Only 500 square meters are needed to grow one house in one year, about the size of a typical U.S. living room. In 1983 The Institute financed the creation of a food sciences laboratory which, in cooperation with the USDA, experimented with a number of soyfoods and other ecologically secure ways of feeding the world. In 1985, the food science laboratory was transferred to a community business, the Tempeh Lab, which today is one of the world's largest suppliers of soy fermentation inoculants. In the mid-1980s The Institute also created a forest research program to identify ways to give standing forests greater commercial value than saw timber and residential subdevelopments. That effort created another commercial enterprise for the local community, Mushroompeople , which is one of the nation's largest mail order suppliers of specialty mushroom spawn and growing supplies .
Water hyacinths are a nightmare plant for many water management authorities.
Untreated wastewater from cities and nutrient runoffs from farms provide ideal growing conditions for hyacinths in rivers and lakes, hindering recreation and navigation, starving fish of oxygen, and blocking water pumps. Hyacinths put out lovely flowers that make them useful for decorating and gardens, but millions of them can kill a freshwater ecosystem. In the early 1990s, the Institute began using the multiplying effects of hyacinths in wastewater reclamation experiments. We found that hyacinths could be harvested and composted and turned into garden soil. Reishi, which has been ground and taken as a tonic in Chinese medicine for more than 1000 years, contains powerful immune boosters known as ganoderms.