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Biointensive
Microagriculture
The human body is still more efficient than any machine we have
been able to invent... Using hand tools may seem to be more work,
but the yields more than compensate.
John Jeavons1

e had our first experience with raised beds during the


2009 and 2010 seasons. In the end, we were happy with
our results, but we must admit that we came across several
significant obstacles in search of reliable data. The first was the absence of
professional gardening resources that covered raised-bed cultivation. We
read a lot of books on permaculture, but the literature out there was primarily geared toward people who want to develop their edible landscape on
a home scale.
We found little that answered our questions about the subtleties of
raised-bed cultivation. Was it true that you never really needed to work the
soil in a bed? Would keeping it covered with a mulch, and letting fertility
increase naturally, really be enough? After two seasons, we found that some
of our beds were compacted, others not. Those that had the benefit of a
significant contribution of compost remained flexible and airy. Now we
decompact our beds in spring with a broadfork, and repeat the operation if
necessary between plantings.2
We also had questions about fertility. We often found contradictory
statements in professional organic gardening literature, permaculture
books, and testimonies from old-timers. No need to add compost,

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declared a permaculture instructor; decomposed mulch is enough. I confess to being uncomfortable with black-and-white statementsthen and
now. Maybe he was right, but maybe not. There were so many parameters
to consider. The fundamental question of fertility seemed to deserve more
nuanced answers. What is the initial fertility of the bed? How many different crops does it produce?

Paradise, for Slugs


As we sought answers, our gardens became prone to a population explosion of
slugs and voles, for whom mulch is a godsend. We had created a garden of
Edenfor slugs. The damage they caused was significant, making salad greens
and sprouts unfit for market. We had to find solutions to deal with these downsides of mulch. It turned out that, like most of the strategies we explored,
mulch management is based on a set of varied and complementary measures.
Natural farming was taking us into a world of increasing complexity
not surprising, since life itself is complex. We had to let go of standards, rules,
and prescriptions, and enter into a detailed observation of each crop and its
interaction with its environment. If there are rules, we now realize, they
should be metarules, conceptual benchmarks to creating a bio-inspired system. This perspective is fairly new in the world of contemporary agriculture,
since one of the characteristics of agricultural production is that the farmer
has, increasingly, become a performer of directives from technicians.
But each locale is unique. Each farmer, too. And permaculture attaches
great importance to the fact that a project should be designed to best match
the place and the people who are doing it. The author who inspired us the
most during these first two years was Patrick Whitefield, a farmer and
English permaculturist. One of his rich books is The Earth Care Manual, a
work of 470 pages with dense, clear text, based on a permaculture approach
adapted to temperate European countries.3 It addresses interesting nuances
for a professional gardener growing in colder European countries.

Accept Being Small


Another thing that made our situation uncomfortable then was the fact
that the working ratio between our cultivated area and what we could

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Biointensive Microagriculture
actually maintain was not good. The surfaces of our beds were too large to
be cultivated in a very careful manner: There werent enough of us to keep
up with the work. To get the best out of your beds, the care factor is absolutely crucial. We had continued to expand our gardens, thinking we were
still too small to earn a decent living from our business. We had not yet
realized the potential productivity of perrenial raised beds. Working by
hand, it is impossible to properly treat a large area. A small, very well-cultivated area will be more productive than a large one that is not maintained.
But this we had not yet understood.
There is an inherent logic in each approach to agriculture, which must
be understood. Otherwise, a farmer will experience the disadvantages of
each system. The mechanized organic market gardener may, with a tractor,
quickly prepare an acre, cover it with plastic using a sheeting reel, and
transplant thousands of plants with a mechanized planter. The same
amount of time spent on raised beds only allows us to prepare a few dozen
square-meter plots. If we seek to do more, as with the tractor, we are doomed
automatically. It is pointless trying to match a machine more powerful than
us. It makes more sense to explore what we can do with our hands that a
tractor cannot accomplish.
Poorly maintained crops will be covered with weeds and subject to erosion, and all the hard work of bed construction, fertilization, seeding, and
transplanting will have been in vain. You will harvest nothing and almost
everything will have to be redone. A garden bed is a space that is costly in
labor and justified only if it has a bountiful harvest.
Eventually, we would start to find the right balance, moving closer to
the most productive surface size and configurationsomething that well
come back to in the pages ahead. We cannot overemphasize how important it is to achieve peak productivity. It can determine the success or failure
of a farm.

John Jeavons, the Man Who Grows More Vegetables


After two years of growing with raised beds, we looked for new influences.
Exploring alternative agricultural practices became, once again, an exciting
journey through countries, cultures, and time. We did not imagine embarking on such an involved investigation to become farmers!

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A milestone in this journey was reading John Jeavonss book How to
Grow More Vegetables than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land than You
Could Imagine.4 I must confess that reading this title made me skeptical at
first. Also, with the cover bearing the words more than 500,000 copies
sold, I thought at first that it seemed too commercial, too American, and I
put it aside for a year before opening it. What a pity! I could have been
reading the result of forty years of research by his nonprofit organization,
Ecology Action. Its pages are most instructive.

A Bit of History
In the 1920s, a young and talented English gardener, Alan Chadwick,
delved into the heritage of horticulture on the old continent to unearth its
traditions. He trained with former Parisian market gardeners who had
developed surprisingly productive techniques in Paris and the suburbs.
Chadwick also studied biodynamics from its founder, Rudolf Steiner.
Steiner formulated the foundations of biodynamic agriculture in a series of
eight lectures called the Agriculture Course, in 1924. Chadwick synthesized the two approaches and called it the biodynamic French intensive
system. He perfected his practice for some fifty years, in Europe, Africa,
and America.
At the beginning of the 1960s, Chadwick created a garden with students
from the University of California at Santa Cruz. Now called the Alan
Chadwick Garden, it is maintained by the universitys Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems. (Perrine was able to visit this exceptional
school.) In three years, they transformed an arid and uncultivated land into
a thriving little paradise, where Chadwick began teaching his method. This
great horticulturist had the honor of passing a rich tradition from the European continent to the United States. Curiously, while the heritage of former
Parisian market gardeners had been forgotten in France, their knowledge
was being further developed in the United States. In the midst of the countrys agricultural gigantism, Chadwick affirmed proudly: Just grow one
small area, and do it well. Then, once you have it right, grow more!5
In 1972, a young team formed by Chadwick created a microagriculture
research and teaching center managed by Ecology Action. A pillar of the
organization, Jeavons continues to study, practice, publish, and train others

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Biointensive Microagriculture
well into his seventies. Ironically, his method has remained little known in
France until recent years, and only one French person, Rachid Boutihane,
was trained by him.

A Damning Report
John Jeavons and his team named their growing method grow biointensive. He describes the approach as agricultural miniaturization, an attempt
to counter the problems brought on by industrial agriculturewhich, he
stresses, destroys the soil at an accelerated rate, losing between 6 and 16
tons of soil for every ton of food produced. Mechanized organic farming,
according to Jeavons, is little better: It destroys the soil seventeen to seventy
times faster than nature creates it. By buying food that is cultivated at the
expense of destroying topsoil, writes Jeavons, we become complicit in this
destruction. He stresses that, according to various studies, if we continue to
destroy soil at this pace humanity will have degraded all the arable land on
the planet in the next century. The biointensive method creates soil at a
substantial rate.6
The arable land that each person has to meet his or her nourishment
needs is shrinking. It is becoming increasingly clear, notes the Ecology
Action team in the preface to Jeavonss book, that grow biointensive
Sustainable Mini-Farming will be an important part of the solution to starvation and malnutrition, dwindling energy supplies, unemployment, and
exhaustion and loss of arable land...7

A Key Question
Therefore, Jeavons asks this crucial question: What is the minimum surface on which a person could grow enough crops to give him all of his food,
clothes, building materials, compost, seeds, and income for a year?
It is difficult to answer this question, as the data may vary from one
place and from one person to another. But this is the kind of questions
that soon we no longer will be able to avoid, when the scarcity of resources
will force us out of globalization and require us to meet our basic needs
locally. As for our food needs, the forty years of research by Jeavons and
his team suggest that with biointensive microagriculture, about 370

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square meters cultivated is enough to grow all the food needed by a person for a year while providing all the materials for compost needed to
maintain fertility. This calculation is based on a vegetarian diet. Why
then look for macro responses to the enormous challenges of our times?
asks Jeavons. Rather, try to develop micro-responses at the individual
level, to meet our own needs.
The research of Ecology Action is focused on individual self sufficiency
rather than on the field of professional agriculture. Yet the potential of
microagriculture is such that Jeavonss approach has inspired diverse development programs throughout the world, making farmers more likely to
cultivate small surfaces. In the 1970s, Jeavons believed that areas of 500 to
2,000 square meters allowed net incomes of $5,000 to $20,000 per year. A
woman from British Columbia earned about $400 a week by growing vegetables for restaurants on only 225 square meters.
These numbers would surprise most French market gardeners. We are
not used to assessing the productivity potential of microagriculture. The
study that we have undertaken at La Ferme du Bec Hellouin will confirm
these results in our own contextthe France of the 2010s.

Building the Soil, Preparing Our Future


Jeavons quotes Gandhi: To forget how to dig the earth and tend the soil is to
forget ourselves.8 The attention given to maintaining and developing cultivated land is one of the most interesting points of the biointensive approach.
For Jeavons, it is important that each garden creates the conditions for its own
fertility. A thorough study, taking into account both the nutritional needs of
people and the nutritional needs of the soil, led the Ecology Action team to
define a simple rule: Part of the terrain must be devoted to high-yield crops
that produce biomass used to make compost for fertilizing the entire garden.
Thus driven, the garden can be sustainably self-fertile.
The golden rule of biointensive microagriculture is to divide cultures as
follows:
Sixty percent of the cultivated area is dedicated to biomass
plants, able to provide the bulk of the materials to be composted
for the whole garden. These plantssuch as grains, beans, and

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sunflowersprocure carbon (the main component of the
organic material) and calories.
Thirty percent of the cultivated area is dedicated to tubers and
other vegetables rich in calories, such as potatoes, leeks,
Jerusalem artichokes, garlic, parsnips, sweet potatoes, and
oyster plants.
Ten percent of the surface is dedicated to various vegetables that
provide vitamins and minerals: salad greens, carrots, radishes,
and turnips, for instance.
It should be noted that grains are grown in raised beds and usually transplanted. In Europe, wheat was once commonly grown in gardens with
yields of up to 100 quintals per hectare (against about 70 today; 1 quintal is
about 200 pounds), without any form of mechanization.9

An Eight-Point Approach
The grow biointensive method was formulated in eight points.10
1. Deep soil preparation, double digging. Double digging is an old
gardening technique that unpacks the ground two shovel-scoops
deep. In the biointensive method, the soil layers are not mixed;
this technique allows the formation of permanent garden beds
with ideal conditions, including fertility and deep decompacting.
2. Composting. Self-fertilization is the goal. Composting is
accomplished by layer, carefully, alternating beds of carbon-rich
material (branches, leaves, straw), nitrogen-rich material (grass,
peelings, and food scraps), and earth.
3. Intensive planting. Vegetables are planted systematically,
staggered to fit more crops and create a favorable microclimate
between the soil surface and leaves.
4. Companion planting. Crop associations foster plant diversity
that keeps the garden healthy while raising its level of
productivity.
5. Carbon farming. Plants absorb carbon from the atmosphere as
they grow. Once they are composted, that carbon is stored in
the soil.

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6. Calorie farming. Producing calorie-rich crops allows farmers to
maximize their efforts toward providing for their food needs
from small areas.
7. Open-pollinated seeds. The gardener looks for self-seeding varieties
(pollinated by insects, birds, or wind) and favors older varieties.
8. A whole-system gardening approach. The method must be
performed in its entirety, as a matter of consistency and efficiency.

Effectiveness of Biointensive Microagriculture


The grow biointensive method was evaluated for decades. According
to Jeavons, the results speak for themselves. He cites in his book the following data:
The yields obtained by the grow biointensive method are, on
average, two to six times higher than those of US agriculture,
and up to thirty-one times higher for some crops.
Water requirements are reduced by 67 to 88 percent per unit of
production.
Purchased fertilizers (that is to say, not produced on the farm)
are diminished by at least 50 percentor even obliterated.
Fossil fuel use is reduced by 94 to 99 percent.
The calories generated per unit of area are two hundred to four
hundred times higher.
Income per unit of area is at least doubled.
It is clear that a manual approach to agriculture may well shake up preconceived ideas. Many may think that mechanization increases efficiency,
but does it really, if crops are obtained at the cost of huge losses of topsoil?
John Jeavons asks the real questions and proposes viable alternatives to the
dominant system, accessible to everyone.

Applications at La Ferme du Bec Hellouin


Careful and regular reading of Jeavonss book has helped us gain confidence
in the potential of microagriculture. We cannot say this enough: The

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obstacles have been mainly in our own heads. Weve had to decondition our
mental formatting to evolve our practices.
Sufficient soil thickness was a problem on our farm. Only in the vegetable garden in front of the house were we able to test the double-digging
technique. Constructing a permanent raised bed with this technique is
obviously a plus, since plants benefit from decompacting the soil between
60 and 80 centimeters (2432 inches) deep, deeper than the most powerful
tractors can go. Working time to build the bed is approximately tripled. We
have not observed a difference in returns relative to our other beds, but
other factors are likely to influence the results.
Jeavons and Chadwick emphasize meticulous care for crops at every
step: preparing the soil, producing seedlings, transplanting, and so on. This
care factor is one of the parameters that creates a competitive advantage
between a market gardener and a tractor. Microagriculture is only productive if the work is very neat. This goes against a certain train of thought that
is in vogue in permaculture circles, and argues that natural farming is to
let nature take its course, and that there is little work for the gardener.
I must admit that I am doubtful. That may be true for someone who just
wants to cultivate something to feed themselves, but to produce sixty vegetable baskets every week, throughout the year, Im skeptical. That taking
advantage of the ecosystem allows, eventually, for a reduced workload is
undeniable. Going with the flow of life, trying to understand what is good
for the soil, good for vegetables, good for people and for the whole world of
the living, is the foundation of natural farming. But nature does not spontaneously grow the sophisticated plants that are our vegetables. The plants
that we are used to eating are usually the result of a long co-evolution
between a wild plant and humans; they need our care and demand fertility,
water, and sun.

Perennial Plants, Wild Plants


Leaving more space for perennial plants, which consume less labor and
fewer inputs, makes a lot of sense. In nature, a vast majority of the plants are
perennials; a Western diet made up almost exclusively of annual plants is
nonsenselike any specialization, its risky. So we aim to expand the range
of perennial vegetables grown on the farm. The spinach-like patience dock

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(Rumex patientia), for example, is a hardy perennial that grows very fast in
early spring and allows several successive cuts.
It stands to reason that wild plants should be part of our diets. Besides
the fact that they grow by themselves without asking for anything from
anyone, they are generally more concentrated in active ingredients and
nutrients than our selected vegetables.11 But the market is currently very
limited. Professional growers are required to meet the expectations of their
customers and cannot hope to revolutionize their eating habits overnight
though they can, perhaps, foster change over time. Meanwhile, our market
garden offerings must be beautiful and must also include the conventional
fruits and vegetables that have become integral components of our shortsighted food culture.
Permaculture has everything to gain by enlisting the approaches of
Jeavons, and vice versa. In my humble opinion, the grow biointensive
method can be enriched by permaculture concepts. Some important
pointsthe overall design of the garden, microclimates, the role of trees
and water, the benefits of a permanent mulch, and moreare touched on
either briefly or not at all by Jeavons. Perrine and I tried to incorporate the
wonderful techniques of biointensive microagriculture in the broader context that permaculture offers, and the results have proven very satisfactory.
There is, however, another great North American pioneer who inspired
us to an even greater extent: Eliot Coleman.

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