DIY Food Campaign

My thinking is that the success of DIY Food as a movement will require promotion and support so that it can emerge. The organization of this activity is the DIY Food Campaign and I see my mission as the first of many DIY Food Campaigners. I envison the Pay It Forward contributions moving through a multitude of channels, in a massively parallel process. Nor do I see the need of any centralized organization but rather seek to establish an organic framework that can expand exponentially. An internet based network of Pioneers will emerge through further improvements to our Wiki. We also need a network of campaigners who help promote the Pioneers and find sponsorship - and this vision of my role as a lead activist in such a network is still taking shape. So I will revisit this page as things develop and we are further down the road.

10/10/10 is the launch date for DIY Food, which is a campaign to make a big impact with Sola Roof DIY during the months leading up to 11/11/11 when I have set the goal to have 350 sites around the globe celebrating success with DIY Food. I will be at Schumacher College on 10/10/10 with Bill Watts to participate in a "Work Party" that will lead the DIY Food discussion. (Schumacher has formally committed to host and support a Sola Roof center for education and skills training) There will be DIY Food sites operational in Canada (Ross Elliott) and Poland (by Ali Kasap). Are there more DI Yers out there who are operational but have not shared their activity with the Sola Roof Community? Arcosanti will have a DIY Food event in America. We could have a DIY Food discussion at the 350.ORG event in Oslo, which Bruce could lead in the context his collaboration with FOKUS. I wonder Rita if we can have a DIY Food event in the Far East since you will be there and Edgar might make an introduction in Holland. Through Kelly Blynn <kelly@350.org> at the USA head office I have been offered support by the EU coordinators for 350.ORG, Diana Vogtel <diana@350.org> and Jeremy Osborn <jeremy@350.org> who will help us with introductions and coordination to get a buz going about DIY Food.The time is short but we can work right up to the 10/10/10 date because this is grassroots action and not a formal top-down organization. Every effort is good and can create a ripple that becomes a wave over the coming months as we approach 11/11/11.


Sola Roof launches DIY Food Campaign on 10/10/10 as a participation in the 350.ORG day of Work Parties that celebrate grassroots solutions for Global Warming. Record your event here and also register at the 350.ORG website:

  1. Schumacher College, Dartington Hall, Totnes, Devon, UK
  2. Watford New Hope Trust, Watford, UK

View, download or print: a Google Docs presentation about DIYFood


I am a Canadian inventor, now active in the UK and Norway and with manufacturing JV in Malaysia. After living 10 years in London, England I am starting to look seriously at North American activity with a proposal to break into this market by way of the "backyards" of millions of Americans (I lump in Canada).

I am still not too optimistic about the American greenhouse and building construction market receptivity to my innovation: Sola Roof. But I have determined that there is a "back door" to these commercial markets and that is the backyards of home owners who would like to take DIY action to secure safe, nutritious food. It is however a market that will not sustain a conventional business model, since the very intention of these users would be to build directly - with little or no "packaging" - using commodity materials that are available locally, off-the-shelf, fabricated on-site or by recycling used building materials.

Therefore my strategy for business success with Sola Roof is to give away the DIY market and to align the Sola Roof Brand with commodity suppliers who would gain sales and new market position by investing in a formal association with their products with the Sola Roof & DIY Food Brands through formal commitment to contribute to the Sola Roof DIY community, where these strategic partners will commit to the 1% of sales to the humanitarian Pay It Forward Projects. Global market suppliers, like Sapa Profiles (aluminum frames) are invited to co-brand with Sola Roof and support the DIY Food Campaign. While working globally, I am concurrently establishing local supply of a DIY Kit and this "entrepreneur" opportunity will make a positive contribution to the livelihoods of many of the members of the Sola Roof Community as it grows.

The DIY Food Challenge is viral since it is calls on the community that is "helping itself" with designated non-commercial access to our Open Source technology, to then accept a challenge to help others in the global community - including impoverished families and communities who need material assistance as well as knowledge and skills transfer. This humanitarian action will attract global interest and positive attention. There is no barrier to any participation by users and little to no manufacturing investment by suppliers is required since all materials needed are in supply as commodity products which are available at low cost. As the purchasing power of the DIY Food community grows and as we are able to issue specifications to suppliers for aggregation of the user community purchasing power, then there will be even better and more competitive offerings of appropriate materials and components.

DIY Food must become a viral movement that brings food security to all who wish to go from awareness, to learning and then DIY action. But what is missing is a strong, talented and well funded internet presence that can support all phases of personal growth and I call that WEB 3?. This is my invitation to the Open Source Software Developers - to build with me the Web 3 environment that enable me and all the DIY Food members to engage, teach and support personal ACTION that will build a viral community that reaches everyone, everywhere.

I refer to Chris Anderson, who has written about Freeconomics and the FREE concept because I feel that DIY Food is a powerful extension of the concept that industry products with very low cost and vast scale of use will become FREE. I extend the thesis to a further supposition that the common driver is that these domains become knowledge driven and have material inputs that trend to global commodity cost-base. At this time I will show with this DIY Food project that not only digital bits&bites "want to be free" but at this time ENERGY in the form of solar radiation "wants to be free". This will happen because I have invented a near no cost way to work with nature and continuously process this energy - capture, convert and use it - and while the value generated is very high, the cost of access is very low. I have assured that the cost of the know-how is zero and a vast scale of use brings the material costs to a trivial level of spending per unit produced. What is the value produced? That is abundance of food, feed, fiber, fuels and water.

I intend by the DIY Food campaign to make these solutions very real to a vast number of DI Yers who will prove to all that food can now be produced with an investment that is so close to FREE that it can and will abolish hunger. With this great achievement as a foundation - I predict that the concurrent commercial opportunities for Sola Roof will be bigger than anything can imagine.