Soil and Human Health: Recent Episodes
Amanda Rowland
If we all ate food grown in biologically rich soil, how would this affect our lives, our communities and the natural systems that sustain us? As Amanda discovered, to approach this question a whole-of-landscape and a whole bodymind approach is required.
The human heart nestles within the economic and environmental incentives driving an emerging carbon economy. We humans are being dragged kicking and screaming into a quantum world to grapple with the complexity we must embrace, in order to survive.
Amanda creates a rich, organic brew that is biodiverse, funny and full of unexpected synergies, to create her own vision of earthly wellness.
Tune in and listen on….
Once there was a beautiful bit of land called Yanget east of Geraldton, named for the local, water-loving bulrushes. Rod O'Bree and his family have spent the last 15 years learning how to rehydrate and restore fertility and abundance to this land and that of the Chapman River Catchment. At the heart of his story are before-and-after pictures that have emboldened and inspired many in WA to tackle erosion on their farms and stations. Yanget has a lot to teach us about how we live on this country.
Have you ever been to a sporting event when the teams haverun onto the ground, but the game isn’t on? Amanda took herself off to various Agricultural workshops and field daysin country WA in February and March. She mills around the packs, does a bit ofcrumbing work, and wonders where the ball is - all the while attempting to workout who’s playing for who and what a goal might look like. This is her attemptto make sense of the state of play.
In the middle of February, I had two wonderful days in Dandaragan, Western Australia, talking about Regenerative Agriculture with the Soil Farming Restoration crew and attendant farmers and agricultural workers. Dr Christine Jones worked her magic on Day 1 with an in-depth look at the microbiome of the soil. On Day 2 farmers and supporters met to nut out ways to get the best from their soils in the face of new understanding about the magic of soil biology and a whole-of-landscape systems approach to farming.
A new consciousness of the world we (Western) humans live in is emerging - and I am determined that nudibranchs will be front and centre of my attention. By showing interspecies sensitivity in my efforts to engage with these creatures I am atoning for past insensitivity and exhibiting what Merlin Sheldrake calls 'simple good manners'. I'm for that. Let's dive into the more-than-human world and have a taste of what our tribal ancestors knew - that we owe kinship to all that lives.
On May 11, 2022, the Museum of WA, Geraldton hosted an evening on Climate Resilience. The event was sponsored by the local DPIRD (Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development) and organised by Sara Walker and the museum team.
Amanda Rowland, local writer and podcaster (soilandhumanhealth.com) spoke on Regenerative Gardening, bringing her understanding of soil biology and regenerative land management practices into the realm of the backyard garden.
Amanda goes to a Conscious Movement workshop and uncovers another pathway to expanding consciousness. As her bodymind experiences shift, she ponders the inadequacy of words to express wordless knowledge. Along the way she enlists Nora Bateson, Moshe Feldenkrais and Bill Callahan's help.
What does it mean to live life seriously? Amanda listens to Tyson Yunkaporta and Jordan Hall talk, giving her a startling insight into Indigenous traditional lives. Do some of us have to wait until the end of life to find out what living life seriously means?
Amanda continues her exploration of Stephen Jenkinson’s sublime ‘wonderings’ while experiencing life in WA’s ‘best’ rehab public hospital. She worries about the quality and relevance of the physiotherapy and Occupational Therapy on offer and tussles with her own tendency towards being institutionalised. While feeling defeated by the huge bureaucracy devoted to disease, she finds solace in the dusty, neglected zones and the workers-with-heart who sustain humanity in the face of a system hollowed out by small-minded economic thinking.
Amanda asks: what does LESS look like? And decides the only thing she can do to deal with what is happening in the world is to pay more attention to what her local plant life is telling her. She zones in on these plants and tries to discern deeper patterns that lie beyond the scope of her understanding, paying attention as she rides on the bike path and the port zone around her city, Geraldton. Amanda makes an obvious, but hitherto overlooked discovery about a common and much loved plant and comes to grips with the latest wave of weeds marching into the sand dunes.
Amanda muses about a workshop she is developing (and has just delivered in Geraldton) covering ideas to do with helping non-indigenous folk connect to land, using the garden as the starting point. She uses tools gleaned from a recently completed Holistic Management course, Regenerative Agriculture techniques and her understanding of Aboriginal Knowledge systems... and from the regenerative to the extractive she relates a story about a morning spent listening to local mining executives where she is seduced to the point of inertia by the presentation of a newly developed environmentally friendly mining/rehabilitation techniques called Vegetation Direct Transfer (VDT).
When working with nature we need a plan a, b and c - and beyond. In other words, assume your initial action is wrong and monitor the situation with a mind to re-adjusting your actions as stuff you cannot possibly predict unfolds.
In which Amanda struggles to make sense of her experiences on a patch of land in her home state of WA - and concludes that the environmental aspects of regenerative/holistic agriculture cannot be decoupled from its social and political context: they are the same conversation. She pays attention to what is happening in her body and determines to lay some ghosts to rest.
When ancient wisdom and new knowledge is packaged for the 'you-can-change-your-life' industry change happens - but not like it says it will in the marketing blurb! Amanda exposes herself to more paradigm-busting thinking and allows big wisdom beamed in via Stephen Jenkinson, Tyson Yunkaporta and Allan Savory to change her at a molecular level.
Tyson Yunkaporta just keeps on giving, and my garden teaches me something about the wider world of broadacre agriculture.
Where two cultures meet and decide to join forces for the enrichment of the land they share
Th new normal is with us. Are you in alignment with 20th or 21st century thinking? Are you still tinkering around the edges of the old systems or taking the leap into the world of the Circular Economy? Soil and Human Health draws a line under the old and finds new beginnings.
Amanda ventures further into once-upon-a-time land, inspired by a long dead relative she encounters near Greenough, WA, and a friend's approach to history that insists on bringing the stories of the colonial past into present day consciousness.
Amanda ventures into the long-ago, inspired by a friend's approach to history that insists on bringing the stories of the colonial past into present day consciousness.
The Jones brothers, inspired by Col Stanton, are introducing erosion control, land interventions at Boogardie Station, out of Mt Magnet, WA. As Henry gets serious about documenting their work, Amanda finds synergies between the Jones' and the Pollocks' efforts on Wooleen Station. She voices the conviction that coming generations in the Southern Rangelands will be able to run livestock businesses that are successful on economic and ecological grounds - if the Government holds its nerve and opens up the public purse to support landscape repair.
Amanda spends a few days hanging out in station country with the Jones. The land at Boogardie Station, out of Mt Magnet, is getting a restorative and rehydrating make-over. At the same time as a wild dog and grazing-animal proof hub is being constructed with neighbouring stations, the brothers are introducing erosion control through the use of earthworks. All they need is for the coming hot months to produce a cyclonic strength rain event to test their landscaping efforts.....
Amanda and Ersilia leave Geraldton for Morawa, get lost on the dirt roads somewhere northwest of Perenjori and eventually find themselves at a shearing shed in Bowgada. Over the course of a few days she learns again how good it is to be welcomed into a developmental process that has a big vision, is not ashamed to wear its heart on its sleeve and encourages everyone to arrive as themselves.
Amanda looks back to the early 80's and an experiment in self-development that almost kills her. Clearly she lived to fight another day and a years sojourn in country Victoria gives her a first taste of rural living that she is still drawing on for inspiration today.
We visit 'The Mount' in Dandaragan, a farm that is trialling regenerative farming practises and see what some applied earthworks following Peter Andrews' brilliant hydro-logical thinking can do to sort out a long-running erosion problem. While there, we investigate the Smith family's strategies to keep themselves, their sheep and their pastures in good shape. Thanks to the far-sighted Shire of Dandaragan who have sponsored this podcast as part of a grant they initiated to trial whole-of-landscape farming practises in their Shire.
Ancient Chinese saying: Relaxation is who you are. Tension is who you want to be. In which Amanda gets to see a de-stressed mob of sheep really enjoying life in the wheatbelt near Perenjori, and a working example of a tool of Holistic Management in the form of a grazing plan. Along the way I come under the spell of the legendary Horse Whisperer, Bud Williams, and learn to curb my cowboy tendencies once and for all as I embrace the ancient concept of shepherding - minus the Yee-Ha.
Is the human species being given a bit of a hint about something at this point? Amanda draws a long bow between viral pandemics, dust storms and fake food and decides that the consumer needs to get a grip. She has a few suggestions involving a Refractometer and a Brix reading that could give power back to the people at the storefront.
Welcome to The Reset: words to help us restructure our world from the inside out. This episode is called The Answer is Carbon. It was kick-started by a conversation with a very knowledgeable agronomist, then de-railed by a free-thinking, carbon market philosopher and finally pulls itself together with characteristic optimism when the writer emerges blinking from her house, blinking at the sun, looking fabulous in her best pair of pyjamas.
In Part 2 we follow Phil the farmers journey as he finds his horizons expanding in unexpected ways working with holistic agricultural processes.
Transition Part 1 talks about one couple's transition from conventional to biological farming practices and a bold new regenerative venture brewing on a farm out of Perenjori.
In which Amanda learns about love from a pot plant and discovers that Subtle Energies are being used to increase productivity on farms and stations across Australia. All because Queensland based Terry McCosker and his future thinking business, Resource Consultancy Services, have joined forces with geomancer and earth acupuncturist Dr Patrick MacManaway to expand our consciousness
In this episode Amanda responds to the viral pandemic through the medium of a night of vivid dreams and then shares with you some more from the thoughts of Zach Bush MD, an inspirational champion of microbial activity as a template for human existence.
The supply chains are broken, the farmers can't get their glyphosate or pre-emergent herbicides. Will this be the season where biological farming takes a giant step forward? Amanda explores the interesting space that lies between conventional and Regenerative approaches to broadacre farming and finds that there is room for all sorts of thinking. And she shares some great compost tips gleaned from a workshop in Nannup at Bee's and Stewart's Merri Bee Organic Farmacy.
What happens when a group of Regenerative farmers and thinkers get together in a larger group, and put all their projects on the table, using their talents, connections and expertise to help each other out? The pace of change is already pretty breath-taking - will this small band of future-thinkers be able to create a matrix that fast tracks change in Midwest, WA and beyond?Amanda is convinced of it, and is excited to share some of what is building in the way of enterprises in this neck of the woods - including a new marketplace for local food growers, a Wheatbelt based Carbon Soil Sequestration project, on-country training for Aboriginal youth . Part 2 will expand the remit on the understanding that it doesn't always have to be about soil and plants and 'regeneration' is a shorthand term that finds life in other enterprises.
The Fall of the Berlin Wall becomes today's metaphor for unexpected and wide-ranging change coming our way. As big money starts looking for the next Big Profits, it inadvertently becomes a potential force for good in this emerging new world. We dwell in the disruption, the abandonment, the fleeing, then embrace what is regenerative - seeing positive influences in Microsoft's magnanimous carbon gestures, a clause called 'fiduciary duty', and one UWA physics professor's determination to tune the next generation into the strange and wonderful imaginings of Quantum Physics... or how the world really operates.
Amanda sits in the back seat of a Holden Statesman - the chosen town car of WA farmers, listening and learning as an entrepreneurial farmer and a Rangeland ecology scientist trade stories on our way to visit a few farms . One is a full-on fence-to-fence conventional cropping operation and one has developed a regenerative, co-operative business; both sit within a 100 km radius of Geraldton. We are sourcing product for a new food business based on local supply from land in transition to nature based farming. Conversation and gossip, new learning and speculation merge into a rich and funny story of life on the land.
Long-term agricultural investment has been growing under great new management at Macquarie Bank's Agricultural division! Yay!....but Amanda's excitement barely made it to the end of the day after a conversation with a cluey mate and a bit of a think. She had to wise up to what this investment was really all about. Here's what she found out about how unsustainable, dead-as-old-cold-toast,mechanistic concepts are still driving all this lovely Capital. To get there she had to wise up to what this investment was really all about, plus haul in Canadian growers and Induced Cultural Blindness Theory (just kidding) to make her point.
Zach Bush, MD and merchant of well-being, lays out the whole sorry saga that is glysophate/Round Up and the story of chemical farming. What Monsanto and the glyphosate saga has helped into existence is a completely new understanding of the role played by the enteric system, the gut and the human biome. The gut membrane, stretched out, is the size of two tennis courts (in comparison, our skin covers less than 2 metres). It is one micron, one-cell thick. This could be considered as either dreadful under-engineering or a clue to how we should be living, given our physical reality. The gradual damage that has been delivered to the gut membrane over the last 30-40 years has given us clusters of diseases and conditions that are placing immense pressure on both personal and social fronts. Because of Zach MD, we now have the story - so we can all stop our feverish research and get on with our lives. Thanks Zach, you are a legend. And thank you, Monsanto.
Science has met, has even hopped into bed, with spirit - but there are those who would still rigidly separate the head from the heart, the body from the soul and glorify the practices that maintain these separations. So, under the banner of Holism, let's demystify spirit/energy/the whole damn zone known to unbelievers as 'woo woo' and demonstrate its magical powers in the field with Regenerative Agricultural (with a side serve of quantum physics and praise for weeds). So, two Western Australian Midwest farmers, one from Perenjori and one just out of Geraldton find out that Nature turns on a stellar show when she is allowed to play her natural game. Abundance is her gift to us...and being human, playing our natural game, we are, of course, going to monetize this gift in the form of Natural Capital.
In which Amanda travels to the southwest to investigate a new WA agricultural company with the potential to inject new energy into the shrinking communities and tired earth of the WA Wheatbelt . She is introduced to the principled ideas of Agricultural investors Commonland and gets to listen to Charles Massey, author of The Call of the Reed Warblers and sit in the audience with some of WA's best Regen Ag farmers.
In Australia, we are guilty of romanticising ecological destruction. In this case, a painting spotted on a station owner's wall in the Murchison, WA brings some of Amanda's cultural blind spots home to roost. She shares her own journey from ignorant to less ignorant while contemplating the art of station country.
When it comes to sheep in the Rangelands, WA, when is a 'good' dog a 'bad' dog? Is it really about dogs, or is there a bigger picture we need to be looking at when we decide what needs killing on pastoral country. Amanda muses on the language, politics and economics of baiting dogs and gets a bit of a head's up from some scientific data to support her arguments about restoring balance across the whole of the landscape, for the benefit of all life, rather than giving most of the airtime to those still messing around in the areas of exclusion and destruction.
In which Amanda looks at the fall-out from the Live Trade export ban in 2011, tries to work out what sustainable agriculture would look like and draws startling connections between artists and farmers as primary producers sitting at the bottom of the food chain. And has a bit of a go at those Southern, tofu munching types who insist on taking the moral high ground at the dinner table. Amanda argues, sensibly that all sentient life deserves respect - even Posh Spice .
In which a friend gets a bad diagnosis, lives until she doesn't, and does it all on her own terms in pretty good health - considering.Amanda reports on her friend's battles with those in the medical profession who found it hard to deal with a patient who insisted on following her own intuition about treatment and wellness. The story looks at the effectiveness of cannabis and the problems of supply and what the writer learned about the extraordinary ordinariness of death.
Why aren't we all tucking into the most abundant, most nutritious and tastiest meat that Australia has to offer?Amanda considers the red tape and the animal liberationists. She identifies and defines the Skippy Paradox, the double think that sees roos as both the sacred emblem of Australia, and dog meat.She looks at the roo skin and leather trade that is hanging on by a thread and wonders why the roo meat industry is controlled by a Government Environmental department rather than a meat business body. She looks at the role the health inspectors and roo shooters play within the industry.While running an appreciative eye over Macromeats, the Adelaide (the only) mob doing big business in this zone, Amanda tells the not-well-known story of the nutritional value of Rangeland meat and dives into a few personal encounters with kangaroos as both pet meat, human food and road kill.She identifies a few lights at the end of a very long tunnel....ultimately, answering her own question.
Ron Watkins has been practicing regenerative-style farming for so long that he is practically in a class of his own. Why the hell isn't he Australian of this Year in this, or any other year? He is exactly the kind of mentor we need when we are looking at ways of restoring and healing our agricultural land.Ron started changing direction in the 1970s when he saw that what was being taught as essential Agricultural practice was not based on observable or practical truth.He met and worked with P.A. Yeoman, legendary creator of the Keyline method, restoring water systems on his property, and over the decades has received International recognition for his work on Payneham Vale Organic , his 500 ha farm in the south-west of Western Australia.Ron and his wife's main income is from Free-Range eggs and meat sold to retailers in Perth and at the Albany Farmers' market.Now nearing retirement age, the Watkins are looking for a way to hand on what they have developed. Ron should be a decorated and revered Elder in the Regenerative zone, to walk with him on his land is to receive a wonderful lesson in integrated holistic farm planning and thinking....but you know what they say about prophets in their own land...
John Thompson, descendant of convict and settler colonials and John Mogridge, a Bibbulman Boodja man call a series of meetings in Midland, Perth offering conversation to better understand local Aboriginal culture.I sit through a first meeting, cycling through emotions from delighted to enraged and finally, days later, after a bit of a think, get with the program, learning something about my pressing need to drop the ego in the face of an invitation to truly listen and trust .Then I head down south to do the volunteer thing on a few farms and manage to find intriguing synergies between the de-colonisation process and the situation of organic producers, both in contemporary and pre-industrial chemical farming days, and my own propensity for martyrdom.I find myself asking that vital question, not once, but twice: Are we there yet?
In which Amanda reflects on the way language is adapting to reflect the changing landscape of health and wellbeing - and tries to separate the good from the stupid. She takes issue with words like 'healer' and explores a few modalities that have risen to tackle the demon of complimentary medicine: Belief Systems. She looks at Psych K , touches on Epigenetics and reflects on The Presence Process, Michael Brown's powerful 10 week guide to self-understanding.
Amanda talks to more WA based regenerative agriculture champions and is terrified by irrefutable data presented on the state of industrial agriculture by Darren Qualman. On a more positive note she meets Brent Burns from Landsave Organics and NZ soil expert, Nicole Masters who introduces her to the teemingly fabulous world of soil micro-organisms. She is instantly hooked.Along the way Amanda draws strong parallels between agriculture and medicine as she engages with a consciousness-based health modality called BodyTalk with a no-nonsense former nurse called Morag Bromfield. She suspects her life will be forever changed by this extraordinary health system and one word, Geosmin.
Climate Change for all its horrors has given Amanda a secret thrill - the idea that every molecule on this planet can be accounted for within a closed system is astonishing. But it does raise the issue of personal accountability. Amanda dives deep into her suburban past, links it all to regeneration of both the soil and the soul.Wendell Berry, Charles Massey, Energy work, new health modalities and judicious amounts of contemplative and physical work gets mulched down into some nice fertile thinking that sprouts a ridiculously positive take on it all.
Amanda has a close look at nature and enjoys a bit of spadework in Buntine before referencing some big thinkers, like Roger Crook, who are looking at the future of the wheat belt, asking questions like: What is yield and how do we judge resilience in the agricultural world? She ends up thinking that details matter and orthodox scientists need to get their head around both the wood and the trees to help get food producers and farmers on the right track.
Writing in the third person - possibly to free up storytelling - Amanda takes a break from agriculture to talk about a period in her life where she sheds her glasses and a carapace at a Down To Earth Festival in rural Victoria and takes a hard right down a different road.
In her time at Edah Station, Amanda starts to understand that the ecological systems of the Southern Rangelands need to be restored, and central to this restoration is the return of the perennial grasses. She starts learning about perennials after an 'aha' encounter with that humble plant, purslaine. An on-ground education to do with native millet (Panicum decompositum) and the kangaroo grass (Themada triandra) follows and she starts to learn what works and what doesn't work when it comes to growing from seed and cultivating these essential plants.Along the way she has an inspiring encounter with the legendary Bruce Pascoe and heads out to agricultural land near Geraldton to see what impact (non-native) perennials are starting to have on production in the world of broadacre farming.
Who knew? Wattle seeds are legumes and there are literally billions of kilos of them in the Rangelands at any given moment! This story tells how Amanda came to be living in the Southern Rangelands on station country and what she learnt about edible seeds.She talks you through her own stages of learning about native seeds that includes what books to read, what seeds to pick, how to collect and clean them and how best they are eaten. She even gives (unsuccessful) tips on how to market them to (unresponsive) chefs and other people (who also refuse to listen to her ideas).