Regenerating Hearts and Minds | The Basis of Regenerative Agriculture with Charles Eisenstein

Hi, friends. Welcome back to the Regenerative Agriculture podcast. This is John Kempf, and as you know, normally on this podcast or frequently we speak about the agronomic orientation to regenerative agriculture. What does it take to produce really healthy soil, really healthy plants, and ultimately really healthy people and farm economics. The conversation I'm hoping to have today is addresses perhaps some of the philosophical underpinnings and foundations of what really defines regeneration and what is the place that we need to come from within to really embrace and embody regeneration of landscapes. I'm really pleased and honored to have Charles Eisenstein here with me as a guest today. I've admired Charles work for quite some time and you know, Charles, I want to say thank you for being here and for being willing to share your wisdom. You've done a lot of heavy lifting over the last, well, decades really, but particularly the last couple of years. There's been lots of, I don't know what the right word is, insanity, maybe lots of craziness in the world. And there is a need for voices of clarity and voices of thought who are able to articulate what's really going on in the world from a, perhaps from a spiritual perspective or philosophical perspective of where is the place that we're really coming from within. So thank you for being here. I've been looking forward to this conversation.

Yeah, thank you, John, for having me on. I'm flattered and honored to be on your show, you know.

Well, you're most welcome. I don't know if you need to be flattered and honored, but I think one of the pieces I wanted to discuss with you and get your perspective on, we have, in many ways we have. Our contemporary agriculture has really drifted far away to almost 180 degrees opposite of the principles and values that attracted most of us into farming in the first place. When I have conversations with growers and I ask people the question, I include myself in this. I grew up on a farm and I asked the question, what is it that really attracts us to farming? What is it that attracts us to working with rural landscapes? The reality is it's a difficult job, it's hard work, it's frequently relatively low paying compared to other jobs that you might take in the marketplace. So why do we sign up for this? And when you really dig into the answers and into the ethos that is at the foundation of those answers, what it seems to come down to is that many of us are attracted to this space because of our desire for a connection with life and living processes. Which we want to be good stewards, we want to nurture life. We get joy from watching seedlings emerge in the spring and from watching the joy of newborn animals. And yet somehow, in our contemporary agriculture, we've adopted a model of agriculture that is in some ways the direct antithesis of that, where we have this warfare mentality of search and destroy, identify specific pathogens, identify specific pests, and figure out how you can wipe them off the face of the earth. And if the first weapon of choice isn't successful, then we just simply follow up with a bigger bomb the second time around. How have we gotten so far away from those inner core values that attracted us to agriculture in the first place? And what's our pathway back to reconciling that?

Yeah, like you say, it's really become a war on nature. You're speaking of herbicides, pesticides, or basically the domination of the land so that only one thing can grow there, only the things that you want to grow. And this has been, if you ask, where did this begin, you have to go back many, many centuries, where, in contrast to, say, hunter gatherers who didn't raise animals, they didn't plant crops, the farmer chooses what will grow here and what will not grow there, and chooses which animals will thrive and which will not. Which ones are good and which ones are bad. So this basic concept of good and evil arose with agriculture. For example, the corn is good, it's a sacred plant. But the burdock or the pigweed or whatever else is growing there is bad. The sheep is good. The wolf is bad. The big bad wolf. Once you identify in that way, then the crusade for good becomes a matter of extinguishing the weeds, the insects, the wolves, and so forth. And that is what has intensified over thousands of years. What we're learning today is what some farmers have always known, which is that this endless war breeds the necessity for even more of it. Like you were saying, a bigger bomb. And somehow the promised paradise of only the good existing, it never comes. And also the external killing, the simplification of ecosystems, the conversion of soil from a living being into a mirror medium for plant growth, all of that killing corresponds to an inner killing. Every time the land around you is simplified, every time a bird species disappears, something inside of you dies as well. I was feeling this just the other day when I was out cutting my grass, and there was all this clover, like just this rich, rich carpet of clover all over my lawn. And I noticed that there were no honeybees and no other bees and no wasps. And like almost no insects. And I just felt. It just really hit me, you know, this feeling of being alone now, because I remember when I was a kid, like you couldn't even walk barefoot through, through the lawn, you know, because you'd get stung by bees. There were so many of them. And butterflies, those like little yellow ones, the little white ones, you know, the monarchs, nothing. And I think, you know, I'm sure that a lot of farmers, I know this is a fact, when they compare the land that they farm, you know, I'm speaking of conventional farmers to the land that they knew when they were kids, you know, that their grandfather farmed or their great grandfather, there's a sadness that maybe they hardly even allow themselves to feel because it's crushed under the daily pressures of, you know, making it economically. But this yearning to return to life is present not only in farmers, but in everybody. You know, all these kids growing up indoors on their electronics. Yeah. You know, maybe because farmers are still more in touch with the outdoors and more directly involved in the process of life. Maybe just as initially they led the way away from embedment in nature, maybe they also lead the way back, you know, because I don't think the leadership is going to come from kids growing up playing video games. They don't even know what they've lost. They have, you know, chronic disease rates now. Depression, anxiety, adhd, all these psychiatric conditions through the roof, you know, like, they're just miserable now. My wife just went to her college reunion and her 30th reunion, and the college president said that half the student body has clinical depression.

Wow.

So, like, why, you know, what's going on here? And I think a lot of it is disconnection if you're alone. I mean, that's like the UN defines that as torture, you know, to put somebody in solitary confinement to cut off all their relations. Well, we've been doing that. And that nourishment, like that little lilt of joy that you feel when you see a bluebird, you know, or a fox. I mean, imagine that's all gone and you don't even know what you've lost. That's the condition of our society. And yeah, so it's a thousands of years story.

When you relate the story of observing the loss of insects, butterflies and honeybees in your yard. One of the things that I.