Making Sustainable Ag Accessible For All
By Jim DiCarlo, Founder, Each One Teach One Farms
My friend Matt Lynch recently said to me that “growing your own food is one of the most radical and revolutionary acts that you can do.” I wholeheartedly agree with Matt’s profound statement, as I believe many of the challenges faced by humanity become much easier to solve when people have food security. Matt calls it the quiet revolution, and Each One Teach One (E1T1) Farms is here to empower the masses to take part in it.
I started E1T1 Farms in 2010 with the mission of making sustainability easy and accessible to the masses.
Inspiration to start this company came after seeing the tremendous impact of teaching my seventh-grade class about organic gardening and sustainability. This experience, along with the trials and errors of my own personal path toward a more sustainable and self-sufficient lifestyle, drove me to reach more people with this information by making it easy to understand.
E1T1 Farms offers school programs, classes and workshops on a variety of sustainable agriculture topics such as starting a backyard garden or composting. We also use our website and social media platforms to educate and engage with the community.
In line with the sustainability-made-easy mantra, E1T1 Farms also offers the Bokashi Bucket. This is a kitchen composting system that enables people to easily recycle 100 percent of their food waste inside their homes without foul odors or pests.
With the help of donations from the community, E1T1 Farms recently launched Throw To Grow. Throw to Grow is a food waste recycling project that implements a greener way to manage food waste and to address our continuing landfill overflow problem. A pilot site has been established at Hawaii Pacific University’s Hawaii Loa Campus, where 100 percent of cafeteria food waste is being recycled into high quality soil.
I also am visiting schools on Oahu to help teach kids and the community that abundant waste can be an abundant resource.
You can find E1T1 Farms online at EachOneTeachOneFarms.com. You also can find me in person at Haleiwa and Hawaii Kai farmers markets. Locally, the Bokashi Bucket can be purchased at Kale’s Natural Foods in Hawaii Kai and North Shore Organic Gardening in Waialua.
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