Fossil Free Food Systems: Jason Bradford, Andrew Millison, Vandana Shiva, Daniel Zetah | Reality Roundtable #06
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Nate Hagens
4.8 • 553 Ratings
🗓️ 12 November 2023
⏱️ 91 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Show Summary:
On this Reality Roundtable, Nate is joined by small-scale farmer Jason Bradford, permaculturist and documentarian Andrew Millison, regenerative agriculture activist Vandana Shiva, and regenerative farmer and educator Daniel Zetah to discuss the feasibility of a food system fully or mostly independent of fossil fuel inputs. While a non-industrialized agriculture system is certainly possible (it was the norm for the majority of human history), what that will look like and how we even begin such a transition is daunting with a population of 8 billion humans to feed. How do we teach people the skills they'll need as fossil inputs become less affordable, reliable, and accessible? Can we create a cultural shift towards a slower lifestyle that is more connected to the land which provides us food? What do the people of a society look like where we are once again centered around agriculture and in tune with the flows of nature? How would our relationship with jobs and the land have to change?
About Jason Bradford:
Jason Bradford has been affiliated with Post Carbon Institute since 2004, first as a Fellow and then as Board President. He worked for the Center for Conservation and Sustainable Development at the Missouri Botanical Garden, was a Visiting Scholar at U.C. Davis, and during that period co-founded the Andes Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research Group (ABERG). He decided to shift from academia to learn more about and practice sustainable agriculture, and in the process, completed six months of training with Ecology Action (aka GrowBiointensive) in Willits, California, and then founded Brookside School Farm.
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.
About Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva is a well known activist, author of many books, and is a global champion on regenerative local agriculture, biodiversity and nutritious food. She has a PhD in physics and 40 years ago founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, an independent research institute that works on the most significant ecological problems of our times.
About Daniel Zetah:
Daniel grew up on a farm in Minnesota where he learned to fix all manner of things driven from an insatiable curiosity about how things worked. He studied economics and business at university. After waking to our planetary predicament, he became a full time environmental activist, then moved to an off grid community in the mountains where he studied permaculture and built straw bale houses. He moved back to America to help steer culture in a more sane direction. He and his wife Stephanie moved back to the family farm in Minnesota where they are growing 80% of their calories, rebuilding the local ecology, and educating and empowering people to wrest back control of their sovereignty as human beings.
For Show Notes and More visit: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/rr06-bradford-millison-shiva-zetah
To watch this video episode on Youtube → https://youtu.be/lb2tJXopTJA
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to The Great Simplification with Nate Higgins. |
| 0:06.0 | That's me. |
| 0:07.8 | On this show, we try to explore and simplify what's happening with energy, the economy, the |
| 0:14.3 | environment, and our society. |
| 0:17.6 | Together with scientists, experts, and leaders, this show is about understanding the bird's eye view of how everything fits together, where we go from here and what we can do about it as a society and as individuals. |
| 0:33.2 | Greetings. Welcome to Reality Roundtable No. 6. I really enjoy putting these together. I have |
| 0:40.7 | almost a hundred prior guests and I kind of mix and match them to create interesting conversations. |
| 0:47.1 | Many more very interesting conversations to come. The hardest part is arranging people's schedules. |
| 0:53.2 | We have one coming on governance and another |
| 0:55.5 | on plastics, another on what question should we be asking in graduate school and postdoc |
| 1:02.6 | research on the Great Simplification and the Metacrisis. Today, I've invited four prior guests back to |
| 1:10.1 | discuss how could we or could we feed |
| 1:14.7 | eight billion plus or minus people with de minimis fossil fuel inputs. |
| 1:20.3 | Is this possible? How might we go about it? What would the yields be? What sort of |
| 1:26.4 | practices would be needed? |
| 1:28.3 | Joining me in this conversation are Daniel Zeta, a small-scale farmer near me in central Minnesota. |
| 1:36.3 | Andrew Millison, who's an educator, storyteller, and permaculture designer. |
| 1:41.3 | He has a popular YouTube channel making permaculture education widely available. |
| 1:48.3 | Jason Bradford, who's an academic biologist turned CSA organic farmer. He also hosts the |
| 1:55.3 | Crazy Town podcast from the Postcarbon Institute. And last but not least, Vanana Shiva, who is a global |
| 2:02.6 | champion on regenerative agriculture, biodiversity, nutritious food, and many other pro-future |
| 2:10.0 | concepts. She has a PhD in physics and founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, |
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