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EP42: Robb Wolf – Cows Can Heal The Planet
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“The industrial food system is really good at producing calories… it’s not great at producing nutritious food”
Regenerative agriculture challenges the dominant narrative around food, climate, and land use by reframing farming as an ecological system rather than an industrial process. Instead of removing animals, this approach integrates them intentionally to rebuild soil, enhance biodiversity, and restore degraded landscapes. The conversation emphasizes that many environmental problems attributed to livestock are actually the result of poor management practices. Real solutions are context-specific, requiring local adaptation, ecological literacy, and a systems-thinking mindset that prioritizes long-term resilience over short-term efficiency.
Robb Wolf shares how his journey from biochemistry into health and nutrition led him to question mainstream dietary and environmental assumptions. He explains that well-managed grazing systems can rehabilitate land and produce nutrient-dense food while highlighting the industrial food system’s strength in calories—but weakness in nutrition and ecological health. He also underscores the importance of adaptability in both individuals and systems.
Robb is a former research biochemist, two-time New York Times bestselling author, and co-author of Sacred Cow. He is widely known for his work in evolutionary nutrition and for advocating regenerative agriculture as a solution to both human and planetary health challenges.
Learn more & connect:
Sacred Cow by Robb Wolf & Diana Rodgers
Revolutionary solutions to modern life: https://robbwolf.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/robb-wolf-008b996a/
Also in this episode:
Explore these valuable resources to further your journey in regenerative design:
Discover more about Regenerative design at Paulownia Landscape Architects. https://www.paulownia-la.com/.
Dive into the Twelve Laws of Nature and unlock the secrets of harmonizing with our planet at https://www.12lawsofnature.com/.
Fulfill your garden aspirations with expert guidance from the Garden of Your Dreams masterclass at https://www.gardenofyourdreams.com/.
Ready to take actionable steps towards your dream garden? Book a complimentary 30-minute training session with Matthieu for immediate results: https://calendly.com/garden-of-your-dreams.
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Transcript
A Beginner's Success in Regenerative Agriculture
00:00:00
Speaker
I was really a newbie at at implementing regenerative agriculture, and I would say we were wildly successful at at doing this. Learned a lot, made some mistakes, but we were able to take a comparatively small patch of dirt, five acres, and dramatically rehabilitate it.
00:00:18
Speaker
produce more food than what what we and our neighbors could could eat. This is a viable solution for you know global food production.
Introduction to the Regenerative Design Podcast
00:00:27
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Regenerative Design Podcast. I'm your host, Mathieu Mehuys, and in this show, I interview the leading authorities in the world of regenerative practices, people who do good and do well.
00:00:40
Speaker
Are you a person that cares about your environment and our planet, that wants to leave the planet to our children to be something that we can be truly proud of, to enjoy for many generations to come?
00:00:51
Speaker
But are you also a person that believes we can do all of this and do good in business? I have really good news for you. You're here listening to the podcast that is all about making our planet a better place and making your business more successful.
00:01:06
Speaker
Enjoy the show. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Regenerative Design Podcast with your host Mathieu. And today we have an amazing guest. We've had a few really cool guests on, but this is really a highlight.
Rob Wolf's Journey into Regenerative Agriculture
00:01:19
Speaker
We have Rob Wolf on the on the show from The Secret Cow, a world famous book. So I'm very excited to have Rob here. Rob, welcome to the show. How are you doing today?
00:01:30
Speaker
Great. And thanks for having me. Yes, I'm very excited and I'd love to start By going a little bit back in history, and I'd love to understand like from you, how did you get in doing all this work that you're doing today? like Were you born on a regenerative farm? Were you working with cows since you were a child or how did how did all of this happen? No, no. i lived in a rural area of Northern California and had family that had animals. And i helped a bit. You know, i would spend summers with cousins and stuff like that. But I can't say that, you know, I had ah a deep steeping
From Health Crisis to Dietary Changes
00:02:09
Speaker
in all this. um I mean, i really...
00:02:12
Speaker
I guess my career has been defined by dealing with a ah personal health crisis. I was in graduate school, ah living about as antagonistically towards health as you could possibly imagine. I lived in Seattle in a basement apartment, the the one tiny window in the place faced north.
00:02:35
Speaker
um The ceiling was about six inches above my head. i ah you know, like many, you know, aspiring grad students and stuff like that. I had this sense that, ah you know, I would sleep when I was dead. So I i slept like three hours a night.
00:02:52
Speaker
I was eating a vegan diet at the time, which I think may work well for some people. it absolutely didn't well work well for me. But in looking back, you know, my sleep and circadian biology were a disaster.
00:03:04
Speaker
I wasn't eating in a way that was good for me. i had... Huge stress levels. I didn't get my vitamin D levels checked until much later after this health crisis, but you know it was totally totally cratered. And so when i when I look back, if I were to write a prescription for how to break someone and make them unhealthy, I was doing virtually all of it. I could have been smoking and drinking a lot of alcohol hallul and doing stuff and that would have been, you know, worse too. But i ended up with ulcerative colitis and right now, so I'm five foot nine, I'm about 170, 175 pounds. At the low ebb of my ulcerative colitis, i was about pounds. So if you imagine pounds
00:03:44
Speaker
less of me like i was very very sick And this is what got me into, ah you know, all of the ah paleo, keto, ancestral health type stuff. And that was around 1998.
00:03:57
Speaker
And i i that definitely saved my life, like we're without a doubt, eating in this this different way saved my life. um But you know thinking about food and its impact on the environment and impact on the world and and whatnot is has always been part of this stuff. And it was around 2001, 2002, I had a buddy of mine who was also vegan.
00:04:23
Speaker
I wasn't at that time. And we would go out and have a couple of drinks and you know just hang out and chat. And this was at a time when people of differing ideologies could and would still be friends. And would hang out with each other like that, you know, that just doesn't happen these days at all. It it it seems like but he would give me grief about, um you know, okay, maybe this helped you eating this way, but how are we going to feed the planet, you know, you're being really wasteful with resources and and stuff like that.
00:04:55
Speaker
And i I just started thinking about it in it and probably having a couple of ciders in me helped the free association
Ecological and Economic Impacts of Cattle Farming
00:05:03
Speaker
a little bit. But I looked at them and I was just like, dude, like cows eat grass. Like, what are they stealing from people? You know, and that's not the total story. There there is some feedlot finishing with with ah grains and vegetables.
00:05:18
Speaker
Some other things along that line, but that really got me thinking about, well, okay, what are the ah full ecological impacts and economic accounting of of raising food? And that, you know, inspired me to start looking into these topics. And this was, 12 years, years, 12 years before... Alan Savory's really seminal YouTube video where he talked about culling elephants and what a disaster that was. And, you know, this thought that grazing animals were were damaging to grasslands when in fact the the two things co-evolved over, you know, tens of millions of years. And probably my my first ah public debate around
00:06:06
Speaker
regenerative ag, animal husbandry and whatnot. I had moved back down to ah ah Chico, California, which is where I did my
Defending Meat in Sustainable Food Systems
00:06:14
Speaker
undergrad. And Chico State's pretty well known for a very robust ag department and ah a number of the professors there very into regenerative ag. And so i had I wasn't in a formal program, but I would spend time with them chatting about these topics. And I remember there was a kind of a public debate about, you know,
00:06:33
Speaker
the role of meat in a sustainable, you know, ah food environment. yeah And there were probably about 15 people there talking about how it was a disaster and going to destroy everything and unethical. And I was literally the one person there defending the the counterpoint. And I leaned into a lot of economics, what's what's called non-equilibrium thermodynamics, which is thinking about energy capture and whatnot. And so it's it's been a long long run with that. And we have it at a personal level, although I wasn't raised with animals, we've been fortunate enough to live a number of places where we could have animals and did have animals. Like when we, when we moved to Reno, Nevada, we bought a a five acre property that had been horribly overgrazed for ages. Like the people had horses and, and, uh, horses can be incredibly, uh, uh,
00:07:28
Speaker
Overgrazing. They have a tendency to overgraze. Yeah, man. They just they like yeah they shave it down to nothing. And so we ended up with a ah mix of sheep, goats, and cows.
00:07:40
Speaker
And I really didn't know a ton of what I was doing, but I talked to people who were more knowledgeable than myself and used portable electric fencing. was really judicious in moving the animals around.
00:07:53
Speaker
Um, I did some kind of wacky stuff. Like we have cats and dogs and I would, I would take their feces and like throw it out in, in, it you know, we would graze an area, move the animals.
00:08:06
Speaker
Um, we, we did flood irrigation in, in this area. So then I would, I would try to put some nitrogen rich, uh, you know, manure and and whatnot in the area. We didn't worm our animals. And so pretty quickly, like we had these, you know, dung beetles out there moving, moving the dung around and stuff like that. But it was shocking ah within two years, ah the amount of grass that we were able to grow and the the change in the erosion patterns that we have were just jaw dropping. And then, you know, five years later, our neighbors still had horses,
00:08:39
Speaker
They were still overgrazing. And I mean, they they had very patchy ah grass in their pastures and whatnot in the areas where we would we would ah keep the animals out of it for a period of time so that we could grow the grass.
00:08:54
Speaker
Like it would get like waist high. It was crazy. And they just couldn't believe that. that we were able to do this. And this isn't a person that, you know, even though I'm
Rehabilitation of Overgrazed Land
00:09:02
Speaker
passionate about ah this topic and maybe understand the the broad brushstrokes, you know, concepts, um I was really a newbie at at implementing regenerative agriculture. And I would say we were wildly successful at at doing this. Learned a lot, made some mistakes, but like we figured out that goats are an absolute pain in the ass they're not actually that That great for the environment that we were in. ah Sheep and cows were were much better options, but we were able to take a ah small, comparatively small patch of dirt, five acres, and dramatically rehabilitate it ah produce more food than what what we and our neighbors could could eat off of the the area. And this is...
00:09:48
Speaker
You know, this is the stuff that has continued to encourage me to both learn about these topics, but then also to to really lean into the idea that this is a viable solution for, you know, global food production. It's not appropriate on every patch of of ground, but it's more appropriate than not. And like some of the things that we talk about in in Sacred Cow is that there are, or there's lots and lots of acreage that is not amenable to crops. It's too rocky. It's too steep. You know, you you wouldn't have an easy time plowing it or anything like that.
00:10:24
Speaker
But ah different grazing animals can do a wonderful job of, you know, accessing those areas. And then you have to emulate some sort of predator-prey interaction. Mm-hmm. scenario and ah to keep the animals moving so they don't overgraze and portable electric fencing or other methods even just using ah herding dogs can be a really effective way of moving these animals when it when it's time to move them this podcast is brought to you by the garden of your dreams masterclass Are you struggling with finding the right tools and tricks for your garden? Are you lacking the confidence to be a self-sufficient gardener? Do you sometimes get overwhelmed by the lack of knowledge and time you have to actually do gardening? Then the Garden of Your Dreams Masterclass is for you.
00:11:09
Speaker
Yeah, totally. i I fully agree with you. And and I think i even want to argue that even on k cropland, it could be a really good system to integrate cattle. That's been done by and by many regenerative farmers, either to graze your cover crops or even here, and I'm here in the Azores and there's lots of cows. And obviously if we have a kind climate that that helps. It's a subtropical climate. So it's like they have 365 days of grass-fed beef, grass-fed milk, which is amazing. and But even the crop fields, you can see people will do corn, for example, for silage that they obviously also use for for some of the feedlots. And then they harvest they they and they put grass ah and they will grow grass for a few months, put the cows on it and then rotate to the next crop. So here it's exceptional. It can have even two to three harvests or crops in in one season.
00:12:04
Speaker
So even there, there's massive integration, obviously, that that is possible just yeah just by ah how a cow
Environmental Impact of Meat Production
00:12:11
Speaker
functions. And I think it's very interesting that already back in those days, in in the 90s, you're realizing that in the exact moment where everyone was going like, oh, we need to stop eating meat. ah It's bad for the planet. They fart.
00:12:26
Speaker
um And I also find it interesting. I'd love to hear your take on that. Like to a large extent, it is true. Like look at all the meat production or I don't know the numbers, but I could argue that 90% of the meat that's produced in the in the world is bad for the environment just by the way it's produced. Right. So it's feed lots and, uh, chicken that are in difficult circumstances, and this probably emits more carbon dioxide than than it absorbs.
00:12:54
Speaker
But then, yeah, so i'd I'd love to hear from you. how How are you incentivizing this knowledge to going to people like it's obviously the the famous phrase, it's not about the cow, it's about the how.
00:13:07
Speaker
But for many people, that's still like a very foreign concept. How do you bring that about? Or is that part of the work that you do too? Yeah, nobody's going to solve that problem immediately. There's a lot of work to be done on it. We'll talk about maybe chicken and pork separately because they really are 100% inputs corn, soy, that type of stuff for the most part. But even feedlot cattle spend about 70% of their life grass.
00:13:35
Speaker
ah feed like cattle spend about seventy percent of their life on grass And then when they when they go to the feedlot, there are ah various grain inputs. But to your to your point, like they usually are used to to graze wheat fields, corn fields, you know, the the silage in the crop residue. So a significant amount of what those animals eat are, are crop residues that you either compost it, which is really a lot of work. Like you got to gather it up and put it into piles and turn it and all that stuff. You could let it just sit in the sun and let it oxidize, which really isn't good for anything, or you can have cows eat it. And I think that this is one of the things where, um, you know, one hundred percent grass finished beef is great, but like I live in Northern Montana, we cannot do that year round. Like we, we have extremely long winters, like, there's There's just, there's no way that you you can do that.
00:14:32
Speaker
And I do think that ah i as good and as important as as understanding, you know, the inputs of of grass in these systems, using crop residues is a really great idea.
Historical Practices in Pork Feeding
00:14:46
Speaker
You know, some application of grains is not a bad idea.
00:14:50
Speaker
you know, as as far as all that that type of stuff goes. And so I think that people have to really understand that there's... the I think the thing that wins doesn't look like Monsanto. It doesn't look quite like, you know, what we see in the the mega farm scenario, but it also doesn't necessarily look 100% like Joel Salatin everywhere. Like not everywhere is amenable for doing that. He lives in in Virginia and although... technically that is ah a four season environment. They, they don't get much to know. Like they, they kind of have access to grass almost year round. So we have to, you have to think about the practicalities of that. um You know, with, with um chicken and and pork, it it is a hundred percent grain soy inputs. And, yeah you know, it it's, it's interesting historically pork,
00:15:43
Speaker
The way that it it played a role in the the food system was ah human waste and food scraps were fed to pork. And about 50% of the food that is produced globally is landfilled.
00:15:55
Speaker
Like it's just thrown away. Yeah. And then that creates methane. gases. Yeah. And it's self-create, which I'm not that worried about because it's part of a biogenic cycle. And we could, we could talk about that stuff. Like you, you have a carbon molecule in the atmosphere that gets pulled into a plant, that plant gets eaten or composted or something. And then it either gets re-emitted into the environment as carbon dioxide or as methane. And the methane has about a 10 year half-life in the environment. And then it gets broken down into carbon dioxide and water. And
00:16:29
Speaker
Um, so like that, that biogenic cycle is, is by and large a a net zero, you know, issue. Like it, I just, it's really hard for me, ah thermodynamically energetically to get spun up about that. And when you really hold people's feet to the fire about like, you know, you walk them through this stuff and it's funny with kids, you can walk them through the carbon cycle and they get this very quickly with adults. Um,
00:16:55
Speaker
it's you get It's a hard thing to get them to understand the interesting the simplicity of the carbon cycle, you know, but, um you know, like pork, arguably, we should be feeding the the pork that we eat all of the food waste that we are not eating instead of just like drumming up a Corn, soy and other products like that to to feed to the, ah you know, the the pork inputs. we We have tons of food that ah could go into feeding these animals that is otherwise just just landfilled. And there's some interesting examples around that. um
00:17:31
Speaker
There's an outfit in ah outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico, that they they had raised pigs there for for ages, and they went to the the local town, and they basically asked for all of the the local restaurants, the grocery stores. They they provided these 50-gallon plastic drums that they would encourage them to put their food waste in, and then these folks would drive around pick this stuff up, they would autoclave it, which is basically like sterilizing it, the high temperature, high pressure sterilization, and then they would feed that to the pigs.
00:18:07
Speaker
And so within that area, the, the, the, these local pig farmers end up providing most of the pork for that region. And it's all from food inputs that would otherwise just be, you know, landfilled. And so I, but most places it's illegal to do that. You know, there's all these provisions against taking, you know, food waste from restaurants. Animal safety, they will call it. Yeah, yeah. Or animal hygiene, whatever. Yeah.
00:18:36
Speaker
and And I think that there are... there are ways that that it can be done hygienically and and smart and, you know, you can have some standards in that stuff. It it is really interesting. ah Chicken historically was like a very rarely consumed item because birds,
00:18:52
Speaker
on the trophic scale are are very difficult to raise. Like they don't, they they will pick at at grass and greens and stuff like that. And it's very good for their nutrition. But from a caloric standpoint, they need to eat bugs and seeds and and and things like that. And in the United States,
00:19:12
Speaker
um It was right around Herbert Hoover's time that one of his campaign monikers was a chicken in every pot because chicken was a very rare item, actually. oh yeah. It was Sunday. It was like the the Sunday lunch meal, not yeah necessarily beef.
00:19:29
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah. ah Beef and lamb were the the primary inputs and it's because those things eat grass. Like they're the easy things to raise, you know. And as we learned how to industrialize our food system as the industrial revolution fed into fertilizer, synthetic fertilizer, various types of synthetic pesticides, the ability to mass scale, yeah ah do planting and harvesting and whatnot. there was such a surplus there that we could take this very energy inefficient animal a chicken and now chicken is is ah consumed ah ah much more more than ah beef and lamb is in particular lamb yeah so there's some interesting things that we became so good at just producing cheap calories that we were able to do something very ah thermodynamically inefficient which is raise huge numbers of chickens as as kind of like a a primary protein source yeah and and No, I think that's that's that's very interesting and it's kind of to the detriment of the the animal like porks pork or pigs and chicken. They are able to live without natural light.
00:20:42
Speaker
Because what I heard is before the First before the first World War, ah Most of the eggs that we consumed were actually from ducks because that was like ah easy to find and they they were easy
Switch from Duck to Chicken Eggs
00:20:53
Speaker
to grow. They're also much larger and they were healthier or tastier than chicken.
00:20:57
Speaker
But then they tried to go into mass production and they put ducks and into like closed environments with with unnatural light and they stopped laying eggs. ah So that's why today we're actually eating so much chicken eggs is because they can live in in unnatural light. Same with pigs.
00:21:15
Speaker
They're very resilient animals they can sustain in in living in very harsh conditions, which most of the park today could compare it more to kind of concentration camps rather than than like meat production facilities or anything else. right So getting those animals back to what they were meant to do Just like eating food waste. Imagine also the quality of this this pork where it eats all the scraps, it eats some broccoli leftovers, some this leftovers. That that is so nutritious meat then, right?
00:21:49
Speaker
Because we saw that on our own farm when we started to do regenerative grazing with with a a wilder cattle breed that the quality of the meat is just uncomparable in taste. Like we had other cows that were that were more in feedlots and just, you yeah, the the nutritional value goes up like crazy. So yeah, I think we we all agree on that on that side. And so then What then led you to write your your book that became so famous and and like it's been many years now like yeah and it became a huge hype. I'd love to hear how that happened and and how it all became such an important work for for the regenerative movement.
Collaboration on 'Sacred Cow' with Diana Rogers
00:22:30
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, all all credit to that goes to Diana Rogers, my my co-author. We we were the good friends for years. Like we met in 2009 at Harvard when ah we both spoke there. I think it was 2009.
00:22:47
Speaker
and She had celiac like I do. She had had all kinds of gut and autoimmune issues. And so we we really bonded on the, like, she's kind of like my my sister, like ah all the gut and autoimmune problems I have, she largely has the the same stuff. and And so we would compare notes on that. And she became a registered dietitian and and went on to write a a lot of ah very helpful information.
00:23:10
Speaker
kind of paleo oriented books in, in that nutrition space. And she herself lived on a ah regenerative farm for years. she's She's divorced from, from that, that guy now, but they, they had children. They were on a regenerative farm for, I don't know, 12, 15 years. so, so And she saw the importance or the value of this regenerative food approach.
00:23:35
Speaker
ah And and you know being in this kind of paleo kind of meat forward space, we were we were just assailed constantly that, um you know one, that the way that we were eating was unhealthy, which...
00:23:47
Speaker
I think is it's always kind of like trench warfare on that. It's, you know, is meat healthy? Is meat unhealthy? Like, I think when you really get in and and look at that, like it it pretty consistently plays out that meat meat is pretty darn healthy and nutritious and important for satiety and stuff like that. But some of these thornier questions around, you know, like, ah are cows the primary driver of climate change due to like methane emissions and stuff like that? like that Those were the many of the claims. um they
00:24:18
Speaker
They use huge amounts of water. They displace land that should be used for ah raising crops to feed people and stuff like that. As we started getting in and and looking at those questions and needing to answer those questions, it was kind of Groundhog's Day. It was like every time we turned around, we' were answering these same questions. And I think as early as maybe...
00:24:45
Speaker
2012, 2013, Diana really wanted to do a book. And I was just like, nobody cares. Like, that yeah you know, there there isn't a critical mass yet to be able to make this thing even reasonably successful. You know, we're going to, this book is going to sell to
Challenges in Publishing 'Sacred Cow'
00:25:00
Speaker
like five people. And there were, there were other folks, um, oh, uh,
00:25:06
Speaker
nicoette nimon there There were a number of books that were quite good that that you know covered a lot of the same material, but they were quite early. And they they just didn't have much in the way of impact because they were so incredibly early. And like I've had some decent successes in business and whatnot, but I've had a lot of failures the way. And i'll I'll pat myself on the back a little bit in that I'm usually good at looking down the road and kind of seeing where things are going. The challenge that I've had is I sometimes see far enough down the road that I'll start trying to do something and it's way too early. Like it it's just way, way too early. And so...
00:25:43
Speaker
Diana and I, you know, she kept pestering me and pestering me and pestering me about doing this. And was like, got wait, we got to wait. And it was around 2016, 2017 that I was like, okay, we can start working on this thing.
00:25:56
Speaker
And ah Diana had the the great idea to not just do a book, but also to to do a film. And it it it was back and forth, whether it would be a film or like ah a 10 part miniseries. And, you know, so she was working on that.
00:26:13
Speaker
in tandem with the book. And it's interesting. We, um, uh, somebody at Netflix reached out to us and, uh, they were super interested in this being a Netflix original, which would have been huge for, for both the the film and the book. And we were, it's funny, it sounds ridiculous, but we were literally in, in like the 11th hour negotiations around what, you know, what resources, uh,
00:26:41
Speaker
ah ah Netflix would provide for for this being an original and whatnot. And we're sitting in this conference room and this phone rings and the person picks up the phone and you could see their face change. And they were basically like, guys, I'm really sorry, but the steel is off. Like it's just done.
00:26:57
Speaker
And I don't i don't know who caught wind of what we were up to, but it had gotten to some level that the you know the idea of supporting a ah a book and film that painted animal husbandry and a favorable light, like that somebody killed it. And so Diana had to go on and and finish that just, just on her own and self-release it. But we released, um,
00:27:26
Speaker
in June of 2020, which was right at the the the ramp up of COVID. yeah And so we, we we the the book did well, but we we didn't make new York Times bestsellers list because ah Amazon, it was kind of kind of fishy, but Amazon when When you try to make a run for the New York Times bestsellers list, all of your pre-sales and then all of the sales from Tuesday through Sunday add up to whether or not you make like that first week on the bestsellers list. And if you make the bestsellers list, then you have a likelihood of making the next week and the next week. like ah It's a virtuous cycle. The Monday before our Tuesday release, we got a notification from Amazon that said that they were out of stock of our books and they wouldn't restock for like three months. mot and And so brick and mortar bookstores were closed because of COVID. Like you literally couldn't go into a bookstore to buy it a physical copy. Yeah.
00:28:25
Speaker
And so the only thing that was available were digital copies and not everybody wants a digital copy. So we had a really good run up. Like we had a decent number of pre-sales, but we basically sold virtually no books the week of launch. And it again, it was, it was weird. It like we,
00:28:43
Speaker
our our ah publisher was like, Amazon has tons of books. Like this doesn't make any moon sense that they're sold out of books. And, but they that's what they said. And yeah, that was it. That's true because they have their fully automated system where it's, it's print on the demand. Right. So you, you,
00:29:02
Speaker
you this would This would not have been a print-on-demand scenario. like we We had a publisher. You have to be ready for stock, but it yeah it doesn't seem to make sense. It it was suspicious, though.
00:29:12
Speaker
It was odd. It was very odd. But you know the book is has done decent. I think at a minimum, it... um it provided a great resource where like every one of these questions that is raised, you know, like it are grazing animals bad for the soil. Do they consume too much water? Shouldn't we just grow more crops in the areas where we're, we're raising these animals and stuff like that, yeah you know, and we, we talked about the the nutritional and kind of ethical,
00:29:45
Speaker
underpinnings of it. And I really think it's a, you know, I think it's a really solid
Reception of 'Sacred Cow'
00:29:50
Speaker
book. Like, I think we do ah a very good job of addressing these topics. You know, an interesting thing is that if you poke around for negative reviews about Sacred Cow, there aren't many. And I think that part of the reason for that is that we did a good enough job on the book. It's really difficult for people to do a hatchet job on it. Because if they if they misportray what's in the book, then we can come back and say like, hey, that's not remotely what we said. yeah And so I really expected there to be a lot of um negative reviews, negative press on it. And that there's actually very little. I think that it was good enough that people...
00:30:32
Speaker
decided we just shouldn't say anything about it, you know, one one way or the other at it on the, yeah on the negative side. So like, it's funny out of any of the books that I've done, I probably, this one probably had the the best overall, you know, total reviews and support online because I think that we did a good enough job. People didn't want to want to bring it up at all, you know? yeah no I think that's very interesting because obviously when you look at fragmented problems around the world, um it's easy to to fragment a certain thing and then be like, okay, cows are bad because they reduce methane and according to science, methane is bad for the environment or
00:31:12
Speaker
And so that's like looking at one fragmented thing, but you don't see all the other things that the cows are doing, which is they're building soil biology, they're sequestering carbon, they're actually sequestering methane again to another and they're storing water better. So obviously, when you look at things in in a separate part, like and we're humans, we try to fragment everything, but that's very limiting because you got to look at it holistically. And and when you then answer all those questions in such way, you end up with ah with something that is so close to the truth that nobody can argue against it.
00:31:49
Speaker
And I love that because I realized that myself firsthand some time ago, like I think I came across regenerative farming about 10 years ago. And i I was like, just growing up, starting working in business, I grew up on an an industrial farm.
00:32:06
Speaker
And I had all these questions like, oh why is everyone saying that meat is bad and and farming is bad for the environment and Europe cannot even sustain their own food production because we'll be flooded by cheap import. Like all these questions I had, even since I was growing up as a child.
00:32:23
Speaker
And then you have mass immigration, climate change, all these big problems that the world is facing. And then all of a sudden, I met a met a regenerative farmer who was my original, my first mentor and from Soil Capital.
00:32:37
Speaker
They're an amazing company consulting in regenerative farming around the world. And so I was able to listen to him and sit down and all of a sudden it it clicked. where was like, oh, wait a minute.
00:32:48
Speaker
So if we solve this one problem with doing regenerative farming in either by grazing animals, by integrating cover crops, by reducing chemical inputs, now we can actually solve all of these other problems. Oh, this is this is really interesting. Right. we're And then it's like, because otherwise, i think a lot of people are still in that like dooms thinking, like everything's messed up and we have mi immigration, all these separate problems. But there's actually ways and I believe agriculture is the cornerstone of of that solution.
00:33:19
Speaker
um So yeah, I'd love to hear your take on that. And did you have like that light bulb moment at some point in in your career? movie like Yeah, this is yeah. And you know, i i um I think I've always been a distantcent a decent systems thinker, you know, integrating lots of seemingly disparate topics, which can be tough sometimes because ah ah Any one topic may be complex to explain and unpack, and then you're trying to integrate all of it, and you sound like a crazy person. It's like, oh, I got a solution for everything. you know But um Alan Savory talks a lot about holistic management, which is this. And it can be applied to any organization.
00:34:02
Speaker
Any problems and it should be applied to, you know, businesses, food systems, immigration, you all this stuff like you have to look at the problem and then figure out the holistically what are the the inputs driving the issues. And then how do you how do you get in and start tackling that in a ah really challenging. fundamental way. And we tend to be very symptoms oriented and, you know, kind of quick fix system, ah symptom oriented. And ah when we start looking more at first principles, a big picture, and, but, the you know, the funny thing is, um so we have these global issues, okay, that we have
Local Solutions for Global Environmental Issues
00:34:43
Speaker
these global issues. The only way you can solve them is at the local level,
00:34:46
Speaker
Like you need everybody at the local level addressing things in a more holistic way. And then all of a sudden that, that daisy chains into global solutions because the, the way that I would do holistic management of an animal husbandry in, Montana, where we're at 1500 meters, and we have extremely harsh winters and stuff. like It's so incredibly different than where you are in a at an island environment that's subtropical. Now, there will be some overlap here and there, but there's shocking differences. And I think that the, you know, one of the the downsides of globalization is that we try to push a one size fits all approach to the whole world.
00:35:27
Speaker
And it sucks because it it doesn't address anybody's needs. You know, like people need to really figure out better how to address the needs on their individual levels. Like I i saw some, there were some people reversing desertification in the the edges of the Sahara and And they they do these kind of wind trap type things with particular plants. And it kind of reminds me of Dune where, you know, they capture moisture out of the wind, but they actually do that. And so they they start off with these these things that slow the air and you get some moisture and you start growing some plants and then they very...
00:36:10
Speaker
tentatively start bringing in some grazing animals and they're reversing the desertification of the Sahara Desert. And there's another one these things that, at you know, the point that we made in the book, um deserts are a symptom of ecological misuse. They aren't really a normal feature. it's It's really interesting, like in the United States, between Las Vegas and up to Salt Lake City and then kind of out going towards Denver, that used to be a massive grassland. It is basically a desert now.
00:36:43
Speaker
And ah there there was an old movie, 1930, something like that, called The Ocean of Grass. And it talked about this giant grassland. But this area was was ah grossly mismanaged. It was overgrazed. And and ah so you can overgraze an area, you can undergraze an area.
00:37:03
Speaker
But, ah you know, getting back in and and looking at kind of local solutions, like there are people in the desert southwest that are now employing these regenerative practices and where we used to have a scrub brush,
00:37:19
Speaker
very it's still a dry area but they're converting that back into grasslands like as part of the the book and the film in sacred cow uh diana interviewed ah a rancher down in the chihuahua desert and it's like when you drew when you're driving towards his place it's just cactus and scrub brush and like virtually nothing green and you go and go go and then out on the horizon you can see there's something What is that? And it's like chest high grass. And these these guys over a couple of, you know, decades have employed regenerative practices and where it was incredibly hard to grow anything there. And and they had historically overgrazed area. They've learned how to use portable fencing and move the animals around and whatnot. And so even though it's a very arid, dry landscape, it does get rain.
00:38:10
Speaker
But when when you don't have perennial grasses there, the rain falls, it runs off, and then that's it. But when you start converting the area to grasslands, the rain falls, it goes into the soil, these tap roots in the the grasses. Like if the grass is a meter tall, the roots can be two meters deep or or deeper.
00:38:31
Speaker
you know And so then that tends to push the water down into the soil and replenishes aquifers and it reduces the heat footprint.
Comparing Agricultural Methods
00:38:41
Speaker
And there's this really virtuous feed forward cycle on this stuff. And and you know just as ah as a side note, in the United States, most agriculture is a very debt driven process like the farmers just they they lease out giant tractors they they have to you know pay huge amounts of money for the fertilizer and crewing like yeah crazy the price is going crazy it and um what what's interesting is these regenerative approaches it's hard work it's it's definitely hard work it's it's not the quickest way to to be a millionaire by any means but it can largely be a non-debt driven system oh yeah like yeah
00:39:18
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny that you mentioned it because I just saw a rancher from Texas and he he was interviewed and he says like the way I'm successful is I don't go in debt and I don't buy things that I don't need. So he doesn't have a tractor he or maybe has an old small tractor. ah Yeah, so that's that's very interesting because farmers were Yeah, they were pushed in the direction of you got to modernize, you got to scale, you got to be one certain thing. like And that's what happened on our family farm too. like the The whole European Union after the World War was okay. we got
00:39:50
Speaker
We never want to have famine again. We need mass production. So either you're a cattle farmer or you either do this and it has to be at at a massive scale with lots of input and will give you subsidies. And that system is now completely falling apart and the farmers are um are very angry about it.
00:40:07
Speaker
But they also have to become resourceful and find the solutions that are there. Like even on our own family farm now we have well, well, chicken houses, we have cattle grazing on the fields. we We do events so that we can create additional revenue because it's just not enough today in the current political system. If you go regenerative.
00:40:27
Speaker
you you might have to bridge some time. So you've got to find other sources of income, which is also great because now it's a a visitor center. People can and learn, can see, they can buy the meat right then and there or eat.
00:40:40
Speaker
We do like even amazing Americans would love that. We do burger nights with with our beef. And so, yeah, it's it's really cool. So there's there's tons of solutions and I'd love to hear now from you and your perspective, why is this still such a marginal part of how the world works and how food is produced? Like we've we've kind of known it now for 10, 20, 30 years and still it's it's so much like underground, let's say.
00:41:10
Speaker
Why do you think that
Aging Farmer Demographic and Farm Consolidation
00:41:11
Speaker
is? Yeah, it's a really good question. I think there are a lot of factors to it. ah In the United States, I think the average age of our our farmers is now like 72 or something.
00:41:22
Speaker
they're They're all aging out. And as they age out, they're their children, by and large, do not take over the farms. So then they they sell the farm into a conglomerate. And so there's just been huge consolidation. you know So that's a thing. And these these large players that are consolidated, in some ways, they are not well incentivized to to do regenerative ah ranching and farming. I think that the... The incentives are more in the the small to medium size operator. the The larger players, once you hit a certain degree of scale, the farm subsidies and all that type of stuff, like it it becomes a little bit of like golden golden handcuffs. Like it's really difficult to to get out of those systems. Usually it's based on how much land you own, right? In Europe, you get a certain amount of subsidies based on your acreage or hectares.
00:42:15
Speaker
So then these big conglomerates, they get lots of subsidies and then that's almost a business model in and of its own. So they buy huge tractors and yeah farm whatever they can yeah in a certain way. Yeah. And I mean, in the United States, we have crazy... ah The incentives are so broken, like there are there are farmers that are paid not to grow food, you know, so they don't ah produce too many soybeans this year. So the prices plummet in in the market and stuff like that. And it's hard because you do have to protect farmers. Like one bad year could destroy a farmer, you know. And so i think...
00:42:54
Speaker
I think the subsidy system is a big part of why I'm mainly familiar with the United States. Like the subsidy systems here are, are really difficult, but also you do have to protect these, these farmers in it. Like if there is a bad year, like they have ah a bad crop or something like that, like that, that could ruin them. But I think we have to find some more market,
00:43:15
Speaker
based solutions around that i i think like in insurance around ah crop fail and stuff like that versus subsidies and you have to be really careful so that you don't get misaligned incentives uh you know but i i think that there's just been ah a tendency of people leaving agriculture so the the big players tend to aggregate and buy this stuff in there is kind of a reality that um The industrial food system is shockingly efficient at
Efficiency in Industrial Agriculture
00:43:43
Speaker
producing food. Now there's some external costs associated with it. like And this is some of the the stuff that we talked about in Sacred Cow. Like we are destroying our top soil with this this process.
00:43:54
Speaker
ah there was ah a thought that there's like 60 harvests left or something, and then the top cell be gone. and when we tried to track that down for Sacred Cow, like it it just it's a meme that just came out of a a a woman who was speaking at the World Health Organization, and just somebody asked her, how many harvests do you think are left? And she said, maybe 60. And so there's no other no research, no nothing, but it it it became this thing that's actually cited in scientific papers now. but we don't know how many harvests we have left, but we absolutely are destroying our topsoil. And when the topsoil is gone, that's it. You're not growing any food, whether it's cows or her or corn, you know? And so we have to figure out some way of dealing with that topsoil. And ah to your point, um, like that rotational grazing and you know, you do ah a crop and then a cover crop and then have the cover crop be grazed. And that is done to some degree, but we could do more of it for sure.
00:44:50
Speaker
But it's, um it it is interesting. ah The, the industrial food system is ah really good at producing calories. It's not great at producing nutritious food.
00:45:03
Speaker
And ah this is, you know, just one of the the things that we are are facing in the United States, we're facing ah ah economic crisis from the metabolic health issues that we have, like there's but pre COVID, I think the estimate was at 12% of the American population is metabolically healthy, post COVID, it's as low as 7%. I mean, we're incredibly unhealthy and it is shockingly expensive to deal with that. And so some way we need to really modify our our food system, like the junk food system in the United States, at least is, is it really propped up by the the farm subsidy process. And so we're subsidizing the production of cheap food that is turned into a highly addictive, hyper palatable food.
00:45:55
Speaker
That we can't stop eating. no And it makes us sick. And then that's going to bankrupt us, you know? And so it's, ah your question is really good. And I don't have great answers as to why regenerative ag hasn't displaced more things. Like it it is had it it is happening. It is, ah yeah there are more people doing it than, you know, have been. There's more people doing regenerative ag than since like the ah pre-industrial revolution, you know, which is when everybody did regenerative ag.
00:46:24
Speaker
Everybody did crops and cover crops and cows and they let one one field lay fallow and, you know, they did all this stuff because we didn't have the luxury of synthetic chemical fertilizers, ah you know, ah synthetic pesticide inputs and and stuff like that. Yeah.
00:46:45
Speaker
And again, I'm a little bit controversial in that I think that there will probably always be some need for some amount of synthetic chemical fertilizers and probably some need, like before we yeah we started rolling, you mentioned like the the robotic weed killing robots. you know i have I have some real optimism around some of that ah ah happening, but it won't work for all crops and it won't work for all situations. And i think and if you don't fix your soil, then it's just still going to be bad. It might yeah help the transition well might help to get out of the chemical usage. Inputs, yeah. ah But if you don't do it regeneratively, it's still going to be yeah super expensive. Yeah, yeah. So I think that people really need to be pragmatic about things. Like, yeah i one, it takes time to transition.
00:47:39
Speaker
And so when people are in a transition process, like you have to give them some some grace around that. and And again, like from location to location, some places will be more or less amenable to a, a you know, like a fully or ah a partially,
00:47:54
Speaker
regenerative system. I think at a minimum, we can figure out ways of not just destroying the topsoil of our croplands and grasslands. like If we just did that, and I think that's very doable, that's a huge win.
Topsoil Erosion and Its Economic Impact
00:48:08
Speaker
Alan Savory has said that the most expensive export the United States has right now is our topsoil because you look at how much of it blows out to sea and goes down the, you know, to the Gulf of Mexico and stuff through the the Mississippi River, um it's arguably our most valuable ah export. We get absolutely no economic benefit from it. We're just like us whilst blowing our topsoil away. um So if we just fix that, that's a huge win.
00:48:35
Speaker
And then I think ah we really do need to have a a revisiting of our farm subsidies programs it is with an eye towards the impact it has not just on kind of environmental health, but also individual human health or just kind of a reality that subsidizing the junk food industry is killing us, you know, and it's incredibly expensive, but these are some of the most profitable outside of pharma. These are like the most profitable companies in the world. You know, like, big sugar manufacturers, junk food manufacturers, like these things are shockingly profitable. And so it's, it's going to be hard to to pivot that stuff.
00:49:14
Speaker
No, that's yeah that's true. And it's it's the whole subsidy thing is is a difficult discussion because you you may want to abolish it, but then you end up with lots of cheap food from other countries getting imported.
00:49:27
Speaker
And then that is another that comes with another series of consequences. Yeah. yeah You know, the United States just just decides, okay Central America, you're going to grow our junk food. so yeah none of them Yeah. That does make sense. And on the other hand, ah the subsidies make farmers somewhat, maybe some people won't like hearing that, but it makes them kind of lazy in terms of like they don't innovate as much. they Also, they have kind of securities. And now it's kind of changing from what I see in Europe is like subsidies are starting to become more like you have to do something and then you get the subsidies like You have to do, now I think the rule in Belgium is you got to do 20% cover crops of your annual crop to be to be and ah to get your subsidies and you got to prove it.
00:50:17
Speaker
So moving into like showing the ecosystem services that farmers can provide, but then they get the subsidies, I think that could be a ah better way to transition it.
00:50:27
Speaker
Yeah. And you know, even... Even a layer more like I always get nervous when um like i wonder, i have no idea if that's a good idea or a bad idea. yeah You know, it's like the 20% cover crops. Like I really don't know.
00:50:40
Speaker
oh and yeah What would be interesting is if you improve your soil carbon content not over a five-year period and if your biodiversity of insects and birds increases like...
00:50:54
Speaker
it people respond to incentives. And so like, if we can figure out some ways of getting some ecologically impactful incentives, then I think that's a good thing. And the thing that makes me nervous is you have people in Washington or in, the you know, the centralized part of the the EU, Europe and Brussels, you know, they've maybe had a house plant before. They don't know what goddamn thing about it. You know, any of this. and And so it's important that those incentives are are well thought out, you know, or they could be a bigger disaster than the current system. Yeah, no yeah that's true. I was actually part of like ah a group that recommended to the European Commission. I mean, did a workshop. And one of the things that was brought up was exactly what you said. So when farmers can show that that there's more insight, like however, the biodiversity is increased and um
00:51:48
Speaker
that house. But also it's interesting when farmers, like we saw it on our own farm, we have like a beautiful hawk on our farm that's only in in the region of our farm and and north of France. And they're very rare.
00:52:02
Speaker
And so um the government said, okay, we we want to make sure that these animals live and they make they they make nests in in the grain fields. It's kind of their biotope. That's how they evolved with farming. And so we always protect them. And ever since my father also saw that, okay, this is good because they will take the mouse in the fields. So our crops will improve.
00:52:26
Speaker
He's now the one that put up like the special poles for them to to do what they like. They need certain things. So it's interesting when farmers can start to see like, oh, this is actually good. I have a hawk on my field. They're catching all the mouse.
00:52:40
Speaker
And finding ways to to incentivize or educate farmers on on all the benefits and how it's other than the subsidies that that that could be extremely helpful. here Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I suspect some of these places then hey, every Sunday you can come out and pay 10 euro, 20 euro to to birdwatch this unique family of hawks, you know, and then it becomes...
00:53:06
Speaker
Yeah, we have these groups at home. Bird watchers are crazy. They're absolutely crazy. like They're all camouflaged and they come to the farmer like, okay, seems to be very special.
00:53:18
Speaker
So that yeah that works. And then farmer can yeah obviously do guided tours, also create extra income of that. there's There's a lot of opportunities, I think, for farmers. I think farmers are sitting on a gold mine if they want to see it and and open their doors and
Creative Business Models in Farming
00:53:34
Speaker
change. and ah get creative. Obviously, that's not easy. Like in our farm, also my sister joined the business and she's doing marketing and branding and all that good stuff. But the great thing is we're we're creating lots of new jobs. Like we have more staff on the farm than ever. So it's really cool to to see that in rural rural jobs can be created too. So not everyone has to move to the city. So yeah, yeah we're getting towards the end of our conversation here. I just still
00:54:02
Speaker
have one more question. I'm just excited to hear your perspective also on the, obviously the new presidency and the new, um yeah, the new direction that ah RFK Jr. is going with farming. Yeah, I'd love to hear your take on that. do you see that as something positive? ah I think it is. in In Europe, a lot of people are very skeptical about it.
00:54:24
Speaker
So yeah, I'd love to hear your take on it. Oh man, you you've you finished off with the the really spicy meatball. Yes. um it You know, it's funny. um ah I think I did two tweets ah supporting RFK, like early when he was an independent candidate for for president, actually. yeah And i have gotten absolutely eviscerated for this. there's There's whole Reddit threads about, you know, what a horrible human being I am for supporting him and and stuff like that. ah But, you know,
00:55:00
Speaker
I've been talking about metabolic health issues for 25 years. I've been talking about regenerative agriculture, gosh, i do almost 20 years. You know, I mean, my my first public debate about this stuff was 2005. So it's years. um Soil health, all that jive.
00:55:19
Speaker
I didn't think I would ever live to see a prominent political figure talk about metabolic health, regenerative ag, and soil health in one way. one sentence and and he does. Does he get all of it right? No. But ah when you look at the past five ah ah secretaries of health and human service, they didn't talk about any and of this stuff at all. But what's interesting about RFK Jr. is that he, so he has, what I find generally is that people who dislike him, dislike his positions on vaccines. Right. And they so dislike his positions on vaccines that they are incapable of seeing any possible benefit anywhere Yeah, that's what I come across too when i yeah I talk positively about his work and why it's so important for the U.S. and for food and
00:56:14
Speaker
changing ah farming and like this is the first politician at such a high level in the world that that is that is talking about regenerative farming and and also knows it's not just like greenwashing or saying we're going to be more sustainable farming, blah, blah, like it's actual legitimate things.
00:56:33
Speaker
But then they say, oh, yeah, yeah the vaccine thing. Yeah. Yeah. and And so like, whatever, whatever um reach this podcast will have, I'll bet that like 90% of the conversation is, is this not all the other stuff we talked about, but it'll be this. And it'll most likely be that because, you know, we we spoke even nominally favorably towards RFK Jr. It's like, oh, those two guys are assholes. They don't know what they're talking about. They're crazy. um And it's just, ah we've reached a point, the world is really complex. It it legitimately is.
00:57:11
Speaker
And I guess that there are single topic items that people are like, well, if they're for this, then I'm for them no matter what. yeah yeah Or if they're against this, then I'm against them no matter what. And this is really what what the story is with RFK. And I would just throw out there to to people, do you think metabolic health, like you could, all I would encourage people to do is if you don't like his positions on vaccines, tackle that. And then can you also partition in your mind that he might be on the right track with metabolic health, regenerative ag, and the importance of our our soil health? yeah And can those two things exist simultaneously? And can you take him to task on these things that you don't like? Like, I saw him go after ah some food additives and stuff like that. And I honestly think that's just like, that that is so not an important topic relative to other things. I really think it's majoring in the minors. And so...
00:58:11
Speaker
I haven't supported him wholesale on every single topic. I actually pushed back on a number of things. And interestingly, I've seen him come out where he was going to, he was, he had some thoughts on one topic and then a lot of people push back on it and he kind of reviewed it. And he's like, i think I was wrong where I was before. yeah in real time And human. Everyone's human. Like you're doing the best you can. And the fact that he's human Now you know people you like you you were let's say 10 years ago you were vegan I even also was like vegan for a while and I tried it because I thought that that's a good thing and it just didn't work for me and so now I have a different viewpoint on that matter and in fact my girlfriend is vegan and it works for her so good like
Value of Diverse Viewpoints in Democracy
00:58:56
Speaker
right figure out what works for you
00:58:58
Speaker
And I think it's like in a democratic system, you can have different viewpoints that are even completely contrasting and they can coexist. Like that that should be possible.
00:59:10
Speaker
yeah It should be, but we're moving into a world where people are making that not possible. And I think it's really dangerous, you know, and and ah you know, the the current administration, including ah RFK is just a a shockingly,
00:59:26
Speaker
polarizing topic and it it addresses things that are, you know, fundamental to our our global and individual health, you know, like ah the way that we, what should we do about climate change? Like, should we cut off the gas and oil to everybody and make them just deal with like, uh, solar and, and, uh, wind. And if you live in Germany and it's cloudy nine months of the year, tough shit, like you don't have any power, like Germany is pivoting right now. Like they probably went harder into the green energy story than anybody in the EU. yeah
01:00:04
Speaker
And they've gotten crushed from it because it's, it's just not a viable solution yet. And, and so I think we have to be, um, pragmatic about the way we do these things. And we need to be able to have a, ah hopefully a minimally emotional discussion around this stuff. And, and you know, if they're like, again, if if people want to have a discussion around ah RFK and his position on, on vaccines broadly, great, let's do that. But let's be able to, but then let's also be able to have a discussion around his approach to metabolic health and,
01:00:39
Speaker
and is leaning into regenerative ag. Like I've seen people who historically have been very excited about regenerative ag and like the paleo diet and stuff like that, but they so dislike ah RFK's position on, on vaccines that now they're, they're like literally like c pro Monsanto, pro Pfizer.
01:01:01
Speaker
And I'm like, are you shitting me? Like, really? Like i just, this is crazy, you know, because they're literally incapable of being able to partition these different characteristics and and go forward. So again, like a really good question. Am I hopeful that RFK will be able to do some good stuff? Yeah, I i am. And I think he's he's had some wins. I think he's had some misses. I've called out the misses. And I think that that's what we all should do, but we we should be able to ah to handle that in a way that we're we're not just like screaming into the wind and, and no you know, it yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:01:39
Speaker
No, fully agree. It's like, yeah, in a well-functioning democratic system, different points can exist. And that's actually the purpose of it. They have to exist. It's not even... yeah yeah Yeah, that's what democracy really is. And yeah, it's interesting what I learned from one of my mentors is also like the more different viewpoints you can handle at one given time, the better your life is.
01:02:01
Speaker
Like if I can and believe different things at the same time that are both true, but they're also a little contradicting. If you can just understand that that that both are right and true or that right and wrong is not even that important.
01:02:16
Speaker
It's just like that's that's true. The supply is here, the supply is there. Yeah, yeah. Your life is going to be so much easier and you don't have to end up in going on forums and raging about something or or having all these people going crazy on on certain topics. Yeah, I think it's an interesting evolution that we're going through. and I'm excited to see where where it's going next. and I'm committed to regenerative farming and design and all that work because it just makes sense. and The work you've done, ah is your book is an amazing proof of it. so yeah Very cool to have had the opportunity to be able to have you on the show and talk to you.
01:02:56
Speaker
so yeah Rob, any final words any final words of advice that we have for the listeners Most of our listeners are are of young people that are wanting to step into regenerative businesses. They want to do something good for the environment, for the world, but they also want to obviously make a business out of it. like yeah What's your final piece of advice for people and stepping into that?
01:03:19
Speaker
Man, I, I, again, you ask really great questions. You do a great, great, great show. And I think doing stuff like this, where it's a passion is, it's super important for everybody. Like do, do something that you're, you're passionate about. I think that that carries through ah to the rest of the world. um i you know With AI and all kinds of other you know things, we will live through the greatest rate of change of any humans in history. like More is going to change in our lifetimes and at at a greater rate than ever before.
01:03:54
Speaker
And the the most challenging thing for any organism to deal with when we look at ah biology, ecology, extinction, is that ah things that can't adapt to rates of change go extinct.
01:04:09
Speaker
And this is true at like a species level and at an individual level. And people are going to be need to be incredibly adaptable and flexible. And your your commentary there near the end about people need to be able to hold disparate thoughts in their head at the same time, just even as a mental exercise. Mm-hmm.
01:04:30
Speaker
This is going to be fucking non-negotiable going forward. People who are so inflexible that it's like there is only one worldview and only one way to look at stuff.
01:04:42
Speaker
You will not adapt. Those people will not adapt. Yeah. And so I would actually direct them back to your commentary that at a minimum, people just need to be able to hold different ideas in their head at the same time.
01:04:58
Speaker
That doesn't necessarily mean that you will have the ultimate truth in that moment. But the fact that you're able to do that, it will allow you to be open to finding truth. know yeah and i And I think that when when the world is changing as rapidly as it is, what's true today may not be as true tomorrow, you know, on ah on a host of different topics. And so that would be the thing that it would encourage people to do is be look towards resilience, look towards adaptability, and you'll you'll probably do pretty well. And I guess one final thought is there will be a lot of change. We are going to go through ah probably...
01:05:34
Speaker
some rough patches as the world ah ah changes at this rapid rate. But I also think it's going to be a very optimistic future. Like i'm very, very optimistic about the future.
01:05:44
Speaker
um The Great Depression, World War I, World War II were difficult times for people to get through. And during those times, it probably looked incredibly bleak and like there was nothing good that was on the horizon. But the the best days that we had were ahead of us at those points. And I think that You know, we're in some tough times right now. There's a lot of transition, a lot of upheaval, but I do think that our best days are ahead of us.
01:06:08
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. That's a great way to end the show. So thank you very much, Rob, and hope to have you again in the future to give you more updates on the work you're doing.
01:06:19
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you.