(dynamic instrumental music)
- Alright, good morning everybody.
- [Audience] Good morning!
- So, I had a whole presentation mapped out.
Slides, everything, about the future
of housing and how Aotearoa could address the housing crisis.
But I threw it out last night based on
two inspirational conversations yesterday.
The first was in one of the breakouts
and Vicky Robertson, one of the fellows
and minister for the environment,
really laid down the challenge and said,
okay, we have all these great ideas.
We have all this inspiration, what do we do?
What do we do?
On this last day of New Frontiers,
how do we take this energy, this spirit
of inspiration, of connection,
and how do we Earth it?
How do we ground it into being?
And the second conversation was after dinner
with Robin Kermode at our house
and she said, Brian, it just wouldn't
be New Frontiers if you didn't rap.
(audience laughs)
And who am I to get in the way of tradition?
So, in that spirit...
(audience cheering and clapping)
♪ I hope ya'll ready to go, 'cause I'm ready to flow! ♪
♪ And blow like a volcano, ya'll ain't even ready to know. ♪
♪ Got so much excitement and so many good feelings ♪
♪ As we're here today at New Frontiers, New Zealand. ♪
♪ With all these bright minds coming together ♪
♪ Merging in a conscious co-creation. ♪
♪ Elevation, way beyond the ordinary ♪
♪ Into the realms of the imagination. ♪
♪ Got artists, engineers, entrepreneurs, ♪
♪ Investors, activists, all at the top of the game. ♪
♪ Saying we're the ones we've been waiting for. ♪
♪ To create and inspire the change ♪
♪ As we rise to the call of a world in crisis. ♪
♪ Where fear and disempowerment ♪
♪ Spread contagious like a virus. ♪
♪ Divided, we are tiny so the time has come now ♪
♪ For our uniting, aligning and Enspiraling. ♪
♪ All it takes is our deciding. ♪
♪ So let's build the more beautiful world ♪
♪ That our hearts know is possible. ♪
♪ Let's stay grounded in the practical ♪
♪ But transcend beyond the logical. ♪
♪ Tap into emotional and spiritual connections, ♪
♪ Intuitive feminine perceptions. ♪
♪ What's next is our ascension ♪
♪ Only if we walk the path with pure intentions. ♪
♪ From the cities and the suburbs, ♪
♪ To way out on the farms, we all must answer ♪
♪ This peaceful call to arms. ♪
♪ Because, like it or not, the big shift is happening. ♪
♪ It's moving like an earthquake beneath our feet ♪
♪ Because collectively, we decide what our future shall be. ♪
♪ So be thoughtful and reflective, ♪
♪ But please do not be passive. ♪
♪ Said, wake up, stand up! ♪
♪ It's time now to get active, peace! ♪
(audience applauds and cheers)
Ah, silliness.
(audience laughs)
Switching back to the nerd glasses.
So, the title of today's, you know,
basically as I said, I really shifted things around.
So, today I'm just gonna really take you
on kind of like a virtual tour of our home.
Many of you, can you get a quick raise of hands,
who's staying in the valley right now?
Alright, so a lot of you.
Who's feeling good about it?
Good.
Alright, so...
EHF really came out, you know,
it was really a seed that was planted
at a New Frontiers event several years ago.
And New Frontiers was a note
that really came out of the land.
It was an experience where we were bringing
people from all around the world to have an experience
in a regenerative, natural environment.
And I really think it's important
to start from that because I firmly believe
in the power of emergence, and that the insights
and realizations which really underpin the EHF community
are largely based in the physical proximity
where it has been happening, which is why
it's such a privilege to bring this event
back to Upper Hutt after a brief hiatus to Waiuku.
So, my journey to this land starts
a bit with my brother, Matthew.
This is back when, before the beard
and this was about 12 years ago.
We started a company called Inflection
doing big data, technology work.
Software in Silicone Valley.
And we really were experimenting.
It started in a notion of experiments.
Finding what worked to solve big problems.
We had some ideas about some problems
people were having, getting reliable access
to government information and we were sort of
experimenting and finding our way.
And the first few things we did, didn't work.
The first few experiments weren't
exactly what people needed.
And then we finally, through iteration,
found something that worked and from there
it was a really amazing ride in a quick rocket ship.
So we went from just the two of us
hacking away together on, I was sitting
on his, what do you call it, a dresser as my desk.
And then just a couple years later,
we had a rapidly growing company.
We were able to, you know, we scaled it up
to over 200 employees across the US and Europe.
And then in 2012 we sold a big chunk
of that business, which was very lucrative.
And, having then spent my early 20's
in the business community, trying to make the money
and then having, you know, being the dog
who catches his tail, I said, okay, well now what?
I made some money, but what does that mean?
That's not fulfillment, that's not meaning.
That's not, and the stories society had told me
about what was going to make me happy
and what was going to make me feel fulfilled,
I had first person and, you know, proof
that they weren't true and that wasn't enough.
And so I started looking out and then trying
to understand how I could use
my energy, my capacity, for good.
And it wasn't hard to find a whole bunch
of problems that needed addressing.
Whether it be climate change, social issues,
the war, this is right after 2008
so the great financial crisis was still fresh in the minds.
And firm belief in the inevitability
of peak oil and the issues there.
And for a period of time I got really depressed
because all these interconnected problems
seemed like they needed just a whole systems change.
And that seemed so big.
How are we gonna have global systems change?
But then, I thought back and I said, well,
I would've never thought that we could
create a business of the scale that we did,
but it started one step at a time.
It started with small actions, learning,
iterating, and repeating that process.
Finding what works and slowly scaling it up.
So we moved to New Zealand and we bought a farm.
We bought this farm, this is the map.
And, well I loved what one of the fellows
said yesterday is you can tell where it's manmade
'cause there's straight lines
and nature doesn't have straight lines.
There's a beautiful river that runs through this valley.
And over to the left is the box that says you,
that's where we're at right now.
So, the farm is literally just over the hill.
And it's a mixture of different things.
It's a combination of sort of a pine forest,
a Radiata pine, monoculture Radiata pine.
It was originally a dairy farm.
And there's a large aspect of native forests
which is actually most of the land.
And then there's very much
a community center where people are.
And so, this was a major undertaking
to basically say that this was going to be the place
where we would develop prototypes
for an alternative way of world living
and sustainable agriculture, by doing.
By actually taking action and by learning
from all of those who have come before
and all of the great wisdom of people who have done it.
But now bringing that ancient knowledge
into the future, integrating it not just with the land
and with the people, but also with the modern
structures of business and commerce.
And so some of the issues that I was really drawn
to focus on were around housing,
the human/habitat relationship,
how we relate to our natural environment.
The term regenerative agriculture
has been thrown around a lot so I put it in the slides.
(audience laughs)
And, you know, really the initial goal
at the very first New Frontiers,
the challenge that I set forth for ourselves
was that Aroha Valley Farms was going to be
a carbon negative farm, negative.
Not just less bad, that the farm itself
would be a conduit to sequester carbon
out of the atmosphere, we'll talk
a little bit about that later.
And then very much about the people.
I grew up in a rural community
and I saw first-hand how shifting trends
have really hollowed out rural community
and it made it really hard, somebody talked
about farmer suicides and that's a real thing.
So it was something that, you know,
we can't heal the land without healing
the people who live on the land.
So, naturally, with this grandiose ambition
the first thing we did was we came and we built toilets.
Composting toilets to be precise.
This was the Rolls Royce model of composting toilets.
And, you know, we learned a lot.
This was a lot of fun and it was,
it was necessary to host New Frontiers 'cause, you know.
And, but it's also great because it takes
a waste product, what we also think of
as sewage or waste, and you know,
create something to humanure, as we call it.
Which is actually a valuable product in farming eco-systems.
It also gave us some experience in recycled materials.
The urinal in the right-hand picture
on the left side, it's actually
an old barbecue bottle cut in half.
So, instead of buying eight new porcelain basins
that have to be manufactured, shipped
across the planet, and then eventually disposed of,
we actually got paid to get rid of these
barbecue bottles, cut 'em off with an arc welder,
and then we have a fully functional urinal.
And the concepts of recycled materials
really grabbed my attention, this was really fun.
So, after the bathrooms we jumped into pallet furniture.
We built a bunch of pallet chairs, pallet beds.
I sort of got a base level of understanding of carpentry
from Sam, who is my teacher in that.
And this is my wonderful wife,
Katlynn, who is on her throne.
We also recycled pallet bed, raised garden beds.
Really simple, you tack some pallet beds together,
you throw some, you know, good soil in there
and it's a great environment for growing food.
We also just got a lot of fun, like,
alright, I need a desk, okay.
Well, you know, we found, we got some old
surplus cubicles from a company
and, for free, and then we slapped them
onto some of the hay bails, and this
is a totally functional desk.
And it doesn't require any new consumption.
So rather than going down to the warehouse
and buying some imported, newly cut wood,
this just makes use of what we already have.
So these are all just learning experiments
that ultimately taught me one of the key lessons,
that trash is a resource,
and it's a really valuable resource.
In the prep for this we had, you know,
all the tents that we built.
We got 75 new tents, 110 new beds.
So this is an enormous amount of material
and it all came in packaging and I was so upset.
I was like, oh my gosh, look at all this plastic waste.
We had trailers full of it.
And then somebody, I think it was David,
as he said well, we also need 10 beanbags.
I go, oh no, polystyrene, it's gonna kill us!
I hate polystyrene and beanbags need so much of it.
And then it connected, we can take the waste
plastic wrappers, stuff 'em in the beanbags
and use that as the stuffing.
So we were able to sequester 2,000 liters
of plastic waste, get no new polystyrene
and then we had beanbags for the welcome week.
So, and actually, funnily, by the end
we were actually, we ran out of plastic
and then we were upset that we didn't have
enough plastic to fill the beanbags.
So, this also speaks, you know,
we do this in our series, but another
great project that just wrapped up
that my new friends led, we took some
degraded showers from a past New Frontiers.
In terms of, one of the builders
that we work with said these things aren't worth a match.
It's gonna be too much effort to move it
or reframe it or use it, you're really just better
to bulldoze and get rid of it.
And this is what it looks like now.
And just through the application of skills,
almost no new materials were used.
Damien and Bernard did some amazing work
to transition into a beautiful space
that we call the zen Den.
Another experiment that we're running
is around alternative architecture.
This dome, which has been the home dome
for all the New Frontiers events,
was actually, we purchased it off the Christchurch
earthquake recovery authority and this was
actually the very first building that was set up
after the major Christchurch earthquake.
And it has been a great home for us
and all of our events, and domes are awesome.
Domes hold a beautiful space interior.
So this was the welcome week photo
and this was my brother, Tom, giving
the world's most glamorous health and safety briefing.
And domes are also awesome 'cause they're just
architecturally brilliant and this is,
you know, we don't see a lot of domes
in New Zealand but it really surprises me.
'Cause they're really really good for earthquakes.
They're very efficient materially
and they also create, they're really good
for wind and they're cheap.
Per square foot, it's a much more affordable
way to create structure than squares.
So this is the greenhouse, we call it the Grow Dome.
Interior, it is a beautiful and lush environment
where we grow all kinds of good stuff
using appropriate technologies.
So, geothermal heating, which is basically
just a tube that goes underground
and uses the thermal mass of the Earth.
So this allows us to grow kumara
in Whiteman's Valley, which people said was impossible.
Even more so, we grow bananas and ginger
and turmeric in Whitemans Valley
which people really said was impossible.
But the most important thing that's
growing in the valley is Laureen.
(audience laughs)
Laureen looks after the greenhouse
and is sort of our permaculture gardener on staff.
And she grows all the wonderful veggies
that several families, you know, rely on.
So, but it's not all domes.
We've also been experimenting with container buildings.
This is kind of a fad, it's in vogue these days.
People building out of shipping containers.
So, this arrived four days before our event
because the cyclone delayed the boat as it was coming in.
But fortunately, we were able to take it
from flat pack to two fully-functioning
shower unites with four units each, in just four days.
Which is including insulation, power,
water, lighting, et cetera.
And we learned a lot through this experience.
I probably won't build a lot
with containers in the future.
We learned a lot of the challenges.
The issues that are there, basically if you don't
have to change the shape, maybe it's okay.
But a lot of toxicity in these containers
that really have to be careful of.
I didn't know that and I was really excited
about it, and at one point I was like,
ah, let's build a container hotel with 35 containers
and we're gonna do this whole thing!
And then Katlynn was the wise one
and she said well, maybe let's start with two.
(audience laughs)
Listen!
So, overall, this is the EHF village.
Most of you are staying here, but for those of you
who aren't, these tents are really great.
They're tensile engineering so there's
very little material used.
It's really just one strong pole and a bunch of fabric.
Tensile engineering's another great
form of architecture that's not
often employed in New Zealand.
So, zooming out to the farm operation more broadly.
In efforts to become carbon negative
we do a lot of biochar production.
This is taking the waste, green waste material
from forestry, and turning it into sequestered carbon.
We put this back into the soil
as part of our composting efforts.
So this is a way that we can take stuff
that would normally biodegrade and evaporate
as carbon into the atmosphere and turn it into biochar,
put it back into the soil, sequester it,
it also helps with nutrients and microbe life.
Most important carbon engine in our farm is the cows.
The way that you manage cows has a huge impact.
New Zealand doesn't have to, you know,
go to zero cows to start sequestering carbon in the soil.
In the US there's a famous person named Allan Savory,
who leads a lot of rotational grazing expertise.
There's a lot of that in New Zealand as well.
This is something that's super practical.
Just the way that we rotate our herds
can have a huge impact on how the soil
can take the carbon from the manure.
So we very much embrace this.
We don't have any metrics to track it
but we just know it's a good thing, so we do it.
And then, as part of the partnership
with government, Riparian planting
to just plant the waterways.
Don't have the cows walk through the river and poop.
It's just common sense.
Brief plug for the family business.
This is Katlynn's solar energy invention.
She's the founder and CEO of this company
and it's amazing, it's a big mirror bowl.
It focuses light and it fast, cooks faster than a gas grill.
Laser cutters, chainsaws, and as I was talking
about community, you know, it's important
that we don't just get totally
sucked in to the function of things.
Art and beauty is a big part of what we're doing.
This is Matthew's garage, which is awesome.
Tents and trees, and then I just wanted
to briefly plug like, land stewardship.
This is Ian Nuer, he's the man who, yeah!
(audience applause)
Give it up for Ian, he's a legend.
Okay, so lots more experiments to come
including some new building sites
that are fresh that we'll be doing more stuff.
So, quickly, one minute left.
We have five key lessons that I just wanted to end with.
One is that innovation requires experimentation.
Nobody know all the answers right away.
We have to test and iterate, but unfortunately
systems level stuff is really hard.
This is part of the kaupapa of the EHF community.
Building communities, not developments.
We just simply must rethink how we
build our homes and how we build housing.
And stop thinking of it as a profit
maximization exercise and start recognizing
that people aren't isolated individual units.
That communities are the level of magnitude
that we need to be thinking about our infrastructure.
Break the supply chains that bind us.
This might be a little controversial
to some things in New Zealand.
But there's a monopoly on supply chains here.
It reduces the quality of the product,
radically increases the cost, and there are better ways.
Alibaba.com, check it out.
And then, I'm at my time, but this speaks
to what Nigel was talking about yesterday.
To scale farming innovation,
we must have regional solutions.
There's a reason that Fonterra is so powerful here.
No dairy farms would be able to be viable
if they had to have their own milk
processing facilities on site, but as we're doing,
you know, biodynamic farming, we have to basically
go from seed to plate just on our farm.
It's extraordinarily expensive and hard to do.
It would be great if there were regional facilities
where we could bring our walnuts, for example.
Or chestnuts, they're really sharp and spiky.
Where do we take 'em?
Right now, we have to do it all by hand
but it would be a lot easier if there were
regional facilities that could process the food
for many many farmers on sort of a cooperative model.
And I think this is where the future
of biodynamic farming in New Zealand will go
because we have to have the economics of scale
to compete commercially, but it's just so hard
to do it as an individual farm
even at, you know, what would be considered
a mid-sized farm in New Zealand.
Like, for us, we're just way too small,
and without going to monoculture.
And then, have fun, life is short, enjoy it.
We'll be having a breakout session after this.
Or excuse me, not after this, this afternoon.
Probably at 2:30, maybe at 3:30, check the board.
And we'll be talking a little bit more
about what we're doing and really keen
to get perspectives of how we can use the space.
Especially as an education facility
to spread the good news, alright.
(audience cheers)
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