FOLO stands for Feed Our Loved Ones. FOLO Farm is a family-run farm on a mission to feed the world nutritionally power packed, super organic vegetables.
Their vision is simply to Feed Our Loved Ones. “Our families started FOLO to provide reason to reconnect with our loved ones through Farm and Food. By “Feed”, we mean:
1) Feeding our bodies with health-giving veggies and microbes.
2) Feeding our hearts and minds: Creating space and activities for our community, especially children and those who are not well. ”
After years of abuse our farm soil is polluted so to ensure that we grow healthy produce we must first of all create healthy compost, natural compost, from organic waste. Rich in healthy microbes, mini beasts, fungi and all the stuff which we have been moving away from in our modern lives.
Their vision in the long run is to feed, not just their immediate families and community, but also all society and to create a whole movement of community and wellness, by inspiring others to join and form FOLO-type farms everywhere.
FOLO are based in Malaysia and Singapore where some well educated young friends became concerned about current farming methods being linked to illness of family and friends. The more that they investigated, the more alarmed they became, eventually deciding that growing your own food is the only way to ensure a healthy diet.
Dr. Lemuel Ng or the ‘farming doctor’ had this to say – “I was brought up in a family that changed its diet radically when my father was diagnosed with coronary heart disease. We went to the best doctor in Singapore and were advised to prepare for bypass and given some vague guidelines by the heart specialist. My mother, a full time professional, took full charge of the kitchen and completely changed the way we ate, by growing our own vegetables and poultry. It’s been 30 years since the diagnosis and my dad is alive and well, with no need of bypass. I have gone on to medical school, lived, studied and worked in Asia, Europe and America. I lived both in the city and in the countryside, keeping an active lifestyle (running, triathlon and adventure racing) and trying out different diets for flavour and fitness. Again and again I found a recurring pattern that supersedes all fads and trends – a diet, or rather, a philosophy that stands the test of time and continues to prove itself against sickness and disease. Unfortunately it’s been unprofitable for the world at large and therefore seldom spoken of until recent years.”
The diet is whole food, naturally grown food of known provenance.
FOLO apply values of Inclusivity and Embracing Diversity into their composting work too. That means they take great care to provide conditions for as many types of microbes as possible to flourish in the soil, including those that we do not know about. We want to encourage all our loved ones to be exposed to the diversity of microbes at our farm, fueled by our compost. Latest science is beginning to show how this is good for our health:
“It’s tricky to add up all this early evidence into a prescription for lowering your child’s risk of asthma and allergies. I’d sum up the recommendations like this: have a dog (but make sure you start early, ideally prenatally), live on a farm where your kids are exposed to cows and straw, avoid antibiotics early in life, and perhaps take probiotics and breastfeed (although the evidence for those last two is preliminary at present). In general, exposure to diverse microbes, whether through older siblings, pets, or livestock — or through good old-fashioned playing outdoors — seems to help, even if scientists are still sorting out the specific microbes involved. It may be that diversity itself is most important.”– Rob Knight, world-renowned microbial ecologist (http://ideas.ted.com/how-microbes-define-shape-and-might-even-heal-us/)
Encouraging more schools, communities and businesses to compost their organic waste on-site is part of the FOLO plan, and the best way to do this is with a Ridan, so we have supplied FOLO with some Ridan composting systems to get things started.
