David Blume

David Blume is an inventor, researcher, organic farmer, alcohol expert, author, teacher and doer with decades of experience at the cutting edge of permaculture, regenerative agricultural technology, and especially alcohol fuel as it fits into local-scale ecological no-waste solutions that, replicated, solve so many of the Earth's seemingly unsolvable problems. Your support allows Dave to articulate, teach, present, and promote important information and big solutions. Often, the information and technologies he tells you about have been undermined and sabotaged by big oil and other corporate entities intent on squeezing money out of people—scared that people will wake up and realize they don't need fossil fuels. We can have a carbohydrate economy instead of a petroleum economy. We can literally put power in the hands of the people. Dave started his ecological training young. He and his father Jerry grew almost all the food their family ate, organically—on a city lot in San Francisco in the mid-’60s! Dave taught his first ecology class in 1970. After majoring in Ecological Biology and Biosystematics at San Francisco State University, he worked on experimental projects, first for NASA, and then as a member of the Mother Earth News Eco Village alternative building and alternative energy teams. When the energy crisis of 1978–79 struck, Dave started the American Homegrown Fuel Co., an educational organization that taught upwards of 7000 people how to produce and use low-cost alcohol fuel at home or on the farm. KQED, San Francisco’s Public Broadcasting System station, asked Dave to put his alcohol workshop on television, and together they spent two years making the ten-part series, Alcohol as Fuel. To accompany the series, Dave wrote the comprehensive manual on the subject, the original Alcohol Can Be A Gas! Shortly after the first show aired, in 1983, oil companies threatened to pull out their funding if the series was continued. KQED halted the distribution of the series and book (see this current book’s Introduction for the whole story). In 1984, Dave founded Planetary Movers, an award-winning social experiment and commercial venture, well known for productive activism (e.g., on behalf of Nicaragua’s Sandinistas), as well as for pioneering practices of progressive employment, green marketing, and the sharing of a percentage of profits for peace and the environment. In 1994, he started Our Farm. This community-supported agriculture (CSA) farm was also a teaching farm, based on sustainable practices, that hosted over 200 interns and apprentices from all over the world, and held regular tours for thousands of people. Our Farm grew as much as 100,000 pounds of food per acre, without a tractor, using only hand tools, on a terraced, 35-degree slope. The International Institute for Ecological Agriculture (IIEA), founded by Dave in 1993, is dedicated to healing the planet while providing for the human community with research, education, and the implementation of socially just, ecologically sound, resource-conserving forms of agriculture—the basis of all sustainable societies. The IIEA teaches permaculture, an ethical system of ecological land design, which incorporates the disciplines of agriculture, hydrology, energy, architecture, economics, social science, animal husbandry, forestry, and others. Dave is currently Executive Director of the IIEA. He has consulted for a wide array of clients, including governments, farmers, and companies interested in turning waste into valuable and profitable products. Recent work includes a feasibility study for a macadamia growers’ cooperative in Mexico, and a water harvesting/reforestation project in Antigua, West Indies. He is working with a farming college connected to the government of Ghana to develop alternative fuels, to train agricultural extension agents in organic farming, and to design an ecological strategy to stop the Sahara Desert from advancing. He also recently inspired the city of Urbana, Illinois, to hold a conference between builders, lenders, developers, municipalities, building inspectors, architects, and engineers, to coordinate the mainstreaming of natural building technologies. He has helped the Ford Motor Company demonstrate alcohol-fuel-powered vehicles at a series of U.S. events. “Farmer Dave” is often called upon to testify before agencies on issues related to the land and democracy. He is a frequent speaker at ecological, sustainability, Peak Oil, and agricultural conferences in the Americas, and has appeared in interviews over 1000 times in print, radio, and television. Dave firmly believes in Emma Goldman’s view of, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be in your revolution,” and he can frequently be found on the dance floor when he isn’t flagrantly inciting democracy. Dave is the author of the classic book, Alcohol Can Be a Gas!: Fueling an Ethanol Revolution for the 21st Century. He's the founder of Whiskey Hill Farms, where he grows high-value organic specialty crops, and Blume Industries, pioneers in regenerative agriculture methods and technologies, including turning agricultural waste into fuel, animal feed, carbon dioxide, and valuable industrial products. Blume's 14-acre organic farm, Whiskey Hill Farms, is a hub where we design, innovate, develop, and share resources, education, technology, and services that accelerate adoption of regenerative agriculture practices. Our goal is to develop low-cost, local-scale models of intelligently designed regenerative agricultural systems and promote their wide replication. Farmer/operators find our models at least as profitable as large agribusiness farming. Benefits to the community include enhanced and expanded economic development, ecological food production, organic fertility and water management, and energy resilience. We focus on the practical use and understanding of new biological technology, regenerative methods, tools, and resources. Projects at the farm include a state-of-the-art local-scale alcohol distillery, and related products such as CO2, an integrated methane digester and marsh that provides input to make secondary alcohol, a process for creating complete balanced protein for animals or humans from plants, mariculture, fertilizer made from local agricultural waste, seaweed farming, greenhouse construction, soil heating with heat exchangers, and soil regeneration deep treatments and inoculations. Together, working in our own communities, we can solve many of the systemic problems plaguing the Earth. We can quit polluting, stop the wars for oil, and move far, far away from fossil fuels forever.