The changes, says Principal John Mussington, will help improve food security for the island, which has a reliance on imported products that makes it vulnerable.

“Facing the devastation of the hurricane, it was an ideal time to rethink the whole system,” he says. “What Garden Pool and IICA offered was the best option in terms of solutions going forward, knowing full well that we will be getting more storms.”

Garden Pool also donated a 3D printer and taught students and staff how to use it. The school reopened in February 2018, and Mussington says McClung’s assistance has dramatically improved its farming operations. Instead of importing costly seeds, the school now clones its own plants. Rather than waiting weeks for a fitting or other part to be ordered and delivered, the school can use its 3D printer to make it.

“Garden Pool advanced the program tremendously in terms of the approach we’re using,” Mussington says. “They helped a lot in terms of that technology transfer — doing things more efficiently and getting better production.”

That simpler approach means working with whatever materials are available, being resourceful and adapting as needed. There was almost no budget for the Trinidad prison project, McClung says, so instead of using a premade liner for the fish pond, he made one by mixing cement and sand. He built the pond’s pump from spare pipes and used some old cement blocks to create raised garden beds.

“We really had to be MacGyver on this one, because the prison really didn’t have any budget,” McClung says, laughing. “We just looked at what they had, and we got really creative.”

‘A really genuine person’

McClung is mostly self-taught, learning through research and a few coaches and mentors he’s met along the way. His bootstrapped background, St. Martin says, makes McClung a highly effective ambassador and teacher.

“I think because Dennis has worked in so many different areas and figured out so much on his own, because of his curiosity and interest, that helps him transmit his work better,” he says. “His excitement is very infectious, and he has the ability to relate to people on any level. He is a really genuine person who has the concern for people at the center of whatever he does.”

McClung is turning to data collection to validate and quantify his models for sustainable farming. He’s working with governments in countries where Garden Pool has conducted projects to collect data on farm yields, productivity and costs, and is partnering with Joel Cuello, a professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering at the University of Arizona and an expert on vertical farming, on the HoloLens project.

Using datasets from their work, McClung and Cuello plan to develop a HoloLens app that will allow users to select a food system model and scale it to a particular space. The app will tell them how much the project would cost, what materials are needed and how much it would produce. The goal is to have a prototype by the end of next year, Cuello says.

“This is going to be a powerful tool for education,” he says. “And for the private sector, it’s going to be powerful as well, because you’re able to visualize everything. It will allow you to pinpoint potential problems and challenges.”

These days, McClung is increasingly focused on international capacity development. Garden Pool’s first international office opened at the IICA in Trinidad in early October and McClung is working on a partnership proposal for Egypt. In late 2017, Garden Pool partnered with IICA and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization to build an aquaponics farm — combining raising fish with growing plants without soil — at an experimental base run by the Ministry of Agriculture in Nevis, which was also hit hard by Hurricane Irma. The initiative, which aims to improve food security and reduce dependence on imported foods, will be used for demonstrations and training.

McClung and his team are also working on plans for an indoor farm and community center in Puerto Rico that will produce energy, electricity, water and food. They intend to make the center’s design open source so it can be replicated elsewhere. McClung has open-sourced several inventions, including his water sanitation system and the aeroponics cloning bucket he designed. He sees information-sharing as critical to Garden Pool’s ultimate goal of promoting global food security.

“No one on this planet should be hungry with the technology available to us right now,” he says. “It’s just a matter of using it efficiently and spreading it to those who need it.

“The fact that we’re changing the world is more important to me than being rich or taking the fame and the glory for it,” McClung says. “I’d rather share the knowledge so that others can do for themselves.”

Lead photo: Dennis McClung, founder and CEO of Garden Pool. Image by Justin Bastien. All other images courtesy of Garden Pool.