Transcript:
Regen Ray: Hello soil lovers, welcome to another episode of Secrets of the Soil. I’m Regen Ray And I’m so excited to chat to our guest today, someone who I’ve been personally working with and doing his online course. Brian Wehlburg, welcome to the podcast.
Brian: Morning Ray, thanks very much for having us. And it’s my new best student. Thanks very much
Regen Ray: slides. The cash later. Thanks very much. Awesome. I just wanted to say that I’m really grateful for, you know, being in the same room with you many times over the last couple of months, and I’m really excited to dig deeper into our soils today. So can you share with our soil lovers how you got onto your soil journey and a little bit about who you are?
Brian: eFantastic. Thanks for the opportunities. My I’m a born and bred third generation Zimbabwean. And yes, and we’ll started with a level of wildlife. Born and bred on a farm. And that was a wildlife conservancy. And then moving on to my own property where we managed the game ranching business as well as cropping and livestock. And that’s where I sort of came into contact with Alan Savory’s work. At the time, the public thinking was burned every, every four years because it was natural. And so we started doing similar sorts of activities like that, but we started seeing impassionate tons and scrub more weeds more background. And we were losing resilience and resilience in wild life is really important because you can’t just go down to the sale yards and restock when you have a good season, you can’t get on there and buy a couple of buffalo and elephants and what have you. There’s just no capacity for that. So building resilience into your landscape is a key component for bard life in particular , so you can contact with Savory’s work and then develop that and have some really fantastic outcomes on on our property. You have a different circumstance, but we managed to do some amazing things and we were moving sort of animals fully to any time today. Huge densities like three and a half thousand animals factor and had amazing results from that, which led me on to become an educator so I kind of certified with Holistic management international and Savory Institute in America, but they have reaches all around all around the world. Today in Australia, we have about 20 educators who are certified and the really exciting thing is that there are quite a few new educators in the wings. And the really good thing is, are a lot of more women coming on board, very good, which is fantastic and younger people, and we really need to to diversify that educated that’s because at the moment, it’s principally based around agriculture. Yeah. And we need to expand that because I think Australia, for example, eighty six percent Australia lives and in towns and cities, and that’s where the power, that’s where the boat, that’s where the money is. And that will, if used correctly by farmers and land managers to become more regenerative to change their practices. So we need to start and I’m really excited because I’m doing quite a bit of work now with businesses in town wanting to make better decisions. And at its core, that’s realistic management so that a lot of people get really excited, and rightly so in terms of its impact on the environment and using livestock as a tool, which is like one of the key things that gets done bloodline all the time. But it’s principally just a way that helps humans make better decisions. So, yeah, we got we got involved with that together. And in about twenty two years ago, we immigrated to Australia and ended up in Queensland managing some cattle properties up there. And that’s fantastic peoples and fantastic country. And yeah, it’s just really exciting stuff up there. And then about 11, 12 years ago, we moved down to, I always call it paradise on mid-north coast of New South Wales, and we’re doing positive pork and beef and pasture pigs on six hundred acres. And again, have had a really enjoyable time there and recently have just sold the property and sold the herd. And so those my life, I’m living in town, which has its benefits, but I look back at I’m going into the last six years. The Chinese side has just begun to become so busy. So about seven years ago, we got involved with. In New South Wales, we developed a nationally accredited diploma in Holistic management, and that really exploded onto this demand was huge. It was grant funding available and because it was national accredited, you came out with a pathway and credits towards a degree various degrees. More recently, Southern Cross University is running the regenerative degree, is it not as well as master’s? And so we’ve been involved with that as well in helping a little bit of the development, but also in the training, especially around the plant grazing. So, yeah, lots, lots of buzz at the moment. And I keep saying to focus on, you know, covid is terrible, but in a way, I think it’s it’s got people found sense more about what’s important in life . Absolutely. And that sort of holistic management is at its core. This is a way of making better decisions based on what do you value? I do want to feel less the time, and I think people are focusing more and more on quality of life and health and connections. And just shifting away from working harder and making more money, which is very narrow and then a sort of a focus. And I’m good at that. Yeah, it’s a management where they really have problems.
Regen Ray: Yeah, yeah. I couldn’t agree more and I’ve seen a big change in that myself as well. And I, it’s refreshing, but also unchartered waters, you know, it’s a bit different. It’s it’s uncertain as well. So I love that and thanks for sharing your journey. And I’m curious to know like you, you’re speaking of very different wildlife in Africa to here in Australia, how it was that change like the animals function, the same doesn’t matter how size they are.
Brian: Yeah, yeah. I think size depends on how much energy is in that environment. So lots of energy, you can afford to have bigger animals. So you know, I’ve been around Australia for long, but all around the world, often the first enterprise zone, one good country was was often milk and beef, and they require really high levels of energy and good nutrition. Then as we as as those environments degrade, which ultimately is the loss of energy, we moved through on things like dairy, meat and hair production. And so, you know, depend on which environment and you will know which you certainly wouldn’t plan their dairy in the middle of the Sahara. You know you’re trying to det for that. But if we if we know that we can change those environments through our decision-making and, you know, we don’t have to look for in history to see that that’s deserts in the world, grasslands and solar, a huge amount of biodiversity. Yeah. Now they have these massive herds of caribou, bison, all of these kangaroos that try to go on. What he did was if we had those huge numbers of those big animals, they would need to be supported by huge number of plants, huge number of microbes, huge number of fungi. So, you know, if if those environments, it said, you know, if there are paintings in the middle of the Sahara, a giraffe, if the indigenous paintings here of all the animals there is not heavy in places where they’re very scarce today, you know, that’s that’s reality. And those environments were very different and they could support larger biodiversity and larger animals at the end of the day. Yeah. So, you know, again, we’ve done it because in that short space of time, there hasn’t been a huge planetary environmental unrest advantage. You’re right, over the course territory, there’s a huge extinctions and all the big damages. That is the one always climate because it’s on satellite image. The Gobi Desert was spreading at ten thousand square kilometers every year. Today, it’s it’s down to two and a half thousand square kilometers every year as that country extends from Garston trees, shrubs, whatever it is within six butterflies, birds, bees and people. Yeah, accept plants into desert. All that stuff go somewhere else. Yeah. You know, the people need to eat, so they’re gonna be finding food from somewhere else. All of that wildlife obviously knows that it can’t be relocated since it just dies out, and all of that life form is basically carbon. And so, you know, you often you hear climate skeptics and deniers and what have you. But when you think of it, as soon as land turns to desert and you know, there’s so much evidence of that, whether it’s in the rock paintings of the sand people, Aboriginal people all around the world, you know, in deserts where there was life as a grass, well shrubs, trees, birds, bees these butterflies, turns in the desert. All that life is carbon based, and as that life disappears with the carbon gone or somewhere else. Yeah. As we lose biodiversity, which then became the catch catch phrase because desertification, you know, there’s a lot of desertification 46 years on to stop it anyway. And then we start becoming focused on biodiversity loss and death. Today, when you read figures, 84 percent of the based in Europe have gone all that insect life. Is carbon. You know, the Western rhino, for instance, in Africa, basically it was a carbon creature. Now with all that, the carbon that inhabits the bodies of those thousands and thousands and thousands of Western rhinos or or kangaroos or not, all of that life for them would have been basically carbon. It’s a building block of life. Yeah. So again, all that carbon is moved somewhere else. So when you look at desertification, biodiversity loss and now climate change, it’s all just the movement of carbon. From one area to another. And carbon is a building block of life, so removes lose carbon from the soil surface and will reduce the cost of 400 pipe a million, the water that we have in space for that carbon that should be creating life on Earth. And it’s not it it’s up in space, regardless of whether you believe it’s changing the climate or not. We have to do something about it because we have to bring carbon back down to the ground. Otherwise you and I won’t have anything to eat and we won’t be supported by, you know, the other life around us the next day we’re going to. I think there are certainly human gut. I the last 40, 50 years has really opened people’s eyes to our relationship with every other living thing on the planet. Yeah, know we like to think somehow humans are in control and we can take all the switches and make it work. And in our sins, the barrier is that of the people you put on. Moisturizer is a guy who goes right through your skin. Yeah, skin is not a barrier at all. And today, with our understanding of all bacteria and the benefits of bacteria to humans, we seem to see and appreciate it more and more. That relationship between all life it doesn’t matter what it is. And if we reduce life, it becomes harder. Yeah. So, you know, I ‘d have see a huge change in the thought climate being involved in all walks of society to accept that, you know, we need to nurture the environment if we’re going to have a happy, healthy lives. Yeah, which is great. Yeah.
Regen Ray: Well, I love that. And I think highlighting the importance of carbon and I want to stick with this for a little bit. You’ve mentioned about, you know, the carbon sitting and going somewhere and not in the right place. It’s in the atmosphere rather than in our grounds. Do you feel that w’re still on the right side of the tipping point to reverse that out? Or do humans need to get to that point of crisis before they do something about it? What’s your approach to? Getting back into the soil and.
Brian: I suppose when you when you look at the science behind the adoption of new innovation, stuff like that, the sweet spot somewhere between 15 and 18 percent between 15 and 18 per cent of any community back on the new way, whatever it is, whether it’s a brand of toothpaste or the way we manage our environment. And then the system worked. And once you reach that sweet point between standards and everybody else is somebody that anybody comes on board and change happens, but easy. Now, often, as you said, that’s driven by crisis. And really? Well, who wants to know the crisis resolved in and often crisis doesn’t drive a sustained change? You know, we’ve had translated advisers, we’ve had all of those things before and those people hunkered down. You know, when you have a crisis, you brace yourselves and wait for the crisis to pass. Yup. And I think it’s not all about us, but you know, we’ve had the fire and now we’ve got a covid and this crisis of come in and around the world, we’ve seen an escalation of it doesn’t know where it is, whether it’s fires, whether it’s droughts with it’s flooding or these things seem to be escalating. And you know, that then starts driving sustained change where we’ve got to change because if it’s not a fire, it’s going to be a flood. So it’s going to be something else, a mouse plague or something. And then suddenly that draws sustained change. But for me, the good news, especially in ground holistic management, it can be anything if, if, if we want humans to change, to them a positive vision. And that’s something that really connects and sinks to them change, it becomes really easy. You know, you again, I often use the example of people who went through the terrible things in Presumable camps, things like that. It wasn’t the fastest or the smartest or the quickest or whatever do managed to navigate it through that constantly changing people environment they lived in. It was the ones that were most responsive in the death, but also the ones that had a vision of what it was like when it all ended, because that gives you hope. And so that’s that’s one of the main things to me around holistic management that will drive and sustained change we want. We know a lot of people are latching onto this, whether it’s doing or whether it’s something else, and we need to look beyond that because these are just methods of moving us forward. So what’s beyond that? Because there’ll be new techniques, new ideas, new knowledge, I mean, just the knowledge that’s coming in around managing soil. Today we know more about sites that can be changed in soil than at any time in human history. You know more about a deep oceans. We know more about the fire. We know that we have more technology today. We’ve gone just over 100 years and learning to fly to the ancient TV phase. Yup. What about technology is not about knowledge. We have the knowledge we can. We can turn things around. It’s a desire of people to do that because change change takes courage and takes effort. And unless we’ve got I mean, drawing us in that direction, we feel from a comfortable now this is the way Dad did it. This is why we’ve always done it. And even though often we know it’s not the right thing to be doing. That’s our fallback position.
Regen Ray: Yeah. Or sometimes people trust in the system and say, Well, the system’s got it. The surely that it’ll protect us all. This group of people have known what they’re doing.
Brian: uthofAll the all the learnings running all stuff together. Yeah. And so, you know, those people have made more and more of them coming up and being visual today in wanting a different life for themselves. Or it is the life of their children or have a really clear vision about the future they want. And again, it’s not a it’s not a narrow vision about, you know, just me being happy if I want to be happy, what is happiness? Yeah. And also me as happy as a life, as a barrier. Yeah, I’m happy and it stops digging into feelings and values because, you know, I think as the culture, as as as the whatever the brought up feelings and values and messy, complicated, don’t go there. Yup. From an early age, especially if you’re a male and you know, you don’t don’t, don’t drive and they won’t touch that emotion because it’s a sign of weakness. But what we know today is that emotion. Actually drives every decision you ever made. Yeah. And so it’s not actually really clear about the values and feeling you want in life. No wonder we make decisions that destroy the environment that hurt people we love. You know, maybe our children or our families and all that and no one wakes up in the morning, says I’m going to go destroy my headache or hurt someone that I love. Hmm. But we do. We make these bad choices and optimistic because we focused on what’s happening right now without a clear vision of what it needs to look like in the future. And that’s really apart of the holistic management and saw that in a moving house around or something. And that’s why Alan started his journey. Allan Savory and I started in the big game country looking at the divine guidance and seeing how they played a major role in just maintaining that environment. And today, sadly, those animals just did. So was with cow and sheep, you know, livestock and matters greatly. They can do a fantastic job. And it’s again, that’s a big shift in thinking is moving away from the livestock, being just a unit of production coming to make money. So, I mean, to pay the school fees actually principally during your livestock is a tool. To maintain healthy environments or improve environments. That we could then provide you with a healthy family, a healthy lifestyle, changes, etc. and that ripple effects once we actually acknowledge the animals they’re the tool. That becomes a really exciting arena, and I think a lot of people come to Holistic the management training because their excitement was that potential, all of animals managed correctly to improve environments. And I say we we all used to be a part of animals or, you know, they’re not natural. Also, for god sake is not natural. Yeah, it’s just a tool. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, to manage the animals correctly and you’ll pick it up from the trading office out of people. Just think of yourself walking on the beach. You’ll see plotters like myself walking on the beach and you’ll see my footprints, and it’s all about compaction, compaction, compaction. And then you’ll see a jogger jogging and you’ll see his footprint in the big leagues in Mexico, hole disturbed soil surface. It’s not because I’m hard nosed or not. It’s got nothing to do with its muscle structure. It has everything to do with what taking my brain as to the level of disturbance thoughts in some source, really thrive of a disturbance. Now, whether you create a disturbance or if it’s in the back garden or a tractor or a cow or a sheep or alpaca , that’s that’s the choice we make. But the first thing is is being able to say. The cow, the sheep alpaca, you know, if you imagine kangaroos, well, you can manage the Kangaroos. But the single best guess is using the animal as a tool. And there’s also, let’s say, the always put the cell down, you know, they’re reproducing cells and if you want to got to eat or they appreciate on your. Impulse. Yes. So when you start doing livestock as a tool, it just opens up huge potential. And so all around the world, so we’ve got people who figure this one out. You know, so we’ve got a of livestock. We can use a livestock as tool . What’s your vision and goal, which is going to drive your decision-making, you know, if you can start thinking about and said, so how that landscape going to be for me to have a good life? Hmm. And my family and my grandchildren flowing creeks for a fish full of life, cherry trees, soil is rich. And now just recently I got a cracker of a string. I’m getting so much excitement on all of the communication channels, whether it’s one of the sample size programs that people actually hear in worms out in the paddock. You know, when we’re in office and I encountered was an island in the Hunter, and every time the Sun came out from behind the cloud, you hear the smoke as the we sat down in their little holes. Yeah. And you know, the season has been fantastic for the people. Get really excited about worms. Yeah, and it’s kind of a dung beetles scratching around and do stuff. I’m really excited about that, because then that’s fantastic. Yeah, because it’s all part of the big picture. Yeah. We get excited about that. I got a $3000 freak out of it. But people are really excited about it and reading about it today. And if we can get it, if we can get the bulk of Australia also excited about improving the environment and the ways of doing it, you know, using livestock and whether you want to eat livestock would not accept this much of it.
Regen Ray: Yeah. And I know that’s a big kind of debate on the internet. Yeah. You know, and we’ll dig deeper in that a little bit. But you keep referring to like making better decisions. And I hear and I’ll be honest, like when I came into the holistic management course, I didn’t feel like I thought, we’re going to like, talk about grazing and animals in the first sessions was more about mindset and thinking and making decisions and paradigms and coming from my business models like almost refreshed going, Oh wow, like this is applied in this space as well. How important is like that decision making and that paradigm and that mindset when it comes to holistic grazing opposed to just looking at grass and moving herds around again?
Brian: It’s everything. You know, I often say often I know of quite a lot of cases where people have really just really focused on, you know, just put in lots of fencing, lots of paddock next meal animals as often as possible and then sells out, you know, because they haven’t actually catered for the social component or even the financial component. So Holistic management is as a decision making framework helps us balance these social and environmental and the financial. As humans, we really struggle with complexity. You know, we’re really good in the linear fall, if I say to, you know, get outside of count the cars coming down the road, everybody can do it. If I sitting outside and count the cars and the buses coming simultaneously. Very few of us can do it. Cars, buses and bicycles. None of us could do those three things, and here we are as as land managers, managing livestock, managing climate, managing family’s suppliers, customers managing finance, managing their amazing biodiversity above and below the surface. And then when you think about what we call managed tree things that are happening simultaneously. You know, so what chance do we got with our current thinking? And, you know, think about this in Australia as we tend to travel long distances? Maybe not so much at the moment, but you know, we travel huge distances every square inch. We travel costs as a result of someone’s choices, someone’s decisions. And a lot of that country is pretty good. But there’s also a huge amount that is deteriorating. It’s eroding. That’s losing biodiversity and. And it’s a result of human decision-making. You don’t know whether it’s increasing in fires, increase floods and droughts. You know, we often see this as. Three ends of the spectrum. But really, the burdens of the same thing as we destroy our soil as part of our soil, as we make our soil less receptive to moisture. We will have more floods. We will have more droughts and droughts and floods. All characteristics of the same problem. A poor water cycle? Yes. Again, saying that no one wakes up in the morning to destroy my water cycle. But we see it happening all the time and it’s our inability to manage complexity that is is the problem. So the core is this isn’t a human decision, that is what it’s about. And so what’s so terrible as he progressed from his time in in the game environment, managing these huge areas are being deserted and that the interconnectedness of everything, whether it was lions and buffalo and all that stuff and figuring out, you know, the key component and also bringing in the concept of time. I mean, that’s been around for ages all the way. That is, talk about the golden fleece of the sheep being able to manage animals. He created with outcome. We’ve known this for ages, but I think the largely we brought to the end. The constant focus on trying to be productive and feed our families. Yeah, and we do both. Can we be productive our families and improve the environment? Absolutely. Yeah. And that’s a goal that everybody should have. But our inability to focus holistically like that limits us that we need to focus on making money. We’ll fix up the environment later, or we’ll spend more time with our children later on. That just doesn’t come. Yeah. So that’s about holistic management. It allows us to manage this complexity of life, and it doesn’t matter whether you manage land or not. Mm-Hmm. You know, people in towns today, they have huge power to change the terms of Australia to change the landscape of the whole of Australia. You know, whether it is national parks, whether it’s forestry, whether it’s grazing land, dairy, land, sheep land doesn’t matter, cropping up the vote and the consumer really has the power. Mm-Hmm. And when the consumer starts saying, I’m not going to buy that, these because I don’t believe it’s doing the right thing for me and my family is not providing clean water, it’s not providing clean air and it’s not healthy food. When people started making that choice in pounds, farmers will change. Yes, actually, it will change just like that. And we’ll be looking back saying, God, what were we doing?
Regen Ray: I can’t wait. I can’t wait.
Brian: And I think the new agriculture is going to be all about life. Mm-Hmm. Where’s the old agriculture is all about death. Yes. You know, whether it’s pesticides the kerocides , you know herbicides cide is death as suicide. Yup, the alternate culture is largely about killing things. Yes. And nature is not about killing things. Nature nature’s about nurturing, and it’s nature’s about preserving stuff and life. And if we go against nature by killing things nature is bigger than all of us, humans will disappear off the planet. Nature will continue water cycle continue everything and carry on. We just want to be part of it.
Regen Ray: Yeah, I agreed.
Brian: So the choice is ours. We can be part of it, or we can try and work against it, but we’re not going to win. And then change is happening right now as we speak. More and more people are either voting with the power buying power, the vote or actually some fantastic people making those changes in the landscape. In the pasture cropping of being called sources. Bruce Maynard’s work, just huge numbers of people trying things. And I suppose that’s one of the big problems with with the change is there’s never going to be a textbook. The people looking at those regen ag people want to analyze it and pull it apart. So what is regen ag and regen ag a pathway? I love taking somethings work and just talks about it and you can relate it to region and you know, you can you can go to the gym, pump iron, work out and you come home and look at yourself in the mirror. No change. And you go to the next day, you go the gym Pump body workout. You can make it and then change it gradually. Your body starts changing and it’s going to be the same in agriculture. You know, there isn’t a point to a moment where you can get a thing and say, I’m a regenerative. We all make those decisions. Those little changes and decision by decision that will lead us towards a regenerating, healthy, happy environment community. So there’s a lot of effort going in and trying to define what is this regenerative thing? Yes. And it’s not a it’s a journey.
Regen Ray: Yep, I agree. I couldn’t agree with you more. And the way that you used pathway, I think, is really a great way of capsulating that it is actually one of the questions that I normally ask people is like, what is regenerative mean to you? And you’ve already done that? You know, and I think you’ve hit the nail on the head and and there is a bit of a problem of trying to define it and putting it into a little box and say, Tick, you’re doing this, this and this. And I think when you really understand the principles and the way of regenerating, it’s hard to do that. And yeah, and I want to just sit on this moment and the soil lovers listening to this podcast, like really hear what Brian’s saying about the power is in the people and the consumers? You know, I think that is what pushes change in our supply versus demand is the marketing 101. If the demand is there to grow more wholesome, we’re regeneratively conscious chemical free food. People will have no choice but to deliver that. You know, I think it is now time to realize to not blame. Well, it’s not at the shops or we’re waiting for legislation. This will change when it comes from the ground up, and that’s what I’ve loved. Being in this space is just seeing the number of people creating, innovating and nurturing this, this these way of living and that hopefulness. So I want I want to thank you for highlighting that and just really giving us a space to think about that. And some times people think, Well, what can I do? I don’t have land. And that was one of my concerns. I live in an apartment, and yet I still did the holistic management course and still doing it and being blown away with like this is more than just owning land. This is about viewing the world through a different way, a different paradigm, a different set of glasses. Come on, you take the old filter out, you put the new fitrony hink . Oh my God, look at all this stuff that I wasn’t seen before and it was right there in front of our eyes the whole time. You know, and so I think I butchered a quote that you said in one of our classes, once where it’s some, you can correct it. It’s on the lines of like seeing is believing, but what you believe is what you see, you know?
Brian: So I, you know, I keep my heart. And that’s nice , I think, one of the one of the things that really stuck with me. So we were supplying one of the local ideas with with pastured eggs. And I happened to be in the idea of the chickens stacking them all nice and neatly. So I figured out, by the way, to deal with those eggs and a person came up and I don’t know the conversation. And she said, Oh, that’s eggs. A terribly expensive. And I kind of looked in a shopping trolley and there was tilly the bottle of the Coke. And so people have the power to make a choice. You know, issues to pay an extra two dollars for eggs that are good for the health of your family, the environment, or do we choose to spend it on something else like two liters of coke ? And when people really connect with, you know, and I keep saying this, I think covid’s thing , what does a good life look like? It’s about being healthy. It’s about having a healthy environment. It’s about having quality time with people around you. What’s going to survive that? Is it going to be that putting that $2 on a bottle of coke, for instance, or buying that dozen eggs Raised by a person whose kids are the same school as your kids? Yup. What it comes down to that kind of decision making and for people to. To be able to make the right decisions, either, but I have the information, and today, you know, it’s so easy to get information . There’s so much information. The trick is to sift through it. But ultimately, it comes back down to a decision that those people are choosing to do this or that there’s a choice. And when more people say, no, we wanted to choose the pastured eggs or whatever it is, we’ll see, you know, everybody farmers producers taking on those those technologies because it’ll be so much easier for them. And six years ago, the farmers and all the rich people in the town. Today, that’s not the case. Farmers, generally that the other end of the scale, the wheels moved all of those cities. And there’s this almost looks to me, you know, a lot of kids who had not commissioned a model commercial supermarket yet again. I think this kind of decision making helps us connect more with our city, which is really important. I think again, that’s that change is happening at farmers markets even before covid hit. We’re popping up everywhere, and I farmers market on for everybody, a lot of farmers are farmers because I don’t want to talk to people and to farmers markets, maybe not for them. But the fact that there is this growing demand and that’s being expressed through people going to farmers markets, wanting to talk to the farmer, wanting to feel that they’re buying good, healthy food again, I think is a really clear indicator of the way we’re heading. And it’s just building more and more steam, I think, because I had a little to three years ago. The increase in farmers market activity in the eastern states in America like seventy four percent. Yup, it was. It was in it. And even though tech companies were recording that kind of increase in this step. So there is is a huge demand by people wanting to know where their food was. And yes, or in some research done looking at communities that have survived crisis, whether it was the plague, whether it was black beans, whether it was the Second World War or they’ve gone back and looked at communities who had managed crisis really well and come through the other end of that. So they basically physically took it down to three things, and the first one was get to know your community. Because there won’t be a health system, there may not even be a doctor, might be a neighbor down the road is to tease you up when it comes to something else. So get to know the people around, you know, a lot of people that I don’t even know their neighbors. Yep. If you want to live in a happy helpful connected community, then you’ve got to get to know your neighbors. And those are probably and especially going to family and neighbors are the most important people outside your family. But there are other people I’ve got your back when there’s blood and fire, you know all these problems going on. So I know your community is critical to allow us to survive change. The other people I was get out of it, you know, so if we’re looking at farming, you know, if we can start using tools that regenerate themselves with solar power is fantastic. You know, that’s going to make us more profitable. And if we can get start working with nature building, so the building sort of life getting all and working for us, we will become more comfortable. And the final bit of research on this study highlighted. Was the first one was his native community, get out of it in the final one was unhealthy because again, unhealthy communities, unhealthy people, fade away , in boxes. Yup. And because once you understand holistically, we are on board. You know, there’s there’s no there’s no barrier between me and this room and the garden outside. There’s no physical barriers. It. It’s about having a healthy environment as well as a healthy body, the two inseparable. You can’t have a healthy body in your environment is unhealthy. That’s right. And so, you know, those are the three things that we want to get through crisis and keep moving forward. It’s in a community where neighbors get out of it and live in a healthy environment and, you know, we can impact all three of those just throughout the season. You know, we have choices. Do we move in this direction? Yeah. And that is where holistic management comes in get allows us to make those choices. And the first stage is creating a really clear vision of what does that happy, healthy last look like? And I often simplify it down to care flowing streams of water to drink and happy healthy families playing, working and loving together. If she’s in that sentence, if you think about it, it brings joy to your heart and it’ll it’ll influence your decision making things. It’s as simple as that. There are a lot of people make it really complex, and some organizations it is complex because organizations do. But when you break it down to the individual, eventually it can be as simple as that. So another example, which I probably shared with you as well, you know, you could be walking down the street and someone can bump into, Oh, you’re an idiot, you know? Now most of us react and I say, you might turn around and have a lot irritating . You bumped into me. Yeah, but if you use the word green glass, I’m looking through a different lens. If your lens was, I really need to have the support and love and connection with all the people around me. If someone bumps into you in the street because you’re an idiot, how do you respond? You’d probably say, well, sorry, there’s something wrong. Can I help you? Hmm. You believe in a different response. And that’s a choice. Yup. Depending on your vision down the track. And you know, that’s just the people. What about our response to all of us for our response to the moss? All choose whatever it is. Are they just a piece of a problem or are they part of the environment? And we need to fix the environment, and this is
Regen Ray: love that I couldn’t agree with you more. Brian, the time I’ve spent with you just reinforces stuff that I’ve heard, but I’ve seen it from a different mindset and I really encourage everyone who is listening the soil lovers is out there. Doesn’t matter what space you have do get around these holistic management. I know there’s a misconception that this is all about raising herds and grass management, but it’s so much more than that. And I want to be part of that kind of journey of sharing light on this to show that it is more. It’s a way of living. It’s it’s about being true to yourself. Been aware of the surroundings and you mentioned something before, and I want to go a little bit deeper on this and very quickly about the whole. I don’t want to start an argument with our soil lovers. And I know it’s argued enough online, but I think that some people who care for country and care for animal and making choices to not eat meat and and respect that there is a bit of a concern or an issue with using animals as tools. And this whole framing of that from my understanding and what I’ve learned, I get amazed by it. I think, wow, look at the amount of abundance and biodiversity and understanding how that animal can add so much value for the greater good of all the wildlife. And then you look at monoculture crops and you think, Wow, this is so depleted of life. And you know, these massive soy farms to move the amount of soy that is required because people feel like they’re doing the right thing, not seeing the actual damage that’s happening to me is a bit of an alarm bell, and I don’t know how to articulate it without pissing people off and making enemies. And maybe I need to get comfortable with that. So I’m leaning on you to shed some light on how do we work through this together? Wholesomely to understand that because I can argue that humans have been used as tools to build cities, to build, to do our chores and our work, no one’s getting upset that we’re being used as tools to build empires for governments and councils and business and and get a salary. And so where’s the difference and can you talk to that for a little bit?
Brian: Yeah. Again, I think a lot of that. I guess there’s two avenues to people against the livestock industry and one is is caring for them, and we do we see a lot of, I suppose, cruelty. Yeah. And governments all around the world are working against it, not again . There’s no this. There’s no need for cruelty. I agree that cruelty does exist in the wild. You know, you see a cat playing with a mouse and slowly killing it or eating it while it’s still alive. You see lions dragging down zebras and eating. It was so trimming in the cruelty job that we have a choice. We don’t have to be cruel. So again, I think that humanity is humans, you know, it’s about humanity. And it’s it’s stop cruelty, I think. And I don’t believe really anybody wants to be cruel. Yes. But again, if we can create a good vision, we’re all living, things had a good life. We will start making decisions that eliminate cruelty. We don’t need laws agreed because laws are often just barriers that we find ways around or move. When we when we actually connect to the environment and the doesn’t have a place, I think we can eliminate cruelty without supporting cruelty. And I don’t think any of the livestock industries do support cruelty. That might turn a blind eye to this time, but most of them are working towards eliminating cruelty. But please see the cruelty is part of of nature. You know. think of poor of plain and touch , we have sex, and that’s not a cruel it’s like it’s out there all the aim of reproducing the other part is death, you know, death is part of that natural process it’s a process death life birth decayed all the time, you know, so this is everything will die. You can’t avoid it. It’s part of the rebirth process. You can’t have birth without death . And so again, just getting a more holistic view that death is natural. Everything’s going to die. But we need to zoom out bigger. We need to look at planetary scale. How do we support the life that a planetary scale? Yeah, is this is the down here moving us in that direction? Now, if you had more deaths than births, well, what are you doing at a planetary scale? You’re reducing stability, reducing life in general, so, you know, if death comes at the benefit of the planet. Then the whole planet benefits if death comes in a degenerative way. Well, then the whole planet suffers. So, you know, big picture blanket as long as we’re moving forward. Everything will eventually die. Everything needs to have a good life. And I think, you know, it’s farmers are becoming more and more aware of that. Yep. And I think humans all around the world are becoming more aware of that. Yep. You know, there’s this great news everywhere to stop cruelty and then said plastic. I don’t think anybody really wants to be cruel. Occasionally, we make decisions that on this planet. But hopefully the decision making will help us with that, as well as the drive from the consumer. Yeah. You know, so they’re great, they’re great certifications, whether it’s proof or SPCA, but we need to leave those also to the environment. So it’s not just about animal welfare, it’s about managing animals as why is it improving the environment which includes you, me, the birds, the bees, the microbes, the woods, everything? Yes. And that’s that’s happening. So no, it’s it’s all. It’s all really, really good. I think, you know, we we we cause friction by focusing on individual parts. If we look holistically and said we want more stability, more happiness in the planet. Yep, how can we do it? Yeah, we need more animals. How can you do that? All we need more death to get more life that has no place in any of this. Not at all.
Regen Ray: I agree. And I think that’s a great place to leave that, and I know I see it as working altogether. Mother Nature has made the system work like that since Day Dot. And so and it’s evolved and I am I’m refreshed when I see what I’m learning and how it all works together. In the fact that soil life improves, grasslands improve the water cycle comes back, the carbon cycle comes back. And I just think the amount of systems that this way of managing our planet can bring back so much life. But squeezing animals into a factory farm and feedlots and things like that definitely doesn’t, you know, I think, you know, and that all comes from consumers wanting more meat quicker, faster, more produce at the shelf and not really questioning where it comes from. You know, the nutrition density has dropped. So now we’re eating more just to get the nutritional value. So if we’re growing better quality food and we can eat one meal a day, that’s extremely wholesome and really nourishing, then our reliance on eating more is reduced. And I love the narrative of these studies unfolding and people having those aha moments and and looking at the lens, looking at the coin from the other side. But I think we could chat about this all day and all night, but I want to get to our signature question. Brian, are you ready to be the voice of the soil? Absolutely. Excellent. So if you were the voice of our soils, what would you say to us on Earth?
Brian: I’d say to the people on earth think of me as you a living, breathing life form part of you. Hmm. I’ll let you
Regen Ray: two. It’s only water. I agree. I agree. I couldn’t agree with you more. Brian, it has been an absolute joy hanging out with you, and I get the privilege to hang out with you more in our upcoming courses if COVID allows. But if not, we hang out on Zoom and a lot of WhatsApp groups and so forth. So I feel very blessed to be within this community and an absolute pleasure to have you on the show and share with our soil lovers a little bit of your world. If they have become a little bit curious and want to hang out with you more, how can they do that?
Brian: yea have a website inside outside management company, training company. We run so and inside out management Facebook page, Instagram yeah lots of ways of community say, and there’s so much good information on the web as well. And again, through your great work and other people like you, it’s easy to sift through it. So again, thanks to all the good work that you guys are doing and have been doing for for ages, we’re all we’re all part of this thing together and it’s it’s changing, which is great.
Regen Ray: Yes, I’m excited. soil lovers all the links to hang out more with Brian will be around this video. If you’re watching it on the Saw Learning Center or if you’re doing the audio version, they’ll be in the show, notes Brian. Thanks again. So much from the bottom of my heart for sharing what you do and keeping up the great work and inspiring people to see our world through the lens of life and not death. And I’m excited to be part of that journey with you and the next generations to come. It’s definitely keeping me hopeful and inspired for a brighter future, especially with the way that everything is heading at the moment. Any final final words before we sign off?
Brian: All right. Just thanks again and I’m on board everybody absorbency already. Well done the job. It’s a community happening because we got to make. The time mistakes. Yes, so again, the community is a really important key to making change happen for all of us.
Regen Ray: Also love that. Well, there you go. Soil lovers, as you heard it here, get outside, getting amongst your community, get your hands dirty and keep digging deeper into your soils. I’m regen Ray until next time. Keep curious.
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