July 23, 2024 • 45 mins
In this episode of the Regenerative by Design Podcast, host Joni Kindwall-Moore sits down with Dr. Abed Chaudhury, a plant geneticist and farmer, to explore some intriguing and often overlooked topics in our food system. They dive into the hidden power of phytonutrients, the mysteries of the gut microbiome, and the surprising ways our farming practices impact soil health.
Dr. Chaudhury shares his journey from rural Bangladesh to MIT and beyond, revealing secrets about our shift from perennial to mono-harvest crops that have had a dramatic impact on biodiversity and soil quality. He talks about his groundbreaking work with Genofax on the gut microbiome and a revolutionary breeding program in Bangladesh that could change the future of farming.
As the conversation unfolds, they touch on big ideas like the co-evolution of humans and crops and the urgent need to rethink our agricultural practices. Dr. Chaudhury's unique blend of traditional agricultural wisdom and cutting-edge molecular biology uncovers the deep connections between our health and the health of our soil.
But that's not all—Joni and Dr. Chaudhury reveal some surprising insights about the importance of crop diversity and the potential for a more resilient, sustainable food system. This episode is packed with revelations that will keep you hooked until the very end. Don't miss out on these eye-opening insights!
Link(s):
The Gaia Hypothesis: teachersinstitute.yale.edu/curriculum/units/files/97.07.02.pdf
Genetics with Abed Chaudhury: https://bengal.institute/team/abed-chaudhury/
Regenerative by design is hosted by Snacktivist. Snacktivist creates baking mixes and finished products that are allergy-friendly, soil, water, and carbon-focused, all while radically impacting human nutrition by transforming staple foods into something more than just empty calories. Visit snacktivistfoods.com to learn more.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Unknown (00:01):
Hello everyone, you are listening to the regenerative by
design podcast where we will begetting to the root of health,
climate, economics and food. Iam your host, Joanie Kenmore.
Join me on this journey as weexplore the stories of
individuals and organizationswho are working to realign our
food system with both humanhealth and the health of our
planet.
Joni Kindwall-Moore (00:28):
Hello, everybody, and welcome to the
regenerative by design Podcast.I'm so excited you're here
today, we are going to have adiscussion with Dr. Abed
Chaudhury, who is one of myfavorite colleagues to have deep
conversations about the thingsin our food system that people
don't regularly talk about. Ifyou've followed my work, you
(00:51):
likely know that I'm reallypassionate about phytonutrients
and the role that they play inhuman health, the gut
microbiome, but also inmodulation of the soil
microbiome. And Dr. Abed hasspent his lifetime exploring all
of these things from a molecularscience perspective, the lens of
(01:13):
a plant geneticist, but alsobeing a farmer, and
understanding what it's like togrow food that people are going
to eat, and enjoy every day. Sowith so much respect, I welcome
Dr. Abed Chaudhury.
Abed Chaudhury (01:26):
Thank you. Thank you, Johnny.
Joni Kindwall-Moore (01:28):
I'm so glad you're joining us tonight. And
where are you calling in fromtonight?
Abed Chaudhury (01:32):
Or today calling in Canberra capital of
Australia, Canberra, thisbeautiful city of Canberra.
Joni Kindwall-Moore (01:39):
And what are you doing their op ed, you
have a very interesting positionright now.
Abed Chaudhury (01:45):
Yeah, so I divide my time between Australia
and Bangladesh mostly. So inCanberra, I am a senior adviser
to a company called long bio,which is a which works on
climate mitigation. But my mainpreoccupation at the moment is
to work for general facts. As aco founder and chief scientist,
(02:08):
which works on the gutmicrobiome. And in Bangladesh, I
lead a breeding program where mygoal is to make crops multi
harvest is you know, most of thecrops are mono harvest from the
beginning of agriculture. So Ihave set in motion a process by
which I want to make crops multiharvest mainly for the for the
(02:30):
benefit of the earth andsustainability.
Joni Kindwall-Moore (02:33):
Abed, in your experience in your
lifetime. What led you to beinginterested in this expression
that we have in our agriculturalcrops between being an annual so
you're planted you go season oneyear versus being a perennial or
multi harvest type of plantwhere there are multiple
(02:54):
production of seed episodeswithin one lifetime of that
planting?
Abed Chaudhury (03:00):
You have in order to understand it in a in a
proper context, you have torealize that mostly most of
these crops were cranialoriginally to just to give an
example of rice rice Oryzasativa, which simply means
cultivated Arizer. sativa justmeans cultivator. So the
cultivated rice is derived fromEliza roofie pecan, and Arizer
(03:26):
nivara, both of which areperennial. So what happened and
as a geneticist and epigeneticist, I have tried to
imagine the scenario that thatkind of transpired during crop
domestication. So so theforaging people hunter gatherer
people, when they, when theykind of discovered agriculture
to crop domestication, theyselected variants out of this
(03:50):
perennial crop, which showseasonal characteristic, not
even annuals seasonal, becausethey wanted to have a flowering
and crop production in a definedperiod. So that crop would be
kind of a well, so domesticationwas the kind of first step
towards capitalism often willdon't understand. Because those
(04:13):
people the foraging did nothappen in just one fine morning
it was going on. And I thinkmultiple farmers probably
collected, seed planted anddemanding seed production in a
defined period so that theycould just harvest them at a
time and keep them and storedthem, as opposed to having to
(04:33):
move on and foraging intoanother territory. So that
sedentary lifestyle probablyhappened over a few 100 years,
whereby these crops wereselected to to give, give seed
in a defined period. Andunknowingly they were selecting
for this, this kind of a monoharvest scenario. And all the
(04:54):
rice if we just give an exampleof rice and the same thing
happened in wheat as well, butin the case of realize multiple
people in China Indiansubcontinent where rice will
domesticated, selected forsingle harvest different periods
in a particular season. And inrice is very striking. So there
are three season rice and theearly winter season that we call
(05:18):
burrow. And then after themonsoon we call house. And then
finally among which is the finalone. So there are three seasonal
types of rice as a result ofancient domestication, which
happened like 10,000 years ago.And each one of them is
characteristic of a definedperiod of crop coming. And then
(05:40):
synchronous flowering, all theflowering at the same time. And
then, so that people can harvestit. And that was the beginning
of, you know, agriculturalrevolution, which allowed people
to settle down and have lots ofblood of rice in their silos,
and so on and so forth. Andsimilar thing happened for wheat
and so on.
Joni Kindwall-Moore (06:01):
It's an interesting notion, because
honestly, I bet honestly, beforemeeting you, I had never heard
anybody talk about this. And Ihad never heard anybody talk
about the value that pre hominidspecies selection for
agriculturally valuable plantspecies by Neanderthals or
(06:24):
other, you know, pre hominidspecies might have, you know,
done to lay the foundation forthe success and the modern era
of what we see today. And Ithink it's a really valid
concept and something that weshould all think about a little
more. Do you mind taking asecond to talk about that? And
just fill people in on thatnotion? Yeah, of course.
Abed Chaudhury (06:46):
So I think the crop and human being underwent
what is what I would callcoevolution. So initially, there
were probably grasses growingand then early human beings, one
doesn't know when it happened,they selected for two things.
One is that the seeds what usedto be very, very small, tiny
seed. And thirdly, you know,human population used to go
(07:10):
foraging for those tiny seedsall day, they would collect it,
women used to do it, and theywould bring it back and into
their homestead wherever theywere living, and they grind it
and they had tiny bit of starch,that used to be the lifestyle
for 1000s of years, then twothings happen. One is that they,
I think, consciously some peoplethink it was unconsciously but
(07:33):
they selected for the biggerseat seat size. So they, they
obviously took some visualdecision that they will take the
bigger seed sized ones. And thesecond one that these grass seed
used to shatter away. And if youlook into the perennial rice,
Arizer roofie, we're gone. Forinstance, the seed, seed
(07:58):
shatters, and seed has a littlestick on it, and like a
helicopter, it flies away, andland somewhere else. So this is
how nature wanted rice to beright. And nature did not make
rice for the benefit of humanconsumption, although some
people might think so they havetheir own reason to be
propagated, and that seedpropagation system can prevent
it domestication. So people gotrid of this little stick, which
(08:22):
is called on, they selected forbigger seed size, and then they
also look for variants, theydon't settle. So you have a
particular cluster of seed kindof remaining for you to harvest.
So these the deed withoutknowing or maybe if the new
rules of genetics were notaware, because they did not
write anything down. And thatgave us the sedentary lifestyle.
(08:47):
As I said, the domestication wascompleted when they kind of tame
these, these varieties whichwere there, then they
deliberately growing next totheir homestead. So they didn't
have to go foraging. So that isthat was the beginning of
sedentary lifestyle where peoplestopped moving around. And it
was also the beginning ofagriculture. And I would like to
(09:07):
say it is not that men or womendomesticated crop, it was the
crop that domesticated humanbeings. Because once that crops
were available with theseattributes, human beings could
be domesticated. So it was amutual, reciprocal domestication
event. Our crops domesticated usso that we didn't have to go
(09:29):
around foraging, and wedomesticated them. So it's a
reciprocal action. Right.
Joni Kindwall-Moore (09:35):
And I don't think very many people think
about this as a reciprocalevent. That it was a it was a co
evolutionary event for bothplants, and domesticated animals
and human beings all at the sametime. And there's this lens of
interpretation that humans loveto lean into. That everything in
(09:58):
nature just as serving us allthe time, but we, we fail to
remember that often we're partof that process, and we are
being domesticated in the sameway as the plants and the
animals were as well. It'sfascinating to me to think about
the events that marched ustowards this domestication
(10:19):
habit, that now humans, plantsand animals enjoy. Because
another thing that people oftenforget, is that, you know,
things like cattle, things likechickens, like as we know them
today, didn't exist, like theyactually grew out of this
domestication, selection,interaction. And, and that there
(10:40):
are so many variables that playinto that. And as we've evolved
over 1000s of years, we hit thisreally fascinating period 100
years ago, and especially 6070years ago, as we went into the
Green Revolution. And itdominated a lot of our thinking
around what we valued in plantand animal traits, both and has
(11:03):
really laid the foundation ofwhat our modern food system is
today, and rapidly, like, in away in a way where humans
couldn't possibly evolve to meetthe demands of these of this
modern food system. And thereare several things that are, you
know, dominating this moderndomestication event, where its
its its responsiveness tochemical inputs, it's a genetic
(11:28):
preference to build over otherthings that are maybe more
nuanced, like micronutrientavailability, Phyto nutrient
availability, and prioritizingmacro nutrient availability, and
several other features that youprobably know. And I know, you
know, a lot more than I do aboutthat have laid the foundation
for the development of a lot ofdiet related disease in humans,
(11:51):
as we experienced thisrelationship between our plants,
our animals and our speciesthrough the time continuum.
There's a lot of molecularbiology there at play, that is
responsible for a massiveepidemic of health and, and, and
a huge impact on our naturalsystems in our in our planet as
well. So I'd love it, if youcould just take that and run
(12:13):
with it a little bit.
Abed Chaudhury (12:15):
More, I think it's something happened very
early on. So even the earlyfarmers when they domesticated
crops, they were only payingattention to above ground,
they're interested in the grainthey are interested in their
food, but unknown to them whenthey selected certain varieties
made them and they kind ofstarted to deplete the soil
character, because when you makea perennial into annuals, you
(12:39):
inadvertently mess around withthe root system, because the
perennials have massive rootsystem. And wells have shallow
roots. So they did not intend todo it. But they were making.
Even in those days, they werekind of depleting the soil. Now.
Now you count in one thing.Another thing people don't
understand is that when whenMendel discovered law of
(13:02):
genetics, and we entered themodern era of genetics, already,
most of the genetic has alreadybeen taken place by this ancient
farmers. So Mandel simply foundsome algebraic role of
segregation of the genetics, hedid not really discover
genetics, although we think thathe discovered in it and starting
(13:23):
from, let's say, 30,000, or evenpeople say 50,000 onwards to the
time of Mendel, all the cropswere in place that we take for
granted. Now, all our foods, allour grains, in my country,
Bangladesh alone, you know, like300,000 varieties of rice. So
Can people who did not know anygenetics at all, selectively
(13:45):
breed and maintain 300,000varieties? It's astonishing that
we just call them naturalvariants, as though somehow some
event of natural produced it,which is completely erroneous.
Yet modern science is promotingthis kind of idea, as though
these ancient farmers did nothave any knowledge or indeed any
agency as though these varietiesjust floating around as part of
(14:08):
the nature. So what happened inthe 60s, people call it green
revolution. I would like to callit the era of extinction.
Because this is exactly when wekind of chose some winners among
the crops and entered the era ofmonoculture. So in my own
country in the early 60s, allthe traditional varieties, you
(14:30):
know, but not not becausesomebody destroyed them or
anything but you stopped growingthem. So so you don't so
suddenly all the red rice gonepurple rice gone. And we entered
the era of these high yieldingvarieties called white rice. And
what happened above ground weare depleted of all the
micronutrients because theredness and purple has indicated
(14:53):
something very good for humanhealth and underneath the soil,
once you stop growing In thistraditional varieties, the soil
is also depleted, because thesame micronutrient that benefits
us in the grain are preciselyalso the macronutrient that was
being exerted into the, into thesoil. So suddenly that era of
(15:17):
extinction in the upper ground,and depletion on the below
ground, I call it chemicaldepletion and below ground
started to happen, completelyunknown to us, because we never
phenotype our root,historically, we never dig up
and say, what is the root like,there was no reason people were
simply interested in their food,you know. So, so, modernity has
(15:40):
been very, very bad forsustainability, because
modernity has promotedmonoculture over polyculture
modernity necessarily when youinject business and you know,
return of investment, kind ofabove ground criteria of how
much grain you can get out ofthe soil, the logic becomes
immediately extractive thelogic, the logic is no longer
(16:04):
replenishing because you cannotmonetize the loss, your
historically capitalism has notmonetized the loss in the soil,
or the environmental. And wehave treated soil as though it's
just a device just a place wherecrops will grow and give us a
substrate. Yes, and that had ledto soil depletion, perhaps not,
(16:27):
not by design, but has perhapsinadvertently, but now, you can
see this depletion in the soilthat you see because the
coevolution of the Earth withthe with the biosphere, dictated
certain multiplicity, certainmultiple crops are growing at
the same time. And they weregiving the nourishment to the
(16:49):
soil. So that was part of theecosystem that Jim Lovelock
developed this in the Gaiahypothesis that that art is a
self sustaining, self correctingsystem. And when we started to
do modern agriculture,particularly in the 60s, we
completely created a ruptureinto this self correcting
system. Simply, we wanted moreand more crop. And that also led
(17:14):
to, as I said, monoculture andthe depletion of the soil.
Joni Kindwall-Moore (17:19):
Now, Abed, you are very well schooled in
modern sciences. And if youcould just take a moment for our
listeners who don't know you tounderstand a little bit about
your background just for amoment. And that you, you really
have taken the deep dive from achild growing up in rural
Bangladesh and being steeped inagricultural wisdom,
(17:42):
essentially, to a MIT educatedmolecular biologist, I think it
would be really insightful atthis point to take a moment and
discuss that.
Abed Chaudhury (17:54):
Yeah, so I wouldn't do different phases of
my life first did the, from mybirth till age of 23, when I
went to the US, first in thestate of Oregon, to study in
University of Oregon, but fromfrom day one to the age of 23, I
kind of grew up in a rural area,and I imbibed agriculture.
Because that was the lifestyleof my, my family. Since about
(18:17):
14th century, we started to dothat. We have long written
history of how we obtained someland and when proceeded on to,
you know, crop domestication,and so on and so forth. So I
kind of that was part of myheritage. And then I studied
chemistry, and I went toUniversity of Oregon and studied
to learn biology in theInstitute of Molecular Biology,
(18:37):
which had very towering figureof biology, such as Frank style,
who discovered DNA replication.There's another foundational
person called Aaron Novick, whowas actually the student of the
famous physicist Leo Gillard,who is the discoverer of the
atomic bomb. So many of thosephysicists, of those days
(18:59):
shifted to biology. So in thatatmosphere, I learned molecular
biology coming from thechemistry background. So I was a
very classical kind ofreductionist biologist who
entered biology throughchemistry. But in contrast to
that sort of total reductionistapproach, I had in my heart and
my heritage, the agronomy and,and in the kind of crop
(19:24):
biodiversity paradigm, which waspart of my genetic heritage, and
then intellectually, I waslearning reductionist biology
and molecular biology. And thenI went on to biology department
at MIT, came in contact withtotally foundational people like
Salvador Luria, who, who eventrained, he's got the Nobel
Prize and trained another Nobellaureate, Jim Watson, who
(19:47):
discovered DNA. So I was sittingactually in the same lab because
they had some space shortage. Sothere are Silva who was shutting
down his lab, could I sit in hislap, so I was sitting in his
lab, and he was During the timeof retirement, his secretary job
and I remember the lady calledJohn and we were continuously
talking about biology and youknow, why should people to
(20:11):
perigee be deep, philosophical,existential question. So I
learned things very, veryrapidly in that kind of in
contact with these people andthat guy bodies mega Sonic, with
people call it number onemicrobiologist changed a whole
generation of subsequentbiologists in the US. So
(20:32):
anything because of myfoundational kind of organic, if
you call it, like, upbringing inthe village, plus the
reductionist biology, allowed meto see the connectivity of both
paradigms, and led me to sort ofunderstand biology in a way that
otherwise would conventionaleducation, I would not have
(20:54):
understood. And I think, now Ihave the subjective feeling. And
I could, I could be delusional,but I do have the subjective
feeling that I, I can see thegrand strategy of evolution, as
well as I can see the grandstrategy of kind of molecular
biology and how it fitstogether. And that kind of
(21:15):
nurtures me and strengthens meto see things like the strategy
of the genes, or the strategy ofthe biosphere,
Joni Kindwall-Moore (21:24):
the strategy of the biosphere.
That's an interestingperspective when you think about
it, because so for so manyyears, you know, our cultural
mindset has been dominated bythe strategy of the biosphere
being totally human dominated,like creating systems that serve
humanity. But we're at thistipping point where we're
(21:45):
realizing that a lot of thoseimplementations of the
strategies are now breeding anevent that could lead to our
demise. And that's making usrethink things very rapidly. And
there's, again, this tensionpoint between biology and
reductionistic. Science andwhere are the places that we can
(22:05):
put efforts and thinking andinnovation to help correct our
system and restore balancebetween humanity and the planet
and the natural systems so that,you know, climate change, and
you know, the human healthcatastrophe and secondary to
diet related disease. And manyof these things that we're up
against that are our modernstressors. And a lot of it comes
(22:28):
to rest, again, at that nexuspoint between science and
biology and humanity.
Abed Chaudhury (22:34):
So I think, I think the best reduction is
peoples and I was fortunateenough to mix with them Luria,
for instance, Luria anddelbrook, the father of modern
molecular biology, and evenbefore them was Linus Pauling to
who has in fact occurred inCaltech is another father of
molecular biology. And I met allthree of them actually. And if
(22:58):
you talk if you talk to them,and Linus Pauling, I, because I
he's from Oregon, and as soon asI was a graduate student in
Eugene, about a month later, Iwas taking to Corvallis where
the Oregon State Universitiesand, and Pauling actually grew
up in Corvallis. He was the sonof like the postmaster of
Corvallis. And even as a childlike by the time he was 12, he
(23:22):
has read all the books in theCorvallis Public Library. He
said there was this amazingevent story around him. But when
I met him, bunch of graduatestudents are taken to him and he
was talking about vitamin Caround that time in
orthomolecular medicine and hewas talking about philosophy and
the grand human heritage and,and you did not get the
(23:44):
impression that he was Father ofreductionist, Violet, and Luria
and delbrook were also veryphilosophical, very deep kind of
people. And so, those peoplewere reductionist, they saw this
as a tool, reductionism was thetool of biology. reductionism
was not the birthplace or thephilosophical or the spiritual
(24:07):
heartland of biology. Theysimply saw it is the device of
the molecule. But the subsequentgeneration reductionist
biologists they did not studythat kind of philosophical
mindset and created in biology akind of a very limited and even
in my case, in my opinion, kindof unhelpful narrative of
(24:30):
biology being totally chemicaland molecular and completely to
be exploited for the formonetary gain and so on. And
that kind of at the rupture,where the humanities people
social, social, sociology kindof people or people of
literature music, did notunderstand reductionist biology
(24:53):
and detection is biology. Thenew breed of reductionist
biologist did not care really,for Some of those philosophical
thing that just got called fuzzyor airy fairy or something. And
then 60s onwards, we had thiscontinuous onslaught of
reductionist biology, completelydeprived from the philosophical
(25:14):
knowledge and even our system,our system knowledge that came
from Gaia hypothesis was, wasconsidered by many of this later
day, just as fuzzy and, youknow, non science, even anti
science. So they kind of brandedpeople like that. And that
created the rupture that createdthis situation that we are
(25:37):
facing right now, because theydid not understand why
monoculture is bad monoculturewill be considered bad, even by
reductionist biology, becauseyou're not exuding the
multiplicity of metabolites intothe soil by depriving the soil
from the polyculture, which wasmeant to be from the beginning
of revolution. So who gave youthe right to not only deprive
(25:59):
people of their nutrient, butalso deprive the soil of the
multiplicity of phytochemicalsthat are to go to the soil, so
this is not, right? This is notright, even even by the best of
reductionist violet green that
Joni Kindwall-Moore (26:13):
challenges so much thinking across the
board, and really makes us stepback for a moment and rethink
these systems because I feellike the whole monocrop mindset
and that hyper reductionisticscientific process has now
(26:33):
infiltrated our culture in a lotof ways, like we don't respect
the beauty imbalance, and thevalue that comes with the
diversity of things. And wedon't also always take the time
to respect that there's a lot ofmagic that's happening there
that is scientifically founded,that maybe we just don't
(26:54):
understand yet. I mean, the factthat we still don't even really
know how to properly identifyand understand what 98% Of the
phytonutrients that are producedby plants do are what they are,
and how they affect systems isastounding to me, considering
that that is the language ofbiology, that is the
(27:15):
communication and the way thatnatural organisms and ecological
systems often communicate withone another, and, and create
their environment and theirenvironmental response. Yeah. So
Abed Chaudhury (27:27):
so the so the reductionist biology said that
you have to break it up tounderstand he doesn't say that
that's all you do, right.Because the because the
multiplicity the biodiversity,you know, hundreds of organism
growing, that is the that is thecake of biology, this is not the
frosting of the cake, right. So,in order in order to understand
(27:51):
how life evolved from thebeginning, and how life is
sustained, you go to a place andyou see the majesty of nature,
and that is the that is themultiplicity that creates it
that 100 1000s of things actingin unison, grades, what is life,
and when you you can, you areallowed to break it apart in
(28:13):
order to understand it. But butin biology, two plus two is not
four, two plus two is isbecoming what we call the
synergy and, and in the emergentproperties, another word
emergent property, emergentproperty is when you find a
property cannot be interpretedsimply by adding the component
(28:35):
of it. Because once you startreading, that interaction, that
interaction creates a newreality. And most of biology is
emergent in the sense that it'sa complex system, where the
individual many many componentis participated and now created
something which you could nothave predicted from the
(28:56):
component. And that is where thereductionism paradigm kind of
breaks down completely. And youhave a say holistic paradigm,
and you have to understand thewhole component thing in one go.
Is and that failure toadequately addressed to it or
even to teach it in thedepartments of universities, and
(29:18):
even business schools kind ofcompletely poopoo this thing and
said, look, just look at a treeand see how much timber it will
make, you know, as opposed toYeah, looking into the inherent
spiritual value of the forestand why should forest exists. If
you convert it into thinking ofhow much timber The forest has
that you can turn it intofurniture and teach people in
(29:41):
business school and ad nauseamspread this doctrine of the
utility of the timber ratherthan the inherent value of the
of the tree for the art system,then you then you're traveling
into the road of climatedisaster that we have at the
moment So
Joni Kindwall-Moore (30:00):
much of it really does come down to
axiology, or the way that weassign value and the way we view
the value we assign to things inour world. If you look at trees
just for board feet, and I grewup in a timber community, so I
understand that like that's,that's the currency that drove
(30:20):
our local economy. But we failedto assign value to the other
features that also drove ourlocal economy and quality of
life, like hunting and fishingintact ecosystems, not having
mudslides, not having sedimentin the river, which then, you
know, contributed to thecollapse of our salmon
populations, like theexternalities and the true cost
(30:43):
accounting is the is the areathat we've really ignored for so
long. And I love that from amolecular biology perspective,
you're bringing it back to thatcomplex interaction, but still
molecular and still small andscientific, small and a good
way, like as far as a molecularperspective, that it's often
(31:05):
these unsung heroes that aremetabolites of all of these into
all of these biologicalorganisms that are driving not
only health, potentially, butcarbon sequestration, soil
microbiome, resilience, drought,resilience, small water cycles,
so many things like, and we dareto admit that we don't even know
(31:30):
a fraction of all of thesethings like it's the tip of the
iceberg. And that's what's soexciting. During my
Abed Chaudhury (31:36):
company, general facts, particularly we studied
gut microbiome, and in biology,nothing is isolated. So so the
human gut, there aremultiplicity of bacteria,
microbiome, nourishing us ourhealth and our mood, our mental
life, etc. And similarly, theart, the art is the topsoil are
(31:57):
in fact, the God of thebiosphere. So, I would like to
suggest that that is the gut ofthe biosphere, gut of the art,
if you can call it and thathuman gut and the gut they are
connected in. So so when youdeplete the soil, for instance,
that depletion goes into thedepletion of the crop. And the
crop you eat now leads to thedepletion of your gut. And, and
(32:22):
you can see the holisticconnectivity is driving human
wellbeing and guard well, wellbeing as though it is part of
the same design is quite when Itry to understand this kind of
thing. It's not some kind ofairy fairy, fuzzy philosophy,
but it is very molecular, it'svery predicted. And, and, and
actually from for myself,because I have spent like 45
(32:45):
years in science now I kind ofsee automatically because I
remember a lot of thesebiochemical reactions when I can
see that connectivity. The otherthing I wanted to, I wanted to
mention here is that there's aphilosophical question of
whether we are in nature, orwhether we are external to
nature, dominating the nature.So there are two worldviews. One
(33:09):
is that you you are yourselfnature, you're a product of
nature, and therefore you'reinextricably tied to nature. And
another philosophy says that youare not in nature, you are
external to nature, you are fromsomewhere else, you are from the
heaven, and you are here, comeinto the art, and you are
looking into the nature, tosubdue nature, to use nature for
(33:31):
your benefit, and to get thefruits of the nature but you are
not nature. So I think that isthe clash of these two
philosophies which we should bealso be mindless, definitely.
Joni Kindwall-Moore (33:42):
Yeah. And that's something I think we're
right at the crossroads therewhere there's a tremendous
portion of the population thatreally does feel like they have
no connection to nature, andthey don't have a responsibility
to live in harmony or beresponsive to nature or natural
rules. So that is a that's a bigissue right now, and it is where
(34:04):
science and philosophy cometogether in an inseparable
conversation.
Abed Chaudhury (34:13):
Then and we could, so what we need is a kind
of a grand synthesis, we cannotjust say that we are one thing
or the other. This is why thecommunication of seemingly
opposite worldviews shouldoccur. And you made the point
about forest forest being ofused to human being as well as
far as, as a as something thatwe marvel at. Because we need to
(34:37):
be practical, we need your lifewe need a life we need need that
a timber sustainably anyresources,
Joni Kindwall-Moore (34:44):
that
Abed Chaudhury (34:44):
resources in order to live. So the question
is then, but what has happenedis that we have gone into an
extreme where we have seennature only to be extracted for
far too long. And that has goneIt brought us to the tipping
point, we have gotten intomonoculture, we could have gone
(35:05):
into polyculture in the 60s. Andthis whole food security, or
we're gonna run out of food andonly by having monoculture we
can have. These were faultyassumptions, these were not
corrected. And looking back, youknow, I collected a lot of the
traditional varieties, and Igrow them after recovering them.
(35:27):
And their yield is very good, infact, so So the bad name that
was attached to them that thereare so hopeless, and they're
only give us famine is a premisethat is not correct. And I
completely refuse it. So So inmy own land, we were kind of
virtually forced to grow thischild in variety and get rid of
all the traditional variety,almost like forced into it was a
(35:52):
was it was a period ofdysbiosis. I don't, I don't
actually praise that it was suchgreat thing. And it was green
revolution, and it saved us fromfamine. That's a very truncated
version of what actuallyhappened. Because by getting rid
of all these traditionalvarieties, we also depleted the
soil, we also and we have tomonetize of this thing, we have
(36:14):
to monetize what is lost. Wecannot just be selective and
congratulate ourselves for thegame and not notice what we have
lost. And for the new synthesisto occur is a pathway for future
we have to be mindful of what wehave lost and find an economic
paradigm, which actuallymonetizes what is being lost.
Joni Kindwall-Moore (36:38):
I think a lot of that economic paradigm is
manifesting itself in healthcare costs. And, and of course,
like climate, you know, soildegradation and climate change.
But when you look at the actuallike direct effect, and the the
rise of diet related disease,that's largely in response to
(37:00):
eating a diet of plants andanimals that are only eating
seven species, like it's likeincredible, you know, what they
say we've lost 75% to 90% of allof our genetic, biodiversity and
our food crops in 100 years, andyou look around and we don't
even, we can't even begin tounderstand, like, how to rebuild
(37:24):
that, because we have to rebuildthe gut microbiome, we have to
rebuild all of the diversephytonutrients, micro and macro
nutrients. And we need torestore the soil, all three
things have to happensimultaneously to realign Food
and Ag systems with the goals ofpositive human health and
positive climate resiliency. Soit's a heavy lift. But you know,
(37:48):
honestly, I think a lot ofpeople feel really hopeless in
this. But by starting to eatmore foods that have richer
phyto, nutrient profiles, richand colors, rich, and Newton,
you know, like diversity, you'rethat you're suddenly humans are
part of the process. Again, it'slike we're part of nature,
again, we're part of a naturalcycle, because our consumption
(38:09):
demand is actually triggering anevent at the field that
stimulates the reintroduction ofall these phytonutrients into
the soil and into our gut.
Abed Chaudhury (38:20):
It's amazing that you bring the issue of
colors. So I had this ad hocidea a few days ago, and I think
I shared it with you. I thoughtthat what if people how, what if
the what I was just trying toentertain the possibility that
the color in the above groundcrop is somehow necessarily
related to soil enrichment ordepletion. So there's a paper I
(38:44):
found like in the smoking gunalmost as soon as they talked
about it on paper eight. So whenpeople studied colored tomato
versus etiolated, or color lesstomato, they found that the root
branching was very different.And in a way that no one
understand but you know how thegenome is set up under
selection. So what we get somegenetic chromosome we call it
(39:08):
and the whole genome of anorganism is not something that
came from heaven but but hasbeen constructed under
selection. So it looks to me andI'm suggesting this ad hoc idea
that when people selected forcolored fruit, let's say tomato
being an example. So whathappened when the tomato is very
red, then people like to havered tomato, so they selectively
(39:30):
propagated red tomato, so verysoon there is red tomato
everywhere. And withoutrealizing and simply by
selecting red tomato, they arealso enriching the soil because
red tomato have more rootbranching, then then tomato that
is not red. So you arebenefiting the art without
really intellectually realizingit. And that is a bit like what
(39:53):
Jim Lovelock was saying in theguide that the human decision or
the decision of other peoplewith agency is In a subterranean
way, creating this newecosystem. And that's why your
own decision. And of course,people did not study molecular
biology and did this in aninstinctive kind of way. But
they were doing things that theydid not realize they're doing.
(40:16):
And when I understood this kindof grand design, if you will, of
the whole nature, interactivemanner, and human ecology is
part of it, because you go tothe forest and all this mist in
there, and now we know that itmister, really helping your
brain. And you're, you're comingdown. We know that we know that
(40:37):
the house next to water has 10times more value than the house
which is not next to water. Andwe never ask why is that? Why is
it that we intrinsically like tobe near water? Why is it that we
really want to be in the forest?This is something we take for
granted, and we neverinvestigated?
Joni Kindwall-Moore (40:57):
Yeah, all those questions, and I love the
the reference to lovelock's Gaiahypothesis, we'll have to be
sure to put a link for people toread about it, because it is a
very provocative concept. It'sactually makes a lot of sense
and feels very natural to somany people. But it's still, you
know, a very contested conceptreally, out there. So I'll let
(41:20):
the listeners take a momentwe'll put the link in so they
can read and decide on theirown. What how they feel about
it. But, you know, I'll bet Ifeel like we've just scratched
the surface, there's so manyconversations, we need to have a
bet. And I have fantasticconversations. Not as often as
we should. And I finally said,we need to just record this,
(41:42):
these are so great. Because Iknow there's other people that
long for this kind of thinkingand challenging of the really
status quo of what is operatingour modern systems and how we
put in that design process torealign our modern era with
resiliency for both human healthand, and planetary health. So
(42:03):
I'll put in a number of linksfor our listeners up so they
can, you know, do some moreresearch. And let's just
consider this session, one ofmany, we'll have to have you on
again, because there's so manytopics that we need a deep dive
on. And I'm just I'm justthrilled you joined me tonight,
or today this morning. It'smorning in Australia.
Abed Chaudhury (42:25):
Very much. It's been well, yeah. It's exciting
to be able to sort of blurt itout, so to speak from the heart
so to speak. Yeah,
Joni Kindwall-Moore (42:33):
absolutely. And I think we'll have some more
sessions just purely ongenetics, because you're
teaching an online course ongenetics. Is that right? Do you
want to quickly tell ourlisteners if they want to hear
and participate in a deeper divewith Dr. Shari and the genetics
and really more of thatscientific rigor? Where can they
sign up for that?
Abed Chaudhury (42:54):
Yeah, so so it's an online course 25 people at a
time, the massive number ofpeople who have signed up now we
have a kind of a waiting list.It's called genetics with abit
Choudry is it's the way geneticsis not taught in universities.
So I bring in a lot of theseancestral or traditional ideas
about genetics, Bremen, DeLeongenetics, as well as genetics
(43:18):
that I feel that has not beencovered as part of my genetics,
education, kind of a geneticsfor the new reality genetics for
climate mitigation genetics forsustainability, I would call it
so it's it's a six hour courseto our time, and I tried to do
it in a kind of a new touchyfeely, organic genetics, if you
(43:42):
want to call it that.
Joni Kindwall-Moore (43:46):
Well, that is wonderful. And I will also
make sure that we put a link forour listeners, so if they want
to sign up for that course theycan. And, um, you know, I bet
thank you so much again, we'llhave you back later this season
so we can take another deepdive. And for you listeners
tonight, please, if you lovedthis content, if you're inspired
(44:07):
by Dr. chattery. Please take amoment to share and rate the
podcast. We would love to havemore people here this incredible
thought leadership and reallyjust getting aligned with this
regenerative by design processof there's so many things that
need to happen so that we canrealign our modern world with
nature and regenerative systemsand give our great grandkids a
(44:29):
better hope for the future. Sothanks for joining us and op
eds. So fantastic to see you.Thank you.
Abed Chaudhury (44:35):
Thank you Jeremy.
Ed Bejarana (44:36):
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Hello everyone, you are listening to the regenerative by
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Joni Kindwall-Moore (00:28):
Hello, everybody, and welcome to the
regenerative by design Podcast.I'm so excited you're here
today, we are going to have adiscussion with Dr. Abed
Chaudhury, who is one of myfavorite colleagues to have deep
conversations about the thingsin our food system that people
don't regularly talk about. Ifyou've followed my work, you
(00:51):
likely know that I'm reallypassionate about phytonutrients
and the role that they play inhuman health, the gut
microbiome, but also inmodulation of the soil
microbiome. And Dr. Abed hasspent his lifetime exploring all
of these things from a molecularscience perspective, the lens of
(01:13):
a plant geneticist, but alsobeing a farmer, and
understanding what it's like togrow food that people are going
to eat, and enjoy every day. Sowith so much respect, I welcome
Dr. Abed Chaudhury.
Abed Chaudhury (01:26):
Thank you. Thank you, Johnny.
Joni Kindwall-Moore (01:28):
I'm so glad you're joining us tonight. And
where are you calling in fromtonight?
Abed Chaudhury (01:32):
Or today calling in Canberra capital of
Australia, Canberra, thisbeautiful city of Canberra.
Joni Kindwall-Moore (01:39):
And what are you doing their op ed, you
have a very interesting positionright now.
Abed Chaudhury (01:45):
Yeah, so I divide my time between Australia
and Bangladesh mostly. So inCanberra, I am a senior adviser
to a company called long bio,which is a which works on
climate mitigation. But my mainpreoccupation at the moment is
to work for general facts. As aco founder and chief scientist,
(02:08):
which works on the gutmicrobiome. And in Bangladesh, I
lead a breeding program where mygoal is to make crops multi
harvest is you know, most of thecrops are mono harvest from the
beginning of agriculture. So Ihave set in motion a process by
which I want to make crops multiharvest mainly for the for the
(02:30):
benefit of the earth andsustainability.
Joni Kindwall-Moore (02:33):
Abed, in your experience in your
lifetime. What led you to beinginterested in this expression
that we have in our agriculturalcrops between being an annual so
you're planted you go season oneyear versus being a perennial or
multi harvest type of plantwhere there are multiple
(02:54):
production of seed episodeswithin one lifetime of that
planting?
Abed Chaudhury (03:00):
You have in order to understand it in a in a
proper context, you have torealize that mostly most of
these crops were cranialoriginally to just to give an
example of rice rice Oryzasativa, which simply means
cultivated Arizer. sativa justmeans cultivator. So the
cultivated rice is derived fromEliza roofie pecan, and Arizer
(03:26):
nivara, both of which areperennial. So what happened and
as a geneticist and epigeneticist, I have tried to
imagine the scenario that thatkind of transpired during crop
domestication. So so theforaging people hunter gatherer
people, when they, when theykind of discovered agriculture
to crop domestication, theyselected variants out of this
(03:50):
perennial crop, which showseasonal characteristic, not
even annuals seasonal, becausethey wanted to have a flowering
and crop production in a definedperiod. So that crop would be
kind of a well, so domesticationwas the kind of first step
towards capitalism often willdon't understand. Because those
(04:13):
people the foraging did nothappen in just one fine morning
it was going on. And I thinkmultiple farmers probably
collected, seed planted anddemanding seed production in a
defined period so that theycould just harvest them at a
time and keep them and storedthem, as opposed to having to
(04:33):
move on and foraging intoanother territory. So that
sedentary lifestyle probablyhappened over a few 100 years,
whereby these crops wereselected to to give, give seed
in a defined period. Andunknowingly they were selecting
for this, this kind of a monoharvest scenario. And all the
(04:54):
rice if we just give an exampleof rice and the same thing
happened in wheat as well, butin the case of realize multiple
people in China Indiansubcontinent where rice will
domesticated, selected forsingle harvest different periods
in a particular season. And inrice is very striking. So there
are three season rice and theearly winter season that we call
(05:18):
burrow. And then after themonsoon we call house. And then
finally among which is the finalone. So there are three seasonal
types of rice as a result ofancient domestication, which
happened like 10,000 years ago.And each one of them is
characteristic of a definedperiod of crop coming. And then
(05:40):
synchronous flowering, all theflowering at the same time. And
then, so that people can harvestit. And that was the beginning
of, you know, agriculturalrevolution, which allowed people
to settle down and have lots ofblood of rice in their silos,
and so on and so forth. Andsimilar thing happened for wheat
and so on.
Joni Kindwall-Moore (06:01):
It's an interesting notion, because
honestly, I bet honestly, beforemeeting you, I had never heard
anybody talk about this. And Ihad never heard anybody talk
about the value that pre hominidspecies selection for
agriculturally valuable plantspecies by Neanderthals or
(06:24):
other, you know, pre hominidspecies might have, you know,
done to lay the foundation forthe success and the modern era
of what we see today. And Ithink it's a really valid
concept and something that weshould all think about a little
more. Do you mind taking asecond to talk about that? And
just fill people in on thatnotion? Yeah, of course.
Abed Chaudhury (06:46):
So I think the crop and human being underwent
what is what I would callcoevolution. So initially, there
were probably grasses growingand then early human beings, one
doesn't know when it happened,they selected for two things.
One is that the seeds what usedto be very, very small, tiny
seed. And thirdly, you know,human population used to go
(07:10):
foraging for those tiny seedsall day, they would collect it,
women used to do it, and theywould bring it back and into
their homestead wherever theywere living, and they grind it
and they had tiny bit of starch,that used to be the lifestyle
for 1000s of years, then twothings happen. One is that they,
I think, consciously some peoplethink it was unconsciously but
(07:33):
they selected for the biggerseat seat size. So they, they
obviously took some visualdecision that they will take the
bigger seed sized ones. And thesecond one that these grass seed
used to shatter away. And if youlook into the perennial rice,
Arizer roofie, we're gone. Forinstance, the seed, seed
(07:58):
shatters, and seed has a littlestick on it, and like a
helicopter, it flies away, andland somewhere else. So this is
how nature wanted rice to beright. And nature did not make
rice for the benefit of humanconsumption, although some
people might think so they havetheir own reason to be
propagated, and that seedpropagation system can prevent
it domestication. So people gotrid of this little stick, which
(08:22):
is called on, they selected forbigger seed size, and then they
also look for variants, theydon't settle. So you have a
particular cluster of seed kindof remaining for you to harvest.
So these the deed withoutknowing or maybe if the new
rules of genetics were notaware, because they did not
write anything down. And thatgave us the sedentary lifestyle.
(08:47):
As I said, the domestication wascompleted when they kind of tame
these, these varieties whichwere there, then they
deliberately growing next totheir homestead. So they didn't
have to go foraging. So that isthat was the beginning of
sedentary lifestyle where peoplestopped moving around. And it
was also the beginning ofagriculture. And I would like to
(09:07):
say it is not that men or womendomesticated crop, it was the
crop that domesticated humanbeings. Because once that crops
were available with theseattributes, human beings could
be domesticated. So it was amutual, reciprocal domestication
event. Our crops domesticated usso that we didn't have to go
(09:29):
around foraging, and wedomesticated them. So it's a
reciprocal action. Right.
Joni Kindwall-Moore (09:35):
And I don't think very many people think
about this as a reciprocalevent. That it was a it was a co
evolutionary event for bothplants, and domesticated animals
and human beings all at the sametime. And there's this lens of
interpretation that humans loveto lean into. That everything in
(09:58):
nature just as serving us allthe time, but we, we fail to
remember that often we're partof that process, and we are
being domesticated in the sameway as the plants and the
animals were as well. It'sfascinating to me to think about
the events that marched ustowards this domestication
(10:19):
habit, that now humans, plantsand animals enjoy. Because
another thing that people oftenforget, is that, you know,
things like cattle, things likechickens, like as we know them
today, didn't exist, like theyactually grew out of this
domestication, selection,interaction. And, and that there
(10:40):
are so many variables that playinto that. And as we've evolved
over 1000s of years, we hit thisreally fascinating period 100
years ago, and especially 6070years ago, as we went into the
Green Revolution. And itdominated a lot of our thinking
around what we valued in plantand animal traits, both and has
(11:03):
really laid the foundation ofwhat our modern food system is
today, and rapidly, like, in away in a way where humans
couldn't possibly evolve to meetthe demands of these of this
modern food system. And thereare several things that are, you
know, dominating this moderndomestication event, where its
its its responsiveness tochemical inputs, it's a genetic
(11:28):
preference to build over otherthings that are maybe more
nuanced, like micronutrientavailability, Phyto nutrient
availability, and prioritizingmacro nutrient availability, and
several other features that youprobably know. And I know, you
know, a lot more than I do aboutthat have laid the foundation
for the development of a lot ofdiet related disease in humans,
(11:51):
as we experienced thisrelationship between our plants,
our animals and our speciesthrough the time continuum.
There's a lot of molecularbiology there at play, that is
responsible for a massiveepidemic of health and, and, and
a huge impact on our naturalsystems in our in our planet as
well. So I'd love it, if youcould just take that and run
(12:13):
with it a little bit.
Abed Chaudhury (12:15):
More, I think it's something happened very
early on. So even the earlyfarmers when they domesticated
crops, they were only payingattention to above ground,
they're interested in the grainthey are interested in their
food, but unknown to them whenthey selected certain varieties
made them and they kind ofstarted to deplete the soil
character, because when you makea perennial into annuals, you
(12:39):
inadvertently mess around withthe root system, because the
perennials have massive rootsystem. And wells have shallow
roots. So they did not intend todo it. But they were making.
Even in those days, they werekind of depleting the soil. Now.
Now you count in one thing.Another thing people don't
understand is that when whenMendel discovered law of
(13:02):
genetics, and we entered themodern era of genetics, already,
most of the genetic has alreadybeen taken place by this ancient
farmers. So Mandel simply foundsome algebraic role of
segregation of the genetics, hedid not really discover
genetics, although we think thathe discovered in it and starting
(13:23):
from, let's say, 30,000, or evenpeople say 50,000 onwards to the
time of Mendel, all the cropswere in place that we take for
granted. Now, all our foods, allour grains, in my country,
Bangladesh alone, you know, like300,000 varieties of rice. So
Can people who did not know anygenetics at all, selectively
(13:45):
breed and maintain 300,000varieties? It's astonishing that
we just call them naturalvariants, as though somehow some
event of natural produced it,which is completely erroneous.
Yet modern science is promotingthis kind of idea, as though
these ancient farmers did nothave any knowledge or indeed any
agency as though these varietiesjust floating around as part of
(14:08):
the nature. So what happened inthe 60s, people call it green
revolution. I would like to callit the era of extinction.
Because this is exactly when wekind of chose some winners among
the crops and entered the era ofmonoculture. So in my own
country in the early 60s, allthe traditional varieties, you
(14:30):
know, but not not becausesomebody destroyed them or
anything but you stopped growingthem. So so you don't so
suddenly all the red rice gonepurple rice gone. And we entered
the era of these high yieldingvarieties called white rice. And
what happened above ground weare depleted of all the
micronutrients because theredness and purple has indicated
(14:53):
something very good for humanhealth and underneath the soil,
once you stop growing In thistraditional varieties, the soil
is also depleted, because thesame micronutrient that benefits
us in the grain are preciselyalso the macronutrient that was
being exerted into the, into thesoil. So suddenly that era of
(15:17):
extinction in the upper ground,and depletion on the below
ground, I call it chemicaldepletion and below ground
started to happen, completelyunknown to us, because we never
phenotype our root,historically, we never dig up
and say, what is the root like,there was no reason people were
simply interested in their food,you know. So, so, modernity has
(15:40):
been very, very bad forsustainability, because
modernity has promotedmonoculture over polyculture
modernity necessarily when youinject business and you know,
return of investment, kind ofabove ground criteria of how
much grain you can get out ofthe soil, the logic becomes
immediately extractive thelogic, the logic is no longer
(16:04):
replenishing because you cannotmonetize the loss, your
historically capitalism has notmonetized the loss in the soil,
or the environmental. And wehave treated soil as though it's
just a device just a place wherecrops will grow and give us a
substrate. Yes, and that had ledto soil depletion, perhaps not,
(16:27):
not by design, but has perhapsinadvertently, but now, you can
see this depletion in the soilthat you see because the
coevolution of the Earth withthe with the biosphere, dictated
certain multiplicity, certainmultiple crops are growing at
the same time. And they weregiving the nourishment to the
(16:49):
soil. So that was part of theecosystem that Jim Lovelock
developed this in the Gaiahypothesis that that art is a
self sustaining, self correctingsystem. And when we started to
do modern agriculture,particularly in the 60s, we
completely created a ruptureinto this self correcting
system. Simply, we wanted moreand more crop. And that also led
(17:14):
to, as I said, monoculture andthe depletion of the soil.
Joni Kindwall-Moore (17:19):
Now, Abed, you are very well schooled in
modern sciences. And if youcould just take a moment for our
listeners who don't know you tounderstand a little bit about
your background just for amoment. And that you, you really
have taken the deep dive from achild growing up in rural
Bangladesh and being steeped inagricultural wisdom,
(17:42):
essentially, to a MIT educatedmolecular biologist, I think it
would be really insightful atthis point to take a moment and
discuss that.
Abed Chaudhury (17:54):
Yeah, so I wouldn't do different phases of
my life first did the, from mybirth till age of 23, when I
went to the US, first in thestate of Oregon, to study in
University of Oregon, but fromfrom day one to the age of 23, I
kind of grew up in a rural area,and I imbibed agriculture.
Because that was the lifestyleof my, my family. Since about
(18:17):
14th century, we started to dothat. We have long written
history of how we obtained someland and when proceeded on to,
you know, crop domestication,and so on and so forth. So I
kind of that was part of myheritage. And then I studied
chemistry, and I went toUniversity of Oregon and studied
to learn biology in theInstitute of Molecular Biology,
(18:37):
which had very towering figureof biology, such as Frank style,
who discovered DNA replication.There's another foundational
person called Aaron Novick, whowas actually the student of the
famous physicist Leo Gillard,who is the discoverer of the
atomic bomb. So many of thosephysicists, of those days
(18:59):
shifted to biology. So in thatatmosphere, I learned molecular
biology coming from thechemistry background. So I was a
very classical kind ofreductionist biologist who
entered biology throughchemistry. But in contrast to
that sort of total reductionistapproach, I had in my heart and
my heritage, the agronomy and,and in the kind of crop
(19:24):
biodiversity paradigm, which waspart of my genetic heritage, and
then intellectually, I waslearning reductionist biology
and molecular biology. And thenI went on to biology department
at MIT, came in contact withtotally foundational people like
Salvador Luria, who, who eventrained, he's got the Nobel
Prize and trained another Nobellaureate, Jim Watson, who
(19:47):
discovered DNA. So I was sittingactually in the same lab because
they had some space shortage. Sothere are Silva who was shutting
down his lab, could I sit in hislap, so I was sitting in his
lab, and he was During the timeof retirement, his secretary job
and I remember the lady calledJohn and we were continuously
talking about biology and youknow, why should people to
(20:11):
perigee be deep, philosophical,existential question. So I
learned things very, veryrapidly in that kind of in
contact with these people andthat guy bodies mega Sonic, with
people call it number onemicrobiologist changed a whole
generation of subsequentbiologists in the US. So
(20:32):
anything because of myfoundational kind of organic, if
you call it, like, upbringing inthe village, plus the
reductionist biology, allowed meto see the connectivity of both
paradigms, and led me to sort ofunderstand biology in a way that
otherwise would conventionaleducation, I would not have
(20:54):
understood. And I think, now Ihave the subjective feeling. And
I could, I could be delusional,but I do have the subjective
feeling that I, I can see thegrand strategy of evolution, as
well as I can see the grandstrategy of kind of molecular
biology and how it fitstogether. And that kind of
(21:15):
nurtures me and strengthens meto see things like the strategy
of the genes, or the strategy ofthe biosphere,
Joni Kindwall-Moore (21:24):
the strategy of the biosphere.
That's an interestingperspective when you think about
it, because so for so manyyears, you know, our cultural
mindset has been dominated bythe strategy of the biosphere
being totally human dominated,like creating systems that serve
humanity. But we're at thistipping point where we're
(21:45):
realizing that a lot of thoseimplementations of the
strategies are now breeding anevent that could lead to our
demise. And that's making usrethink things very rapidly. And
there's, again, this tensionpoint between biology and
reductionistic. Science andwhere are the places that we can
(22:05):
put efforts and thinking andinnovation to help correct our
system and restore balancebetween humanity and the planet
and the natural systems so that,you know, climate change, and
you know, the human healthcatastrophe and secondary to
diet related disease. And manyof these things that we're up
against that are our modernstressors. And a lot of it comes
(22:28):
to rest, again, at that nexuspoint between science and
biology and humanity.
Abed Chaudhury (22:34):
So I think, I think the best reduction is
peoples and I was fortunateenough to mix with them Luria,
for instance, Luria anddelbrook, the father of modern
molecular biology, and evenbefore them was Linus Pauling to
who has in fact occurred inCaltech is another father of
molecular biology. And I met allthree of them actually. And if
(22:58):
you talk if you talk to them,and Linus Pauling, I, because I
he's from Oregon, and as soon asI was a graduate student in
Eugene, about a month later, Iwas taking to Corvallis where
the Oregon State Universitiesand, and Pauling actually grew
up in Corvallis. He was the sonof like the postmaster of
Corvallis. And even as a childlike by the time he was 12, he
(23:22):
has read all the books in theCorvallis Public Library. He
said there was this amazingevent story around him. But when
I met him, bunch of graduatestudents are taken to him and he
was talking about vitamin Caround that time in
orthomolecular medicine and hewas talking about philosophy and
the grand human heritage and,and you did not get the
(23:44):
impression that he was Father ofreductionist, Violet, and Luria
and delbrook were also veryphilosophical, very deep kind of
people. And so, those peoplewere reductionist, they saw this
as a tool, reductionism was thetool of biology. reductionism
was not the birthplace or thephilosophical or the spiritual
(24:07):
heartland of biology. Theysimply saw it is the device of
the molecule. But the subsequentgeneration reductionist
biologists they did not studythat kind of philosophical
mindset and created in biology akind of a very limited and even
in my case, in my opinion, kindof unhelpful narrative of
(24:30):
biology being totally chemicaland molecular and completely to
be exploited for the formonetary gain and so on. And
that kind of at the rupture,where the humanities people
social, social, sociology kindof people or people of
literature music, did notunderstand reductionist biology
(24:53):
and detection is biology. Thenew breed of reductionist
biologist did not care really,for Some of those philosophical
thing that just got called fuzzyor airy fairy or something. And
then 60s onwards, we had thiscontinuous onslaught of
reductionist biology, completelydeprived from the philosophical
(25:14):
knowledge and even our system,our system knowledge that came
from Gaia hypothesis was, wasconsidered by many of this later
day, just as fuzzy and, youknow, non science, even anti
science. So they kind of brandedpeople like that. And that
created the rupture that createdthis situation that we are
(25:37):
facing right now, because theydid not understand why
monoculture is bad monoculturewill be considered bad, even by
reductionist biology, becauseyou're not exuding the
multiplicity of metabolites intothe soil by depriving the soil
from the polyculture, which wasmeant to be from the beginning
of revolution. So who gave youthe right to not only deprive
(25:59):
people of their nutrient, butalso deprive the soil of the
multiplicity of phytochemicalsthat are to go to the soil, so
this is not, right? This is notright, even even by the best of
reductionist violet green that
Joni Kindwall-Moore (26:13):
challenges so much thinking across the
board, and really makes us stepback for a moment and rethink
these systems because I feellike the whole monocrop mindset
and that hyper reductionisticscientific process has now
(26:33):
infiltrated our culture in a lotof ways, like we don't respect
the beauty imbalance, and thevalue that comes with the
diversity of things. And wedon't also always take the time
to respect that there's a lot ofmagic that's happening there
that is scientifically founded,that maybe we just don't
(26:54):
understand yet. I mean, the factthat we still don't even really
know how to properly identifyand understand what 98% Of the
phytonutrients that are producedby plants do are what they are,
and how they affect systems isastounding to me, considering
that that is the language ofbiology, that is the
(27:15):
communication and the way thatnatural organisms and ecological
systems often communicate withone another, and, and create
their environment and theirenvironmental response. Yeah. So
Abed Chaudhury (27:27):
so the so the reductionist biology said that
you have to break it up tounderstand he doesn't say that
that's all you do, right.Because the because the
multiplicity the biodiversity,you know, hundreds of organism
growing, that is the that is thecake of biology, this is not the
frosting of the cake, right. So,in order in order to understand
(27:51):
how life evolved from thebeginning, and how life is
sustained, you go to a place andyou see the majesty of nature,
and that is the that is themultiplicity that creates it
that 100 1000s of things actingin unison, grades, what is life,
and when you you can, you areallowed to break it apart in
(28:13):
order to understand it. But butin biology, two plus two is not
four, two plus two is isbecoming what we call the
synergy and, and in the emergentproperties, another word
emergent property, emergentproperty is when you find a
property cannot be interpretedsimply by adding the component
(28:35):
of it. Because once you startreading, that interaction, that
interaction creates a newreality. And most of biology is
emergent in the sense that it'sa complex system, where the
individual many many componentis participated and now created
something which you could nothave predicted from the
(28:56):
component. And that is where thereductionism paradigm kind of
breaks down completely. And youhave a say holistic paradigm,
and you have to understand thewhole component thing in one go.
Is and that failure toadequately addressed to it or
even to teach it in thedepartments of universities, and
(29:18):
even business schools kind ofcompletely poopoo this thing and
said, look, just look at a treeand see how much timber it will
make, you know, as opposed toYeah, looking into the inherent
spiritual value of the forestand why should forest exists. If
you convert it into thinking ofhow much timber The forest has
that you can turn it intofurniture and teach people in
(29:41):
business school and ad nauseamspread this doctrine of the
utility of the timber ratherthan the inherent value of the
of the tree for the art system,then you then you're traveling
into the road of climatedisaster that we have at the
moment So
Joni Kindwall-Moore (30:00):
much of it really does come down to
axiology, or the way that weassign value and the way we view
the value we assign to things inour world. If you look at trees
just for board feet, and I grewup in a timber community, so I
understand that like that's,that's the currency that drove
(30:20):
our local economy. But we failedto assign value to the other
features that also drove ourlocal economy and quality of
life, like hunting and fishingintact ecosystems, not having
mudslides, not having sedimentin the river, which then, you
know, contributed to thecollapse of our salmon
populations, like theexternalities and the true cost
(30:43):
accounting is the is the areathat we've really ignored for so
long. And I love that from amolecular biology perspective,
you're bringing it back to thatcomplex interaction, but still
molecular and still small andscientific, small and a good
way, like as far as a molecularperspective, that it's often
(31:05):
these unsung heroes that aremetabolites of all of these into
all of these biologicalorganisms that are driving not
only health, potentially, butcarbon sequestration, soil
microbiome, resilience, drought,resilience, small water cycles,
so many things like, and we dareto admit that we don't even know
(31:30):
a fraction of all of thesethings like it's the tip of the
iceberg. And that's what's soexciting. During my
Abed Chaudhury (31:36):
company, general facts, particularly we studied
gut microbiome, and in biology,nothing is isolated. So so the
human gut, there aremultiplicity of bacteria,
microbiome, nourishing us ourhealth and our mood, our mental
life, etc. And similarly, theart, the art is the topsoil are
(31:57):
in fact, the God of thebiosphere. So, I would like to
suggest that that is the gut ofthe biosphere, gut of the art,
if you can call it and thathuman gut and the gut they are
connected in. So so when youdeplete the soil, for instance,
that depletion goes into thedepletion of the crop. And the
crop you eat now leads to thedepletion of your gut. And, and
(32:22):
you can see the holisticconnectivity is driving human
wellbeing and guard well, wellbeing as though it is part of
the same design is quite when Itry to understand this kind of
thing. It's not some kind ofairy fairy, fuzzy philosophy,
but it is very molecular, it'svery predicted. And, and, and
actually from for myself,because I have spent like 45
(32:45):
years in science now I kind ofsee automatically because I
remember a lot of thesebiochemical reactions when I can
see that connectivity. The otherthing I wanted to, I wanted to
mention here is that there's aphilosophical question of
whether we are in nature, orwhether we are external to
nature, dominating the nature.So there are two worldviews. One
(33:09):
is that you you are yourselfnature, you're a product of
nature, and therefore you'reinextricably tied to nature. And
another philosophy says that youare not in nature, you are
external to nature, you are fromsomewhere else, you are from the
heaven, and you are here, comeinto the art, and you are
looking into the nature, tosubdue nature, to use nature for
(33:31):
your benefit, and to get thefruits of the nature but you are
not nature. So I think that isthe clash of these two
philosophies which we should bealso be mindless, definitely.
Joni Kindwall-Moore (33:42):
Yeah. And that's something I think we're
right at the crossroads therewhere there's a tremendous
portion of the population thatreally does feel like they have
no connection to nature, andthey don't have a responsibility
to live in harmony or beresponsive to nature or natural
rules. So that is a that's a bigissue right now, and it is where
(34:04):
science and philosophy cometogether in an inseparable
conversation.
Abed Chaudhury (34:13):
Then and we could, so what we need is a kind
of a grand synthesis, we cannotjust say that we are one thing
or the other. This is why thecommunication of seemingly
opposite worldviews shouldoccur. And you made the point
about forest forest being ofused to human being as well as
far as, as a as something thatwe marvel at. Because we need to
(34:37):
be practical, we need your lifewe need a life we need need that
a timber sustainably anyresources,
Joni Kindwall-Moore (34:44):
that
Abed Chaudhury (34:44):
resources in order to live. So the question
is then, but what has happenedis that we have gone into an
extreme where we have seennature only to be extracted for
far too long. And that has goneIt brought us to the tipping
point, we have gotten intomonoculture, we could have gone
(35:05):
into polyculture in the 60s. Andthis whole food security, or
we're gonna run out of food andonly by having monoculture we
can have. These were faultyassumptions, these were not
corrected. And looking back, youknow, I collected a lot of the
traditional varieties, and Igrow them after recovering them.
(35:27):
And their yield is very good, infact, so So the bad name that
was attached to them that thereare so hopeless, and they're
only give us famine is a premisethat is not correct. And I
completely refuse it. So So inmy own land, we were kind of
virtually forced to grow thischild in variety and get rid of
all the traditional variety,almost like forced into it was a
(35:52):
was it was a period ofdysbiosis. I don't, I don't
actually praise that it was suchgreat thing. And it was green
revolution, and it saved us fromfamine. That's a very truncated
version of what actuallyhappened. Because by getting rid
of all these traditionalvarieties, we also depleted the
soil, we also and we have tomonetize of this thing, we have
(36:14):
to monetize what is lost. Wecannot just be selective and
congratulate ourselves for thegame and not notice what we have
lost. And for the new synthesisto occur is a pathway for future
we have to be mindful of what wehave lost and find an economic
paradigm, which actuallymonetizes what is being lost.
Joni Kindwall-Moore (36:38):
I think a lot of that economic paradigm is
manifesting itself in healthcare costs. And, and of course,
like climate, you know, soildegradation and climate change.
But when you look at the actuallike direct effect, and the the
rise of diet related disease,that's largely in response to
(37:00):
eating a diet of plants andanimals that are only eating
seven species, like it's likeincredible, you know, what they
say we've lost 75% to 90% of allof our genetic, biodiversity and
our food crops in 100 years, andyou look around and we don't
even, we can't even begin tounderstand, like, how to rebuild
(37:24):
that, because we have to rebuildthe gut microbiome, we have to
rebuild all of the diversephytonutrients, micro and macro
nutrients. And we need torestore the soil, all three
things have to happensimultaneously to realign Food
and Ag systems with the goals ofpositive human health and
positive climate resiliency. Soit's a heavy lift. But you know,
(37:48):
honestly, I think a lot ofpeople feel really hopeless in
this. But by starting to eatmore foods that have richer
phyto, nutrient profiles, richand colors, rich, and Newton,
you know, like diversity, you'rethat you're suddenly humans are
part of the process. Again, it'slike we're part of nature,
again, we're part of a naturalcycle, because our consumption
(38:09):
demand is actually triggering anevent at the field that
stimulates the reintroduction ofall these phytonutrients into
the soil and into our gut.
Abed Chaudhury (38:20):
It's amazing that you bring the issue of
colors. So I had this ad hocidea a few days ago, and I think
I shared it with you. I thoughtthat what if people how, what if
the what I was just trying toentertain the possibility that
the color in the above groundcrop is somehow necessarily
related to soil enrichment ordepletion. So there's a paper I
(38:44):
found like in the smoking gunalmost as soon as they talked
about it on paper eight. So whenpeople studied colored tomato
versus etiolated, or color lesstomato, they found that the root
branching was very different.And in a way that no one
understand but you know how thegenome is set up under
selection. So what we get somegenetic chromosome we call it
(39:08):
and the whole genome of anorganism is not something that
came from heaven but but hasbeen constructed under
selection. So it looks to me andI'm suggesting this ad hoc idea
that when people selected forcolored fruit, let's say tomato
being an example. So whathappened when the tomato is very
red, then people like to havered tomato, so they selectively
(39:30):
propagated red tomato, so verysoon there is red tomato
everywhere. And withoutrealizing and simply by
selecting red tomato, they arealso enriching the soil because
red tomato have more rootbranching, then then tomato that
is not red. So you arebenefiting the art without
really intellectually realizingit. And that is a bit like what
(39:53):
Jim Lovelock was saying in theguide that the human decision or
the decision of other peoplewith agency is In a subterranean
way, creating this newecosystem. And that's why your
own decision. And of course,people did not study molecular
biology and did this in aninstinctive kind of way. But
they were doing things that theydid not realize they're doing.
(40:16):
And when I understood this kindof grand design, if you will, of
the whole nature, interactivemanner, and human ecology is
part of it, because you go tothe forest and all this mist in
there, and now we know that itmister, really helping your
brain. And you're, you're comingdown. We know that we know that
(40:37):
the house next to water has 10times more value than the house
which is not next to water. Andwe never ask why is that? Why is
it that we intrinsically like tobe near water? Why is it that we
really want to be in the forest?This is something we take for
granted, and we neverinvestigated?
Joni Kindwall-Moore (40:57):
Yeah, all those questions, and I love the
the reference to lovelock's Gaiahypothesis, we'll have to be
sure to put a link for people toread about it, because it is a
very provocative concept. It'sactually makes a lot of sense
and feels very natural to somany people. But it's still, you
know, a very contested conceptreally, out there. So I'll let
(41:20):
the listeners take a momentwe'll put the link in so they
can read and decide on theirown. What how they feel about
it. But, you know, I'll bet Ifeel like we've just scratched
the surface, there's so manyconversations, we need to have a
bet. And I have fantasticconversations. Not as often as
we should. And I finally said,we need to just record this,
(41:42):
these are so great. Because Iknow there's other people that
long for this kind of thinkingand challenging of the really
status quo of what is operatingour modern systems and how we
put in that design process torealign our modern era with
resiliency for both human healthand, and planetary health. So
(42:03):
I'll put in a number of linksfor our listeners up so they
can, you know, do some moreresearch. And let's just
consider this session, one ofmany, we'll have to have you on
again, because there's so manytopics that we need a deep dive
on. And I'm just I'm justthrilled you joined me tonight,
or today this morning. It'smorning in Australia.
Abed Chaudhury (42:25):
Very much. It's been well, yeah. It's exciting
to be able to sort of blurt itout, so to speak from the heart
so to speak. Yeah,
Joni Kindwall-Moore (42:33):
absolutely. And I think we'll have some more
sessions just purely ongenetics, because you're
teaching an online course ongenetics. Is that right? Do you
want to quickly tell ourlisteners if they want to hear
and participate in a deeper divewith Dr. Shari and the genetics
and really more of thatscientific rigor? Where can they
sign up for that?
Abed Chaudhury (42:54):
Yeah, so so it's an online course 25 people at a
time, the massive number ofpeople who have signed up now we
have a kind of a waiting list.It's called genetics with abit
Choudry is it's the way geneticsis not taught in universities.
So I bring in a lot of theseancestral or traditional ideas
about genetics, Bremen, DeLeongenetics, as well as genetics
(43:18):
that I feel that has not beencovered as part of my genetics,
education, kind of a geneticsfor the new reality genetics for
climate mitigation genetics forsustainability, I would call it
so it's it's a six hour courseto our time, and I tried to do
it in a kind of a new touchyfeely, organic genetics, if you
(43:42):
want to call it that.
Joni Kindwall-Moore (43:46):
Well, that is wonderful. And I will also
make sure that we put a link forour listeners, so if they want
to sign up for that course theycan. And, um, you know, I bet
thank you so much again, we'llhave you back later this season
so we can take another deepdive. And for you listeners
tonight, please, if you lovedthis content, if you're inspired
(44:07):
by Dr. chattery. Please take amoment to share and rate the
podcast. We would love to havemore people here this incredible
thought leadership and reallyjust getting aligned with this
regenerative by design processof there's so many things that
need to happen so that we canrealign our modern world with
nature and regenerative systemsand give our great grandkids a
(44:29):
better hope for the future. Sothanks for joining us and op
eds. So fantastic to see you.Thank you.
Abed Chaudhury (44:35):
Thank you Jeremy.
Ed Bejarana (44:36):
This episode of the regenerative by design podcast
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Unknown (44:50):
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