Dan Kittredge: On the Cusp of a Nutrition-Led Revolution?

Episode Transcript
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Dan (00:00):
The more I thought about it , the more I'm like you know,
this is a really good idea.
This is a really good idea.
Somebody should have done thisbefore.
Why is no one doing this?
I'm like, wow, that's a reallygood idea.
This could actually, withnothing else I've done in my
entire life, if I just did thisfor like three years, globally
it could leave an amazing impact.
By simply calling the game andsaying who wants to come

(00:23):
together and really coordinate,collaborate, synergize.
That's the only way forward.

AJ (00:33):
Are we on the cusp of a revolution in the nutritional
content of our food, one thatcould change everything?
Dan Kittredge thinks so, andhe's about to launch his next
global effort to that end.
When you get a chance to speakwith the man who's been called
the global steward of nutrientdensity in food, the man who
developed the very term nutrientdensity, you don't necessarily

(00:57):
expect it to go as big and broadas this conversation did, but
then maybe I should have.
Dan Kittredge is living oneheck of a life and, as founder
of the Bionutrient FoodAssociation, goes as far as to
say that they're on the cusp ofachieving their mission, that a
revolution in the nutritionalcontent of our food could happen

(01:18):
within the next five years, andthat that'll be driven by
farmers being rewarded forproducing quality food and that
will set in tow enormousbenefits for human and planetary
health.
From the physical to themetaphysical and back again,
indeed, this has been the natureof Dan's personal journey.

(01:38):
Dan had wandered from his roots, with pioneering organic
farming parents, across allsorts of intellectual and
spiritual disciplines,experiencing the limitations of
each before arriving at anepiphany.
Growing and eating organicisn't enough, and coming back to
our nutrition-oriented sensesis key to everything.

(01:59):
In subsequent decades he's beenincreasingly invited to engage
with communities all around theworld, and this month he
launches a new program to spurthe vision along.
We're all invited, and those ofus who won't get to attend the
program will get a chance tohear how it goes later this year
at the next major RegenWAconference in Perth in September

(02:22):
.
G'day Anthony James here for avery special 250th episode of
The RegenNarration, yourindependent, listener-supported
portal into the regenerative era.
I couldn't be happier to markthe occasion with Dan, though of

(02:44):
course it's all with thanks tosuper generous listeners like
Nadine Hollamby and KristyBrydon.
Thanks for being paidsubscribers for over three years
now, making all this possible.
If you're not yet part of thisgreat community of supporting
listeners, I'd love you to joinus.
Get benefits if you like andhelp keep the show on the road.
Just follow the links in theshow notes.

(03:04):
With my enormous gratitude, anactually recently visited
Australia for the GroundedFestival and some other stuff,
but we connected when he had abrief window back home on his
farm in Massachusetts, just as Ihad a brief window down the
road a bit in Maryland.
So we recorded on Valentine'sDay, which, as I've learned in

(03:25):
the States is a more universalaffair, not just for romantic
couples, n the name of universallove.
hen, here's Dan.
Oh, dan, it's good to meetLikewise.

DK (03:36):
Likewise, a hundred percent .

AJ (03:37):
I've heard your name over the years.
You're one of those people thatit's like yeah, can't wait to
speak to Dan or meet at somestage.
And of course, I wasn't at thefestival in the end in Australia
and you were yeah, but hey,before we go any further, happy
Valentine's Day, happy.

Dan (03:52):
Valentine's.

AJ (03:52):
Day to you.
You've got a warming firebehind you too.
I do.

Dan (03:57):
I do.
I have a nice Russian stovehere.
I built off my land and it'sthe only heat in my house and
it's below freezing and windytoday, so it's a good place to
sit right in front of the fire.

AJ (04:11):
I'm a little south of you, of course, but yeah, it's cold
enough.
I think we're just abovefreezing today, and for a West
Australian, that does test themetal a bit, I'll admit

Dan (04:23):
A t's not below zero, it's only below freezing.

AJ (04:24):
That's right.
I believe that's coming nextweek.
We might have to head south.
But yeah, you hadn't been toAustralia before, is that right?
K hadn't been to the SouthernHemisphere.
There you go, so how was it ?

Dan (04:35):
It was quite exciting, it was wonderful to come down.
I mean I was struck by thecaliber of people, just the
sheer level of like knowledgeand skill and wisdom and
capacity.
Wherever I went, I I mean, I Ithink I stopped.
I did like six or sevenlectures in australia and three
or four in new zealand and itwas really impressive.

(04:56):
I was like, wow, you guys,there's, there's a lot of you
don't need to look anywhere forall the knowledge.
You guys already have it all.
You guys already haveeverything down here and maybe a
few of us in the rest of theworld could learn a few things
from you guys more than wealready have.
So that was my takeaway was, um, a very high caliber of

(05:17):
knowledge and and experience andcapacity, etc yeah, so what did
you do?

AJ (05:23):
So you went to Grounded Festival, obviously, where you
made a real impression, I heard,and you did other things too,
yeah, it was.

Dan (05:31):
I mean, there was a couple of keynotes at Grounded which
was wonderful, Great, great,great group, great ambiance,
everything.
I did a couple of half-daythings, I did a couple of
full-day things, a a coupleevening lectures, just a mix.
I didn't do any of the fullcourses which I'm hoping to come
down and do starting in Marchand April, but yeah, it was just

(05:53):
my first time in the countryand various people had heard I
was coming and set me up withplaces to speak and people came
and had a good time and yeah, itwas wonderful.
As usual, there's amazingpeople all over the world and
you get to go, I get to go andmeet them all and then they come
in.
Yeah, some brilliant peoplecome and hear me speak.
I'm like what are you doing?

(06:14):
Coming to hear me?
You're pretty damn cool.
How far did you come to hear me?
What?

AJ (06:20):
I noted that you were responsible for people's eggs in
the mornings too at Grounded.
So as much a hit for what youdid bring to the table
intellectually as what youbrought to the literal table for
breakfast.

Dan (06:31):
Part of being on the road.
A lot is good basic bodilymaintenance and one of those
things I think is a proper farmbreakfast if at all possible.
So I try to stay at people'shouses and, if I can, I try to
make a nice breakfast.
And, yeah, it was an amazingopportunity to make scrambled
eggs for 15 there and all theorganizers were there and the

(06:54):
host and it was just great andit was wonderful.
It was a wonderful, wonderfultime.
Yeah, it's community, right, Imean just culture and community
and that's what we're all doinghere.
It's just being humans together, yeah.

AJ (07:04):
So yeah, right on, I'm very glad we started there, given
what the material we're going totalk about.
That that's the foundation ofit all.
Still, I also noted, when Ispoke with Sadie and Matthew in
a bit of a debrief on thefestival for the podcast, that
Sadie cited you calling on us toengage with the earth as a
sentient being rather than afactory floor, which makes me

(07:29):
instantly curious what thejourney was for you to come to
that understanding.

Dan (07:34):
Yeah, how long do you have?
How many details do you want?
I can go for a long timetalking about my story, but I
mean, is there a crux of that.

AJ (07:45):
I don't know if it was a transformation for you or was it
an emergence.
Given your, your parents andeverything, they did something
around that particular insightthat dawned on you I think it's
been an evolutionary process.

Dan (07:59):
Um, I, I mean, I've had spiritual transformations that
have happened spontaneously, butas it comes to this deeper
process and all of the work I'mdoing, it's been a.
You know, it's like the path.
You just take the next step onthe path and don't worry about
steps two and three and fourbecause you haven't taken step

(08:21):
one yet.
Four because you haven't takenstep one yet.
And if you just keep followingthe inner guidance of what the
right thing is to do, you gotmultiple choices and you know
what the right thing is to do.
Just just take one step.
Don't worry about steps.
Like I said, five, six andseven are completely irrelevant.
Two, three and four even is youin your head in the future,

(08:41):
which is not reality.
So just stay present and followit.
Um, yeah, no, it's been.
I mean, I, I, I think I'mblessed to have been brought up
on a homestead, back to the landoperation, you know, with a
milk cow and a wood stove and,um, freezing and canning and not
buying stuff from the store.
Uh, chopping our own wood, Ithink, I think, um, that's a

(09:04):
complete blessing in today's dayand age, especially at least
for a white American male.
Not many of us have beenbrought up with that and it may
have been quite normal a whileago and I think a lot of other
things were quite normal, likehonor and integrity and culture
a while ago that are beingdenuded like our soil.

(09:25):
Yeah, it's been a process.

AJ (09:28):
I'd love to pick up a couple of those threads as we go, Dan,
but let's start with yourparents, Noting that they also
wrote a book.
Many Hands Make a Farm yeah,and given that the farm is Many
Hands Organic Farm.
I noted also that the forewordwas written by Leah Penniman
from Soil Fire Farm.
Yeah, and this line reallystood out to me.

(09:51):
I mean, she talked about theinvaluable guidance and so forth
in her work at her farm, butshe said they have also shown me
and so many others how to loveacross differences, how to tell
the truth and what it is to live.
Well, I think it sort of stemsfrom what you where you just
tailed off at your previousanswer some of the things that

(10:11):
you'd still like to see morehighly valued.
I wonder if what she got fromyour parents in their book is
akin to what you would describeyou got from them too, would
describe.

Dan (10:25):
You got from them too.
Ah, yeah, I'm sure I think Imean in today's day and age, to
have two people who arecommitted to living a simple
life well, on land open tocommunity, no screens, you know.

(10:46):
Just it's anomalous, it'sentirely anomalous, and I think
I mean when they wrote that bookthey did a bunch of stuff.
One of the things was theycounted the number of meals that
were cooked at the stove forpeople that year from food from

(11:08):
the land, and it was more than5,000 meals my mother served
from the wood stove in thekitchen to people who come
through.
Just because that's the natureof the place, because it's a CSA
, because there's volunteers,because it's it's effectively a
community farm and people of allcolors and ages and shapes and

(11:30):
sizes and backgrounds andeverything else are coming
through on a daily basis.
Um and uh, yeah, it really is abeautiful um thing.
I mean, now they're in theirseventies and eighties and when
I grew up they were in theirtwenties and thirties and
forties.
So it's now they're in their70s and 80s and when I grew up
they were in their 20s and 30sand 40s.
So they're different people nowthan they were then and the
energy is different now than itwas then, and sometimes time

(11:52):
wears off our rough edges.
So how do I say that politely?

AJ (12:00):
I think I'm blessed that it does.
Hey, given we're approachingthese transformations that
awaits us.
Yeah, but I hear you, I wonderwho taught them.
I mean, they were from Boston,right.

Dan (12:15):
Actually, my father was from Maryland, where you are
right now.
He grew up in Catonsville, inthe suburbs.
My mother grew up on a farm inIllinois, right, and that's the
side.
I consider my sort ofmatrilineal line mother's,
mother's, mother's, mother's,mother's mother's.
If you look at the sort of whatdo they call it, the

(12:38):
mitochondrial DNA where yourenergy comes from, is unbroken
on the land.
So I can track my lineage notthrough the patrilineal line of
Kittredges but the matrilinealline of mother's mitochondria to
people on the land as far backas forever, basically.

(12:58):
And so, yeah, she grew up on afarm.
They did a lot of, they had abig garden and they did the
canning and all that kind ofstuff.
And you know you don't have togo back too many generations to
a time when 95% of people livedthat way.
So you know my grandmother wasreading Adele Davis and organic

(13:19):
gardening and I mean they wereboth I mean come from families
of political activists and sortof stuff like that and social
like if you've got privilege youshould use it.
You don't sit back and getcomfortable.
Get out there in the streetsand make noise for those who
need help, and that's what theywere doing when they met, they
were community organizers in thecity in Boston.

(13:41):
So, and that's what they didwith the Organic Farming
Organization when they decidedthey didn't want to raise their
kids on the city in Boston, andthat's what they did with the
Organic Farming Organizationwhen they decided they didn't
want to raise their kids on thestreet in the city, they wanted
to raise them on the land.
And they bought some land andbuilt a house and started a
homestead.
They rapidly realized that, likea lot of farmers, they couldn't
make a living, because, well, Idon't think necessarily
understand why they couldn'tmake a living, but what they

(14:03):
were good at was organizingpeople.
And so they helped to found theNortheastern Organic Farming
Association of Massachusetts andthey ended up running the
broader organization it's aseven-state organization for 30
years quite actively.
So, yeah, they've never farmedfor a living.
It's never been an incomestream, it's always been a

(14:25):
lifestyle for them.
And that, I think, is part ofwhat I did differently than them
was I loved the lifestyle, butI also wanted to be able to make
a living and that's whatbrought me into the nutrient
density stream.

AJ (14:37):
Bang, we're definitely obviously going to pick that
thread up, but before we do, howfar back do you know about that
matrilineal line?

Dan (14:45):
My brother knows a lot more than I do.
I don't particularly care toomuch, honestly.
I figure I am who I am and I amwhere I'm at and I got what I
got.
I chose this incarnation when Ichose it and I don't need to
worry about it because I madethe decision then and here I am
now.
But yeah, I mean I think it'smore German on that side and
more English on my father's side.

(15:06):
I just spent a bunch of time inGermany recently, last month,
and I was like, wow, I reallyfeel comfortable here.
This feels and I can almostunderstand, like I can almost
read the road signs and whenpeople are talking, I can almost
understand the language.
I'm like, holy shit, I got tolook more into this.
This is not too far below thesurface.
That heritage, that somewhere.

(15:29):
It's not too far from thesurface.

AJ (15:33):
That's interesting, mate.
Yeah, that's so interestingbecause with my Irish and
English but mostly Irish I'vesort of approached it similarly
to how you described at the topof your answer there.
But I don't know, it's sort ofcreeping up on me in a similar
sort of a way.
So yeah, maybe we will end updelving a little further.

Dan (15:50):
Yeah, well, I've been spending a bunch of time in the
British Isles and it's amazing,and I mean Wales.
I was like, oh my God, I'm fromhere.
Like, oh my God, somethingabout here, this is amazing,
amazing, wow, this place is ohviscerally, viscerally.
I was like this is yeah, so ithappens, you know.
I mean, if you actually do getout and you go back to where

(16:14):
you're from and you connect Ithink we do all have that
connection to land, geneticallyand whatever you know we're
relatively native to.
But yeah, I mean my side, myfather's side, came over 400
years ago and my mother's sidewas more like 100 years ago, so
it's a little bit different inyou know how recent it's been.

AJ (16:30):
That is fascinating because I felt that as a teenager
growing up in Melbourne throughmy teen years but not wanting to
be there, wanting to be backwhat I consider to be home,
where the family was from inmore recent times, in Perth, on
the other side of the country,and I'd got pretty down and out
by the age of 19 when afortuitous set of circumstances

(16:50):
took me back to Perth and itturned the lights on.
I had all those feelings andthen some family and stuff too.
It turned the lights on for meand it was a little early
example of that in tangible well, perhaps it's very tangible at
a certain level, but that moresubtle connection stuff that
I've only learned more since.

Dan (17:10):
Well, I think I mean you can look at your genetic lineage
and then you can just look atland, and I think this is part
of the conversation about nativeversus indigenous.
And there's a guy here in theStates called Reginaldo Hazlitt
Marroquin who speaks, I think,very well to this and he is both

(17:31):
native and indigenous to NorthAmerica and he says where you're
native to is the place whereyour bloodline has been for a
while recently, butindigenousness is the depth of
your relationship to the land,and so we're all indigenous to
earth.
The question is, we may benative to different parts of the

(17:53):
earth, but the question iswhat's our relationship to earth
?
And yeah, for me, I mean that'sthe thing is having a piece of
land that you have a deeprelationship with and being able
to be in.
I don't know love withsymbiosis, with deep, you know
respect and partnership, andnurturing with, I think is an

(18:16):
amazing opportunity.
You know all the metaphors ofmother and goddess and the
curves of you know the woman andthe lusciousness and the
lovingness and the support andthe care and you know, I mean
it's one of those things themore you, the more you attend to
and care for and enjoy andappreciate the lands, the more

(18:39):
the land loves you and it's adeeply, deeply, uh, fulfilling
and gratifying experience for me.
Um, and yeah, I no longer, youknow, live on the land where I
grew up on my parents farm.
But I have bought a piece ofland here 15 years ago and it's
20 minutes away and I've put alot of love into this land and I

(19:01):
feel so at peace and soempowered and so strong and so
clear.
I've got a really simple life.
I mean it costs me like $10,000a year.
Right, it doesn't need to bemuch.
I took a wreck and I fixed itup and it still kind of looks

(19:22):
like a wreck on the outside, butit works really, really well.
It's got ponds and streams anda big barn and rambling this and
that and a porch, and I'm likeyou know, according to the
government, it's not worth much.
I'm like, great, my taxes arelow, I can pay off the mortgage
easily and I've got 15 acres andI'm like wealthy, wealthy.

(19:49):
What else could I want?
It's such an empowering placeto be, to just have a piece of
land that you can be connectingto and in a relationship with.
And the thing is, I mean I wasmaking $1,000 a week, working 20
hours a week when I was doingthis as a full-time occupation

(20:12):
off of less than an acre.
You know, if you work well withthe land, if you work well with
nature, the fecundity, theprofound vitality and just
capacity of the land to produceamazingness is right there.
It's right there.
You know, when I first boughtthis land, it was tight, yellow,

(20:34):
light, you know color, harddirt.
The weeds wouldn't grow morethan a foot and a half tall.
You know it was just in roughshape and through applying some
basic practices, some basictechniques like air, water, food
, minerals, life, in two monthsI had chocolate cake.
Two months, two months.

(20:56):
You just need to give naturewhat she needs and get out of
the way.
And get out of the way Like, bein service to and support of,
and understand the needs of andserve.
Don't try to impose your will.
Try to support and understandthe needs and care as though you

(21:18):
were raising a child, right?
Do you impose your will on achild and tell them you're wrong
and I don't care if somethingscared you shut up?
Or do you hold your child andsay I'm sorry and here you know,
I'll let you make you like.
It's so simple.
Do we act out of love or actout of fear.
You know, I mean, where's thecomplicatedness?
I don't think it's thatcomplicated.

AJ (21:39):
So what sequence did things come for you in in the of?
It sounds like sort of if Icould pluck two threads there of
our conversation so far therewas the how can we actually make
a living off the farm?
Yeah, and getting paid for thequality of food, not the
quantity of food, sort of ano-brainer when you, when you

(21:59):
think of it but, but such as theway the system's gone, that
would be a shift and thespiritual transformations you
described at the very top.
I'm imagining there might havebeen a bit of parallel and
circularity in there.

Dan (22:15):
Yeah, well, I mean, I dropped out of university
halfway through my senior year.
What were you studying?
I get in on music.
I was.
I mean evolutionary biology and20th century physics and
philosophy and sociology andhistory and organic chemistry.
I finally ended up with ahistory degree three years later

(22:41):
.
But I thought I was.
I mean, my father said I had togo to college and I was like I
hated school from kindergarten.
I hated sitting down, shuttingup and being told what to do.
I wanted to go out and runaround.
It was so boring.
I was just like I hated it, andme too, and I had.
You know, after high school Ihad four more years and I'm like
oh jesus, and so I just um, andI'm like oh Jesus, and so I

(23:05):
just yeah.
Anyway, I was, you know, in mysenior year, at the end of 17
years of school, and I could seethe end of the tunnel and it
was dark.
There was no light at the endof the tunnel and I was just
like completely depressed and Isaid I'm out of here.
I had this vision.
I wanted to be a shepherd on amountaintop, I wanted to get the
hell out of Dodge and justsayonara.

(23:26):
I can't do it anymore.
I've tried and tried and I'vereally given it my best and I'm
done.
And I heard about the Navajo inArizona that were having their
land taken away from themthrough devious means by the
Bureau of Indian Affairs and thecoal company to you know
whatever cultural genocidebasically.
And they needed people to herdsheep for them and witness the

(23:48):
things that were being done.
And I was like great, so I tookoff and I showed up there and I
said, sure, you want to herdsheep, go for it.
And I had brought a bunch ofbooks with me because I like to
read books.
And that's when I came acrossthe science of the East.
And you know the fact thatthere's other cultures in the

(24:11):
world beyond the Western cultureand they're actually a lot
older.
They have a lot more integratedwisdom and their writing and
their texts are thousands ofyears older and they actually
have a science that looks at the95% of reality the physicists
tell us is not in the physicalplane and actually is.
The scientific instrument ofperception, is not a telescope

(24:31):
or microscope, but it's thething you incarnated into and
there's a whole massive,brilliant science of
enlightenment and the purpose oflife is love and I was like
that makes a hell of a lot ofsense.
Why did no one tell me?
I was asking everybody what thehell's going on and no one

(24:52):
can't.
No one had a good answer.
No one had a good answer.
And then I was like, okay,these guys in india, they know
what, they know what's up.
So I'm off to india and I yeah,I just you know that was the up
.
So I'm off to india and I yeah,I just you know that was the
part of the quest um, long story, all kinds of details, um, but
you know, not less than a yearlater I guess you could say yeah

(25:13):
, less, yeah, less than a yearlater I was up in the himalayas
and, um, um, I woke up in astate of super conscious bliss.
I experienced transcendentsatchitananda, enlightenment.
So you know, they write aboutit and you can intuitively know
it's true.
But then to viscerallyexperience it only for half an

(25:34):
hour or whatever, willcompletely shift your
perspective forever, because youknow you can think you're a
human, people can think you're ahuman and you're like great,
yes, I'm carrying around a humanbody.
But let's not make the mistakeof thinking that that's what I
am, unless you have a veryenlightened definition of what a
human is A soul incarnate orsomething along those lines.

(25:58):
That was when I was 20, 21.
Wow.
So I spent a couple more yearspretty heavily on that
metaphysical track and deeplydeveloping my inner faculties of
capacity to access chakras andnadis and project energy and
blah, blah, blah, got to a pointwhere basically there was too

(26:21):
much energy running through mycircuits.
The reason a lot of thesetechniques are hidden is because
they're extremely powerful andif you don't know what you're
doing, you can literally fryyour circuits, the energy
meridians in your body.
You put too much prana, toomuch life force through them and
if they're dirty they'll blow.

(26:42):
And so I could feel thatstarting to happen in my second
winter there in the Himalayas.
And that's what got me thinkingabout the fact that I was young
, I was healthy, I was raised onan organic farm You'd think my
body's in pretty good shape andmy body couldn't handle
consciousness.
And so if my body couldn'thandle consciousness, then how

(27:07):
about everybody who had a littleless of an opportune initial
life or as older and has gonethrough other issues, like if my
arrogant judgmentalness of thatstage in life was, you know,
enlightenment is all thatmatters.
You know, consciousness is thepurpose of life.
Why the hell is nobody payingattention to it?

(27:29):
The response was, you know, it'svery difficult to ground
consciousness into an incoherentform, and this is where my
study of music and harmonics andvibration and physics, you know
, provided a language, ascientific language of
explanation and understanding,and so that, over time, evolved

(27:51):
into the rationale for the BFA,the strategy of increasing
quality in the food supply, isbasically understanding that, as
we have, we get new bodiesevery six months or so.
Um, you know.
The question is, you know, isit more or less coherent?
Are you able to tune into theovertones of consciousness?

(28:13):
Can you ground your highernature into your form?
Or are you so out of tune, areyou vibrating so dissonantly
that the higher octaves ofconsciousness can't possibly
show up in your being?
And you know, after being abunch of, I did a bunch of
activist stuff too in my 20s.
You know pretty serious activiststuff and fighting this and

(28:35):
fighting this and fighting this,and I realized like all these
structures of culture are madeup of humans who are not
necessarily operating from thehighest light, and we can't
solve the problem by fighting.
We can solve the problem byhealing.
And if we create a dynamicwhere all the humans are more

(28:58):
coherent, then all the rolesthey're in whether it's politics
or economics or media, oreducation, or agriculture or
medicine right.
If the people are more well,then they'll make better
decisions.
And so the strategic way tocreate a dynamic where people
are more well is to create adynamic where their bodies are

(29:18):
more coherent, and the way youdo that is by having the food
that they build their bodies outof be more coherent.
And if the nature of the foodright now is junk and we're
building our bodies out of junk,we shouldn't be surprised that

(29:39):
that's the nature of culture.
So, strategically, increasingquality in the food supply,
which is exactly the mission ofthe BFA, is the core agenda,
because if we can increase thequality of the food supply and
people get new bodies everymonths without them even knowing
any better, they're going tobecome more coherent, and then
we'll have a foundation forhealing the apparently
intransigent existential issuesof human society.

AJ (29:57):
I'm hearing so many echoes of my conversations with Fred
Provenza, yeah, and what occursto me in this moment is the work
that he did that I know.
You know, I've read off yourmaterial.
You focus on too around theinnate human capacity, through
the palate, through our senses,to attract food that would serve

(30:21):
this purpose To discern, todiscern between the things that
are good and the things that arenot good that we still have
that capacity.
We're wired, so we haven't lostit.
Is that consistent with yourobservation?

Dan (30:33):
It's called your tongue and your nose.
If the carrot tastes good, it'sgood for you.
If it doesn't, it's not.
It doesn't matter if it's localor regenerative or organic or
whatever.
A three-year-old is an animalwith an inbuilt nutrient
monitoring system, and thereason kids don't eat their
fruits and vegetables is becausethey're not any good.
They're better than they'rebetter than junk.
Yeah, right, which is not food?

(30:54):
A snickers bar is not food.
Let's be clear.
That's junk, right, it'sdesigned to pervert the senses.
That should not be allowed.
You want to talk about childabuse?
We can talk about child abuse.
I would can talk about childabuse.
I would say that's child abuseperverting your children with
exposure to these completelyinappropriate things.
So remove that from theequation because it's junk.

(31:16):
It's not part of theconversation.
End of conversation.
The question is food and that'sthe thing that comes through
natural processes in its rawform that our grandparents and
great-grandparents wouldrecognize.
Yeah, and with those things,the vast majority of what's
available now is relativelyquite poor compared to what it

(31:40):
could be, and that's why mostkids don't eat their fruits and
vegetables.
That's why our bodies areslowly beginning to fall apart.
That's why we're tempted to eatthese other processed products,
because our bodies are starvingfor sustenance, which is not
actually in our food, but we'rewired with these really
sophisticated nutrientmonitoring systems called noses
and tongues.

(32:01):
30% of our DNA is associatedwith the function of your nose
and your tongue.
Nature thinks it's reallyimportant for you to be able to
smell and taste well, becausethat helps you discern what will
cause your body and yourchildren and your
grandchildren's body to be wellor not.
It's evolutionarily criticallyimportant to build your body

(32:21):
from things that taste goodnaturally, because that is what
will cause you to be able toflourish and, if you haven't had
kids yet, your kids and yourgrandkids to flourish.
And we've been eating junk fornow three or four generations
and we're physiologicallydegenerate and we're falling
apart and we're starting to dieoff because we're denatured,

(32:43):
because we are no longer inharmony with nature, and so what
happens when you go out ofharmony with nature is you die
off and that's just the rules ofthe game, like we're in the
game of life.
We don't learn this inkindergarten.
We should learn this.
The rules of the game are lifeand it's not a chemistry set.
It's not.

(33:04):
You know physics and basic.
You know it's like it's life,and life actually is
consciousness.
If you talk to the physicists,you know where do those
electrons come from?
They come from the field ofconsciousness and it's a really
beautiful thing.
It's such a beautiful thing andthe question is, how can we

(33:27):
work with it?
Because a lot of us areexperiencing pain and suffering
and you know that's thepleasure-pain principle.
If you start to experienceenough pain, hopefully you begin
to turn away from your currentpath and we're good.
That fight or flight Like it'stime to do something right.
We're in this existentialmoment and we have everything we

(33:49):
need to turn things around on adime In five years climate
change reversed, chronic diseasereversed, you know, I mean all
these things.
We completely can do thisglobally with resources,
knowledge, capacities we have.
It's, it's all there.
It's totally exciting.

AJ (34:05):
Oh, I agree, I agree.
So you come out of india.
I'm guessing you're doing someof your activist stuff back home
here in the States, yeah, andthen you decide to found the
BioNutrient Food Association.
When and what led to that?
The founding of the BFA.

Dan (34:27):
Yeah, I think we founded the BFA in 2010.
2008, I started giving courses.
That stemmed from my experience2005,.
I got married and started afamily shortly thereafter.
That's when I started being anactivist and started trying to

(34:47):
figure out how to provide for afamily, because I was basically
managing my parents' farm in thesummer and then traveling the
world and being an activist inthe winter through my 20s.
Farm in the summer and thentraveling the world and being an
activist in the winter throughmy 20s um, and it was.
It was when I got married and,you know, realized I had to be a
man, provide for a family.
That I all of a sudden you knowI was like you got 30 hot ideas

(35:10):
.
That's great.
Now what the hell you can doabout it.
You know, and you know I thoughtthat raising a family was the
only possible way toappropriately do that is, in
close relationship to nature, onthe land, in a homestead, was
the best model I'd had access toand seen and I'd worked on
farms in India and Siberia andCentral America and across the

(35:32):
US and I'd seen all kinds ofdifferent experiences and I
thought a simple life on theland looks like a pretty damn
good plan and both parentsshould be at home and you should
have all kinds of aunts anduncles and grandparents and
community members and it should.
You know, and you know low techand off the not maybe not off
the grid entirely, but keep thescreens at arm's length and you
know, just don't pervert them.

(35:53):
Children are amazinglybeautiful and profound in their
nature.
Just don't screw them up.
So yeah, so that was when Istarted seriously trying to make
a living farming, at whichpoint I realized that, like a
lot of farmers, I couldn't makea living.
Like a lot of farmers, pestpressure, disease pressure,

(36:14):
failure to thrive, etc.
Logistically made it impossiblefor me to pay the bills, et
cetera.
Logistically made it impossiblefor me to pay the bills.
And I had been raised in thisorganic orthodoxy of you know,
we are God's greatest giftbecause we're organic.
And when I realized that beingeaten alive by a flesh-eating
fungus is not a sign of healthand that was what was happening
to my plants then maybe I had tocome to terms with the fact

(36:34):
that organic was better, but notall the whole thing.
And that's when I, you know,was able to accomplish a level
of humility necessary to startlearning and going to
conferences and reading booksand attending seminars and being
exposed to the broad suite ofinsight that's out there from

(36:56):
the multiple streams of thought.
There's the permaculture andbiodynamics and agroecology and
this indigenous wisdom.
There's the quantum components,there's the biochemistry and,
you know, evolutionary biologyand all the hard Western
sciences.
All that can be used as fodderfor a deeper, you know,

(37:19):
understanding.
And so that's what I did.
Um, and, yeah, in pretty shortorder, still staying within the
organic rubric, like I can stillbe certified organic, but I was
just changing practices.
Um, that's, we're gone.
Diseases were gone, yields wereup, cost of production was down
, economic viability was there.

(37:39):
I was making my living farming,working part time, and I was
like, holy shit, wow, this isnot normal.
I grew up on, if I grew up onan organic farm, if my parents
ran an organic farmingorganization, if I didn't know
any of this stuff, then probablyother people don't also, and
that was what caused me to feellike I needed to start talking

(37:59):
about it.
So it started off as workshopsand that turned into courses and
that turned into anorganization.
Basically, it was sort oforganic, not sort of.
It was quite organic and I knewenough to know.
I didn't know what I wastalking about, but that there
was something important to talkabout, and so we just started
talking and 17 years later, I'vegot a pretty good shtick.

(38:24):
I think I've got a bunch ofpieces that are a coherent
structure that can be presentedand integrated and used to
accomplish system function byanybody anywhere on the planet,
and that's why I'm so excited tobe launching this course, this,
you know, certificate levelcourse in Australia, new Zealand

(38:46):
, coming up here in March andApril.
It just feels like the time isready.
I'm ready to do it.
I know how to do this.
I've been teaching this thingfor 17 years and it's time for
us all to raise the bar.
It's in our own self-interest,actually, but enough talking
about it.
Let's see who's interested inactually accomplishing it, who's

(39:09):
interested in actually pushingthe envelope, getting to the
point of excellent plant health,facilitating the dynamics of
local system empowerment thatare necessary because it's a
collective, because we've gotall kinds of broken pieces of
the supply chain that we have toheal.
There has to be a cadre ofleaders who step up and say okay
, I'm going to figure it out tothe best of my ability.

(39:31):
I'm going to have a supportnetwork of 20 or 50 or 75 people
around me that are all in thisprocess and we're going to I'm
taking this piece, you take thatpiece we're all going to share
together, we're going to shareour learning, we're going to
coordinate with what we need toeach of us has pieces that other
people don't have and see if wecan get to that point of
actually leading by example.

(39:52):
Let's do the job of showing howamazingly powerful nature is.
Let's stop talking about it,let's actually do it.
Let's humble ourselves, let'scollaborate, let's synergize and
let's you know, in our littlenodal regions around the planet,
coalesce and actually startdoing it.

(40:14):
Yeah, it's exhilarating.
It's exhilarating.
It's exhilarating, yeah, whenyou see plants do things they've
never seen them do before, itgets exciting.
I mean, if you're a farmer whenI say farmer, I mean somebody
who's working with the land toproduce food, just so we're
clear.
If you're a farmer, it getsexciting when you, when your

(40:35):
land and nature, do things thatare so, yeah, vibrant and
productive.

AJ (40:42):
In turn, dan I mean as a non-farmer the same is true To
witness it, on the one hand, butthen to be able to engage my,
our senses, as a family too, andcommunity, in that.
Food and clothing and water,for that matter.
You know the whole well, themicrobiome, then we can talk
about the air, I mean the wholekit.

(41:02):
So I'm curious, dan, whatyou've observed over that
journey with regards to themovement, let's say building
appetite.
Maybe we could say for thisstuff that this next iteration
of your courses are going toland in.
And I ask that, I guess withrecognition of the context that

(41:25):
you talked about at the top.
What did you use words likewhere integrity and honesty
aren't in such ready supply?
And you know we sit here now,not far from Washington DC and
everything that's happeningthere at the moment.
So I'm curious, in general andin direct reference to the

(41:46):
current context, which hasfrankly has some people super
optimistic too, but obviouslyothers.
So, how it lands in thatcontext and in general over your
journey, the 15 years of theBFA, how you're observing the
shift in culture in society andhow you expect your course to
land in that.

Dan (42:10):
There's a lot of pieces there.
You know I watched Organic fromthe 80s as a kid and my parents
wrote some of the first organicstandards in the US.
And yeah, I mean, when I was akid, in elementary school, I
told my science teacher I was anorganic farmer and she said

(42:31):
organic means contains carbon.
All farmers are organic farmers.
She was a silly child and whenI was in junior high and high
school, all of a sudden it hitthe collective consciousness and
everybody knew that organicmeant no chemicals.
And then five years later thegovernment took over the word
and now you can grow plants notin soil and you can have animals

(42:55):
never see the light of day andthey're certified organic.
So you know we have this, thiscreative tension between social
movements, bottom-up lifestyle,you know human attempts, and
then we have these binarystructures of reductionist,
mechanistic paradigm andcertification and labeling and
corporate incentive that pervert.

(43:17):
And I've watched lots of localand I don't know permaculture
had a good run there for a whileand you know regenerative is
obviously the one that'sflourishing right now.
And you know I have somebrilliant friends in the
regenerative community movementthat are deeply looking at their
inner life and the structure oftheir companies and really walk

(43:42):
in the talk in a very honorablefashion.
And then you've got the bigcorporates that are sort of you
know, maybe meaning well, buteffectively paying lip service,
and it rapidly becomes a youknow, a FOMO, a bandwagon effect
.
And once you've got a word andeverybody thinks it's a cool
thing, and everybody startsusing the word and they start
talking about practices oh,regenerative practices,

(44:02):
regenerative practices.
And I'm like guys, you can'tjust check the box and get the
result.
You have to sensitively andlovingly engage the land and
give her what she needs when sheneeds it to get the result.
But there's this whole layer ofunconscious I call it colonized
mind, where it's bureaucratic.

(44:24):
It's like I use a metaphor ofreligion to discuss this and I
say Jesus, I'm pretty sure, wasa pretty cool dude, right.
I think it's entirely likelythat he was very, very, very
highly conscious.
And yet, you know, it wasn'ttoo long after he was alive that
the crusades were happening andpeople were, with the formal

(44:47):
blessing of the church, rapingand pillaging in the name of
Jesus.
And so you know, nature is onething, regenerative may not be
nature.
So we have this creativetension between the words we use
and the structures that fitinto our political human
dynamics and results.

(45:08):
And the thing that's excitingis, nature doesn't care.
If you keep going out of tune,you're going to die.
And so that's what it comes downto is that we're at this point
now where we weren't 20 yearsago, where we're much closer to
the edge, where chronic disease,where the level of human

(45:33):
dis-ease, of human dis-ease,dysfunction, is so much more
prevalent at such younger agesthat it's becoming a survival
issue, Maybe not in all parts ofthe world, but here in the US,
I think to a large degree, andmaybe other parts of the country
.
The world is coming alongrapidly.
We're in rough shape.

(45:53):
We're starting to really fallapart and we don't.
I mean, not everybody wants todie, right, some people want to
actually live and even kids.
You know, I've been speaking atuniversities recently and, like
you know, they want to havekids, they want their bodies to
work and they know their bodiesdon't work because they're on
pharmaceuticals, because they'reon, they've got diagnoses.
We're in this point where it'svisceral, it's absolutely

(46:18):
visceral Climate change and allthat is nice, like okay, yeah,
that's there.
But actually my body, my life,my ability to function is deep
down inside.
I know something's wrong and soI see it as an exquisite
opportunity.
You know I saw the vision,whatever it was, 17, 18 years
ago I created the word nutrientdensity, then to begin

(46:39):
discussing this thing, which Ithought was really important,
and had all these corollaries.
And you know I've been workingsystematically at it ever since
and I mean I'm in the middle ofthe seven month speaking tour
right now.
It's literally globally forseven months.
I'm home for maybe three weeksof that entire seven months.
It's all over the planet and Imean I just got back.

(47:01):
I was at Harvard Business Schoolyesterday.
I was at, you know, spoke atMIT a couple months ago.
I was at Davos and WorldEconomic Forum last month.
You know it's not just thegrassroots farmers conferences
and things like Grounded, it'sall these other layers and I
mean castles and you knowwhatever.

(47:21):
Big corporates, massivemultinational corporates, people
of all walks of life aregetting it.
It's interesting.
It's almost impossible to finda human being who doesn't get it
, like almost everybody gets it.
The issue is not the people inthe positions of power, the
issue is the structures of power.
It seems to me the issue seemsto be the way the model is built

(47:46):
and the structure of businessand the structure of government
and things like that.
So the first thing is to saywe're all in this together and
to not engage in this us, them.
You know drama, like it's realeasy to be an activist and say
we hate you, we're better,you're, you're worse.
That's just, that's ego.
That's just ego.
Like, get over it, right.

(48:07):
I mean, if you're a youngactivist, if you're getting off,
okay, go through your process.
And then, with all the world'sall screwed Yep, your process.
And then, with all the world'sall screwed Yep, there's all
kinds of horrible, bad thingshappening, a hundred percent
dirty dark, have been for awhile, still are, yep.
Once you've come to terms withthat, then what are you going to

(48:28):
do?
You're going to keep makingnoise.
You're going to keepcomplaining.
You're going to keep gettingobnoxious and like getting
people's faces.
You're going to sit down for asecond and say, okay, what can I
do?
Maybe.
How am I part of the problem?
In what ways am I actuallyfeeding the beast?
Because most of us are pluggedinto the system pretty damn well
.
And if, the more we can takeresponsibility for our energy,

(48:50):
for our actions, for our money,for our lifestyle, the more we
actually begin to walk the talk,which is actually what you need
to function, to flourish, to bevibrant, to be vital, to be
renatured, is to unplug fromthis disharmonious dynamic.
And as long as you're thinkingabout other people and like I'm

(49:10):
good and they're bad and you'rein this head trip binary, you're
missing the point to a largedegree, because probably the
issue is with you and how you'reliving your life, and it's not
your fault per se because of theway culture brings us all up
and we're sort of programmedinto this system.
But taking responsibility forourselves, shifting our

(49:30):
priorities, shifting our actionsyou know every little thing you
do that actually, you knowsecretly, is not the right thing
to do.
Stop doing it, or stop onething this week and stop another
thing next week and startputting that energy towards
something different, becauseit's not hard to be in a much
better place.
But yeah, I thinkfoundationally, I think the

(49:52):
quality of food is a massivepiece of this puzzle and I mean
actually I think we need to getthe hell out of the city in the
first place.
I think people belong on land.
I think we're animals, webelong in nature.
We'd be much happier if we hadsimple lives, and I was pitching
this all across Australia whenI was down there in December.

(50:14):
I'm like I think it's in theconstitution in Russia that
anybody who wants it gets landlike an acre for you to have,
period.
You can't sell it, it's justthere for you to have a simple
life, to be able to grow all thefood you need, and then you can
choose to plug into culture tothe degree you want, and then

(50:35):
you can choose to plug intoculture to the degree you want.
But how about that?
How about if we had a rulewhich was if you wanted a simple
life as a citizen in thiscountry that has land, that
makes it the country you get apiece to live a simple life and
you can't sell it?
This is not something that youcan profit off of.
This is something that you canhave to provide yourself basic

(50:56):
tenure and autonomy, becausethen you don't have to have a
job, you don't have to work Ifyou're not paying rent all the
time, if you don't have to buythe fancy clothes to go to a job
.
You don't have to suck it up tothe people you don't like to be
part of a system you don'tbelieve in.
I don't know.
I mean I think endgame like.
I mean I think endgame like asimple life in harmony with
nature, growing your food.

(51:18):
I think it's absolutely the waychildren need to be raised,
because when you raise childrenin front of screens inside
buildings and you pervert them,then that's the whole next
generation that's screwed up andthe early childhood development
phase of life is so powerfuland I think a lot of younger
people would basically see avery difficult path forward.
They would like to actuallyhave a simple life with somebody

(51:42):
they care about and raisechildren.
And I think I mean I meet a lotof people that are teens and
20s and 30s that are like youknow what.
I don't really want to be partof the rat race, but there's no
off-ramp.
There's no off-ramp Part ofthat.
I mean I'm working on all thesepieces behind the scenes and I
don't know how much time we haveto go into all these pieces,
but a foundational component ofthat is the empowerment

(52:05):
necessary to provide for yourbasic needs from the land with
this course is to download that,develop those skills in all the
local, regional nuances, withthe land types, with the soil
dynamics, with the climate zones, so we can have an open-sourced

(52:27):
collective wisdom for anybodywho doesn't have the skills but
wants to plug in to easily andreadily get to that point of
being able to do what I can dobecause I grew up on an organic
farm, so I have the privilege of30, 40 years now experience
working with land, so it's realeasy for me to grow a hell of a

(52:47):
lot of food with almost noeffort.
But it's only because Iunderstand things, and so is
there some way to take thatunderstanding and get it out
there into the collective in apractical and open way.
In almost all cases, the thingswe actually need are from
nature and really inexpensive.
We're oftentimes taught to buyall the stuff, which is actually
the thing that is the problemin the first place by the people

(53:09):
who are selling us the stuff.
Everybody's repeating to buythis because they don't know any
better and they're justrepeating what somebody else
said, which is the way it works.
To buy this because they don'tknow any better and they're just
repeating what somebody elsesaid, which is the way it works.

AJ (53:17):
So much of what you're saying is so consistent with
what I've heard, not onlythrough the podcast over the
years, but in travelling acrossthe states last year as well.
But, of course, but and ruralAmerica was considered to be at
the heart of the election of theTrump administration now and,

(53:38):
like I said, some people feel Iheard some people feel
optimistic about that, includingpeople who don't wish badly on
anybody else 100%, yeah.
So in that complexity, I'mwondering how you are seeing the
communities closer to the landacross rural America that, for
what we see on the media, havesuccumbed in some numbers to the

(54:02):
us and them thing and arefighting back and all that sort
of stuff.
How do you?

Dan (54:11):
perceive rural America and what's happening.
I'm not sure if it's ruralAmerica or just people who live
close to nature.
I've been too far around theworld and lived in too many
places to differentiate betweenAmericans and anybody else.

AJ (54:22):
Yeah.

Dan (54:23):
We're all people of the simple.
You know nature of honor andintegrity and community and
family and culture.
I mean, you're in India, you'rein South America, asia, doesn't
matter where you are, humansare humans and the basic
dynamics are remarkably similar.
I mean, what little bit.

(54:46):
I was here in North Americathis last couple before the
election.
I saw almost no signs for Trumpor Biden, even though the media
was portraying this big, massivedrama.
Right, it's called bread andcircus.
Right, it was the strategy ofthe Romans, the empire, to keep
people fed and entertained, andthen divide and conquer is the

(55:10):
other strategy.
So keep them fed, entertainedand engaging in polarity.
So I mean, one of the things Idid when I was an activist 20
years ago was I worked for apresidential political campaign
for a guy named Dennis Kucinichand I got to see behind the
curtain how the Americanpolitical system works and it is
completely rigged.

(55:31):
It's like the Truman Show.
It's a complete, managedreality show and they pull the
strings.
It's like the Real Housewivesof wherever.
It's all managed.
It's all to keep peopledistracted from actually doing
the things in their cultures, intheir communities, which are

(55:53):
important, and a lot of us getdistracted by it to one degree
or another.
It's embarrassing how manyplaces around the world I go
when people know the nuances ofwhat's going on in America.
I'm like, guys, what about yourcountry?
The fact that you know allthese nuances of America, like
Jesus?
What's going on in your country?

(56:14):
What are you doing in your land?
Why are you paying attention tous?
Why aren't you taking yourpower and building the solutions
you want in your land?
I mean, it's a deep and dirtyand dark structure that's
sophisticated and has succeededin taking our minds and messing
with them, but you have tounplug.

(56:35):
And messing with them, but youhave to unplug.
You have to disengage from theshiny object and focus on the
real things.
Get the screens the hell out ofyour life.
I don't know.
There's so many opportunities,so many opportunities, so how
does that?

AJ (56:49):
relate, dan, to what you said before about the structures
of power being in the way,before about the structures of
power being in the way.

Dan (57:01):
Well, the thing is, we've been trained from childhood to
sit still shut up and repeatafter me, right, yeah, the
indoctrination system they calleducation, which takes children
away from elders and communityand land and real skills and
dumbs them down dramatically sothey can become cogs in the
industrial wheel, trains us notto think for ourselves, but

(57:22):
trains us to repeat what we'vebeen told.
And now, with kids and withscreens, they got them
completely plugged into theirscreens early on.
So we're basically programmingchildren and programming the
culture to pay attention to thisfaux reality and in so doing,

(57:43):
create, as far as I'm concerned,cogs in the industrial wheel
whose life force has sucked.
I think the metaphor of thematrix was brilliant, right,
we're all there plugged in,getting our life force sucked.
But the thing is, you do havefreedom, you do have the
capacity to unplug if you sochoose.
It's just not the way thedominant paradigm is set, and so
you need to take responsibilityfor your life and for your
choices and how you organizethings.

(58:04):
And what's exciting is we'vehad enough of this experience to
know we don't like it, right,the first thing you have to know
is you want something different.
And if you think you want it,then keep at it until you think
you don't anymore.
And some people still want it,great.
But I think there's a greaterand greater number of people who

(58:24):
are like this system is screwed.
How the hell do we get out ofhere?
What's the off ramp?
Like there's walls on bothsides.
I can't see an exit.
I can't see an exit.
And that's what we need to dothose of us who have the
privilege, who have theexperience, who have the
relationships, have theknowledge is to facilitate those
structures that can empowerpeople to take an off-ramp from

(58:45):
this dominant paradigm.
That's what our conference isgoing to be this summer your
winter, our summer.
It's called, you know,renaturing Ourselves, and you
know, and we're going to go allinto that.
You know, renaturing ourselvesand you know, and we're going to
go all into that, deeply into,like, all the dynamics of our,
of our.
You know our, our basicbiochemistry and function in our
, in our, in our mitochondrialDNA, like in many cases, like

(59:09):
we're so weak, we're soenergetically incoherent right
now we can't follow through athought with an action, right,
we're really so like we're justsucked dry.
And understand that, understandthe science of that, understand
what you need to do to start tobuild energy back up in your

(59:31):
body.
What are the things you canfocus on?
Take a weekend and go do this.
How can you begin to slowlybuild that energy back up so
that you have the capacity toactually make a shift?
Because a lot of people are inthat weakened state.
So we're doing everything wecan do in the organization to

(59:51):
talk about it, to share, toempower, to coordinate, and I
just see amazing people globallyall coalescing.
It's like we're all downloadingthe same insights, right?
We're all getting the samevisions and there's so many of
us who are on side and bubblingup together and call it divine
order, god, universe, whateveryou want to call it.

(01:00:12):
I would say there's order inthe universe and we are
supported.
We are totally supported, butwe also have free will and we
need to choose to take thosedecisions and follow through
with them.

AJ (01:00:27):
Yeah, so interesting, dan, that you use that term order.
I know the order you're talkingabout is a bigger, transcendent
order.
The paradox, of course, is howmany people are perceiving the
current reality, the groundedreality, as disorder.
If we specifically talk aboutwhat's happening in the States,
what the Trump administration isdoing, like we've said and

(01:00:49):
you've echoed me that somepeople feel optimistic about it,
some people feel like it's theultimate disorder.
Yeah, I'm wondering if we areto get off the screens and so
forth, to what extent are wejust letting that happen for
better or worse?
Or are you seeing what'shappening as a necessary part of
the change that we're lookingfor to break that old nexus?

Dan (01:01:11):
The first thing to ask is what can you do?
Is there anything you can doabout what's happening in
Washington right now?
If you don't have any capacityto impact it, then spend five
minutes a day staying roughlyabreast and focus your attention
on what you can do.

(01:01:32):
The brilliance of this game isto distract you, to put your
attention on things you have nopower over, and so then you are
functionally disempowered when,in reality, you have tons of
power.
You're just not using itbecause you've been distracted
with the shiny object of all thedrama, of all the bread in the

(01:01:52):
circus, right, I mean, the realgame is to control your mind.
So I could answer your questionand talk about what I think is
going on, but it's really, Imean, whatever.
I can answer that as well, butI think the important answer is
use the amount of you knowwaking hours you have.
With the creative capacity.
You have to do as much that youcan do.

(01:02:16):
That is step one, cause you knowin your life you got 50 things
that you could do right now.
That would all make thingsbetter.
So stop being distracted oreven, while you're distracted in
the background, start doingthose things.
Like it has to do with each oneof us doing the things that we
know we need to do, and if weall stood up together and did

(01:02:37):
what needed to happen, the worldwould be different in three
days.
But we're not, and so we.
So we're passive, and so we'reable to be manipulated and
controlled and governed right.
The.
The government is supposed toserve us, not manage us, but if
we aren't taking our power, thenthey're going to take it.

AJ (01:02:58):
So let's circle back to that original motivation of farmers
getting paid for producing foodthat would reignite our
renaturing.
Where is that at?
Where is that at?
Perhaps is the question what'sthe pointy end that's required
to get?

Dan (01:03:14):
there.
So watching my parents gothrough the process of you know
organic and creating labels andhaving it taken over, and
watching what's happening withregenerative and these other
various certification labelshave come up and claims and
things like that One of mycritiques from having watched it
for more than 30 years.

(01:03:35):
There's a couple of critiques.
One is that they're binary.
You're either organic or you'renot.
You're regenerative or you'renot.
You're local or you're not.
You're biodynamic or you're not, and that's not life.
Life is a continuum, right?
You're not healthy or sick.
You're biodynamic or you're not, and that's not life.
Life is a continuum, right.
You're not healthy or sick,you're somewhere in the middle.
You're 80th percentile or 40thpercentile.
That's just the reality ofthings.
So the first issue is we haveto get rid of the binaries, the

(01:03:59):
reductionist, mechanistic blackwhites, and engage a continuum.
The second issue is you get ridof the priests.
Do you want to talk to Goddirectly or do you want to have
a priest tell you what God saidand communicate back to God
through you?
Like I would suggest, the bestway to do it is to download your

(01:04:20):
direct insights yourself andact on them and have your
conscience communicate directly,and that basically means you
don't have certification labels.
In this metaphor, that meansyou can check the thing yourself
.
It's no marketing, it's nolabeling, it's no brands, it's
you can directly see theessential nature of the thing

(01:04:40):
itself.
So the design, the vision fornutrient density is that it is
something that anyone candiscern themselves and they get
a number that's part of acontinuum one to 100, as opposed
to black and white.
And so for that to occur, wehave to have a definition of
what that is.
There has to be a rock solidscientific conclusion which

(01:05:03):
integrates microbiome,biochemistry, human nutrition,
soil health management practices.
We need to use the beautifulprinciples that science is and
the capacity of our technologyto look at all these things to
find the patterns where natureis showing us this is what she

(01:05:23):
thinks is better and this iswhat she thinks is worse.
And if we can humbly andhonestly, with integrity, do
that science and come up withthat standard, then we build the
meters and then people canaccess them and then we're off
to the races.
And we're pretty far along thattrack on our first crop, like
we did a bunch of stuff for anumber of years, proving that
nutrient variation was massive,proving that it did correlate

(01:05:45):
with soil health, proving thatyou could build handheld meters
people could afford and thiswhole thing was a possible
vision.
Okay, done, we got that done by2021.
Now, what the hell is quality?
How do you define nutrientdensity?
It's not a you are or are not.
It's a you're in the 80thpercentile or 40th percentile or
20th percentile, but what isthe definition of that?
And so we've been going throughthe process of doing that

(01:06:08):
science, which is verycomplicated and serious and
expensive, and so it takes time.
It takes money, really is whatit takes.
It wouldn't take that much timeif we had the money, but we
don't have the money, so it'staking time.
So, yeah, basically, it's amillion dollars a crop.
At least that'll give us agreat baseline to start with.

(01:06:30):
How many crops do you want tolook at?
25 crops, $25 million I'mtalking US million, not
Australian million.
If someone wrote us a checkthree months from now, for $25
million, we could havedefinitions of nutrient density
for 25 crops in two years, andthen I think the market would be
able to take it and run with it, because I truly do believe
people want the best forthemselves and their kids, and

(01:06:51):
if, given the opportunity tomake a small difference in their
actions.
Like I'm at the grocery storeanyway, I'm just going to buy
these carrots instead of thosecarrots and this milk instead of
that milk, because I know thatthis one's better and that one's
worse.
I think that level ofengagement based on
self-interest could easily andreadily occur broadly, rapidly.

(01:07:11):
And when that starts happening,start counting back three years
, five years and we'vecompletely transformed the
planet.
We've completely transformedthe planet because we've shifted
the way the incentives in agculture work which completely
affect the climate.
And if we've shifted thoseincentives, then we shift
people's health and then weshift their consciousness and
then we shift the structures ofhuman culture.

(01:07:33):
It's really simple.
It's just that $25 millionhurdle we haven't gotten over
yet.

AJ (01:07:41):
as the way I see it, the meter, then, is a key
development to be able to linkthe human senses, if you will,
to the way that the structureswork.

Dan (01:07:53):
It's really the definition of nutrient density, it's the
science, because there's amillion meters out there.
I mean, actually, right now,the cameras in my phone are good
enough.
We've already got a meter.
We just don't have acalibration for it.
We don't have, we don't.
We haven't told this camerawhich frequency ranges of light
off of the carat mean 80 andwhich mean 20.

(01:08:15):
Got it, we already have thetech.
We just don't have the cleardefinition.
Interesting.

AJ (01:08:22):
That's how I see it.
Yeah, so to someone from theoutside like me, the meter that
you've developed can appear likemagic, but there is a
scientific grounding to it.
There it is.
Yeah.

Dan (01:08:35):
Yeah, there is a scientific grounding to it.
Yes, how does it work?
What the?
How could you possibly?
What?
Ray guns, that's Star Trek.
That's not possible.
Ray guns, that's Star Trek.
That's not possible.
People have heard, maybe, of thewhat's it called the James Webb

(01:08:55):
Space Telescope.
It's a big one that got sent upa couple years ago.
There was the Hubble beforethat.
So we are able right now, withthe James Webb Space Telescope,
to read the atmosphere of aplanet 10,000 light years away.
10,000 light years away is adecent distance and we can say

(01:09:18):
this planet, right there, hasmethane in its atmosphere with
complete scientific confidence.
Because of this technology orscience called spectroscopy,
which basically is every elementin chemistry, every compound,
is actually a vibration.
Copper vibrates at a certainfrequency, zinc vibrates at a

(01:09:39):
certain frequency, proteinvibrates at a certain frequency
and those vibrations are light,effectively, if you look at it
the right way.
So a spectrometer all it'sdoing is taking a picture of the
light bouncing off of something.
So the meter we built I mean,and if we can build it as a very
small nonprofit educationalorganization and it works and is
published in Nature like thisthing works that's what our

(01:10:01):
paper in Nature said.
It's like, yes, this works, andthe variation of polyphenols is
40X, which is really really big,then certainly Apple can do it
right.
And it's just 10 LEDs.
It's really really simple andthey flash at different times
and it just takes a picture ofthe light that bounces back and
from that it can determinewhat's in the carrot, and

(01:10:25):
technology is there to be used.
It can be a devil.
It can be a devil.
It can be a servant Right on,like money and everything else.
Yeah.

AJ (01:10:34):
Fascinating, fascinating.
All right, so, when it comes tothis course that you're going
to launch in Australia and is itthe first time that this
certificate level course willrun at all will be Australia and
New Zealand.

Dan (01:10:46):
Yes, exactly.

AJ (01:10:48):
And what's going to happen in those courses.

Dan (01:10:50):
So it's basically a digestion of what I've been
doing for 17 years.
Taken to the next level, theconcept of the course is, I mean
, what I've always called it isprinciples of biological systems
.
It's effectively you know howdid nature evolve things to work
?
How have plants been growingfor the last 420 million years?
You know what, beforeagribusiness got invented?

(01:11:13):
You know how was it that naturewas doing things so brilliantly
?
And the more we can understandthat, the more we can work with
it, the more readily we canexperience the fecundity.
That is what indigenous peopleswere able to accomplish
globally with no wheel and noplow and no piece of burden.
And so we can integrate theirpractical insights along with

(01:11:35):
our cutting edge Westernscientific facts and
instrumentation and data, andreally dial in this process of
tuning into nature.
It's a four-day course.
The first two days are in thefall, the second two days are in
the spring.
I basically say, if you thinkof the fall as the end of the
growing season at least where Ilive here in the Northern

(01:11:58):
Hemisphere, where we've gotwinter, we sometimes think of
the winter as not the growingseason.
Then you start again in thespring, in a linear fashion.
From spring to fall is agrowing season and then the fall
to spring is whatever, doesn'tcount.
So what I like to say is youknow it's a circle, it's a cycle
and you can think of the end ofone growing season as the
beginning of the next growingseason.

(01:12:18):
So we start in the fall and wewalk through a bunch of basic
principles and you know how to'scover dozens of different
topics and, yeah, yeah,basically lead people with okay,
in the next three months orfour months, these are the
things you need to be focusingon and why.
This is how you can addressthese imbalances.
We want to leave you with aseries of very practical,

(01:12:39):
detailed, specific steps you canaccomplish to get these results
and ways of measuring andmonitoring to confirm or to
recalibrate.
And then we do the same thingin the spring two days in the
spring to cover spring andsummer, everything about soil
preparation and seedling,starting and monitoring and
management in season, et cetera.
And yeah, there's a whole bunchof content that's covered.

(01:13:04):
And what's the different thingabout this is people have been
asking me for years like, can Iget a certificate?
I'm like no, you just took mycourse.
Why should you get acertificate.
I just meet talking to you fora couple of days.
That's not doesn't count, yeah,All the more given what you
were just saying aboutcertifications.

(01:13:25):
Well, there is a desire toaccomplish, to get somewhere,
and so what I'm saying here isI'm going to teach a course and
ideally everybody who's takingpart is going to be working on a
different piece of the puzzle.
If you're any part of thecertificate level course, you
know part of the course.
You are going to have extrahomework, which is we have to.
There's all these pieces ofsystem function in the bioregion
that are necessary, like whereare your sources of natural

(01:13:46):
minerals?
Where can you get your covercrops?
Where's the high-quality seed?
There's?
You know what's in the subsoil?
There's a bunch of deeperquestions that no one has
answers to, which is why mostpeople aren't able to get to
that level of overall systemfunction.
So part of it is everybody notonly learns the content, but
takes on a specific piece ofhomework which they then bring

(01:14:08):
to the collective and say, okay,I got this piece for everybody
to share.
I got this piece for everybodyto share and all of a sudden you
have a greater capacity toimplement because each person
has done a piece of what needsto be done for everybody else.
The second part is everybodywho's part of it documents their
efforts.
You only get the certificate ifyou're able to achieve

(01:14:31):
excellent BRICS reading in thecrop that's harvested on five
different crops.
So I'm not providing thecertificate.
I'm saying if you can work wellenough with nature to
accomplish what we callexcellent in BRICS in five
different crops, then I thinkI'm happy to say you can work
with nature and you areaccomplishing, you are producing

(01:14:55):
nutrient-dense food.
There you go, Interesting.
But the idea is, yeah, thatmight take two years or three
years and there's a supportnetwork of people that are there
that are coordinating.
Something like seed quality ismassively important.
The health of the grandmotheraffects the health of the mother
, affects the health of thedaughter, and if you're going to
be taking seed that did nothave healthy grandparents and

(01:15:16):
planting it into otherwisereasonably good soil, you're not
going to get the resultsbecause of epigenetics, and so
there's all these dynamics thatneed to be dialed in that
actually take time, and so weshouldn't expect everyone to get
it all accomplished in thefirst year and there's no
pressure to.
What there is is a structure ofsupport and collaboration.

(01:15:36):
So everybody who's involved ontheir crops is documenting what
they're doing.
They're taking their bricksreadings, they're taking their
soil samples, they're takingtheir tissue tests.
They're reporting what theyadded, what their foliar sprays
were.
They're open sourcing it all.
Everything is collectivelyshared so that we can have, if
you have 50 people in a course,50 years of learning for each

(01:15:58):
participant every year, Becausetogether we can figure this
thing out Together in anybioregion, we can dial it in
pretty quick.
If we actually decide to workin nature's model, which is
symbiosis, If we try to keep itto ourselves and keep it private
and control it and compete, Imean you can do that if you want

(01:16:19):
.
You're not welcome in thiscourse.
What's welcome here is peoplewho want to collectively discern
and humbly attempt toaccomplish a very high caliber
of function which almost no oneglobally is accomplishing.
It's almost impossible to findany excellent bricks reading
crop, much less five, much lessany farm producing five.

(01:16:40):
So it's a high bar, but it'sentirely an accomplishable high
bar if you actually set yourmind to it, and so that's the
vision.
Accomplishable high bar if youactually set your mind to it,
and so that's the vision is thatwe do this in whatever we want
to call it, 500-mile radiuslocations all over the planet,
Mm-hmm.
All over the planet.
And so, in short order, you'vegot communities of knowledge who

(01:17:03):
have relationships, who canspeak to what needs to be done
in this bioregion with greatwisdom and capacity to support
anyone who wants to dial done inthis bioregion with great
wisdom and capacity to supportanyone who wants to dial in from
their bioregion, and we canactually accomplish this level
of function everywhere.
So that's the vision.
And it was after my tour throughAustralia, New Zealand, and I
was like why the hell are allthese people who really are very

(01:17:26):
knowledgeable coming to see me?
And it was some guys in NewZealand who were like you know,
Dan, you know you are able tointegrate the soil food web and
the Albrecht mineral balancingand the reams and the savory,
and you're able to speak to allthese things in context because
you're an organization, you'renot a company, you're not

(01:17:48):
selling a product, you knowyou're a farmer first and of all
the people on the planet whoare speaking out there, you're.
You know, you're pretty good.
And I was like shit, maybethat's true and maybe I should
act like it.
Instead of just bumming around,I should actually say okay,
who's up for a realcollaborative process together?

(01:18:08):
So yeah, we're launching it andit'll start in end of March.
In New Zealand, the fallsessions and then the spring
sessions will be in August orSeptember, and then April
sessions are going to be inAustralia and again the fall
sessions will be in September.
And, yeah, minimum 50 people,per course.
If we don't get it, we'llcancel it.
No pressure, I got plenty goingon.
If we don't get it, we'llcancel it.

(01:18:28):
No pressure, I got plenty goingon.
If people want to show up,that's great.
That's in various states too.
Eh, yeah, I think there'sWestern Australia, there's
Tasmania, there's Victoria, NewSouth Wales and Queensland.

AJ (01:18:41):
Yeah, it'll be fascinating, dan, to hear how that vision
evolves.
It'll be utterly fascinatingand, as you say, potentially
utterly transformative.
And you're going to be speaking.
We're going to get to meet onthe other side of the world, in
WA, right In Western Australia.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, inSeptember, because you'll be at
the RegenWA conference.

(01:19:01):
Exactly, it'll be a bigconference that's the first one
it's run of that scale in sixyears pre-COVID, really and it
will have six or 700 people.
It will be significant and soI'll be back for it.
You'll be there speaking and Iguess I mean, I don't know, I
mean it'll just be interestingto hear you speak about this in
general again, but also, I guess, to report back on what that

(01:19:25):
six months, or whatever, hasshown.

Dan (01:19:27):
Hopefully we'll have had a lot of, I mean a couple of these
courses we'll have subscribedand we'll have they'll be
running, and I mean, ideally,this is all happening openly.
So it's all the learning andthe sharing is happening is
happening publicly.
That's the vision.
Yeah, this is not a private,closed thing.
This is a who wants to be aleader?

(01:19:48):
Show, leader, show up, put yourshoulder to the wheel, open up
and let's do this together.
I think it could be.
The more I've thought about it,the more I'm like this is a
really good idea.
This is a really good idea.
Somebody should have done thisbefore.
Why is no one doing this?
I'm like, wow, that's a reallygood idea.
This could actually, withnothing else I've done in my

(01:20:08):
entire life, if I just did thisfor like three years, globally,
it could leave an amazing impactby simply calling the game and
saying who wants to cometogether and really coordinate,
collaborate, synergize.
It's the only way forward.
It's the only way forward is ifwe work together deeply and

(01:20:29):
humbly and openly.

AJ (01:20:30):
In that, sense people can obviously join, I guess become
members of the association, thebionutrient food association,
and in terms of the courses too,like is it?
Is it just farmers or otherstoo.

Dan (01:20:42):
No, no.
So I mean, I've been givingthis course for 17 years and
there's many versions of itonline on YouTube for free.
So you don't have to attend,you don't have to pay.
You don't have to If you justwant access to the content.
Right now, you just look up myname on YouTube and there's a
bunch of different versions.
You know, anything that saysPart 1 through 8 or Part 1
through 9 is versions of thiscourse.

(01:21:03):
This one is longer, it's morecomprehensive, it's more
comprehensive, it's moresystemic.

(01:21:24):
There's an infield component,there's the classroom component.
But really, what I'm talking tothere, who were pretty
progressive, were like is itreally possible?
Is it really possible to make aliving working with nature?
I'm like, yeah, we've been tothe no-till in the plains, we've
been to acres.
Like no, we've never been outof Idaho.
I'm like, well, we have thisissue with our water quality,
but this issue with this, I'mlike, great, every bioregion has

(01:21:46):
its issues, right.
Every bioregion has its one ortwo systemic issues which there
are solutions for.
But let's work on them togetherand collectively.
Let's figure out what thedynamics are that everybody's
struggling with.
Let's come together with theit's all possible.
It's all possible.
It just sometimes takes adeeper thinking and a broader

(01:22:08):
and a broader structure to tocome to these solutions.

AJ (01:22:11):
So yeah, yeah, and the transparency I mean.
I just I want to echo that thatyou mentioned before that the
transparency in in the wholesystem really, but in any way we
can, is just so central andit's so opaque in the system, I
mean probably across the boardit's a model of nature.

Dan (01:22:29):
Are we operating as colonized people or as
indigenous people?
Are we operating with symbiosisand collaboration?
Are we operating with controland separation, like?
If the objective here is to bein service to nature, then we
have to act like it.
We have to act like it.
We have to look at all of ouractions and understand when

(01:22:50):
we're being hypocrites andchange our actions.
And if we're being closed andreductionist and controlling and
competing as opposed tosupporting, then it's on us.

AJ (01:23:01):
We're the problems right Full circle, dan, beautifully in
our conversation.
It's just been fascinatingspeaking with you, mate.
Thank you very much.
My absolute pleasure and, ofcourse, you also.
Another element of coming fullcircle.
You also introduced at thestart that you had been in music
in a significant way, so I'dlove to know as I customarily

(01:23:24):
would do, ending our episodewhat a piece of music is that's
been significant in your life?

Dan (01:23:30):
ah, um, yeah, do you know the garden song?
no inch by inch, row by row,gonna make my garden grow, gonna
mulch it deep and low, gonnamake it fertile ground.
It's an old actually I thinkit's a Welsh tune Really, or

(01:23:52):
maybe it's Irish, it's in Gaelic, huh.
But it's this deep, deep prayerabout everything, about the
land and growing food and beingin touch, and your bones are
built from the land, and justthe prayer and it's just a real
sacred, sacred, sacred song.

(01:24:13):
That's the first couple linesof the English version.
But back to the point about ourcultural heritage.
I think a lot of thepre-English languages in the
British Isles had a lot ofindigenous wisdom and sacred

(01:24:35):
perspective and that's one wecould argue comes from that
perspective.
Oh yeah, profound, it's aprayer, it's a song, it's a
beautiful one.
So the garden song I think ArloGuthrie covers it and Pete
Seeger done a couple of times.
They were sort of folk musiciansand I think Arlo's still alive.
I'm pretty sure Pete Seegerdied, but that's a good one.

(01:24:55):
I like that one.
I sometimes sing Dora NobisPacem at my courses.
You know that one.
Yeah, dora Nobis Pacem, that'sa round and you can get
everybody going.
No, peace, patem, patem.
That's a round and you can geteverybody going.
It just means grant world peace.
Yeah, it's a beautiful thing todo every now and then.

AJ (01:25:17):
Wow, there's extra incentive to get along in person.
I'd like to see that.
Oh, fantastic mate.
Thanks so much for chattingwith me.
It's brilliant to meet ahead ofSeptember when we'll actually
meet in person.
But good luck in the interim,of course, in March and April.
I hope it goes brilliantly.

Dan (01:25:35):
Yeah, me too.
And for those who areinterested, there's a brand new
website.
It's dankitridgecom.
It's just been up for about aweek and I'm not sure when this
is going live, but We'll get itout quick and I'll link to it.
Yeah, brilliant, muchappreciation and a great time.
I I was told you're an amazinginterviewer and uh, yes, this
has been a wonderfulconversation.

(01:25:55):
I love, I love how you weavethings in and pull things out.
It's been great fun.

AJ (01:25:59):
DK
all thanks to you for goingthere, and it's been terrific
speaking with you.
So, yeah, good luck and andwe'll meet soon enough.
Hey?
, brilliant, brilliant, be well.
That was Dan Kittredge, founder and ED of the
Bionutrient Food Association.
For more on Dan, the BFA, Dan'snew masterclass launching in a

(01:26:22):
few weeks and the RegenWAconference see the links in the
show notes.
I'll include links to myconversations with Fred Provenza
and irishman Manchan agan magantoo, related to some of the
enticing threads in this yarnwith dan.
I look forward to seeing someof you back in australia in
september at that regenwaconference too, and, with luck,

(01:26:44):
some of dan's world famous eggswill be on offer.
As usual, I'll have more forpaid subscribers to the podcast
and new sub stack soon, in greatthanks for making 250 episodes
of this podcast possible.
You can join this greatcommunity of listeners by
heading to the website or theshow notes and following the
prompts, thank you.
Thanks, too, for sharing,rating, reviewing and

(01:27:07):
recommending the podcast.
The music you're hearing isRegeneration by Amelia Barden.
My name's Anthony James.
Thanks for listening.
I'm going to press record andhope nothing changes.

(01:27:53):
Okay, oh we're in the game.

Dan (01:27:56):
You're a genius.
The old turn off, turn on trickworks about 90% of the time.
Oh my God.

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