A miracle plant worshipped in the East. A Superorganism with unique abilities. The Third Event since life originated on our planet.
This is the story of a wonder plant that can help us at this crucial moment in our human journey.
Its name is azolla and it can help us weather a Perfect Storm that threatens us all – the dangers of climate change and shortages of land, food and energy as our population grows by a million people every three days.
The Azolla Story transports you from the Earth’s past millions of years ago to a future filled with excitement and adventure a hundred years from now.
THE PAST
The Past first takes you back 49 million years as you stand on the shore of a warm Arctic Ocean and scoop up a floating plant called azolla that covers the water as far as the eye can see.
This greenhouse world will end when azolla sequesters enormous amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, eventually resulting in today’s icehouse world with its frozen poles and succession of glacial-interglacial cycles.
We then discover how azolla changed the climate, why it is a unique Superorganism and why it represents the Third Event since life originated on our planet.
As we move from Deep Time measured in millions of years to Our Time measured in thousands, we see how azolla increased rice productivity, first in China 7000 years ago, and then in other parts of the Far East and India where its use as a livestock feed began.
But it was not until the eighteenth-century that azolla was ‘discovered’ by the West during Louis-Antoine de Bougainville’s circumnavigation of the globe. Plants collected from South America were brought back to Europe where they were described in the scientific literature by the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.
The stage was now set for the next part of our journey as we move from the Past into the Present.
THE PRESENT
The Present shows us the many ways in which azolla can help us weather the Perfect Storm. The story takes us to different parts of the world, including India where azolla is revered as a wonder plant, transforming the lives of smallholder farmers for less than one US dollar (80 rupees) a year, and then to Ecuador where it can save the country more than a billion dollars a year and protect the country’s ecosystems.
We meet Japan’s Takao Furuno to see his azolla-rice-duck-fish system that provides farmers and their families with a diverse income without having to use chemical fertilizers or pesticides.
We then travel to Sierra Leone where azolla’s use as a biofertilizer in rice paddies doubles the yield of rice and provides the country’s Ebola Orphans with a sustainable source of food, money to build their schools and a future filled with hope, while also preventing deforestation of the region.
We see how azolla can slow the move into cities across Africa and the world, letting people stay in their communities so that people can maintain a connection with their roots.
… instead of migrating thousands of miles, or eking out a bleak existence in shanty towns, favelas or Nigeria’s Makoko – the world’s largest floating slum.
The story then takes us into space where azolla can be used in closed-loop life support systems (CLLS), providing food, recycled oxygen and purified water that are essential as we terraform other worlds.
Back on Earth, the Azolla Biosystem, which is described in the book, grows azolla anywhere in the world. The highly flexible, modular biosystem sequesters CO2 for Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) or converts the greenhouse gas into a local source of renewable food, livestock feed, biofertilizer, biofuel and high-value pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals.
But azolla can do more. Azolla Hubs that house the Biosystem increase urban agriculture in the world’s growing megacities and help connect their inhabitants with nature through living, green arteries.
THE FUTURE
The last part of the book takes us back to the shore of the Arctic Ocean, but it is now 2120. As we stand there remembering the events of the past century, we record our message and view a world that is bright with optimism. It is a future that we can all have with azolla’s help – a unique plant, a Superorganism and an ally on our remarkable human journey.