This episode features a conversation between Phil Dillard, Founder of Thruline Networks, David Montgomery, a MacArthur Fellow, and Professor of Geomorphology at the University of Washington, and Anne Biklé, published science writer and public speaker. 

Together, they’ve recently published: What Your Food Ate: How to Heal Our Land and Reclaim Our Health, a book that builds on their trilogy of books about soil health, microbiomes, and farming.

David is an internationally recognized geologist who studies the effects of geological processes on ecological systems and human societies. He is the author of several textbooks in his field and his work has been featured in documentary films, network and cable news, television, and radio.

Anne draws on her background in biology and environmental planning to explore humanity’s tangled relationship with nature through the lens of agriculture, soil, and food. Her writing has appeared in digital and print magazines, newspapers, and her work has been featured in radio and independent documentary films.

In this episode, David and Anne talk about the power of regenerative gardening, the need for conventional agriculture to modernize rapidly, and address the primary issue with current agriculture: monocultures.

Key Quote

“Most of what feeds the world are not these big, mega farms. It's small farmers, most of whom are women. When you look at things on a global basis, it's not the North American grain farmer. I look at the incredible food waste, at least in North America, and it's like, do we really need to scale up if we're throwing 30 or 40 percent of our food away? And it's not just food we're throwing away, there was a lot of petrochemicals and a lot of agrochemicals and a lot of people's time that went into getting that kind of a yield, and we're throwing that away. That's just wasteful.” - Anne Biklé

“In terms of individual consumer action, you look for the regenerative label in stores. People are starting to label food as regenerative now. A way that consumers can support that movement is to actually start eating that food, see how you like it. If you can connect with regenerative farmers at farmers markets and find out what they're doing and support them, supporting farmers who are doing the right thing by their land is a really good thing to do as a consumer. But it's not always possible to tell that when you go into a grocery store with the signals that we get of exactly how your food was sourced. And so there's also the idea of trying to exert political pressure on elected representatives.” - David Montgomery

Episode Timestamps

(02:18) David and Anne’s current roles

(11:48) Getting involved in their work

(23:04) Collaborating with other scientists

(29:46) Conventional versus modern agriculture

(39:52) Addressing the problem of agriculture: monocultures

(47:53) How to contribute to reforming agriculture globally

Links

Dig2Grow.com

Phil’s LinkedIn

Thruline Networks