Food Forest Podcast: John D. Liu – How to create food forest communities

You cut all the trees and you think that the lumber is more valuable than the living forest. You don't know what you're talking about. The basis of life, the basis of health, and the basis of wealth is ecological function. So that's a, that's a choice. We have this choice to make.

Hey, welcome to a new episode of the Food Forest Podcast. And today with us, we have a real hero, John D Liu, who made us aware of fantastic regeneration projects happening all across the world. But most and for all, he put the Lost Plateau on the map thanks to his efforts. John, welcome. How are you doing?

Thank you. I'm well. I'm in Beijing at the moment. It has been raining, but it just seems to be stopping now.

All right. What kind of climate do you have in Beijing?

Well, it's been 27 degrees mostly today, and I think it just went down to 25 because of the rain. And it has changed dramatically. I came here 45 years ago and it was extremely dry. Almost all the vegetation was gone. So the Chinese focus on restoring vegetation on a nationwide scale has been very successful in returning the hydrological cycle, moderating the temperatures, and also to, you know, to some extent, it's obviously sequestering carbon. So it's better than not having it. We need to have photosynthesis and we need to have symbiotic relationships with all different life forms. So yeah.

Where did you grow up?

I grew up in the United States. I was born in Nashville, Tennessee, and grew up in Bloomington, Indiana.

Were your parents musicians?

No. Well, not really. My, my father was a soldier actually in the Second World War. Oh, wow. And then he became an engineer, civil engineer, but then he, he made Chinese restaurants in America.

All right.

Uh, was a teacher. She's still alive, actually. She's 106 now.

Oh God. Fantastic. You have good genes.

Well, um, yeah, I think I've had a, yeah, it, it, it's hopeful. Yeah, I'm 72 now and I feel, you know, still I'm ambulatory and I have most of my faculties.

Yeah, that's a good way to start. You started your career as a journalist and filmmaker for major broadcasters like CBS, RAI. What drew you to the filmmaking world and how do you Did you take your path then to go to environmental storytelling? Tell me about that history.

Yeah, well, I definitely wanted to make films when I was young, but how do you get a job in making films? You know, do you go to film school or do you know? And so what I noticed with music is that the people who were good, they played music all the time. And so What I found was being a news cameraman, you basically film every day, all the time. And so you become very familiar with what this means in terms of framing and in terms of what's important. And so that was quite important for me. And I followed that. But what happened eventually was that I covered really the big stories of the time. And what happened after a bit was I was extremely exhausted. And when China was rising from poverty and isolation, there was a war in Afghanistan between the mujahideen and the Soviets. And the United States was supporting the mujahideen, which meant it was supporting Osama bin Laden, which is quite extraordinary. So they made Osama bin Laden. And then, um, then the collapse of the Soviet Union was quite, quite exhausting because I was sent to Moscow and, uh, you know, there was stories all the time and then—

Must have been crazy times. I can only imagine having watched documentaries or movies made about it. You were there in the action. Must have been crazy.

Yeah. Well, that's— it was exhilarating. It was confusing. And it also made me realize that change is inevitable. Change is coming. But at some point I started to notice the huge amounts of pollution. I mean, I couldn't miss them. As China was emerging into this industrial period, it was creating a huge amount of pollution.. And of course, they were only doing that because the whole world wanted them to manufacture the things and they would rather have China have the dirty factories than have the dirty factories themselves.

Mm-hmm.

So the Chinese did that, but, and the pollution was quite amazing. And at some point I started to think somebody should really do something. About this pollution. But actually I meant somebody else should do something about this pollution because I thought I'm so important going to my job and so on. And after a little while of that, I realized that that was a very bad attitude. If I could see what was going on with this pollution and I understood it because I'd grown up with a lot of propaganda about keeping the water clean, the air quality acts and responsibility. I saw that they didn't have that same socialization in China because essentially they had been a very poor and organic country. So if you don't realize that these manufactured substances are completely different than all the natural sources and natural materials, then you really don't understand what it's about, the dangers of pollution and so on. So anyway, when I realized this, I thought I should do something, but what should I do? And then I thought about it and I thought, well, I work in media. And so I began to bring the environmental films from the West to China. And I ended up bringing about 1,000. I did this for a long time. And I took about 1,000 films to China and we distribute them. And then we published a number of books on air and water quality, on citizens' participation in environment and children and education for environment. So all of those things we did.

So you started a distribution company?

It wasn't a company. It was a charity. We gave the films away. We just got the films, brought them to China and gave them. Wow. To the television and gave them to the environment ministry. Eventually it was first the State Environmental Protection Administration. And then this also led me to know more about, for instance, the fear that a lot of people had about HIV/AIDS because they, they didn't know anything about it. So as the AIDS was, you know, HIV/AIDS was spreading around the world, the Chinese really didn't have— they had been closed and they didn't really have that thing. And then it started to— they started to have like— and when they started to have people who were HIV positive, this was very dangerous because if they didn't treat the people or if they didn't prevent the transmission, then it could go crazy in a country with over a billion people. And so this was— there was a lot of fear and ignorance around this. And so there were a couple of, you know, a couple of things. I mean, one was I was asked by BBC to make films on the environment after I was bringing a lot of films, a lot of films from the BBC to China. And so I started making films and then there were different aspects of that. Some were to ask about, you know, filming water pollution or air pollution or these other things. And I was doing this and I went to the partner, the State Environmental Protection Administration, the precursor to the Ministry of Environment. And I said, I want to use the reference library. And they said, we don't have one. And I thought, well, that's impossible. You know, you have to have a reference library because the problem is so enormous. So they said, well, can you build a library? And I said yes, you know, because I'd already taken 1,000 films to China. So I thought, yeah, I didn't know I could take 1,000 films to China, but I did. And then I did that, and then I helped to create the HIV/AIDS Information Network. So, so there was a few things that got me into, say, let's say, environmental work and the BBC asking me to make films in China about environment. And then, so I was already in that thinking, but then the World Bank asked me to go and document the rehabilitation in the Loess Plateau.

Because that's really like, or how I've perceived it, and I think a lot of people perceive it as that That really was a kind of turning point in your life or career, the filming of The Lost Plateau?

Yes, because I realized that to understand it, what was going on, was a life's work. It wasn't like, oh, I'll go out and spend a few months making a film and then I'll know. I realized that this was connected to all of human history. But not only all of human history, but all of evolutionary time and all of Earth time. So it was really the primary systems on the Earth, as opposed to, say, buying and selling products or any kind of thing which is just more secondary to life. And so finally, this was of great interest. I have been curious all my life. That's a good trait if you're a journalist or if you want to make films, you, you, you kind of need to be curious. And then I also have another trait, which is that when I follow something, I just probably am not going to stop.

So Pitbull biting into—

well, I think it's a bit obsessive. So I became obsessive about this because I realized that the quality of the ecological understanding and the actions of the people who are alive now are determining the quality of life for all life on Earth in the future. So our children and future generations and basically all living things, we are deciding the future now because if we continue to add poisons or to lose species or You know, it's the change the climate, change the weather. These things are, you know, existential threats to human civilization now. So this caught me. I was captivated and I looked at the geopolitical events, the wars, the politics, the economics, and I realized actually those are a little bit transitory or ephemeral. They're not really the things that anybody will remember. No one will remember the corporation or the amount of money or the government or who was the— you know, I think about covering, well, you know, Brezhnev or Gorbachev or any of the Chinese leaders or the US presidents or the, you know, and nobody asks me about that. It's over. They're gone when they're gone. And so that's in terms of evolutionary time or Earth time or cosmic time, it's nothing. It's a moment. It's just, it's gone.

But aren't they, for example, the causes of the degradation that has been going on?

Well, the degradation is basically, my conclusion is that there were two main reasons. One was ignorance. So if you look at, say, early humans began to drive megafauna to extinction. Well, why would they do that? They would drive megafauna to extinction because they were afraid of them.

Yeah.

Because they had big teeth.

With a good reason.

Ran fast and they would kill them and eat them, you know. So it became clear that Humans were prey before they were predators. So their fear caused them— so they were afraid and they were ignorant of the role that animals play in evolutionary succession. I mean, we have DNA in our bodies which are connected to all sorts of We're connected to all life since the beginning of time through our DNA. So we have a reptilian brainstem and we have a, you know, we have another brain over it covering the earlier part, you know. So we have, we have this and we have photosynthetic DNA and we're symbiotically related to bacteria. If we didn't have all our bacteria in the gut, helping us to digest, we would definitely die. And micronutrients that we, we absorb through food help us regulate our glandular secretions and hormones. So, I mean, we're, we're not really a single species, but we're generally— we're ignorant about that. We think we are special, but actually everything in life is coming together to make a whole. And if we don't have it all, we take a bit out, we're losing something. We're losing a capability or we're losing something which is nourishing us. And as I started to think about those kinds of things and follow this, I just realized that the other one of this is selfishness, that we're ignorant And then humans are also like, this is all for us. We say, we call, we talk about ecosystem services. Well, actually, through my research, I realized there are no ecosystem services. There's only functional or dysfunctional systems. And if you've, if you've broken the system and the ecosystem is no longer functional, it's also no longer productive. But in our thinking, we have, we have gone to the derivative and said the water or the air or the food or the whatever we're getting, that's where the value is. This is wrong. This is fundamentally wrong because all of the water or the air or the food or anything else we're extracting is coming from functional ecosystems. And if by extracting those things, we destroy that system, it's not more value. It's no, you have no more. You cut the, all the trees and you think that the lumber is more valuable than the, than the living forest. You don't know what you're talking about because the living forest has millions and hundreds of millions and billions of years of development. And now if you, if you actually look at the climax equilibrium that we can still see, then the highest trees might be like 465 feet, maybe 160+ meters high in the air, and they're 4,000 years old. Well, have you seen any 4,000-year-old trees lately? And when you—

There are not many left.

There's only a few remnants. But what this means is we don't care. We don't understand. And when you understand that the height of the canopy is where the solar radiation is interrupted, and that determines the physics of the planet, it determines the wind speed, wind direction, vortex activity, surface temperature. And the circulation of moisture in the lower hydrological cycle. That's the only reason we exist. So if we lose all that and we think, oh, our buildings and our cars and our computers and our robots and AI and whatever, virtual reality, and is it, we don't understand that those are all abiotic systems. But we are born, we're alive. And so we are part of a biotic system. So we're valuing the abiotic system higher than the biotic system. This is a mistake. This is ignorance and this is greed. And now, now we're expressing this greed. I would say we're at peak greed now. Because you can have billionaires, you can have a single individual who has more of the Earth's wealth than many, several countries together. You know, like, this is not possible. This is ridiculous for this to happen. And we're questioning— in the United States, they're questioning the concept of birthright. How can you ask that? You know, like, So you were born on the earth. Of course you have a birthright. You have the right to life. How can you say that you don't? How can you say that, oh, well, I have it and that person over there doesn't have it? You know, that's completely ridiculous. So we're now into a sort of Kafka, Voltaire kind of place where, you know, it's where this, it's satirical. It's so bizarre. And now I think that, that has brought me to, to realize that if we understood what is truly valuable, and we understood what is meaningful in our lives, then our lives are different. Yeah.

And they often say that people are more captivated by positive stories about stories that show possibilities, and less less motivated by, oh my God. And for example, what did motivate me was the saying that if— or the research that showed that in 2050, 90% of our Earth will be degenerated. So I'm like, okay, in 25 years I'll still be pretty young, uh, in my 50s, uh, and, uh, I'd like to still eat food and have a peaceful society. But they often say, well, it's better to like show them the possibilities of regeneration. And I'm wondering, you made the beautiful work around the Lost Plateau. Did you have the feeling that you have the selfishness, you have the greed and everything that goes with it? Do you feel that film, for example, really put a seed in people's minds and worked against that greed and against that ignorance?

Well, I think the greed and the ignorance you can trace back over historical time. And you can see an arc of consciousness emerging in humanity. The question is, how fast can we become enlightened? How fast can we emerge to understand that we're going to die? We're only here for a short while, but life goes on. And that we're part of a cycle of life. It's not— I think maybe it's the question about whether we are physical beings that are hoping to experience some sort of spiritual awakening or understanding, or whether we're actually spiritual beings who are, for a short while, experiencing physicality. And it seems to me that we're for a short while experiencing physicality and that our purpose might be to bring consciousness to life. And so if humanity were to become really enlightened and understand, I mean, I'm not sure about the sort of Dalai Lama, Jesus, Buddha thing, but we at least have to go to the next step. In human consciousness where we understand we're breathing air, we're drinking water, we live because of all the life forms that have ever lived, that also there's a very big part of this, which is that biological life has joined together and, and self sort of co-created a symbiotic biological reality that has altered the physics on the planet. So if we disrupt the biology, that disrupts the physics.

That's clear.

If we're not doing what we're supposed to do, we're actually de-evolving, devolving. And when we do that, we're turning the Earth into a planet like Mars or the moon or some other celestial planet that doesn't have an oxygenated atmosphere, that doesn't have a freshwater system, that doesn't have fertile soils and doesn't have amazing biodiversity. Why would we do that? So if you start to think this way, then you can't unknow that. You can't imagine that going shopping is the purpose of life or that treating other people badly is okay. How is that okay? Why would we do that? War. How, why should we have this? So who does it benefit? You know, who, and, and it really doesn't benefit anyone. It's only that they think it does because they're ignorant and they're selfish. So if they, if they took the next steps to become conscious that, well, that's not even a strategy because already there have been two Nobel Prizes given, one to John Nash and another to Elinor Ostrom, for the concept that if you pursue selfish interests, to the point that it erodes the collective interest, it's not in your interest anymore. It's not just not in the collective interest, it's not in your own interest.

True selfishness is collaboration.

Yeah. If we just learned this, that fact alone would help us move to the next, next stage.

And what's the power of film? You, you experienced, you used film to bring this message to the world. How powerful is it according to you? What's your experience?

Well, I think that actually you can't teach anybody anything. This is the reality. But people can learn. I grew up in horse country, you know, there's horses. And so basically, if you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink is a saying, you know. And you know, you can write books and you can give speeches and you can write essays and scientific journals and whatever. But if they don't read them, then that's not very useful. And if, if, if I have some knowledge and I don't communicate it to others, it's of no use. It's irrelevant. If, if, if I know how to end human impact on climate change, or if I know how to end hunger, or I know how to restore, you know, protect the endangered species, but I don't tell anybody about it, I don't share that information, it doesn't reach them, it doesn't land, then it's irrelevant. It doesn't matter that I know it. It only matters when we have a collective intelligence. And when we have a collective intelligence, we have a collective— we can have a collective intention. Without having collective intelligence, we can't even have a collective intention. I think that's kind of what we're seeing right now in the political realm. We don't have a collective intelligence. And so we're not— we don't have a collective intention. We need to come together and understand what is important and what's important not only for individuals, but for everyone.

Is that why you shifted your attention from making films to share the knowledge, your own knowledge, but also the knowledge of other people? To creating ecosystem restoration camps because they literally, like you say, bring people together, bring consciousness, make people work on the same goal?

Well, at some point I had been working with large multinational institutions, the World Bank or the United Nations or other countries, the British, the Norwegians and so on. And the Germans and the Dutch. But, and then IUCN, International Union for the Conservation of Nature, and organizations like that. But then I kind of noticed that there's a type of hierarchical situation with these organizations, that there's a verticalism. And this is also not the concept of collective intelligence and collective intention and collective action. The other thing that I realized was that knowledge and even wisdom are— is different than information. There's lots and lots of information, but many people don't understand what that information means. And secondly, if it remains theoretical or conceptual, it's not real. You know, it's a concept. It's an idea. Good idea.

It's an air castle in the air.

Yeah. But you have to do it. So when I realized and understood and had learned how you change the soils, how you change the hydrological cycle, how you change the vegetation and the biodiversity, and that's how do you change people? So when I learned that, I realized, okay, the only way that that is actually real is if people take it up.

Do it.

And they do it. And as an individual, I can't do it by myself. I mean, I have a lovely garden. It's absorbing the water now. It's very diverse. But what has to happen is that everyone who knows this And everyone actually needs to know it because this is the basis of health and this is the basis of life. And finally, that means it's the basis of wealth. And so this is the real economy. The material economy is not the real economy. That's a false economy. It's a trash economy. It's an economy based on producing more junk, which ends up in the landfill or in the trash. And what's truly valuable is the functional ecosystems on a planetary scale.

So they're the ones keeping us alive.

And that should be the basis of— that should be the central intention of human civilization. If that's the case, and there's some people who say, well, we, we need food or we need production. Well, think carefully. Do you find that degraded systems are more productive than functional systems? And when you study that, you find out, no, of course not. Functional systems are always more productive than degraded ones. So there is zero logic in that rationale. The only reason for it is selfishness to gather more and more material possessions to certain individuals or certain classes or certain special interests. And if we, if we look and understand about equity and equality and birthright, and that everyone who's alive today has inalienable right. And all the different species, from gigantic megafauna to tiny insects to bacteria, single-celled organisms, they all have the right to life. And in fact, without them, we wouldn't exist. So when we go to this level of understanding of the philosophical reasoning inside of our civilizations, inside of our activity, functional ecosystems must be the central intention of human civilization going forward if we intend to survive. Yeah.

Can you quickly explain to our listener what an ecosystem restoration camp is? What people can expect.

Do we only have one listener? I hope we have more than one listener. But yeah, go ahead.

No, I always address like the listener in the podcast because it's always like one person listening at a time. Because listeners, it's like, yeah, I'm just one listener.

All right.

No, so, um, an ecosystem restoration camp, I visited one in La Junquera in, uh, in Spain with Yannick and Alfonso, where I also I followed the course. I also taught there the course. We also filmed the documentary there. Can you quickly explain what it is and what your view on it is and also on the future of ecosystem restoration camps and maybe also talk about how people listening to this podcast can maybe start one at their own place?

Sure. I think that La Junquera was the first ecosystem restoration camp, and now most are called ecosystem restoration communities. And that's because it's evolving to realize that if you're doing this, you're going to have— it's a life's work that you're, you're embracing or you're engaging in. It's not simply let's go for a couple of weeks and plant a few trees. It's really that you're starting to understand that this is what is needed for human civilization, but you're also beginning to understand that this is more satisfying than being in a little cubicle buying and selling things or working for, you know, doing something that you don't really, that you sort of know is not the central intention should not be the central intention of human civilization, or that is less valuable than if you were restoring the soils or restoring the hydrological cycle and ensuring the survival of human civilization. So, so gradually, when anybody starts to understand this, they're all going to want to do that. And also we're starting to see a kind of collapse. And when we study history, we see that many civilizations have collapsed. They have lost their currencies. They have lost their soils. They have lost their water. They have lost their purpose. And they're, they're not sure what they're doing. And so in China, that would be called losing the mandate of heaven. So if the emperor doesn't take care of the country, take care of the people, then he's going to go down for sure.

That's what happened at Easter Island and a lot of other places, even the Roman Empire.

Everywhere. So, so essentially, I think that also we start to see that as, as individuals, we really work well as humans are social beings, social animals. And so we work well together if we can organize ourselves into teams. And so if you do some study about this, you might find that there's probably an optimal number that at some point If you go over a few hundred, let's say, you might get to the point where you don't know everybody. So if you don't know everybody and you look at somebody and you don't know who they are, you don't know what they've done in the past, you don't have an opinion or understanding of their character, then you might not trust them. So you need to be in a kind of place of trust. With one another. And so if you can work together with people and you can have good communications and you can do things that you, you agree on and also have a lot of fun, I think music and food and entertainment, theater, movies, all of that is good, especially if we move away from really dystopic You know, I don't think all— you don't need to watch constantly vampire and zombie films or war movies.

There's the wrong image in your mind.

Yeah, no, you don't need this. You need to see people who are in love with each other, in love with the earth, in love with life and enjoying. So that is a direction. Now, if that's what happens, inside of ecosystem restoration communities, that's great. So what I've been doing lately, so now there are about 86 of these and soon there will be 100 or more. Oh, wow. And then—

Congratulations.

Yeah, then there will be more and more. But what we've been looking at is what can they do? How can they link with, say, universities to teach experientially. So in a, in a way, it would be nice to have all the resources of a university, but it would be nicer to look at how do you take the conceptual information and make it physical? Because if we know how to clean the water with nature-based solutions, if we understand about toxicity and we understand about protecting endangered species and we understand about the relationship between perhaps diversity in plants and having diverse polycultures as opposed to monocultures, or if we understand the importance of ancient DNA, that actually if we're hybridizing or breeding or genetically modifying the DNA of our plants, we have to think we don't understand what's the result in terms of creating and constantly filtering and continuously renewing the oxygenated atmosphere, the freshwater system, the fertile soils. And so this threatens us, and that's our ignorance causing yet more degradation. So we need to have all this kind of thinking. Now, where can you do that? You can do that in an ecosystem restoration community. And when you understand that the value of restoring ecosystems is higher than buying and selling hamburgers or moving plastic lawn chairs in container ships from the other side of the world, This is where the real economy is. This is how you ensure survival and peace and full employment and stability and psychological health. Also physical and psychological health.

What can one expect when they enroll in an ecosystem restoration community? For how many days or weeks is it? What can they expect to do?

I don't think it should be this way. I think basically we're starting to look at community land trusts and the ability to make land available to people who want to, and if, especially if we go to the places which are most degraded, then that's where the work needs to be done. So if we choose to do that work, what is more valuable than that? If we face an existential threat from climate change or from from overpopulation or from biodiversity loss or any of these planetary boundaries, we should be doing this. This is exactly what the economy is and should be. That is the economy that works. You can't have infinite growth of plastic goo-gaws and buying and selling them and think that that's a real economy when you're facing Actually, climate change, biodiversity loss, soil infertility. Those are your— those are the central areas where human civilization needs to work. So by choosing this and by making it possible to have a type of ownership by all, as opposed to like I own everything. It's all mine. The man or the person with the most things when they die doesn't win anything. There's no prize. In fact, they've lost a tremendous amount. They've lost their life in a way, their souls. So if we can figure out how, and we're doing this also in terms of studying how to do this. So if we systematically study how do you create a legal structure where the actual people who are doing the work are the owners of their own enterprise, not the government, not private industry, but the people themselves. Can we do that? Of course we can. Yes, we can. There's actually a lot of study about this. So in doing that, can we have childcare for all the children? Can we have healthcare for everybody? Can we have care for the elderly? Can we have all the entertainment and music and recreation that we need? Of course we can. So that's a, that's a choice. We have this choice to make. And now it's also, I would say, ecosystem restoration communities are the anecdote for the type of depression and burnout and, and quite terrible situations that we're seeing in many parts of the world. So they are leading already to war. They're leading to collapse. They're leading to discord within the societies. So what's the value of a harmonious communities who can feed themselves and feed the hungry.

It's priceless.

Yeah. Who can build houses and care for everybody, take care of everyone instead of say, I'm a real estate person and I want more money for myself, control of everything. Like, well, that's stupid. We don't want that. We want everybody to be free. We want everybody to be happy. We want everyone to achieve their heart's desire. So that their lives have meaning. When we do that as individuals and we work for the good of all, everybody has that chance. Yeah.

If one of the food foresters who is listening to this would like to start their own ecosystem restoration community, is it difficult to start them? How do you take the first step?

I think everyone— there's no two ecosystem restoration communities are the same. All the ecosystem restoration communities must be working locally, hyper-locally. And so then there also must be communities throughout the world. So the more people who take this on, the more that becomes a normal way of life, a normal way of building your family and your home, to have your children educated in doing this. Because we don't need this kind of domination in the society. We need to be self-motivated and self-activated. So then we don't need anybody to tell us what to do because we know what to do. And so that, that is a new possibility for us. If we don't do that, the, the situation looks pretty grim right now. So as an old journalist who covered these sorts of societal changes, you don't want to go to war. You don't want to see your family die. You don't want to die yourself. And you certainly don't want to kill other people.

Yeah.

So, so how are we going to do that? We're going to have to organize society in a way that works. That protects the environment, that protects our society, protects the wisdom of the elderly and supports the growth and education of the young.

Yeah, and you've seen it with your own eyes, standing in the front lines, standing in huge societal shifts that were pretty scary. And I can totally understand that you don't want to go back to places like that and want to prevent those from happening. If you look back on your decades of work, is there a moment that you feel that you failed that really deeply impacted you but ultimately led to a breakthrough?

Oh, there are many. I would call it their inflection points or realizations. So I think— Can you tell one? Well, yeah, I would say that when I realized that it was possible to restore large-scale degraded ecosystems, including those that had been destroyed over long time periods and over really vast areas. This is a whole lot of places on the planet. And when, when you understand that, then you really want it to happen because this will change everything. And so seeing, seeing this in China back in 2000, and I think it was 2005, I got a fellowship from a very important research institute, the Rothamsted Research Institute in the UK. And the, the director said, you must go to Africa. And I went, Africa? I've already been to Africa. He said, no, no, you must go to Africa to share what you've learned about in China. And suddenly It was like when he said that, it opened up a lot of doors. And the World Bank and the British government and the Global Environment Facility said, go to Africa. And so I went to Africa and I spoke to— we called it the direct dissemination method. So we went there and just showed all of the films and gave them to the television. But we also spoke to the presidents and the prime ministers and the cabinets and the parliaments and the science faculties in the universities and the students in the universities and the press and the public. And we just like told everybody this and that in like 2, 3 weeks, we started with the Global Environment Facility High-Level Technical Roundtable. We spoke to the Terra Africa Board of Directors. We talked to to the— we went to Rwanda and to Tanzania and to Ethiopia. And we just told everybody, and I'm relentless, so I won't leave until they understand it. You know, like, you have to understand. And so they could ask any questions. We could go all day and all night. It was pretty, pretty intense. At the end of that, at least in Rwanda and in Ethiopia, they both changed their land use laws to understand that. And, and all of the development agencies pledged to change their actions and to, to, to do restoration rather than keep shipping over food assistance or, you know, which doesn't really change the situation. It means you're going to always have to deliver food if they don't grow it themselves. So they, if they switch to restoration, then they get real jobs. And if you pay them to do the restoration, that's more valuable than anything else. So it's true, there's data now coming from those African countries that show, well, that's more valuable if you do that. So that was a moment where it became quite clear. Now, there's some other moments that people don't know about, like when you get to see that we're having drought and heat, heat waves and wildfires and all these things. Oh my gosh. Well, that's going to continue unless we do something about it. And so there was a very nice in Spain, in Valencia, A very wonderful scientist. He passed away on my birthday.

Milan Milian, is that the one you're talking about? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He passed away on my birthday. I was really sad.

Yes, yes, very sad. He was a wonderful person, and he was also very bitter because he was—

I understand—

trying to tell people very important things. And one of those very important things is he was realizing how you achieve critical mass for condensation and precipitation. So this is a really huge, huge understanding.

Basically creating rain, right?

Well, how rain comes together, why precipitates, why it condenses. And so this, you know, it was, he was in the right position But the politicians were not able to either understand this or have the courage to do what was needed to be done. So this made him very bitter. But because he wrote about this, he taught this, there's still this body of work about him. So we sort of understand more about this, that you can reach critical mass for condensation and precipitation. So this is one of the things that has motivated the Weathermakers to do some really excellent research and to theorize on large-scale restoration. So now we're in the practical area. This is where I think the— one of the things that the living— we see the ecosystem restoration communities as living laboratories. So if they can work on changes that will increase evapotranspiration so that you can have the additional moisture to join the moisture that's always flowing from evaporation off the ocean, if you can reach 21, 22 grams per kilogram of air, it's going to condense and precipitate.

Trees will create rain. It's amazing. The first time that people hear this, that trees actually create rain and it just don't only consume rain, it's another way of thinking. And I think it was Mian Mian that said you only need, was it 8 or 16 square kilometers of trees to—

I think it's about 100. It's 10 by 10, I would say.

10 by 10, yeah.

You got something like 100 square kilometers. So that would be 10 kilometers by 10 kilometers would be 100 square kilometers.

You can make it rain.

Well, yeah, I think you should be careful about too simplistic things, but basically you can get to a situation where you're having a bigger impact than simply, and in fact, if you're too small, you won't make this because we're talking about atmospheric rivers, which are flowing and they're in jet streams and so on. So you really need to bring the moisture to the lower hydrological cycle. And if you've ever been in a lightning storm and you realize that the, you think the lightning is coming down from the sky, you know, God is throwing a, you know, Fires sticks. Lightning bolt. But actually it's the two charges, one building up on the ground and one in the air, and they meet each other. That's what causes this. And so if you think about lightning and then you think about moisture and you realize, well, they're not quite the same, but that particular thing is sort of what you're seeing happen. You're, you're attracting the moisture from the ground and the atmospheric river is not going to pass you by. It's going to give you the water when you do that.

I love the comparison between the two, that it's not just one direction, it's two directions meeting in the middle. I haven't looked at it that way.

I mean, there, there are more of these kinds of inflection points. I think a big one Another big one would be this concept of the economy. This is really where we're failing now because the existing economy, the GDP-style economy, says you have to do more of that to have money. Well, that's ridiculous. More of that or more of that kind of money is just going to destroy Earth systems. You have to value the Earth systems. And I would say it's not about monetizing nature. There's something also wrong with the idea of carbon markets, and there's something wrong with the idea of biodiversity credits or any of that. So that's basically like, we're going to monetize it. Well, that's kind of lowering the value in a way because the value is much higher than this money that they're paying for it. So what you really need to do is you need to naturalize the economy. So once you understand that the ecosystem function is vastly more valuable than anything that human beings have ever made and everything that human beings will ever make, that's the answer. Because you, you have a relative value which is higher. Than anything else. Now, when you do that, you cannot pollute anymore. You can no longer destroy. You can no longer degrade. You can't say— now they say it's okay to have a little bit of poison in your food. You know, what are you talking about?

No, it's ridiculous.

Zero is the only— you know, we don't want any poison. That's ludicrous. So when we get to this, this point, then the economy reflects our understanding. Now the economy reflects our ignorance. All this ignorance which has been built up over this, over historical time, we're bringing to our economy, saying, okay, we can have rich people and desperately poor people, and we have classes. These are the aristocracy and these are the slaves. You know, like, what? No, you know, like that's no, that's not okay. So once we, once we get to the level where no, it's not okay, then we have to get rid of that. We have to say, well, that doesn't work. And so if we get rid of that, how do you get rid of it? You get rid of it. Do you have more war to, to end it? Do we have to have a revolution? Is it, I heard somebody say, now's the time for the pitchforks. To come out. Well, that's terrible. Pitchforks, the pitchforks are not going to bring peace. They're going to bring— Oh, well. Yeah. So the answer, it seems to me, is to realize that if we come together in small groups where we can create trust, where we can control sufficient land, So not by saying it's mine, but by saying we're all here together. We all know that we all have the right to life. We all know we have to care for this Earth. And we're all learning how to do that really well. Then that's really the best case for us now.

And that's the antidote, according to you, towards this crazy economy. One of my personal inflection points, as you call them, was reading the Merchants of Doubt and watching the documentary about the historians/scientists that analyzed the tobacco lobby, the anti-climate lobby, the asbestos lobby, that they're using the same playbook to get you, to really get you and influence you. And I've always been wondering, but these are like these huge machines with huge amounts of money. Paying lobbyists, paying scientists to spread fake news, to spread doubt. Do you think it will be enough coming together with small groups?

Well, I think it's what we can do. It's certainly the more small groups and it's a big group is the reality. So right now you, you, you can see really very disrupted societies all over the world. And interestingly, I mean, I have to say, I mean, I'm sitting here in Beijing. And I have been working and living, and now I'm kind of 72, so I'm sort of old. But what's happening in China is not without importance. First of all, they have transformed their civilization. This is the first time that you have an ancient civilization that's also a modern superpower. So that's very different. And their judgment is different. And what they've been— they also tell you everything that they're thinking. So they have a 5-year plan system. So they write down the 5-year plans. You should go and look and read. They also translate it into English and other languages. So you can get it in probably in Dutch or German or French or Japanese or anything. But what they're talking about now is a new epoch, in a way, of civilization. So we're leaving this materialist time. So I think the people haven't really come to this understanding yet, but we have to leave the materialist time. Because we can't infinitely grow based on finite resources. And we can't say, "I can get as much as I want," whatever, with billions and billions of people on the Earth without saying, "Well, let those die," you know, treating some very, very badly. And we're seeing that right now. We're seeing that in the United States. The people who pick the food, the people who care for the gardens and care for the children and so on, They're being treated terribly. Like, how could you do that? They're the ones who are doing the—

Pillars of our society.

Yeah. And so, you know, they should be honored. How can you beat them with some— who are these goons, you know, who are beating people? That's outrageous. And then, but what the Chinese are calling it is ecological civilization. Now, ecological civilization as a new epoch is kind of what we're defining in ecosystem restoration communities. So as a concept in a university, in a lecture hall talking about it, it doesn't mean anything really. You know, I'll go, oh, that's an idea. But in a living laboratory with 50 or 100 families living together to make this happen, they're actually showing the way forward for human civilization to have ecological function as the central intention of humanity and the methodologies to get there. And if they achieve happiness and joy and satisfaction and all achieve their heart's desires, then that's way better than the dystopic kind of misery that we can see in many other parts of the world.

Yeah, that's a, that's a beautiful vision of the future. Before we wrap this podcast up, we always ask the question: if, imagine if you would have a magic wand, what would you do with it?

Magic wand? Oh, I think if, if it— I would I would use the magic wand to create mass enlightenment immediately for human civilization to realize that the basis of life, the basis of health, and the basis of wealth is ecological function. And if that's understood, it must be the central intention of human civilization going forward. And that will solve all of these problems. So if you can, if you want to answer climate change, if you want to answer planetary boundaries, all the different ones that we're having, can we restore the oceans? Yes. Can we restore the soils? Yes. Can we restore the vegetation and the biodiversity? Yes. That is going to require us to heal the human spirit as well.

Are you a happy person, John D Liu?

Sometimes. I think I'm rather satisfied that I have been somewhat useful. So that's somewhat satisfying. But I am frustrated at the speed. I had believed in the early 2000s when I made some of these breakthroughs that people would listen to me. And I can't really say that nobody's listened to me because millions and millions of people have been affected. I know that for a fact. So there's statistical data that says like millions of people.

You've been useful. Statistically proven. Yeah.

Yeah, go ahead.

And how do you deal with that frustration or lack of contentment?

Well, I think I just keep working. We're, we're now in the process where we found— so that I think frustration or unhappiness is pretty useless, really. But what is useful is to do something. So what we've, what we've found now is, all right, just like the, the soils can be grown, we can take on a really big issue. So what's the biggest issue in that we can, which is in our face all the time now in certainly in the Netherlands or in Northern Europe or in the UK, it's eutrophication. It's this pollution, super nutrients, too much nutrients, also toxicity. It's not only nutrients. You have all sorts of pollutants in the water. So can we take this on? So we're just working on a new community in Sussex in Britain where we're building out living water gardens and using— also we're experimenting with the eco oasis that the Weathermakers have been researching from the work of Dr. John Todd in the United States. So if we can have hundreds and thousands of people studying this and replicating this kind of work, this is faster than governments and corporations to do this work. And it makes a new economy where— and the people directly benefit from clean water and living together with nature and having that as a satisfying way of life. So we're very close with this one. We're also making a new studio and media kind of thing. So we could work together if you want to.

Oh yeah, cool.

Yeah. So we're, we're, the whole idea is just to have really clear conversations as opposed to having arguing or something. I mean, we have something which is affecting all of human civilization. So we have to get along in order to settle it, find the solution. So let's find the solution. So that's, that's, here's, here's the task. Here's the issue. And I don't see that. So, I mean, the, the noise factor in the traditional media or in social media is too high. So there's like all this cacophony and it's, there's no clarity. So we need to have a much, much clearer— so we have a beautiful place in which is being developed in Kent.

Oh yeah. Oh, beautiful.

Near Dover called the Pines Calyx. So the one, the place where the water treatment is taking place had a terrible pollution episode upstream from them. Somebody dumped toxins and nutrients and killed all of the life in the stream and lake. So this is a terrible thing, but it's an opportunity and it must be cleaned. So this is our chance to train more and more people at this. And then it turns out there's unlimited numbers of places which have to do this. So it's not really, if we can teach them and duplicate it, and we're working on the legal structures to have community-based enterprises. Yeah. So instead of—

Like Stewart-owned.

Yes, owned by the group that's doing it. Yeah.

That's incredible.

Everybody can share in the responsibility, share in the risk, and also share in the reward. So instead of paying to the government or paying to private industry, have the people in the community do it because actually that's the only way it works.

Yeah.

And they're the direct beneficiaries and they are the ones who are most committed to the outcome. So perfect.

Well, I can see that. Yeah. Like, being frustrated and so it's not a nice feeling, but it propels you into action. And when you start talking about this project, I see the spark in your eyes and I see that the happiness is really there. So it's like what you say, it's about how do you deal with frustration and like action. It's like the only real thing you can do and it brings you happiness. So it's super cool to see that. One last question, a piece of advice I actually would like to get if you would willing to give it to me. We are organizing a large festival across different places in Europe called 10 Lives, and it's basically the concept of the ecosystem restoration community, but like very condensed in 5 days and with a couple of thousand of people to come together, work during the day doing ecosystem restoration, and have a true dance festival at night to do what you do, but on steroids. What advice would you give us?

Well, I would say you better be aware that ecological restoration is not a sprint. It's more of a marathon. So you need to pace yourselves and you need to make it your life's work. And several generations are going to have to take this on. It's not going to be solved in 5 days.

But it is a way to like get people there that otherwise like would not have time to do something.

Yes, you can do that. We have seen this. I think that you have to realize that, I mean, if you're careful, do you know Martin Klop at Grounded?

Yeah, heard of him.

Yeah. With Martin, he has 650 young people and they are doing something similar festivals and so on. Cool. But they're working on a design for mobile toilets and mobile kitchens. We're also looking at some of these things for, in Britain and other ecosystem restoration communities, to have creator spaces where you can build anything. If you have say, like if you go and you build infrastructure for 5 days and then you take it all apart and take it away, or you use those horrible chemical toilets or any of that stuff, that's just ridiculous. So I wouldn't, do not do that. But if you, one of the things that we're talking about doing is using vacuum collection toilets, which take the waste. Now you have to train the people not to put anything else into the toilets. Toilet paper's okay, but nothing else. And, you know, and it all goes, "Foomp," like on the airplanes, it goes, you know.

Yeah, exactly.

The vacuum takes it away. And so that vacuum has to take it to another container. And inside that container is a biodigester. So this is anaerobic methogenic bacteria, which creates methane. So after you, after you can use this also To cook your food? Well, yeah, but you don't have to do that. You can use it for anything. You can make electricity. It's whatever you want. It's gas. It's natural gas. But when you go in there, you can make methanol and put it in a car. You can do anything. But if you do this, you can also take green waste and put it in there too, or animal waste. So like if you start to understand and stack functions, it's part of permaculture.

Yeah.

Then you can use these things in chicken farms or pig farms or dairies. And, you know, you can solve the— and if those are owned by community-based enterprises, then this is perfect.

Yeah, definitely.

Then you're starting to emerge with— and, and that's also the water. So where, where is all the nutrients coming from in the water? Well, it's also there. So we can solve this if we do it together. Yeah, we can't solve this alone. Your people going for 5 days, not going to do it. But everybody together all the time. So making those creator spaces and then making legal offices which help community-based enterprises or community land trusts to register to, you know, those are all the things that need to be done. That's my advice to you.

Well, thank you so much, John D Liu. It's going to be a crazy ride, those festivals. I'm very, very grateful to to get some extra things to think about. It's been a true pleasure talking with you, John. You're one of my heroes. You spread the idea about restoration to a lot of people, maybe one of the biggest super spreaders out there. So very grateful for that. If you've enjoyed this podcast, go to foodforcepodcast.com and in the show notes you'll see links to John D Liu's work. Where you can also watch some beautiful stuff he made and of course learn more about food forests, food forest design, the festival we're organizing, the movie we're making, the design work we're doing. So very happy that you've been here and see you next week for next episode.