The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens - Restoring Global Ecology: The Great Green Wall and Large-Scale Permaculture in Action with Andrew Millison

Episode Date: May 21, 2025

It's no secret that massive change is needed to restore our planet's vital ecosystems. Permaculture offers practices to restore local environments by focusing on creating sustainable agricultural systems that mimic patterns found in nature. But how might permaculture initiatives go beyond agriculture to transform some of our largest-scale problems, such as social cohesion, climate stabilization, and even human migration? In this conversation, Nate sits down with permaculture educator Andrew Millison to discuss the Great Green Wall project, a massive ecological initiative aimed at combating desertification in the Sahel region of Africa. They explore the causes of the Sahara Desert's expansion, the simple but impactful permaculture techniques being employed to restore land, and the significant ecological and nutritional benefits resulting from these efforts. This conversation highlights the collaboration between local communities and global organizations, emphasizing permaculture's potential to transform lives and ecosystems around the world.  How can innovative permaculture techniques aid in helping our most complex ecological challenges? In what ways have land restoration projects reduced conflict between people in resource scarce areas? Furthermore, what kinds of  responses – both grassroots and top-down – are needed to implement these practices on a large scale?   About Andrew Millison: Andrew Millison is an innovative educator, storyteller and designer. He founded the Permaculture Design education program at Oregon State University (OSU) in 2009. At OSU Andrew serves as an Education Director and Senior Instructor who offers over 25 years of experience, and a playful approach to regenerative design. Andrew is also a documentary videographer who travels the world documenting epic permaculture projects in places such as India, Egypt, Mexico, Cuba, and throughout the US. You can view his videos and series on his YouTube channel.   Show Notes and More Watch this video episode on YouTube   Want to learn the broad overview of The Great Simplification in 30 minutes? Watch our Animated Movie.   ---   Support The Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future Join our Substack newsletter Join our Discord channel and connect with other listeners

The ripple effects of restoring land bridges all the way into the worldwide geopolitics. Because people that are on land that is productive, they don't need to migrate. A lot of the stresses of the world is about migration and all the pressures that that puts on both the societies from where people are leaving from and going to. When you actually have land that is abundant and productive and people see a future, there, then they don't leave. You're listening to the Great Simplification. I'm Nate Hagen's. On this show, we describe how energy, the economy, the environment, and human behavior all fit together and what it might mean for our future. By sharing insights from global thinkers, we hope to inform and inspire more humans to play emergent roles in the coming Great Simplification.

Joining me today for a second time is permaculturist and educator Andrew Millison for an update on some recent projects that he's been documenting, including the massive scale ongoing project in Africa called the Great Green Wall that is aiming to hold back the expansion of the Sahara Desert. Andrew Millison is an instructor in the horticulture department at Oregon State University for the last 15 years, where he founded the OSU permaculture design, which runs the first online university permaculture program. Along with Andrew's teaching, he also creates short documentary videos of permaculture projects around the world in places like Mexico, Egypt, Cuba, Senegal, and India, which he publishes on a very popular YouTube channel. You can find the link to Andrew's work in the description of this episode. As my own podcast grows, it is my hope to begin more and more covering the responses to our human predicament, but especially ones that are ecological, effective, and scalable.

The projects that Andrew discusses in this episode are great examples of such possibilities, and demonstrates that actions can be taken at every level, from individuals and small groups all the way to governments and international organizations. With that, please welcome Andrew Millison. Andrew Millison, you know you've hit the big time when you come back as a return guest on the Great Simplification. Is that so, huh? You don't do returns. I have a fraction of your viewers. I was just kidding. Yeah. Thank you for coming back. It's been two years. When you first came on, this show, you gave us an overview of teaching permaculture and documenting permaculture projects all over the world, especially in India. And today, because of all the craziness and untethered

polarization and drama and anxiety in the world, I came across a few weeks ago some of your recent videos, which were just so inspiring. And I would like you to give our viewers, an overview of some really good pro-ecology, pro-future things that are happening in the world. So welcome back, my friend. Thank you so much for having me. It's really great to be back talking to you. And I've been watching your podcast as well and learning a lot from it. Thank you. I still believe it's important to lay out the constraints and boundaries and initial conditions of the moment we're in. But increasingly, I want to highlight what's going on that's positive and at least directionally aligned with what more humans need to do.

So with that, I'll start with the video I saw a few weeks ago had to do with you working in the sub-Saharan African region, which includes quite a few countries. And you highlighted something, if I recall, was called the Great Green Wall in an effort to hold off the expansion of the Sahara Desert. Can maybe we start with that? Can you tell us a bit about why the Saharan Desert is expanding and what dangers come from that and what you're working on in that region? Yeah. So the Sahara Desert, I just looked up a few facts here before the podcast to be able to really give you a sense of scale. The Sahara Desert is about the size of the continental U.S. Whoa. Yeah. I would never have guessed that. Yeah. The maps are sort of skewed when you look at it because,

They have to change the amount of space between the latitudes to make it all fit on a piece of paper. Well, the whole continent of Africa is like enormous. It is enormous. And the Sahara Desert is a vast area. And in the last 100 years, it is expanded by 10%. So about 1% per decade. It's expanded. Do you know the answer to this, not to put you on the spot?

But when was it not desert? I can't actually tell you the dates. But I will tell you that when I. I was in the western desert of Egypt in the Dachla oasis doing a project during COVID a few years ago. We visited some old sites that had pictures of giraffes and elephants, you know. In an area that is now a desert. In an area that now, when I was there, had not received rain for 13 years. So not that long ago, then?

Not that long ago. In human memory, this was not a desert, right? Of course, there's been humans in this part of the world for as long as there's been humans. So, yeah, not that long ago. It was not a desert. And then I can't really tell you exactly when it became a desert. But it's been a desert for, you know, modern history, basically. And so it's expanded year after year.

And in 100 years, it expanded by 10%, which is about the area of Texas. So if you've ever driven across Texas, I mean, it is a vast state. It takes two days to drive across Texas. That's how much the Sahara Desert has pushed to the south, right? And the impact on people's lives. I mean, imagine people and animals. People and animals, right? And, you know, when you're talking about the expansion of the desert, you know, from what I've experienced in my time, both in Egypt as well as in Niger and Chad and. and Senegal. I mean, you're talking about dunes literally blowing in and covering over agricultural areas. You're talking about trees being cut, soils drying up,

and then the vegetative cover being eliminated. You're talking about severe overgrazing, overcropping, and there's a resource extraction element that is a pretty big reason for the expansion of the desert. You know, just human uses are really causing a huge impact. And we could look to colonialism, right?

We could look to, I believe it was 1898 that the European powers got together in Germany and divided up the nations of Africa, for the most part, to see which colonial power would get, which piece of land. and they pretty much divided those lands based on the logistics of European powers. It was sort of like, okay, let's carve this up for our own needs, regardless of the cultural, political, social structure. So one contribution to the destruction of the land stewardship of this region was the fragmentation into pretty arbitration.

arbitrary nation states. So that, I mean, you can't blame it solely on that. There's a lot of factors that went into the desertification. So we'll put a map up on screen, but what are the, what are the countries that are involved? So the area that I've been in is the Sahel zone. So the Sahel zone is the southern edge of the Sahara, right? So we've got Senegal, we've got Mali, Niger, Chad, Sudan, Burkian. Ginofaso's tucked in there as well. And so these are huge countries. And each one has a different chunk of, you know, how much of it is in the Sahara versus Sahel.

So I started, you know, I've been now twice on two extended trips with the United Nations World Food Program, looking at the unbelievable work that they're doing to restore vast areas of land working with the governments, working with the people in these areas. And that's really the basis of the videos. And I'll just say the videos, if you haven't watched them for the listeners, they've struck a chord in people. And I've had higher viewership on these videos by far than anything else I've ever done. Why do you think that is?

I think there's a couple reasons. One, the Great Green Wall of Africa is the largest biological design project on the planet. Right. If you look at the totality of creating a wall, a buffer, a vegetation of trees across the entire width of the continent of Africa, I mean, it is just a visionary, epic scale project. So that's very fascinating to people. But I think the part about the UN is that seeing the United Nations World Food Program involved in the United Nations World Food Program involved in land restoration,

involved in bringing social cohesion, bringing ecological, agricultural, and economic prosperity to some of the most hard hit regions in the planet, I think that people see that and they're like, that's what a world body should be doing. Like if we have a United Nations, a collection of countries that represents the will of the world,

that's the kind of work they should be doing is fixing some of our most dire problems with ecological solutions. So I have so many questions. Yeah. What is the Great Green Wall? So the Great Green Wall is, it's a vision, really, of creating a buffer of vegetation on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert in the Sahel. The Sahel zone is between the Sahara and the tropical savannah.

So it's like the part that's being desertedified is that. Sahara expands. So in the Sahel, to actually hold back the expansion of the Sahara Desert. At first, it was sort of put forth as like a wall of trees, so to speak. But there was a lot of failures early on, because you can't just plant trees and not have them be tied into the economy and the social structure. The people live there. The project will fail. So the Great Green Wall has really become more of a mosaic of different restoration, tree planting, agroecology,

agroforestry, land restoration projects that is all in this zone with the goal of keeping the Sahara in its current footprint because it's still expanding. I'll just start with a dumb question. If you plant a tree

on the border of the Sahara Desert, won't it dry up and die? Yeah, if you just plant a tree in isolation with no other sort of structures around and no human interaction, chances are it's going to die, right? And that's what happened. They feel like everybody was very gung-ho

about the Great Green Wall. They went and planted all these trees and, you know, they had a very high mortality rate. And so the Great Green Wall kind of got a bad rap in the beginning. But I would say what's happening now is more like Great Green Wall 2.0, which is using the most cutting-edge ecological permaculture type of techniques to establish trees in a way that's utilizing water harvesting, utilizing soil building, land restoration, restoring the microbiology of the soils, the hydrology, the water, retorting. bringing in really hardy species and building these agro ecological systems that actually are part now of the culture of the people there that are harmonized with the needs of the people, the needs of the people for food, for economy, and for stability, and even for peace, which we can

get into a little bit later. So what is your role in this, just documenting what's going on with videos and sharing it? Yeah, I mean, basically, I am like a, you might say, say a translator and an amplifier of this work. Now, like I said, the first video that we did on this topic, it's called How the UN is Holding Back the Sahara Desert, we have almost 16 million views in this video. Whoa.

And so it is now by far the largest piece of propaganda, you might say, or educational material about this project. Well, in addition to what you were saying before, that people like to see what's going on and they think this is what a united governmental body should be doing, it also is an advertisement for humans improving the land that we're on in an ecological pro future in service of life thing that a lot of people, even if they don't follow your podcast or mine, kind of feel this disconnect. with nature and maybe that you're tapping into something that really needs to be born. Yeah, because the ripple effects of restoring land, it bridges all the way into the worldwide geopolitics in a sense, because people that are on land that is productive don't need to leave. They don't need to migrate. So we look at a lot of the stresses of the world, both in Europe and the U.S., is about migration, illegal migration, you know, and all the pressures that that puts on society, both the societies from where people are leaving from and going to. And so when you actually have land that is abundant and productive

and people see a future there, then they don't leave. So how many people are involved in this project across all these countries. There's the UN people, but what about the local people? Yeah. So I don't really have a number on how many local people are involved in these projects, right? But, and some of the, some of the countries are, have a lot of instability right now. And it's more difficult to make progress. For instance, right in this zone, we have Sudan, where we have the largest war in the planet. So if anything, they're going backwards right now. We also have Mali, which has been, have, very unstable with a jihadist insurgency. Burkina Faso also has had a lot of really big instability. So, but the countries that are more stable are making incredible progress. And so I started in Senegal where they're, they are actually recognized as having the most, as the only country that's actually meeting their stated goals for progress in the Great Green Wall.

So this involves, well, the other thing to realize, I guess, is important is that these are not highly populated areas because they're very marginal. So you have the populations that live there, which are basically subsistence farmers, and then you have cities interspersed. But you also have a population of nomadic herders that are constantly, as the rains come, they're moving up into the Sahara. and then as the rains recede, there's a three-month rainy season, right? And then there's a nine-month dry season. So as a nine-month dry season kicks in, these people go, are crossing national boundaries. And there's about 30 million nomadic herders in the Sahel zone that are moving back and forth throughout countries. So that's how many nomadic herders you have.

And these people, of course, are going to be impacted because creating stable agro ecosystems in this region is, you know, part of the food source. for these large herds of cattle, of camels. So tell me what's going on from a permaculture standpoint with this great green wall and planting trees. Like what sort of techniques are being used to make this vegetation come to life again? So the work that I saw in Niger was the most mature and sophisticated example thus far,

where they are using these water harvesting half moons, for the most part, among other structures, but that's kind of their main tool in their toolbox. They can range anywhere from three to five meters wide, and they're basically a half moon that is intercepting the flow of water. There's many different styles of these half moons depending on what you're going to do. But the ones that are most relevant to the Great Green Wall

are creating these silva pasture systems, which means that they are planting trees, and they're also planting grasses. And so it's primarily productive for animal feed. So there's a half moon and then a little ways away. There's another half moon and another. What's the distance between the half moons? Well, it depends on what the rainfall is like in that particular area.

So where I was in Chad, where it was a rainier area, the half moons were smaller and more close together because the amount of rains would fill those up. But as you get into the more desertified, so they were almost like, you know, three meters wide and just almost interconnected one after another, one after another, another row, like the entire landscape was made into these, they look like fish scales, right? But as you get into the more arid regions, you're going to have a bigger half moon because you need more of a catchment area to feed the center of the half moon. So forgive my kindergarten like questions. So this is an example of humans using. a simple technology to change the ecosystem to be better, more productive and more regenerative, full stop. Yeah. And I would actually, I would go against the idea that it's a simple technology necessarily

because there's a surprising amount of sophistication involved in which type of half moon, which the variations, the spacing, the intercept. So is this half moon technology? Is this a new thing like in the last 20, 30 years? Well, it's an ancient technology, but it has been evolved through standard scientific trial and error by the World Food Program, by the people practicing to, so it's an ancient technology that's indigenous to the region, basically. And does this, would this apply to any arid regions in North America? Yeah, basically. You know, you could pretty much apply this to any arid region.

that the type of water harvesting structures that we teach about in permaculture is just talking about taking water from runoff from a large area and concentrating it into a place where it's going to be wetter. And once you do that, how long does it take to see improvements to the soil and have things start growing again? It is instantaneous once the rains come. I mean, basically, they're also spreading grass seed. So they're putting in these half moons.

they're spreading grass seed or planting trees, then the rains come and you instantaneously have a flush of grass where previously you may have just had barren, compacted soil. And the grass is what the cattle and camels eat? To start with, yes. But then what's happening is they're planting these hearty, thorny desert trees, these different types of acacias that are native to the area. And so in the wet season, the grasses are growing, the cats,

the cattle, the goats, the camels are getting fat. But then in the dry season, these thorny trees are growing up. They're establishing canopy. And it's a food source for camels and goats who can eat these gnarly thorny trees. So it provides a year-round food source with pulses of grasses in the wet season. How does this change the nutrition? not for animals, but for humans in the region, what sorts of improvements to like nutrition and hunger are happening?

Well, in the regions, like in Niger, where they actually have the scale that can feed the populations, I mean, they have 300,000 hectares that they've put into these structures. So we're talking like, really, that's 750,000 acres. I have to look up how many square miles that is. We're talking about a large area. So when you actually get it at scale, you have whole populations of people that were previously on long-term emergency food assistance.

They were being kept alive by the World Food Program. So the average, I think of the last five years in Niger alone, there were three million people that were on permanent food assistance, right? These projects have now taken 500,000 people off of the books that no, longer need permanent food assistance, completely free of permanent food assistance. So it's taking a situation where you had like dire malnutrition and hunger. Like, you know, we showed in the video that a center where they had been, you know, tracking the nutrition of babies and that they had had prior to these projects, they had nine out of 10 of these babies were malnourished, right,

to some degree. And so now it's been a complete turnaround in the places where they've done large tracks of this systems, and then it's matured into a forest where now it's like, it's basically like a tropical savannah like, you know, woodland, dense with trees and many different plants. How did you like, I mean, you're at Oregon State near Corvallis and you have a lot of experience in India. How did you like, hey, I want to go look at the great green wall of Africa? Yeah.

Well, I was invited by an organization first to go to Senegal called Planet Wild to do some documentation of a different project, a really cool food forest project by an organization called Trees for the future. And since I was going to Senegal, I have a great colleague. Her name's Natalie Topa. And she, I don't know if you ever heard of her. She would actually be someone excellent person to have on the show. She's very brilliant. She's American by birth. She's been in living in Kenya for the last 20 years.

She works with the World Food Program. She's a permaculture person. She's worked with the Danish Refugee Council. Now she works with the resilience program of the World Food Program. And so I got in touch with her. And I was like, Natalie, I've seen on social media, I've seen all of these images of these cool half-moon landscapes. Can you hook me up with can I go see one of these things? And so she connected me with the World Food Program in Senegal because I'm an instructor at Oregon State University, it's kind of like a calling card where I can get in touch and I'm saying, hey, I'm a university instructor. I do some filming. I've got this YouTube channel. I want to come see this project and people are usually very happy to invite me in. So that was the first trip. And I did one day of filming. I mean, we drove to the border of Senegal and Mauritania. Moratania is another country, by the way, on the list of countries that are within this belt.

And we did one day of filming. And so I, and it was a small project. It was only 30 hectares. And it was two years old. So it was like really not very impressive at all compared to what they've done. But this is the one that the video got, you know, almost 16 million views now. And so they, the world food program, the people that had really facilitated this whole resilience programming for the last, I mean, it started Ethiopia in the 90s and it's been going for a long time. time they were like man this project that you showed that had so much attention is like really

small scale and not very impressive compared to what we've done what you really need to do if this is if you're getting this kind of viewership on our stuff then you need to come to niger and you need to come to chad and you need to see where this is really popping off on a massive scale and so that's where they invited me to come and it all worked out It was, you know, not easy to get there, but... So other than viewing your YouTube channel, I hadn't really heard about this. Is there a sense of pride and awareness in these countries of these projects? Well, yeah, I mean, certainly Niger is the country that is way ahead of the pack.

And this has become a center point of how they are dealing with malnutrition and poverty in that country. And climate? And climate. Yeah. I mean, so, I mean, desertification. climate for them, it's like kind of wrapped up into one thing because, you know, the result of hotter temperatures, erratic rainfall is going to be increased desertification because it's just more stresses on the environment, you know? So the government of Niger is like all in, basically.

And they are, they are very well trained at this point. I mean, they have their internal knowledge about how to implement, install, and monitor these systems and make sure that they don't get cut down and make sure that they last. So being an ecologist or a permaculturalist in Niger might now have the social status of a real estate developer or a oil tycoon. Well, I mean, if you watch the video, the one that's, it's called Inside Africa's Food Forest Mega Project is the title. I interview this, the lead forester of the state. state of Madadie. And I also interviewed, and I didn't put it on the film, but I also interviewed the lead forester of the state of Zindar. And I mean, these guys are, it's interesting because, you know,

there was a military coup in 2023 in Dijer. And so the military took over the country, and it still rules the country right now. So these foresters are kind of like in military fatigues, you know, they're part of this government infrastructure. And these guys are, I mean, they are really, really smart. They know what they are doing. They know what's going on. From your expertise, as a permacultural expert, what ecological benefits have you witnessed as a result of these projects like in terms of biodiversity or cooler temperatures or water table, recharging or those sorts of things? Yeah. I mean, all of the above, basically, the, you know, these structures, you put these, you know, you think about you have all of these half moon scales.

in this whole landscape, they become a net for water to collect water, for fertility that blows in and settles in these half moons. And then they're planted. And then the vegetation that you plant becomes a net for biodiversity

to just be caught up in this forest system. So in the one site I visited, they've had the return of native monkeys to an area that was like bare, compacted soil. Now it's a forest. forest, they've got native monkeys. They've got, I mean, the bird song is, you know, so loud. You can barely hear yourself. There's insects of all kinds. I mean, there's so many creatures moving in.

The temperature effects in the, you know, the areas themselves are, you know, like 15 to 20 degrees. I mean, really dramatically cooler. The ground, you know, when they're measuring the NDVI, which is like the vegetative cover, the ground. The ground. The ground. The ground. The ground. ground is now 100% covered with vegetation. So let's say they put a strip of these half-moon silvicultures and what you say happens. Yeah. Then is the next step to put a strip further north and further north and do it like that? Well, I think that if they got to the level that we actually were ready for the next step,

I mean, we don't even really need to talk about that because just to get, I mean, we're talking about such a vast area. just to get a strip across would be like a transformation of the entire region the entire economy the entire climate you know from there I mean there's a point where

you could only go so far north before you hit an area that it just doesn't rain right and you could argue that perhaps if you put more trees in you may bring more rain into the Sahara I mean I don't really know because there's you know

there's certain areas that like the Sahara is a desert for kind of worldwide climate reasons as well. So was the impetus of this the UN or was it a collaboration with the governments within Niger and Chad and other places? Well, I think that the stimulus on really the large scale projects was the UN. in part it was coming off of a nearly 30-year transformation in Ethiopia. So you remember back, you know, USA for Africa, feed the world, all that stuff back in what was it the 80s when the Ethiopian famine. There was a horrible famine. It wasn't just Ethiopia.

There was a horrible long-term drought in this region at the time. Ethiopia is the place that became the most well-known. But the World Food Program, and I mean, specifically the guy that I did. traveled around with in Niger and Chad, who is the director of the West African branch of the resilience. His name's Voli Karuchi. And he started working in Ethiopia in the mid-90s. And they restored about six million hectares in Ethiopia, entire watersheds, they brought back and they stabilized this entire system. And so coming off of that, they realized that they could apply a lot of this same, you know, these same types of systems in the rest of the Sahel. So I'm not sure,

you know, like the details of who approach to or how it actually evolved, but 2014 is when it started in earnest. So what do you think the long-term impacts are for the people who are living in these restored areas? And will they be able to keep it going if the World Food Program leaves? The impacts are a total transformation from living in a scarce, you know, practicing subsistence agriculture in a very degraded ecosystem, leaving, needing to leave when there was drought to go find work in other places, right, in the cities. You know, chronic malnutrition to now you basically have social cohesion. you have people sticking around, you have people well fed, you have increasing water tables,

so people now are able to sink in bore wells and irrigate horticulture crops. It's like night and day is the difference for these people. Could you explain to me, since you have a very popular permaculture podcast, the mechanics of why the water table is such that they can put in bore wells, Like what is happening because of these half-moon structures that's changing the water table specifically? So previously, before you have these structures in and you have a desertified landscape, the rain falls down on hard soil and it rushes away and it rushes down through streams to the nearest wash, the nearest rivulet it could find, and it scours, it creates erosion and it just exit the system as fast as possible. And eventually goes to the ocean. Eventually, yeah.

So here we're talking about the Niger River. So eventually it will be leaving through Nigeria, you know, and all that. So when you put in all of these water harvesting structures over this vast landscape, the water is not exiting the system. Instead, the water's pooling in these half-moon water harvesting structures and it's soaking in and it's building up underground into a subsurface aquifer. So it's actually recharging the aquifer and it's recharging the areas that are downstream from the project as well. So suddenly where before you would drill

and you wouldn't hit water because the water was just exiting the system before it ever soaked in, now if you drill down, you hit this ever-increasing aquifer that's every rainy season the water's recharging more and more basically. But if it only rains three months a year

there and they plant seeds and trees and the grasses grow and the trees grow, but then it doesn't rain again for nine months. How did the trees and the grass stay alive? Just from the water table underneath? So basically, these are very hardy, well, the grasses don't stay alive. I mean, the grasses are seasonal. I want to mention one other thing that I actually didn't is I'm talking about one particular version, which is the perennial system. In the most recent video I did, which was from the border with Sudan and Chad, where they're working with refugees coming over, they are planting annual crops. They're planting sorghum, which is a native, very, very drought-hardy grain in these half moons. So they're actually just using them as like direct annual cropping systems.

I just want to kind of throw that out there because it's not just perennials. But basically, like I described, in the dry season, there's all of these perennials that are growing and they do supply food for camels and goats, which are really important part of the diet there. Is there a corollary to South America? Because I've had a couple of guests on talking about how perilous the Amazon rainforest is and how the southernmost parts are turning into Savannah. And I don't think most people realize how huge the central African rainforest is. So it sounds like this is almost a buffer. Like this project is, is, is, is helpful to ultimately the Central African Rainforest,

which is just south of this. Does this, two questions. Does this ultimately affect the weather in the future maybe? And is there a South American corollary to this sort of work? You know, there's a lot of comments on my video of like, if you get rid of the Sahara Desert, that's the source of the, you know, rain for the Amazon or something like that. Like there's some sort of, there's some sort of,

there must be some pocket. YouTube videos about some sort of relationship between the Amazon, between the Sahara and the dust that comes from the Sahara and blows over the Amazon. But, you know, I mean, as far as climate goes, you know, I don't know if you've talked to anybody about the biotic pump, but, you know, when you have trees, they interact with atmospheric moisture, right? Trees, they exude small particles, pollen spores and mushroom spores and dust and bacteria that then can become the nuclei for raindrops. Trees evapot transpire water into the atmosphere which then meet up with clouds moving and that's, you know, part of the rain that falls is rain that came from the forest and part of

its rain water that came through the atmosphere. So yeah, anytime that you're talking about a massive scale re-vegetation, you're going to have climatic effects. Hopefully, climatic effects that actually hold more moisture in the land system, which then makes it so the rains can be more consistent. Now, this, when I was there, so this is just last August and September, I mean, there was massive floods. As I was, I was almost like being chased by these floods as we went across so I never got affected in a sense where I could I filmed every day I was planning on filming but I don't know if you saw some of the footage of I mean if it the rains came all the way they usually stop at the Sahel but you had these cyclonic storms coming all the way up into

the Sahara and you had places in the Sahara that got more rain than they'd had in you know 50 100 years and there was all this footage of these like flooded you know lake beds that you know nobody in living memory could remember these lake beds having water in them. So, you know, there's going to be, there's erratic weather anyway, but I would say if anything, having these, this, you know, permanent vegetation here is going to do more to stabilize that. It's certainly going to be a flood mitigation when you do have heavy rains because instead of having all that water rushing out, it's going to be soaked into the ground. So is this a win-win story or is there conflicts and dramas with the humans in the area at all?

I mean, from an ecological perspective, it sounds unbelievable. Yeah. Well, there are a lot of nuances in this region that I discovered, a lot of social, cultural nuances. And, you know, a big source of conflict is the stress that happens between herders. Remember talking about these 30 million nomadic herders and settled farmers, right? So herders come through with, I mean, very large herds. It's like kind of spectacular when you're there and you're like, wow, this is this is really intense. You know, a huge animals.

Well, there's 30 million herders. Imagine how many animals they're hurting more than 30 million. Must be a billion animals. I have no idea. So many animals. So, but it's interesting that this restoration work is actually they're using it as peacemaking work between the farmers and the herders. So they are creating like a ditch. This is the next video from the series I'm going to be putting out about this topic.

So stay tuned for that one. But they're basically doing these restoration areas. They're digging a ditch that is hard for the animals to get over. And then they're putting a water source for the animals outside of the restoration area. So the herders don't need to cross through the restoration area to get to water. And then they are facilitating agreements between the tribal leaders of the village. and the herders. And so where they've done this,

it's been very successful. They've brought, you know, farmer, herder violence basically down to zero in these areas that they're doing this. But the nuance between, you know, another important aspect to understand is this is the fastest population growth area

on the planet. I mean, this is the highest birth rate. This is the highest birth rate. So I mean, this is the highest birth rate. Niger has the highest birth rate in the planet. So at the same time, the farmer villages are expanding, right, because they're having so many kids. So they're expanding. And then the herders, they leave, and then they come back a year later, and like if the village expanded,

and suddenly the village has expanded into a place where the herders traditionally would go, and that's kind of the source of, one of the sources of conflict there. So, you know, it's a delicate it balanced, they're certainly tackling it in areas and their systems are working to stop farmer-herder conflict. But you can imagine that if you just pop in all this restoration, suddenly you have this protected area, then you have all these herders show up and they're like, hey, that's our land or hey, this is where we've come for, you know, as long as we can remember. So, you know, there's a lot of dynamics. So how these, these silver cult techniques that you're describing and the fact that your video alone on that one project got

16 million views as an advertisement for doing permaculture in degraded areas in the world. Is this repeatable in other arid regions all around the world, the Middle East and Asia and South America? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the techniques vary based on rainfall. based on soils, based on the seasonality of rainfall. You know, there's a lot of, like, it might not be that the half moon as a structure is appropriate.

There's a lot of other structures that people use as well. They have like compartment buns, they call them, or they have, you know, check dams. I mean, there's a whole toolbox of these strategies. So, you know, but there's certainly a lot of places that, yes, the half moons would function really well. Yeah, but once you have all these half moons, I mean, you're talking about,

it has to be a non-mechanized, you know, maintenance because half moons like this, it needs to be in a place where you're talking about handwork. You're talking about people walking. You're talking about animals because you're not coming through with combines or any sort of tractors or any kind of machinery. You know, so that means that it's only in these types of places where, you know, people are still living. I mean, I want to tell you a little, a little, fact, the country of Chad is, I think it's 9%, it's either 9 or 11% of the total country has electricity. When you get into the rural areas, it's 1.3% of the people have electricity. So it's so hard for people to imagine a place that is completely non-industrialize that there's just like very few motor vehicles. People are charging cell phones kind of funny. They're charging cell phones on you know, solar panels. So, you know, it's, it's, there's not like, they're not, there's not industrial agriculture at any scale. You know, it's subsistence farming, it's walking, it's carts, you know, it's donkey carts, it's wagons. There's a, um, there's a

few little vehicles in there, but, you know. What an amazing experience for you. Yeah, it was pretty mind-blowing. Yeah. I've been to like 20 countries in Africa, but mostly central and southern countries. And I've loved every moment of it. So it's funny that with all the macro geopolitical, biophysical things going on in the world, I dial in my permaculture friend to give.

me some good news about what's going on in the world. You're working on other things, too. I think I saw that you're doing something with saltwater farming techniques. Can you update us on that? Yeah, I did a video down in southern Spain in the southwestern corner of Spain, in a river delta, where they're actually you know, they're utilizing halifitic plants. So halifidic plants are plants that actually can live in salt water or thrive in salt water. And so they're taking, you know,

if you think about the low-lying agricultural areas of the world, a lot of them were salty areas that were sort of reclaimed by building up these areas and draining the salt water and creating dikes. But they've always, you know, in areas, especially where you're, have a tidal influence. You have the tides coming in some sort of river delta, then you have the river pushing back down. There's all, there's this constant salt flow of water from the ocean coming

inland with the tides. And, you know, you have salt water infiltration into the groundwater. And so in these areas, it's very difficult to have agriculture production, basically. But people, of course, have tried with detrimental effects. And so there's some real pioneers out there that are basically creating, you know, finding and developing a plant palette of species that can live in these salt marsh conditions. As food crops for humans? Well, for now, the ones that they're using in the area that I visited in the video you're talking about are actually used for animal feed. And so it is like part of the animal industrial process. Well,

they'll come in with combines and they'll let this ecosystem grow. And then once a year, they come in and they just cut the whole thing down. They harvest it. And then they will use it and they will, they will mix it into like pelletize animal feed. I think that given the amount of salt in these plants, they can use about 40% of an animal feed can be this without damaging the animals. So it is kind of contributing to like the animal industrial system, which does feed a lot of people in this world. So what are the ecological effects of this type of saltwater agriculture? You know, it's interesting because if you look at the comments on that video, I mean, people kind of slayed the process. One of the main comments was you're absolutely destroying these

areas because you're bringing salt water in and you're flooding these zones. But I think that what people don't realize is that these areas are, you know, there's a constant inflow and outflow of water with the tides in these entire regions. And these are not areas that were salt-free to start with. They were areas that they were, they had attempted to create non-salty agriculture over time and just kind of destroyed these regions. And they were very, like sort of unproductive agricultural regions. So there is an argument to say, don't touch them, just turn them back into native, you know, salt marsh habitats. And, you know, sure, but, like, there's also a lot of pressure to produce enough food to feed 8 billion people.

Do you feel like your role as a permaculture evangelist slash filmmaker, basically, even though they're not, films as much as their short videos is a really important in a cultural, educational sort of way just to, because there's so many pro-future things we can do that people are unaware of. They just don't know. So how seriously do you take that responsibility and like what else are you working on? I take it really seriously. Like I see where I've made mistakes. So like in the saltwater video, for instance, like there's some things that we really, missed explaining. And the feedback in the comments showed me very clearly, you know, like, okay, we did. So actually, since then, we implemented a thing where I have a focus group

now. And when I have a video that's about ready to go, I'll send it to a focus group. And I'll be like, so what do you not understand, you know, and just because I, I have a hard time knowing what people don't know. I mean, like, there's certain things that are just, for me, it's like, everybody knows that, right? There's these basic assumptions, but I can't assume that people have, you know, that understand this. So I always need to kind of take a step back. And so a lot of times, well, now we show, we, so I take it very seriously because, I mean, in 2024, I had 35 million views on my channel, right? So I mean, that's, that's a lot of eyes. That's a lot of influence to this collective mind and I really, you know, want to, first off, just respect my

viewers' times by doing my own homework. But also, I want to portray the excellence of the things that I'm seeing and I want to explain it in a way that it could potentially be replicated. So a lot of the things you've done recently have been international. A lot of the viewers of my program and maybe yours are in the United States and Europe. And for many of those viewers, their most frequent experience with growing vegetation are grass lawns. So can you discuss your thoughts on that and why there's a growing movement against lawns? And what are you suggesting instead? Yeah. Well, I just published a video called Kill Your Lawn and Grow Food. So I'm not mincing my words about how I feel about the American lawnscape.

I think in the video we figured out that there's enough lawns in the United States, the size of Florida. The size of the state of Florida is how much lawn we have. People are dumping fertilizer. You're mowing. You're, you know, weeding, spraying herbicide. I mean, the amount of, if you look at a really well-maintained lawn, especially when you get down to like, you know, Phoenix. Arizona or something like that where it's super hot and you know you're growing this green lawn or something all the time the amount of resources we're dumping into this little square to recreate

some sort of fantasy from like old England or something I mean I don't even know what the psychology is to having this psychology is I do know the answer to this I read it in an evolutionary biology textbook somewhere that when you come out of your house and there's like green low-cut things, there's, there's nothing that's going to reach out and grab you like a predator, like if you had large things that were hiding, like bushes and things. Yeah. So there's a little bit of a safety and aesthetic, but I don't think it's worth the ecological impact.

So, so what are the alternatives? Food, gardens. You could put the same amount of resources in as far as fertilizer and maintenance and weeding and all of that. And you could actually be, A, you could just be growing vegetables. gardens. You could be lessening your bill at the grocery store. You could be growing very nutritious food. You could have a connection. And, you know, when you're out there gardening, you meet all your neighbors. And it improves the soil. And it's better for insects and butterflies and birds and

everything. Yeah. So is it just a cultural barrier that right now to be in a neighborhood of a hundred houses and everyone has green lawns and you're the first person to kill it and grow food, you look like an outcast? Is that the barrier? Well, I mean, and then there's the, there's the HOA. What's that? The Homeowners Association. So most places, there are not most places, I don't really know about it, if it's most or not, but many places, there are regulations about what you can and cannot do in your yard. And I could never live in a place that told me what I could or could not do in my yard. But many of those there, you have to keep a grass lawn.

You know, you can't put too many trees or shrubs in. What do you have in your yard, Andrew? My yard is like a biodiverse explosion of fruit trees, food plants, native plants, flowers. I mean, I have a third of an acre here, which is like a typical suburban lot. And I mean, I have, I've been here for 15 years and I have a tremendous amount of food growing here for what it is. And I don't even do a lot of maintenance at this point. A lot of it's these permaculture perennial type systems, berries, artichokes, rhubarb, you know, figs, apples, pears, plums. I mean, just it's packed in. Wow. So you're no longer a weirdo from your neighbor's perspective. Or are you still? I specifically moved to somewhere that was full of weirdos because I didn't want to be. I was in Prescott, Arizona, and I was kind of a weirdo. And I was like, I want to be somewhere where I'm not a weirdo and I can do my thing here. So, I mean, I live in Corvallis, Oregon, which is, it's a very, very gardeny place. Because it's Oregon State University, which is an ag school, like people garden like crazy here. So what's the formula? How would you recommend someone listening to this program with a little plot of grass, get started in transforming it to something a little bit more aligned with permaculture principles and maybe growing some food as well? Yeah. Well, you'd be very smart. The smart way to do it is to actually sheet mulch over your grass before you even start anything is to get rid of all the grass by layers of cardboard and wood chips. You could bring in soil, but,

basically smother the grass for a season or two and then start to put in your other plantings. I didn't do that. And I'm still to this day fighting grass in many places. Because grasses, once they're sort of unchecked, grasses are very vigorous. They're competitive with vegetables. They're competitive with fruit trees. So getting rid of the grass and then starting to put in your perennial infrastructure is what I'd call it. So getting in your berry bushes, your fruit trees, you know, getting those long-lasting plants in, and then establishing your annual garden areas. I mean, it depends what kind of maintenance you want to do.

Some people do, you could do the whole thing and not do any annual gardens. Annual gardens, meaning like vegetables or higher maintenance. You could do the whole thing in lower maintenance, perennial crops. It really depends on how much time you have. For me, it's a hobby, and I'd love it. So if viewers want to support or get involved with these bigger projects that you're working on now in the future, like the Great Green Wall or saltwater agriculture, how would they go about doing that? Yeah. Well, first off, on the videos themselves, we put links to where people could, you know, hopefully support each project. I'm actually starting. I just filmed my first project in Hawaii with the sovereign. an indigenous nation of Hawaii, where I'm actually going to be doing a call to action within the

video for people to support the project directly. So that's a new direction that I'm going in. You know, I'm having to make that video outside of Oregon State University because I can't use state funds to raise money for a private organization. You're the permaculture video Johnny Appleseed. I'm trying, you know. So ultimately, what I'm doing now is I'm actually getting funds from private donors to help me make videos that are going to be fundraising tools for the projects that I am highlighting. So we have the first prototype that we're doing, that we're editing right now for that one. Yeah. Well, congratulations. That's really exciting. Thank you. Since this is your second time on the podcast, I'm not going to ask you my usual

closing questions. Instead, I'm starting to ask my repeat guess, if there was anything in their work or perspective on the world that's changed since they were first on the show. So that was 24 months ago. Well, 24 months ago, I had not been to Africa at all. And that changed my perspectives

in a really big way. But one of the things that this guy was talking about, the head of the resilience program for the World Food Program, Valdi Karucci, one of the things that he said is the scale of the solution, needs to match the scale of the problem.

Having like a person to person grassroots transformation, it's very valuable. But I have actually come all the way around and I'm like, we need some top down solutions here. The United Nations World Food Program, I mean, coming in, like, I was like, why does the UN have to be here? That was my question. And the answer was, the need is so great.

The breakdown is so great. that it has surpassed the abilities of these countries and their governments to deal with it. They need outside help to help organize this movement and apply real worldwide expertise to solve some of these situations. So I've gone from being more of like a, say, a grassroots, you know, like let's let the flock of people. do this, like, permaculture is very much like one by one. You do your own yard and, you know, it's this sort of like people's movement to like, hey, we really need this from the top down also because there's a lot of places that solving this problem is beyond their current capacity and it's getting worse. So what's your like grand vision and wish list? If all the stars align,

what role could permaculture and media about permaculture along the way play in our, ecological, economic crisis in coming decades. There are so many of the great, especially the great ecological problems, but like I said, that are directly tied into social, political problems. There are so many of the problems in the world that could be solved with these types of permaculture type approaches. You know, we're seeing it on a large scale in sub-Saharan Africa, partly because the need is so great that it's come to that in a sense. But I mean, I could see similar types of land restoration,

climate stabilization projects applied. I mean, you know, show me somewhere in the planet that does not have a problem that these solutions could help. You know, so I think that hopefully my education and, you know, my media work is creating a spark where people are like, wow, you know, There's actually really simple solutions to a lot of these problems that are actually not even costly. Like, do we know that? Do we realize that a lot of the answers to our problems are really, really simple?

Could you imagine if killing your lawn and putting in a food for us made you cool in the United States? Like, just that one thing and what would result from it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you for the oxytocin and positive inspiration for the ecology of Earth and your continued work. Thank you so much. And do you have any closing words for our viewers? Well, I just want to thank you, Nate, for continuing to bring this positive messages and also just all the information you do. So I appreciate being in the podcast. And yeah, you can check in on, you know, I actually, I would love if people would just watch the videos we're talking about. It'll give you a lot. more depth. Just go to my YouTube channel, Andrew Millison. And yeah, just stay tuned because I've got a lot more coming. To be continued, my friend. To be continued. Yeah. Awesome. If you enjoyed or learned from this

episode of The Great Simplification, please follow us on your favorite podcast platform. You can also visit thegreat simplification.com for references and show notes from today's conversation. And to connect with fellow listeners of this podcast, check out our Discord channel. This show is hosted by me, Nate Hagan's, edited by No Troublemakers Media, and produced by Misty Stinnett, Leslie Batlutz, Brady Hyan, and Lizzie Siriani.