Please note this transcript is AI generated and imperfect, but hopefully serves to provide greater access to this conversation for those who need or like to read.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
farmers, people, farm, zach, community, system, reconnection, farmer, australia, indigenous, regenerative, land, country, byron bay, world, ella, tanya, story, money, starting
SPEAKERS
Anthony James, Zach Bush, Ella Noah-Bancroft, Tanya Massy, Blair Beattie.
Anthony 00:00
You're with The RegenNarration exploring how people are enabling the regeneration of life on this planet. By changing the systems and stories we live by. It's entirely listener supported the best way to keep it independent ad free and freely available. So thanks very much to you Michael Hart for your generous donation. And to you Dean Bruins for becoming a subscriber and sending a big affirmation with it. If you too sense something worthwhile in all this, please consider joining Michael and Dean, part of a great community of supporting listeners with as little as $3 a month or whatever amount you can and want to contribute. You can get all sorts of benefits principally, of course, continuing to receive the podcast every week, just head to the website via the show notes regennarration.com forward slash support. Thanks a lot.
Zach 00:51
When we see this happening, what we're really talking about is a cultural shift that these women are leading here, in which we re-envision the way community engages with agriculture. And so it's not about soil management in the end, in some ways. It's really about reconnection on every level. And that's my one word definition of regeneration is reconnection, because it works on every level.
Anthony 01:19
G'day, my name's Anthony James. This is The RegenNarration. And that was Zach Bush live on tour in Australia in December last year. This event in Byron Bay had sold out in a matter of hours. So a humming Full House of 250 plus people filled the local theater for Zach's rousing keynote, and this subsequent panel conversation. The two women joining Zach and myself for this were Bundjalung woman and founder of The Returning Ella Noah Bancroft, and regenerative farmer and award winning writer Tanya Massy. You'll hear me introduce Ella and Tanya in a bit more detail on the night. And for those less familiar with Zach, he's the highly decorated physician who's become globally renowned for his work on the microbiome as the basis of all human and planetary health. And he's since become a co founder of farmers footprint - a not for profit in the US supporting farmers who are regenerating their landscapes to produce healthy, nutrient dense food for a healthy planet. And last year, Zach supported Blair Beattie and the growing team here to launch farmers footprint Australia. This tour was its first big national splash and there was no shortage of big breakthroughs to dive into as our conversation evolved. So settle in for a night that became a highlight of highlights on tour. And the film I refer to is the debut short by farmers footprint Australia that also screened on the night.
Anthony 03:00
Now, I'm going to introduce our two additional guests here who you might recognize them both in the film. Actually, I wonder if Ella Noah Bancroft even needs an introduction around these parts. What it will say is that it's great to be here in your hood with you tonight.
Anthony 03:16
For those who are less aware of Ella, she's a proud Bundjalang woman, as you heard earlier, with bloodlines to England, Poland and Scotland. She returned to the city of her birth and late schooling when we started this tour in Sydney having spent time in between in remote community very much out of the city. Ella is many things including an artist, author, mentor, consultant, and founder of The Returning. This is an indigenous female led not for profit organization designed to bring all peoples of all ages races and places back to country - retracing our ancestral steps towards a new paradigm of living. Ella's books include Sun and Moon which was illustrated by her amazing indigenous mother Bronwyn Bancroft. And "It takes courage to tell the truth" which was self published a few years ago. Ella's story includes time as a vegetarian and vegan briefly, and is grounded in a passion for rewilding the world and the feminine force. Please welcome Ellen Noah Bancroft.
Anthony 04:34
Now Tanya Massy is one of three brilliant daughters of regenerative agriculture doyen Charles Massy, though, like Ella in some ways, she'll tell you that she's been equally inspired and formed by the strength and spirit of her mother Fiona, who typically didn't appear in the limelight in that film. Great lineage aside, Tanya is forging her own pivotal path as a regenerative farmer, award winning writer and highly respected researcher. A couple of recent reports in particular have made a big impact and continue to. Then there's another one coming soon exploring the barriers to regeneration, but also the breakthrough opportunities with communities around Australia and the world. Stemming from that she's helping to create more of those breakthrough opportunities in some significant ways with the wonderful crew at Sustainable Table. But for a while, it was actually music that took Tonya around to concert halls, and ultimately Aboriginal communities. But she has made her way home. Ultimately, she has taken up the mantle back at the family farm, while she continues to write and research to better support regenerative efforts everywhere. Please give a warm hand to Tanya Massy.
Anthony 05:56
And, of course, you know the guy up the end there by now. Now, Ella, it feels like - we did this last night because it was the first day of the week you've got at the moment - so it feels like the place to start tonight too, where you've come from today and what's been going on there and I guess how it relates to why we're here tonight.
Ella 06:14
So I run a charity called The Returning Indigenous Corporation - we're a registered indigenous charity with DGR status and this week we're running one of our culture camp programs. It is 60 participants. 35 of the those participants are indigenous scholarships. So full scholarships. To return back to country with 10 workshops with that throughout the week. Jaanbi, our dear Brother's sitting here, he taught and welcomed and did his grounding meditation last night for the participants. It's indigenous led, we're trying to increase indigenous employment in the region, but in a way that is honoring the cultural value of indigenous knowledge across the east coast. As a Bundjalung woman who also has bloodlines to Poland in Scotland, i and many of the people in my community have been impacted by the colonization that occurred on the shorelines in 1788. And I don't believe that we can move forward as a collective until everybody is well and connected and not just those who can pay for it. So the charity is there to provide full scholarships for single mothers as they are also very disadvantaged group within our region. And also indigenous mobs from regional and remote areas up and down the East Coast.
Anthony 07:38
might come back to continue that a little bit. But Tans by way of introducing yourself a little further, I suppose. What do you feel - what would you say you feel most deeply about that relates to what you do, and why we're here tonight?
Tanya 07:52
So I was born into a multi generational family farm, which is down in the southeast pocket of New South Wales on Ngarigo country at the foot of the snowy mountains. And so for me, everything begins and ends with that piece of land which has held my family for five generations now. And where our family has been farming is very much a conventional farming area. And so growing up as a child in this incredible ecosystem of grasslands and grassy woodlands, there was a lot of damage that was happening around me. And my family was still farming conventionally at that time as well. But there was also a real silence and defensiveness around any mention of our first peoples and the history that had enabled my family to be on that land and what had led to us being there and the genocide that had ensued before we arrived. And so I think that sort of complicated inheritance of this piece of land that I loved of the brutality of the history that enabled my family to be there, and the damage that was being done by the European farming practices that we brought, sort of sewed all these really big questions in me that I carried out into the world. And as I started to sort of work alongside other communities who are also facing up to these questions, I started to see these solutions bubbling up. But also this is really clear taking of responsibility in different places for history and for damage, and that the most powerful ways of taking responsibility was to commit deeply to a place and a community and do the work there. And so that's what brought me back home because that was my responsibility. That's the land that has been damaged by my people. But that's also where we need to do the healing work. So that's sort of My Heart Journey here.
Anthony 09:42
Thanks Tans. Zach, I wonder if we might go straight to something you said today, actually, over lunch. You used an analogy that a startup would never start up without a market for its product, but a lot of this work has come from a different motivation. It wasn't led by money clearly. Yet, now there's this extraordinary work being done everywhere. But you still think that the market bit hasn't been figured out - that connection through. Want to talk a bit to that, and what we need, and I guess how farmers footprint you think plays a role?
Zach 10:24
Yeah, we were talking about the efforts in the United States, where we've kind of led the charge on abstract economies around food systems and agriculture at large, that are highly subsidized in strange ways. And so there, there's incentivization, for farmers to plant far more corn than we could ever possibly use on a planet. During the pandemic, was first time we had widespread food shortages across the country, apparent, there's been times where it's kind of been hidden, but there was empty shelves across the country. And in the same year, that 2020, we burned more bushels of corn than any time in history, because there was no market for the amount of corn that we had produced. And so there's this, this extreme swing to the most bizarre abstract economy is built by government bureaucratic subsidies, that kind of keep this system going. And then there's crop insurance, that is the method by which banks are allowed to loan money to farmers for their inputs, as long as they have crop insurance, they don't have crop insurance, and the bank doesn't want to loan money, because farms, if it fails, there's no backup plan. So it's really functions more as a welfare system, and then actually crop insurance. But nonetheless, it's allowed chemical companies can help shape the policy such that if you become a regen ag farmer, you can't get that crop insurance, because there's no proof that what you're doing is gonna be successful. I mean, ignore the 40,000 years of regenerative agriculture on the planet as proof. But in the last few years of macroeconomics, there isn't enough evidence by those actuarial tables that the insurance companies run by. So there's all of that problem of abstract economies that are baked into the global economy, because we open trade routes. And so we saw more suicides and farmers in the six months following Bill Clinton signing of NAFTA than any time in history, because we suddenly opened up free trade between subsidized crop production in the US, and Central and South America. And those farmers could not compete when you eliminate the tariffs. And so some of these farmers that were had been 33 generations on their farms went bankrupt in an instant, because there was no industry for their crops they were producing. And so we saw this massive, you know, devastating effects across the competing environment. So the North American Free Trade Agreement. And so there's this ways that all this weird economy comes out. But for all of that, it's still not the primary boundary, I think about for for, for the universal adoption of regeneration to happen in the food systems. And that one comes down to the ecosystem around the food. And so a farmer can do an amazing job raising, you know, grass, raised meat and Market Garden, everything else that's going on, a farm educator can teach what that's going to look like. And the farmers go out inspired and go do that on small scale, large scale the whole thing. But when they go to try to get that to market, there's no grain silos dedicated to a regenerative agricultural grain output. There's no abbatoir or butchering system that can keep that value added product all the way to the consumer. And this is very evident in Australia, US in these large countries where you have an enormous amount of territory to cover, you know, and supply lines in the US average supply chain in the US is now reported 200 miles or something like this from the scene, transportation distribution storage effort to get commodities around. And so for a farmer to think they can overcome all of that paucity, it's impossible. So this is where we have the exciting moment of regeneration is we need to tell a story in which farmers are no longer competing to try to get into that space, but are imagining a completely new system of decentralization at the core. And suddenly farmers are being reintroduced to a household that is no longer thinks of itself as a consumer, but as a co producer, because it knows the farm and in fact, it volunteers on Saturdays to come to the local farm or the CSA and shops at the farmers market and gets to know the farmer gets to know the farmers kids who now know that they have a purpose within the community such that they might imagine a future staying on that farm. And so this is the exciting and challenging thing that we have faced as farmers is we can't solve the whole thing on our own. And me as an educator, I can't solve it on my own and says really take stakeholders from across all sectors to engage with a common vision. And that's why a story telling project has to become the beginning of the revolution, because we have that CO vision, this future. So that will manifest a completely different system of distribution, transportation, direct consumer goods, how we let farmers own their own brands, again, have a piece of that. And the amount of money potential in there is pretty extraordinary to return to those that are most suffering. In the United States. In the 1960s, the average farmer was earning 60 cents on every dollar of consumer money spent on food. Today, it's 13 cents. And so when a farmer makes 13 cents on the dollar, and the other 87 cents goes to all the middlemen and the transportation distribution to supply chains are 3000 miles long, there's no there's no reason that kids would stay on the farm. And so the average age of a farmer in the United States is now 70. And so we're losing about 8000 family farms a year in the US, and about half of those are due to bankruptcy to the 13 cent margin. And half of those are due to lack of secession. And so we so disempowered and and stole the the imagination of the future of farming that we're there. So when we see this happening, we're really talking about as a cultural shift that these women are leading here in which we re envision weighing in community engages with agriculture. And so it's not about soil management in the end, in some ways, it's really about reconnection on every level. And that's my one word definition of regeneration is reconnection. Because it works on every level. And if it doesn't happen at every level, the farmer will be left in the lurch, having done all the right things and be very frustrated, and their lack of capacity to win the game.
Anthony 16:39
Yeah, which, of course, is partly tons of bounce back to you. It's partly what we've witnessed and what they've experienced here, some of those people for decades, but partly what's changing, and I'm thinking of your experience, partly and as a young woman who's gone back next gen. And all the people you've researched many others in your boat, who haven't had farming experience, even their first gen who are looking to get into it and finding ways but still needing there's still more to be done or more support to be given. So I guess I'm wondering what your take is on this dilemma.
Tanya 17:18
Now the big question. I mean, there's there's so much in what sector said, but I think one of the key things is the way that agriculture has evolved in Australia with colonization, we came in with this industrial agricultural system that had centralization at its core. And so that has sort of constrained and shaped the shape of family farms in the very way that we found with sort of commodity export focused production. And, you know, the sort of food system language around this as its food from nowhere, we've created this system where you don't know where your food is coming from, because it's coming from such a long way away. And what we're sort of seeing emerge through the through the regen movement, and this sort of localized movement that local economy movement is, is grounding food from somewhere, you know, sort of, it's relational. And it's, I think that the sort of the challenges that we're facing now that we're hearing bubbling up right across the system is that our system is geared for this huge centralized production. And as we're working to re localize our production systems and make them more relational and connect deeply with community and be health giving to community, we don't have the infrastructure to enable that. So, you know, we now have incredible regenerative grain farmers in WA who can't get this sort of grain differentiated from the conventional market to the consumers who want it because of the grain silos aren't there because of the sort of the transparency that's needed to value their product, and the health benefits that it gives isn't there yet, because of our system hasn't created it. So there's all these sort of structural barriers that have been broken, because we're kind of figuring out how we do this as we go along. We've got infrastructure being built from the ground up by communities, we've got communities investing in the infrastructure that they need, whether that's cooperatives or food hubs, or sort of direct distribution that starts with a small band and ends up, you know, covering a whole period and regional linking farmers directly to restaurants, that's, that's been created from the ground up. And I think what we're seeing also here is, so many of the next generation farmers that I'm seeing coming through and that I'm working alongside, their mindset is so different coming into this space, it's not a business, it's a social enterprise, you know, they're looking at the ecological outcome at the social impact of what they're doing. And, and so with that kind of mindset, the whole sort of social infrastructure and community engagement around it changes because of the farm isn't something that's isolated from the rest of the community. It's sort of an epicenter of what gives life to a community and that's an incredible cultural shift. And it's so exciting to see.
Anthony 19:50
I'm gathering that's where you feel something like this can join in what exists and the other stuff you're trying to incubate to To help bridge that 100% Yeah, how would you see it?
Tanya 20:05
I think you when I think about myself as a farmer and my, my family as farmers, I feel like we have this incredible responsibility to the broader community across Australia, because we are managing ecosystems that are some of Australia's most threatened ecosystems that temperate grasslands and grassy woodlands and southeast Australia and, and so that sort of responsibility that we have to you, as a community, you also have to ask because of for us to farm in the way that we want, we need you to value the way that we're farming. And that the way that that relationship is formed, and the way that we get connected is through through the stories that farmers footprints trying to tell that Zach spoke so eloquently to tonight, and, and the sort of deeply play space work that Ella doing, like the stories is where our culture shifts, and where that farming gets valued. And where communities and mothers and all the work that's happening at that sort of deep family level gets valued. That's where we begin,
Anthony 20:58
including at that more than financial level, right that you've alluded to it, that's a big pace, and you're seeing some stuff coming on. feel like we need to sign this bit off, it's so important, maybe we'll come back to it as well. But you see some stuff coming on to that's going there that's valuing in broader ways, while not falling into that old pit of just decentralizing everything with the dollar figure, giving it a price tag that we're prepared to pay to chop down advice and that sort of thing. That's not doing that that's giving value in a really quite beautiful way. You're seeing some of that emerge, despite the system's.
Tanya 21:36
Yeah, yeah, we, I mean, I think probably many people in this room are aware of this, too. But, you know, Paul Hawkinson, of definition of regeneration has placed his life at the center of every action and decision. And so when when we've got this regenerative system that's evolving, we've also tried to make it fit alongside this economic system that does not place life at the center of every action and decision. And so as we're trying to look at how do we unlock the sort of investment and different forms of capital that we need into the system, we're meeting a lot of challenges because of investment is coming with in with the old mindset of the dollar is the most important thing and bugger the rest. But these sort of deeper conversations are happening. And if so, if we look at spam and investment in Australia, at the moment, it's dominated by the corporate model, wherever you sort of have investors based in the city with huge amounts of money that have been come from colonialism, and buying up huge swathes of Australian farmland generating a return on that farmland, selling it on sort of communities or getting disintegrated along the way. But the work that I'm doing with sustainable table and that we're seeing sort of start to bubble up from different pockets of Australia, including here is their investors don't just sit down and be like, Okay, we can't fix this problem without you. And we realize that money is not the most important thing anymore. So how do we enter into this space with this form of capital that we have, and make it work for life, make it work on the side of life, and those conversations are just starting to happen. We're starting to see the beginning of relationships forming between money and land that places land at the center and not the money. And that's the start of something really special.
Anthony 23:17
It's interesting to consider story and, and language in that context. We know the farmer, I think you're referring to Western Australia, Diane Haggerty, out of some of those experiences that were not that had the clash of story, said like, even the term investor can't be used anymore. It's co-creator because we've we've each got value to bring to the table. Let's get rid of that old paradigm of power. That seems to inevitably when you do it in that paradigm, come to the old story. Ella, Zach mentioned before, that reconnection would be almost the definition of regeneration if he was asked for it. I know you've said as much it's that all you do comes back to that term. Is that something that I guess that's sort of the standard bearer for the work you do? Define that it relates when I say this, I mean, not just the work you've been describing before with culture camp and the returning but also the whole you know, Bush food scene and the way that it's relating to economic systems, but also potentially changing that reconnection still the thread through it all.
Ella 24:29
Yeah, I mean to you know, we speak about us being an overpopulated planet. And I've mentioned this before, and I don't think we are overpopulated. I think we're an overpopulated planet of disconnected beings. And if we had, you know, 8 billion people stick their hands in certain sand and in the soil and replant trees and return to the coastlines and sink to the waters, we could see a dramatic change. One thing that often doesn't come up in these spaces is like that we've lost our spirituality You know, the Western culture has stripped us of our spirit and told us to live from our mind. And we've lost our connection to our body because of that. And there are three things that make us a custodial species, it's our spirit, our mind and our body. And until we return to these three things, we can't expect to find reconnection with the natural world. You know, some people might think that it's very hippy to like how plants lie on the ground, walk around with their bare foot, but it's actually essential for your health, if you sit by a fire, you will lower your cortisol levels, if you get earth, and not in a supermarket, but on the earth with your soles of your feet, you will feel energy rising up through you, whenever you dive into the water, if you have a bad day, you feel changed by that there's a reason because the unseen magic lives in our relationship with the natural world. You know, our, our one true purpose here is to be custodians, all of us, you know, we all have a place here, and is that speaks to we're all indigenous to this planet. You know, and until we recognize that until we bring back our ancestral stories and claim our ancestors, and claim ourselves in the story of those people that came before us, because every single one of you has an ancestor that was once well and connected. And every single one of you has been impacted by a system that's tried to disconnect you and separate you, you know, from the instance of your of your birthing, or the instance of of your schooling. And we have a culture of convenience. And that convenience is killing us, you know, fast food, C sections, cars, agriculture, you know, when we try to cut corners, and when we don't give presents to the natural world, each other and ourselves, we end up with disease because we're diseased, right? Because we're unable to be in harmony. And so until we kind of unpack this colonial setting that says that we have to be productive, you know that we have to be always growing and expanding, we will still continue to pave the way to hell, we will still continue to create systems that are built around a colonial framework. And so our work as human beings is to find that place back in ourselves, where we can remember that we're the only species that can make fire. And that's pretty fucking special.
Anthony 27:36
Feels like a completely inappropriate moment to point out that I'm getting dripped on Yeah. Have you seen it? Can you tell the look at my little mini puddle for me, Dennis, I don't know if a staff member wants to get out there and find out where that's coming from. I'd hate to short out that say that live. I'd like to go along with that, in all seriousness, with the quintessential stat of the native foods industry, Bush foods industry being 1% indigenous owned. I wonder what it means to be in an in an emerging new story that times was fleshing out from her point of view, and Zach, obviously, with the big picture from there, and perhaps you're witnessing some of it, or you've got a sense of what needs to happen where land access comes in. And where land holders can play a part or just us as us as public constituents of crown lands, you know, what is it that you're you're seeing or would like to see and, and get help with?
Ella 28:37
Well, I mean, I found the bush foods movement, very problematic. I went and studied Bush food as a way to refind out a lot of the medicines in this area. And I went to take, you know, Western schooling, what did they do, they gave us a chemical license, and taught us as aboriginal people, because at that stage, it was only open for Aboriginal people that we were to monocrop Bush foods. And so this is again, the assimilation process of our knowledge systems, trying to fit a system that is ultimately, you know, ill health and broken. And so I quickly left that TAFE course I don't think my teacher like me anyway, because I refuse to sit in the chair. And I studied permaculture instead. But you know, it's very confronting for Indigenous Australians, because the reality is that we have been kept out for a really long period of time. You know, I grew up with a grandfather who was denied education, as stories as indigenous people are very common. Our grandparents lost their songs just like your ancestors did, but it's closer to us. We sit around the dining room table with these people who got beaten bashed, and some of them who can't sit around the dining table anymore because they were killed at trying to keep their culture alive for us. Not just us as their descendants, but all of Australia. And so when we don't invite indigenous Ausrtalia on this walk with us, we are never going to heal as a population, we only 3% of the population that's not a lot, you know, not in comparison to 97. And the fruits that you all have is because of the hard work is because of the beautiful culture that existed pre 1788. And that needs to be recognized. And it's not about making you feel guilty, or bringing in shame. It's about recognizing that something was done wrong to you, and that maybe you are perpetuating that trauma out to other people in our lives. So how do we heal that and come together with a common story that unites us that this system is actually not working for anybody? It's actually broken. And it's actually keeping us all really unhealthy. So how do we say no to money? And yes to community? And how do we bring everybody on that journey? Because I don't want to be somebody that gets land back. Unless every single bunch one person can get that land back. And we're not looking for your houses when not looking at what it goes, you know, where does looking? Jambi would like water goes. But I'm a bit smarter than him, I got the foresight to know that probably not going to be there for a long time right when he goes. So we are just looking to find a common story of give us Crown land back, you know, give indigenous people an opportunity to have the opportunity that you have all been given on this country. And that's really all we're asking for.
Anthony 31:51
We know some of these stories are starting to emerge to so I guess that's that's sort of the power you believe resides in the thing were celebrating and giving a boost to tonight, not stories, the only piece to farmers footprint but that it plays a role with this, this reconnection,
Ella 32:07
I mean stories, our culture stories inform culture, the stories that we tell our children about what success is, informs who they want to be. When we celebrate our child for making a garden rather than than getting an A in an education system that separates them and removes out intergenerational community, then we say that's okay for us to be separate. You know, we have to look at these eternal value systems if we really want to make change, and it starts with our children. You know, I'm lucky enough that my mom applauded me even when I was drawing on her walls. I'm lucky that my mom applauded me when I was getting C's, or when I was put into a class because I had dyslexia. And they told me that I had to be with people with disabilities when I was in your eight, because I grew up in an indigenous mission where I didn't learn numeracy and literacy. But I learned how to speak Bundjalung. And I learned how to find my native plants and I fished with my community, you know, so we have a backward Western Western education system, that tells us that we need experts to tell us what's going on, rather than to look within ourselves and our own embodied experiences, sit with each other and share stories of our own embodied experiences, and then feel your somatic body know the difference between a lie and truth.
Anthony 33:27
We actually did can for some of you might have sent in questions or thoughts that you'd had prior to this to the team. And they sort of curated and brought together themes, the really the overarching themes were around what we've covered tonight, and how can we be part of it? What can we do to adopt regenerative mindset to develop that in ourselves regenerative mind, and to reconnect? And in practical terms to some of which we've heard about tonight already, so you'll hear this continue to be woven in as we get get to the end of the evening, Zach, on this note of how do we go about this? It's really interesting. When we talk about reconnection, and we talk about community and land and food that comes from somewhere that you're doing work, you're finding an audience or a connection with big companies too now and finding it to be positive and potentially transformative.
Zach 34:21
Yeah, there's an exciting shift happening where the core of everything is rotting so thoroughly that it's this point that it's not working for anybody is starting to become evident and so the colonialized macroscale everything monoculture to monopolies that whole system is now completely failing at its core, which is always an exciting moment when you when you see transformation because energy is infinite all implement all this energy that's been created in the current paradigm is prepared to transmute and become the new thing and so like all the carbon in the atmosphere all the virus is ready to manifest this new life. All of the Economics and all just the the hard work of the engineers and the construction laborers and the transportation as you lay out the pavement. And I mean, so much human ingenuity and human production goes into building this system that's now utterly failing us. And it's ready to be captured and transmuted into the new effort. And so it's a very exciting time when companies like Nestle, who is arguably probably the most damaging empire on the earth, right now largest food company has driven more indigenous peoples off their lands than any nation state ever has, really, these corporations command so much economy, that it just dwarfs, the economy's most countries. And so these these are starting to fail. And the new CEOs that are coming into these companies, not only are they have a different ethos, recognizing the failure of the business itself, so they're being called into imagine the next thing because Nestle can see that by 2030, they lose their market potential, and they're failing as a company. And this has actually happened to all the major companies. If you go back to the Fortune 100 companies, when that list first got formed in the 1960s, there's only one of those companies left today. And it's at the very bottom of the Fortune 100 today. There's 99 companies better than that one, or bigger than that one. And so the point that we've proved is the whole fortune accumulation is that it fails, monopolies fail. And so we don't really have to fight or take down the Bayers of the world or the Monsanto's of the world and the Nestle's of the world, we can recognize that either they transform or disappear. And so again, we lose our judgment and start to make room for community is the shift from the wealth of monetary systems, the wealth of connection, is really starting to be felt. And here's Mark Schneider of Nestle, just a few months ago now, announcing to the world that 97% of the food portfolio coming out of Nestle is bad for human health. And that CEO kept his job. Which means that his board must agree with him. And so they about you know, six months previous that Mark Schneider, actually unbeknownst to a lot of his executives, and everything else announced that they would have 14 million pounds of regenerative supply chain in Nestle by 2030. Right now they have zero and he called up a couple of weeks later to farmers footprint and talk to him for an hour and a half. His first question is what is regenerative agriculture, just guarantee the world, they would have 14 million tons of the city a month, didn't know what the hell he was talking about, was aware of that and didn't care that he didn't know because he didn't think that was his problem to define it. Or to make it he saw himself as a potential force of change by giving an avenue for those farmers to have a future market. So this is how, how exciting it is. That's kind of the macro system of the worst of the worst. How much faster can we pivot as a button Byron Bay, in this audience right now you have city council members, you have mayoral office members. In this room right now you guys could pivot on a frickin dime. And literally, by next week, you all in your offices can be talking about let's make Byron Bay, the keystone of change in Australia by becoming the first county to make sure that all of their school systems are connected to a farmer. And the children know that farmer in that farmer is empowered to understand that their food and Market Garden is going to feed those children. That'd be a first in the world. And that's easy, because you have some farmers in the room that raise their hands at the beginning. And so we should do that again. At the end. Let's remember to raise the hands of the farmers and y'all who are in these decision making spaces. What if your kids No, we don't care if it's a regenerative farmer. What if they just knew a farmer that was growing the carrot that ended up on their school plate, they might eat that carrot? And so that's a super simple transformation moment. And what if Byron Bay was the very first waterside community to ban all organophosphates from the Department of Transportation in here? Ban organophosphates from school yards ban organophosphates from the correction facilities. Those three prisons schools and and your highway systems use more glyphosate per inch than any farm in the world does. Stakeholders are are all over the place. And it just takes a moment to just say well what would happen if there was some weeds which any farmer in Regenn knows are renamed forbs because they're doing good things for the formation of soil. What if we allowed our the borders of our highways to start to build soil by stop spraying glyphosate so we have clean shoulders on our highways? This is it.
Anthony 39:58
Yes, keep going If it's good to set the tone turns, I feel like it's a great place to bring in what's happening for you right now. It's another manifestation of how just people have decided to do something different based on the value we started talking about, and people with money to, but then that's unleashing a whole other level of reconnection and including with First Nations, give us a hint. I mean, it's a it's another big story only be that that is happening back at seven Park, right at the moment.
Tanya 40:34
So seven parks is the name of our family farm, and we lost half of it while Mom and Dad was still farming conventionally, because we'd accrued this huge debt, and we're sort of trapped in this extractive financial system. And that was sort of it was a very special piece of land that other half of the farm 900 acres of it is under biodiversity covenant for grasslands, and the sort of the the owners that came in didn't always treat it the way that it needed to be treated. And so I guess for sort of for 10 years, our families sort of pulled back and has been focusing on on the area of land that we still have stewardship over. And at the start of this year, when I made the decision to move back to the family farm for good, we heard that that piece of land was going to be going on the market. And we also heard that a lot of the farmers that were looking at it were part of the sort of conventional system and would wreak havoc on on the sort of the really precious grasslands that had been protected for some time. So I pulled together as sort of an investment proposal with my family with the idea of creating a new model for farmland investment in Australia that isn't about corporate ownership, and isn't really about ownership at all. Because if you can't own this land, with an item looking at well, how do we how do we with land prices that are now above the cost of production and pricing land out of the reach of any farmers unless you inherited or unless you come from a lot of money. How do we how do we solve this problem because we need more diversity and our farming population, we need more than white males managing our landscapes and we need our first peoples back on country and we need our migrants coming in with incredible knowledge from their countries on country. So we sort of sent this this proposal out to a couple of people that I've been working with for some time that I really trusted for feedback. And they got straight back to us and said, We think you could do something here, we think we could work with you to create a model that enables the stewards that we need to have stewardship of country that brings in First Nations connection to country and that sort of removes this corporate extractive model of farmland that is owned and farmland that is returning value to people far away but not to the community where that is. So with. That said set in motion right now it looks like we're going to be regaining stewardship of that piece of land, in partnership with our community and in partnership with bringing back first people's access to that land as well.
Anthony 43:19
Will be a story to share already is whatever happens from here, but well, then it's not isolated is I mean, these are the, these are the shoots everywhere. Okay, in the few minutes, we've got live here together. I'd like to bring in something Zach that you said at a conference that you attended online with us a few months ago, when we were in Brisbane. And you started with a meditation much like you brought to the table here tonight. But with a room full of largely farmers and station holders. This was held in Queensland, an unlikely place perhaps to hold hands and conduct a meditation. But it worked. It worked. So what's happening there? You said, as we move into our stewardship phase of the regenerative movement, it's critical that we all begin to coalesce in a state of being rather than doing in the name of our queering about how we shift our internal story, heal deeply and adopt, let's just say regenerative mindset, whatever language we like, reconnected mind, what are the practices that you personally employ to try and do that?
Zach 44:35
Ultimately, it's the reconnection to nature and a broad sense of the word certainly sitting underneath a tree. One of the most powerful things for me and I think anybody with a with a neurologic system is to lay on your back and look up through the branching system and leaves of a tree to see a blue sky behind it with clouds moving by there's so much data in that quantum physics patterns of the way that trees branch. For that you're tying into this original math of the original light that would have hit the belly of a woman laying under that tree. Imagining the child that would come forth from her body like this is like deep, deep reconnect is looking up through a tree. So that combined with the roots below your back, and the experience of being between the two canopies of the root system and a tree, put yourself into these places where your original math is being remembered to you, even if you're too distraught and too emotionally caught up in the human experience right now to maybe do the out of body journey and do everything we did tonight, the tree can hold that space perfectly for you. And you're welcome yourself back in that womb of the tree between root and canopy, to receive that original information back and to start to decode the belief systems and start to express the real truths within you. So there's many ways to do that. But nature is a calling there. But the other piece of this would be what Mari showed us tonight, which is the power of vibration that we would create through music. And so this is the best way for me to communicate with my family now, because families as we understand develop many different perspectives. And the older you get, the more these paths tend to diverge over time and nobody's right or wrong. But those those differences do. So family reunions, and all this can be very intense. And when you're named the Bush family, there's plenty of stuff that can go around the table there to really upset people and everything else. And so my parents did a brilliant thing might give a lot of credit, my dad hear of inspiring every single one of his four children to learn instruments and to learn multiple instruments really. And so when things get too tense around the table, we know to break the meals process and go step into the living room and get all the instruments out and start playing music together. And so I would invite you to sit beneath the tree beneath the canopy and rebirth yourself into that and then play music with somebody near you. And for that we will create, you know, a much more beingness that would express more beauty than we might be doing at the moment.
Anthony 47:10
I'm wondering what vibration we're accessing as I get dripped on. But I'm interpreting it as the source of all life. There's water.
Zach 47:19
This is actually the re-beginning of the water cycle - the earth's water cycle.
Anthony 47:23
Bang. Knew there was something. Tans, you? What personal practices are you engaging in?
Tanya 47:30
So I think a really defining moment for me in the last couple of years was the black summer bushfires, which is when our farm for three months was surrounded by a ring of fire and we were living in smoke. And, you know, it was scary. And for a while there I was full of fear. And it really got me thinking about what it means is we live on this planet moving forward with many of her planetary boundaries transgressed, and the sort of the kickback. I mean, again, Paul Hawken talks about it as so we're getting homeschooled by Planet Earth. You know, she's she's responding to what's been done to her. And it means that we're facing these huge extremes. And I know that in this region, you face some pretty brutal times in the last couple of years too. And it was just so obvious to me that sitting in that from a place of fear is not what's gonna get us out of here because of fears what got us into this fear is driven colonialism and patriarchy and genocide and white supremacy and, and all the other systems that have wounded all of us. And so similar, what what's exit for me to sort of feeling this fear feeling kind of the systems around me that have always supported my life and supporting my family feeling like the turning on me felt like, what I was being called to, and what our family is being called to is to, is to a bigger sort of bigger love of place, and country and life that is not conditional, there isn't just for when the times are good. And when it's treating as well, but goes sort of right deep to whatever happens here. We are committed to you, and we are here. And so I guess ever since then, my daily practice has been to just sort of sit in that space of love, however briefly in the morning, so that I can send it out into the world and receive it back and operate from love, not from fear.
Anthony 49:31
Ella, and you, to close this.
Ella 49:35
I mean, for me, the one thing that brings me into being more than anything else is yes, returning to nature but with people. You know, we've just so experienced the weirdest two and a half three years of separation that's continued to separate us and if we know anything about this system, is that it? That's what it's always trying to do separate us from ourselves from community and from the natural world. And so Like when I returned back to nature with a group of people, we have a fire. And we can always sit around and some people will be waving, some people will be swimming in the creek, you know, this is a portal into the place of magic about existence. And in that space, I can rest fully, in that sometimes I find it weird to be in nature by myself, especially if I find like only one other human there and scared of that human, you know. So I feel like it's, it's a bit hard for my nervous system to rest into that, unless I'm in this more collective space. The other thing that I would invite all of you to do is to regularly meet with one another. I see like beautiful women sitting here from a women's group who have supported me and my journey in this community and I have supported them and our profound bond from sitting together, fortnightly. Thanks to Halina for bringing us together and, and sharing ourselves vulnerably with one another, which is something that this society doesn't really allow us to do quite often will intrinsically build the framework of this community. And you are all so incredibly blessed to be here because this community is one of the best we exist on the first light, you know, the east coast of Australia is first light. What we do here impacts not only the nation, but the entire world. There is a reason why people come here to heal and they have for 60,000 years. So this is the work that we had to do look around at these beautiful people and build your connections with them so strong that you don't need money in your back pocket because you will know that you will always be fed by the person sitting next to you
Anthony 51:54
Please thank our guests Ella Noah Bancroft, Tanya Massy and Dr Zach.
Zach 52:03
And I want to also give thanks to Anthony.
Blair 52:07
And a big thanks to Anthony James, who's the most consumate of MCs and just a beautiful human so please give it up for him.
Anthony 52:18
That's not the script - what's going on. A couple more things before we go. Murray Kyle, thanks again. Can't be said enough. gold sponsors Bardee who are in the room who are transforming food waste into protein and fertilizer with insects. And I so wish I could play chariots of fire right now but please, one enormous final thank you to our special guests, Tanya Massey, Ella Noah Bancroft and of course, from across the seas Zach Bush MD
Anthony 52:58
That was Zach Bush, Ella Noah Bancroft, and Tanya Massy, and Blair Beattie's kind voice of thanks at the end. For more on farmers footprint Australia. And to see the full film of this event, including the short film I mentioned, see the links in the show notes. Podcast subscribers, you can get 25% off the purchase of the film, with thanks to the farmers footprint team. And if you'd like to hear more from Zach, including his fascinating backstory, and that reference to Chariots of Fire, listen to Episode 62. And a reminder that if you're in or near Brisbane in late March, join me for a live podcast conversation at the World Science Festival. You'll find me at 10am on March 26, talking regenerating country with brilliant First Nations guests Jacob Birch and Zena Cumpston. The link for that is also in the shownotes. Thanks as always to the generous supporters who have helped make this episode possible. If you too value what you hear, please consider joining this great community of supporting listeners so we can keep the podcast going. Just head to the website via the show notes regennarration.com forward slash support. And thanks again. As always, if you think of someone who might enjoy this episode, please go ahead and share it with them. The music you're hearing is regeneration by Amelia Barden off the soundtrack to the film regenerating Australia. My name is Anthony James. Thanks for listening.