Vote for Chickens and kenaf idea for Google contest
Hello again.
Bill Loftus here the inventor guy growing kenaf and using kenaf as a human an animal feed as well as using it to make low cost affordable houses for the developing country. I have entered a contest sponsored by Google and you can vote my work into the winners circle. It’s coming up March 17th and I need you to vote.
Here’s some data and check out this 30 second video that kind of explains my work http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFEbIV32xvA
Please feel free and I would appreciate it if you would forward this to your friends and tell your friends to forward this too and vote for my work on March 17th and when I am famous you can say I know this guy and helped him. LOL:
Idea Selection
Q: How will you decide which ideas to fund? A: A selection of Google employees will review all the ideas submitted and select 100 for public consideration. The 100 top ideas will be announced on January 27, 2009, at which point we will invite the public to select twenty semi-finalists. An advisory board will then choose up to five final ideas for funding and implementation. We plan to announce these winners in early February.
Q: Who is on the advisory board? The advisory board will be composed of five to seven individuals known for their expertise in the submission categories.
Q: What criteria will be used to select the winning ideas? The following five criteria will be considered by the advisory panel in evaluating and selecting the winning ideas:
Reach: How many people would this idea affect?
Depth: How deeply are people impacted? How urgent is the need?
Attainability: Can this idea be implemented within a year or two?
Efficiency: How simple and cost-effective is your idea?
Longevity: How long will the idea's impact last?
This is an update on my progress with my work.
Haiti.
We now have 30 lbs of kenaf seed awaiting spring planting at the orphanage. visit www.theoswork.org and see the good works these guys do. If you want to donate some money to them ask that your dono goes to the kenaf/chicken project. This way they have some $ to buy chickens and materials to make cages and stuff.
Timote Georges my friend and ally is a Haitian agronomist (Plant PHD specialist) and he is planning on visiting the orphanage to scope out a growing plan for the entire 120+ acres. He works for Trees for The Future and he like kenaf because it answers soil erosion, soil replenishment, and quite frankly kenaf can be used for firewood and Haitians have cut down 95% of their trees for firewood. He likes the way I fertilize the soil with chicken and rabbit manure and the top soil in Haiti has been washed away for the most part. The kids do not live by kenaf alone – so corn or whatever needs to be planted needs to be scoped out too. There are about 700 kids there. So what and where to plant an overall plan is going to be generated. Thanks god I have friends because this is beyond me you know. I know kenaf and that’s about it.
Timote likes the growing method I have designed. The kenaf fed chickens are in moveable coops in between the rows of kenaf. The soil gets the manure and it is a lazy man's ay to fertilize. Plus the eggs and chicken meat are VITAL to the orphanage as they lost all their crops and killed off all their chickens because the feed was too expensive to import. (This is why kenaf is so cool - it's a very good chicken feed.) The goal is that in a few years the orphanage can get up to harvesting about 1500 chickens a week and supply all their eggs as well.
On the research end and appreciate I am an inventor of a building system that uses kenaf as an aggregate in concrete to make building materials (visit www.environmentalhouse.com) and not a farmer but I fed chickens the kenaf leaves because I did not have a use for it in my kenaf concrete mix and I hate to waste anything. So I fed it to chickens and most recently rabbits. Appreciate that this technology I am coming up with is being developed and has never been done before. But I don't think I can miss with Haiti as growing ANYTHING will be an improvement. But I hope to totally handle the entire country in 5 years and have their country green again and chickens are being grown because they are kenaf fed. It starts somewhere doesn't it?
So far I know that kenaf as a chicken feed looks pretty good. Some PHD friends of mine and one is a poultry expert did some research for me. A review of the protein, carbohydrate and fat content of kenaf was reviewed and kenaf is surprisingly complete as a diet for chickens. It only lacks some enzymes that can be achieved by putting out some animal guts.
Rabbits.
Although I love the cute little guys and don’t look at them as a food source like chickens and cows but I can now look at them as food now because of their high protein, (higher than beef) low fat, low cholesterol make their meat better than beef. We are such woosies when it comes to killing what we eat. The dead small farm animals wrapped in plastic at the grocery store were once these cute little guys too. So I tell my daughter this. It’s OK to grow animals for food. And it’s Ok to have animals as pets too. Some countries eat dogs and I would rather pass on that - but rabbits I could eat because they can be grown for eating. She understands this but she’s the type of girl who wants to adopt all the animals that don’t have homes. She’s 8 and wants to be a vet. So I make sure we have animals around. The rabbits I feed kenaf to are hers so we don’t even think about them as food. I’d get killed. She helps me make baby chicken feed from the leaves. You just let the leaves dry and put it between your palms and rub and what comes out is this fine stuff like flour and the baby chicks eat that just fine. I am still working on the baby chick kenaf formula. So I haven’t finished my work yet but want to let you know what I am working on. I also have made cookies and bread from that kenaf “flour” too.
So I finally have a result with feeding kenaf to rabbits. After I harvested the kenaf I grew this summer I dried it and then placed some kenaf into the rabbit cage along with the store bought rabbit food - just to see if they would eat it. (They like the stalks more than the leaves which is good because I need the leaves for the baby chicks.) Every day I found the kenaf gone and so I put in more. Then I put in more. As it turned out they did not even touch the store bought food and just ate the kenaf. So along with my sophisticated laboratory test that I did (LOL)– more like the commercial “Mikey likes it” but coupled with Beth Seeley’s evaluation (She’s the largest rabbit producer in the South east – sells rabbit meat to a big grocery chain and her rabbit meat is always sold out.) we think kenaf is a pretty good rabbit food for developing countries. From Beth’s perspective she needs more data before she will switch because her business is based on how many babies get produced per year vs. cost of feed etc. So if she doesn’t get 40 to 50 babies from a rabbit she aint feeding them right and aint making any money. So for her the feed is kind of high tech science stuff. But for what I am trying to do in a developing country is just create some sustenance and something to bring to the local market and later a commercial export. Appreciate she buys a rabbit for $5.00 and if a bunny makes 40 additional rabbits a year well it could be quite an income source for a developing country rural family.
I like the idea that in between the rows of kenaf I have a moveable rabbit coop that is followed by a moveable chicken coop. I have heard that the rabbit manure as it breaks down these bugs appear and the chickens love them bugs. So I got one of those eco systems going where kenaf is the key ingredient. One guy said I will the Nobel prize for this and I said I’ll take the$75 grand and they can keep the medal. LOL It’s tough being an inventor without some deep pockets behind ya.( If anyone wants to see our biz plan it is almost finished.)
I should win this Google contest and then watch out what I can do to improve conditions with 2 million behind me. It make sense to get people working and eating and what I came up with is very simple. Thank God kenaf is really a weed and grows anywhere and does not need pesticides as the bugs and insects don’t want to eat it and is drought hardy. I purposely did not water some kenaf for a month and it still lived. So its rugged, drought hardy and I just don’t understand why someone hasn’t though of this before. Kenaf is mainly grown for its fiber but when it’s young (below 4 feet and grows to 20ft.) it’s a good food because it has up to a 34% protein content.
I am currently working on a kenaf concrete rabbit and chicken coop. (My patents cover this concrete mix as one of the claims by the way. I have patents filed in 19 countries) Basically I am trying to make as much as I can from kenaf so a rural guy can make a coop without too much imported goods or hardware or money. It looks like an arch – a tunnel is a good concept. On one end I have a screen and the other is what I call a Florida Room –a screened porch so the rabbits and chickens can graze and a place to keep out of the weather. What’s cool about this design is that I place water pipes into the concrete and this way the water that animals drink is handled and kept cool and you don’t have to buy a container and should last about a week between refills. (I am lazy)
Additionally I am playing around with having a fan powered by solar. I am playing around with having a brooding house for the baby chicks. A thermostatically controlled fan and light bulb would go on to regulate the temperature.
I am also still working on the farm equipment. I dismantled the Tiller machine I made because it sort looked like something that was made out of parts from a junkyard. (Well it was!) This is an inexpensive device that cuts a 2” wide chunk of pasture and digs 6” deep. What’s unique is I only till where I plant the kenaf. So in between the rows I still have pasture for the chickens and rabbits to eat. The kenaf is so fast growing the other weeds and grass don’t compete and the kenaf grows and the weeds die. The tiller is made from a rear end (The part of a car that drives the rear wheels. Instead of wheels I put on something like a lawnmower blade and this digs the soil) )and Tills two rows simultaneously 52” apart. Now I am cleaning it up so it looks like a real piece of equipment. Next is the automatic seeder that makes a furrow and places the kenaf seeds into the furrow and covers them up too. The basic idea is that developing countries have a wet and dry season and if we go wild and plant kenaf 24/7 before the wet season the kenaf yield should be pretty good without needing to irrigate. So my view is that my farm equipment will be used like mad about a month before the wet season.
After the planting is done you take off the blades and install this grinder thing I and my machinist made. It grinds kenaf so the water comes out of the kenaf and makes it easier to dry. You need to dry the kenaf in order to store it for the off season when kenaf is not being grown. You can also boil kenaf and it’s like a spinach. Its good in salads. Visit www.stop-global-warming.org and get a member ship and get some kenaf seeds. ($10) When I mix kenaf in concrete I have permanently removed CO2. Each developing country house will remove 5 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere. Hell, if we build enough houses we might put a dent in global warming. Don’t forget CO2 -carbon dioxide- is plant food – so my idea is grow kenaf because it takes in 3 to 8 times as much CO2 as a tree. So while we are awaiting the no fossil fuel technology to take root on this planet it makes sense to plant a lot of kenaf. Visit the site as there is just too much science done by GREAT scientists and data to put in this short update.
Google Contest
The Google contest is coming up soon so I want you all to vote for my ideas. It would be quite cool to win as I think kenaf will be to the developing country what corn is to the US. I think rabbit meat will be what beef is to the US. I really believe we can end poverty and get people working and the kids will be well fed with this idea. What say you?
Yak more later,
Bill Loftus
727 639 2127
This is what I entered to Google:
#10. What one sentence best describes your idea?
We have developed a curriculum to grow kenaf, which would supply food, agricultural based products, jobs and teach how to build sustainable communities globally.
#11. Describe your idea in more depth?
The idea is that we eliminate poverty by training educators on kenaf technologies at our training village. This staff returns to their countries and teaches self-sufficiency by growing kenaf. By growing kenaf one creates a panorama of opportunities:
1.Kenaf with its high protein content (up to 34%) is an excellent first choice for introduction to countries facing starvation. Kenaf can be used for firewood - efficient for countries that deforest because the "poor" need firewood.
2. This high yielding crop can be eaten raw or cooked. Feed rabbits and chickens with kenaf to create a self-sustaining eco-community.
3. Other benefits involve our global warming problem. Kenaf sequesters two tons of CO2 for every dry ton of kenaf. When mixed with concrete the CO2 becomes fixed into the concrete permanently. An average of about ten tons of CO2 gets removed from the atmosphere per acre.
4. Kenaf has many other uses: paper, fibers for clothing, reinforcing plastics and ethanol.
The process: When kenaf is grown and harvested correctly you get several yields – the first cutting is for animal feed or human consumption. As it grows up to 20 feet tall the leaves are continuously harvested to feed chickens and rabbits. Then when it is full grown the farmer gets to sell the kenaf on the global market.
Our goal is to establish a non-profit training center in Florida to train the overseas representatives. Here we train teachers on every aspect of growing and harvesting kenaf and its related products. Upon completion of the training, those teachers will bring to underprivileged communities the knowledge that conditions can be improved through community effort. Each community will learn how to breed rabbits and chickens that are kenaf-fed and create a closed-loop system for sure success.
#12. What problem or issue does your idea address?
By analyzing poverty and the related substandard conditions in the world, the common denominator is, there is no curriculum that exists to get people trained to produce self-sufficiency. My idea addresses ending poverty by removing the feeling of hopelessness and replacing it with hope and direction – achieved by training - where the “poor” are productive and self-sufficient. Poverty is really just an idea that an individual held in place because he is unemployed.
Rural families loose their youth to the lure of a better life in the industrialized cities only to find squalor and no jobs. What would happen if the rural framers were making a cash crop as well as growing food and producing building supplies that can change the way impoverished communities are living now? This will help to stabilize entire countries and alleviate stress on governments through positive, productive programs that this project offers.
#13. If your idea were to become a reality who would benefit the most and how?
The family would benefit - the children and adults would be well fed by growing kenaf because you incorporate eggs, chickens and rabbit meat for solving the local hunger problem. With using the methods of this system of growing that has taken years to develop, a byproduct of fertilized soil is produced; hence other crops can be used after the kenaf is harvested.
All community members benefit with the jobs that are created which will help support the family infrastructure thus creating a harmonious environment for the children who have been left in the dust with the current poverty trend.
Again, the kenaf concrete has been developed to make affordable houses that a family can build by hand, as no power tools are necessary. Only the teaching of this simple and easy building system is part of this submission but each house built will SLOW DOWN GLOBAL WARMING.
#14.What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground?
Through working with a non-profit that I founded, Stop Global Warming, Inc., we are currently seeking land to set up a training village. This step, coupled with the finances for a management team would introduce the kenaf benefits curriculum to Ministers of Agriculture, Education and Housing in developing countries for worldwide exposure.
A carefully chosen team of agronomists, engineers and architects as well as environmental farmers who have been working directly with myself for years would join forces and create The Village which would showcase several environmental building technologies as well as kenaf agricultural products. For example our own sewerage treatment plant that produces methane gas and fertilizer by Dr. Jose Sifontes, Gainesville, Florida is an integral part of the environmental infrastructure.
Other innovative technologies will also be showcased. During the initial year, we will be outreaching to diplomats worldwide and will be fully operational before our second year.
#15. Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it?
I would like to see the agricultural technologies be free and available to anyone published on the Internet. I would estimate that we could measure the success of this venture by many statistics: Number of: downloads of educational materials, graduates, tons of CO2 removed, acres of kenaf grown, chickens and rabbits produced, and the quantity income generated by kenaf products.
The first training village in Florida would be the beginning point and would be best directed by myself under the non-profit organization Stop Global Warming, Inc. or another non-profit in alignment with my goals – Phoenix Voyage has expressed strong interest in managing the activity and has fiscal strength. The curriculum would be exported either in part or full and made available to any non-profit willing to teach the curriculum according to a free license agreement. Other training centers in other countries would then be established.
#17. You may submit one U tube video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFEbIV32xvA
#18. If you'd like to recommend a specific organization, or the ideal organization to execute your plan please do here.
I think the first organization to be appointed should be Stop Global Warming or Phoenix Voyage. Phoenix Voyage is stronger than we are and may be the best choice. However, I think any non-profit that Google decides would be fine with myself.
