Louis De Jaeger - SOS: Save Our Soils

Today I'm talking with Louis De Jaeger author of SOS: Save Our Soils.

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00:00 You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free to use farm to table platform, emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. Today I'm talking with Louis de Jaeger in Belgium.

00:29 and he's an author of a book called S.O.S. Saving Our Soils. Good. I don't know what time it is in Belgium. Good day, Louis. How are you? No, very happy to be here on your podcast. It's so nice. What time is it in Belgium? It's 10, 12 here in Minnesota. Well, it's 5 p.m. 5, 12 here. So almost time for dinner. OK, so good afternoon to you, Thanks. Good morning.

00:58 Thank you.  So I was very surprised when you reached out to ask about being a guest on the podcast. And then I saw what you do.  And all my surprise went away because you are trying to save the earth by teaching people about soil. Exactly. And so I would love to know what your background is and why you got involved in this in the first place. Yes. So

01:25 I actually  have two grandmothers that grew up on farms  and they had to  move from the countryside to the city because there was actually no future anymore  for farming.  that actually  influenced me  until a point that when I was 18 years old, I actually wanted to become a farmer.  The only

01:48 problem was is that I didn't have land anymore in the family and land is like super expensive in Belgium. It's around 100k per hectare or  like, let's say 40k per acre.  And  so  that wasn't really an option for me. And I was  kind of curious about why that is, how things are going.  And also was thinking about what kind of farmer would I like to become.

02:16 For that, really was  looking for answers and the more I kept looking for answers, the more I realized that the farming system worldwide is actually pretty screwed. that the way we farm today is a  lot of the reasons we farm today as we farm today is because of governments,  of lobbyists pushing us in certain directions. actually  nobody's winning,  only big corporations and not the farmers themselves and certainly not

02:46 not the consumers. So  yeah, we need to do something about that urgently.  Okay, that explains the drive for you to write this book and do all the other things you've done over the last, I don't know, 12 years.  And you're only 31. Yeah, correct. You're baby.  My daughter's 35 and she's the oldest of four. So yeah,  you could be my kid.

03:16 So  what I want to know is in all your travels, because I know you've traveled a lot looking at your website,  who is doing it the best out of the worst? Well, the good news actually is that I've