Agriculture

Sustainable By Nature
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Agriculture

Virtually all island nations struggle to develop a food secure agriculture sector, the only exception to this Cuba, which is blessed with a land mass that supports large mechanical field agriculture. All other islands have significantly less land to work with and what they have is held by hundreds of small less than an acre land holders. These small land holdings barely provide sustenance for the families that farm them let alone generate any meaningful income to live on. What is needed is the introduction of a plant growing technology that is both affordable and easy to use, one that is environmentally friendly and extremely productive. Feed An Island Crop Circle agricultural technologies do that and more. Crop Circles are scalable, able to grow abundantly on as little space as 5 feet square up to an acre or more. Crop Circles are climate and soil adaptable, able to blend into just about any environment and grow food sustainably. Crop Circles also use 90% less water and fertilizer.

Crop Circle Gardens

Small space agriculture is rarely profitable or productive. Backyard spaces and containers simply don’t grow enough food due to design limitations and the inefficient use of valuable resources like water and fertilizer. Crop Circle gardens are the perfect solution for growing a lot of produce in small spaces and places. Crop Circle Gardens target the top of each root with timed applications of nutrient throughout its growing cycle. Targeted application of nutrient minimizes root development in favor of plant development, which encourages big plant growth, flowering, and fruit set.

Targeting nutrient to plants growing in plant containers prevents “root-bound”, a condition that curbs growth and production in container gardens. Containered Crop Circles elevate plants above plant damaging water flows from excessive rainfall. A specialized trellis called a Tomato Volcano, supports vining plants like tomatoes tomato as they grow and bear fruit. The unique design of the Tomato Volcano permits plants to branch and vine naturally as they grow over the trellis eliminating the need for plant ties.

Lateral tie downs spaced about the perimeter edge of the Tomato Volcano prevents removal of trellis and container from wind blow. A single Crop Circle Garden can produce more than 1,000 cherry tomatoes, 200 bell peppers, and 25 pounds of bush beans.

Crop Circle Farms

Crop Circle Farms is another space adaptive agricultural technology designed specifically for island small farm land holders. They are exponentially more productive than a Crop Circle Garden. A 50 x 50 foot Crop Circle Farm can grow 200 times more food than a 5 x 5 foot Crop Circle Garden, for example.

Small land holder farms that struggle to make a profit from their hard work can quickly become a thing of the past. Our smallest farm sets up in a day and produces its first harvest in just 60 days. Once they are set up, Crop Circle Farms are easy to use and maintain, requiring little or no work between planting and harvest.

Each Crop Circle Farm features a spiraling row of vegetables growing on top of a raised box 12 inches above the surrounding ground. The box is fabricated using laminated 2 x 6, which are wrapped with a woven permeable material to protect the wood from rot. The raised box is filled with enriched growth medium an inch or two above the height of the box. After the soil settles to the level of the box, it is covered with an air and water permeable cover, secured to the exterior perimeter of the box every 12-inches with removable fasteners so the cover can be removed to work the soil if needed. A ground cover that covers the area that the soil filled box sits on prevents weed growth. Three-foot-long stainless-steel pins through the wood secure the box in place on top of the cover preventing removal by hurricane force winds. The fasteners used to secure the cover to the box do the same.

A flexible 250-foot irrigation line waters plants that grow in openings spaced alternately along the line. Spacing of plant openings and/or spiral loops depend on plant type and variety. Onions would be spaced closer together than beans, for example.

Drill Don't Till Agriculture

At the beginning of each planting cycle, a depression is cavitied out from each grown cover opening to a depth of 8-inches and filled with a naturally fertilized growth medium. Drill Don’t Till Agriculture saves a tremendous amount of fertilizer – as much as 95% less than conventional agriculture, which has become vitally important an as costs of fertilizer continues to rise and runoff from man-made fertilizer continues to pollute the natural environment.

Only the roots of plants are irrigated with this system, which saves a tremendous amount of water – just 2 cups a day are required for plants that in each opening. Cavitated Drill Don’t Till Agriculture regenerates the soil not only contained by the cavity but for at least 12 inches all around, building a subterranean ecosystem that rivals the most virgin of natural environment soils.

Crop Rotation

At the onset of each growing season, the cavities are replenished with fresh soil and essential nutrients. This process allows for the cultivation of a diverse range of plant species, differing from those grown the previous season. This method essentially establishes a form of crop rotation that proves advantageous to both the soil's health and the plants' growth. By continuously altering the types of plants cultivated, the soil remains fertile and nutrient-rich, while the plants benefit from a more balanced and sustainable growing environment.

FEED AN ISLAND

Agriculture

Non-nomadic societies dependent on agriculture for their sustenance rely on a stable environment for survival. A catastrophic event or sustained change to the environment in the past has caused mass migrations and reductions in populations. Today, with over 7 billion people populating the planet, events, and changes such as these would have sudden and devastating effect.

In the aftermath of the pandemic, broken supply chains and food shortages are placing enormous pressure on island nation natural resources like water, soil natural fertilizer, many of which are either exhausted, in short supply or polluted. As a result, food security has quickly become the number one issue in the world, particularly for the islands of the Caribbean.

Since the “green revolution” of the 1960’s, global agriculture has been organized under a massive corporate conglomerate that controls most of the arable land on the planet. The system runs on “oil” and as such is dependent on the free flow and price of this environmentally toxic hydrocarbon. Oil not only provides fuel to run farm and transport machinery, but it is also a vital component in the manufacture of fertilizer and packaging. Any significant rise in the price of oil per barrel translates into higher costs for food.

Today, we are witnessing in real time the hold that oil has on the global farm economy with effects that trickle down to the consumer reflected in food prices that have seen a doubling in less than 12 months. Food inflation, unheard of a year ago, is now a common term used to describe the food pain of everyday people when they check out at the supermarket.

Globalization of the world’s food supply has left many countries dependent on imports, sometimes from half a world away. Reliance on a half century of imports has severally damaged local agricultural, which was once the backbone of each country’s economy. Most family farms are gone, replaced with large contiguous tracts of land. Responsible land stewardship has been replaced by large scale mechanized agriculture utilizing application after application of man-made, oil-based, artificial fertilizers that pollute ground water and deaden the soil.

In times of need, there won’t be vegetables for sale next to these farmerless fields. Instead, people will fend for themselves and take what they need even though they know it may noy be entirely healthy for themselves and their families.

Island nations experience both challenges and advantages simultaneously. While their limited arable land constrains their capacity to produce sufficient food, their deep cultural connections to the land encourage the adoption of sustainable agricultural systems and practices that benefit both the environment and economy.

In the future, growth in food production will depend largely on finding ways to utilize unused urban land spaces to grow food.

According to the United Nations, there are 2,469,501 cities with over 30,000,000 urban farm and gardens. They grow 10% of the world’s food.

Urban Agriculture utilizes city spaces too small for open field farm production to grow food. In many cities around the world urban agriculture has become a social movement strongly supported by both community and government.

Despite their relatively small size, urban farms grow a surprising amount of food having distinct advantages over their rural cousins that include minimized plant damage from insects, ability to harvest produce at its peak and plant more densely because they are hand cultivated.

Crop Circle Farms could double urban agriculture production to 20 percent by 2030 if just a quarter of the world’s urban farms began farming small city spaces with Crop Circles.

AA Crop Circle Farm can reduce the carbon footprint of our food, conserve water, help create localized food systems, lower dependance on imports, reduce the warming effects of urban heat islands, reduce demands on city infrastructure and lower labor costs. Crop Circle Farms are soil regenerative and biodiverse that surpass the production of rural farming operations 4-fold.

A Crop Circle Garden can feed a family of 4 and provide nutritious, wholesome food year-round on the islands. Intended for use in yards at home where people live, Crop Circle Gardens grow a wide variety of produce including leaf vegetables like Callaloo, bush vegetable green beans, eggplant, zucchini and peppers, vining vegetables like tomatoes, watermelon, cucumber, and Cho-Cho, and climbing plants like pole beans and Pidgeon peas.

People want to know where their food comes from, how it was grown and by whom. They want food that is nutritious, healthy, and good for them. They want food that is grown locally, in the communities where they live.

TThey’re even willing to pay a little more for the confidence that their food is of high quality, helps create jobs where they live; safeguards the environment and protects and conserves precious resources like soil and water.

In many parts of the world, it’s not just about fresh produce; it’s about availability. Most cities lost their local growers’ generations ago to development and now depend on imports trucked in from wherever for their food supply.

As a result, there’s a huge investment and business opportunity high above everyone’s heads.

With all but a few farm acres lost to development, the only space left to grow is high above the ground; on top the roofs of cityscape high-rises. Feed An Island proposes a transformative change to rooftop agriculture by colonizing city roofscapes with high in the sky farms and gardens to create a building-by-building supply chain of nutritious, fresh produce for villages, towns, and cities of the world’s islands.

Crop Circle Farms & Gardens are lightweight and their small footprint features make them ideal for roofs of all types, new and old. A dumbwaiter constructed outside the building can supply a “rooftop to parking lot” marketplace for the public. Alternatively, a “rooftop market” can be built to sell to building residents, resorts, and local restaurants.

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