Greg Watson and John Todd in Conversation

John and Nancy Todd and a group of scientist friends established the New Alchemy Institute on a twelve-acre site in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Greg Watson joined the staff in 1980. He was inspired to apply New Alchemy's strategies and solutions to urban areas. He and John Todd have remained life-long friends making it a point to lunch together each week whenever possible.

New Alchemy influenced a generation who “moved back to the land” with the vision of living more sustainably. Organic gardening, aquaculture, bioshelters, plant-filtered waste-water treatment, compost toilets, renewable energy systems were all modeled, and the designs shared, by New Alchemy. Fritz Schumacher and Buckminster Fuller were among those who made pilgrimages to witness and support the work done there.

Both Todd and Watson moved on to other projects, but the principles and systems thinking described in New Alchemy’s mission statement continue to direct their work as it evolves to solve emerging problems of the day.

Greg Watson is Director of Policy and Systems Design at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics. His work currently focuses on community food systems and the dynamics between local and geo-economic systems.

Watson has spent nearly 40 years learning to understand systems thinking as inspired by Buckminster Fuller and to apply that understanding to achieve a just and sustainable world.

John Todd has been a pioneer in the field of ecological design and engineering for nearly five decades. He is the founder and president of John Todd Ecological Design. Dr. Todd has degrees in agriculture, parasitology and tropical medicine from McGill University, Montreal, and a doctorate in fisheries and ethology from the University of Michigan. He is professor emeritus and distinguished lecturer at University of Vermont’s Rubenstein School and a fellow of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at UVM. He is also the founder and president of Ocean Arks International, a non-profit research and education organization; and co-founder of New Alchemy Institute, a research center that has done pioneering investigation into organic agriculture, aquaculture and bioshelters. He has been an assistant scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and assistant professor at San Diego State University.