David Blume

Photo Credit: Bob Fitch

David Blume started his ecological training young. He and his father Jerry grew almost all the food their family ate, organically on a city lot in San Francisco in the mid-'60s!

Dave taught his first ecology class in 1970. After majoring in Ecological Biology and Biosystematics at San Francisco State University, he worked on experimental projects, first for NASA, and then as a member of the Mother Earth News Eco Village alternative building and alternative energy teams.

When the energy crisis of 1978-79 struck, Dave started the American Homegrown Fuel Co., an educational organization that taught upwards of 7000 people how to produce and use low-cost alcohol fuel at home or on the farm.

KQED, San Francisco s Public Broadcasting System station, asked Dave to put his alcohol workshop on television, and together they spent two years making the ten-part series, Alcohol as Fuel. To accompany the series, Dave wrote the comprehensive manual on the subject, the original Alcohol Can Be A Gas! Shortly after the first show aired, in 1983, oil companies threatened to pull out their funding of KQED if the series was continued. KQED halted the distribution of the series and book (see this current book's Introduction for the whole story).

In 1984, Dave founded Planetary Movers, an award-winning social experiment and commercial venture, well known for productive activism (e.g., on behalf of Nicaragua's Sandinistas), as well as for pioneering practices of progressive employment, green marketing, and the sharing of a percentage of profits for peace and the environment.

In 1994, he started Our Farm. This community-supported agriculture (CSA) farm was also a teaching farm, based on sustainable practices, that hosted over 200 interns and apprentices from all over the world, and held regular tours for thousands of people. Our Farm grew as much as 100,000 pounds of food per acre, without a tractor, using only hand tools, on a terraced, 35-degree slope.

The International Institute for Ecological Agriculture (IIEA), founded by Dave in 1993, is dedicated to healing the planet while providing for the human community with research, education, and the implementation of socially just, ecologically sound, resource-conserving forms of agriculture the basis of all sustainable societies.

Dave has consulted for a wide array of clients, including governments, farmers, and companies interested in turning waste into valuable and profitable products. Recent work includes a feasibility study for a macadamia growers' cooperative in Mexico, and a water harvesting/reforestation project in Antigua, West Indies. He is working with a farming college connected to the government of Ghana to develop alternative fuels, to train agricultural extension agents in organic farming, and to design an ecological strategy to stop the Sahara Desert from advancing. He also recently inspired the city of Urbana, Illinois, to hold a conference between builders, lenders, developers, municipalities, building inspectors, architects, and engineers, to coordinate the mainstreaming of natural building technologies.

"Farmer Dave" is often called upon to testify before agencies on issues related to the land and democracy. He is a frequent speaker at ecological, sustainability, Peak Oil, and agricultural conferences in the Americas, and has appeared in interviews over 1000 times in print, radio, and television. Dave firmly believes in Emma Goldman's view of, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be in your revolution," and he can frequently be found on the dance floor when he isn't flagrantly inciting democracy.

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