158. Loop Growers
Alice Star & Phil Garozzo on changing paradigms where we gather
I headed out of Brisbane this week to Camp Mountain, to learn about some of the regenerative work being done around there. One of the outstanding places I visited nearby was where Loop Growers happens. Alice Star and Phil Garozzo, hairdresser and marketing graduate respectively, are its founders.
Phil & Alice by the creek where we had our conversation.
“[Phil:] It’s not like we created this system. We just started doing it a certain way. And it just, like magnets, people and plants and animals I felt like were drawn to it, you know, because it’s all in us.
[Alice:] You and I were in the city and feeling disconnected. We definitely aren’t the only ones. Like a lot of people in the city. Cities can be incredible. And they can be a really effective way of housing a growing population of people. But the reality is that those people still have this sense of discontentment and they’re not as connected to the land as what they probably innately should be. And people do have that innate feeling that once they come out to a property like this, something just feels right. It happens to almost every single person that comes out here.”
They call it a ‘bio-intensive market garden’, which produces a wide range of chemical free fruit and veg that feeds their growing community of households and local businesses. The loop they refer to comprises 15 cafes, restaurants, bars and brewers who provide their excess organic materials (read, not waste) to feed the worms at the farm, which the farm in turn, cycles back as fresh produce. A functional loop at one level, and at another, a paradigm change in the heart of the places we gather.
With tiny houses, event space and seed bank also emerging onsite, that initial loop is just the start of it. Though it could also have been the end, as the biblical-scale floods of last year almost wiped them out entirely. How this community is rebounding together says so much about what’s possible everywhere.
This conversation was recorded at Loop Grower in the Samford Valley around 30 kilometres outside of Brisbane, on 31 March 2023.
See more photos including behind the scenes by becoming a subscriber via the Patreon page.
Find more:
Broadsheet piece with a series of photos at Loop Growers from before and after the flood.
Upcoming launch of Sustainable Table report on Regenerating Investment in Food & Farming.
GoFundMe page set up by the family of Carol Sanford (our guest in ep 150).
Music:
No Such Thing As Waste, by Formidable Vegetable.