#127 Allan Savory - The Importance of Holistic Management - Ben Wehrman Podcast

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hello, everyone. Today, I'm joined by Alan Savory, an independent scientist, founder of holistic management in the Savory Institute, as well as an author with an upcoming memoir covering one of the most incredible lives one could imagine, ranging from being a game ranger, leading guerrilla units in the military, parliament, independent science, ecology, and more. It is such an enormous honor to have you here, Alan Savory. Thank you so much for joining me today.

(00:27):
Well, thank you, Ben, for inviting me.
So a place I thought we could start this out is where I think most people have heard your name before, even if they didn't know it, was the TED Talk that you did about grazing and how this can be the most regenerative new thing that people aren't really thinking about as a way to bring back the land and reverse desertification we see all over the world.

(00:52):
Tell me about this TED Talk experience for you.
I can imagine that this was just a total catalyst in your life that got your message out to so many people after so many years of having relative struggle getting the message out.
So what was that like getting on that stage and sharing your message with the world?
That was thrilling.
That was thanks to Chris Anderson, who owned and ran TED.

(01:17):
They did an audition in Johannesburg.
I went down to it and gave a short talk,
and Chris was in the audience doing the critique.
And at the end of it, he told me it was bloody terrible.
And I said, thanks for being honest.
I like that.
And I said, give me 15 minutes and let me redo it.
And I actually tore a piece of brown paper off a package

(01:39):
because I didn't have any paper.
I had a pen.
I mean, sat on the wall outside for 15 minutes and rewrote it,
came in and regave it.
And then he invited me to give a TED Talk.
and I gave that, and I said to all of the people associated with me,
I said, this will either bomb and go nowhere, or it'll go viral, and let's hope.

(01:59):
And I gave that talk probably 10 times to my dog, trying to get it right,
and when the talk ended, I knew that we'd got it right.
So it's gone to officially over 9 million people now, or about 9 million,
but unofficially to far more

(02:21):
because sometimes 100 people look at it together,
300, sometimes 20, 30, etc.
But of course some people repeat.
But tragically, if you look at it on the TED site,
it still carries a disclaimer.
And TED never invited me to talk again.
They said they had a policy of never inviting somebody twice,

(02:44):
which is obviously not true
because they've invited two or three people to talk twice.
What does that disclaimer say? What's it warning people about?
It says that some scientists, et cetera, disagree with me. I haven't been able to find a single scientist in 50 years that disagrees with me. Hundreds, thousands of academics who have no idea what my work is disagree with me. No peers. I haven't had a single peer say, what's wrong?

(03:18):
And in developing the work, I was commissioned with 2,000 scientists and academics through training by the U.S. government, USDA, Soil Conservation Service.
And we did that over two years.
And I deliberately spent one hour of every day with those 2,000 people on nothing but what I called Anything Goes.

(03:43):
In other words, I said, we've got one hour we're devoting every day, and it is your job to find out where I'm wrong, either logically or in any science you're aware of.
And in two years of that, with 2,000 scientists, we couldn't find any error in the logic or the science.
So to say, to hear that there are people who disagree, I wish one of them somewhere in the world would come forward and tell me where.

(04:13):
yeah and you know one of the things that i love about the talk that you gave and we can get into
details of it in a second here but it it really brings together all of the different sides of the
climate change debate because i i have friends who you know when you look at the traditional

(04:35):
left right political spectrum those two sides have very different views of climate change
obviously, as we know. But I think everyone can agree we should be making the land healthier,
bringing back soil, having healthier soil for better food, cleaner water, cleaner air,
happier animals. All these things should be indisputable. And it makes me think, you know,

(04:58):
is the fact that your talk is really catering to everybody, not causing all this divisive debate,
is that why people don't like it? Because there are certain forces out there that really want to
have this constant fighting between each other. Do you believe that could be a part of it?
It is, but it goes deeper than that. And you can't blame anybody. You can't blame the institutes

(05:18):
who've opposed me, bitterly tried to get me deported from America because of the damage I'm
doing to America. That's powerful universities and the international range society. Or in Southern
Africa, where I was banned from setting foot on any university campus in the whole of Southern
Africa for over 20 years, you actually can't blame any of those people. It took us a long time to

(05:43):
understand it. But what I spoke about at the TED Talk was just one aspect of our work, but it was
the first one that we discovered in the 1960s. And that was the whole world had always known
what caused desertification. The desert sands that overwhelmed the biblical cities,

(06:05):
created the great deserts of North Africa,
up into China, across into India,
and the world knew what caused that.
It was wherever there's damage to land,
it's too many animals.
If animals are involved,
and that had become a scientific truth,
you find it in ancient texts,
blaming the shepherds for overgrazing
and causing the deserts.

(06:26):
So there are thousands of PhD dissertations
based on that.
Not a single one even defined overgrazing, because we knew what it was.
You don't define that water flows downhill, because you know it.
And it was the same with livestock.
If land is deteriorating and animals are involved, there's too many animals.

(06:48):
Period.
And what I discovered in 1960s was wrong.
So it was heresy.
And so you cannot blame anybody who opposed that, etc.
and still does. The people are not wrong. It's just how humans behave to new discoveries that

(07:09):
go against the beliefs of society. So nothing's changed since Galileo and Copernicus. Nothing's
changed. And we see this happen no matter what industry or field it is. There's just
this built-up belief that a lot of people have put a lot of reputational capital in. They've spent
many years or decades studying these things and they need that to be true this idea to be true

(07:36):
for their identity to stay intact and it's really painful for their identity to be shattered and to
come up with a whole new idea and it takes a really special kind of person and you do hear
these stories rarely where someone will say you know what my whole life's work was a lie let's
start over let's let's figure out the truth but it's so so rare and you know i'm assuming that

(07:56):
do you believe there are still people out there that do this and are able to completely shatter
their life's view and they can start over? And what do you think is the path to fostering an
environment where more people are open to doing this? Because surely financial investment is a big
part of it. Like we said, educational investment. How do we get it so more people can be okay with

(08:18):
this? Well, I would like to get our discussion into that. And I think there's another way to
do it, but to answer your question, I don't think you'll solve that problem of how to get
people to accept that they were wrong, because it's so associated with the level of self-esteem.

(08:40):
If a person's self-esteem is high, they can readily accept that they might have been wrong,
But if they've pinned their self-esteem to their status, their position in a university, their seniority, the number of papers they've written, their eminence as a scientist, they're beyond retention.

(09:02):
They can't.
Their self-esteem is too low.
Now, that's beyond me to deal with that.
So I don't.
We've found a better way to deal with it.
But before we go there, let me explain one other thing.
The TED Talk was fantastic. It's got us to where we've got, I think it's 50 odd hubs in 30 countries now, where people are beginning to manage their lives holistically. So it's taken us a long way. But it's only part of our work.

(09:34):
it was the part that I
and I'm using the word I
discovered in the 1960s
and how to solve it
and that was that where we'd had this belief
for thousands, thousands of years
as I said to you
we also had another belief
and that was that you could solve this problem

(09:56):
of desertification, biodiversity loss
using the only two tools that humans have
We're a tool-using animal.
Nobody listening to us can even drink milk today without using technology.
If they want to, they've got to go and find a cow and suck with a mouth.

(10:17):
You can't even drink water without technology, a mug, cup, pipe, whatever.
We're a tool-using animal.
And what I discovered essentially in the 1960s was that throughout a million years of human evolution,
we first only had one tool, technology, and that was just stones and sticks like otters, apes, vultures,

(10:40):
other tool using animals, crows, etc.
And then, unlike all other animals, we learned to use and then to make fire.
And at that point, humans started changing whole continents, climates, etc.
So we've always only had those two tools.
And I realized as a young ecologist in the 60s that with those two tools, it's impossible, impossible.

(11:08):
And I plead with any scientists in the world, any Nobel laureate to come forward and say how it's possible to reverse global biodiversity loss and desertification.
You cannot solve that biological, ecological problem with fire or technology.
And so that was the first part of our work, was discovering we had no option but to use much vilified livestock.

(11:35):
And then we had the problem, well, how the hell do you do so?
Every way humans have ever managed livestock or run livestock led to biodiversity loss.
and not in Costa Rica, not in London, not around Paris,
but over most of the world where there are long periods of no humidity,

(11:57):
it led to desertification.
And Elizabeth Sartoris, I loved a talk she gave once in California.
She showed a picture of the earth rotating, much like the TED picture,
the NASA one I used, but hers was the earth rotating
and you can see the vast desert areas are far greater than the forests of Amazon, far greater.

(12:19):
And you can see this.
And she had a little spacecraft up there.
And she said, had we been in space observing Earth over the last 50,000, 100,000 years,
we would have described humans as a desert-making species.
So we had to solve that problem.
and the way I did it

(12:42):
because I tried to get the government
to take over my work
I tried to get people with resources
to take over my work
and I got ridiculed basically
so I had to do it myself
and I didn't have the resources
as a lone independent scientist
to do extensive research
etc etc
so I did what I could
and I looked at all professions

(13:03):
to see if any had solved a problem
anything close to this
looked at Harvard Business School
planning, you know, what had been done.
And nobody came close to it, except the army.
And as I was an officer in the army in a long war,
I had gone through the same Santer's training that we Rhodesians did,

(13:25):
same as British Army and so on.
It's similar to the training of all the armies of the world.
And I looked at how they had solved a way,
found a way of planning extremely complicated situations
where you didn't know what the hell was happening.
It could all change overnight.
In other words, how had they, over 1,000 years,

(13:48):
refining it over the last three or four centuries,
how had they learned to train officers
to come up with the immediately best possible plan
right now in immediate battlefield conditions, situations?
And I didn't try and reinvent the wheel.
So if you go to my textbook, you'll see I credit Santos.

(14:10):
They would not recognize it today, but that's where the work came from or the technique.
So we had that in the 60s.
And then some things we thought we were home and dry, or I did, and many of us did.
And it spread to five countries that I was working in, et cetera.
Now, something started to go wrong.
and I was picking up the first signs of two clients of mine who went bankrupt.

(14:37):
And that worried me a great deal.
And of course, the plan grazing process we used was blamed.
But I knew it wasn't because I was living with the families when I was working with them.
And the one, I'd seen the warning signs and they went bankrupt because of a divorce.
And I hadn't catered for a divorce.
I hadn't catered for the full social consequences

(14:59):
we're social, cultural creatures
and the other case, I was staying with a guy
and he went into a big irrigation scheme
3% interest, long time to pay
blah blah blah, government project
and he went into that and I said I think you need to be cautious
you're going to have to pump all the water onto your fields

(15:19):
that's going to take diesel, that's going to take energy
but I'm only advising you on your land and your grazing
so I can only say to you
have a careful look at that
well he didn't and it bankrupted you
and again the grazing got blamed
but those were red flags to me
and then fortunately

(15:40):
I saw it as a disaster at the time
but like many disasters
it turned out to be a good thing
and I was driven into exile
and came to the United States
and then the far-sighted bureaucrats
in the USDA. They'd been watching my work in Africa. It was already being plagiarized in Texas.

(16:05):
And they came to me and asked if I could provide training for them. And I said, yes, I'd love to,
but on one condition, we make it open to everyone, all the universities, all the government agencies,
not just one. And so that was agreed and interagency committee was put together.
Don Sylvester chaired it. And that's when I put the 2,000 people through training.

(16:29):
Now, I described that in the memoir and what came about, so I won't spend time on it now.
But that's when we emerged with the second part of the problem. And that is, in many ways,
no, you can't divorce them, but it's equally or more important than the fact that you cannot save

(16:49):
the world now from desertification
without livestock
the second part of it again went
against all human beliefs
so again tell me if I'm wrong
I would
pretty well bet that
every human listening to us
knows that there are many ways
of managing
many ways of developing

(17:12):
policy which is management at scale
alright
we all believe that, I believe that
I was trained that, I was taught that
universities teach that
that's a belief, it's not true
and we
discovered that when I was working with
2,000 scientists
what we discovered was, oh my god
every tool using

(17:34):
animals uses
exactly the same decision making
process, whether we're an ape
a crow, a vulture or a human
it's genetically
embedded in us, it's very
simple
tell me if I'm wrong. Haven't you made every conscious decision in your life to meet a need,

(17:54):
a desire, or to solve a problem? So has every human. So has every human. That's the problem.
It's a holistic world. It's a complex world. And that will never change. That will always be the
reason for our decisions. But we are making our decisions to manage our lives. And it cannot be

(18:19):
the context for our lives, needs, desires, etc. So we discovered that in 1983, when I published the
first edition of the textbook, that, oh my goodness, this is the cause of the problem.
and we need to find why that is causing all policies of all governments

(18:43):
to have unintended consequences.
When good people are developing them, highly skilled people,
the world's best experts are developing them,
and yet they lead to unintended consequences.
Just take COVID.
In the first four months of COVID,
it did more economic damage than World War II did in four years.

(19:07):
How the hell can a virus do more economic damage
in four months than a world war in four years?
That's not possible.
So what did the damage?
It's because every government developed policy
to deal with it in exactly the same way.
so that's the second part of

(19:28):
our work
and I sent you that
in a short talk, a 12 minute
talk that I gave at
COP26 when I
was invited along with
Vandana Shiva and I forget who the other
person was, anyway three of us were
invited to talk about how regenerative
agriculture might

(19:49):
help solve the climate change problem
and having been invited
to talk about that as you see
I refused to do so
and I said there are people who know
far more about agriculture than I'll ever
know in my life, I'm just an ecologist
although I farmed
and ranched and game ranched
and I said but I want
to talk about the cause of the problem

(20:10):
because I know nobody is doing
so
now
then everybody
knows
if you've got a headache
you've got a problem
deal with the cause of it.
If you take aspirin, you're dealing with a symptom.

(20:32):
And if you take aspirin and you take more aspirin,
you start to get high blood pressure or whatever.
So you take codeine.
And the more codeine you take, but you've still got the headache
because you're just masking it with these symptoms.
And then you take Tylenol.
And now you've got liver problems and other problems.
And that just describes how we work in the world.

(20:56):
So if we've got a problem and you find that my headache was because somebody was banging me on the head every half hour,
we'll just stop that and the headache goes.
It is that simple.
So I think you have interviewed a number of people in some of the 600 odd regenerative agricultural organizations in the world.

(21:24):
You've interviewed a number of them.
Tell me, did any of them spend two minutes talking about the cause of the problem?
you know i'd have to go back and listen again what would you define as the clear
cause that you're alluding to here yeah go back and i guarantee you they're all talking and it's

(21:49):
wonderful stuff i support it a thousand percent i'm not opposed to anything they're saying
but what they're talking about is how to produce food by farmers based on the biological sciences
Now how we produce food is not the problem because everything we produce whether milk bread butter cheese wheat cell phones bombs planes cars music orchestras cities everything we produce stops if you stop producing it

(22:22):
You do not manage anything we produce.
You don't manage it.
You produce it.
All right, so that's what they were talking about.
And if you go to, say, COP26, 27, 28, 29, you can go to COP100.
you'll find them in the agricultural sphere
and the energy sphere
you'll find the same

(22:42):
you'll find people arguing for pharma production of food
based on the biological, ecological science
and you'll find the mass of people
arguing for corporate production of food
based on chemistry and marketing of technology
and then you'll find the mass of our 9 billion people
or however many are, are apathetic

(23:04):
so they support the bulk
and that's why agriculture is the most destructive industry ever in the history of the world,
more so than coal, fossil oils, mining, anything has ever been.
So when you ask what is the cause of it, that fortunately,

(23:26):
and I stress through no wisdom on my part, I'm just an ordinary person,
I accidentally stumbled on in my 20s.
And the memoir will cover that.
When I discovered that biodiversity loss,
desertification was occurring in wild areas of Africa

(23:46):
before we even formed national parks.
And I was working with one of the world's top ecologists
at that time, Sir Frank Fraser Darling,
and he had no answers.
And I realized, oh my God, this is serious.
And that changed my whole life
and led to the last 70 years of working on that problem,

(24:07):
trying to understand it and solve it.
So as I put in that short talk at COP that I sent you,
I said, thankfully, while we've had no denial about desertification,
we knew it was due to livestock, and I addressed that so I won't come back to it,
I said, we have had denial about climate change being caused by humans,

(24:31):
and we've had a lot of confusion
and that denial is still going on.
We're seeing it in America right now.
But I said, over the last, I don't know,
five, ten years, whatever,
every sane scientist has acknowledged
that humans are causing accelerating climate change.

(24:53):
I think we can accept that now.
Sure, there are a few who are saying
humans have got nothing to do with it.
but they are wrong because desertification is a major part of it,
and that's 100% due to humans' management,
as I showed in the TED talk.
So we now know that humans are causing climate change.

(25:16):
Now, science is logical.
Science is not illogical.
Science is deduction, logic, et cetera, knowledge.
So if the world acknowledges that now,
it's tragic. The media has missed it. Our universities
have missed it. Our governments have missed it. They've all

(25:37):
missed the significance of that acknowledgement. Let me explain
why. If you have a problem
climate change and you acknowledge that humans are causing
it, now you have the cause. Humans are causing it.
You can have two, three, four, many things
affecting a problem, but only one root cause. So if humans are causing it, then fossil fuels are

(26:03):
not causing it. And livestock, methane, is not causing it. It's humans causing it. They're
causing it by management. How they manage fossil fuels, how they manage livestock, how they manage
forestry, how they manage fisheries, how they manage all resources in the world. So that's what

(26:28):
we need to focus on. So you actually don't need to even re-look through all your past talks, because
I think I can guarantee none of them talked about what we manage. Now, if we don't manage food,
beef, wine, cheese, forests, fisheries, whatever
if we don't manage these resources

(26:50):
that we are producing from nature
what is it that we manage
that world leaders need to focus on
and here again, unfortunately
this came as news to everybody
we only manage three things
and everybody listening to us can attest to this

(27:12):
you are managing your life
you and your family
and the first thing you've got to do
is manage your economy
if you don't earn money
if you don't have
money to buy food
clothes
men commit suicide when they can't support their families
it's very common

(27:33):
and only then
do you manage nature
to produce every single thing
that sustains humanity and civilization
All the forms of food, all the forms of music, art, literature,
is produced from nature, goes back to nature.
Okay, so we manage these three things.

(27:54):
Now, if you look at the millions of things we produce,
whether cell phones, bread, wine, bombs, whatever we produce,
because we don't manage it, if you stop producing, it stops.
and with most of it, which involves technology,
if a battery run dries, it stops.

(28:15):
If fuel runs out, it stops.
And with any form of food, if you stop producing it, it stops.
And you can choose to produce milk or meat,
cheese or wine, cell phones or bombs,
cars or planes or whatever.
You can choose.
Now, when it comes to the three things we manage,
our families, ourselves, our cultures,

(28:40):
and at scale, our institutions.
We cannot manage at scale without an organization or institution.
So we're managing that human component.
And the first thing, the political party,
the environmental organization, the farming organization,
whatever it is, has to do, or the family, is finance themselves.

(29:01):
If they go out of money, they're out.
And then, whatever they are, institution or human, at whichever scale, now they are managing nature, our life, supporting environment, from which we produce every single thing that makes every business, every economy, every civilization possible.

(29:27):
and you cannot choose to manage only the humans
or only the organization
or only the economy
or only the land.
You can't choose.
If you do, you'll fail
because they're indivisible.
And that was the second discovery

(29:49):
when I then,
and that I say we,
because 2,000 of us working on that,
when we did that,
that's when I published the first edition of our textbook.
So one of the things I would really like to drill into here is,
for those who haven't watched the talk on YouTube, the TED Talk,

(30:11):
which I obviously recommend everyone does for the full detailed breakdown
with the visuals and everything,
but I know you've spent your whole life breaking this down for people,
so I can imagine how many times you've done it over the years,
But for those who just want the 101 elevator pitch on what you're talking about, I know we brought up this idea of livestock grazing as being the essential piece.

(30:33):
Could you give us that elevator pitch for the people who haven't heard this before?
What is the solution to this problem of desertification and biodiversity loss we are seeing around so much of the world right now?
Well, you've got it now that it's two things.
It's how humans manage resources.
right that's the number one thing now if you as i see in your background you're in costa rica

(30:59):
you've got perennial humidity so life goes on birth growth death decay anything in that vegetation
but that i can see behind you i know because of your distribution of humidity through the year
i don't care whether you're high rainfall or low rainfall you get humidity throughout the year
I can see it from the vegetation behind you.

(31:22):
All right, now in that, you cannot break that cycle.
You can use all the fire in the world.
You can use all the chemicals in the world.
You can use all the machinery in the world.
You try and create 1,000 hectares of bare ground where you are.
You can't do it.
Why?
Because nature will cover it up so quickly.

(31:44):
Now, the rainfall in London, the rainfall in Johannesburg,
it's about the same.
around London, it's much the same as I'm saying to you.
You can overgraze every damn grass.
You can use all the chemicals.
You can use machinery.
You cannot create 1,000 hectares of bare ground.
Nature will fill it up.
Now, if you come to where I live in Zimbabwe,

(32:06):
or you come to most of the world,
right across North Africa,
right down the Americas,
from Canada to South America,
if you look at right across North America,
up into China,
across into India, if you look at most of Australia,
so now I'm talking of areas far vaster than the Amazon forest.

(32:28):
If you look there, it's terribly easy to create thousands,
millions of hectares of 80%, 90% per ground between the plants.
You've only got to rest the land, and it'll happen,
because biological decay will turn to chemical oxidation,
and it cannot be solved with fire or technology.

(32:51):
That was the subject of the TED Talk
and I explained what oxidation is
and what it leads to, etc.
So that's why even though you might live, say,
around London or Paris or parts of Europe
or in Costa Rica,

(33:11):
we have to be very careful what we're saying
when we're saying something is a solution for the world.
Because the solution right where you are,
if there's some badly damaged environment
or in the ocean or marine areas or wetlands,
if you want to restore biodiversity,
you have the most powerful tool in the world.

(33:33):
Just rest the land.
Just rest the ocean.
It'll recover.
It'll be in changed form if you've lost thousands of species,
but it'll recover.
now if you are
in these other environments
that I've said, if you rest the land
it loses biodiversity
so that's

(33:54):
a critical part
when you ask me to make that
very very simple, I often just
say to people, I hope this
isn't a sexist remark or anything
I'm a bit old fashioned, but I've often
said to people with a PhD in
range science, I said god damn it
if you can't understand this
go to the village and join the old ladies in tennis shoes garden club they'll teach you

(34:16):
because if you go to them and you're dealing with a piece of bare ground and you say how could i
possibly get this to cover up they will tell you if that's hard capped break it break it and you
can do it with a tool a pick a shovel a machine or do you know what cattle hooves do it sheep
hooves do it. Camel hooves do it.

(34:39):
Animals do it.
Free of charge.
They'll tell you that. And if you want plants
to grow on it, and you want water to
soak in it, and you want water to stay
on it, cover it with
some litter.
Some dead plant material.
That's all. Now,
how can you do that? You can go
and cut grass and come and cover it

(35:00):
as people do in the gardens.
Or you know what? If you put
animals on, they dung and urinate and trample vegetation, and they do it free of charge.
It is that simple. Now, thousands of people with PhDs designed great big machines to imitate that,

(35:22):
and there was no science behind it. There was only what I call proof by authority.
I say it works, and I am professor at such and such a university.
And I say it works. Now, on the basis of that, the American government, other governments, United Nations, spent billions of dollars on these machines, trying to imitate animals, break the surface, lay mulch, litter, Dixon imprunter, etc.

(35:51):
Today, those machines lie rotting, rusting. And nobody's held accountable. Nobody refers to them now. It's too embarrassing.
now when i suggested by the way we could do that with animals
it was like throwing a pork chop in the synagogue
yeah and this is a very interesting idea you talked about technology how we've always been

(36:18):
a species that uses technology and tools to figure things out and get things done
And it makes me beg the question, where do humans really stand in this pecking order of life on Earth?
Because on one hand, you could say, you know, we keep ruining everything.
We, you know, we're getting too fancy with all these tools and we're creating damaging tools that are disrupting nature.

(36:42):
On the other hand, you could say, well, that is we are part of nature.
It's in our nature to create these tools and use them and keep using them.
And so how do you reconcile those two?
I guess the question could be, where do you see humans are in the pecking order of the web of life right now?
And where should we be and where should we aspire to move toward to be a better steward of this land?

(37:07):
Bear in mind, nobody's deliberately destroying the earth as we are in our own habitat.
You can live longer without water and food than you can without habitat.
all right if you don't believe that try living underwater for five minutes
now we are destroying our own habitat now we're not doing that deliberately

(37:29):
and that was the great breakthrough in 1983 why have more than 20 civilizations destroyed
themselves through their agriculture why is it now a global threat we are globally destroying
civilization as we know it, when nobody intended that. Economists call it the law of unintended

(37:51):
consequences, jokingly. Right, so that's what we discovered. So now I'm optimistic. Prior
to that, it was, let me use the Wright brothers, for thousands of years, we didn't know how
to fly. Who do you blame? Somebody had to be blamed. Surely to God we can hold somebody

(38:12):
responsible. That's what we're saying. We didn't know why humans were destroying ourselves,
our own habitat. So don't hold anybody accountable. Now, after 83, when we discovered what was
causing it, yes, you can start to hold institutions accountable because they resist new knowledge.

(38:35):
Ordinary humans don't, to a certain extent. All right, so where do humans lie in this?
I'm excited for the future if we will address the cause of the problem.
And what is the problem?
If you had to summarize it, I would say it's global biodiversity loss.
And I think the whole world is now acknowledging that that's in free form.

(38:58):
The words I'm hearing in my episode, global biodiversity loss.
Now, desertification is only a symptom of that.
without biodiversity loss, desertification doesn't occur.
So that's leading to the symptom of desertification,
non-effective rainfall, a term I coined in the 1960s,

(39:21):
where your rainfall starts becoming non-effective
and you start getting floods and droughts,
even with no change in rainfall.
That then leads to mega-fires burning at altitudes and latitudes
where fires never burnt before.
and these three now fuel climate change
and now they're feeding on each other

(39:43):
in a spiral that's virtually out of control.
Now, that is the problem.
Now, if you're going to break that cycle,
if you look at the world's scientific community,
how they're trying to break it at the atmospheric level
of excess carbon, greenhouse gases, etc.
You cannot break it at that level.
You can only break it by addressing the cause.

(40:04):
and the cause starts with biodiversity loss.
And what we are calling climate change today
began roughly between 50 and 100,000 years ago.
We weren't using fossil fuels.
That's a late come-up that helped accelerate the curve.

(40:25):
All right, so now I'm very hopeful, very hopeful,
if we can get the world to stop focusing
on how we produce energy.
Do we produce it from nuclear, fossil fuels,
water, wind turbines?
They're arguing about how to produce energy from nature.
And if we can get people to stop arguing

(40:46):
about should we produce food from farmers or corporations,
biological sciences or chemicals,
stop arguing about that because it's not the problem.
So if we can get people to just focus on the problem,
which is just how we manage humans, culture, our organizations,

(41:08):
financing themselves, managing nature to produce everything.
And when you focus on that, the problem becomes unbelievably simple to solve.
So that gives me great hope.
Now, why I give all the time I can to you or any other podcast

(41:30):
is how do we get that message out to the public?
Yeah, absolutely agree.
And my question to that would be,
using that framework you just gave
about how we need to manage things better
in the current institutional model

(41:51):
is not getting us in the right direction,
I'd be curious what you believe structurally
would be the better direction to go.
because we have all these government-funded institutions that seem to be not solving the
problems as you're talking about. And coming from the Bitcoin world, we talk about this a lot,
how all of these things that are really downstream from the central banking system and the money

(42:13):
printer just don't seem to be solving the root problems. They seem to be masking things and
going after symptoms, like you said, that never seem to move the needle.
so what do you think would be the framework we should aspire to would it be more centralization
of the institution so reform becomes easier you don't have to reform all these different

(42:35):
organizations or do you think more decentralization more people creating their own homesteads starting
their own farms and splintering it out even more just to bring it more to an individual level what
What should we be looking for for the future?
None of those.
None of those.
None of them address the cause of the problem.

(42:56):
Okay, so let me try and explain that.
It's simpler than that.
You don't look for another framework for institutions, et cetera.
Over thousands of years, we have found that beyond the human scale,
that's you and I and everybody listening, managing their family,
their small communities, maybe the little small family business,

(43:16):
beyond that everything is done through organizations i've got a pencil here no human can
make them virtually today they're made by corporation just a simple toothbrush i don't
know anybody who can make them these days they're made by corporation everything is done by
corporation we have to have them so don't try and look for another framework we need them

(43:39):
now we'll never change the way that humans make decisions it's been like that for a million years
it's exactly the same for every tool-using animal, don't try and change it.
So what do we need to do?
We just need our institutions, at which we manage at scale,
to acknowledge that our institution itself is complex,

(44:03):
and we are managing the institution with the economy and with nature to produce things.
and once we acknowledge that
and that institutions being complex
have what we call wicked problems
meaning extremely difficult to solve
once we acknowledge that
without anybody being held accountable

(44:25):
blamed or anything of that sort start uniting as humans it becomes relatively easy to solve Now when institutions
The problem when you form an institution, which you have to have,
so I'm not against them, when you form them, they take a life of their own.

(44:45):
No institution has emotion.
No institution basically has common sense.
Institutions find it almost impossible to ever admit error,
whereas ordinary humans have all of those okay so it's an institution it's a legal entity
it's not a human being the first institution corporation whatever political party uh that

(45:10):
is treated as a human we will hang it when it poisons people or kills people how the hell do
hang a company we don't we reward the senior people move them on and go on all right so so
face that reality, don't deny it, and then come together and address what is causing the problem.

(45:30):
And it is not a lack of goodwill. It's not bad people. There are bad people. There are
people with ill will, but they're the minority. Most humans, I believe, are good, doing their best.
I really believe that
alright
so when we come together

(45:52):
and acknowledge what is causing the problem
it is not any of these things
as I say that we're blaming
so now
what is causing it
and it is simply the way
that all governments
all environmental organizations
all farming organizations
all companies

(46:13):
develop policy
just change the way they develop policy and the exact same people produce a totally different
result and we've done that over and over and over again so i'm curious what your thoughts are on how

(46:35):
we fix that because i have my view and i'm in line with uh who we talked before we started recording
i listened to your episode with safe adina moose the author of the bitcoin standard who i'm a very
big fan of in the Bitcoin world, I think him and I would be aligned on this thinking that
the reason why the policies we keep seeing come out are not what we would call good or

(46:59):
solution seeking or root cause healing is because there is that financial beast in the background
that is causing misincentives where people in those positions are often there just to
get free money for themselves and profit themselves. We look at the politicians today,
they're all super rich, way more than their salaries. So they're finding ways to...

(47:22):
Can I interject you there? Of course. Yeah. Do you see how you're getting into blaming?
You're blaming politicians. Stop it. We've got to stop blaming each other. Now, when you're saying
it's because of the economic component.
Don't repeat history.
Remember that we had economies

(47:43):
for thousands of years
where the currency first was just barter
and then it was cowrie shells or whatever.
And it still went wrong.
That's not the problem.
So don't stop keep barking up the wrong tree.
Just face the problem.

(48:04):
Now, what is the problem?
The problem is the way that the organizations develop policy.
So let me try and illustrate that.
And again, anybody can tell me if I'm wrong.
If a political party decides to develop an agricultural policy, which is vital, okay, how does it do so?
The leader of the party, if they're very progressive, whatever, it doesn't matter whether it's a tradership, one party or a multi-party state,

(48:30):
What they do is they decide to develop it.
They're meeting a need, a desire, or solving a problem.
Do you see?
They're using human decision-making.
So now to solve this problem of bad agriculture
or this need for better agriculture, etc.,
they'll pull together specialists and experts

(48:53):
to advise the politicians, the political leader.
Now, all of these specialists and experts
who are pulled together, how many will be paying their own salaries? None. Virtually none.
They will all represent corporations, companies, universities, environmental organizations,

(49:17):
institutions, and these are the heads of them or the top people in them. All right, so that's good.
You're bringing all the institutions and the people with the expertise together. Now, think
about this for a moment. What is the first priority of the political party? It is to finance itself.

(49:37):
If the party runs out of money, it's dead. What's its second priority? Keep support of people,
etc. What's its third priority? It has to stay in power at any cost. What's its fourth priority?
the interests of the citizens.

(49:58):
All right, so the party convening this,
its fourth interest is the citizens.
Now, all the institutions brought with their experts
to develop the policy, first point,
all of them are experts in forms of production,
energy, food, whatever.

(50:19):
Are any of them experts in how to simultaneously
manage the complex of humans, culture, institutions, economy, and nature.
So we have no experts in what is required.
Now, all of them coming represent institutions.
Let's say there might be one person there who doesn't.

(50:41):
Now, what's the first concern of that institution?
Finance itself.
What's its second concern?
Support.
What's its third concern?
If you're lucky, if it's a corporation, it may be market dominance or whatever.
If you're lucky, the third concern or the fourth concern will be citizen interests.

(51:02):
So every party developing that policy, their third or their fourth concern is the interests of the citizens, including their own families.
Now do you see why policy is not working?
so when we develop policy using the holistic framework i can't go into here but we neutralize

(51:24):
all of this without anybody feeling blamed responsible anything like that i literally
hate blaming anybody or condemning anybody what i do do is to condemn how institutions behave
because if we don't face that, we're doomed.

(51:47):
Now, when I say that, let me illustrate it with an example
that happened to me a while back.
I was talking to two young men in my own country.
They have grown up in the country.
They've seen me over years struggling.
And they made a statement to me.
They said, Alan, you're doing something wrong.

(52:07):
They said, we've watched all our lives.
your message is so simple, so clear, and yet we've seen you facing constant obstruction and rejection, etc.
So you're clearly doing something wrong.
And I said, you guys, you're all right.
And I said, I've had many people tell me that over the last 60 years.

(52:29):
I've had nobody tell me how to do it right.
So we're trying to put two new heretical concepts into society.
and I said but anyway how are you guys doing
and they said what do you mean
we're not managing anything
and I said how are you doing
and they said we don't understand you
and I said well by the look of you

(52:51):
you look like Christians
are you and they said yes
and I said what did your founder have to say
didn't he talk about
love and caring
isn't that simple
over 2000 years
how many millions
of Christians, families
people have been capable of love and caring for each other.

(53:12):
Millions and millions.
What happened when you managed religion at scale?
You formed well over 2,000 Christian churches
and you've been fighting each other, going to war.
It was Christians who carried out the Holocaust.
You've had major religions protecting pedophile priests.

(53:32):
Is this what your founder said?
I said, you guys aren't doing any better than I am.
and I think at that point they got it. Our institutions, we have to have them,
but we have to start facing the fact that they're not human.
I'm trying to figure out what is your path to fixing those institutional problems.

(53:58):
I certainly want to agree that I don't mean to blame the people within them as bad people.
These are just people that are following their incentives that they're given.
And I try to look more at the system itself as the issue.
And so from your framework that, you know, we do need these institutions, we just need to, you know, scale them differently in a more holistic way.

(54:21):
Like you said, how would you summarize the better way to do that?
No, I didn't actually say that.
We can't scale them differently.
We don't need to do things in a more holistic way.
you know people thought more holistically for centuries old cultures aboriginal cultures
native american cultures it didn't help them it's how humans make decisions i keep stressing that

(54:46):
all right so we need our institutions and as i said just now um if uh if i could wave magic wand
just be to get one statesman leader of any country to just say i'm going to carry on governing as i
I'm a politician, contact risk.
But concurrently, I'm going to have my experts,

(55:06):
my people, our country,
develop policy in the way Alan's talking about.
You just get to say every institute to facilitate it.
They won't develop the policy.
They'll just facilitate how you manage the complexity
of humans, institutions, economy, and nature
to produce food or to produce energy or whatever.

(55:28):
that would be my wish and then the whole world could say oh my goodness this is not difficult
we're all complicating it we're all talking about the wrong issues we're all and i don't
repeat everything well we're talking about how to produce not how to manage
yeah i think that's a really good way to transition into what your organization is

(55:52):
doing the savory institute just going through this website you can see it has so much on there
has so much information, education, online resources, podcasts, history, like all these
things are so helpful for people. So how do you see the Savory Institute coming in and being part
of this solution? What's your vision for it, where it is now, where it's been and what you see in the

(56:13):
future for it? Well, we took a decision 15 years ago, and we felt that getting the world to accept
the whole package would be a little bit complicated.
So why don't we focus on the area of the world

(56:34):
where the problems are the greatest?
In other words, the desertifying areas,
which is the grasslands, savannas, etc.
Because it is the droughts, floods, desertification
that's leading to most of the emigration, wars, violence,
changing the whole political face of Europe, etc.

(56:54):
So why don't we focus on that? And that has been our focus for 15 years. And through that, gradually influence public opinion through successes, results, etc. until policy changes.
so we've done that for 15 years with remarkable success and we've made more progress i believe

(57:17):
than i've ever known in history where two new concepts contrary to all human belief are involved
um so now we are facing the fact that after 15 years we need to review
that strategy and just see are we still on the right path and uh after we've done that perhaps

(57:38):
I could answer your question better.
At the moment, I can only give you my personal view,
but we haven't worked on it as a team yet.
My personal view is that if we trim the rudder a little bit,
we can direct that and get even faster results.
But let's wait and see what comes out.
I think what we're doing, as I said, has made great progress,

(58:04):
but with a little trimming,
we could focus more on the policy side of things
and less on the management of the grasslands alone,
which has sort of boxed us in as the people
that are all about cattle and wildlife and grasslands.
No, we're not.
We're about managing people's lives holistically.

(58:25):
And no way does that I get that brought out better
than my wife and I went to a book signing
after I'd written the first,
or we'd written the first edition of our textbook.
And we went to Australia for a book signing.
I had trained two Australians who had gone back training many,
and we were met by over 300 people at this book signing

(58:46):
from every state except Tasmania.
And what I liked was the number that came up and thanked me,
and I liked that, but not for saving their farm,
not for improving the land.
What I liked was they came and thanked me for saving their family.
Because managing holistically is all about managing our lives,

(59:09):
not about managing grasslands.
You cannot manage land.
It cannot be divided from the culture, the people, the economy.
They're inseparable.
I love that, and I completely agree that this is so important
that we reconnect back with nature using this holistic mindset in all aspects of our lives.

(59:33):
And there's nowhere that you shouldn't be thinking holistically long term.
Work along with nature and everything that you do 100%.
And it's so awesome to see more people coming to that conclusion through all sorts of different
fields.
It doesn't really even like Bitcoin, like we talked about.
Bitcoin is a very different entry point than where you came from, for example.

(59:55):
but we're still coming to the same conclusion that we really need to work with nature here.
We need to stop trying to fight these natural laws we see all around us and think holistically,
like you said. So what would be the main call to action for the people out there that are looking
for ways to become more holistic in how they present themselves in this world and how they

(01:00:19):
raise families and just go about their daily lives in a holistic way?
And, you know, you and I are representing the whole struggle right now
between you and I trying to communicate as adults.
And nothing, I've never found anything blocks learning except two things.

(01:00:40):
I've never, ever known ignorance block learning.
I've only found what we already know as adults blocks learning and our egos.
All right.
And you and I are both adults and we both have egos.
So we're human.
Now, nothing I've said indicates that we should change our thinking.

(01:01:04):
You've said we should have a different mindset.
We should think holistically.
You've said that in several different ways.
Man, I never said that.
I said we have to change the way we make management decisions.
You see, that's a totally different thing.
And I'm not blaming you because you're an adult.
You're relating it to what you know.

(01:01:24):
Bitcoin, Bitcoin, and so on.
All right?
Remember that for thousands of years, at least 100,000 years,
early cultures saw their connection to nature.
It's only a recent Western culture disconnect from nature.
So Native American Indians, we know in latter generations,

(01:01:47):
long after the early people, saw that connection,
and they tried to make decisions, management decisions in the tribe,
seven generations, thinking seven generations ahead.
Go to Australia, the Aborigines, I mean, they've got ceremonies, everything.
They're just tied to nature.

(01:02:08):
Go to all the pastoral tribes.
They're livestock.
They are part of nature.
It didn't help them.
The whole of Australia was being turned into a desert
by those same people knowing, believing, thinking holistically.
It's not going to help us at all if people just think holistically.

(01:02:29):
We have to address the cause of the problem.
And that is the way humans make management decisions, period.
And anything I say after that, I'm just repeating.
But I cannot...
How does one take that management to their daily routine?
How do they apply this to their lives in the best way?

(01:02:52):
Oh, it's so easy.
I mean, I'll give you one example.
I use it often.
My wife and I had a woman come from Africa.
At the time, it was funded by Ford Foundation and supported by the government there.
And she came as part of six Zimbabweans for six months training with me in New Mexico.

(01:03:13):
And she stayed with my wife and I with her son.
She was a single mother with a son.
And so she was learning how to manage her list,
agreed to take this back to teach people in the villages, et cetera.
And one day she said to me, but couldn't I do this in my own life?
And I said, of course you can.
Let me help you.
So we sat by the dining room table, and I just said,

(01:03:37):
how do you want your life to be?
Because remember, she's going to make all her decisions
against needs, desires, problems, and you can't do that.
you have to have a holistic context for your life to tie your life to your life-supporting
environment. So I just said to her, how do you want your life to be? You're a single mother.

(01:03:58):
Does anybody make your management decisions for you? No. Does anybody have veto power over
management decisions in your life? She said, no. I said, then it's you and your son. Okay,
so we've got it. Now, how do you want your life to be? And I just got her to lay that out
write it on a paper. If she put any action, any decision already made, no, that's out of order.

(01:04:22):
You cannot have an action, a prejudice, a decision already made in the holistic context to guide
your management. It is a holistic context. And so when she had done that, I said, no,
you don't manage land, but everything you eat, everything you consume, everything you throw out
goes back to the environment. So how would the environment have to be

(01:04:44):
generally for your great-great-great-grandson
and daughters to live a life like you want to? Well, we
started to describe clean air, drinkable water from the rivers, blah, blah, blah.
High biodiversity, stability, productivity of
land, blah, blah, blah. Generically. And then at the end of that

(01:05:05):
I said, okay, now you're employed. People employ you.
how can you make
them want to employ you forever
how can you make them want to come to your help
at any time
how can you make your friends really support you
can you change any of them
no you can't
I said okay so
how are you going to have to be

(01:05:26):
because at the end of the day
you're judged by your behaviour
not your brand, not your marketing, not your words
end of the day
every one of us is judged by our behaviour
so I just said
how are you going to have to be?
And I got her to describe that.
And then I said, that's it.
Now just begin making your life in that context, holistic context.

(01:05:51):
And about a week later, she came to me very excited and she said,
hell, this works.
And I said, what happened?
And she said, I went with my son to the supermarket shopping,
went around the aisles loading the cart,
I got to the checkout counter
there were six people ahead of me
so I had to wait

(01:06:12):
and while I was waiting
I looked at my shopping list
and I suddenly thought
everything was ticked off
need, desire, need, need
desire, desire, desire
and she said
oh my goodness
I thought of the holistic context
for my life
and my importance of education
of my son

(01:06:32):
and the things that are real value to me
and she said I sheepishly went back and put
half the things on the shelf
that is managing
holistically it not about managing land it about managing our lives and that a great example using just the different

(01:06:54):
things you're purchasing and spending your energy and money
toward in your life and one of the programs I know that you have
is the land to market program within Savory Institute
so I'd love to hear more about this because this is something that everyone should be
looking at how do we really connect ourselves more closely to these regenerative practices and

(01:07:17):
regenerative food production methods. Could you tell me a little bit more about this
land-to-market program and what it's doing, how it's helping people?
Yeah, what that basically is, is we're trying to influence the public, corporations, everything,
through showing that if people manage their lives holistically

(01:07:41):
and they're also managing a farm or ranch or whatever,
that that product is absolutely sound environmentally.
It's not doing any cultural damage, any economic damage,
environmental damage, right from the source, the producer,
to the end consumer and trying to show land to market

(01:08:04):
that every link of that chain is sound to the best of our knowledge,
documented, et cetera.
That's what that is.
And so it's a great idea and concept.
I'm not involved in it, but as part of the organization,
I know that's going on.
And then we've got another one, environmental monitoring.

(01:08:26):
And again, just try and monitor and establish that the environment
is actually really improving
and to document that for various end producers,
consumers, etc.
So, yeah, these will go on.
But they're all still associated

(01:08:46):
with the management of farming agriculture
and good.
But at the end of the day, as we said earlier,
we still are going to have to return
to addressing the cause of the problem,
which is how the institutions develop policy
because we're working at these levels

(01:09:08):
but global finance
and you're part of that with your Bitcoin, etc.
is driving environmental destruction.
So on the farm level, let's call it
or the pastoralist level, the human level
we can only do the best we can
to manage our families, our communities
and our economy

(01:09:29):
and nature to produce the food we do,
but we're operating in this global economy
that is driving environmental disruption.
So when we do holistic financial planning,
which is part of the framework that we use,
we actually distinguish the sources of money.
So you might want to go and look at that,

(01:09:50):
being interested in Bitcoin,
because what we have is when people are investing
in the business, investing in the farm,
producing money, whatever,
We're dealing with money. And when management decisions are made, we just have some precautionary steps there to avoid addictive use of wrong forms of money, because that leads to bankruptcy and all sorts of things.

(01:10:15):
And so we, without being judgmental on them, we identify three forms of money, if you like.
And one is what we call a mineral dollar.
That means that the source of that wealth or money is coming from a non-renewable resource.

(01:10:37):
It'll run out at some time, theoretically.
Okay.
Not good or bad, but acknowledge the source.
And then the other is a paper dollar.
So the source of this is just nothing.
Create it.
Print it.
Bitcoin.

(01:10:58):
Paper dollar.
Paper money.
Okay?
So that's the source of it.
There's no substance to it except confidence.
If the public lose confidence, it has no value.
And you can create trillions of dollars overnight or lose them overnight.
All right?
So not good or bad, just acknowledge the source.
And then the third is what we call a solar dollar,

(01:11:22):
because without agriculture, you cannot have a choir,
you cannot have an orchestra, you can't have a church,
you can't have a government, you can't have an army,
you can't have a university,
you can't have any business in the world sustainable,
you can't have any economy in the world that will ever be sustainable
without agriculture.
all right so ultimately ultimately the economy needs to be based on the photosynthetic process

(01:11:47):
food all right so the third form of dollars would be called a solar dollar now in managing the
business the farm whatever we simply get people to acknowledge the source of the money are they
borrowing it is it a grant where is it coming from and the pattern of use because if you're using it
once only to build infrastructure,

(01:12:08):
it might be right in line with your holistic context.
If you're using it,
but it's going to be a repeated use,
that's not so good.
It might be.
So you need to look at that very carefully.
And then if you are using something like, say, a paper dollar,
and it's addictive,

(01:12:30):
with compound interest,
God help you.
You can know that.
and a study by Ohio State University,
Deb Steiner and co-workers,
she and her colleagues followed early adopters
who came to me for learning from me in the early 1980s

(01:12:52):
when I first went to America and started teaching thousands of people,
and they, from California right across to Florida,
averaged 300% more profit,
and all they were doing was just following
what we call holistic financial planning.
And at that time, the time period over which that occurred,

(01:13:14):
over 600,000 farm families went bankrupt
and suicide was the leading cause of death
in the same markets.
And people thinking of the sources of the money,
managing holistically, I stress,
averaged 300% more profit.
we could be doing that all over the world.

(01:13:37):
Yeah, and I know this is something that the Savory Institute is very monumental in helping
as you're increasing your footprint across the world to really push those principles
or help educate on those principles, I guess I should say.
How would you describe the process of how these different hubs are actually helping
these different geographical locations understand these things that you are saying and implement them

(01:14:03):
in their communities and people listening would probably like to know as well how they can
implement in their own communities yeah i think that varies with with every hub it's like how
long is a piece of string um so every hub is different but what they are is local um formed
by local people, managed locally, etc.

(01:14:25):
And they're part of a network, hopefully helping each other, etc.
Say Reinstitute is part of the network and, you know,
helping with the coordination of the knowledge and the training
and things like that.
So each hub is different.
And again, like everything, we have that under constant review

(01:14:46):
and we'll be again shortly reviewing that, I'm sure.
and one of the things I'm anxious about
so I don't know what more to say
than some of being more successful than others
in getting the knowledge spread
getting more and more people to manage their lives holistically
on farms, ranches, etc.

(01:15:07):
And one of the things I'm anxious to do
and this is my personal win
is to get hubs like this formed in the cities
because it's not about managing land
but cities are all going to fail
if we do not change
how agricultural policy is developed
so if we could get hubs like this
just local people

(01:15:27):
deeply concerned
getting together like a book club
whatever
in the cities
and then they could have affinity
with some of the rural hubs
and be able to take people out
and let them see the land etc
so that's just an anxiety of mine
is to see some people
but you can't push with a piece of string
so if dozens of young people in cities said we're concerned about the future

(01:15:51):
and we want to form a city i'd love it
yeah i definitely see that pattern where more and more people
that are living in cities and have been brought up in cities or
they're building a closer connection to why they need to
think more natural and why their environment isn't

(01:16:12):
everything. It's, you know, the, the grocery store doesn't make the food as a classic example,
you know, it's, it's connected with the nature outside of the city that makes the food is brought
in. So they really, it helps everyone. It benefits everyone to understand how that natural process
works. And I agree that would be an amazing way to help educate these, these so many people,

(01:16:34):
because there's so many people in cities that are so passionate about solving these problems,
but they just don't have the correct A to B path to understanding what the solution is.
So that's excellent. I love it.
Yeah, I hope something happens there because the bulk of the population in the world has now shifted to cities.
The economic power has shifted to cities.

(01:16:55):
The political power has all shifted to cities.
And cities, people, understandably, are right out of touch with nature.
and nowhere do we see this more than the very sincere genuine people who are vegans vegetarians
because they want to be more humane etc the big environmental organizations that are so

(01:17:21):
raised millions of dollars to stop poaching and try to save wildlife etc and these are all
terribly sincere people forming institutions, etc.
But they're flawed.
They're ending up, again, unintentionally doing great harm.
Tragic harm.

(01:17:43):
For example, the people who believe they're being more humane
are being vegan or whatever.
Humane is an urban concept, a human concept.
It doesn't exist in nature.
That's why we call it humane, I guess.
Now, so they don't want us to kill or eat meat or whatever,

(01:18:06):
because they don't want to kill,
and they want to let these animals live natural lives.
Well, tragically, as an ecologist and person, wildlife there,
I've witnessed thousands of animals dying a natural death,
and it is brutal.

(01:18:27):
Brutal.
If you leave any animals, including humans, to just die naturally, how does it happen?
It doesn't happen humanely.
We die of starvation, or we die of disease, or we die of accident.
These are the sort of things we die of.

(01:18:47):
And they're all brutal.
and then if you look at nature
very few animals
die of disease, starvation
etc
in wild, naturally
functioning nature
most animals die humanely
in the gentle jaws of a lion
or a crocodile
a quick, humane death

(01:19:10):
and so
when we stop it
and I had people in my country
calling me a brutal fellow, murderer, etc., etc.
And these were good environmentalists,
and I had to watch in one area of my country alone
while I was the researcher in charge,
I had to watch over 30,000 animals die

(01:19:33):
of starvation disease.
It was terrible, and that was entirely produced
by good people meaning well.
yeah the the whole food conversation of the the carnivores versus the vegans and how

(01:19:55):
the majority of people right now think that the most ethical diet is veganism i agree with you is
is not correct it's and but outside of just the the death component like the the nature of the
death itself is also the ecological component and how much damage is caused to earth and the

(01:20:18):
ecology of different ecosystems when you have to scale up this this vegan diet to have all these
crops those rows and rows and rows of corn that you see and the different ways that they have to
manage that land like you said i would say this is probably the worst uh management you could
possibly have is monocropic because that is very anti-nature so how would you elaborate on the

(01:20:42):
the damage to nature if we're trying if we're thinking about nature here like we've been
talking about how you want to we want to be as intertwined with nature as possible and not
cause destruction how would you compare someone like me who eats meat from cows who you know walk
on the land and face one bad day in their life where they are harvested versus the vegan diet

(01:21:07):
where you have these monocrop agriculture initiatives. How would you compare those two
in terms of environmental destruction? Well, one is going to destroy civilization.
The other, we've got to hope. Now, you know, what you're calling the vegan diet,

(01:21:27):
if anybody in the world wants to be vegan
it's wonderful if they're doing so for spiritual reasons
or health reasons that they believe in
that's every human's right and I would never oppose it
I wrote a blog on it and I was helped by a very good
vegan friend to write that
so that's fine but if they're doing it for ethical reasons

(01:21:53):
or environmental reasons then they're doing great harm and I've just
spelled that out.
The
dead talk and so on, these all
spell it out. Now, if you're going
to reject all
animal products for whatever
reason, yes, then you're back
as Monbeau, one of the

(01:22:13):
writers of The Guardian, keeps
preaching and he's written a book,
Regenest Sornet, in which
I'm the most criticised scientist,
I see. If you
do take that line of the
world, monocultures
are chaos. There's not
a scientist in the world
that knows how to manage monoculture.

(01:22:33):
They defy the principles
of ecology.
So that whole form of agriculture,
chemicals, monoculture,
technology, etc.,
corporate production,
it is destroying
civilization. There's no question.
Just take
the United States.
When I went to the United States,

(01:22:55):
Soil conservation service people were very concerned and trying to get the message over unsuccessfully to the American population.
I got the data from them.
And I used to ask Americans, I was training thousands of farmers and ranchers and others,
and I would ask them, what is America's biggest agricultural export?

(01:23:18):
And they would all name grain or beef or whatever.
And I'd say, no, no, no.
and it would run to halt.
And I'd say, none of you have mentioned
the biggest agricultural export of America.
And then they'd say, what is it?
And I'd say, dead, eroding soil.
And I got the figures from your own government.

(01:23:39):
America was exporting far greater tonnage
than all other exports together.
And the Soil Conservation Service at the time
was trying to get that to the public
by saying it's the equivalent of a train of railcars full of soil

(01:24:00):
leaving the country every day, that train 21 miles long,
leaving the country every day.
And that was 40-odd years ago.
And if anything, it's probably worse today.
Why?
Not because people are bad.
We'll just go back to repeating,
because of the way every government develops policy.

(01:24:24):
Alan, I know we're getting close to an hour and a half here, and I want to respect your time. So I think this would be a good time to start wrapping things up and giving some good calls to action for the people out there listening, wondering how they can be a part of these solutions you're talking about and educating themselves on the root problems that you talk about as well.

(01:24:46):
So where would you direct people? I know you have tons of resources through your website, your TED Talks we talked about, your book and your upcoming memoir.
So you're going to have multiple books out there. Where would you direct people like myself also?
Like I would I'm definitely going to be listening back to this and I want to read your books as well to do a deeper dive into these concepts you're giving me.

(01:25:08):
Where would you send folks like myself who are looking to learn more about all of this?
Well, the first thing is to care enough. If you don't care enough, you won't investigate, you won't follow up. So if you care enough about the future, if you're a young person, you should, and so on, then start getting more information, start getting involved. Now, that'll differ for everybody, wherever they are. We've talked about possibility of city-based hubs, etc.

(01:25:33):
good sources of information
go to the website, say Reinstitute
if you get the textbook
get the most up to date one
but even the most, any textbook
including mine are out of date
the day they're published
because knowledge is advancing all the time
so you would get
the textbook
the training materials, there's all that stuff

(01:25:57):
and then also look at things like
the COP26
and podcasts because those are running
ahead of the textbook. They're more up to date. And then you mentioned the book that my wife and I
are writing right now. Let me mention that because I think it's going to help everybody. That's the
reason I'm writing it. I've been pushed to write a memoir for years and I refuse to do so because

(01:26:21):
I see them as egotistical and I want to be part of that. That's not what I'm about. But I finally
agreed to write it when I could see a purpose to it. So what I want to do in that book, and
let me tell you about it, is to explain the biggest problem facing the world we've been

(01:26:43):
talking about, right? Our inability to manage this complexity of humans' economy nature.
Now, how did we discover how to address that in 1983? And I want to point out in the memoir
that that could never have ever been discovered by one person,
me or any other person.

(01:27:04):
Impossible.
It could never have been discovered by any university,
institution, environmental organization.
Impossible.
It could never have been discovered in any one country.
And it could never have been discovered at any time in history.
The ability to discover that from 2,000 of us

(01:27:27):
that were involved in it arose from a set of circumstances in Africa
that I was born into.
A country that was only 12 years old when I was born,
a very small population running it,
a dying days of empire, dying days of colonialism,

(01:27:49):
war, politics, violence, tracking.
Tracking was the origin of science.
according to Liebenberg who wrote a book about that
and I believe he's correct
and I as an ecologist spent 20 years of my life
tracking people and dangerous game
and that's all part of it
and then exile and working with many people

(01:28:10):
and out of that mixture
and that time in society
emerged our ability to talk as we are today
and i know it's coming up very quick that release so i'm really excited for you i'm sure that's a
huge accomplishment you're excited to get out there a memoir is a huge uh piece of that you

(01:28:33):
know life's work you're going to have to share with the world so congratulations on that i'm
very much looking forward to getting my hands on myself alice savory it's been absolute pleasure
talking to you today thank you so much for unloading your wisdom on us all giving us a lot
to think about and lots of questions to ask. So I very much looking forward to keeping in touch
with your work and all that you're doing to create a better world. So I appreciate you very much, sir.

(01:28:57):
Well, Ben, I appreciate being invited. Thank you. Thank you.

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#127 Allan Savory - The Importance of Holistic Management

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