaches her gardeners how to save
seed from their existing produce and
then treat that seed to use it for their
next planting she encourages them to
save and recycle waste water from
cooking washing dishes bathing and carry
that outside very conveniently to their
garden and keep it watered the simple
instructions she provides have most of
her gardeners planting within just two
weeks and beginning to harvest just 60
days later but the real momentum comes
when one successful gardener inspires an
entire neighborhood to plant their own
bales and because the startup cost is so
low even free no ngos or governments or
banks or other sponsorship is needed to
continue growing these strong successful
straw bale Gardens
the straw bale gardening method is
providing a simple sustainable
productive solution to overcome all of
these difficulties and to grow food for
a family or an entire neighborhood with
zero outside inputs or investment food
insecure populations here or anywhere
can quickly easily learn this method and
because the startup costs are so low
they can set these up anywhere in a
parking lot on a rooftop even over top
of previously contaminated urban soils
and within sixty to ninety days fresh
fruits and vegetables are already having
a huge impact on healthy diets people
and societies are never truly
independent and free until they can grow
their own food supply without that
ability governments politicians even
tribal leaders will always control their
populations much more easily by limiting
their food supply then with even the
most powerful weapons hungry people
spend their days concerned only about
food and finding food to stifle the
cries of their children lucky for us in
this room today it’s likely we’ll never
experience this level of hunger
firsthand but a short walk around a city
or a town near where you live will most
likely bring you to a neighborhood where
a straw bale garden providing a bounty
of fresh vegetables would have a huge
impact on food security and healthy
diets the food grown that’s measurable
but what’s much more difficult to
measure is the astounding positive
impact that gardening success can have
on one’s self esteem and on an entire
neighborhoods level of hopefulness
growing a garden can bring a person or a
society back from the brink of
starvation not just with nourishment for
their bodies but with nourishment for
their souls I’m certain that you know
someone who could benefit from the
healthy produce of a straw bale garden
or you may know of a group or an
organization that you could help to
implement this method you may want to
start a strawberry in your own backyard
next spring
and see just how simple it really is to
grow your own fresh fruits and
vegetables
don’t hesitate because the seed of an
idea first planted so long ago has now
taken really deep root and with your
help we can continue to plant this idea
around the world and watch it grow to
benefit not just backyard hobby
gardeners but to help fill the food
security gap for people everywhere where
hunger the worst of all diseases could
finally be eliminated
thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause] [Music]
growing a vegetable garden using my own
unique straw bale gardening method
instead of soil I had no idea how that
would transform backyard gardening for
millions and how I just may have set the
wheels in motion to one day help to end
world hunger hunger is still a major
problem here in the United States as
well as around the world but the reality
of hunger today may not be what you
think it is hunger doesn’t necessarily
mean that a population has nothing at
all to eat but instead it often refers
to malnutrition where people simply
aren’t eating anything close to a
balanced diet a lack of fruits
vegetables and leafy greens can be at
the root of many diet related diseases
but fresh fruits and vegetables require
a level of care and refrigeration after
harvest it simply isn’t possible in many
remote lands world food programs provide
shelf stable carbohydrate rich food
supplements usually made from peas beans
grains and soy certainly they fill
stomachs but they often exacerbate
diseases like heart disease cancer
diabetes even promote obesity it’s an
unfortunate fact that obesity in the
United States and around the world has
become far too common among people who
rely on food aid as their primary source
of nutrition the exciting news that I’m
here to share with you today is how this
revolutionary but simple method of
gardening is already providing a unique
and viable solution to this problem all
around the world it might surprise you
to know that the world’s farmers already
supply plenty of food to feed the entire
Earth’s population
the problem is in distributing that
harvest world food programs are their
biggest challenge today is in getting
some kind of food into the hands of
these 800 million hungry people every
day
before it spoils people in remote
locations often have limited access to
transportation and refrigeration so a
steady continuous supply of fresh fruits
and vegetables is really essential to
avoid that food spoilage and fill that
food security and nutrition gap without
spoilage the ultimate solution would be
for us to teach all of these hungry
people how to grow food themselves right
where they’re already located using only
the very limited resources that they
have available with zero outside inputs
now that’s a really really lofty goal I
agree but it can be accomplished history
tells us that most revolutionary ideas
at their inception are often considered
crazy and outlandish rather than
rational and effective straw bale
gardening was no different
origination of this idea this concept to
plant vegetables and decomposing bales
of straw took years to fully develop but
it’s since proven effective and it’s
been adopted by gardeners all around the
world the genesis of this idea was on
the farm where I grew up where we’d
spend a couple of days each summer
baling the oat straw after we harvested
the grain now normally farmers use straw
as livestock bedding because the dry
stalks have this amazing capacity to
absorb and hold moisture which kept the
livestock dry and healthy once ago I
would have a bale with a broken string
so it would get tossed against the bar
and shortly we get rained on and then
attacked by insects and worms and fungi
and mold eventually colonized by
bacteria the inside of the Bale would
begin to break down and it would become
what looked like early-stage soil I
would notice that the tallest healthiest
thistles on the whole farm were always
the ones that grew out of those
crumbling bales years later I went to
plant bought my first house and I went
to plant a vegetable garden but I
discovered unfortunately my property had
terrible soil so I thought about
building raised bed gardens instead but
at the time I didn’t have $4 much less
400
dollars to build proper raised beds but
what I did have was this recurring
memory of these giant thistles growing
out of these rotting bales back on the
farm so that’s when I began my first
experiments with what I started calling
my straw bale garden I quickly
discovered that growing vegetables in
bales means no weeding fewer problems
with insects and diseases and the raised
height less bending these bales had an
amazing capacity to hold moisture but
yet crops planted in the bales couldn’t
be flooded the bales would warm up in
the spring as they began to decompose
and that helped me plant earlier and it
made the roots grow more quickly because
there was no soil required for this
method of gardening this meant I could
set these Gardens up anywhere without
tools and because of the quick learning
curve most straw Bell gardeners were
harvesting within just sixty to ninety
days it’s no wonder this method spread
quickly people around the world in the
early days of social media began sharing
images of their straw bale Gardens with
towering tomatoes and cabbages the size
of small children now you might be
wondering how can a bale of straw
provide the nutrients that a vegetable
plant needs to grow it’s important to
understand that nothing grows well if
you plant it into a fresh bale of straw
the bales must first go through a short
period of cellular deconstruction more
commonly called decomposition before
they’ll support root growth insects
worms fungi mold and heavy lifter of all
the decomposers bacteria quickly go to
work metabolizing the straw bale keeping
the bales wet for that first two weeks
and feeding the bacteria what they like
to eat which is nitrogen usually from a
source of organic or traditional
fertilizer will encourage them to
reproduce they quickly colonize the Bale
and then they begin to break the stalks
of straw down into cells and those cells
down into molecules these charged
molecules are
idiot Lee available to be absorbed
through the roots and become part of a
new vegetable plant growing out of that
Bale this is a lot of science and a lot
of exciting biology but this next part
gets me really excited despite the name
straw bale gardening in fact these bales
they don’t need to be composed of straw
at all they could be made from baled
grass or sugarcane stalks or leaves or
grass clippings or lake weeds
essentially any organic material
gathered nearby which means anyone
anywhere on earth can gather leaves and
grass from their surrounding environment
for free compress that material into a
bale bind that Bale with a string or
wire begin the two-week preparation
conditioning process the Bale begins to
decompose releases those molecules
they’re absorbed through the roots of a
brand-new vegetable plant within 60 days
crops are being harvested from those
handmade bales this gentleman on the
left
his name is NARR nove he runs an NGO in
Cambodia called Ockendon they’re charged
with helping to mitigate disasters in
rural parts of the country if you talk
to a Cambodian farmer they’ll tell you
that the biggest disasters they face
each year are the floods and droughts
right after the rice is harvested the
monsoon rains begin most of the farmland
ends up covered with about three meters
of flood water when those floods
dissipate and the drought comes it
brings no rain and with no access to
irrigation water growing crops during
the drought isn’t possible either so now
they have this four to five month period
where there’s a food production gap and
malnutrition is rampant the solution we
proposed while it seems simple now this
was revolutionary to these farmers when
he brought them the idea first we would
dig a large pit on their farm we use the
soil excavated from the pit to build a
mound flattened out on top this plateau
was built to a height to exceed the
highest annual flood level we then used
simple wooden box to make bales and
compress the waste rice straw to make
bales put the bales up on top of this
plateau after the two-week conditioning
period these bales were then planted now
normally when the monsoon rains arrive
it saturates the soil and it kills the
roots of any vegetables planted in the
soil but because of the extraordinary
drainage capacity of these bales the
water runs right out the bottom of the
bales and lets air back in which allows
the roots of the vegetable plants to
thrive even during the monsoons when the
inevitable drought does arrive each of
these farmers has a large pit right next
to the garden which is still retaining
floodwater that they can now use for
irrigation enabling this year-round
production of vegetables is not only
helping to fill the food security gap
but it’s also giving another source of
income to these farmers because they can
sell any excess harvest during this
these lean months one of the other big
side benefits is this waste rice draw
now has value to these farmers who
traditionally believe it or not had
resorted to burning their fields to
remove the straw before the next
planting good ideas spread quickly
especially when they provide a simple
solution to fill an empty stomach straw
bale gardening since I was in Cambodia
for a short visit my friend and taught
my friend Nara this method straw bale
gardening has spread quickly there he’s
taught more than 3000 farmers how to
implement this method it’s also built
many demonstration gardens at schools
where the children take notes draw
pictures and then they go home teach
their parents and grandparents this
method because 75% of the population in
Cambodia is still involved in
agriculture it’s likely that these
children will one day farm the same land
face the same floods and droughts as
their ancestors did except now they’ll
have a skill that will enable them to
grow vegetables year-round and avoid
this malnutrition not far away in the
Philippines people also suffer from food
insecurity but their 75% of the
population lives in cities
rather than rural areas the urban poor
oh no land no tools they have very
limited access to water
they have little knowledge of growing
anything and no money to invest in any
type of gardening project my friend Joan
of epochal Barr is a young graduate of
an agriculture technology program in the
Philippines and she helped us set up
some demonstration straw bale Gardens at
her alma mater the University of
southeastern Philippines and at Asus
Polytechnic she also helped provide
assistance to several urban gardeners
who just wanted to start their own straw
bale Gardens so together they made bales
using waste rice straw at no cost and
then they position those bales very near
the participants home so it was very
convenient and secure because there’s no
money available to buy too often to buy
refined fertilizers to begin this
process instead many of these bales are
treated with mother nature’s most
available free 12 percent nitrogen
liquid fertilizer that each of us
produces a few times each day this
yellow liquid is perfectly sterile and
while it might give off a little ammonia
gas it’s very effective at feeding the
bacteria inside these bales Joanie Lee
also teaches her gardeners how to save
seed from their existing produce and
then treat that seed to use it for their
next planting she encourages them to
save and recycle waste water from
cooking washing dishes bathing and carry
that outside very conveniently to their
garden and keep it watered the simple
instructions she provides have most of
her gardeners planting within just two
weeks and beginning to harvest just 60
days later but the real momentum comes
when one successful gardener inspires an
entire neighborhood to plant their own
bales and because the startup cost is so
low even free no ngos or governments or
banks or other sponsorship is needed to
continue growing these strong successful
straw bale Gardens
the straw bale gardening method is
providing a simple sustainable
productive solution to overcome all of
these difficulties and to grow food for
a family or an entire neighborhood with
zero outside inputs or investment food
insecure populations here or anywhere
can quickly easily learn this method and
because the startup costs are so low
they can set these up anywhere in a
parking lot on a rooftop even over top
of previously contaminated urban soils
and within sixty to ninety days fresh
fruits and vegetables are already having
a huge impact on healthy diets people
and societies are never truly
independent and free until they can grow
their own food supply without that
ability governments politicians even
tribal leaders will always control their
populations much more easily by limiting
their food supply then with even the
most powerful weapons hungry people
spend their days concerned only about
food and finding food to stifle the
cries of their children lucky for us in
this room today it’s likely we’ll never
experience this level of hunger
firsthand but a short walk around a city
or a town near where you live will most
likely bring you to a neighborhood where
a straw bale garden providing a bounty
of fresh vegetables would have a huge
impact on food security and healthy
diets the food grown that’s measurable
but what’s much more difficult to
measure is the astounding positive
impact that gardening success can have
on one’s self esteem and on an entire
neighborhoods level of hopefulness
growing a garden can bring a person or a
society back from the brink of
starvation not just with nourishment for
their bodies but with nourishment for
their souls I’m certain that you know
someone who could benefit from the
healthy produce of a straw bale garden
or you may know of a group or an
organization that you could help to
implement this method you may want to
start a strawberry in your own backyard
next spring
and see just how simple it really is to
grow your own fresh fruits and
vegetables
don’t hesitate because the seed of an
idea first planted so long ago has now
taken really deep root and with your
help we can continue to plant this idea
around the world and watch it grow to
benefit not just backyard hobby
gardeners but to help fill the food
security gap for people everywhere where
hunger the worst of all diseases could
finally be eliminated
thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause] [Music]
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