Soil health emerges as the unlikely hero in our quest to feed a growing population, reverse climate change, and restore human health in this eye-opening conversation with documentary filmmaker Josh Tickell. As the creative force behind the acclaimed "Kiss the Ground" and "Common Ground" documentaries, Josh brings decades of environmental advocacy experience and firsthand observations from regenerative farms across the globe.
The conversation challenges fundamental assumptions about our food system. Josh reveals how 75% of global calories are actually produced by smallholder farmers working less than an acre, dispelling the myth that industrial agriculture is necessary to "feed the world." He exposes the true cost of our current system—where we burn 4-5 calories of fossil fuel to produce just one calorie of food in developed nations—and connects this inefficiency to broader health and environmental crises.
Perhaps most compelling is Josh's evidence of rapid change already underway. In just five years, regeneratively managed land in the US has increased from 5 million to over 50 million acres. This growth comes as consumers and companies alike recognize that the current system isn't just unsustainable—it's fundamentally broken. Through vivid examples from diverse global regions, Josh demonstrates how regenerative practices rebuild soil, produce abundant food, and create resilience against climate instability.
The conversation turns when Josh explains how our individual food choices represent powerful actions that reverberate through the marketplace. Every regenerative product purchased sends signals to boardrooms worldwide, accelerating the transition toward healthier systems. As Tickell puts it, "We're just edging up to the tipping point," suggesting we're witnessing the early stages of a profound transformation in how we grow food and relate to the land beneath our feet.
Watch "Kiss the Ground" and "Common Ground" now on Amazon Prime, and look for the trilogy's conclusion, "Groundswell," in 2026. Your garden, your shopping choices, and even your bare feet connecting with soil are all part of this revolution.
If there is any topic you would like covered in future episodes, please let me know.
Email: info@mastermygarden.com
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Until next week
Happy gardening
John
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
How's it going, everybody, and welcome to
episode 288 of Master my Gardenpodcast.
Now, this week's episode is oneI've been looking forward to
for a while.
I'm just back from holidays and, as you do on holidays, you get
a little bit of time to thinkabout.
You know different things andthis is an episode I've been
thinking about for a while.
So for any of you that listento the podcast and have listened
(00:32):
to it over over the last numberof years, you'll know that soil
health is hugely important.
You know it's something that wetalk about on a regular basis.
We talk about treating the soilwith care and so on.
You will also know that there'ssome documentaries that I've
watched over the years thatreally kind of I connected with
and what we talk about in thepodcast.
(00:53):
It relates very much to them,and one of those documentaries
is Kiss the Ground.
I've watched it multiple timesup to 10 times at this stage and
for this week's episode I'mdelighted to be joined by the
producer of those documentaries,and Josh DeKalb has created
that Kiss the Ground documentary.
(01:13):
He's also done the follow-on,which was Common Ground, and
there's another one, a trilogy,coming out next year which is
Groundswell, and all of thesetouch on, I suppose, the food
systems, agriculture andregenerative farming, centered
around soil health, and they'refascinating documentaries.
(01:35):
As I say, I've watched Kiss theGround up to 10 times, so it's
a little bit different in termsof the content that we normally
talk about on a week-to-weekbasis, but one that I think will
resonate with all you guys,seeing as we talk so much about
soil health and the importanceof it.
So, josh, you're very, verywelcome to Mastering my Garden
Podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Thanks for having me, john, and thanks to your
viewers and your listeners forbeing interested in this topic.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Yeah, you know it is.
It's something that we've spokeabout a lot and, as I've said,
off air it's up to 10 times.
I've watched this Kiss theGround particularly and always
get something out of it.
It's obviously narratedbrilliantly by Woody Harrelson.
You know, and I suppose it'ssomething that you highlight in
(02:22):
some of your other interviews isthat it's not all doom and
gloom which sometimes thesemovies or these documentaries
about environmental issues canbe.
There can be no kind of light atthe end of the tunnel.
But certainly with all of thesethere is a light at the end of
the tunnel that is clearlynarrated through.
You definitely highlight theplaces that we're in now and
(02:45):
where we need to go to, butthere is, you know, ways shown
and it's backed upscientifically, you know, with
the, with the help of some verygreat farmers gabe brown
obviously in the first one andyou know that sort of gives
light at the end of the tunnel,as as I said.
But Kiss the Ground has beenone that I've delved into so
(03:06):
many times, really really loveit.
So honored, completely honored,to have you on the podcast.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
It's great to be here , so glad that you've got a lot
of benefit from the film youknow.
As you know, Kiss the Groundnow has Common Ground, which is
the second film in the series.
It's also on Amazon Prime forpeople who want to see that.
And then working on a thirdfilm.
Who knew that there would bethree soil films spanning 13
(03:35):
years of life?
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Yeah, and Groundswell is going to be out next year.
We might chat a little bitabout that shortly.
Obviously it's still inproduction works.
But what really interests meknow, there's some other of your
documentaries that I haven'twatched and but there is a
particular team through that.
So I'm kind of interested toknow what is it?
Obviously you're a filmmakerand you know documentary maker
(03:58):
and those.
Once you gets a topic that isresonating with the general
public and there's a demand forit and an appetite for it, then
you know it's it's easy to to goand make another one because
you know that that demand andappetite is there.
But obviously behind thatthere's, there's something that
drives you to make this type ofmovie, because it seems to be a
(04:19):
team through all of the onesyou've made.
So what is it that that you toyou know?
Speaker 2 (04:28):
go for this type of a documentary stroke film.
Well, I was born in Australiaand then I moved to Louisiana.
When I was nine I moved to aplace called Cancer Alley or
Cancer Corridor.
It's the petrochemical refiningcenter of the United States of
America.
There's 150 petrochemicalfacilities there.
The average cancer incidence is800 times the national average.
(04:53):
So people have leukemia,lymphoma, all of these very,
very, very strange diseases, butthey have them in vast numbers.
So I watched members of myfamily get sick and die from
this stuff at a young age.
Meanwhile, the environmentitself was both beautiful and
(05:14):
toxic.
It was both beautiful and verypolluted.
So it was a lot at nine yearsof age to sort of make that
mental transition, I think, froma pristine environment out back
of Australia to one that hadbeen, you know, largely just
sabotaged and abandoned by toxicindustries.
(05:34):
And I thought at that point andI still do this is a bad way to
do things.
There must be a better way.
You it, you know, never thoughtwell, people shouldn't drive
cars, or we shouldn't fly planes, or we shouldn't have
civilization or society.
I just thought why, you knowwhy destroy the environment and
(05:55):
why make people sick toaccomplish the things we need to
do it just.
It just seemed lazy or poorlythought out, and so that's been
my ethos for 40 years.
I've been in the environmentalmovement for over 40 years and
the idea that I come with isvery simple To every problem
(06:21):
there's a solution, and if wehaven't figured out the solution
, we just haven't worked hardenough.
You know we haven't wrapped ourheads around the problem.
Generally speaking, we'relooking at the problem through
two small lens.
We need to expand the view.
You know, like with climatechange or oil pollution.
(06:42):
You know oil dependence or oilpollution.
You know oil dependence.
These things tend to haveoccurred because of a very small
, myopic understanding of theworld, and that led me on a
crazy wild journey, you know,from organic farming and wolfing
when I was younger, in my teensand 20s, across Europe and you
(07:05):
know, parts of Central America,to finding biodiesel and seeing
Rudolf Steiner's originaljournals in the you know man
Museum archives in Germany andrealizing that he designed the
diesel engine to run onvegetable oil.
To building a veggie van andgetting fryer grease out of used
cooking oil restaurants,mcdonald's, kfc across the US
(07:27):
and being on the Today Show.
You know, at 17 years old toyou know, writing my first book
about biodiesel, my second bookand working for the biofuels
industry.
I ended up working for, youknow, some of the biggest
agricultural conglomerates inthe world and going to DC and
(07:50):
you know being part of effortson uh in Congress and seeing
everything the whole span fromthe farm all the way to you know
, the the halls of power, andrealizing after all that journey
that the problem is still thesame whether it's agriculture or
oil.
And we often trade one foranother because in our modern
(08:14):
society, you know, the mostefficient countries, the most
efficient countries, arespending about 1.5 to 2 calories
of fossil fuel energy to createone calorie of food.
That's in the developing world.
Now, in the developed world, inthe developing world, it's very
(08:37):
different.
There are countries, numerouscountries, where smallholder
farmers are the majority of food, where they're using far less
than one calorie of fossilenergy and they're producing
more than that in food calories.
So that should tell ussomething Like wait, why is a
(08:58):
country like Uganda moreefficient on a per-calorie basis
at growing food than a countrylike the United States with all
of our modern technology and GPSand satellite?
And the reason is we're cheating, and when you cheat at the
gambling table.
You can make anything look good, right?
(09:18):
And so the way we make food iswe're just eating fossil fuel.
It's very simple we just eatfour or five calories of fossil
fuel to get one calorie of food.
That's it, and so the two areintrinsically linked, right?
You cannot, in the modern world, based on the design that we
(09:41):
bought into, have the societythat we have without fossil
fuels, because we have to eatfossil fuels.
We're literally eating fossilenergy, but that has a knock-on
effect called climate, right?
So there's, you know, thesystem is a system and you can't
cheat because the rules arevery set.
(10:03):
And so that leads us to aquestion regardless of if you
start with energy or food, youstill get to the same question
is how do we feed 10 billionpeople?
yeah and stabilize the climateand have a functioning society
and a healthy economy and havehealthy people.
(10:23):
Uh, and and to?
To answer that question, we'vegot to get out of the little
silos of like me, me, me me.
Solar climate change, electriccars you know, and you've got to
get into a big picture andyou've got to look at it as a
system, and when you do that,the answer gets really clear,
really fast yeah, and it is.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
I've been in rooms, in boardrooms, listening to the
talk from an angle of um, youknow the chemical industry and
I've heard it being said that itisn't possible to feed the
world into not possible yeahcan't do it, can't do it, can't
(11:04):
do it.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
We tried, we tried.
We did that in 1956.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Herbert.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Grace, the founder of the company, he did it.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
He tried, didn't work , got to use fossil fuels and
it's very easy to knock somebodywho asks a question around that
by saying it's not possible tofeed anybody.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
It's so hard to disprove a negative, and that's
how.
That's the myopic sort of verylimited vision that runs much of
the extractive machine, thecorporate machine inside which
we all live.
Right, it's like, well,somebody tried that at some
stage.
(11:43):
I know they did, becauseotherwise why would we be here?
It's like, did you ever thinkthat if you start asking
questions and start pulling thethread, the fabric might pull
apart and the wool will come offyour eyes?
And all of a sudden you'relooking at a system in which
you're just perpetuating a myth.
And that's what regenerativeagriculture is.
(12:04):
It is literally the flip sideof the myth.
It's the reality of thebiogenic cycle in which we live,
taken into a system thatactually functions for our
health and that is like for thecorporate extractive economy,
which is based on limitedresources.
(12:25):
Anytime you limit a resourceand you make the resource very
valuable, everybody wants itright.
So now there's competition, andso now whoever controls the
resource wins.
That's the model, that's modern, that's modern economy, that's
Adam Smith economics, right.
But if you go, well, what ifthere was a totally different
system, in which abundance wasthe engine?
(12:49):
Calories were not limited byyour fossil fuel extraction.
They were limited only by yourimagination and your ability to
use solar energy, and if you'reable to use the tools that have
been here for thousands andthousands of years, since humans
began to cultivate, you couldhave as many calories as you
(13:12):
want for 10 billion people, andyou could build the soil while
you do it.
And you could sequester all thecarbon that you accidentally put
in the atmosphere.
Wow, that would be a differenteconomic model.
Now we're talking aboutregenerative economics, which is
even one step above theagricultural idea itself, and we
can go back to the agricultureand go back to the soil.
(13:32):
But again, if you want to solvea big problem, your context has
to get bigger than the problem,and we've got a lot of people
right now thinking to try andconstrain these problems in
small context, which is why it'sfailing.
It's why the environmentalmovement has largely not been
able to succeed for the fourdecades that I've participated
(13:54):
in.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Yeah, and we will take a step backwards in a
second.
Firstly, you mentionedsomething there about cheating
at the roulette table.
I think you said, and whatyou're talking about here is
basically heavily subsidised,the system that we have now
heavily subsidised foodproduction with the use of
(14:19):
chemicals, fertilisers etc.
And that's the cheating elementthat you're talking about and
we will talk about.
You know, in Kiss the Groundthere's a few great examples of
large scale examples of howregenerative farming can work
and does work.
Interestingly enough, that hasjust sparked something in my
(14:40):
mind.
A couple of years ago I coveredan episode on the podcast again
after coming back from holidays,which is typically in that part
of July, and it was it was twoweeks in Tuscany in Italy, and I
spoke about I spoke about onthat on that episode about there
was there was a food productionarea all around us, but there
(15:02):
was.
We used to go out on the bikesand in the daytime there was a
beautiful little farm shop.
Now there wasn't a lot ofhouses around or notable amount
of houses around, but inside inthe farm shop you had so much
choice of food.
99% of it was produced on theland or on neighbor's land and
it was very much a communityelement to it.
(15:23):
It was a case.
Now this is small scale to acertain extent, but it just
gives an example of what I thinkis perfect food system.
There was a lady inside in theshop.
She was running the shop.
There was beautiful pumpkins,melons, tomatoes, onions, and
there was the husband in thebackground on a little mini
(15:46):
tractor and every so often shewould go out and say I need x, y
and z, and off he'd go into thefield or the next field and
he'd come back with what shewanted and the shop got stocked
up and during a continuousbecause I watched it for four or
five hours just out of interestand it was amazing the amount
of people as I say, there's noobvious houses around, but the
(16:07):
amount of people that came overthat period of time took away
what looked like their week ofingredients and it was all being
topped up all the time fromwithin a very, very small radius
.
Now, at that small scale, I sawsomething similar this year in
Croatia.
How can we get to a situationwhere I suppose we can make that
(16:30):
into a bigger scale, becausethose growers are brilliant and
they work to do are brilliant,but it does need to be on a
huger scale you know the likesof Gabe Brown's scale for it to
truly work in terms of feedingeverybody doesn't it yes and no.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Okay, 75% of calories on Earth are grown by
smallholder farmers, so we'retalking less than an acre for
the most part.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Yeah, so there is a misnomer how do we feed 10
billion people?
We need to scale up.
We need to make everythingindustrial.
You know there's no evidence tosupport that.
The evidence supports theopposite, right?
So if we're really going to askthe question, then we actually
have to look at the evidence.
(17:18):
We have to do an investigation,right?
We have to look at the data, andwhat the data shows is, first
of all, the type of caloricintake that we do in the United
States is totally insane.
65% of our calories are fromultra-processed food.
Processed and ultra-processedfoods Bags, boxes, cartons and
(17:40):
containers in the middle of thegrocery store.
The vast majority of that isjust corn, soy and wheat that
has been repackaged.
So you know why are we spending$2 billion in food stamps on
Coke and Pepsi fizzy productsthat contain sugar that creates
diabetes?
We have prenatal diabetes thatdidn't exist prior to putting
(18:04):
corn syrup into fizzy drinks.
Right, we're literally astaxpayers.
We pay to make sure that peopledon't go hungry, but what that
actually means is, you know, bigsoft drink companies make
billions of dollars from peopleeating sugar to make them sick,
so that then we can spendtrillions of dollars in the
(18:24):
healthcare.
So when people go oh, we don'thave enough money or we don't
have enough land.
It's like let's look at thesystem, because right now you're
spending what just in theUnited States?
A trillion, $2 trillion onpalliative healthcare to deal
with your food system which, bythe way, healthcare to deal with
(18:47):
your food system.
Which, by the way, you're taxsubsidizing companies to produce
food to make people sick.
I don't know, I don't knowabout you, but that doesn't seem
like a there's zero logic inthat system whatsoever.
That is a profit driven systemto make people sick to make
money, right?
And so the objective of thecurrent food system, the
industrial food system, is tomake people as sick and fat as
(19:08):
possible, as fast as possible,and then to make as much money
on the pharmaceutical side aspossible.
And, by the way, a lot of thosecompanies are the same company,
right?
Bayer makes Roundup, it makesglyphosate, and then Bayer makes
a product for cancer, to treatthe non-Hodgkin's lymphoma which
(19:28):
you get from Roundup, right?
So the more Roundup you use,the more people get sick, the
more money they make.
And so when you really peelapart the chemical food system,
you realize that these companiesare, if not the same companies,
they're very interlinked.
They share board members, theyshare resources, they share
pipelines, they shareinfrastructure and largely the
(19:50):
chemical, sick pharmaceuticalindustrial complex is the same
as the chemical food industrialcomplex.
Right, and so you go well, oh,but we feed people.
We feed them a lot of calories,you go well.
No, you feed a small number ofthe human population a lot of
(20:13):
empty calories, mostlycarbohydrates, which, the more
science we do, reality ofdistortion, because 75% of human
population is not fed by thatright.
So now we go to the largerquestion, which is could we in
effect have some kind of hybriddiet where we build from ancient
(20:38):
knowledge?
What did ancient people eat?
You know, ancient beingpre-industrial, right, and what
modern tools could we use to dothat?
And it turns out that when welook at protein specifically,
when we look at animal proteinspecifically, we in the Western
(20:58):
world know very little aboutanimal protein, how to raise
animals.
Well, we, we do one of twothings we either stick them in
factory farms and feed them corn, yeah, and then we eat them.
Makes everybody sick.
It's a terrible system.
Or we let them free range, wejust let them graze.
Both systems createdesertification, both.
(21:19):
Both systems ruin soil.
Both systems release the carbonthat's in the soil up into the
atmosphere.
If you see five or six cows ina paddock just grazing, or sheep
, as you would in the UK, that'sdesertification.
That is destroying the soil.
It's also lazy farming.
(21:39):
I'm sorry to say I'm not afarmer.
It's a.
It's a hard job.
Yeah, it's a.
It's an incredibly humblingtask.
We tried to run a five acreranch here in Ohio, california,
for many years, um,unsuccessfully and successfully.
But I've documented no lessthan a hundred regenerative
(22:00):
operations around the world inaustralia, kenya, uganda, asia,
africa, um, india, the uk,america, colombia, south america
and they, they're allconsistent.
They mob graze, they put theanimals together and they move
them, just like a wolf wouldwhen four-legged animals are
(22:23):
moved, as they were in nature.
With a predator type mentality,they build soil.
If you let them free, graze anddo whatever they want, they'll
take the best plants, they'lltake the new plants and those
are the plants that destroy thesoil.
That's the grass that youactually need.
Destroyed the soil, that's thegrass that you actually need.
They'll selectively graze onwhat they want versus being
(22:44):
forced, as they would in nature,to move across a landscape,
fertilize that landscape andkeep moving and not come back
for at least six months.
Most of the world, like over 80%, need the six month rest period
between grazings, and mostranchers get that wrong, even
regenerative ranchers.
I see them getting it wrong allthe time.
They're like why is my soildegraded?
(23:05):
You're overgrazing.
It's so simple.
So all of that is to say thatwhen you pack those animals
together and move them acrossthe landscape, you have higher
herd density, meaning many moreanimals.
So we're actually growing.
This is true in the UK too.
I've seen it.
I've never seen grazing likethe UK, and the UK ironically
(23:31):
exported its system to the restof the world.
Because you get rain all thetime, so you have grass, so it
looks green.
So, oh, we'll just put ahandful of sheep, a handful of
cattle and we'll just let thembe in the paddock forever,
meanwhile soil resources gonedown right.
So what we actually need inglobally is higher stock density
(23:54):
, which generally means moreanimals, and less time on the
ground, which means movingfaster, and less time on the
ground, which means movingfaster.
When you really do the numbers,there's far more protein
available than what we'regrowing today, and that's a
stunning, shocking,controversial thing to say,
(24:15):
especially with the sort of movetoward a more plant-based plate
.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,blah.
But you know, there's a reasonwhy lewis and clark came across
the americas and and when they,when they found the cherokee,
when they found the nativepeople and the denae and all of
the different tribes, they werestunned because here were these
small, white, kind of emaciatedenglish people who were
(24:37):
literally small in stature.
And they came upon theseindigenous people who were huge
and muscular and tall and theyrealized, oh, they eat bison.
It's simple and that's prettymuch what they ate.
That was it.
They didn't do a lot of greens.
And the irony of that wholething is we think the indigenous
(24:57):
people didn't do agricultureand meanwhile they were changing
entire landscapes, they weremanaging forests.
There's now evidence that theAmazon forest itself was seeded
and created by indigenous people.
So some of the great forests onearth that are producing our
oxygen were probably at leastwith the data that we have now,
(25:22):
probably and very likely theywere the result of regenerative
agriculture.
So we think about it, it's like, okay, ancient people far more
carnivorous diet.
They built soil, they builtforests, they built landscapes.
And this new Western model oferasing trees and erasing
(25:44):
landscapes and then turning theminto grazing grounds that's the
model that we're still workingoff of and monocrops, not a
biodiverse species approach.
And now we have a questioncalled how do we feed people?
How do we feed 10 billionpeople with that model?
You don't, because that modelis broken.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Yeah, and that's the system we have.
We're here in Ireland andthat's the system we have.
We have loads of rain, but itis that system.
It's intensive, it's heavy,overstocking, overgrazing, soil
quality is poor.
Yeah, it's.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
They don't move the animals.
They do not move the animals.
I've been.
Your country is absolutelystunning.
By the way, ireland is sobeautiful, people are so
friendly, unbelievable, butliterally I've never seen
animals move less.
They move as much as they movein a feedlot.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
It's like yeah, no, it's small paddocks and eat
everything in the paddock, thenmove at whatever period of time
that it's, and no rest no rest.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
They'll have another herd in that paddock again
before you know it.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Yeah, for sure, and you're.
So you know these becauseyou're you're creating
documentaries.
You can't just create them,state things and have no
evidence to back them up.
So you're obviously gatheringand compiling, you know, with
the help of others, thisevidence that you know this,
this regenerative system can anddoes work.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
I have a thousand hours of footage.
It's literally a pentabyte ofstorage, a pentabyte of examples
.
And yes, there are white papersand yes, there are scientific
studies about this stuff now.
But it's one thing to argue ascience paper you get with a
(27:40):
bunch of scientists and it'slike being with theologians.
They're like how many fairiescan dance on the tip of a
pinhead?
You're like, okay, fine, lookat this example that we filmed.
We haven't filmed it once, wefilmed it hundreds of times and
you can't argue with reality.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
You just can't argue with reality, you just can't,
yeah, and you're doing it in somany locations with different
climatic pulls and drags.
So it's, you know the systemworks and it's just a case of
implementing it elsewhere.
In light of that, and in lightof you know who these systems
are contradicting, I guess doyou get much pushback.
Is there resistance there?
(28:26):
Is there pressure from higherpowers, anything like that?
Speaker 2 (28:32):
The more evidence that this movement gains and the
louder it gets, the more theopposition gets interested.
You know we're going up againsta multi-trillion dollar
industry in North America.
You know, when you addpharmaceuticals and food, you're
up well over two trillion, anda lot of that's profit.
(28:53):
So you know there's people thatstand to lose a tremendous
amount when this becomesmainstream not if, when because
there's no other way to feed 10billion people and there's kind
of.
We're reaching an inflectionpoint where I think companies
really are thinking about legacy, not just the next year, not
(29:18):
just the next quarterly profitposting, but they're thinking
both in terms of reality.
How brittle is your supplychain If you're a chocolate
company, if you're a coffeecompany, if you're a, I don't
care if you produce wheat, soyor corn how brittle is your
supply chain?
You know the US just lost atremendous amount of corn to
(29:40):
rust.
Why?
Because it's the same geneticvariety for thousands of miles.
It's one gene, one genome ofcorn.
Right, it's like okay, whoseidea was that?
There is no resilience in that?
Some smart little creature,whether it's a fungus or or an
insect, they figure that genomeout and you're done, your whole
(30:03):
crop's done so.
There's no food security inthat, and it's actually an issue
of international militarysecurity when you're thinking
about feeding billions of people.
So we need to think as we entera connected world, as we enter
sort of this time of extremelylong supply chains I mean, look
(30:23):
at what happened in Europe withthe Ukraine-Russia crisis, right
I mean we need to begin tothink about bioregionalism,
which is, what's the strength ofa food-producing region, what's
the strength of Ireland as afood-producing region?
What's the strength ofCalifornia or the Midwest in the
United States, mexico,different countries internally
(30:45):
as to themselves?
If a food borne problemstretches across a land, that
could be mad cow disease, itcould be a wheat problem.
How do we feed people inregions, right?
So we need to think like that.
And then we need to think howbrittle are our supply chains,
moving out from this year to twoyears to five years to 10 years
(31:09):
to 15 years?
Right, because ultimately we'realways going to import and
export.
It's just the way it works.
But when those supply chainsare so brittle that we literally
can't guarantee coffee orprotein in five years, then
that's a real problem for amulti-billion dollar company and
(31:32):
I think companies are startingto feel that burn and it's
shifting them and they'rebecoming very interested in
regenerative agriculture, notbecause they want to do good for
the world, they just want tokeep their jobs.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
Yeah, which is understandable, yeah it's human
nature and it's the nature ofeconomics, it's the nature of
business, it's what drives allof that and I suppose, yeah, we
understand that.
If you take it back tograssroots level and to you know
, you and I, walking into asupermarket there was quite a
good study done in the UK, whichI'm sure it's similar in
(32:11):
Ireland, I'm sure it's the samein the US, I'm sure it's the
same in Australia, when back inthe 1970s and you talked about
ancient diets earlier on, buteven if you go back not so
ancient, go back to the 1980s,you know that's for most people
right now, that's ancient.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
We're dating ourselves here, John.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
Yeah, yeah.
But the study was brilliantbecause it showed the typical
shopping basket for a month inthe 1980s and the typical
shopping basket today, over thesame period.
And what it did was it took allthe items and it laid them out
on the floor of a farm shed.
(32:53):
And what you saw on the 1980sone was and I forget the exact
figure, but it was, roughlyspeaking 90% ingredients on the
floor, so things like meat, fish, vegetables, fruit, nuts,
components of food, and then onthe opposite side, that figure
(33:16):
now is down to 30 or 40% Again,I'm not certain on the exact
figures, but you know, in thatregion.
So that meant that theremaining 60% was processed and
during that same period, as youalluded to, most diseases have,
you know, spiraled upwardsuncontrollably, and so there's a
(33:39):
direct correlation betweenthose, no matter what anybody
says.
Yeah, I think the sooner thatyou know, the joe public really
sees that as as the thing.
How, how do you convince themto to start making the change?
Because you have to make aconscious choice, because when
you walk into a supermarket,that supermarket is designed for
(34:02):
you to pick up as muchprocessed, packaged food as
possible.
That's the design.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
That's where the profit is.
That's where the profit is.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
That's where the profit is, and they have
psychologists working onpositioning in stores, pricing
in stores, journey through thestore.
All of that is not happening byaccident, so we have to
consciously be aware or we haveto learn what's happening here
and then we have to choose.
But it probably is difficulttoday to choose to move fully
(34:34):
away from the dependency on.
On that, am I right in sayingthat?
Or what would you see as onthat, am I right in saying?
Speaker 2 (34:40):
that or what would you see?
As I would say absolutely it'sdifficult, you know, and
acknowledging the difficulty isimportant because when you start
down this path, you're like,why is it so hard to continue to
make healthy choices and tocontinue to shop healthily and
to continue to get my kids toeat this stuff?
Because society is designedaround the other right.
(35:03):
It's designed around the fat,sick and almost dead model.
So you want to shift yourfamily, you want to shift
yourself, you want to shift yourfamily.
First thing I'd say is giveyourself some grace.
It's.
This is not a one day journey,it's, it's an everyday journey.
You're going to get, you'regoing to move forward.
(35:23):
Then you're going to get stuffback that you know it's
nonlinear.
Um, if you have a spouse thatyou're working with in this
process, now you've got twopeople with very different
backgrounds and what you ate inyour household, what's normal
for you, what's healthy for you,what's your idea.
Know that every choice is anaction and those actions they
(35:55):
are cumulative and brands arepaying attention and it doesn't
actually take that many peopleto shift a brand.
I think Wild Farmed is a greatexample in the UK of what can
happen with a very small numberof people.
That's a bright company.
Andy Cato, who's the formerGroove Armada DJ, you know
famous DJ.
He helped co-found that company.
(36:16):
And look, I'm not the numberone person to go tell people to
eat bread, quite the opposite.
But what they have done withgetting small farmers involved
and what they have done ingetting bread under the shelves
and getting consumers to choose,that is no small feat and it
sets a model where, yeah, yourchoice of the grocery store
(36:37):
makes a difference.
In fact that directly impactswhat somebody grows.
And there's all the old adagesshop around the edges of the
store.
It's true in the UK as well asthe US.
First thing I go, the firstthing I like to do when I get to
a new country, I like to go tothe grocery store.
I do, I love it, I love to seeall the different things, and
they're all now universallyorganized, even in developing
(37:09):
world countries.
Right, it's the edges of theidea that processed and
hyper-processed food is betterfor us.
Companies will continue to sellthat mystical burger made in a
factory, the weird milk that'smade from some strange thing,
and on and on and on and on milkthat's made from some strange
(37:33):
thing, and on, and on and on andon.
Like you said, go back to the70s and 80s.
People ate butter, milk, cheese, meat, fish, vegetables, fruits
, nuts, seeds.
That's what human beings havelargely been eating for
millennia.
Why did we come up with theconcept that eating something
else would be better?
It's not.
It's just not.
And so yeah, we got to get awayfrom seed oils.
(37:54):
You know, these are the oilsthat are being put in our food,
that come from corn soy largely,but canola as well.
Totally toxic, completely toxic.
And and anyone who begins thisjourney, you're gonna have
setbacks and you're gonna findthat the entire system is
(38:14):
stacked against you making thosechoices.
But every single time you makea choice, you're choosing health
for yourself, you're choosinghealth for your family and,
believe it or not, those choicesare being heard in boardrooms
around the world and we're justedging up to the tipping point.
So don't give up.
Those choices are being heardin boardrooms around the world
and it's just, we're just edgingup to the tipping point.
So, you know, don't give up.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Yeah, don't give up.
So I said we could go indifferent directions on the
conversation and we already have.
But to take it back to thetrilogy of documentaries, just
talk us through and I know theend.
One in the trilogy isGroundswell and that's going to
(39:00):
come out next year.
So maybe just touch on Kiss theGround for anyone that hasn't
watched it.
As I say, as the host, I'veencouraged the listeners to
watch this before, so I'm suremany of them have.
But take us on that journey.
Kiss the Ground came out andCommon Ground and now
Groundswell is coming in 2026.
So obviously there's a themethrough those, but there's also,
I guess, what you're seeing.
You're probably seeing changeshappen as a result of those.
(39:23):
So talk us through the startedtrilogy and the idea.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
Yeah, so we'll talk through the films first.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
And then we'll talk about the change that's
occurring and what you can do.
And, and the films, you know,follow a pathway of learning and
knowledge, but they also followthe movement itself in real
time, right, yeah, so kiss theground.
It's the framework, it's thebasis, it's the sort of.
It's the framework, it's thebasis, it's the 101, it's the
(39:54):
first class and it forms a veryfundamental understanding of
regenerative agriculture.
It's very much based on Westernmodels of agriculture.
Right, how do we grow thesecrops doing regenerative
practices?
It brings carbon into the soil,and so we, we, we sort of we
formulate all the the big basicpieces.
(40:15):
Common Ground.
The second film, you know, wasmade during COVID and it was
made in a lot of ways as areaction to how people dealt
with the information from thefirst film.
Right, they didn't.
A lot of people had questionsabout scale.
Could it scale?
Is there scalability?
Right, people had questionsabout farmers, what you know.
(40:38):
How are farmers gonnaparticipate in this?
Will they be incentivized byprofits?
What's really going on withfarmers?
And then people had questionsabout the economy.
You know, how is this beingdealt with at an economic level?
And it all boils down to thesame question can we do this
right.
So, common ground, we go deeperand we get more specific and
(41:01):
more granular, and so you learnmore about the farming system,
what locks farmers into thecurrent system and how they can
break out and what it looks likewhen they do break out, what it
looks like when they do breakout, and we learn about farmer
suicides.
We learned about some of thereal stressors that are
occurring.
We go into the pharmaceuticalsystem and we look a little bit
about how that money is playingwith the money of chemicals.
(41:23):
Because, again, the flip sideof can we do this is why aren't
we doing this?
Common ground answers both ofthose questions.
By the end of the film, you'relike oh, it's totally scalable,
we can totally do it and it'stotally profitable, right, and?
And now you know why we're notdoing it at the end of the
second film, yeah, money, verysimple, easy.
(41:45):
The third film, groundswell,which were, I'd say, were about
90, 95% filmed and we'reprobably edging up to 80, 80%
edited.
It's a global journey.
We go to 10, 12 countries.
We look at regeneration fromall different perspectives.
(42:06):
We look at it from an economicperspective, a forestry
perspective, a desertsperspective, a regenerating
landscapes perspective, a foodperspective and we're looking at
vastly different ecosystemsfrom South America all the way
through India, all the wayaround the globe Not just
(42:27):
equatorial systems, right andthe UK.
We spent a lot of time in the UKand I can tell you, even though
the film's not finished, thereis no way, no way I don't care
who you are, if you're ascientist that is dead set on
the industrial food system thereis no way that you can watch
(42:49):
that much evidence in that filmand go regenerative agriculture
doesn't work or it won't work,unless you have the ability to
have complete cognitive distanceand to see reality and to say
no, that's not real.
I don't believe it.
You know, the third film, thejourney of making the film and
the reality of what the film isbecoming.
The third film, the journey ofmaking the film and the reality
of what the film is becoming.
(43:09):
It is definitive, it's justdefinitive.
You know, and and we went withit when and as open a mind as
possible around the world reallylike okay, if it's going to
work, it better prove itself.
It better prove itself oncamera.
And it did.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
Yeah, so that's the journey, yeah, and so you're
going to these countries and,over the course, have you?
Have these people been farmingregeneratively?
And then you've just found themand tapped into their systems
and, you know, tracked it over aperiod of time and seeing the
results, yeah, and generally wefilm them and we film their
(43:49):
neighbor.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
Same trick as in film one, you know, yeah, yeah, and
generally we film them and wefilm their neighbor.
Same trick as in film one, youknow.
Yeah, pretty easy.
If it works, you're going tolook different than your
neighbor, you're going to havedifferent soil, you're going to
have different carbon, you'regoing to have different test
results, da-da-da-da-da-da-da,and even the whole of their
family.
It's all over the world Samething.
And so, really, the thing thatpeople can do is, every single
(44:11):
time somebody views those films,that is an action of power, and
every time you talk about thefilms, that is an action of
power.
And, believe it or not, all ofthat is adding up to some really
big changes.
When we began Kiss the Groundin the United States, there was
less than five or six millionacres of organic, certified
(44:33):
organic, in production in the US.
Today, we're well and trulynorth of 50 million acres of
regenerative land in the US andeasily that number two or three
times globally.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
So that's in the US.
You're talking about a 10 timesincrease in 10 X.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
10 X in five years, easily five years, or six and 10
X globally.
Yeah, wow, yeah and so, and soI believe that when the third
film comes out, we're going tosee that double again.
Speaker 1 (45:06):
Yeah, so an increase in the speed of transition.
Speaker 2 (45:09):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So an increase in the speed oftransition, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And again, you know we talkabout all of the co-benefits.
Healthy soil leads to healthyplants, leads to healthy animals
, leads to healthy humans,healthy air, healthy climate,
healthy biomes, healthy, youknow, microclimate regions,
watersheds, water holdingcapacity all of these things are
(45:29):
co-benefits, right, but none ofthose things will drive
for-profit companies.
Consumers drive companies.
Consumers drive governments.
You know citizens drivegovernments, right.
So you know there's your gardenand your family.
What can you grow?
What can you create for yourfamily?
(45:50):
And in the US, you know, we grew50% of our food.
We grew in front yards,backyards and unused baseball
fields during World War II.
50%.
That's called realbioregionalism.
I mean, they handed outpamphlets about what to do with
seeds and how to manage chickensin your yard, right, yeah, so
(46:11):
it's doable, you know.
And that's without internet andtechnology and sharing and like,
oh, what's your soil type?
And that was just peopleputting some seeds in the ground
and growing some stuff.
Right, very, very, very loose.
We can easily do, easily, youknow, uh, close to 100%
bioregionally, not just in thiscountry but globally.
(46:32):
So your garden matters, yoursoil matters.
If you watch the earthing movieyou'll learn.
You know, putting your hands inthe soil has an electromagnetic
benefit for your body, but moreand more science also shows it
has a bacterial benefit, and soall of these things matter for
our health.
Can you begin with a planterbox?
(46:55):
Can you begin with a plant?
And can we grow a revolutionfrom?
You know, pots and planterboxes and backyards?
I believe the answer is yes.
I believe it's alreadyhappening.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
Yeah, for sure, and it's.
You know, it's great to seethat.
And, as I said at the start,there is.
You know, sometimes you watchenvironmental movies or movies
of those teams or documentariesof those teams and the.
You know there isn't a clearlight at the end of the tunnel
or a way to get to that light atthe end of the tunnel, the end
(47:31):
of the tunnel or a way to get tothat light at the end of the
tunnel.
But all of the, you know, thetwo that have released so far,
definitely show that there is away and the fact that it's
evidence-based and you'refilming this evidence, you know
it, it can't be, can't bedisputed, can't be contradicted,
I guess.
So so that's huge.
Um, before we finish off, uh,the grounding movie, just out of
(47:54):
pure personal interest, I've,I've watched that one as well.
Again, it's one of one of myfavorites and it's a practice
that we do here quite regularly.
Do you do it yourself?
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:06):
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:08):
All the time yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
And you know, yeah, sometimes, when I'm traveling in
a big city not every day, butevery day, when I'm not in a,
you know, when I'm not in aconcrete jungle, and even when
I'm in a concrete jungle, youmight find me in the, in the
little strip of grass in thepark, you know, barefoot.
Speaker 1 (48:25):
And it's huge, Like here in Ireland.
There's a huge amount of peoplenow practicing grounding,
whereas five years ago it wasn'theard of at all.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
Look, you know, even if you don't buy the science,
and I get it.
It's pretty cutting edge stuff.
So you know, fine, I will tellyou this, having done this on
and off my whole life, I willtell you this, having done this
on and off my whole life, I getoff a plane, I get out of a you
know meeting or something,putting my bare feet on the
(48:56):
ground, and if there's a tree,that's even a bonus.
Little little, you know timewith the tree it's.
It does something to theparasympathetic nervous system
nervous system.
(49:17):
It gets us out of the sort ofhyper intrusive, very, very,
very intensive amount of visualand auditory stimuli that we
have, especially in cities, andit puts the parasympathetic
nervous system back into acalming state.
It takes a minute you got tobreathe, et cetera.
So that we know, we know fromso many studies over the years
that that too much stimulationputs us into fight or flight,
(49:40):
right, um?
So if that's all it does,wouldn't that be a benefit?
Yeah for sure.
If human beings did that,wouldn't that be a great thing?
And it costs nothing.
No one makes money from this.
It's not like well, put yourfeet on the ground, oh, big
company's going to make moneyEasy.
Reconnect with nature.
(50:00):
It will help you see things ina different light.
Speaker 1 (50:04):
Yeah, for sure, josh.
It's been a really interestingchat.
As I said, the conversationcould and did go in kind of
different directions.
Groundswell is due out in 2026,q1 or Q2, you were saying
beforehand the other movies.
So Kiss the Ground is onNetflix, common Ground.
Speaker 2 (50:26):
Both of them on Prime now.
Speaker 1 (50:28):
Both of them on Prime now.
Speaker 2 (50:29):
No more Red N.
That's gone.
Okay, so that's gone Just.
Amazon Prime.
Speaker 1 (50:34):
Amazon Prime now and Groundswell likely to be there
as well.
Yeah, agreed.
Where can people check out yourother movies?
So Big Picture Ranch is theproduction company.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
Yeah, so check out bigpictureranchcom and, folks
who want to get more information, commongroundfilmorg so many
PDFs, downloadable things, links.
I mean the resource section isvery deep.
Uh, you can check out my substack, josh Tickell.
And yeah, look forward totalking again.
(51:06):
John, really appreciate your,your viewers and your listeners
and their interest and theirdedication to getting some dirt
under their fingernails.
Speaker 1 (51:15):
Yeah, for sure, and from my perspective, thank you
very much for producing one ofmy favorite, as I said,
documentaries.
A little bit of a fanboy heretoday, but, yeah, brilliant to
have you on and thank you very,very much for coming on.
Master, my garden podcast it'sbeen an honor.
Thank you, john that's been thisweek's episode.
(51:36):
Some really, as I said, we'vegone slightly off topic in terms
of our normal week to weekgardening uh content, but still
huge connection between what wenormally talk about and you know
what josh's joshosh'sdocumentaries are speaking of.
They're really worth checkingout.
You know the what we spokeabout there in terms of consumer
(51:57):
choice.
That really is up to us.
You know that's.
You know that's where thisstarts is with ourselves.
Choose your farmer's market,choose growing your own.
Um, you know, from a healthperspective, from an
environmental perspective, forall those reasons, it's hugely
important that we do start tomake those choices ourselves.
That is what's going to makethe difference.
(52:18):
We've seen, you know, in thecase of five years, an increase
from 5 million acres in the USto 50 million today in organic
growing and evidence backed tosay that it will work and will
feed, you know, futurepopulations.
So it's hugely important thatwe make those choices as well.
But really, really interestingtopic.
(52:38):
And that's been this week'sepisode.
Thanks for listening and untilthe next time, happy gardening,
thank you.
How's it going, everybody, and welcome to
episode 288 of Master my Gardenpodcast.
Now, this week's episode is oneI've been looking forward to
for a while.
I'm just back from holidays and, as you do on holidays, you get
a little bit of time to thinkabout.
You know different things andthis is an episode I've been
thinking about for a while.
So for any of you that listento the podcast and have listened
(00:32):
to it over over the last numberof years, you'll know that soil
health is hugely important.
You know it's something that wetalk about on a regular basis.
We talk about treating the soilwith care and so on.
You will also know that there'ssome documentaries that I've
watched over the years thatreally kind of I connected with
and what we talk about in thepodcast.
(00:53):
It relates very much to them,and one of those documentaries
is Kiss the Ground.
I've watched it multiple timesup to 10 times at this stage and
for this week's episode I'mdelighted to be joined by the
producer of those documentaries,and Josh DeKalb has created
that Kiss the Ground documentary.
(01:13):
He's also done the follow-on,which was Common Ground, and
there's another one, a trilogy,coming out next year which is
Groundswell, and all of thesetouch on, I suppose, the food
systems, agriculture andregenerative farming, centered
around soil health, and they'refascinating documentaries.
(01:35):
As I say, I've watched Kiss theGround up to 10 times, so it's
a little bit different in termsof the content that we normally
talk about on a week-to-weekbasis, but one that I think will
resonate with all you guys,seeing as we talk so much about
soil health and the importanceof it.
So, josh, you're very, verywelcome to Mastering my Garden
Podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Thanks for having me, john, and thanks to your
viewers and your listeners forbeing interested in this topic.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Yeah, you know it is.
It's something that we've spokeabout a lot and, as I've said,
off air it's up to 10 times.
I've watched this Kiss theGround particularly and always
get something out of it.
It's obviously narratedbrilliantly by Woody Harrelson.
You know, and I suppose it'ssomething that you highlight in
(02:22):
some of your other interviews isthat it's not all doom and
gloom which sometimes thesemovies or these documentaries
about environmental issues canbe.
There can be no kind of light atthe end of the tunnel.
But certainly with all of thesethere is a light at the end of
the tunnel that is clearlynarrated through.
You definitely highlight theplaces that we're in now and
(02:45):
where we need to go to, butthere is, you know, ways shown
and it's backed upscientifically, you know, with
the, with the help of some verygreat farmers gabe brown
obviously in the first one andyou know that sort of gives
light at the end of the tunnel,as as I said.
But Kiss the Ground has beenone that I've delved into so
(03:06):
many times, really really loveit.
So honored, completely honored,to have you on the podcast.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
It's great to be here , so glad that you've got a lot
of benefit from the film youknow.
As you know, Kiss the Groundnow has Common Ground, which is
the second film in the series.
It's also on Amazon Prime forpeople who want to see that.
And then working on a thirdfilm.
Who knew that there would bethree soil films spanning 13
(03:35):
years of life?
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Yeah, and Groundswell is going to be out next year.
We might chat a little bitabout that shortly.
Obviously it's still inproduction works.
But what really interests meknow, there's some other of your
documentaries that I haven'twatched and but there is a
particular team through that.
So I'm kind of interested toknow what is it?
Obviously you're a filmmakerand you know documentary maker
(03:58):
and those.
Once you gets a topic that isresonating with the general
public and there's a demand forit and an appetite for it, then
you know it's it's easy to to goand make another one because
you know that that demand andappetite is there.
But obviously behind thatthere's, there's something that
drives you to make this type ofmovie, because it seems to be a
(04:19):
team through all of the onesyou've made.
So what is it that that you toyou know?
Speaker 2 (04:28):
go for this type of a documentary stroke film.
Well, I was born in Australiaand then I moved to Louisiana.
When I was nine I moved to aplace called Cancer Alley or
Cancer Corridor.
It's the petrochemical refiningcenter of the United States of
America.
There's 150 petrochemicalfacilities there.
The average cancer incidence is800 times the national average.
(04:53):
So people have leukemia,lymphoma, all of these very,
very, very strange diseases, butthey have them in vast numbers.
So I watched members of myfamily get sick and die from
this stuff at a young age.
Meanwhile, the environmentitself was both beautiful and
(05:14):
toxic.
It was both beautiful and verypolluted.
So it was a lot at nine yearsof age to sort of make that
mental transition, I think, froma pristine environment out back
of Australia to one that hadbeen, you know, largely just
sabotaged and abandoned by toxicindustries.
(05:34):
And I thought at that point andI still do this is a bad way to
do things.
There must be a better way.
You it, you know, never thoughtwell, people shouldn't drive
cars, or we shouldn't fly planes, or we shouldn't have
civilization or society.
I just thought why, you knowwhy destroy the environment and
(05:55):
why make people sick toaccomplish the things we need to
do it just.
It just seemed lazy or poorlythought out, and so that's been
my ethos for 40 years.
I've been in the environmentalmovement for over 40 years and
the idea that I come with isvery simple To every problem
(06:21):
there's a solution, and if wehaven't figured out the solution
, we just haven't worked hardenough.
You know we haven't wrapped ourheads around the problem.
Generally speaking, we'relooking at the problem through
two small lens.
We need to expand the view.
You know, like with climatechange or oil pollution.
(06:42):
You know oil dependence or oilpollution.
You know oil dependence.
These things tend to haveoccurred because of a very small
, myopic understanding of theworld, and that led me on a
crazy wild journey, you know,from organic farming and wolfing
when I was younger, in my teensand 20s, across Europe and you
(07:05):
know, parts of Central America,to finding biodiesel and seeing
Rudolf Steiner's originaljournals in the you know man
Museum archives in Germany andrealizing that he designed the
diesel engine to run onvegetable oil.
To building a veggie van andgetting fryer grease out of used
cooking oil restaurants,mcdonald's, kfc across the US
(07:27):
and being on the Today Show.
You know, at 17 years old toyou know, writing my first book
about biodiesel, my second bookand working for the biofuels
industry.
I ended up working for, youknow, some of the biggest
agricultural conglomerates inthe world and going to DC and
(07:50):
you know being part of effortson uh in Congress and seeing
everything the whole span fromthe farm all the way to you know
, the the halls of power, andrealizing after all that journey
that the problem is still thesame whether it's agriculture or
oil.
And we often trade one foranother because in our modern
(08:14):
society, you know, the mostefficient countries, the most
efficient countries, arespending about 1.5 to 2 calories
of fossil fuel energy to createone calorie of food.
That's in the developing world.
Now, in the developed world, inthe developing world, it's very
(08:37):
different.
There are countries, numerouscountries, where smallholder
farmers are the majority of food, where they're using far less
than one calorie of fossilenergy and they're producing
more than that in food calories.
So that should tell ussomething Like wait, why is a
(08:58):
country like Uganda moreefficient on a per-calorie basis
at growing food than a countrylike the United States with all
of our modern technology and GPSand satellite?
And the reason is we're cheating, and when you cheat at the
gambling table.
You can make anything look good, right?
(09:18):
And so the way we make food iswe're just eating fossil fuel.
It's very simple we just eatfour or five calories of fossil
fuel to get one calorie of food.
That's it, and so the two areintrinsically linked, right?
You cannot, in the modern world, based on the design that we
(09:41):
bought into, have the societythat we have without fossil
fuels, because we have to eatfossil fuels.
We're literally eating fossilenergy, but that has a knock-on
effect called climate, right?
So there's, you know, thesystem is a system and you can't
cheat because the rules arevery set.
(10:03):
And so that leads us to aquestion regardless of if you
start with energy or food, youstill get to the same question
is how do we feed 10 billionpeople?
yeah and stabilize the climateand have a functioning society
and a healthy economy and havehealthy people.
(10:23):
Uh, and and to?
To answer that question, we'vegot to get out of the little
silos of like me, me, me me.
Solar climate change, electriccars you know, and you've got to
get into a big picture andyou've got to look at it as a
system, and when you do that,the answer gets really clear,
really fast yeah, and it is.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
I've been in rooms, in boardrooms, listening to the
talk from an angle of um, youknow the chemical industry and
I've heard it being said that itisn't possible to feed the
world into not possible yeahcan't do it, can't do it, can't
(11:04):
do it.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
We tried, we tried.
We did that in 1956.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Herbert.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Grace, the founder of the company, he did it.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
He tried, didn't work , got to use fossil fuels and
it's very easy to knock somebodywho asks a question around that
by saying it's not possible tofeed anybody.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
It's so hard to disprove a negative, and that's
how.
That's the myopic sort of verylimited vision that runs much of
the extractive machine, thecorporate machine inside which
we all live.
Right, it's like, well,somebody tried that at some
stage.
(11:43):
I know they did, becauseotherwise why would we be here?
It's like, did you ever thinkthat if you start asking
questions and start pulling thethread, the fabric might pull
apart and the wool will come offyour eyes?
And all of a sudden you'relooking at a system in which
you're just perpetuating a myth.
And that's what regenerativeagriculture is.
(12:04):
It is literally the flip sideof the myth.
It's the reality of thebiogenic cycle in which we live,
taken into a system thatactually functions for our
health and that is like for thecorporate extractive economy,
which is based on limitedresources.
(12:25):
Anytime you limit a resourceand you make the resource very
valuable, everybody wants itright.
So now there's competition, andso now whoever controls the
resource wins.
That's the model, that's modern, that's modern economy, that's
Adam Smith economics, right.
But if you go, well, what ifthere was a totally different
system, in which abundance wasthe engine?
(12:49):
Calories were not limited byyour fossil fuel extraction.
They were limited only by yourimagination and your ability to
use solar energy, and if you'reable to use the tools that have
been here for thousands andthousands of years, since humans
began to cultivate, you couldhave as many calories as you
(13:12):
want for 10 billion people, andyou could build the soil while
you do it.
And you could sequester all thecarbon that you accidentally put
in the atmosphere.
Wow, that would be a differenteconomic model.
Now we're talking aboutregenerative economics, which is
even one step above theagricultural idea itself, and we
can go back to the agricultureand go back to the soil.
(13:32):
But again, if you want to solvea big problem, your context has
to get bigger than the problem,and we've got a lot of people
right now thinking to try andconstrain these problems in
small context, which is why it'sfailing.
It's why the environmentalmovement has largely not been
able to succeed for the fourdecades that I've participated
(13:54):
in.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Yeah, and we will take a step backwards in a
second.
Firstly, you mentionedsomething there about cheating
at the roulette table.
I think you said, and whatyou're talking about here is
basically heavily subsidised,the system that we have now
heavily subsidised foodproduction with the use of
(14:19):
chemicals, fertilisers etc.
And that's the cheating elementthat you're talking about and
we will talk about.
You know, in Kiss the Groundthere's a few great examples of
large scale examples of howregenerative farming can work
and does work.
Interestingly enough, that hasjust sparked something in my
(14:40):
mind.
A couple of years ago I coveredan episode on the podcast again
after coming back from holidays,which is typically in that part
of July, and it was it was twoweeks in Tuscany in Italy, and I
spoke about I spoke about onthat on that episode about there
was there was a food productionarea all around us, but there
(15:02):
was.
We used to go out on the bikesand in the daytime there was a
beautiful little farm shop.
Now there wasn't a lot ofhouses around or notable amount
of houses around, but inside inthe farm shop you had so much
choice of food.
99% of it was produced on theland or on neighbor's land and
it was very much a communityelement to it.
(15:23):
It was a case.
Now this is small scale to acertain extent, but it just
gives an example of what I thinkis perfect food system.
There was a lady inside in theshop.
She was running the shop.
There was beautiful pumpkins,melons, tomatoes, onions, and
there was the husband in thebackground on a little mini
(15:46):
tractor and every so often shewould go out and say I need x, y
and z, and off he'd go into thefield or the next field and
he'd come back with what shewanted and the shop got stocked
up and during a continuousbecause I watched it for four or
five hours just out of interestand it was amazing the amount
of people as I say, there's noobvious houses around, but the
(16:07):
amount of people that came overthat period of time took away
what looked like their week ofingredients and it was all being
topped up all the time fromwithin a very, very small radius
.
Now, at that small scale, I sawsomething similar this year in
Croatia.
How can we get to a situationwhere I suppose we can make that
(16:30):
into a bigger scale, becausethose growers are brilliant and
they work to do are brilliant,but it does need to be on a
huger scale you know the likesof Gabe Brown's scale for it to
truly work in terms of feedingeverybody doesn't it yes and no.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Okay, 75% of calories on Earth are grown by
smallholder farmers, so we'retalking less than an acre for
the most part.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Yeah, so there is a misnomer how do we feed 10
billion people?
We need to scale up.
We need to make everythingindustrial.
You know there's no evidence tosupport that.
The evidence supports theopposite, right?
So if we're really going to askthe question, then we actually
have to look at the evidence.
(17:18):
We have to do an investigation,right?
We have to look at the data, andwhat the data shows is, first
of all, the type of caloricintake that we do in the United
States is totally insane.
65% of our calories are fromultra-processed food.
Processed and ultra-processedfoods Bags, boxes, cartons and
(17:40):
containers in the middle of thegrocery store.
The vast majority of that isjust corn, soy and wheat that
has been repackaged.
So you know why are we spending$2 billion in food stamps on
Coke and Pepsi fizzy productsthat contain sugar that creates
diabetes?
We have prenatal diabetes thatdidn't exist prior to putting
(18:04):
corn syrup into fizzy drinks.
Right, we're literally astaxpayers.
We pay to make sure that peopledon't go hungry, but what that
actually means is, you know, bigsoft drink companies make
billions of dollars from peopleeating sugar to make them sick,
so that then we can spendtrillions of dollars in the
(18:24):
healthcare.
So when people go oh, we don'thave enough money or we don't
have enough land.
It's like let's look at thesystem, because right now you're
spending what just in theUnited States?
A trillion, $2 trillion onpalliative healthcare to deal
with your food system which, bythe way, healthcare to deal with
(18:47):
your food system.
Which, by the way, you're taxsubsidizing companies to produce
food to make people sick.
I don't know, I don't knowabout you, but that doesn't seem
like a there's zero logic inthat system whatsoever.
That is a profit driven systemto make people sick to make
money, right?
And so the objective of thecurrent food system, the
industrial food system, is tomake people as sick and fat as
(19:08):
possible, as fast as possible,and then to make as much money
on the pharmaceutical side aspossible.
And, by the way, a lot of thosecompanies are the same company,
right?
Bayer makes Roundup, it makesglyphosate, and then Bayer makes
a product for cancer, to treatthe non-Hodgkin's lymphoma which
(19:28):
you get from Roundup, right?
So the more Roundup you use,the more people get sick, the
more money they make.
And so when you really peelapart the chemical food system,
you realize that these companiesare, if not the same companies,
they're very interlinked.
They share board members, theyshare resources, they share
pipelines, they shareinfrastructure and largely the
(19:50):
chemical, sick pharmaceuticalindustrial complex is the same
as the chemical food industrialcomplex.
Right, and so you go well, oh,but we feed people.
We feed them a lot of calories,you go well.
No, you feed a small number ofthe human population a lot of
(20:13):
empty calories, mostlycarbohydrates, which, the more
science we do, reality ofdistortion, because 75% of human
population is not fed by thatright.
So now we go to the largerquestion, which is could we in
effect have some kind of hybriddiet where we build from ancient
(20:38):
knowledge?
What did ancient people eat?
You know, ancient beingpre-industrial, right, and what
modern tools could we use to dothat?
And it turns out that when welook at protein specifically,
when we look at animal proteinspecifically, we in the Western
(20:58):
world know very little aboutanimal protein, how to raise
animals.
Well, we, we do one of twothings we either stick them in
factory farms and feed them corn, yeah, and then we eat them.
Makes everybody sick.
It's a terrible system.
Or we let them free range, wejust let them graze.
Both systems createdesertification, both.
(21:19):
Both systems ruin soil.
Both systems release the carbonthat's in the soil up into the
atmosphere.
If you see five or six cows ina paddock just grazing, or sheep
, as you would in the UK, that'sdesertification.
That is destroying the soil.
It's also lazy farming.
(21:39):
I'm sorry to say I'm not afarmer.
It's a.
It's a hard job.
Yeah, it's a.
It's an incredibly humblingtask.
We tried to run a five acreranch here in Ohio, california,
for many years, um,unsuccessfully and successfully.
But I've documented no lessthan a hundred regenerative
(22:00):
operations around the world inaustralia, kenya, uganda, asia,
africa, um, india, the uk,america, colombia, south america
and they, they're allconsistent.
They mob graze, they put theanimals together and they move
them, just like a wolf wouldwhen four-legged animals are
(22:23):
moved, as they were in nature.
With a predator type mentality,they build soil.
If you let them free, graze anddo whatever they want, they'll
take the best plants, they'lltake the new plants and those
are the plants that destroy thesoil.
That's the grass that youactually need.
Destroyed the soil, that's thegrass that you actually need.
They'll selectively graze onwhat they want versus being
(22:44):
forced, as they would in nature,to move across a landscape,
fertilize that landscape andkeep moving and not come back
for at least six months.
Most of the world, like over 80%, need the six month rest period
between grazings, and mostranchers get that wrong, even
regenerative ranchers.
I see them getting it wrong allthe time.
They're like why is my soildegraded?
(23:05):
You're overgrazing.
It's so simple.
So all of that is to say thatwhen you pack those animals
together and move them acrossthe landscape, you have higher
herd density, meaning many moreanimals.
So we're actually growing.
This is true in the UK too.
I've seen it.
I've never seen grazing likethe UK, and the UK ironically
(23:31):
exported its system to the restof the world.
Because you get rain all thetime, so you have grass, so it
looks green.
So, oh, we'll just put ahandful of sheep, a handful of
cattle and we'll just let thembe in the paddock forever,
meanwhile soil resources gonedown right.
So what we actually need inglobally is higher stock density
(23:54):
, which generally means moreanimals, and less time on the
ground, which means movingfaster, and less time on the
ground, which means movingfaster.
When you really do the numbers,there's far more protein
available than what we'regrowing today, and that's a
stunning, shocking,controversial thing to say,
(24:15):
especially with the sort of movetoward a more plant-based plate
.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,blah.
But you know, there's a reasonwhy lewis and clark came across
the americas and and when they,when they found the cherokee,
when they found the nativepeople and the denae and all of
the different tribes, they werestunned because here were these
small, white, kind of emaciatedenglish people who were
(24:37):
literally small in stature.
And they came upon theseindigenous people who were huge
and muscular and tall and theyrealized, oh, they eat bison.
It's simple and that's prettymuch what they ate.
That was it.
They didn't do a lot of greens.
And the irony of that wholething is we think the indigenous
(24:57):
people didn't do agricultureand meanwhile they were changing
entire landscapes, they weremanaging forests.
There's now evidence that theAmazon forest itself was seeded
and created by indigenous people.
So some of the great forests onearth that are producing our
oxygen were probably at leastwith the data that we have now,
(25:22):
probably and very likely theywere the result of regenerative
agriculture.
So we think about it, it's like, okay, ancient people far more
carnivorous diet.
They built soil, they builtforests, they built landscapes.
And this new Western model oferasing trees and erasing
(25:44):
landscapes and then turning theminto grazing grounds that's the
model that we're still workingoff of and monocrops, not a
biodiverse species approach.
And now we have a questioncalled how do we feed people?
How do we feed 10 billionpeople with that model?
You don't, because that modelis broken.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Yeah, and that's the system we have.
We're here in Ireland andthat's the system we have.
We have loads of rain, but itis that system.
It's intensive, it's heavy,overstocking, overgrazing, soil
quality is poor.
Yeah, it's.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
They don't move the animals.
They do not move the animals.
I've been.
Your country is absolutelystunning.
By the way, ireland is sobeautiful, people are so
friendly, unbelievable, butliterally I've never seen
animals move less.
They move as much as they movein a feedlot.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
It's like yeah, no, it's small paddocks and eat
everything in the paddock, thenmove at whatever period of time
that it's, and no rest no rest.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
They'll have another herd in that paddock again
before you know it.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Yeah, for sure, and you're.
So you know these becauseyou're you're creating
documentaries.
You can't just create them,state things and have no
evidence to back them up.
So you're obviously gatheringand compiling, you know, with
the help of others, thisevidence that you know this,
this regenerative system can anddoes work.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
I have a thousand hours of footage.
It's literally a pentabyte ofstorage, a pentabyte of examples
.
And yes, there are white papersand yes, there are scientific
studies about this stuff now.
But it's one thing to argue ascience paper you get with a
(27:40):
bunch of scientists and it'slike being with theologians.
They're like how many fairiescan dance on the tip of a
pinhead?
You're like, okay, fine, lookat this example that we filmed.
We haven't filmed it once, wefilmed it hundreds of times and
you can't argue with reality.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
You just can't argue with reality, you just can't,
yeah, and you're doing it in somany locations with different
climatic pulls and drags.
So it's, you know the systemworks and it's just a case of
implementing it elsewhere.
In light of that, and in lightof you know who these systems
are contradicting, I guess doyou get much pushback.
Is there resistance there?
(28:26):
Is there pressure from higherpowers, anything like that?
Speaker 2 (28:32):
The more evidence that this movement gains and the
louder it gets, the more theopposition gets interested.
You know we're going up againsta multi-trillion dollar
industry in North America.
You know, when you addpharmaceuticals and food, you're
up well over two trillion, anda lot of that's profit.
(28:53):
So you know there's people thatstand to lose a tremendous
amount when this becomesmainstream not if, when because
there's no other way to feed 10billion people and there's kind
of.
We're reaching an inflectionpoint where I think companies
really are thinking about legacy, not just the next year, not
(29:18):
just the next quarterly profitposting, but they're thinking
both in terms of reality.
How brittle is your supplychain If you're a chocolate
company, if you're a coffeecompany, if you're a, I don't
care if you produce wheat, soyor corn how brittle is your
supply chain?
You know the US just lost atremendous amount of corn to
(29:40):
rust.
Why?
Because it's the same geneticvariety for thousands of miles.
It's one gene, one genome ofcorn.
Right, it's like okay, whoseidea was that?
There is no resilience in that?
Some smart little creature,whether it's a fungus or or an
insect, they figure that genomeout and you're done, your whole
(30:03):
crop's done so.
There's no food security inthat, and it's actually an issue
of international militarysecurity when you're thinking
about feeding billions of people.
So we need to think as we entera connected world, as we enter
sort of this time of extremelylong supply chains I mean, look
(30:23):
at what happened in Europe withthe Ukraine-Russia crisis, right
I mean we need to begin tothink about bioregionalism,
which is, what's the strength ofa food-producing region, what's
the strength of Ireland as afood-producing region?
What's the strength ofCalifornia or the Midwest in the
United States, mexico,different countries internally
(30:45):
as to themselves?
If a food borne problemstretches across a land, that
could be mad cow disease, itcould be a wheat problem.
How do we feed people inregions, right?
So we need to think like that.
And then we need to think howbrittle are our supply chains,
moving out from this year to twoyears to five years to 10 years
(31:09):
to 15 years?
Right, because ultimately we'realways going to import and
export.
It's just the way it works.
But when those supply chainsare so brittle that we literally
can't guarantee coffee orprotein in five years, then
that's a real problem for amulti-billion dollar company and
(31:32):
I think companies are startingto feel that burn and it's
shifting them and they'rebecoming very interested in
regenerative agriculture, notbecause they want to do good for
the world, they just want tokeep their jobs.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
Yeah, which is understandable, yeah it's human
nature and it's the nature ofeconomics, it's the nature of
business, it's what drives allof that and I suppose, yeah, we
understand that.
If you take it back tograssroots level and to you know
, you and I, walking into asupermarket there was quite a
good study done in the UK, whichI'm sure it's similar in
(32:11):
Ireland, I'm sure it's the samein the US, I'm sure it's the
same in Australia, when back inthe 1970s and you talked about
ancient diets earlier on, buteven if you go back not so
ancient, go back to the 1980s,you know that's for most people
right now, that's ancient.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
We're dating ourselves here, John.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
Yeah, yeah.
But the study was brilliantbecause it showed the typical
shopping basket for a month inthe 1980s and the typical
shopping basket today, over thesame period.
And what it did was it took allthe items and it laid them out
on the floor of a farm shed.
(32:53):
And what you saw on the 1980sone was and I forget the exact
figure, but it was, roughlyspeaking 90% ingredients on the
floor, so things like meat, fish, vegetables, fruit, nuts,
components of food, and then onthe opposite side, that figure
(33:16):
now is down to 30 or 40% Again,I'm not certain on the exact
figures, but you know, in thatregion.
So that meant that theremaining 60% was processed and
during that same period, as youalluded to, most diseases have,
you know, spiraled upwardsuncontrollably, and so there's a
(33:39):
direct correlation betweenthose, no matter what anybody
says.
Yeah, I think the sooner thatyou know, the joe public really
sees that as as the thing.
How, how do you convince themto to start making the change?
Because you have to make aconscious choice, because when
you walk into a supermarket,that supermarket is designed for
(34:02):
you to pick up as muchprocessed, packaged food as
possible.
That's the design.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
That's where the profit is.
That's where the profit is.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
That's where the profit is, and they have
psychologists working onpositioning in stores, pricing
in stores, journey through thestore.
All of that is not happening byaccident, so we have to
consciously be aware or we haveto learn what's happening here
and then we have to choose.
But it probably is difficulttoday to choose to move fully
(34:34):
away from the dependency on.
On that, am I right in sayingthat?
Or what would you see as onthat, am I right in saying?
Speaker 2 (34:40):
that or what would you see?
As I would say absolutely it'sdifficult, you know, and
acknowledging the difficulty isimportant because when you start
down this path, you're like,why is it so hard to continue to
make healthy choices and tocontinue to shop healthily and
to continue to get my kids toeat this stuff?
Because society is designedaround the other right.
(35:03):
It's designed around the fat,sick and almost dead model.
So you want to shift yourfamily, you want to shift
yourself, you want to shift yourfamily.
First thing I'd say is giveyourself some grace.
It's.
This is not a one day journey,it's, it's an everyday journey.
You're going to get, you'regoing to move forward.
(35:23):
Then you're going to get stuffback that you know it's
nonlinear.
Um, if you have a spouse thatyou're working with in this
process, now you've got twopeople with very different
backgrounds and what you ate inyour household, what's normal
for you, what's healthy for you,what's your idea.
Know that every choice is anaction and those actions they
(35:55):
are cumulative and brands arepaying attention and it doesn't
actually take that many peopleto shift a brand.
I think Wild Farmed is a greatexample in the UK of what can
happen with a very small numberof people.
That's a bright company.
Andy Cato, who's the formerGroove Armada DJ, you know
famous DJ.
He helped co-found that company.
(36:16):
And look, I'm not the numberone person to go tell people to
eat bread, quite the opposite.
But what they have done withgetting small farmers involved
and what they have done ingetting bread under the shelves
and getting consumers to choose,that is no small feat and it
sets a model where, yeah, yourchoice of the grocery store
(36:37):
makes a difference.
In fact that directly impactswhat somebody grows.
And there's all the old adagesshop around the edges of the
store.
It's true in the UK as well asthe US.
First thing I go, the firstthing I like to do when I get to
a new country, I like to go tothe grocery store.
I do, I love it, I love to seeall the different things, and
they're all now universallyorganized, even in developing
(37:09):
world countries.
Right, it's the edges of theidea that processed and
hyper-processed food is betterfor us.
Companies will continue to sellthat mystical burger made in a
factory, the weird milk that'smade from some strange thing,
and on and on and on and on milkthat's made from some strange
(37:33):
thing, and on, and on and on andon.
Like you said, go back to the70s and 80s.
People ate butter, milk, cheese, meat, fish, vegetables, fruits
, nuts, seeds.
That's what human beings havelargely been eating for
millennia.
Why did we come up with theconcept that eating something
else would be better?
It's not.
It's just not.
And so yeah, we got to get awayfrom seed oils.
(37:54):
You know, these are the oilsthat are being put in our food,
that come from corn soy largely,but canola as well.
Totally toxic, completely toxic.
And and anyone who begins thisjourney, you're gonna have
setbacks and you're gonna findthat the entire system is
(38:14):
stacked against you making thosechoices.
But every single time you makea choice, you're choosing health
for yourself, you're choosinghealth for your family and,
believe it or not, those choicesare being heard in boardrooms
around the world and we're justedging up to the tipping point.
So don't give up.
Those choices are being heardin boardrooms around the world
and it's just, we're just edgingup to the tipping point.
So, you know, don't give up.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Yeah, don't give up.
So I said we could go indifferent directions on the
conversation and we already have.
But to take it back to thetrilogy of documentaries, just
talk us through and I know theend.
One in the trilogy isGroundswell and that's going to
(39:00):
come out next year.
So maybe just touch on Kiss theGround for anyone that hasn't
watched it.
As I say, as the host, I'veencouraged the listeners to
watch this before, so I'm suremany of them have.
But take us on that journey.
Kiss the Ground came out andCommon Ground and now
Groundswell is coming in 2026.
So obviously there's a themethrough those, but there's also,
I guess, what you're seeing.
You're probably seeing changeshappen as a result of those.
(39:23):
So talk us through the startedtrilogy and the idea.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
Yeah, so we'll talk through the films first.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
And then we'll talk about the change that's
occurring and what you can do.
And, and the films, you know,follow a pathway of learning and
knowledge, but they also followthe movement itself in real
time, right, yeah, so kiss theground.
It's the framework, it's thebasis, it's the sort of.
It's the framework, it's thebasis, it's the 101, it's the
(39:54):
first class and it forms a veryfundamental understanding of
regenerative agriculture.
It's very much based on Westernmodels of agriculture.
Right, how do we grow thesecrops doing regenerative
practices?
It brings carbon into the soil,and so we, we, we sort of we
formulate all the the big basicpieces.
(40:15):
Common Ground.
The second film, you know, wasmade during COVID and it was
made in a lot of ways as areaction to how people dealt
with the information from thefirst film.
Right, they didn't.
A lot of people had questionsabout scale.
Could it scale?
Is there scalability?
Right, people had questionsabout farmers, what you know.
(40:38):
How are farmers gonnaparticipate in this?
Will they be incentivized byprofits?
What's really going on withfarmers?
And then people had questionsabout the economy.
You know, how is this beingdealt with at an economic level?
And it all boils down to thesame question can we do this
right.
So, common ground, we go deeperand we get more specific and
(41:01):
more granular, and so you learnmore about the farming system,
what locks farmers into thecurrent system and how they can
break out and what it looks likewhen they do break out, what it
looks like when they do breakout, and we learn about farmer
suicides.
We learned about some of thereal stressors that are
occurring.
We go into the pharmaceuticalsystem and we look a little bit
about how that money is playingwith the money of chemicals.
(41:23):
Because, again, the flip sideof can we do this is why aren't
we doing this?
Common ground answers both ofthose questions.
By the end of the film, you'relike oh, it's totally scalable,
we can totally do it and it'stotally profitable, right, and?
And now you know why we're notdoing it at the end of the
second film, yeah, money, verysimple, easy.
(41:45):
The third film, groundswell,which were, I'd say, were about
90, 95% filmed and we'reprobably edging up to 80, 80%
edited.
It's a global journey.
We go to 10, 12 countries.
We look at regeneration fromall different perspectives.
(42:06):
We look at it from an economicperspective, a forestry
perspective, a desertsperspective, a regenerating
landscapes perspective, a foodperspective and we're looking at
vastly different ecosystemsfrom South America all the way
through India, all the wayaround the globe Not just
(42:27):
equatorial systems, right andthe UK.
We spent a lot of time in the UKand I can tell you, even though
the film's not finished, thereis no way, no way I don't care
who you are, if you're ascientist that is dead set on
the industrial food system thereis no way that you can watch
(42:49):
that much evidence in that filmand go regenerative agriculture
doesn't work or it won't work,unless you have the ability to
have complete cognitive distanceand to see reality and to say
no, that's not real.
I don't believe it.
You know, the third film, thejourney of making the film and
the reality of what the film isbecoming.
The third film, the journey ofmaking the film and the reality
of what the film is becoming.
(43:09):
It is definitive, it's justdefinitive.
You know, and and we went withit when and as open a mind as
possible around the world reallylike okay, if it's going to
work, it better prove itself.
It better prove itself oncamera.
And it did.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
Yeah, so that's the journey, yeah, and so you're
going to these countries and,over the course, have you?
Have these people been farmingregeneratively?
And then you've just found themand tapped into their systems
and, you know, tracked it over aperiod of time and seeing the
results, yeah, and generally wefilm them and we film their
(43:49):
neighbor.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
Same trick as in film one, you know, yeah, yeah, and
generally we film them and wefilm their neighbor.
Same trick as in film one, youknow.
Yeah, pretty easy.
If it works, you're going tolook different than your
neighbor, you're going to havedifferent soil, you're going to
have different carbon, you'regoing to have different test
results, da-da-da-da-da-da-da,and even the whole of their
family.
It's all over the world Samething.
And so, really, the thing thatpeople can do is, every single
(44:11):
time somebody views those films,that is an action of power, and
every time you talk about thefilms, that is an action of
power.
And, believe it or not, all ofthat is adding up to some really
big changes.
When we began Kiss the Groundin the United States, there was
less than five or six millionacres of organic, certified
(44:33):
organic, in production in the US.
Today, we're well and trulynorth of 50 million acres of
regenerative land in the US andeasily that number two or three
times globally.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
So that's in the US.
You're talking about a 10 timesincrease in 10 X.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
10 X in five years, easily five years, or six and 10
X globally.
Yeah, wow, yeah and so, and soI believe that when the third
film comes out, we're going tosee that double again.
Speaker 1 (45:06):
Yeah, so an increase in the speed of transition.
Speaker 2 (45:09):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So an increase in the speed oftransition, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And again, you know we talkabout all of the co-benefits.
Healthy soil leads to healthyplants, leads to healthy animals
, leads to healthy humans,healthy air, healthy climate,
healthy biomes, healthy, youknow, microclimate regions,
watersheds, water holdingcapacity all of these things are
(45:29):
co-benefits, right, but none ofthose things will drive
for-profit companies.
Consumers drive companies.
Consumers drive governments.
You know citizens drivegovernments, right.
So you know there's your gardenand your family.
What can you grow?
What can you create for yourfamily?
(45:50):
And in the US, you know, we grew50% of our food.
We grew in front yards,backyards and unused baseball
fields during World War II.
50%.
That's called realbioregionalism.
I mean, they handed outpamphlets about what to do with
seeds and how to manage chickensin your yard, right, yeah, so
(46:11):
it's doable, you know.
And that's without internet andtechnology and sharing and like,
oh, what's your soil type?
And that was just peopleputting some seeds in the ground
and growing some stuff.
Right, very, very, very loose.
We can easily do, easily, youknow, uh, close to 100%
bioregionally, not just in thiscountry but globally.
(46:32):
So your garden matters, yoursoil matters.
If you watch the earthing movieyou'll learn.
You know, putting your hands inthe soil has an electromagnetic
benefit for your body, but moreand more science also shows it
has a bacterial benefit, and soall of these things matter for
our health.
Can you begin with a planterbox?
(46:55):
Can you begin with a plant?
And can we grow a revolutionfrom?
You know, pots and planterboxes and backyards?
I believe the answer is yes.
I believe it's alreadyhappening.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
Yeah, for sure, and it's.
You know, it's great to seethat.
And, as I said at the start,there is.
You know, sometimes you watchenvironmental movies or movies
of those teams or documentariesof those teams and the.
You know there isn't a clearlight at the end of the tunnel
or a way to get to that light atthe end of the tunnel, the end
(47:31):
of the tunnel or a way to get tothat light at the end of the
tunnel.
But all of the, you know, thetwo that have released so far,
definitely show that there is away and the fact that it's
evidence-based and you'refilming this evidence, you know
it, it can't be, can't bedisputed, can't be contradicted,
I guess.
So so that's huge.
Um, before we finish off, uh,the grounding movie, just out of
(47:54):
pure personal interest, I've,I've watched that one as well.
Again, it's one of one of myfavorites and it's a practice
that we do here quite regularly.
Do you do it yourself?
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:06):
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:08):
All the time yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
And you know, yeah, sometimes, when I'm traveling in
a big city not every day, butevery day, when I'm not in a,
you know, when I'm not in aconcrete jungle, and even when
I'm in a concrete jungle, youmight find me in the, in the
little strip of grass in thepark, you know, barefoot.
Speaker 1 (48:25):
And it's huge, Like here in Ireland.
There's a huge amount of peoplenow practicing grounding,
whereas five years ago it wasn'theard of at all.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
Look, you know, even if you don't buy the science,
and I get it.
It's pretty cutting edge stuff.
So you know, fine, I will tellyou this, having done this on
and off my whole life, I willtell you this, having done this
on and off my whole life, I getoff a plane, I get out of a you
know meeting or something,putting my bare feet on the
(48:56):
ground, and if there's a tree,that's even a bonus.
Little little, you know timewith the tree it's.
It does something to theparasympathetic nervous system
nervous system.
(49:17):
It gets us out of the sort ofhyper intrusive, very, very,
very intensive amount of visualand auditory stimuli that we
have, especially in cities, andit puts the parasympathetic
nervous system back into acalming state.
It takes a minute you got tobreathe, et cetera.
So that we know, we know fromso many studies over the years
that that too much stimulationputs us into fight or flight,
(49:40):
right, um?
So if that's all it does,wouldn't that be a benefit?
Yeah for sure.
If human beings did that,wouldn't that be a great thing?
And it costs nothing.
No one makes money from this.
It's not like well, put yourfeet on the ground, oh, big
company's going to make moneyEasy.
Reconnect with nature.
(50:00):
It will help you see things ina different light.
Speaker 1 (50:04):
Yeah, for sure, josh.
It's been a really interestingchat.
As I said, the conversationcould and did go in kind of
different directions.
Groundswell is due out in 2026,q1 or Q2, you were saying
beforehand the other movies.
So Kiss the Ground is onNetflix, common Ground.
Speaker 2 (50:26):
Both of them on Prime now.
Speaker 1 (50:28):
Both of them on Prime now.
Speaker 2 (50:29):
No more Red N.
That's gone.
Okay, so that's gone Just.
Amazon Prime.
Speaker 1 (50:34):
Amazon Prime now and Groundswell likely to be there
as well.
Yeah, agreed.
Where can people check out yourother movies?
So Big Picture Ranch is theproduction company.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
Yeah, so check out bigpictureranchcom and, folks
who want to get more information, commongroundfilmorg so many
PDFs, downloadable things, links.
I mean the resource section isvery deep.
Uh, you can check out my substack, josh Tickell.
And yeah, look forward totalking again.
(51:06):
John, really appreciate your,your viewers and your listeners
and their interest and theirdedication to getting some dirt
under their fingernails.
Speaker 1 (51:15):
Yeah, for sure, and from my perspective, thank you
very much for producing one ofmy favorite, as I said,
documentaries.
A little bit of a fanboy heretoday, but, yeah, brilliant to
have you on and thank you very,very much for coming on.
Master, my garden podcast it'sbeen an honor.
Thank you, john that's been thisweek's episode.
(51:36):
Some really, as I said, we'vegone slightly off topic in terms
of our normal week to weekgardening uh content, but still
huge connection between what wenormally talk about and you know
what josh's joshosh'sdocumentaries are speaking of.
They're really worth checkingout.
You know the what we spokeabout there in terms of consumer
(51:57):
choice.
That really is up to us.
You know that's.
You know that's where thisstarts is with ourselves.
Choose your farmer's market,choose growing your own.
Um, you know, from a healthperspective, from an
environmental perspective, forall those reasons, it's hugely
important that we do start tomake those choices ourselves.
That is what's going to makethe difference.
(52:18):
We've seen, you know, in thecase of five years, an increase
from 5 million acres in the USto 50 million today in organic
growing and evidence backed tosay that it will work and will
feed, you know, futurepopulations.
So it's hugely important thatwe make those choices as well.
But really, really interestingtopic.
(52:38):
And that's been this week'sepisode.
Thanks for listening and untilthe next time, happy gardening,
thank you.
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