www.growbiointensive.org/index.html

Biointensive gardening, biointensive mini-farming, Ecology Action Research Garden, double-dug raised beds, Grow Biointensive methods, mini-farming workshops and tours, bointensive teacher training, sustainable vegetable gardening, How to Grow More Vegetables... , worldwide soil loss and soil conservation, and much more.

www.seattletilth.org/sustgrow/biointsv.html

Biointensive Gardening

On this page you will find:

Biointensive Mini-Farming–a sustainable solution to growing food.
Ecology Action–the non-profit that does Biointensive research and education.
Local Biointensive Resources

1. Biointensive Mini-Farming–a sustainable solution to growing food.
The goal of Biointensive gardening is to recycle all nutrients, grow compost crops to build and maintain a healthy soil, and provide nutritious food for people.

www.johnjeavons.info/index.html

GROW BIOINTENSIVE
Workshops
Taught by John Jeavons

GROW BIOINTENSIVE Workshops offer an excellent opportunity to acquire a wealth of information on the most efficient gardening method we know. This information has been gathered from over twenty-eight years of research, and is currently in use in over 130 countries around the world.

John Jeavons has been the Director of the GROW BIOINTENSIVE Mini-Farming program for Ecology Action since 1972. He is the author of HOW TO GROW MORE VEGETABLES, FRUITS, NUTS, BERRIES, GRAINS, AND OTHER CROPS, the primer on sustainable Biointensive Mini-Farming, which is currently available in English, Spanish, German, French, Arabic, Hindi and Russian.

www.minifarms.com/index.html

Market Gardening, Mini-farming, Mini-ranching
The information contained here is provided to promote raised bed agriculture (rba) and minifarming. My emphasis is on using organic and biointensive growing methods to achieve more production with smaller acreage.

journeytoforever.org/iirr.html

Bio-intensive gardening cuts malnutrition in the Philippines
In response to the 1984 economic crisis in the Philippines, the International Institute for Rural Reconstruction (IIRR) developed a bio-intensive gardening program in the Province of Negros Occidental to increase food availability for Negros islanders.

www.panasia.org.sg/iirr/ikmanual/negros.html

Increasing food production in Negros, Philippines
In 1984, when global sugar prices plummeted, more than a quarter of a million people in Negros Occidental, Philippines, lost their jobs. Hunger and malnutrition spread. At the depth of the crisis the provincial government and the United Nations Children's Fund asked IIRR to help. IIRR and local organizations responded in 1986 with an intensive program to teach thousands of rural families to grow their own food through bio-intensive gardening. In 1990 the project was expanded to include livestock production, sea farming, and pond fish production.

www.brown.edu/Departments/World_Hunger_Program/hungerweb/WHP/briefing/awards.html

The International Institute of Rural Reconstruction

"Not relief, but release" is the motto of the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction (IIRR). The private educational organization, headquartered in the Philippines, works to improve the quality of life of the rural poor in Africa, Asia and Latin America by developing practical solutions to rural problems.
...
* Integrated farming systems. In two Philippine villages, IIRR is developing and testing environmentally sound integrated farming technologies with the active participation of the villagers. Small farm plots include multi-purpose trees, a variety of vegetables and fruits, rice, livestock and fish. With the aid of the farmers, dry and wet season crop data have been recorded, monitored and analyzed, providing baseline data for further experiments.

* Bio-intensive gardening. Trials have been conducted in the Philippines on pest management, soil fertility management, semi-temperate vegetables and growing vegetables off-season. A total of 25 vegetable species have been tested for adaptability to chemically-free vegetable production. Results of the trials have been encouraging. For example, the mean yield of tomatoes was 1.9 kilograms per square meter - a kilogram higher than the national average. There was a total annual yield of more than 3,500 kilograms of different vegetables in a plot of 1,400 square meters.

fadr.msu.ru/rodale/agsieve/txt/vol6/1/art7.html

How to Garden 'Bio-Intensively
In response to the 1984 economic crisis in the Philippines, the International Institute for Rural Reconstruction (IIRR) developed a bio-intensive gardening program in the Province of Negros Occidental to increase food availability for Negros islanders. Two years after bio-intensive gardening was introduced in 1986, the rate of malnutrition had dropped from 40% to 25%.

Bio-intensive gardening aims to rebuild and maintain soil fertility through nutrient cycling, diversified cropping and deep-bed preparation on small-scale plots (200-500 sq. feet). Bio-intensive gardens contain a diverse range of indigenous crops which minimizes the opportunities for pest outbreaks and preserves indigenous seed varieties. Families with these gardens can save cash that they would normally spend on food or non-food essentials for the family. Bio-intensive gardens may also produce enough food for families to sell the surplus and still meet their own nutritional needs.

www.bountifulgardens.org/growbiointensive.html

Biointensive Gardening & Mini-Farming
What Is Biointensive?
Nature prefers to grow plants together intensively. Nature likes life everywhere. Thus when we have an open area without plants in it, weeds and other plants magically appear. This is the way trees, grains, herbs, flowers and vegetables grow when left to themselves. It is part of the biological life process. The Chinese observed this over 4,000 years ago, and imitated this living balanced complex diversity in their farming. That was one of the reasons that Asian agriculture remained sustainable for at least 4,000 years. About 2,000 years ago the Mayans, Bolivians, Peruvians and Greeks took similar initiatives. People sooner or later seem to have a kind of universal urge to plant crops as nature does with biological intenseness — Biointensively!

Biointensive Mini-Farming is a way of growing crops and soil simultaneously, with a resulting production of healthy, nutritious food for people, and a production of healthy soil for your garden. Biointensive techniques are the result of 10,000 years of successful field trials. "Modern Agriculture" since the mid-1800’s has not used this practical wisdom and catastrophic soil loss has resulted. Biointensive techniques are based on thirty years of patient research by our non-profit, Ecology Action, plus results of Biointensive mini-farms in over a 100 countries.

www.information-engineer.com/loop/bfr.html

BIOINTENSIVE FOR RUSSIA
Biointensive for Russia was formed in July 1993 by Carol Vesecky and Liza Loop. Their organization was form to support the publication in Moscow of 50,000 copies of a fine Russian translation of John Jeavons' authoritative book on Biointensive gardening and minifarming, HOW TO GROW MORE VEGETABLES.... BFR offers a service enabling books to be mail-ordered from the U.S. and sent out from Moscow. To date, Americans have presented over 250 copies of KAK VYRASCHIVAT' BOL'SHE OVOSCHEI... to their Russian-literate friends living in Eurasia.

While continuing the book service described above, Vesecky turned her efforts in another direction, beginning in July 1994 when John Jeavons suggested bringing Eurasians to his model farm in Willits, CA, USA for training. An e-mail announcement gathered 9 applications for the November 1994 workshop, but ultimately only Larissa Avrorina of Ecodom succeeded in attending. (Ecodom project information link will be added soon.) Avrorina's visit led to the ISAR/USAID-funded joint project "Toward an Integral Home and Garden" and to the arrival of three more participants from St. Petersburg in March, 1995.

www.users.bigpond.com/ucrc/PROGRAMS/SA/ACTIONAID.html

REPORT on ACTION AID WORKSHOP
KIBOSWA DEVELOPMENT TRAINING CENTRE

Introduction

In the month of August, 8th to 22nd, 1999, UCRC had an opportunity to participate in one of the training courses organized by Action Aid Kenya at Kiboswa Development Training Centre. The course was on bio - intensive gardening. UCRC was represented in the course by two of the staff from the food security desk.

The training session was an eye opener for our staff who participated in the two weeks course. For quite sometimes UCRC has been involved in promoting Permaculture and designing as one of our project activities.

The two weeks course touched on various topics such as kitchen gardening, intergrated pest management (IPM), animal production amongst many others