NEWSLETTERS & POSTS

One Grass, Three Jobs: A Trilogy on Vetiver’s Living Functions

For most of its working life, vetiver has been valued as an “engineer”. It holds slopes, slows runoff, traps sediment, drains waterlogged ground, and treats decontaminated water and land . That reputation is deserved and thoroughly documented. But the same plant is also a living organism in a farmed landscape, and over the past year we have set out to write down, carefully, what it does biologically rather than mechanically: how it interferes with an insect pest, how it behaves toward the nematodes in the soil, and how it partners with the fungi that quietly govern soil fertility.… Read the rest “One Grass, Three Jobs: A Trilogy on Vetiver’s Living Functions”
Dick Grimshaw
1
Comments
Labels: agricultureTagged , , , , , , ,

Vetiver Against Stem Borers: One Simple Rule Decides Where It Travels

Vetiver Against Stem Borers: One Simple Rule Decides Where It Travels In the paddy fields of Zhejiang, China, a quiet revolution in rice pest management has been running for more than a decade. Farmers plant rows of vetiver grass along the bunds and ditches of their rice fields, and the striped stem borer — one of Asia’s most destructive rice pests — is drawn to lay its eggs on the vetiver rather than on the rice.… Read the rest “Vetiver Against Stem Borers: One Simple Rule Decides Where It Travels”
Dick Grimshaw
2
Comments
Labels: agricultureTagged , , , , , , ,

Vetiver Genotypes by Region, Fertility and Weed Status

A reference table separating the sterile cultivars used in Vetiver Grass Technology from the fertile, seed-bearing accessions that carry the invasiveness record Invasiveness in vetiver is a property of the genotype, not of the species. The material used in Vetiver Grass Technology (VGT) across the world is a sterile, vegetatively propagated clone that sets no viable seed and does not runner; it stays where it is planted and is trimmed at the hedge boundary. The documented weed record attaches to the other end of the plant — fertile, seed-producing accessions, chiefly the wild North Indian type of C.… Read the rest “Vetiver Genotypes by Region, Fertility and Weed Status”
Dick Grimshaw
0
Comments
Labels: plant, uncategorized, Vetiver researchTagged , ,

Reading the Land from Space – A Compendium on Satellite Imagery and Field Evidence for the Vetiver System

Reading the Land from Space — A Compendium on Satellite Imagery and Field Evidence for the Vetiver System Guide to the seven documents, and the order to read them This compendium brings together what a land-restoration program can and cannot learn about vetiver from satellite imagery, where the free tools genuinely help, where they mislead, and where the real evidence has to come from the field instead. The worked examples are drawn from Ethiopia – the Witchi, Gebra Dima, Jafti, Mettu, Gule, and Talube catchments, and comparison with the Vanya food forest in India – but the principles, methods, and cautions are general.… Read the rest “Reading the Land from Space – A Compendium on Satellite Imagery and Field Evidence for the Vetiver System”
Dick Grimshaw
2
Comments
Labels: agriculture, climate change, design standards, erosion, land restoration, Vetiver technical publications, watershed managementTagged , , , , , , ,

The Vetiver System for Stream Bank Stabilisation

The two attached documents make a complementary case for the Vetiver System (VS) as a living, low-cost means of protecting river, canal, dam and sea banks against flood and wave erosion. The first sets out the underlying method and a broad international field record; the second follows one national program through a full decade to test how that method holds up over time — the successes and the failures alike. Read together they move from principle and proof-of-concept to durable, honestly audited outcomes.… Read the rest “The Vetiver System for Stream Bank Stabilisation”
Dick Grimshaw
0
Comments
Labels: community, Hydrology, infrastructure, land restoration, River banks, slope stabilization, waterTagged , , , , ,

NEWSLETTER (NL2026-06): Attention: wine industry, Vetiver’s shifting climatic range, Hedging Bets: Sequestration vs. Storage Reality

On hikes that passed through wine-producing regions in Europe, scenes like those pictured below prompted thinking about how the Vetiver System could benefit vineyard owners around the world. Wine grapes want slopes – for drainage, for sun, for the cool air that drains off a hillside at night – and slopes lose soil. In Europe, vineyards are among the most erosion-prone farmland, and it is likely little different in the other wine grape growing regions of the world, including the new high-latitude and tropical-highland regions.… Read the rest “NEWSLETTER (NL2026-06): Attention: wine industry, Vetiver’s shifting climatic range, Hedging Bets: Sequestration vs. Storage Reality”
Jim Smyle
0
Comments
Labels: agriculture, climate change, climate change adaptation, climate change mitigation, erosion, nematodes, uncategorized, VineyardsTagged , , , , , , ,

NEWSLETTER (NL2026-05): The $3 Revolution: Proving What Vetiver + AMF Can Really Do at Scale

Dick Grimshaw
3
Comments
Labels: agriculture, climate change mitigation, community, upscaling vetiver, Vetiver researchTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

FIVE  STUDIES. 1,300 FARMERS. THE QUESTIONS NOBODY ASKED

THE VETIVER ADOPTION PARADOX Understanding Why Farmers Don’t Use What They Know Works Part of the Global Farmer Demonstration Program series Introduction This post builds on our recent article Become a Farmer-Researcher: Six Vetiver System Models to Transform Your Farm, providing essential context for the proposed Global Farmer Demonstration Program (GFDP). What we’ve discovered through analyzing five independent studies across 1,300 farmers in four countries reveals a troubling pattern: farmers experience vetiver’s benefits but don’t always connect those improvements to the plant itself.… Read the rest “FIVE  STUDIES. 1,300 FARMERS. THE QUESTIONS NOBODY ASKED”
Dick Grimshaw
0
Comments
Labels: agriculture, climate change, design standards, economics, erosion, nematodes, plant, uncategorized, upscaling vetiver, Vetiver research

Ethiopia’s Terraces Are Failing. Here’s What the Research Says They Need.

How Vetiver Retrofits Turn 7% Yield Losses Into 200%+ Gains—While Suppressing Pests Farmers Never Expected (the photos in this article are all from Ethiopia and show vetiver planted in the mid 1990s and the early 2000s) The transformation of Ethiopia’s degraded agricultural landscapes through vetiver grass integration represents one of Africa’s most compelling success stories in soil conservation. With more than 60% of the Amhara Regional State threatened by soil erosion and land degradation, Ethiopia has invested massively in structural soil conservation measures including soil bunds, fanya juu terraces, stone bunds, and bench terraces.… Read the rest “Ethiopia’s Terraces Are Failing. Here’s What the Research Says They Need.”
Dick Grimshaw
4
Comments
Labels: agriculture, erosion, upscaling vetiver, Vetiver researchTagged , , , , ,

Bridging the Adoption Gap: TVNI’s 2026 Engineering Standards for Slope Stabilization

For three decades, Vetiver Grass Technology (VGT) has demonstrated extraordinary technical performance in stabilizing engineered slopes—yet struggled with institutional adoption. Hong Kong documented ten years of zero slope failures, then rejected vetiver. Hawaii faced $70 million in flood damage and eleven landslides, then chose conventional metal soil nails over vetiver for Kuhio Highway repairs. China scaled vetiver to over 9 million square meters across massive infrastructure programs, only to see application rates collapse when crisis pressure released.… Read the rest “Bridging the Adoption Gap: TVNI’s 2026 Engineering Standards for Slope Stabilization”
Dick Grimshaw
0
Comments
Labels: design standards, Hydrology, infrastructure, slope stabilizationTagged , , , , , ,