Will Allen and Life-Integrated Systems
Nature is a series of connections. We recognized this when we moved from the “food chain” concept to a “food web,” each component intimately tied through consumption or waste to many others.
Many of our industrial processes and systems have lost sight of that interconnectivity. We have inputs and outputs for a thousand tiny processes, but few can understand the system, including the upstream and downstream effects. We accept pollution, waste, and resource degradation because our myopic approach to business considers anything outside the factory to be “someone else’s problem.”
That’s why I get so excited about philosophies like Lean, which integrates the big picture with the small day-to-day decision making. That’s also why I get excited by people like Joel Salatin and the way he seamlessly choreographs the life of his farm, achieving synergies that are always greater than the sum of their parts. His way is at once ordered and organic, acting more like an orchestra conductor than a heavy-handed foreman.
After watching Michael Pollan’s talk on PopTech, I noticed a related video by Will Allen. Will founded an urban agriculture program called Growing Power 25 years ago, and his results are just as inspiring as Salatin’s. He is the same kind of leader, integrating and encouraging these natural systems to be more of what they already are, rather than force-fitting them to some invented standard. His approach goes beyond agriculture, and the impact of his program ripples through an underprivileged community. What started as a compost pile and greenhouse expanded to become a children’s reading program, crime deterrent, and organic food co-op.
Check out the video, and begin to appreciate all of the amazing interconnections. It’s the first time I’ve seen an aquaponics setup, growing fish in a greenhouse. Worms from compost, water for plants, nitrogen from fish, and around it goes.
PopTech 2009: Will Allen from PopTech on Vimeo.
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