Sustainable Agriculture London
Health, Nutrition and Preventative Medicine through Permanent Agriculture

Sustainable Agriculture London

Based on the life and works of Sir Albert Howard and from our research farm at Well End South Hertfordshire, we offer a range of consultancy options for farmers, growers, Eco-villages, schools and communities in the West and in developing countries. Write to Richard:  rhiggins@ggi.org.uk

 

Write to us with your request for any of the following. We offer on farm training for HH-1 windrow composting and mineral replenishment to protect you animals and crops from disease and HH-2 Hot Box composting for small holdings, that digests all manner of obnoxious wastes from pets and farm animals alike. We also offer our alternative sanitation system HH-3 that does not involve water in the treatment process. Water is now too valuable a commodity to keep flushing down toilets. While todays cities are lumbered with this problem increasing numbers of sustainable solutions are being effected with DRY sanitation solutions (HH-3)

Lead consultant Richard Higgins NDA, PDC.,

Our Agricultural/horticultural System  establishes  Arbuscular Mycorrhizae into all systems of Sustainable Agriculture automatically. We also offer:

  • Soil Micro and Macro biodiversity, Organic farming and nutrient management
  • Research and Information Management
  • Contour Water Management/Watershed Management
  • Analysis and Problem Solving
  • Project Management and Organization
  • Interpersonal and Leadership Skills
  • Scientific Writing and Reviewing of research papers

 

Brief summary of Howard’s History

Howard’s work was extensive and centred on the sustainability of farming systems.  He previously cured TB in cattle and prevented the spread of Foot and Mouth Disease in his cattle and treated and healed those that contracted the disease, with over 21 years of experiments. His work on crop breeding was also award winning and his work on fertility making was revolutionary being based on the ancient technology of the Chinese.

Our farms are too big

With extensive experience in presenting and practising the fertility making work of Sir Albert Howard we recommend for all small holdings the HH-2 Horticultural System. This system allows smallholdings to become more closed loop by relying on waste generated in vast volumes by society.  You can even help society by taking out of the current landfill system all manner of waste products from all types animals and pets and produce a fast safe and an optimum fertiliser that is still so far un-known to the modern world. This science was practised and documented by Howard 100 years ago and has been formulated for the modern day health regulations by Richard Higgins the author of this web site. The easiest and most cost effective way to recycle wastes is to do so locally and so more and more small farms and smallholdings provide the answer. Besides cutting transport and pollution these systems can produce large amounts of high quality foods that are the solution to increasing problem of mental and physical disability that is so common today.

This web site is informative in all these fields and can benefit anyone who is seeking an a more enlightened form of agriculture.

Besides taking strain off the overloaded food production system that is inbuilt into the West which is produced by extensive and chemically supported growing systems we offer a completely different system that follows an ancient aphorism that states:  All things from the Earth should be returned to the Earth.

The science of the system is in agreement of the the World’s leading authority on the Soil Food Web, Dr. Elaine Ingham and she has our book on the management of this system. While her understanding of the science involves study of soil samples through a microscope the Howard-Higgins system obtains very similar or the same results without the use of a microscope. This will appeal to a greater number of subsistance farmers in developing countries who are battling with soil (carbon) loss and climate change.

Write to us

with your request for installation of the HH-2 Horticultural System or for any of the above requirements that you may have. Depending upon the locality of any waste stream that you can identify (we can help you) you can also turn the HH-2 system into a financial advantage due to the potency of the end product HH-4. This material is so effective in any growing system and is being used by top landscape gardeners to stabilize and renovate landscapes and gardens.  The SuperFast composting system  converts dead or nutrient poor soil into rich micro-organically active soil in three months, from whereon you will need ever decreasing chemical fertilisers  to maintain a sustainable cropping system. This system can kick start any  growing system and can double and triple your production and reduce crop pests and disease on all soil types to an absolute minimum.

New land aquisitions for Permaculture design, and food production, Eco-villages and CSA projects (Community Supported Agriculture) and school projects are also catered for.

Food for Cities

Vegetable growing in your garden for growing pest and disease free crops by growing straight through grass, without digging the soil. Grow large and super healthy vegetables right on your doorstep or on roof tops without the use of any chemicals.

write to the Lead Consultant Richard Higgins: rhiggins@ggi.org.uk

Bio Fertile Farming Consultancy

Bio Fertile Consultancy team

Bio Fertile Consultancy team

Bio Fertile Consultancy team working in Spain profile

The members of our consultancy also have other web sites.

Short Bio of Richard Higgins

Richard Higgins, Founder of Bio Farming Consultancy was raised on a Somerset farm in the UK. He attained his NDA, at the Royal Berkshire College of Agriculture. Later he completed a ten year postgraduate study of the works of Sir Albert Howard while travelling and teaching from China to Hawaii. Sir Albert is now considered the Grandfather of organic farming and his research was from Permanent Agriculture of the east, which is where the term Permaculture was derived. Richard has become a world leading exponent of his work. He presented the Howard (memorial) lecture 2009 at the University of Coventry, for Nigeria to ‘Go Organic’ (transcript sent to HRH The Prince of Wales, who made an immediate response). HaIti Film II was also sent to HRH The Prince of Wales. Richard spent three months at the Haiti earthquake disaster being the lead consultant for the NGO ‘New Directions Foundation’ where he quickly established the Howard-Higgins Thermophilic composting system HH-2, which can also render human waste into safe and potent fertiliser in 30-90 days and avoids the standard practice of moving it from one hole in the ground to another or sitting anywhere for long periods of time (unproductive). The waste is essentially pathogen free in 14 days and at testing at 90 days – none have ever been found. He is the consultant to various groups and runs a Centre of Excellence in South Hertfordshire, in the green belt of north London.

Attracting the interest of several Universities Richard has now pulled together partnerships to attract funding to take this work into Africa, Mozambique being the first port of call.

What is healthy food

Howard’s work detailed that really healthy soil produces really healthy plants. Healthy plants are those that are not attacked by pests or disease without using any kind of insecticides organic or otherwise. This is the true measure of the health of plants (Howard).

The effects of eating healthily grown food are cumulative and so generation by generation the health of the population will either increase or decrease.

The cause of disease

Howard states in his lifetime’s work, which included 30 years research and development in India, that if animals are fed crops that are imported to the farm that may not have been grown on humus rich soils, (depleted or inferior soils), they will not be imbibing the nutrition that humus rich soils will provide. Those that have had the greatest care taken to replenish and sustain them. Therefore it is imperative for farmers today to start smaller closed loop farming systems, otherwise known as mixed farming. All crops grown on humus rich soils will imbibe good health upon their consumers. To find full reference to this and the history of Howard’s success in many countries of the world we hold the title Farming and Gardening for Health or Disease. This is temporarily unavailable, price £10.00 . To purchase write to rhiggins@ggi.org.uk

Modern high tech farms that are chemical dependant can also take advantage of Howard’s principles of fertility making, although it may seem a long time ago that Howard carried out his work, we at Sustainable Agriculture London are doing the same work today and remarkably we are finding that with very little man hours we are achieving the same results that Howard did. Therefore the system is viable and relevant today. The scaling up of the fertility making process is easily possible with the machinery already found on the modern farm, but with the addition of the mixed farming approach. This supports the case for a smaller sustainable and more robust closed loop farming systems that we generally do not see today. Large chemically dependant systems with their proudly reduced manpower to manless gantries and more efficient sprayers on bigger fields results in a more fragile farming system which plunders the resources of the soil and depend more and more inputs from other farms to keep the system going.

This cannot be called sustainable or in any way conservation farming.

Without Nature’s bank of indigenous weeds and wild flowers and herbs for carefully balanced fertiliser making which preserves species micro biological diversity cannot be maintained. Modern farmland is becoming impoverished and the whole einvironemt is suffering and is dependant on the ever increasing mining solutions for artificial inputs such as N,P and K and more and more expensive scientific research to try and put things right.

“If we don’t change the way we’re doing things – we’re going to go on getting the same results.”

And today it’s loss of species and indigenous flora that is on everybody’s lips. Without the required pollinators 25% of certain crops can be lost. This is a disaster in farming economics. So here it is clear that the link between soil health, the maintenance of species diversity and productivity are relevant to profit. This is the valuable balance that is required in Sustainable Agriculture. (We have lost 50% of species in the last 40 years)

Mainstream farming

When you reduce some of your land area from yield, approx. 15%, and divert it to bio mass production and introduce some mixed farming you will be able to maintain a sustainable system that will not, under normal circumstances, suffer the catastrophic crop failures we have seen in recent years due to drought in the UK. You will also greatly reduce your fuel bill and be able to slash your chemical inputs to zero.

In the long term, and that is what is required of agriculture, we need sustainability not just profitability. We have to see further than the quick fix in crop production to satisfy the bank manager and the supermarkets.

Real agriculture means sustainable agriculture  – an agriculture that preserves the source of life and the species and plants that we all depend on for our food and habitation.

Richard Higgins, author of this web site.