Author Anne Biklé in Conversation With Zach Bush, MD - Groundswell 2023 - Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thank you all for coming here on the afternoon,
the second afternoon, whichfeels a bit slower.
We're going to dive into somedeep soil, unintended topics
here connected to health.
I'm Kun van Sey.
I'm going to be your host andmoderator of these two amazing
human beings on stage.
We run a podcast on investingin regenerative agriculture and

(00:20):
food, focused on the role offinance in this space, and we
had the pleasure to interviewboth separately on the podcast.
I'm very happy.
We've been focusing a lot onthe nutrient density, the
connection to soil health andall of that on the podcast, and
to be able to do this live isjust amazing.
So, first of all, welcome.
Take a seat still some seats inthe back.
I think.

(00:40):
We have a very full programshort time, so it's going to be
snippets.
There's going to be someinterruptions, which I'm going
to do because both of thesehuman beings can talk for three,
four hours straight, I think,on their specific topic.
So I'm going to apologize inadvance.
I already did in the pre-callthat I'm going to interrupt and
keep it moving, otherwise wehave to be out.

(01:02):
This then I heard at 4.30 forthe next one, so we're going to
keep it on time and with that, Iwould love to ask both of you,
because for sure many have heardone or two, maybe even both.
Maybe I've seen your keynoteand yesterday, but just for
anybody that doesn't, just toset the stage, a brief
introduction and what brings youhere, and then we're going to

(01:24):
dive into our session.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Okay, well, for those who came to my talk yesterday,
hello again.
I haven't changed muchovernight.
I don't believe, and yeah,let's see.
So I'm the kind of person asyou might have gathered from the
talk, or even if you didn't seeit I'm endlessly fascinated by
connections between ourselvesand nature and agriculture.

(01:51):
Oddly enough, you'd think, fora biologist like me, I 'd much
rather maybe be out looking atplants and birds and so on.
But it was in writing the hiddenhalf of nature that by the end
of that book, for a birds andbeagle like me to suddenly find
that the microbial world wentjust far beyond my imagination

(02:14):
in terms of what they werecapable of and everything that
they do in and on our bodies andin and on the bodies of every
other organism.
It just it was a real turningpoint for me and it really
hasn't let up.
And so there's this kind ofsense of awe and wonder in
agriculture, because microbiomesare so profoundly important to

(02:37):
the health of the soil, crops,animals and ourselves, so that
that is what keeps me going.
I guess you know in just a fewwords, I'm kind of a free-range
biologist who thinks about a lotof things.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
Relationships and connections are sort of central
to all of that and just to addto that, I wrote probably, I
would say, the most importantbook on the connection between
healthy soils, healthy produce,animals, people and ecosystems.
What's your food aid?
If anybody didn't read it, getit.
It's at the book stand actually.

(03:10):
There's some sign copies.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
Actually I am afraid to say sniffle.
They ran out of books.
But you all buy books and so goout and get that.
Wherever it is, you shop forthem.
It's still available out therein the landscape.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
And if you have read it, just give it to other people
.
It's a good gift.
Anybody interested in healthshould read that book or egg for
that matter, For the two-milelife.
I'm so happy to have you hereon stage straight out of a
flight from Heathrow.
Welcome, You've had a bit of tohear on the farm.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
How do you feel?
It's very exciting to be here,glad to see all of you.
This is symptomatic of aninevitable movement that is
happening around the world, inevery country I visit, and it's
exciting that it's inevitableand yet it's there's a sadness
or a broken hardness as to whyit's inevitable, because we
didn't choose to do this untilwe were collapsing.

(04:03):
So in classic human behavior wedon't change until we are
hitting the wall, and that'swhere human health has really
led this charge of regenerationin some ways, and you've seen
the growth of this event overthe last three years, I think
largely because of the pandemic,and so there was a huge sea
change in awareness of foodvulnerability, food sovereignty

(04:27):
and that movement going on.
And then, under the surface is areally cool biology story the
microbiome that I've got abackground in my research and
development in the medical worldas a medical doctor was in
chemotherapy and I wasdeveloping chemotherapy from
vitamin A compounds that arenutrients obviously within much
of the food we eat.
It's actually the most commonnutrient in the entire food

(04:52):
system and it's the mostabundant receptor in the entire
body is the vitamin A receptorsand every single cell is more
abundant than any othersignaling system within the body
.
So that's what I was studyingfrom a chemotherapy cancer
research standpoint and thenrealized that nature had really
engineered a biology that neverneeded chemotherapy and so it

(05:12):
kind of took a hard left turninto food as an alternative to
the pharmaceutical model and asI got into that realized the
food was no longer working formy patients to reverse the
chronic diseases we had supposedit would.
And that got me into studyingwell what happened to the food
between 1970s and current day,and that was my debut into not

(05:34):
only the collapse of nutrientsand the metabolism within soil
and plants but also this debutof so many chemicals that now
are carried in our food system.
So for the last 13 years I'vebeen running a biotech company
and laboratory.
That's right in the space ofunderstanding the intersection
between herbicides, pesticides,the human microbiome and the

(05:55):
genomics of the cell, as well asthe metabolism, which is the
mitochondria that live insideour cells, small little microbes
that live inside the cells togenerate energy within the human
system.
So I'm here at that intersectionof human health and planetary
health, witnessing on one sidethe collapse of human biology
and witnessing on the other sidethe rise of consciousness that

(06:15):
we are connected to nature andwe are nature, and so that's why
we're all here, I think, isultimately to be part of this
revolution, and I honor the UKfor having such a vibrant event
that is honoring all of us onevery part of our journey,
because obviously, you don'twake up one day and become a
regenerative agricultural expert, and there's a long journey to

(06:38):
becoming a healthy soil systemthat we all have to be a part of
.
Every stakeholder in a societyhas to get engaged if this is
going to become real, because afarmer can't do it alone.
There's a whole huge supplysystem between them and the
consumer and marketplace thathas to solve at the same time.
So every stakeholders engagedand I'm excited how many farm

(06:59):
speakers you guys have here.
It's a very impressive comparedto other parts of the world.
So lots of farmers speaking,lots of farmers engaged, and
every tent that I stopped at onmy way in here, stick my head in
, and almost every farmer wassaying this is extremely
difficult and many of us aregoing to go out of business over
the next 10 years, and sothey're optimistic.

(07:20):
They feel the thing, butthey're seeing the challenge and
that's why all of you, inwhatever role you play as a
stakeholder within a complexfood system has to be part of
this conversation.

Speaker 1 (07:31):
So honored to be part of it with you and speaking of
another stakeholder, the medicalworld, which of course you have
one foot in the farmers world,farmers footprint, one foot
definitely in a medical world.
You're going later to a medicalconference.
What do you bring there?
What do you see there?
Do you see the same grass rootexcitement that is happening

(07:51):
here?
I mean this festival.
Now it's not even a conferenceanymore.
Festival grew to 6,000 peopleover the last six, seven years.
What's happening in a medicalworld?
What should we know as farmers,as people working on the
regenerative ag food side should, what should we know about the
medical space?
What's what's exciting or notexciting?
What do you bring from thatrealm?

Speaker 3 (08:11):
yeah, I would say that it's becoming more
polarized, and just as we seeour politics and everything else
becoming polarized.
But you have an entrenchedgroup that I was raised within,
saying the pharmaceutical drugsare only path out of here and
food has nothing to do with whyyou have disease.
You would think that groupwould have given up by now,

(08:32):
knowing what you guys know inthis room.
But it's gotten more extreme, ifanything, and you saw digging
themselves into there diggingtheir heels in and really
insisting that you know fooddoesn't have anything to do with
it.
And the reason for that isn'tidiocy, it's it's because the
education system is what it is.
And even as far back as the1990s, when I started into the

(08:53):
medical career, I was told thatit takes about 25 years for a
breakthrough in the basicscience space to actually become
relevant in the clinicalenvironment.
So that's one generation.
25 years takes a fullgeneration of people practicing
old science that's not relevantor not right anymore.
Before there's a little bit ofa ripple is as a weight, we
should be doing something else.

(09:14):
And then it takes anothergeneration before it comes
mainstream.
So that's a 50 year gap inscience.
And so we don't have that time.
We just don't have that time.
And it's ironic because that'sreally the only area of science
that's that slow.
If you think about your cellphone, I think doubles its speed
every two years and peoplewould be disappointed if it
wasn't changing that fast allthe time.

(09:35):
So for some reason, medicine isthis sluggish, titanic thing
that is very slow to move, andto give you a sense of the scale
of it is important because Ithink that gives you a little
bit of grace towards the doctorsthat are stuck in the system.
The US medical system alone notglobal is a four and a half
trillion dollar a year engineright now, and so that

(09:59):
pharmaceutical industry that'snow over four trillion dollars.
Compare that to our military,which historically was our
biggest you know industry inmany ways historically for any
empire it's kind of your maindriver and our military and
homeland defense biggestmilitary in the world history is
only about 800 billion a year.
So we're five times bigger, sixtimes bigger in the

(10:21):
pharmaceutical industry than weare in the entire military.
And so we're doing war, butwe're no longer killing humans.
We're trying to kill everythingaround humans, inside of humans
and everything else.
This pharmaceutical thing hasbecome the best business model
ever.
Globally we're at about ninetrillion dollars.
But if you look at the US, thatfour and a half trillion
dollars is almost 25% and someyears 30% of our entire GDP.

(10:46):
And so if your nation is nowfully reliant on a
pharmaceutical mom that isdisease management rather than
disease prevention you realizeyou're stuck in a really violent
trap.
That is the end of the AmericanEmpire as it stands is really
the cost of health care.
It's driving our economy, butit's driving down our

(11:07):
productivity, and so the USdoesn't produce anything anymore
, unfortunately, in largeamounts.
We're we're really depend onthe rest of the world to produce
food.
All of our built world isimported from outside.
You saw the pandemic happen.
Within three weeks we couldn'tget a mask on any nurse in our
country, because we don't makemasks, you know.
And so it's just.

(11:28):
It's this insidious problemwhere you build an economy out
of disease management and youultimately fail.
So we're on the brink in theUnited States and we're gonna
drag most the developed worldwith us.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
I think, as we go down the tubes here and this is
the solution, this is thecounter-revolution to that that
epic adventure and as you,because I think for a long time
we in the space and I'm usingthe very general we always said
of course it's the, of coursethe food from healthy, so it is
different.
And then you got the responseyeah, but just show me the data

(12:03):
or show me the proof.
And you decided to go down thatpath, read a thousand papers,
which I'm very happy somebodydid and not me, because they're
mostly unreadable.
But a lot of these things, as Iread the book, seem to be.
We've known many of thesethings for a long time.
Maybe nobody has put the pearlsof the chain together to
understand, but a lot of thesethings have been observed, have

(12:25):
been shown.
You've done a peer review paperSince the book came out.
There's a question coming Sincethe book came out, have you
seen, like, from the placesyou've been invited I mean, this
is an obvious one, but from themedical world, for instance
like, have you been surprised atthe invitation from where you
and David, your partner, wereinvited to speak, to share what

(12:45):
you've seen or what you'velearned or what you have
researched?
Or has it been relatively thestandard region and conferences,
et cetera?

Speaker 2 (12:53):
I suppose it's been kind of a little bit of both,
all farming.
I guess farming is not amonolithic, monocultural thing
at all, and the more that Davidand I have spoken at conferences
and with farmers, you begin tosee sort of some common ground.

(13:16):
I mean, some of the things thatZach was saying about why
groups like this andorganizations like Groundswell
have come about is it's becausethe mainstream stuff isn't
working anymore.
And so, even though I may go toan organic conference or a

(13:40):
conventional farming conference,it's interesting to me to hear
that both farming systems aresaying the way we're doing it
just it's not working.
The organic people are not happywith at least in the US, with
the way that standards areimplemented.
I mean, the government boardthat's in charge of that stuff

(14:01):
has become very problematic.
And then on the conventionalside, they're really tired.
Farmers are really tired ofpaying an inordinate amount of
the money that they bring in.
It just turns right over to bepurchasing more inputs for next
year.
And so there is theredefinitely is a hunger and a

(14:23):
hunger for change in bothmedicine and agriculture for us,
for people, for things thatwork and that actually do
improve the quality of our lives, which we are seeing
increasingly connected to thequality of our environment and

(14:48):
so it.
And so I'm not sure I exactlyanswered your question, but it's
groups like this where it's newthinking, new ideas.
I wanna learn more, because theway things are working now, oh,
they're not really working forhumanity in affluent countries

(15:12):
or in poorer countries.
So some things gotta give andsome things gotta change, and
that's the space.
Where is medicine food, or isfood medicine, or is medicine
not medicine?
I mean, we're having theseconversations because things are

(15:32):
not working out and when Ithink about, of course, we've
all seen, food is medicine, okay, okay.
And then I ask myself I thoughtfood was sitting down with
family and friends and havingthese great meals, and to me
that's always been kind of foodand I'm like wait a minute, if
food is medicine, then am I sick?
Oh, I don't know, maybe at somelevel.

(15:55):
So I don't know if I like this.

Speaker 1 (15:58):
Framing is important, yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:59):
I don't know if I like food can be medicine when
you are sick.
There is no doubt everybodyhere has been healed or in some,
at some level or another withfood or with meals, but I kinda
always unpack that in my mindwhen we use that term.

Speaker 1 (16:21):
And what does it do to you, zach, when somebody says
, yeah, but food is medicine?
What triggers it in your mind?

Speaker 3 (16:29):
Yeah, historically it was exciting because I felt
like that was my area ofexpertise was to figure out the
medicine within the food.
But I think a similar journeyas you would describe there is
realizing that no matter howmuch nutrient we could put into
a carrot, it doesn't actuallyturn into health in the
individual.

(16:49):
If they're sitting therestressed and lonely, it's really
.
The isolation of the human isas damaging as the isolation of
chemical agriculture on a carrotand how does it work in terms
of nutrients?

Speaker 1 (17:03):
Does it literally block us from absorbing it?
It does, yeah.

Speaker 3 (17:06):
So the stress of the human adrenal system, for
example.
So cortisol being the dominantadrenaline hormone, as that goes
up in the bloodstream it feedsback on the neural system of the
gut and it decreases thebiodiversity within the
intestinal environment andtherefore making that nutrient
less bio-available to theindividual and it down regulates

(17:28):
the production of serotonin anddopamine at the gut lining,
which should be the result ofthat nutrient dense food
interacting with the microbiome.
The microbiome is responsiblefor making the neurotransmitters
that will ultimately get to thebrain, our peripheral nervous
system, and we produce about 90%of the serotonin in our whole
body and the gut lining about50% of the dopamine.

(17:48):
The other 40% of the dopamineis produced in the kidney
tubules, not the brain.
So 90% of your serotonin,dopamine not made in the brain.
And there's this necessaryrelationship to specific
microbes in the gut lining thatinteract with the enteric
endocrine cells that wouldproduce those.
And we're now realizing thatstress of the human being breaks

(18:10):
that relationship to themicrobiome directly.
And so what we did in thepandemic put everybody in
isolation, put them on processedfood because they can't get
outside, do this whole thing.
So we basically did the biggestnutrient depravation experiment
in history over a two-yearperiod and we were seeing

(18:31):
catastrophic results across theboard.
We've never seen a fasterexplosion of cancer,
cardiovascular events, bloodclots, the whole thing all the
way to mood disorders, suiciderates.
All of it exploded.
And so we have proved over andover again that it's not just
the nutritional stress, thestress on the farm field, that's

(18:51):
going to destroy that nutrientresult or the metabolism of a
species, it's also the health ofthat individual's landscape as
well.

Speaker 1 (19:02):
That was a rabbit hole you probably didn't expect.
Take a deep breath.
And then how do we?
I would say, like almost whenthe science and the medical
world says OK, show me thepapers, the peer-reviewed papers
.
How would you test this?
How would you if you had amagic wand and could design of

(19:24):
course maybe without a controlgroup, because that would be
cruel but design a research toshow almost full diet coming
from super healthy soil farms,but also the stress piece, how
would you approach that if youhad complete freedom?

Speaker 3 (19:39):
Yeah, in some ways it's already been done really
eloquently with the blue zoneexperiments.
And so the blue zones are theareas around the planet in which
people tend to live over ahundred years of age, with
commonality, and In those spaceswe tried to go and find oh, it
must be the food.
And so we like, we read, andwhat we found is all those blue

(20:00):
zones differ radically in theirfood systems.
You know some?

Speaker 1 (20:04):
everybody found something in the presently they
like and they were like oh, butit's must be that yeah.

Speaker 3 (20:08):
And so the only conclusion you make about food
and living to a hundred years isthere's absolutely no
correlation.
It's just like that, doesn'tseem to be it.

Speaker 1 (20:15):
And then there was a lot of discussion of counting
years and I think, ages I meanwe're generally older, but many
of those places in the properrecords of age as well.

Speaker 3 (20:23):
They're there, there.
So you're, icaria greases, aninteresting one that really
taught me this, this wholeQuestion that you're getting out
there, or the answer to it.
Icaria, one of the GrecianIslands.
They have an extraordinary rateof centurions there, often
living to a hundred five hundredten years of age, and what you
can say about the food ingeneral is that it's real food.

(20:45):
So none of the blue zones havea primary diet of processed food
, but what types of food and howthey eat it, whether it's raw
or fermented or whatever, allthat's radically different.
But I was trying to make someconclusions with this group out
of Icaria, you know, about themicrobiome and the nutrient
density and all this.
And I gave this eloquentmonologue and I was crying.

(21:08):
It was so beautiful, it wasjust like this is Really poetry
in motion, if you ask me.
So I gave this incrediblemonologue and this, and the
elder from Icaria says that'svery interesting, doctor, but
you're completely wrong.
And how did you feel?
I Actually chuckled because ithad been quite a while and not
since academia that somebody hadtold me that I was completely

(21:29):
wrong, which is what academiatells you every day.
But but I chuckled and I waslike us, like back back in in
the halls of the big Universityand so I asked what is it I
don't think even waiting for meto ask.
He said that the reason why welive long in Icaria is not
because of what we eat, but it'sbecause we always said an extra
chair at the dinner table,hoping that somebody we don't

(21:49):
know shows up to share a mealwith us.
And in Icaria we never askedeach other what did you eat last
night, but we always ask everymorning who did you eat with
last night?
And that was a big shift for meof realizing that Food is in
fact the focus of fellowship andit's not really medicine in the
end, unless it's shared.
And that's a very intriguingthought and Really plays out

(22:12):
well in your Americandemographics, in that 35% of
meals in the United States isnow eaten alone behind a
steering wheel, and so we're nota part.

Speaker 1 (22:23):
We're alone at a computer and not a screen on the
table yeah but specificallybehind a steering wheel as that
change, like that meeting,monologue and Epiphany, let's
say right country to do that aswell as a change.
You're eating Habits andpatterns like, are you?

Speaker 3 (22:40):
Radically, yeah, and I think it just keeps changing
every every year that I live now.
But we do an a week coursecalled a journey of intrinsic
health, and the whole firstmonth is around nutrition and we
not once in that Journey do weexplain to people what they
should be eating.
Instead, it's changing therelationship to the food and

(23:00):
ultimately, your relationship tothe growing of the food and all
that that becomes relevant, andso that's that's what we've
found really changes your, yourcourse of cancer or whatever
we're trying to treat is what isyour fundamental relationship
at that psycho, spiritual levelTo your environment, namely your
food and all this.
But it's that relationship,rather than the nutrients, that

(23:23):
is critical.
And in the end, it's kind ofobvious.
Like Y'all are Subject to dating.
You go out there and if datingwas like okay, you just need
like lots of calcium in thisperson, like check their teeth
and make sure that's good andmake sure their bowel movements
are regular, and you know, likeyou just had your checklist of

(23:45):
like, yeah, good hair quality,you know whatever it is.
And then you're like why isn'tthis relationship working like
this?
This is a stressful thing.
You know like well, you didn'tactually have a conversation
with the person and you juststarted the relationship because
they had good teeth.
That's basically what we'redoing with food right now, as
we've decided, like good food ishigh calcium, love blood, and

(24:07):
we've been so reductionist thatwe aren't even tasting, smelling
, moving into a state ofgratitude over that which we're
putting in our bodies, and so,for me, is just every day that I
study the microbiome in mylaboratory.
It moves me back to this senseof awe and reverence for the
relationship we have to thisenvironment, and it becomes less

(24:29):
and less prescriptive every dayand more and more curious as to
what have I missed being alivefor that first half a century?
What am I gonna do differentlyfor the next half of my century?
As I move to that centurionthat I want to be, I'm gonna be
much more focused on therelationship rather than the
constituents of of that whichI'm moving into relationship

(24:50):
with.

Speaker 1 (24:52):
I'm not gonna ask you about dating life, because we
need David on stage as well, butwhat has this journey I think I
asked a little podcast as wellChanged in your eating and in
your?
With whom do you put extrachairs?
Like what has this?
Four books now that to you werevery much part of in the other
two for sure as well, becausenot one person in in the house

(25:14):
of rights a book in the otherone doesn't get all the
manuscripts, I think.
How is that shaped your, youreating practice and
relationships?

Speaker 2 (25:24):
I Think I've always been a person Certainly from my
20s on Interested in food, andthat that may have been.
I mean, there were some earlyseeds of that, a little bit
anyway.
So I was a.
I was a person who grew up inthe 1970s outside of Denver both
working parents and and myfather cooked which was a little

(25:49):
, a little bit unusual and heused to.
In the morning He'd put allthese things in the crock pot.
He chopped up the keroseneonions, beef, potatoes, and then
it would be ready, and I Ialways like to watch him cook
and put the things in the crockpot and then I Would come and
kind of I don't think you'rereally supposed to do this with
a crock pot, but I'd open up thelid and what's happening in

(26:11):
here Is it done.

Speaker 1 (26:12):
Yeah, it's a pressure cooker.

Speaker 2 (26:13):
Right, it was not a pressure cooker was an electric
thing, so I was, stuff was notexploding around the kitchen.
But so I just became veryinterested in food.
And I don't think as a kid Ithought I had two brothers and I
didn't particularly like them,I wanted sisters.
So I'm not sure I reallyappreciated sitting around
eating the beef stew with mybrothers, but anyway we did,

(26:36):
because that's when dinner wasserved.
We were not like if you don'tlike beef stew here, I'll make
you something else.
No, beef stew is what we're allhaving, you too.
And so I.
That was kind of the initial,just observations of food.
I don't think I thought of ittoo much about About whom I was

(26:56):
eating it with.
And then I had to college and Ihad a really interesting
experience I my second year.
I needed housing.
The end of the first year ofcollege You're supposed to
figure out where you're supposedto live the next year and I'm
like, because they don't let youlive in the Dorms for two years
, I'm like, oh shit, where am Igonna live next year?
So I, I, so there was thisthing called pad People's

(27:23):
Alternative dwellings and I'mlike, oh, that sounds kind of
cool.
What is that?
I went to the meeting and itturned out this, this group on
campus this was at theUniversity of California, at
Santa Cruz.
They had commandeered part of adorm and they were turning it
into pad and you could cook yourown food.
And I thought, hey, that'spretty neat, like I could do
beef stew and I could do thisand that.

(27:45):
And it was my first experiencewith like cooking for a large
group of people.
And one of the best thingsabout pad was A part of the dorm
floor got turned into.
We had to eat somewhere and youknow it wasn't gonna be in your
bed, so maybe for some it was,but we had this communal eating
space and we all had to cook.

(28:05):
I can't remember at least onemeal a week, maybe, maybe more,
and it was really a lot of funand I think there was a whole
social aspect to it that wehadn't anticipated.
As students and and yourdiscussion about you know who
are we eating with and what arewe getting out of it.
I think that's a big part ofwhether we enjoy food or not,

(28:30):
and Perhaps, in a way we don'tcompletely understand, when
you're happy, the serotonin isflowing and and and everything
is grooving and moving like it'ssupposed to Maybe your cells
and your cell receptors are justliterally a little more
receptive to the nutrients andthe microbial Metabolites and

(28:54):
the fab.
For that I talked aboutyesterday.
Maybe our receptors- are justfor whoever the fab for our
micronutrients, phytochemicals,fat balance in our animal foods
and this whole new world ofmicrobial metabolites.
So these are all these thingsand food that don't necessarily

(29:16):
Necessarily fuel our growth orenergy.
They're not, with the exceptionof fats, they're not caloric,
but they're doing lots of thingsbiochemically in our body.
And if our body is happy happyand the receptors are
functioning and and and open,maybe we are taking in more of
these things in our meal aswe're sitting around with our

(29:37):
friends and with our strangersand being a human being, like,
hey, let's join the be in of thehuman being.
That that is something that IMean.
What if we just sat for a momentbefore meals I bet Zach does
this and thought a little bitabout where's this food coming

(29:57):
from?
What does it really mean?
How do we, how do we celebratethis and Benefit from it?
Right, that has always been thegreat promise of agriculture.
It's not just the calorie partof it, it's that these calories
are A really fundamental part ofour health, and I would say

(30:18):
calories plus the fab four, so Idon't know.
Just kind of a freeform answerthere for you.

Speaker 1 (30:24):
Because the other ones were super clear and
concrete.
Now that's the whole point ofthis conversation.
But did the last book like whenyou went through Food is not
food, is tomato from healthysoil?
Like not looking at who you'reeating with but literally what's
in the food and going throughall that research and all those
years?
Because I remember InterviewingDavid and then he already
mentioned we're working on abook on nutrients and the

(30:46):
density and we're, and that wasfive years later.
The book came because it was awas a and a Big lift and a lot
of work.
Did the last book change yourEating at all or was it more?
We already noticed what it'snice to put it in a super
accessible not easy, butaccessible form.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
Yeah, I think what it made me think about there's the
the difficult parts of writinga book.
It lasts a lot longer than thefun parts.

Speaker 1 (31:17):
I'll tell you that but this is a fun part, right?

Speaker 2 (31:19):
Yes, but the fun parts, that they're small but
they're.
They're the sort of likeEpiphany.
Epiphany like moments where yougo, oh my god, that's what it's
all about.
And so For me it kind of itkind of came down to Zach's
comment about you know, is it,is it really the nutrients in

(31:41):
the food that are doing us good,or is it this, this social
thing?
And I think the answer is inpart.
Everything about our health andwell-being is Multiple factors
coming together in optimal waysSocial stuff, nutrients stuff,
things we may not evencompletely understand.

(32:02):
And so with this book, with whatyour food ate, it dawned on me,
especially when you dig intothe research in this stuff, and
especially the biomedicalresearch, you're wondering, like
you know, in your littlescientific but you know logical
mind, you're like, damn it, theycouldn't replicate that.
Or what is with all these humantrials?

(32:22):
None of none of this stuff islike really like cut and dried,
black and white.
How come?
What's going on?
This is frustrating.
And then you realize, lo andbehold, there is a lot of
biological diversity out thereamong people, plants, animals
and all of that.
And so my epiphany was this isthe power and strength of

(32:47):
omnivory.
This, in part, is why anomnivorous diet is so important
for people, because, dependingon where we are in our life
stage and gender and stresssituations, our body wisdom can
kind of direct us to the thingsthat can help, I think, keep our

(33:10):
bodies on the right track.
So it was kind of an epiphanyto me that, oh, variability is
really our strength, but we haveto be able to listen to it and
interpret it and then act on it.
And in some ways I really dowish I was a ruminant out there
in a beautiful pasture, becausenobody's harping at me about

(33:34):
what to frickin' eat, right,I've got my body wisdom, I've
got the botanical world, I'vegot the sunshine, I've got my
mates, I've got water.
You know, it's just, it's allthere.
And it's hard as a human beingbecause modernity has just
irrevocably kind of changed ourenvironment and we're bombarded

(33:55):
in the grocery store with theboxes and the bags and things
like that.
So as much as possible, colin,I try and remember I'm a human
being and like, could you pleaseget in touch with your inner
ruminant and just go with that?
So, and I'm really appreciatingvariability and what that can

(34:17):
mean, and it is sort of like aload off of my shoulders when I
get irritated with oh, theresults of that study aren't
replicatable.
Yeah, because human beings arevariable.
Even those little rodents inthe laboratories, even they're
variable.
And you can only do so muchwith all that variability.

(34:38):
But then you're back to bodywisdom and ape biology and what
we can learn every day about whowe are and how we function and
what we need.

Speaker 1 (34:49):
It almost feels like very advanced farmers on a
regentive journey that can senseand feel hopefully also their
body, but definitely theirfields.
Therefore, is there what isneeded?
I know some stories of peoplewalking in the field and sense
what is really needed andconnect that and that might
sound out there for some, butit's definitely in the field for

(35:10):
many and there's no sense thatI can help with that.
What do you learn from that,zach, in terms of I think you
compared the high intensivechemical farm with an ICU at
some point Like what do you takefrom the sensing, what is
needed in a field like that orwhat is needed in a herd like
that?
What do you bring, for instance, to the medical conference you

(35:31):
go to in a couple of days?
What message or what lessonslearned or views?

Speaker 3 (35:38):
Yeah, for a medical audience, or for a food consumer
audience or food growers,whatever we are, it's a very
interesting almost reversedichotomy there with cost versus
health.
So the cost of the individualgoes up radically as their

(35:59):
health goes down.
And so in an ICU it's prettyeasy for me to spend $25,000 a
day on one patient, versus theirhealthy counterpart might cost
me $25 to take care of them, soa thousandfold difference in
cost of keeping that person inwhat would be considered a

(36:21):
livable state.
And so that is the same thingin a farm field.
That's driving thisregenerative movement is that
the cost of that farm goes upevery year.
If you're in that ICU mentality,if I need to kill everything to
make my corn grow, or I need tokill everything so that my
soybean is the only thinggrowing, and so in that same way

(36:42):
I need to kill everythingaround the human so that they
can not have any competition fornutrients or calories.
This is the mentality of theICU environment.
And so if you wake up everymorning wondering what to kill
so that you can survive, you endup with a very high cost life.
If you wake up wondering whatyou can help to make live around

(37:05):
you, each day your cost goesdown, and for a society that is
so extractive for every bit ofwealth that we achieve, we will
simply do less damage on theplanet when we are not doing an
ICU approach to life.
And so we have to make thatdecision quite quickly now,
because, as we know, in the ICUyou can only really stay alive

(37:27):
in ICU for a couple of weeks andthen the fatalities go through
the roof.
You are at 80, 90% mortality ifyou are in an ICU for a month
or something like that.
So if you are going to touch anICU, you have to get out of
there quick if you are going tosurvive.
And so we have now got a wholeplanet on ICU care and we have
got to get out of there quicklyif we are going to truncate this

(37:51):
six extinction that is rollingon us right now.
So we have precious few decadesright now to reverse out of our
ICU experience and shift intothis low cost of care of human
life, and fortunately we allhave it within us.
We have that code written in usas to how to live that way.
We are all indigenous andendogenous to this planet, and

(38:14):
so we have an indigenous cultureand memory of our relationship
to food, our relationship tosoil, our relationship to the
seasons, our relationship to thecycles of the moon, our
relationships to any element ofnature that is still baked down
into our genetics.
We still remember how to do allof that, and so that is what is
starting to emerge, I think,from what you guys are all a

(38:34):
part of right now.
There is an emergent futurethat is happening, that is
really coming from the past, andso the regenerative
agricultural movement is reallya remembering of who we are and
a remembering of ourrelationships to nature, food
and the like.

Speaker 2 (38:48):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely Amen, there, brother.
So, on that note, I think thatit was realizing that we are
indigenous and endogenous at thesame time and that much of what
maybe is happening here issomething is triggering our gene

(39:10):
expression to remember who weare and where we came from.
And I don't know what it is,but it is really important
because we have these ancienttraditions take cover cropping
or fermentation, what have you.
And maybe way back when wedidn't understand everything

(39:32):
that was happening with covercropping and fermentation, all
we knew was that, hey, we likethese outcomes, we like soil
fertility after we cover crop,we like being able to eat dairy
without it going off because ithas been fermented, or
sauerkraut or something likethat.
So, as much as we might thinkthat what we call regenerative

(39:56):
is new, a lot of this is reallyold and we have just forgotten
it.
And so it is kind of likereaching back into our ancestry,
wherever that ancestry may havebeen, and pulling it back
forward and saying this is whatwe have today.
And how are we going to marrythis with the best science to

(40:17):
get ourselves out of the ICU?
Because that is kind of all wegot at this point.
You know the agrochemicals andthe pharmaceuticals.
They only take you so far.
That stuff is good if you havegotten acute, like one time
problem, but in the long run, tokeep using that stuff over and
over and over and over the longrun to compensate for body

(40:40):
wisdom, for aruminants in abiology human in a biology it
doesn't.
It's not.
We're not gonna get there inthe long run and have much of a
future Unless we startremembering what we've forgotten
and Begin to incorporate itagain into farming, into how we
eat, what we eat, everything.

Speaker 3 (41:00):
I think it's.
I'm getting to this almostfrightening part of my career
where I'm realizing that scienceis gonna have no role in our
recovery.

Speaker 1 (41:11):
What do you mean about that?
And a rabbit hole.

Speaker 3 (41:14):
Yeah, it means that I'm useless is what that means.

Speaker 1 (41:18):
But the reason why you're self.
You're fine, you can do nicemonotone monologues and I'm
going pretty much defaulted nowto hugs like that's.

Speaker 3 (41:29):
So I do now, as I give hugs around the world and I
feel like I've done somethinggood for humanity.
But the science that I bringCan only try to like give you a
few brushstrokes as to whathappened, but it's not the path
forward, and so science is never.
Nature has never waited forscience to do its thing, and it
has done some wondrous things.

(41:49):
Over a four billion year period, this planet has gone through
massive extinction events.
We we can map five of them, butthere's probably been many
before we yet there was enoughlife to even recognize when the
extinctions were happening.
But five massive extinctionevents were in the sixth now,
and Nature did not wait forscience to come along to be like

(42:10):
boy.
We're gonna have to rebuild thegenome of this planet.
You know we just had this bigvolcano event.
The volcanoes like waiting forthe scientists to show up.
This has never happened.
Where's the benchmark?
Yeah, it's just never happenedand and and so science is Really
an observational experience andit's not Prospectively showing
you where we're gonna go.
It can show you what's gonnahappen if we continue on our

(42:35):
path, but it's not gonna showyou the path forward that's
gonna heal the planet, and sothere's something inside of each
of you that is the path forward.
And so there's the SteinerStuff that came out a hundred
years back, and all this if youhaven't run much on Steiner,
assume there's a lot of you inthe audience that that's the

(42:56):
Bible for you.
But there's a whole body ofwork that came out of that
period, not just from Steiner,but many others at the time who
were recognizing that the thehuman body has more than five
senses, and that there'sprobably more like Seven or
twelve senses in the body, andthe majority of which are sensed
below the chest, down in thegut area.
And all of this and thesesenses are include things like

(43:20):
sensing life force and thesekinds of things.
And so right now we're runningaround with all these hand
meters trying to figure out Isthat a healthy carrot or not,
and you imagine you could be aconsumer, you could shine this
thing on there, but in realityit's like, well, you actually
have twelve senses in your bodywhere you could pick up that
carrot in your hand, and you'regonna do far better than some
computer thing trying to justfind a narrow band of light

(43:44):
that's gonna say it's a healthycarrot or not.
You've.
You are a powerful Quantumcomputer system that knows life
at layers that the scientistscan't even begin to imagine yet,
and so it's really gonna beinstilling in each of you the
trust Within you you need to tore-engage your soul.

(44:07):
Your soul is some sort ofcomplex energy field that
informs biology.
How to make one cell turn intoseventy trillion cells and then
self-organizing your mother'swomb into a fetus that then
becomes an, an infant that thengrows up to an adult, like this
is a, this is a miraculous stuff.
And so then you start to lookat food science and we are like

(44:29):
in the dark ages.
We're like I don't wonder whatcalcium is.
It's like, well, I don't know,but you self-organized in your
mother's womb.
That was pretty good.
Kick butt on that like ten toes, ten fingers, eight billion of
you, amazing.
And so just the point is likewe got to stop trusting the

(44:50):
science.
Okay, like it's, we proved whathappens when we do that.
We got to stop trusting thescience to show us the way
forward.
The science can at best give usa little semblance of
understanding how the hell wegot here, but it can't show us
how to get forward.
And that's within each of you.
Each of you has a deepknowingness of where we have to

(45:13):
go as a species if we are tosurvive, and it's not just
survive, its thrive.
You know inside of yourself howyou become a keystone species
on this planet.
I've been working a lot inAfrica recently.
It's just been an absolutelymind-blowing experience to see
what happens to nature when youput a keystone species back in

(45:33):
it.
And I've been working aroundthese lions, the wild lion.
As a microbiologist, I think alion is about as far away from
microbes in the soil as youcould possibly get on some sort
of Hierarchical system.
And yet when you put one ofthese lions back in a hundred
hectare region, the soilrecovers within months.

(45:53):
It makes absolutely no sensefor some sort of linear
understanding of how life works.
But the damn same thinghappened in the US when we put
beavers into the rivers.
All this carbon water cycleKick back in microbes.
Well, beavers are at least inthe in the water.
That kind of made sense.
But then they put wolves backin Yellowstone and the soil and

(46:15):
water systems improve within ayear.
We just were out at force ofnature in Texas and it's a big
bison ranch that put theAmerican bison back into these
desert systems where the arroyos, the Seasonal water systems,
were all dry and they were toldwhen they bought this piece of

(46:35):
land there's no rivers here butthere's just the arroyos which
run just during the rainy season, one year of those bison bank
being back on the land and theyhave year-round rivers running
on that.
That those are keystone species.
The elephants, the beaver, thething.
Those are Animals that have arelationship to their

(46:55):
environment that improveseverything.
It immediately kicksbiodiversity into gear.
Humans are the opposite and wehave some pretty amazing aerial
footage of Africa where youallow the L or you allow the
lions to be the keystone speciesand so all the humans coming
into that environment Literallygo through a spiritual process
of reverence to the lions.

(47:16):
There's no hunting of the lions.
The lions are allowed to be thekeystone species in that space
and then next door, the other Athousand eight hectares next
door, it's trophy hunting.
Same lions, same game animals,the antelope, the kudu, all
exactly the same on both piecesof land and yet, over a 20 year
period, they'll under the thereign of lions.

(47:37):
It thrives.
Under the reign of humans, itis dead.
So again, the animals are thesame, the vegetation the same,
the weather is the same.
This is different.
The lion, king of the jungle,as this said, understands and
reverence the life around it andsees itself as a nurturer to

(47:58):
life around it, rather than adestroyer or an extractor.
We are not acting as a keystonespecies on this planet right
now.
We are acting as a cancer wouldact upon a large organism, but
we have the option to shift, andso what you guys are really
doing in their gender movementis becoming a keystone species.
When a farmer walks out on hisland and the soil improves

(48:20):
underneath their feet, it'susually a woman.
That is a keystone species.
That's a human stepping intoour full potential to be a
co-creator on this planet.

Speaker 1 (48:35):
Thank you for that.
We could do, as I said, anotherfive hours probably, but we're
gonna be kicked out of the tentand I want to have time for some
Questions.
So we're gonna have a micwalking around, not running,

(48:55):
because that's dangerous.
Maybe running, just raise yourhand, we'll figure it out.

Speaker 6 (49:00):
Hi, um, love your podcast, come by the way.
Um so, if I Guess theregenerative movement relies on
consumers educated consumers,I'm a nutritionist, so how do I
help consumers switch on theirbody wisdom?

Speaker 1 (49:22):
Who wants to take that I?

Speaker 2 (49:25):
Mean.
Probably both of us couldprovide comments on that and I
think, first of all, it probablytakes a person who Wants to
know first of all.
So there's this kind of anawareness piece, that Not
feeling great, not feeling right, I don't know what's wrong.

(49:46):
I'm coming to you, thenutritionist, and I Think part
of it is I don't know if I agreeentirely with you, zach, on the
science part because I think itdepends on the kind of
scientists and how we usescience.
And there's sciences, there's ahumility part of it and it's
very observational and it's kindof standing back and asking

(50:09):
questions With regard to what isthis?
How should this inform ourthinking and our actions, as
opposed to we're just going totake this and run with it the
nuclear bomb, gmos, all thisstuff.
So I think there's differentkinds of scientists and that
maybe science hasn't beendeployed appropriately For the

(50:30):
benefit of humanity in all cases.
But that takes a carefulscientist that's not your
run-of-the-mill Scientist at allmaybe who thinks that way, but
it makes me think so back.
So how does that relate to yourquestion?
Is is kind of building anawareness, taking some time to
kind of probe yourself aboutwhat is kind of, you know, sorry

(50:56):
, eating at me, eating me up,that I don't understand and what
is?
Maybe my diet and food have todo with that.
So I think there's kind of asort of basic education where
somebody sees some sort offundamental connections that
maybe they hadn't seen before.
Because it's like that, witheverything we don't know
everything our whole lives we'realways at some kind of very

(51:20):
basic learning step and as webegin to sort of you know, I
talked yesterday about what yourfood date was kind of building
an onion backup, and so we getthese slivers of onion that come
around and then we begin to seea bigger picture of things and
then we're more capable of maybetackling the reason that we
came to see a nutritionist.
So I think I'm a big fan ofeducation, and not so much, like

(51:44):
here's facts and knowledge youneed to know, but this
stimulating your ideas, your ownideas, what's in your own mind,
because ultimately you're theone who's in charge of the way
you farm, what you do on thisplanet, what you do with your
life, and I think we have toseed that in ways that will lead

(52:12):
to solutions.
And solutions are different allover because we're all
different kind of people when itcomes to diet and food and how
it affects us.

Speaker 3 (52:23):
I would say that similar maybe that the
nutritionist is going to have toforget everything they were
taught in nutrition school,first of all because obviously
it was a reductionist approachto a very complex science that
we have a vague understanding ofat best.
And so we have to, as anyhealth practitioner, we need to
open our hands and surrender theknowing part and start to

(52:45):
really trust the feeling part.
And so, again, there's 12senses in here, and that
nutritionist sitting down with apatient who really is going to
listen to that patient is goingto feel something for that
patient.
That could be a guide in justbeing that mirror to the
individual.
But the patient's ultimatelygoing to tell you 90% of the
time what they should be eating,and it's not going to come from

(53:06):
your own training.
And so that's the importantthing for any practitioner of
any sort, whether you're anagronomist or a nutritionist or
a doctor.
You're going to do your highestwork when you sit as a human
being and reverence to the beingbefore you and you listen, and
then you keep listening, andthen you ask some follow-up
questions and then you listen tothose.
When we go into an attitude ofI'm going to tell you what to

(53:29):
eat.
It's going to be a miss 99% ofthe time because this is a
complex being that's in acomplex ecosystem that has very
little to do with the micromacronutrients and the food
they're eating.
It has to do with the entirepsychospiritual, psychosocial,
environmental relationshipsultimately, so surrender what

(53:52):
you know and move into it Aregion-act transition.

Speaker 1 (53:56):
It is Question over there.

Speaker 7 (54:00):
Hi, I'm really impressed by your idea of you'd
like to be a ruminant and nothave to think about what you're
eating, because I think thechoices we have are all very
complicated, but they don't needto be All.
Food should be healthy and we'dhave to be asking ourselves are
we trying to farm better, orshould we stop farming badly?

(54:21):
Because I think artificialfertilizers are the elephant in
the room and if we just stoppedusing agrochemicals and
depending on them for food anddepend on nature for food
instead, then everything wouldbecome well again.
That's my feeling.

Speaker 1 (54:41):
You have a question, no question.
Okay, statement, which wereally like.

Speaker 8 (54:45):
Question and then one here Hi, I'm afraid mine's
going to be more of a commentthan a question.

Speaker 1 (54:52):
We do two comments in a row, then we want a question.

Speaker 8 (54:54):
Yeah, okay, I have to say it seems sounds as though
the second half of yourpresentation was largely
psychobabble, and I have toadmit that I'm an intensivist,
so I come from a sciencebackground.
I think it's highly dangerousfor you to suggest we don't need
science.

(55:14):
I thought that actually thescience of soil is where the
future lies, not in psychobabble.

Speaker 3 (55:24):
I accept that I feel like a psychobabble person most
of the days.
I came from 17 years inacademia and I did very
scientific research for a longtime, and I still run a science
lab every single day.
I'm in there running scienceand so, like I said, it's
startling to me to be able tosay that too, because it is a

(55:44):
journey into realizing what weknow in the soil is such a
smidgen of what is really in thecomplexity of life itself.
Keep thinking about findingscience.
We will, but we don't have time.
We've been at it for 50 yearsand we're still sitting here
arguing about calcium andmagnesium, and we haven't gotten
down to mitochondrialmetabolism of soil yet as

(56:06):
scientists, and so we're way,way far from being able to
actually measure the vitality ofyour soil.
We can tell you a few thingsabout it, but what impresses me
is how fast farmers know whethertheir soil is vile or not by
looking with their eyes andfeeling their experience with
that land.
That farmer is way better thanI am, thank you.

Speaker 1 (56:32):
We're going to keep moving and I will invite you
both at the bar late atearthworm bar for a beer too,
because we're not going tosettle this in two seconds.
I have a question here and thenI think here in front and then
we're going to move to the back.

Speaker 5 (56:44):
I just wanted to say that, because regenerative
agriculture is creating anincreasing community on regen
farms, because there are morepeople coming on and doing more
things, do you think that initself is part of what makes
regenerative farming a morehappy experience?

(57:06):
Is it because you're actuallybringing a community onto a farm
which was not populated beforeit's?

Speaker 1 (57:13):
an interesting question if there is research
being done in the mental healthof farmers who are on a journey,
compared to not.

Speaker 2 (57:23):
I don't know about that question, Cohen, but I
think there is something.
That would be a veryinteresting question.
What is the mental health offarmers who have embarked on
this regenerative journey?
What I can say about that isthat some of the and I like how

(57:47):
this question put- we don't wantany job, least of all farming,
which is so important to ourcivilization to become an act of
drudgery and dreary.
I mean, jesus Christ, that'slike sitting in a cubicle, right
?
We definitely don't want that.
I have seen on farmers that areon this journey.

(58:11):
One of the most thrillingthings about it is when farmers
get together and they do whatare called farm days or farm
schools.
This is exciting because it'sfarmers who they publicize in
advance.
Come onto my farm.
I'm going to show you how Ihave managed to figure out the

(58:33):
specific techniques for applyingthe regenerative principles on
my farm.
The people who farm in Manitobathey really don't want to hear
so much from the people out inCalifornia.
Conditions are completelydifferent.
They go to their peer farmersin Manitoba and then they're
there learning.
It's exciting.

(58:53):
It's this sort of it's aco-creation of sorts, where I
would never have known this hadI not come to this farm school
and met you.
And now I have this new ideaand I'm going to go back to my
farm and my community and takeit with me.

(59:13):
I don't think that happens inchemical farming.
I'm not even sure I think ithappens some in organic farming,
but I think becauseregenerative is a farming system
that is taking.
I like regenerative even thoughit's ill-defined and people
exploit it and there's somegreenwashing going on.
I like it because we are takingthese pieces of other farming

(59:38):
systems and we're figuring outhow to build a new system that I
hope will become the newmainstream system, where the
focus is on soil health and itis using the science that we
know is informing us about howcan we treat soil better than we

(01:00:02):
have and what does that meanfor us.
So I think it's very positiveand very productive.
When you get farmers on theregion journey who are joining
others, it's just like anything.
I mean honestly, you embark onsomething by yourself and it can
be damn scary, and then you runinto somebody else and you're

(01:00:23):
like, wow, you had thatexperience, I want to hear about
that.
And then pretty soon you get alittle movement and then that
movement gets bigger.

Speaker 1 (01:00:33):
And then it becomes mainstream, and then we have
6,000 people here.
I want to go forward here for afew more questions, go ahead.

Speaker 10 (01:00:40):
Thanks so much, guys .
That was amazing and, I think,really moving for a lot of us.
Something that keeps strikingme in a lot of the talks and
with this is that we're alwaystalking about this big theme of
unlearning, and the need toalmost deconstruct medicine and
agriculture and our colleges andeducation system is something
that we're working against.

(01:01:01):
So for you guys, what's yourvision for the education system,
so that we're not just workingagainst the system that is
literally shaping our wholeculture from day dot?

Speaker 1 (01:01:12):
Ooh, another rabbit hole for an hour and a half,
which let's try to keep itconcrete.
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:01:19):
I'll do a concrete answer to that that's short,
which is we need to move fromeducation systems to engaged
learning systems.
It's a radically differentexperience and if you look up
the definition of educationversus learning, nobody will
ever want to do education again.
Very straightforward.
Oh, thank you.

(01:01:39):
It's exciting how simple theshift is.
I mean, it already is happening, unfortunately.
So what you guys are doing hereis experiential learning really
, and so you're not walkingaround being told what to do.
You're hearing story of whatother people are experiencing
when they do this, and so theregenerative movement is not
coming out of our educationsystem, it's coming out of our

(01:02:01):
engaged learning system, and sothis is an engaged learning
system, and so this is alreadyhappening.
We're seeing the food movementless and less coming out of the
university agronomics and moreand more out of this grassroots
awareness of change and shiftthat needs to happen for farms
to survive and become thrivingeconomic centers again.

(01:02:22):
So that's a big piece of it.
On this food and access, we'realready doing it.
But on the child education beinga good example, we see this
huge movement of homeschoolingand everything else starting to
happen around the world and I'mthinking, wow, this is really
exciting.
And then I go to Africa and I'mlike they don't need to call it

(01:02:44):
homeschooling else, becausethey still have engaged learning
everywhere, except whereWestern civilizations, economics
are coming into the picture,and they set up all these
schools to do education.
And I'm meeting all these 18 to25 year olds in Africa who have
two master's degrees in systemsengineering and all these fancy

(01:03:04):
terms and are completelyunemployed because there's not a
systems engineering job within2,000 miles of them.
And so we create great povertyand a sense of hopelessness in a
system of education, becauseeducation is ultimately teaching
abstract concepts, whereas whatthey really need is the engaged
learning that they had done fortens of thousands of years in

(01:03:25):
that environment, which was theyknew what was relevant to their
environment and that's it.
So we don't necessarily have todeconstruct education, we
simply just need to shift tothis engaged learning process.

Speaker 1 (01:03:38):
Question in the back.

Speaker 9 (01:03:41):
Ground soar is quite a unique event and our question
is are you aware of any otherevents in the world that are
happening like this?

Speaker 1 (01:03:50):
You like the dancing yesterday?
You want to visit other places?

Speaker 9 (01:03:55):
Every year it evolves and gets bigger and it seems to
answer all the questions you'vebeen asking.

Speaker 1 (01:04:01):
Other places to go to Any of you.

Speaker 3 (01:04:04):
I mean I'm impressed.
This is my first day here.
I missed yesterday, but I'vegot to say this is about the
largest event I've had and Ireally appreciate that.
It's got the spectrum again ofan ICU farmer here listening to
my cycle babble all the way toall of you that are already in
the choir of cycle babble.
So that's really exciting tosee that spectrum.

(01:04:27):
Because if you don't have thatbiodiversity of questions and
perspectives, you're not goingto get to your end point either.
So I herald and celebrate thatyou guys have created a
biodiverse environment for thisdiscussion to unfold in.
So that's what I see differenthere than most of the other
events I have.
I see a lot of events that arepreaching to the choir and

(01:04:49):
everybody gets to get in andthat's not to say it's not a bad
thing, because fellowship is acritical.
Farming can be a very isolatingexperience and so to come
together with a bunch of peoplethat are like-minded can be a
relief for a weekend.
But what you guys have donehere feels like community where
it's a family, because the onething you bet the family dinner
is nobody's going to agree onanything, but you enjoy hanging

(01:05:10):
out and you are enriched by theexperience of being together and
so keep doing the family thing,keep doing the complex
community experience.
It'll make you feel friction,it'll make you feel weird, it'll
make you feel anxious atmoments and that means you're
alive and that you're human andyou're in a complex environment
and it will tune you back intoyour 12 senses to say where is

(01:05:33):
my resonance in my body when Ihear these things and can I
trust that deeper?
And it'll move you towards that.

Speaker 2 (01:05:42):
Yeah, I'll just echo.
I mean, I think, thecross-section of people who come
to an event like Grantswell andI'm sorry I can't answer your
question Because I was thinkingI don't really You've been going
to one a long time ago.

Speaker 1 (01:05:53):
Here you were, at the first or the second.

Speaker 2 (01:05:54):
Yeah, I was here at the second Grantswell Because we
did a preco.

Speaker 1 (01:05:57):
And then we said, oh, there's going to be a lot of
good food.
And you said last time therewas no food and five farmers in
a fire.

Speaker 2 (01:06:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:06:03):
And a lot of smoke.

Speaker 2 (01:06:05):
Yeah, and I think any time you get a cross-section of
people, you then get adiversity of ideas and then you
get sort of this quilt of thingsand so there's going to be a
lot to chew on and digest.
I hope for all of us here inthe days to come and reflect on
what we've heard.
So I'm sorry, I mean I thinkthis is a strength of Grantswell

(01:06:28):
, because it's like I love it.
There's people who eat, there'speople who farm, there's people
who sell farm products.
It's all a part of agricultureand we need all of these voices
here, I think.

Speaker 1 (01:06:40):
So the short answer is no, but that doesn't mean
there shouldn't be more likethis in other parts of the world
.
I think we have the lastquestion over there.

Speaker 4 (01:06:50):
How you doing folks.
Just a question regarding thefood that our animals eat.
A lot of it is geneticallymodified.
A lot of it is sprayed withRoundup.
So, from an animal perspective,how do we help their health and

(01:07:12):
help to get rid of the orencounter the effects of, say,
the Roundup?
I know, jack, you talk about itin your podcast, about it being
a big problem destroying themicrobiome.
We see it in horses, we see itin dairy cows, we see it in
cattle, I see it in dogs, cats,you know, right across the board
.
I'm a vet resurgence so I'mfrustrated to see every day and

(01:07:38):
I don't have solutions for it.

Speaker 1 (01:07:41):
Again, try to keep it concise.
This is not a rabbit hole.

Speaker 3 (01:07:46):
Yeah, I know, you're absolutely right.
The toxicity of animal feed isabout 400 times more toxic than
human feed, as far as what kindof residues of herbicides and
pesticides we allow into thosefood chains.
So it can be very toxic.
We can see 1,000 parts permillion of glyphosate and cattle
feed and things like that, soit can be really startling how
much toxicity these animals areseeing.

(01:08:07):
And the answer, of course, isbiodiversification again, and so
returning those animals intobiodiverse environments instead
of relying on monoculture feedsystems is ultimately the thing.
And what we saw happen about 100and 150 years ago is a divide
in the farming industry whereeither you were a cropper or you
were a rancher, and so when wesplit the animals away from the

(01:08:30):
food, that's when things startedto go downhill for everything.
So fortunately, what's happeningis a repollination across those
subspecialties, and we'reseeing a lot of people here
within the audience, I'm sure,but within the regenerative
movement that are starting to beable to do both.
They're growing food in thecontext of biodiversity in the
animals as well, which isallowing them not to buy the

(01:08:51):
agricultural inputs of GMO feedfor their animals, and they're
grazing on diverse cover cropsand the like, and I kind of
would welcome the same movementultimately into domesticated
animals, cats and dogs.
In the United States we nowhave 1.6.
There's one case of cancer forevery 1.6 dogs in our country
right now, and so it's nearly100% of dogs have cancer in the

(01:09:14):
United States now because ofthat toxicity, that food system,
and so I would like to see arewilding of our domestic
animals as well.
We need to realize we have arelationship to nature that we
don't have to palliate bydomesticating animals in our
household, and I think thatwould be a nice movement to see.
As much as I love a dog, a wolfwould be a good step probably.

Speaker 2 (01:09:37):
I got a quick answer.
So, yeah, how do we do this?
Well, so why not put room inits out again on phytochemically
diverse pastures with no sprayson all of those plants?
That's a way to start removingall of these toxic things that
end up in the bodies of theanimals that are a part of the

(01:10:00):
human diet.
I mean, I don't see any other.
It's kind of like you know, I'dreally like to stop being drunk
every day.
Oh well, then maybe you shouldstop drinking every day, ok, so
I know it's not that simple tojust flip the switch, so to
speak, but honestly, if we stopapplying these products, they

(01:10:21):
have no route into the bodies ofanimals and then into our
bodies.

Speaker 1 (01:10:28):
And with that, I want to ask you all to join me in a
round of applause for these twoamazing human beings.
Thank you.

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Author Anne Biklé in Conversation With Zach Bush, MD - Groundswell 2023

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Author Anne Biklé in Conversation With Zach Bush, MD - Groundswell 2023