In a 1960 speech, John F. Kennedy, then a presidential hopeful, declared that:

“The farmer is the only man in our economy who buys everything at retail, sells everything at wholesale, and pays the freight both ways.”

Other than its gender specific language, this quote could still be used, 60 years later, to describe the plight of farmers in America. Only this time, instead of waiting another 60 years for government officials to represent the interests of farmers, Ken Hanson, a farmer from Colfax, Washington, has already grabbed the “bull by the horns” and emerged from the status quo with a green solution for farmer self-sufficiency.

In an environment concerned with feeding the planet (with a global population expected to exceed 10 Billion by 2050), tariff wars, and CO2 emissions farmers are once again being asked to do more with less. More food and more stress, with less land, less profits and less sleep. What is taken for granted by most Americans are the inputs required to make food and clothing almost miraculously appear in their local convenience stores. Affordable food is the result of affordable farming and transportation practices. However, farming and transportation, which have become increasingly dependent on carbon-based fuels, has made this miracle virtually impossible to perform without killing the planet in effort to feed its inhabitants.

Inherent in farming is the need for farmers to be inventors, engineers, scientists and the ultimate Do-It-Yourselfers. The immediate need to fix a tractor, a plow or to invent a tool to fix a faulty irrigation system requires tremendous ingenuity. Crops don’t wait for a Customer Service Department to wake up or to respond. Nature works on its own timetable and farmers have learned to work in accordance with nature’s demands. So who better to develop a solution for the Doing-More-with-Less paradox than a farmer? Ken Hanson just happens to be that farmer. During his 50 years of farming, Ken has submitted eight different patents, developed irrigation systems and coached his neighboring farmers to become more efficient.

‘Find a need and fill it’ is an old axiom both in business and in farming. Ken took the challenge of feeding more people with less land, reducing carbon emissions while still being profitable and solved the problem with a solution found in nature – heat, wind and water. According to Ken “Nitrogen has always been the key to growth in farming.”

In 1932, farming figured out a way to harness the fertilizing effects of nitrogen out of an NH3 molecule. That particular development increased the yield and quality of food and now serves as the fertilizer for most farms in the world. Ken saw even more potential for this agricultural history-making molecule. Within this molecule he saw energy at a farmer’s fingertips. Through the use of available sources of heat, wind and water he theorized that a sufficient supply of green energy could be produced to run an entire farm.

Now, that theory goes into practice.

Ken gathered with other farmers (prominent amongst them were the CK Agri LLC that farms over 30,000 acres of farm land in Washington and Oregon), scientific expertise from GeoTrends Energy Associates, Inc., (GEA), and the Out-of-the-Box thinking of The Pacific Institute Community, Inc. (TPIC) in order to operationalize this concept under the organizational name C-fficiency Systems, Inc. (CSI). In their inaugural proof of concept, CSI designed its green solution for a 10,000 acre irrigated farm and reduced its carbon fuel cost from $900 per acre to zero. The plan eliminated its external fertilizer costs and added surplus energy production to its cash crop inventory.

Today, large farms across America and around the world are taking advantage of secure, free-standing micro-grids, self-produced fertilizer and zero carbon fuels to create self-sustained farms which no longer buy at retail to sell at wholesale. As technologies continue to increase the CSI energy solution will become scalable to even the smallest of farms.

Tomorrow, you can breathe easy; there will not be a farm on the planet emitting green-house gases. Food will continue to miraculously appear at your convenience stores and we will not have needed to pay the ultimate price for our low prices.