421: Ricardo Aguirre on Water Harvesting & Land Management.

Making good use of rain water in the community.


Ricardo is the founding member of Holistic Engineering and Land Management, Inc. (HELM) and is focused on creating innovative approaches to improve conventional engineering. He works to integrate natural processes into large scale engineering projects with his primary professional focus to implement functional design strategies to achieve multiple synergistic objectives.

Don’t miss an episode! Click here to sign up for podcast updates

Ricardo has a profound interest in reversing desertification through water harvesting and increasing soil organic matter. This can have a measurable benefit to reduce flooding, improve both storm-water and soil quality, conserve water, provide passive irrigation for vegetation, and reduce the heat island effect. Ricardo’s project experience includes infrastructure improvements for communities that have been adversely impacted by storm-water.

In This Podcast:

As Ricardo Aguirre was about to become a father, he took stock of his life. Would he continue to work as a civil engineer as he had for 15 years or would he do something that would have a positive effect on the earth? Which one would he be proud to tell his son about? The answer was to bring about more creative and natural approaches to improve conventional engineering. He tells us more about water management and holistic planned grazing to help avoid negative land management issues.

Listen in and learn about:

    • His demonstration program in Phoenix 
    • What a tour of his program includes 
    • How impending fatherhood changed the course of his life 
    • How we can control flooding and mitigate dust storms 
    • Earth works-what is it? 
    • Holistic planned grazing 

As well as: 

His failure – I love failing. I wrestled with myself when I worked for a local engineering company. Will I continue to help build subdivisions or do something good for the environment? 

His success – Reinventing myself and continuing to reinvent myself. It’s done in small incremental building blocks. 

His drive – To leave the world in a better place than it was when I arrived. 

His advice – Know yourself and know your context.  

Ricardo’s Book recommendations: 

Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (Incerto) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

How to reach Ricardo: 

Website: www.helm.world www.arizonasavoryhub.com 

Email: Ricardo.Aguirre@HELM.world  

Ricardo’s Blog Article:

Methods to Reverse Desertification available HERE

UrbanFarm.org/helm


To learn more about more about Growing Your Own Food visit IWantToGarden.com

And to see the I’m an Urban Farmer line visit ImAnUrbanFarmer.com


Note: You can also find these books mentioned above at one of our favorite local independent bookstores and have the satisfaction of knowing you are supporting a small business.


Don’t miss an episode! Click here to sign up for podcast updates

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


The reCAPTCHA verification period has expired. Please reload the page.

Post comment