A journey to a better world

In the November blog I have tried to explain about the difference between deserts and manmade deserts. A manmade desert is in fact degraded farmland, caused by the influence of man. Our view is that  if man can destroy it, man can recover it. That is a simple truth. This is what Groasis stands for: make the 2 billion hectares (5 billion acres) of degraded farmland productive again.

In 2003 I started my journey to reach this objective. First of all, I developed the Groasis Waterboxx. Then, with the help of many others and as the result of dozens (successful and failed) of pilot plantings, we discovered that just using the Groasis Waterboxx wasn’t enough. As a result we developed the Groasis capillary drill. Then we learned that the roots didn’t develop well – they didn’t grow vertically downwards - and we discovered that we needed to prune them to reach this. We also found that if you add 20 (in clay soil) to 80 liters of water (in volcanic sand soil) one day before planting in your planting hole, the speed at which the root grows downwards (where it can find water) triples. 

Subsequently, we experienced that we need Growmaxx mycorrhizae, because you cannot work with fertilizers in dry circumstances and plants need food and minerals. The next challenge was raising the available amount of water in a simple way. This challenge is being solved at this moment and mid 2015 we will introduce the Groasis Mini-terracedixx to do this cheaply, quickly and easily. This machine will stop the erosion of slopes, and increase the harvest of rainwater by 150 to 300%. This will increase the growth of trees to a previously unimaginable speed.

We also identified that a big difficulty is not the planting itself, but managing the circumstances faced by the young plant/tree afterwards. The planting with the Groasis Waterboxx is actually quite easy. The big problems after planting are wind, sandstorms, evaporation, light intensity, cold nights, frost and grazing animals. All these “enemies” for the post-planting period, have to be combated. With the Growsafe Telescoprotexx we have introduced an incredibly cheap solution that solves all these problems at once.

During 2015 we will also introduce the first commercial version of the Groasis Greenboxx. With this degradable Waterboxx, made from recycled paper, we take away the necessity of removing the Waterboxx after planting. The Greenboxx will also be very cheap to use.

In addition to all these developments I wrote a book to inform people about the capacity of trees to help us solve, partly or wholly, the 7 Challenges that mankind faces today. They are:

•    Erosion

•    Poverty

•    Food crisis

•    Climate change

•    Unemployment

•    Rural-urban migration

•    Sinking ground water levels

The 7 Challenges can be partly helped to solve if we plant the 2 B hectares of manmade degraded farmland with economically interesting trees – producing fruit, oil, wood, medicines - on accessible areas and ecologically interesting trees on difficult to access areas. We call this “The Treesolution”. I invite you to read the book if you want to know more about the opportunities that the Treesolution offers. For further reading, we have created a Dropbox folder with very interesting documents, which is accessible here!

Spread this message to your friends please and help us implement the Treesolution!

Pieter Hoff,

Green Musketeer