Realfoodology - 34: Why Your Food’s Not What it Used to Be with Finian Makepeace

Episode Date: May 5, 2021

Finian Makepeace is the co-founder of Kiss the Ground (a must see doc on Netflix) and a renowned presenter, media creator, and thought leader in the field of regenerative agriculture and soil health. His dedication to Kiss the Ground’s mission of “inspiring participation in global regeneration, starting with soil”, has motivated him to develop training programs, workshops, and talks designed to empower people around the world to become confident advocates for this growing movement. We talk about regenerative farming, how it will save our planet from desertification if we prioritize it over degenerative farming, why the conventional agriculture narrative of “feeding the world” is b.s., glyphosate on our food, food policies in place that are keeping us sick and what we can do on an individual level.  CAFOS = Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation - a system of farming which concentrates a large number of animals into a small space for maximum efficiency. https://kisstheground.com/https://www.instagram.com/finianmakepeace/

on today's episode of The Real Foodology Podcast. The only hope I have is that regeneration gets taken on and we're able to see a different future as possible because right now the rates of degradation, we're losing an area of land, the size of England is being lost from productive farmland to unable to be used even with chemicals because of how degraded it is, the area of England every year. Hi, guys. Welcome back to another episode of the Real Foodology podcast. I am your host, Courtney Swan. I'm the creator of Real Foodology, which is, of course, this podcast, but it is also a food blog and an Instagram where I post tons of healthy, low sugar recipes. So if you're new here, please go follow

along at Real Foodology on my Instagram. So today's episode is with Finian Makepeace, who is the co-founder of Kiss the Ground. And if that documentary sounds familiar to you, it's probably because I recently had Rylan on, who is also a co-founder of Kiss the Ground. And I have mentioned this documentary several times throughout multiple podcast episodes. It is a must-see documentary on Netflix. So if you haven't seen it yet, please go watch it. I've seen it twice. It is so powerful and incredible. Finian is a renowned presenter, media creator, and thought leader in the field of regenerative agriculture and soil health. So we talk all about regenerative farming, how it will save our planet

from desertification if we prioritize it over degenerative farming, which is what we're doing right now in conventional agriculture practices. Why this narrative that the conventional agriculture has picked up on of feeding the world and is spreading is just complete BS. Glyphosate on our food and the impacts of that on our health, food policies in place that are keeping us sick and what we can do on an individual level to help change this. Oh, also, I want to make a note here. We talk a lot about CAFOs, but we never actually defined it. So for those listening that are unaware of what CAFOs are,

it stands for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation, which is a system of farming that concentrates a large number of animals into a small space for maximum efficiency, or otherwise known as feedlots. And cows are most commonly found in CAFOs here in the United States. Imagine having a metabolic coach in your pocket that you could access at any point, any time in the day, whenever you want. That's what Lumen is.

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is called easy greens and it's a refreshing green apple juice where kids will never know that it's packed with veggies. And the other one is called protect. It's a delicious wild berry punch, like the Kool-Aid that we used to have as a kid, but without any sugar. This is really exciting. And if you've listened to the podcast for a while, you know that I'm a huge fan of Organifi. And most specifically because every single product that they make is glyphosate residue free. So you know that you're going to be able to give these powders to your kids and know that they will be able to consume them safely without any glyphosate in it. So let's break down each one. The Easy Greens is a nourishing and delicious blend of superfoods and veggies that provides essential nutrients, probiotics, and

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slash Real Foodology and use code Real Foodology for 20% off. Again, that's Organifi. It's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I.com slash RealFoodology. With that, let's get to a question. No one has sent in questions in a while. So if you have a burning question about health, wellness, something, an individual personal health story that you may have that you want answers around, please send me an email at realfoodologypodcast at gmail.com. Cause right now I'm getting all of my questions from my Instagram and I want to hear from you guys personally. So send me an email. Let's get those questions answered. Every week on the podcast, I like to ask my guests what their health non-negotiables are.

And what I mean by this are no matter how busy your day is, these are things that you do that better your health. So Finian, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. I'm so happy to have you. Great to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah. So I actually found you through Ryland because I had him on recently to talk all about this documentary that you guys did, Kiss the Ground, which for everyone listening, I talk about this. I've been talking about it a lot on my podcast. Go watch it. It's on Netflix. It is so incredible.

It's so impactful. And it's really a conversation that we all need to be having right now. So for those listening, can you give them a little bit of a background about what you do and what Kiss the Ground is? Yeah, I am Kiss the Ground's co-founder as well as our policy director and lead educator. So I do a lot of things around where is the organization heading? What are our big ideas? We're trying to get out into the world. And then on policy, I'm involved with local, state, and federal policy in terms of how we're working to do a type of advocacy policy that I'll

probably explain later, but really helping to champion this idea of regenerative agriculture on the policy front. And then with my training and the teaching I do, I'm working to develop and empower thousands, if not millions of advocates for this message around the world. So I've trained a bit over 3,000 advocates from over 30 different countries to be empowered soil advocates. So like yourself, like giving them the resources and the coaching of, and, and presentation decks and things like that so that they can jump right in, become empowered advocates for this idea and not have to take seven years to do that. So that's kind of where I play and Kiss the Ground is really here to allow for this message to get out to the world. When we came into this idea about eight years ago, we said, if we didn't know, probably most

people in the world also aren't aware of this big opportunity. And if it inspired us this much and changed our lives this much, probably it can do the same to so many others. So how then can we be champions for these leaders and the folks who are doing this work on the ground? How can we make this idea more available? So that was really the origin of Kiss the Ground. And we've been doing that for almost eight years. That is so incredible. I'm so glad that someone is doing it and advocating for it.

And you guys are a very loud voice in this space, which I'm very grateful for. So for people listening, if they're new to this term, I've talked about it a lot on other podcasts. But if this is the first one they're listening to, what is regenerative farming exactly? What is it exactly? That's tough. I can give you my explanations. I like to start as simple as possible because you can look up many different definitions that have been collaborated on or put together by different folks in this movement. And they're all great, Courtney., look at it, read it, check out the dictionary definition. Regenerative means something is happening to bring the conditions or the ability of something to function again. So if your arm is regenerating after a cut, it's restoring itself back to its ability to function correctly, right? If a lizard's tail falls off and then it regenerates its tail, it becomes a functioning whole lizard again, correct? Right? Yeah. So when we recognize the

word regenerative, it means something that's happening to bring something back to its highest functioning state, right? So if we're doing agriculture, that's regenerative. We're doing agriculture that's helping an ecosystem or a landmass or arguably even the ocean come back to or be restored back to its highest operational state. So that means everything from how well does it absorb rainwater when it rains? How much is it helping increase biodiversity or abundance of life? Or how much photosynthetic capacity does it have? How well is it functioning? And when we start to analyze our land, as degraded as it is, and go on Google Earth, everyone, tonight, go look around the earth and see how much land has been degraded because of

humanity's agricultural practices, and then realize that if we don't regenerate it, it either stays as bad as it is, or continues in most cases to continually, perpetually decrease its ability to function. So that's where we are. So we're basically saying agriculture that is regenerating or helping landscapes regenerate to their highest functioning state. So just take the word regenerative, take the word agriculture, marry them, and that is regenerative agriculture in its simplest form.

In more nuanced ways, it's helping sequester carbon, it's helping biodiversity, it's, you know, it's wrapped up in so much of indigenous wisdom and many cultures around the world. But in its really basic form, it's just two words put together that mean themselves. And that will help us if we really just focus on the meaning of regeneration. Yeah, well, and I love that regenerative farming is really changing the conversation around climate change. And we're not just now focused on slowing down our emissions, but we're actually trying to repair the damage that has been done. We're bringing the carbon out of the atmosphere and back into the soil. And what's so cool, too,

that you guys talk about this a lot in Kiss the ground is preserving that soil for so long we have been spraying it with synthetic chemicals and you know trying to kill off as much as we possibly can but we've forgotten that there's so much in that soil that we need for life and for our health yeah it's when well said and when you get into it, the function of everything is interdependent on biology. And what we've failed to really grasp and has unfortunately been co-opted by the sales companies for chemicals is this isn't a chemistry set, Courtney. This is life begetting life. And if we break down the ability for life to function or we make it impossible for life to be able to regenerate back to its higher functioning self, we make a system that is turning land to desert and decimating the possibility for food to have nutrition. Like there's one. You're like, why does our food taste like cardboard?

Why does this tomato taste this much worse than this tomato? Well, macronutrients, micronutrients, phytonutrients are not available when certain biology aren't present in the soil. Literally can't get many of the trace minerals that our bodies need when certain biology aren't in the soil. It's those biology that are making those minerals available, plant available. If they're not there in the root zone because we've killed them, decimated them with chemicals in our agricultural system, we don't get food that has the nutrition that we need. God, and that alone is a great part of the conversation to have around trying to get vegetables that come from regenerative farming or, you know, organic as well. Because I know there's a lot of conversation around conventional versus organic.

For me, my biggest thing is trying to stay away from all the synthetic chemicals that are being sprayed. But on top of that, like you said, they're literally not even as nutrient dense because we're spraying the soil. Yeah, I mean, it can be the spraying of the soil, but it's also when we get down to the... Sorry, motorcycle passing. Oh, they're really going for it. Yeah. When we get down to the function, and this is, I don't know if people are just listening here, but when we get down to the basic function of soil and plants, we have to understand that there was a vacancy of knowledge around how much was happening in regard to biology. So really quick science lesson for everyone to grasp why regenerative agriculture, aside from just organic, for example, is really important. So plants take carbon that's in

the atmosphere, pull it in via photosynthesis, utilize energy from the sun to take the carbon from carbon dioxide, break it off to oxygen, and connect that carbon with hydrogen and oxygen from H2O, water. And they make essentially a liquid sugar that pumps through the plant, right? When you break open a plant, you get that sap or you get that liquid sugar that's flowing through the plant. That's what a plant uses to build and repair itself. So as a plant's growing, those carbon chains are literally the structural skeleton of any plant, tree, even our own bodies. So those carbon blocks came from carbon from carbon dioxide. What we didn't know was how much of that liquid carbon

sugar plants were exuding out of their roots to feed microorganisms. Okay, so this is so crucial because when we say, okay, farming is, especially chemical farming is, oh, sorry, let me finish the story. So the exudates are pumping out of the roots. They're feeding these microorganisms. These microorganisms, as I said earlier, are consuming that carbon. They're growing. In their life cycle processes, they're making minerals available to the plant, right? Then the plant's able to absorb those minerals and put it into its fruit or put it into its own body.

And it has those minerals in it. When we spray the soil with chemicals, we're killing the biology, not just the targeted pest. We also kill all of this other biology. When we till the soil, we're exposing that biology to oxygen, oxidating it, turning it back into CO2. When we leave soil bare, meaning even if you have an organic farm that leaves bare ground for a bunch of the year, there's no carbon being pumped in via the plant to feed the microorganisms. That means they have to eat something. They eat the stored carbon and they are turning that soil into dirt because they're

basically consuming their own house and home. So essentially, if we're doing farming that's not helping to increase how much biology by feeding more carbon sugars into the ground, we are creating a net carbon loss and we are losing the functionality of soil as well as the carbon in the soil and the ability for the soil to have minerals and nutrients available. So this is where not just saying, okay, just cutting the chemicals is great because let's say that's about a third of the problem, but tilling the soil, leaving the soil bare, and the degenerative agricultural practices that have been happening way before chemicals were invented. Fertile

Crescent used to be fertile, right? They didn't have Monsanto back then. So we've been dealing with farming practices, overgrazing, tilling, taking out trees, and all of these leaving soil bare that is essentially stopping the soil building process the soil regeneration process and therefore causing soil degeneration and carbon going up and loss from the system and desertification occurring so we've been doing agriculture in most societies many have beenative, but most societies across the world, especially in brittle environments, have been doing what is blatantly considered degenerative agriculture, degenerating the ecosystem's carrying capacity and function over time as we produce our food. Wow. I actually hadn't heard it explained like that. That's really

powerful. And I mean, it just goes back to this notion that I'm brought to a lot in in conversations with health and wellness that we forget that before humans nature was here way before us and mother nature mother earth knows what she's doing and there's certain ecosystems and certain things in place that work so proficiently and then when we come in as humans like not to shit on humans but it's kind of like we come in with these interventions and we think that we're doing better, but we're actually, if we're not learning to work with nature, then we're just going to, I mean, it's, we're just going to make it worse. Well, I would just call a spade a spade. I mean, especially male humans, especially in recent times, white male humans. I mean, there's,

you can, you can definitely pigeonhole who's been the source of complete annihilation of nature's functionality. I mean, it's pretty obvious. But we've done so much damage and then our trends become the worldwide trends and globalization and everything is just, it's insane. The only hope I have is that regeneration gets taken on and we're able to see a different future as possible because right now the rates of degradation, we're losing an area of land the size of England is being lost from productive farmland to unable to be used even with chemicals because of how degraded it is, the area of England every year around the world. That's our rate of loss of land that's in current production. Not even land that was in production that's already too beat up to use. Every year we're losing land out of production at that rate

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receive 10% off sitewide. That's from our place.com code real foodology. Our place offers a 100 day trial with free shipping and returns. Wow. I mean that's really scary. So with this concept of regenerative farming, can we take those pieces of land that have been desertified and bring them back or is there no hope for that part? I mean arguably, arguably everywhere can be regenerated. There isn't a place on the planet, aside from like Antarctica or whatever it is, that is vacant of life being able to work. Carbon and water are interconnected here. And this is where if we are working as humans on the pathways of water and carbon and their cycles, if we're focusing on both of those elements, life will be able to prosper anywhere. And this is where,

when we say, okay, the flow of water in Saudi Arabia, you know, a friend of mine worked on a project you can YouTube about greening the desert there. And it looks like a desert, has looked like a desert for the past 50 years when they nationalized the land and had that happen. And people have never managed land, went and managed land in a brittle environment, it goes up in dust very quickly. But with different management, you're able to slow water down on an ecosystem. So when it rains, even when it flash floods, moving from able to lose 90%, 100% of your water to either evaporation or runoff to holding, absorbing, retaining 80 percent of your water. Let's just make up some numbers. You've significantly changed how that ecosystem is able to provide for plants. And then almost everywhere, Courtney, this is

something that gets overlooked a lot, is something called latent seed banks. People overlook this because they look at an environment that looks very destroyed and they say it's desert. But in truth, it's not desert. It's organisms, smallest of the small organisms, seeds and the such waiting, hibernating essentially until conditions are right. We've all probably seen National Geographic videos where it's like, this big bloom happened finally after this many years of drought. Where the heck did the seeds come from that planted that entire prairie, right? They're waiting there. So latent seed banks in California, New Mexico, Texas,

where especially in these places that used to be tall grass prairie, are just sitting there saying, when am I conditions going to be right? Not all of those seeds have been lost. Some of them have been lost from erosion, etc. But a lot of them are just waiting dormant there. give the conditions back, when we start doing planned grazing, when we start doing these other regenerative ecosystem management tools, those flower species or grass species that someone hasn't seen in 50 or 100 or 500 years, they come back and be like, oh, wow, that's like magic. Be like, it's just waiting for the conditions. And humans are this unique species that destroyed everything, but we can also use tools and land shaping and practices of regenerative agriculture to bring back areas that seem outside of that zone of possibility,

and we can bring them back to functioning and doing what they're supposed to do and what they evolved to do before. Yeah. Oh, that's so cool. I actually hadn't even heard that. So that's really promising. And it makes it, the job isn't quite as big as it might seem. When you look at how bad everything is, say, yes, it's really, really bad, but the job isn't like we have to go Johnny Appleseed the entire world. Yeah. Well, and again, like we were saying earlier, we need to trust mother nature, you know, help her get back on and she'll be good.

Yeah, we need to learn to work with her. So how did we get here? I really want to talk about some of these policies that we have in place that are only further throwing us down this track of conventional agriculture that's just destroying our earth and our soil, and how can we turn it around? There's a myriad of them. Any in particular that you think we should talk about? Okay, so the ones that I'm thinking of, paying farmers subsidies, for example. So we pay, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I have these numbers right. So corn, soy, and hay are 70% of the U.S. cropland that we grow in the U.S., which is interesting.

Ninety-nine percent of that goes to animals, so it's not even going to humans, really. And then on top of that, so we're paying subsidies to farmers to grow corn, wheat, and soy, and it's why we're seeing it in all of our processed foods. It's why we're able to provide really cheap food, but it's also like high caloric, highly palatable, not at all with humans nutrition in mind. And it's really, in my opinion, what's keeping us sick.

Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of arguments you can make here but to be general for a second um our desire to commodify our food systems to have more um omnipotent control of the globe as the united states is something we all have to take seriously this was a strategy is if we're able to um mess with other countries ceilings meaning that i mean their price ceilings and're able to mess with other countries' ceilings, I mean their price ceilings, and being able to offer them our products and own that food market and disrupt theirs, we gain a lot of control around the world.

It's just policy 101. So that's really scary to think about as we've developed our food policy in the United States from the late 50s into the 70s of really what was dictating it was kind of global perspective of control of food systems. And that's pushed farmers to, the phrase they had was go big or go home. And that's pushed farmers to maximize their field size, to maximize how many crops they're trying to do a year, to do their push for yield, yield, yield. There are a lot of farmers who were very embedded with conservation, rotating crops, leaving fields to regenerate and heal themselves. Even if that was mild and still slightly degenerative compared to now where we're maximizing this yield thing, it's every year, Courtney, that means that

farmers are incentivized to put more fertilizer on to maximize their yield off of degraded land. So the problem is we're in a downward spiral because a farmer, when they're utilizing the methods that have been put out there, tilling, overproduction, pushing out biodiversity, they're using more chemicals because their soil is less fertile every year. So the fertilizer rates have to go up. Their insecticide rates have to go up. Lack of biodiversity means their fungicides, herbicides, everything has to go up. So they're on a constant increase of input costs. So our farmers are having to go bigger and bigger to make it work.

And that's going to come crashing down. And already as farmers are adding 4% debt in their farm debt every single year. And if you think about a business to get into and the loans that they're looking at, is there half a million to a million dollar loans every year to even just do that year of farming? And then they're all on a payback cycle. So it's a really vicious, poor cycle for farmers that a lot of them are finally starting to see this isn't really working. It works for the chemical companies, but not necessarily for the farmers themselves. So in terms of the policies, some of them are kind of like Band-Aids of like, farmers need this support.

Yes, you could argue that farmers need this support. But when we look at what we're subsidizing, essentially, we're not changing the system to be better. We're essentially saying, OK, here's how we make farmers be able to live for the time being in this current system. So regenerative agriculture, why it's so crucial, is it's saying, this is a way that if we endorse this, if we support this through our government, our farmers can actually get off of this bandwagon, this hijacking of their own economics, they can start saving on input costs significantly, cutting input costs in half in some cases

the first year and a half to two years. That's a really huge promise for farmers to be able to say, this is an avenue for farmer prosperity. If you're just telling them you have to stop because it's bad for the environment, you have to do this because it's good for climate, that's not necessarily as valid an argument of this is a way forward for not just you, but your sons and daughters to be able to inherit this farm and actually have a viable farm. prosperity conversation. We're saying, you're in a really precarious situation and we want to support you and being able to reduce your inputs, whether it's the chemicals, the fertilizers,

et cetera, we want to help you get on a train that's actually much more prosperous for you. So that's something in the policy realm that we're trying to work with people at the highest levels of policy, state and federal, who are able to say, how are we going to support farmers to do this and start to collectively stand up to the chemical companies who've been dictating this? And they're the drug companies. So they're drug dealers. They win if everyone's unhealthy. That's the problem. Oh, God. Well, I remember this was so impactful for me in that documentary. Gabe Brown, the regenerative farmer that you guys interviewed, he said, I don't want to be in welfare anymore.

And I was like, whoa, I'd never thought about it like that before. And then, you know, to go even more into that, where he was talking about how, I believe it was three years in a row, he lost 100% of his crop because they weren't resilient at all. And then the fourth year, I think it was maybe 80%. And then when he was able to switch to a regenerative farming, he doesn't lose almost any of his crop now because they're resilient. And now he's not dependent on these chemical companies. He's able to grow a vast majority of diversity of different plants

instead of just this corn, wheat, and soy. And I think that, yeah, it's important. Right, so he's less vulnerable to the markets he has. If one crop doesn't work, he does have other options, which is crucial. And he's a maverick among mavericks. And what we're really trying to look at on the policy front is, how are we making this more available for early adopters? What I say is we're kind of getting to the end of the maverick or leading.

There you go. There's another motorcycle. How are we basically saying, okay, we've had this last 10 years of these mavericks or folks who are just the extraordinary doers who've made regenerative agriculture a reality, made that an actual attainable goal. How do we now make this a bit more available for the early adopters? Those people, maybe like yourself or myself, who are like, I can do this, but I need something to go up. If I need an example, I need training. I need to be able to access training because I'm not an innovator to that degree. So that's where we're looking at. How is the government looking in this next four years to substantially help farmers do that?

Those early adopters achieve this, have access to the training and technical support they need. Yeah. And I mean, I think some of it is literally having these conversations and educating people on this, you know, getting this information out that The way that we're doing it right now is not sustainable, nor is it healthy for us. Yeah. It's really important. It's really bad. I mean, it's the problem is the deeper you go into this, there's the good news and the bad news. The deeper you go into this subject, the more hopeful you'll be of humanity actually having a valid option out of the mess we're in.

The other side of it is the drastic nature of what we're in right now and how significant it is. Everything from the chemicals that are on our food. I mean, if you just look at the increased amount of glyphosate on wheat, for example, since the late 90s when they started spraying glyphosate on wheat to increase the harvest basically to dry it out and to make it so that the last push of seed happens so you get a you know a bump of 15 to 10 percent or so of your your harvest gets it's bigger your yield gets bigger but people aren't realizing that like if you're not eating organic wheat the amount of glyphosate you're consuming is just going up and up every year and has been for the past 15, 20 years.

And it's like now your non-organic bread is spraying glyphosate right before it's processed, right before harvest. And this is sound the alarm, folks. This is scary stuff that completely takes out the bacteria and other organisms in your gut that are vital for your own survival like this is you your body your evolution of what your body's supposed to do getting decimated by a chemical that's designed to kill everything except for human cells but lo and behold we're mostly not human cells so yep exactly. We have in our microbiome a whole diversity of bacteria that very much contributes to our health and is super important. Yeah, the glyphosate conversation is one that I have very often

because I feel like I'm just in this corner screaming, sounding the alarm, just like, guys, we really need to pay attention to this because not only is it desertifying our world, it's killing the soil. It's also killing our microbiome. And there's pretty good evidence that it's causing cancer. And, you know, there's a lot of conversation too around gluten. Everyone's like, why is everyone gluten free all of a sudden or has to be? I think there's a connection with the amount of glyphosate we're

spraying on those grains. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's still a bit anecdotal at this point so i don't necessarily encourage everyone to go and like say factually gluten intolerance is a glyphosate intolerance but when you look at it it in terms of logic and i try to just sometimes be barebone logic with this of like have you seen the increases of this insanely toxic chemical that we're putting on our food? And then you see the studies of how much is actually on Cheerios or on our bread that we're eating. And you're like, this is scary. Why are we feeding this to our children? So I encourage advocates out there, start your friends with something because most people can't swallow at all. So I, you know, I encourage people to check out Clean 15, Dirty Dozen,

for not Center for Food Safety, what's the other group? EWG, Environmental Working Groups, Clean 15, Dirty Dozen. That's helpful for people to start to say, okay, how can I navigate this? But on the bread front, Courtney, I just am like, if you do one thing this year, take your family off of non-organic bread. Yes. And if it's 19 more cents or 50 more cents even per bread pack, cool if you eat two less slices of bread per week anyway, probably healthier for you no matter what. Yeah. But seriously, that changed because they can feel good about that.

They can feel like they accomplished something and they're doing something for the health of their kids. And that's one step in the right direction to get them going this way. And they can celebrate that win. Absolutely. Yeah. I love that. I love that approach. So in this conversation, I'm curious to hear what you have to say about this narrative around this conventional farming and feeding the world. What do you have to say about that? It's a bunch of, uh, out of bologna. It is. I'm not, I'm trying not to swear on, on podcasts anymore. Um, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's a great sales pitch. If you, if you think about what, what are conspiracy theories, right? Some conspiracy theories are just wacky. It's really out there. Added things like, oh, this thing plus this thing equals this thing. But whoa, that's a lot of assumptions.

But sometimes conspiracy is interesting to look at of like, what does that mean? Does it mean people were sitting around a table conspiring for an agenda? In that case, if you look at this phenomenon, it's very strategic for them to convince the world that big ag, big chemical is what needs to feed the world. And then they get the support of the government because they have their own policy incentives to make that happen. And they can be in cahoots of like, yep, this is what we need to do to feed the world. But the fact of the matter is feeding the world still comes, I think it's 70% of food is still coming from smallholder farmers that are many cases organic, especially like around the world where they don't even have access to these chemicals. So that's where this kind of big lie helps them convince government to stay on their side when like, oh, this is what we need to

feed the world. But when we look at the statistics, first of all, it doesn't match. Second of all, the human health condition is absolutely important to check into. I think it's Iowa's rates are 85%, sorry, 90% of land in Iowa is farmed. 85% of the food they eat is imported. Iowa is the second biggest agricultural state in the United States. Think about how crazy that is. So 90 percent of their land is in farming. 85 percent of their land is imported into the state and they're the second biggest ag state in the United States. Wow. So if we think about is big agriculture feeding the world, it's not just not only feeding the world,

it's not even feeding the states that have the most agriculture. And that's where you start to say, wait a minute, what are we making? And as you mentioned earlier, those percentages in the movies are really hard to pinpoint because they're based on some things, but we're producing a bunch of ethanol with the corn production as well. So it's important not to forget that a bunch of that is for ethanol production, which is pretty silly as well. But when it comes to food people need to eat

and the food that we're creating with these subsidized systems, it's pretty alarming that we're supporting this with our own tax dollars all the time. Instead of saying, how can we make sure we get really good healthy food available regionally and support agriculture that's doing that? And for some reason, that's like laughed at as like, that's impossible. Be like, no, it's not. It's the fact that we're subsidizing something that's about commodities and has its own origins of why it was designed in the first place. We can design something different and we can have billions of dollars that are then feeding the animals that are crammed in feedlots that are then contributing to the majority of climate change.

I'm having a motorcycle day. I think someone's testing a motorcycle in my neighborhood. So sorry about that. So yeah, I think this is this is it's a it's a great point, Courtney. And I'm I'll just tell it to you straight as I see it. It's really important for all of us to check into some of these statements where, you know, is cattle production, even in feedlots, a majority of our climate problem? No, especially when you account for all of agriculture and what it's doing. So one thing as we have these discussions, I encourage people, especially if they're involved with policy or trying to help advocate, is the more that you're able to delineate and say, okay, how can we do better with what is potentially there for us to do better with? So for example, every cow is raised on pasture for about a third

of its life, at least in the cow-calf operation side of it. Before it moves to a feedlot to be fattened up, they're all raised, except for veal, but they're all raised on pasture. So we say, okay, there's an opportunity there because most of those pastures are overgrazed and their potential to be regeneratively grazed, meaning they're increasing biomass production, photosynthetic capacity, increase of carbon sequestration, water infiltration, biodiversity. All of these metrics of regenerating an ecosystem are possible with well-managed grazing land. So then you say, okay, that's a potential there. If I'm looking to create political will and movement,

if I'm completely isolating a huge majority of the population to say, it's all bad, it's all terrible, and be like, wait, but actually, where's an opportunity? So if all of our ag land or ranching land that's currently feeding calf-cow operations was moved to regenerative and had some of the results that people like Gabe Brown and Alan Williams have, where you're seeing these staggering carbon sequestration rates, alarmingly amazing infiltration water holding capacity rates. If that was happening, that's a huge win, right? And then we say there's a really bad problem. So if I'm able to say this could be good, and here are some examples. Watch A Regenerative Secret, for example. You see across the street what bad grazing looks like.

It's not a CAFO. It's cows out there eating grass like we've all been taught. Oh, they're speckled on the landscape. They look great. No, it's terrible. They're overgrazing, and they're annihilating the ecosystem. Right across the street, cows are being used in paddock, adaptive multi-paddock grazing, and the regeneration rates are insane. Quite literally, unbelievably insane how quick it can happen. So you're saying, wait a minute, how am I able to articulate what can happen that's good while I'm simultaneously and

constructively trying to dismantle what's extremely bad? So then you say, okay, let's get a little bit clearer on CAFO system. What's bad about the CAFO system? Yes, the lagoons of manure that are constantly producing methane gas, terrible. Is cow poop and farts just inherently the worst thing ever? No, because there's always been ruminants that have been doing that. And the ecosystem was evolved to handle that and deal with it. We didn't have major issues back in the day. So you can have a whole nother conversation about that. But then you're saying, okay, what's in that whole thing that's a problem? Well, the feed, Where is all the feed coming from?

Almost all of it is coming from degenerative agriculture. Then you say, wait a minute, hypothetically, what if all the feed was becoming more regenerative in its growing? Highly unlikely because of how it's produced and what it's producing, corn, soy, wheat, hay and stuff, but it could be. So that could be like, oh, we could actually make that better. But that's still the biggest contribution to the CAFO being bad is all of the land that's losing over four tons of topsoil per acre per year, insane amount of chemicals, that's contributing to that big problem with the CAFO. So you're then like, okay, the CAFO problem isn't just that CAFO right there that I'm looking at on Google Maps.

It's all of the feed that's terribly farmed to make that that's causing all this erosion, this runoff, this water pollution, blah, blah. I could go on and on. Then you're saying, OK, where is that? Where's the potential there? Then you're saying, wait a minute. And this is where you go even deeper. Why was the CAFO originally architected? What was happening? And you start

to think holistically here, Courtney, and this is where you're starting to say, as we were over grazing on any grazing system, there's efficiency side of like, oh, put all the animals into a place and you can harvest them faster. There's an efficiency conversation. There's this other conversation that doesn't happen very often, which is as your ecosystem degrades because you're overgrazing, your ability to fatten up cattle significantly reduces over time. And you have to lessen how many cows you can have on your property and you have to send them somewhere to fatten them up. So Alan Williams, perfect case in point, he's able to fatten up cows on land as he's regenerating it. So he's able to say, wait a minute, my land doesn't get worse. So if we look collectively at the United States and say, we've reduced all this grazing land to desert, and now we're like,

oh man, I have to go fatten my cows up. We're in a context of, okay, the CAFO makes sense because you have to have the animals somewhere to feed them a bunch of things to fatten them up to sell them. But if you're able to have a buffet of really great looking grasses, as you'll see in a regenerative secret, where the cows go eat for an hour and then they just sit and chew their cud, then you're able to fatten up cows and not have to move them to a place to fatten them up. So when we start to look at the whole context of why did things become an automatic that makes sense? The CAFO system, there was efficiency, there's all these things that stacked up, but also the degradation in ecosystem carrying capacity or the biomass carrying capacity of the land was diminishing all over the place. So you needed

to fatten up things. So these are things that like, when we really start to toss this together, it's very complex. But when we do so, we're able to talk with a conservative rancher in Nebraska and have a conversation that we can meet eye to eye on eight things out of 10. And then we can have a bit of things to work with here. And that's where I am encouraging advocates to say, the more you black and white this, the more you throw something under the bridge without understanding it, the more likely you're going to be putting yourself against someone who might be your ally a year from now, who might actually be the most important person to ally with as things move forward. Wow. And that's so interesting because that, when you zoom out and you look at it as if, as though it's all these different systems in place

that are contributing to it, then you could also say that going vegetarian or vegan is not necessarily, or I would say is not actually the way out of this. And it's a great, it's a great thing to do. Yes. If you're saying, well, what should I do? Should I not do the bad totally but are you going to build the good in the meantime if you can I would encourage building the good and that's going to mean helping to advocate for it helping to purchase it but that's according to it's like per calorie be like what's worse California organic large-scale organic carrots or backyard chickens per calorie. The backyard chickens are better per calorie and per miles shipped and per soil degradation loss. But conventional organic, which you know what that means, carrots like so destructive.

But people are like, I'm eating organic carrots. I'm saving the world. And I didn't eat an egg from a backyard chicken. Be like, well, dude, you're not doing a better thing for the planet by eating your carrot. I'm sorry. If you ate someone who's doing, you know, pasture raised backyard tree canopy chickens in your neighborhood, that's way better per calorie than shipping those carrots to Minnesota from California in the most destructive agriculture system on the planet. Exactly. So then if people don't know this and they just read they need to go vegetarian or

vegan and then they think they're doing their part, if they're just buying conventional and they're buying into this conventional system, they're not helping any more than the people that are eating meat. Yeah. And I think, but there's two ways to say that you can say that as you're stupid. See, you didn't get it either. Or you can be like, no, I know. I'm just saying, I'm not saying you, I'm saying plenty of people on Facebook. Let's just say that. And I think I'm like, okay, but to all fairness, where were you 20 years ago? Where were you 10 years ago? Before you 10 years ago before I knew this I was trying to make options more available to myself based on what my limited context and understanding was

and you can't fault people for trying to do good by god there's enough people who don't give an f who are doing plenty of bad give respect to people who are saying, I'm doing this for a cause. If there's context, you can provide them that allows them to see things a bit differently. Great. But by, by no means is, should they be lambasted for making a hard decision amongst everyone else who's running us off the cliff? If they're thinking, Hey, this is what I've heard is the best current option. Good on you. And I can help educate you on the things because I was right there with you, buddy. You know, like where can we take that hold someone's hand approach, get them to see a bigger picture and not knock them for, for being about something. We need way more people about things.

We just don't, can't look at things black and white. We have to think holistically. Yes. Oh, and I'm so glad that you brought up this point because I fully agree with you. I just love to bring up this part of the conversation. When I bring it up, this is not even directed at people that go vegan or vegetarian. What I get really frustrated about is that there is this narrative right now that I believe is fueled by big agriculture that you just need to eat the Impossible Burger and go vegan or vegetarian. And that's going to contribute. So for me, that part of the conversation is very like, I get upset because I'm like, once again, the narrative is being changed when we need to actually be having the conversation like you and I are having where we need to focus on regenerative farming. So this is not even to say

like, um, don't go vegan or vegetarian or that I'm like, and by any way, shaming anyone, it's more that there's so much more to the conversation than what is being told in like a mainstream way. Yeah. And we, we weren't trained in the dialectic Courtney. I mean, I was homeschooled until I was in eighth grade and like the, the hilariousness of just how much we've been spoon-fed what's the answer and so we have adults who the smart people who just haven't been trained in okay what about this yeah and they're said i was told this this is what it told me i teach soil advocate training and i'm always amazed i'll be training 300 people at a time. The lack of questions of like, wait, what did you just say? And I'm like, why aren't people asking me? I just told you, yes,

it's in fact, I'm not lying to you. But if something's surprising, our society is just trained to be like, dude on the screen said it, expert said it, white dude with a suit jacket on said it, Must be true. You're like, dude, if you just heard something that seems totally crazy to you, why aren't you being like, that seems totally crazy to me? Because probably 40% of the people in the audience are like, whoa, that's crazy. Why are we so trained in our schooling? Remember that you've been trained to be embarrassed by your peers, to feel weird for asking questions, to feel like an idiot if you got the wrong answer. That's what our schooling system did to you, not you, but the general you. And it's sad because

we have adults who, once they've made a decision and said, OK, I'm in this camp, their ability to hear a critique, it feels like people are stepping on like their religion almost. You're like you're stepping on my God and you're like, all I'm doing is asking you a question. I'm offended. I don't want to talk to you anymore. And then you're like, that's that's a big wall. So part of our problem is we're not trained to be receptive of questions. And therefore, that uncomfortableness that comes when someone says, well, what about this? So what I encourage people to do instead of asking the what about this questions, which ticks a lot of people off, is to say, oh, cool. Yeah, like to go the route of like, I didn't know. Al Gore didn't know. Freaking DiCaprio didn't know.

Like people didn't know about this who you probably consider the knowers of the forefront. They didn't know also. Soil scientists didn't know how soil worked, like Ray Archuleta says. We just didn't get this stuff. That is a really nice soft cushion for most people to sit on and be receptive of, like, I'm not an idiot and this is a fun one like talking with the governor here governor newsom we were at an event with him and he said i started by sharing that like hey look everyone we're at this fundraiser like talking

about regenerative agriculture you're not an idiot for not knowing about this stuff this is really coming out a lot of indigenous cultures knew about this but like sorry for most of us this is new and the governor comes out and he says thank you for saying that because i'm a competitive environmentalist and if you hadn't set the stage for this being new i would have felt defensive and it was really interesting to have someone at his level who's been at the forefront of so many of these environmental conversations saying i would have been triggered i would have felt defensive if you hadn't set the stage of like other famous environmentalist people didn't know either. And it was really telling. So

that is, this is such an important conversation to be having that people just need to, you know, well, okay. I, I say this a lot about anytime I share things, for example, about the amount of pesticides that we're using or how bad processed foods are for us, you know, et cetera. I tell a similar thing to people because I've also found that people get really defensive. They get upset because they think that you're implying that you're dumb for not knowing this or that you should have known it. Or I see a lot of people saying, well, these companies would never do this on purpose knowingly. Like, you sound like such a conspiracy theorist thinking that the government is, like, purposely doing this to our food. And what I come back and I say is, look, no, I'm of the mind that all of these things that are in place right now started with good intention. We thought we were doing the right thing.

We thought we were doing something that would create more agriculture. And yes. Well, just one other really, I think, really important thing is it might have been completely different category that someone was doing something that they thought was a good thing. So for example, U.S. preeminence around the world, the unintended consequences could have been an industrial agriculture system that 50 years later is making everyone in our country sick. Yeah. Right. Like that could be arguably like, yeah, we want American preeminence. We want this to happen. Some of us, whatever. Yeah. But that could have been a good intention by someone in their own context. But 50 years later, the unintended consequences for agriculture is just oh my god

right exactly but that's where i'm saying it's not just in that that one sphere it could be somewhere else that swayed something else over here exactly and that's my whole point in all this and this is kind of to your point as well that um that it i i am of the mind that all of this stuff is started with good intention but now that we know better, we need to start taking those steps to change it. And also I think, too, just what you said is so important for people to hear because I related so much to what you were saying about asking questions. I spent the majority of my time in school, and then up until very recently I felt like in my adulthood

where I was scared to ask questions because I thought that it meant that I looked dumb that I didn't know what I was talking about and it would be revealed if I was asking questions and I've really had to change that narrative in my head to where like I'm probably the person that asks the most questions out of anyone I know now because I'm just like you know what I'm just going to own it admit that I don't know anything about this and I want to get to know, and I want to ask all the questions so that I can understand it better. And as, I mean, if you're on a learning curve, and I'm just going to say this straight up, if you want to be a learner and be someone who's going to be helping this versus someone who's a consumer, asking questions is absolutely a necessity.

Whereas like people do, they have this, this built in training of this is what it means. It means you're stupid. Cause I got made fun of when I was seven, but like, if you're going to learn this stuff, if you don't ask the questions,

you don't receive the information that you want to know. And these experts and people you're talking to, they will gladly give you the answers. And yeah, I'm grateful that I missed out on, you know, my first years of schooling because I came into the system and I just was like, hilarious. I would ask a question or several during a class and students would be like, I'm so glad you asked that. I had no idea what they were talking about. You're like, why didn't you ask that? And it's just like, I didn't, I didn't want to be like, that's so weird. What, what, what, but you wanted to know and you just sat there. That's hilarious and scary and weird, but that's, that's what our education systems

develop. But that's what we've conditioned people to do. And so for anyone listening, we want to encourage you to ask more questions in your life. Maybe homeschool your kids. Yeah. Just kidding. That's a whole other podcast. But definitely ask more questions. And the other thing is it does connect you to the people that you ultimately want to be working with and brings elevates you into a circle of connection with them. Yeah, I have countless people.

If everyone asked me questions, I would have too many questions and I have to I'd have to have a firewall. But luckily, not enough question ask question askers are out there. But when they do, that's a connection that's built in and I will remember them and they will be someone who's, especially if they're constructive, if they're trying to help and not just be a glom on, if they're trying to help, that's what I'm about. And I'm about helping you move forward in your activism. So why not? Of course, that's a good place to invest and answer into, you know? Yeah. So on the topic of asking questions, I have another question for you. For people listening,

what can they do on like a personal and individual level to get involved in changing the landscape that we have going on in this country right now? Number one, help spread awareness. Watch the film, kiss the ground. Start sharing Courtney's work. You know, start being a message spreader to bring people together around this. Each of us, no matter what part, no matter what area of the learning curve we're in, each of us can play a role in spreading awareness no matter what. So that's number one. Number two, kisstheground.com is a huge resource for people to get information. Also, if you're ready to become a part of this movement, watch the film

and then take soil advocate training. If you're a farmer, you can go through our farmland program, connect to the best farmer training programs in the world, in the country. So that's for kind of the farmer route. And then we're going to be setting off a major campaign called regenerate america that'll be a reformation of the farm bill that we're going to be looking for a lot of support we'll be of course checking with you to see how we can work in coordination with that but this is this is an opportunity for humanity i mean at the depths of this we each have an incredibly big role to play like if you look at the space, like the dot com era, again, it's not a great analogy, but like, we're just coming into an era of regenerative

agriculture. If you're looking for a place to have a fulfillment in your life of what you've contributed to before you die, by all means, get the heck in here and start working with us in this movement on this, because this is where things are going. They have to be, otherwise we're pretty much all doomed, because climate change, shmimate claims for a second, in terms of carbon, just desertification alone, it's going to create so many climate refugees and so many vulnerable landscapes that we're all going to be so broken across the world and have so many climate refugees that it's going to be insane. So yes, global warming is the problem that's on people's mind, but desertification, lack of water, recharge, all this kind of stuff is just sitting there

happening. And it's going to be the cause of us being so vulnerable and destroyed all across the world. So get involved, start coming and start generating ideas. I mean, the reason I did soil advocate training for people is to jump them ahead so that they're empowered to take these messages to the world. And we have people all over the world taking on their projects, doing things that are just incredible in their communities or bigger and stepping in. And it's exciting once you get a taste of contribution into this movement.

So welcome one and all, yeah. Yeah, so share this with all your friends and family and farmers if you know them too. We need as many people on deck as we can for this. So my last question that I like to ask everyone is what are your personal health non-negotiables? That meaning that every single day, no matter how crazy your schedule is,

things that keep you grounded, keep you focused on your health. And so for example, mine are, I get greens with at least one meal a day. I make sure I always go on a walk outside so I get sunlight and vitamin D. And I try to get 70 ounces of water in a day. I do try to drink water.

Um, and I think the non-negotiables, it's great. Cause I do negotiate with myself quite a bit. We all do. I'm trying to think, is there anything that haven't negotiated? Um, it's tough, but definitely, definitely the water one. we all do I'm trying to think is there anything that haven't negotiated um it's tough but definitely definitely the water one definitely my wife's non-negotiable is my vitamin in the morning she's non-negotiable about that so good on her um it could be like meditation um I'm getting reading in every day that you enjoy like just things that are that are well I definitely

every day I have to step outside I do a lot of work on the computers so I have to step outside every day um so that's that's one my garden I spend at least a few minutes in the garden every day um it's just even if it's just glancing at my plants checking them them out, saying hi. It gives me kind of a recalibrate. So that's probably, I guess it's sort of considered a health thing. But checking in with my garden, I would say, is one. I'm so jealous. I can't wait to have a house and have a garden. I'm in an apartment right now, and it's impossible to have a garden.

But someday. You got a balcony, you can do it. Is everyone composting of course yes people compost stop it if you're not composting figure it out youtube the heck out of it anywhere you are apartment there's no excuse you can compost and when you see how much you're throwing away if you're not composting just by putting a receptacle of compost in your freezer for a week you'll be like oh my god I cannot believe I was throwing away this much organic material that could turn into rich compost.

So do it. Commit to it. If you commit, you'll YouTube things. So do it. Yep, you sure will. And it's not as hard as everyone makes it out to be. You just get a little receptacle for it, and then you can take it out. I mean, in L.A., we're really lucky that we have a compostable bin,

so I would look into that in your city and see if you have that too. Yeah, yeah. Cool. Well, for everyone listening, where can they find you? KissTheGround.com, KissTheGroundCA on Facebook, and then KissTheGround on all the other handles. My name is Finian Makepeace, and my name is finian make peace and i'm on my name is the only infinity and make peace in the world so you can find me on most of the channels just by my

name so amazing and we'll have all the links in the show notes too so and make sure you guys all go and watch kiss the ground on netflix it is incredible i've watched it twice it's so powerful thanks for having me this was really fun fun. Yeah, it was really fun. Yeah, I appreciate that these kind of conversations are happening more and more. People are able to connect to an opportunity, and we're starting to move away from just the call-out and everything's bad or good. And because regenerative agriculture requires so many intersections of different people working together, both sides of the aisle and many other interactions, it's integral for where we're going as a species. So please get involved if people can.

Please. Thank you so much for coming on. This was so fun. Thanks for listening to today's episode of the Real Foodology Podcast. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in your podcast app to let me know. This is a resident media production produced by Drake Peterson and edited by Chris McCone. The theme song is called Heaven by the amazing singer Georgie, spelled with a J. Love you guys so much. See you next week. Bye. I know that is for me

cause I always see him see him checking me out all he thinks and more is still kissing and make me dance

like this guy so if he doesn't like me Thank you. I'm going to go.