You know what’s gonna save the world?
I do.
It’s regenerative agriculture.
You know whY?
It’ll make it so you never look at dirt the same again.
And why that matters is it returns humans to a place where they are capable of appreciating things on a micro level.
If we can just move one iota as a species back to the appreciation of other life on earth outside of the world of dodo videos and see it as a part of the life and death cycle of which we are all a part, and how very beautiful that is, we may benefit the all. However, my intention and focus is on you as an individual having a felt sense of grounded connection to the world you exist on, knowing that somehow through learning about microscopic systems you will connect with the fact you also matter and play a role in the greater scheme of what is out here. If everything on the planet matters, maybe you do too.
When you see soil as dead, or rocks as nothing, bugs are simply a nuisance, or trees as things that can just be cut or moved for no reason but vanity or convenience, you experience no connection to them all. Which means there is something missing around feeling at home with the earth itself. Which probably means you’re likely to think that your body is stupid and makes mistakes, too, because nothing in nature holds felt value to you. It’s all a matter of convenient or inconvenient.
Dirt and our relationship to it is everything. The microbes within it are the building blocks of life on the planet. The things we do to dirt either increase or decrease the amount of life here. Conventional farming practices and virtually everything you do with your lawn, all of which are more and more taken over by giant companies, reduce biodiversity over time through chemical use and lack of animal husbandry in the system. When an animal walks through a field it breaks it up with its hooves, poos and pees all over it, and partakes in the regeneration of the soil in a way that has not been appropriately mimicked in other ways.
White Oak Pastures in Georgia, USA recently shared how when they stopped medicating their cattle the dung beetles returned in force to their pasturelands. The video was taken down by the internet overlords so I think the medications in question were vaccines, but they may also have been antibiotics or something else produced by major corporations. I can’t find the info quickly now. The point is that the poisons were coming out in the poo and fucking up the downstream ecosystem’s ability to integrate it. They made the planet less healthy. The fact that dung beetles couldn’t use the poop matters and speaks to questions about what we’re putting in the cows that become food for us.
Dung beetles are critical in the natural breakdown of manure into the soil.
From White Oak Pastures:
Dung Beetles are essential to maintaining a healthy pasture ecosystem. The adult fly to freshly dropped manure piles to feast, and to lay their eggs. Here are some of the benefits that this action provides for the land and the herd:
• The Beetles aerate the dung heap by burrowing through it. This breaks the life cycle of external parasites like horn flies and face flies that lay their eggs in the feces. This can almost completely eliminate these flies that suck blood from the livestock.
• This also breaks the life cycle for internal parasites like Brown Stomach Worms and Barberpole Worms.
• The Beetles dig vertical tunnels a foot deep under the manure pile to lay their eggs. This action aerates the soil so that moisture and roots can go penetrate more deeply.
• The Beetles action breaks up the cow pie, preventing it from becoming a hard cake. This allows it to break down much quicker so that the microbes can make the nutrients available to plant roots.
We consider dung beetles to be the hardest working species on White Oak Pastures.
Here is a list of things I’ve consumed over the years I’d recommend, if you’re interested in learning more about how we can still farm but in a way that actually regenerates the planet, and how and why cows and other ruminants (animals with four-chambered stomachs containing bacteria capable of turning plant matter into protein) are actually essential to the regeneration of the planet.
I first read about biodynamic farming (something I don’t know enough to say how it’s different but someone would definitely yell at me for that) in a Forbes FYI lifestyle magazine over a decade ago. The anecdote that stuck with me (the article was about winemaking) was how when the vineyard owners told the migrant workers that they would start planting by the phases of the moon and burying cow horns packed with dung into the fields, the workers were like, “Oh duh, they got it finally.”
The Gateway Drug to Regenerative Agriculture:
Easiest way to get what I’m saying in a polished, easy pill to swallow.
Documentary. Biggest Little Farm. It’s beautiful, it’s got a storyline, and it gets your heart going while teaching you about the interconnectivity of the universe without getting very woowoo and also showcasing the important differences between conventional and regenerative farming.
A little more serious:
Documentary. Sacred Cow. Learn how veganism doesn’t actually prevent death, it just showcases how removed we are from our food supply and what happens in agriculture. Also does a great job explaining as only Robb Wolf does (the intellectual weirdo, I say with fondness) the practical and disturbing issues with trying to force other people to eat less meat, particularly the moral quandaries of impressing it upon people in countries without a CVS down the block to buy supplements from. This documentary taught me about why rotational grazing practices keep cattle grouped relatively tightly together rather than letting them roam over the whole ranch, let’s say. It mimics the “mobbing” of staying together that natural predators would create, keeping the herd a bit denser for protective purposes in the wild, which allowed the grasses that were not being stepped upon to rejuvenate and grow.
Pulls-no punches:
Thinker. Feminist. Revolutionary. Vandana Shiva. This link simply takes you to searching for her on YouTube, and there are a gazillion passionate and mic-dropping interviews with her. She is not a fan of Bill Gates.
For the bibliophile:
Books. Anything published by Chelsea Green Publishing or Acres USA.
Someone fabulous to check out is Nicole Masters. Her book “For the Love of Soil” weaves together ideas so beautiful I could cry in just the first few pages. I gave my copy to a friend and he loved it as much as I did, saying it made so much of life make sense to him.
Acres also showcases live and online events. I took a Zoom 3-day event a few years ago intended for farmers and it was incredible. I still have portions of it ringing in my head almost every single day. My biggest takeaways: there is always a reason something is growing where it’s growing. Every thing that is growing represents something in the soil and also changes the soil that it grows in, and will shift to other growth after it is done doing what it needs to in that soil via a full life cycle of the plant that isn’t cut down, etc. Ecosystems gradually increase in complexity and biodiversity over time until they reach a pinnacle of great stability, usually dominated by oak trees. Whenever I see something growing somewhere, I wonder what it is turning over in the soil and why it’s needed where it is.
Podcasts:
Episodes of Joe Rogan with Joel Salatin on them
Jeff Leach on Tangentially Speaking with Chris Ryan - this one had me and my roommate start eating leeks and had me thinking about lawn biodiversity for the first time. Had me interested enough to give it a good 3-4 listens. I alternate between thinking there’s something off I don’t like about Ryan (the host) and thinking he’s one of the best conversationalists on the planet, so enjoy this one because I think he’s good on it. Ryan met Jeff by chance at a bar and was able to do this interview.
Go rub some dirt on your face or just stare at it, knowing that there are a thousand things going on in it that we need to exist on the planet. For a moment try and divest yourself from the idea that it is dirty, or dead, or gross to think about. Then go watch or read or listen to something so you can know just a little bit and let that worm its way into the way you think about and relate to the world around you. Let wonder overtake you and gain contact with something lost inside of you.