Conscious Consumption: The Physical and Spiritual Effects of Modern Farming with Alan Rosenberg Part 1

[00:00:00] Sadaf: Alan Rosenberg has spent 50 years studying agriculture and in this episode he uncovers the truth behind our food and its invisible impact on our health and even our connection to the world around us. Consequences of modern farming are so pervasive and how it's impacting everything.
[00:00:17] Alan: The biological side of the soil has been fundamentally compromised and therefore our food has been compromised.
[00:00:23] Alan: You beget life from life. Not from the mineral.
[00:00:26] Sadaf: With today's industrial agriculture, the landscape is far from ideal.
[00:00:30] Alan: Glyphosate emanates out of the Vietnam War, and the Vietnamese have a wonderful ability to hide in the forest. And the Americans are saying, we can't fight you if we can't see you. So they come up with an idea.
[00:00:43] Alan: If we kill the forest, then we've removed the hiding place. The more I can do for you.
[00:00:50] The Loss of Life in Soil and Food
[00:00:50] Sadaf: This is part one of a special two part series with Alan, where we explore the origins of industrial agriculture, the compromises made along the way, and [00:01:00] the foundational concepts of regenerative and biodynamic farming as a path to a more sustainable future.
[00:01:09] Sadaf: Welcome to Alt Life, where we break free from the chains of conventional thinking and explore the limitless possibilities of a redefined reality.
[00:01:24]
[00:01:24] Sadaf: You've written a book called Global Health in Crisis. The answer lies in the soil. What is this book about?
[00:01:32] Alan: So the book was motivated, it was the second book that I wrote. And a lot of people, the first book I wrote was on organic agriculture. A lot of people asked, what's organic? Why would I want to know anything about that?
[00:01:46] Alan: And that motivated me to, in a sense, recognize there is a critical need for people to become more aware that, uh, we're only as healthy as we are subject to [00:02:00] food grown on the soils that we, in a sense, ideally would nurture. So there's a lovely phrase that binds everybody directly into that. Given by Wendell Berry, an American poet, author, and farmer.
[00:02:16] Alan: And he wrote, Eating is an agricultural act. So, most of us do want to eat every day. So, we're fundamentally bought into Acknowledgement that there's a relationship between myself and the food that I eat. And then, uh, the, the real context is healthy soils, healthy plants, healthy animals, healthy people.
[00:02:43] Sadaf: So what's wrong with the soil?
[00:02:44] Sadaf: Like, why do you say that? Why do you say that our global health is in crisis because of the soil? What's wrong with the soil?
[00:02:49] Alan: So that's a big question. All my answer to it is a big answer. You know, we have to put it in the context of the evolution of agriculture. And we [00:03:00] went from that, what we called agriculture, we don't, we don't, we, we, we don't have a relationship anymore with agri culture.
[00:03:10] Alan: It got bastardized after the Second World War into agri business. So we lost our human interaction, our cultural orientation to the growing of food, and it became a business. So I don't mind, I don't mind compromising on my neighbor if I'm going to make more profit. And then it got bastardized even further in the, in the 90s, where we have now AgriPower.
[00:03:37] Alan: And there are five multinational companies who predominantly own the food sector. They own the seed, they own the pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, nematicides, and they own the fertilizer. So they pretty much captured globally, this, um, agricultural sector, [00:04:00] and it was through this evolution that our orientation to the soil changed.
[00:04:05] Alan: We also, as a species, went through a mindset shift, where we went from relating things, we, we went from relating to things, as an organism, We now relate to them as a machine, and the soil's function was minimal. It was there to hold the plant upright, and we gave all the fertilizer, or we give all the fertilizer, to the plant to enable it to grow.
[00:04:34] Alan: The biological side of the soil has been fundamentally compromised. The life aspect of the soil has been compromised. And therefore our food has been compromised because you, you beget life from life, not from the mineral.
[00:04:52] Sadaf: So, so what, so what do you mean when you say that the life aspect of the soil has been compromised?
[00:04:57] Sadaf: Can you explain that? What is, what happened? What happened to the [00:05:00] soil?
[00:05:01] Alan: It literally dies. Literally dies. And you know, we, we, again, part of the whole context is that we function within the four kingdoms of nature. And nature has a physical kingdom mineral. There's a shape, there's a form, there's a structure, but there's no life in it, that physical matter.
[00:05:23] Alan: And then the physical matter gets lifted into life, and it's represented by the plant kingdom. There's a shape, there's a form, there's a structure, and within that shape, form, structure, there's a knowledge element called life. Then it gets lifted even further, and it's, uh, shape, form, structure, life. But now this being has the capacity to be awake and asleep, and to dream.
[00:05:51] Alan: And that kingdom is called the animal kingdom. The plant, in a sense, doesn't dream like an animal can dream. And then the fourth [00:06:00] kingdom is the human kingdom. Shape, form, structure, life, awake, asleep, dreaming. But what sets us apart from the animal kingdom is that we're able to have a conversation. We are able through our I, and I mean a capital I, not your lower ego, your higher self, we can have meaningful conversations.
[00:06:23] Alan: And that's the kind of context in which we're working agriculturally. We need to be honoring and respecting. And developing all four of those kingdoms, and they all one, they don't live in isolation and modern man suffers from establishing the relationship with the other three kingdoms. You know, when you ask a soul, where's nature?
[00:06:49] Alan: Invariably, they point outside and say, it's over there. Instead of saying, it lives in me. I have a skeleton. I have nails. I have the eye. [00:07:00] These are very physical. Then we have our life body, so when we pass over to the other side, it's your life body that leaves your physical body, and then you're considered to be dead.
[00:07:13] Alan: And we have this awake asleep dream like quality, and we have our ego.
[00:07:19] The Role of Microorganisms
[00:07:19] Sadaf: So what you're saying is that because we are killing the soil, our global health is in crisis. Normally, so, so normally I would think that, um, or most people would think that, oh, you know, our global health is in crisis because of processed foods.
[00:07:35] Sadaf: But you were saying, no, no, it's not just the processing of the food. It's the processing of the soil and the processing of the plant. That's
[00:07:43] Alan: absolutely the foundation is the soil. We make it worse by growing compromised food in compromised soils. And then we take it a step further and do all the processing.
[00:07:56] Alan: The value adding and the, those, yeah, [00:08:00] those additives that we add to the food. Those are, you know, we've become again another, it's another expression of our materialistic viewpoint. We don't want to stand in the kitchen and peel vegetables. Old world stuff. Let me just go to the supermarket, buy a ready made meal, put it in the microwave, kill it even more dead, and eat it.
[00:08:24] Alan: That's the way that we've been currently brought up to.
[00:08:26] Sadaf: Why is the soil compromised and why is the food compromised?
[00:08:30] Alan: So again, I'm going to lean towards acknowledging the biological side of the soil. All soils have a, have a, have a trilogy in terms of their components. They have a mineral component, they have a, uh, chemical component, and they have a biological component.
[00:08:49] Alan: And it's the biological component, in a sense, is the gel between the chemical and the mineral. So if you're taking out that biological [00:09:00] side, You're landing up with minerals and chemicals, no life. So from a, from a biodynamic point of view, from an anthroposophical point of view, when we talk about nutrition, yes, of course, we have to honor and respect and recognize there's minerals, multivitamins, essential elements, you know, the, the trace elements, there's all this terminology.
[00:09:24] Alan: But essentially what we're doing when we eat is we're eating the forces That were emanated out of the cosmos into the manifestation of what we're eating. A carrot, a beetroot, a lettuce, whatever it might be. Those What we call vegetables or fruits, they have the capacity to capture those living forces that emanated out of the cosmos.
[00:09:50] Alan: They do that to their best ability when they're in a living environment. They're very compromised when they're [00:10:00] growing in a soilless situation.
[00:10:03] Sadaf: And the mechanism through which that happens, the way I understand it, is through microorganisms. Is that correct? That's
[00:10:10] Alan: the key. That's the one thing that very few of us are even aware of.
[00:10:18] Alan: This absolute, uh, dependence on processes, um, that are, that are realized, manifest and attributed to, uh, micro, microorganisms, microbiology. They're the real players in the world.
[00:10:36] Sadaf: So can you give us like, some examples of what, what the role of what some of, well I, I know that there's possibly trillions, but what is, give us examples of the role that microorganisms play in, in our food, um, in the context of soil in food.
[00:10:55] Alan: So you, you, you, you, you were mentioning trillions, [00:11:00] you know, when we passed through our education system, invariably we were all told about cells. And how many cells there are. There's like Google amounts of cells. But we're 10 times more microbial than cellular. The average adult holds about a kilo and a half of microbes in their gut.
[00:11:24] Alan: Those are little creatures that you can't even see. They're too small to You know, in a teaspoon, there are 10 billion of them. In a teaspoon of healthy soil. So we're going beyond numbers here, we're leaning towards acknowledging the world of the super sensible, it's outside of our physical senses, that's what's happening with the microbes.
[00:11:48] Alan: So my professor, back in 82, when I was doing the biodynamic agriculture, he said we've got two teachers, one is the forest, and one is your body. [00:12:00] So if you've got a question, ask the forest, or ask your body. So I'm going to utilize your question and say, what happens in the forest from a microbial point of view?
[00:12:11] Alan: How do they influence that activity? So typically, spring comes along, there's new buds, there's new leaf, the leaves mature, photosynthesis, those life processes happen. Comes autumn, comes winter, those leaves fall to the floor of the forest. Then they subject to the influence of microbes. And those microbes decompose, uh, humify, and mineralize to enable those leaves to feed the next generation of leaves.
[00:12:43] Alan: And so the, those pro, life processes are a continuum, uh, ex, uh, and their expression is shrouded in the world of microbiology. If you ask yourself, how in my own [00:13:00] body are those microbes active? Case in point, I had an apple for breakfast. So my digestion started visually, it then gets first steps when I'm investigating in my mouth where the saliva goes to the stomach, goes through towards my gut, and in my gut are these microbes, and they then assimilate that apple into my body.
[00:13:30] Alan: That's a huge influence. I don't have apples running around here. I have those life forces that work in that apple. Plus all those vitamins, essential elements. So that's the influence the microbes play in our life.
[00:13:46] Sadaf: So, so what you're saying is that the microbes, uh, convert the food into a form that our body can use.
[00:13:53] Alan: Yeah.
[00:13:54] Sadaf: That's one of their functions. Because the way that I understand it is that there's a lot of other [00:14:00]
[00:14:00] Alan: functions
[00:14:00] Sadaf: as well. I want to ask you about something. While I was doing my research for this, um, for this, for our conversation, I I, I was actually learning about how that microbes play a very similar role in the soil.
[00:14:15] Sadaf: So they convert minerals from the soil into a form that the plants can take up. So isn't that, and what I understand now from modern agriculture is that, uh, with the use of genetically modified, uh, plants. Uh, seed and, uh, the pesticides and the herbicides, it's actually killing off these microbes in the soil.
[00:14:41] Sadaf: That's why we
[00:14:41] Alan: wait. Sorry, that video. Yeah.
[00:14:43] The Origins of Fertilizer
[00:14:43] Sadaf: So, so I have a question there. But then when you look at food that is grown, uh, with conventionally, it often look brighter, bigger. Like you see strawberries, they're massive. Why is that happening? If the food is able to [00:15:00] take up less from the soil, so why are they growing like that?
[00:15:05] Alan: So they're, in a sense, pumping nutrients into the plant. So there was a famous man who kind of was at the absolute forefront of the shift that happened in our consciousness. He was a German, Baron Justice von Leibeck. And in about 1850, he did two tests in his laboratory. One is that he ashed plants, so subject the plants to fire.
[00:15:33] Alan: And in the ash he determined that there's nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, N, P, and K. And out of that he deduced that actually for every plant then to manifest itself, it needs access to N, P, and K. The other test that he did, uh, is, uh, in the context of humus. And he found humus is not soluble in water, so he [00:16:00] deduced from that, if it's not soluble in water, it can't be feeding the plant.
[00:16:05] Alan: And that was the fundamental shift from our acknowledgement linked to the Industrial Revolution, where we viewed things as organisms, we now started to say, hey, wow, no, this is a very materialistic, scientific, measurable, determinable approach. And, uh, yeah, it's through the context of the evolution that we've been through since 1850 where we get to where we are now.
[00:16:34] Alan: So, predominantly to try directly to answer your question, if we're adding in the NPs and Ks to the chemical and mineral component of the, of the soil through a water medium, the plant has no choice. It's going to assimilate those NPs and Ks. And it blows them up like this. Look what's happening to modern man.
[00:16:59] Alan: [00:17:00] How subject we are to obesity. We're being blown up by those, in a sense, by the lack of nutrients. But it's the detail in modern food that's doing it to us.
[00:17:13] Sadaf: So, so on the one hand, you're saying the plant has this easy access to nutrients. through the NPK fertilizer additives and then
[00:17:24] Alan: in
[00:17:26] Sadaf: conventional agriculture.
[00:17:28] Sadaf: Yet, you're saying it's nutrient deficient. What's happening there? How is it nutrient deficient if you're putting in all these nutrients?
[00:17:36] Alan: Yeah, so it's the quality of the life force. That's what we would appeal to the listener to momentarily still themselves. Try to hold the concept that it's not those things that we typically have analyzed, but it's a predominantly a life force.
[00:17:56] Alan: And we each and all know that. When we look [00:18:00] to, into Mother Nature, we see, wow, that plant really looks healthy. What makes it look healthy? It's those life forces that it's enshrouded into its material form. Sometimes you go into a room or you're in a crowd in a room and somebody walks in and everybody looks or is drawn to that soul because there's something emanating from him or her.
[00:18:27] Alan: Something that has an energy. that we fundamentally recognize. That's a life force.
[00:18:35] Sadaf: In terms of like nutrient value, like would this, can this life force be seen in terms of the food's effect on a person's body? Do you have any?
[00:18:47] Alan: Absolutely. Yeah.
[00:18:49] Sadaf: Okay. So
[00:18:49] Alan: there have been studies where they've exposed even several thousand people to a change in their diet from a so called conventional [00:19:00] average ordinary to an organic diet.
[00:19:02] Alan: It becomes, uh, determinable from a scientific point of view that it evokes a change. You know, even your immune system is fundamentally housed in your gut and it's dependent, dependent on the health, the biodiversity of your microbial content in your gut. The healthier you are, the stronger your immune system.
[00:19:28] Alan: That's why most of us, or a lot of us, actually need a probiotic. Because we're not getting those probiotics from the food that we eat.
[00:19:37] Sadaf: And normally, like if, uh, in non chemical agriculture, or through non chemical means of growing food, we would normally get those microorganisms through the food that we eat.
[00:19:48] The Dangers of Herbicides and Pesticides
[00:19:48] Sadaf: But now because of this, you know, the herbicides, pesticides, glyphosate, I think is, is one that's been talked about quite a lot. We're not, we're not getting that anymore. On, on that topic, can you [00:20:00] tell us a bit about glyphosate? Like what is it, what is it, and what does it do to the soil and what does it do to a person?
[00:20:07] Alan: So, I need to be, I need to make your audience aware. I'm not a microbiologist and I'm not a scientist. So the information that they get from me is based on my, um, experience, Glyphosate emanates out of the Vietnam War. So there's a picture that the Americans are attacking the Vietnamese and the Vietnamese have a Wonderful ability to hide in the forest and the Americans are saying we can't fight you if we can't see you So they come up with an idea if we kill the forest then we've removed their hiding place And they came up with what's called Glyphosate, and they sprayed it, Agent Orange it was called.
[00:20:56] Alan: And they sprayed it onto the forests, found all these [00:21:00] Vietnamese and did what they did. And then of course, you see, we have to remind ourselves that we're in the hands of those multinationals who own the food sector. They then said, what can we do with this Glyphosate, this Agent Orange? Let's sell it to the farmer and he can spray it onto his weeds.
[00:21:26] Alan: The problem is that it kills everything. So they said, nah, that's fine, we'll ask our scientists and we'll come up with a genetically modified organism that has a resistance to the glyphosate. So I grow my field of corn, I then, of course, the weeds now start to become manifest. I spray with my glyphosate.
[00:21:50] Alan: It kills every weed, every plant. But it leaves my corn. You don't have to be, uh, even too bright to acknowledge there's [00:22:00] something iffy about this. I'm now eating, if I'm eating corn, a plant that's been genetically modified to withhold the impact of something as a, as a, as a herbicide, and I'm gonna be nourished by it.
[00:22:19] Alan: Doesn't happen like that.
[00:22:20] Sadaf: And then on top of that, we're eating the plant that's been sprayed by this herbicide that kills everything. And, and it definitely, it's definitely having some effect on our gut. I've read a lot of accounts of glyphosate being linked to leaky gut. And, and that's actually what's contributing to gluten intolerance.
[00:22:43] Sadaf: Like there's a lot of people that are becoming more and more gluten intolerant.
[00:22:47] Beyond Organic: A Higher Philosophy of Food
[00:22:47] Sadaf: And there's, it's been linked to this use of glyphosate Before we go into, you know, I, I, when I contacted you, I actually was very fascinated by biodynamic agriculture, and [00:23:00] I'll tell you like a little story about how I came across it.
[00:23:03] Sadaf: So I went to the Oranjezak market and I met Wendy there and Wendy was, Wendy is from the biodynamic association in South Africa. And Wendy was doing like a little taste test between biodynamic produce, conventionally grown and organic produce. So I, I actually passed the taste test on all because I could tell the difference between conventionally grown, um, biodynamic and organic.
[00:23:33] Sadaf: But what really stood out to me was that the biodynamic, uh, produce, like the lettuce and even the milk, actually, she made me try milk as well. It didn't look as perfect, but it tasted, it tasted the best, actually, it tasted the best. And then I started ordering from, you know, and then I, and then I was like, what is this biodynamic?
[00:23:54] Sadaf: I'd like heard Cheryl from the market once say, Oh, you know, it's actually, they, they, [00:24:00] like, it's not just organic. It's better than organic because they also interact with the cosmos and they plant according to lunar cycles. And this like really piqued my interest. I was like, Oh, this is so interesting. And that's how I started.
[00:24:12] Sadaf: And then I started ordering from Wendy, you know, so I eat a lot of biodynamic produce, um, and I started like studying it and I was like, wow, this is actually really cool the way it respects, well, when I say studying it, I just looked into it, you know, like looked into what it's about. But what was really cool about it is I read that, uh, in biodynamic agriculture, uh, the farmers grind up some rock, like some crystals, mix it up in water, spray it in the air.
[00:24:40] Sadaf: And then I was like reading separately about effective microorganism, you know, the, the probiotic that you sent me. And then I was, I was liking reading about this photosynthetic bacteria. And I was like, Oh my God, that makes so much sense. So when you're like using the crystals to spray it in the air, the sunlight passes through it.
[00:24:58] Sadaf: Through these little [00:25:00] micro crystals or nano crystals that you've ground up into a powder. And that's possibly one of the mechanisms could be that it's possibly activating photosynthetic bacteria in the soil. So this was, this was like, of course, quite interesting to me. And then as I started looking more into agriculture, I realized that actually there's a lot of different philosophies and you seem to have studied a lot of, well, at least the major ones.
[00:25:26] Sadaf: I'm sure there's many other. Yeah. Um, but before we get into that agriculture, can you just tell us what is, like, people are talking about regenerative farming, regenerative agriculture, what is it like, and, and why is it important, not just for farmers, but for everyone, like for the average person that's eating and living?
[00:25:46] Alan: So the regenerative is, uh, is a, is a, almost a bolt on and add, uh, uh, an addition to conventional organic, where they realized, uh, the [00:26:00] organic, uh, aspects could be developed further into a regenerative form or expression. And it would open the door for more people, uh, to buy into, uh, the conversion towards a regenerative approach to, to the agriculture.
[00:26:22] Alan: I'm going to start off with the origin of the biodynamic agriculture, because It, it started at a point where we once again found ourselves, a whole bunch of farmers are appealing for an understanding of why are their farms not as fertile as they used to be. That's what happened to the 22 farmers who approached Dr.
[00:26:47] Alan: Rudolf Steiner. They posed the question, why are our animals not so fertile anymore? Why are our fields not so fertile anymore? Why are our seeds not so [00:27:00] viable anymore? And Dr. Steiner gave his series of lectures from a, from an anthroposophical side as an interpretation um, as to why and how these conditions would arise.
[00:27:15] Alan: And then he said to the farmers, go out and form an exper, an experimental circle and put into practice that information that I'm giving you. And it's on the basis of that That you will determine whether or not there's any reality in what I'm saying. He was saying don't just use the quote Herodotus has spoken.
[00:27:37] Alan: You know, the doctor has spoken. Go and prove these things for yourself. And we are celebrating now a hundred, a hundred years of biodynamic agriculture. It was the first scientific approach to an organic form. As we've evolved over these hundred years, there's men and women, [00:28:00] And organizations who are saying, Hey, we're missing out here.
[00:28:04] Alan: We've got a chance to capture the market if we brand ourselves differently. And so there are a number of different approaches to what's called agriculture. Predominantly, they're all similar. There's an agronomic aspect to it. The plowing and the planting. And even through that, we've evolved out of that from a regen side, we're saying even the plowing is not a good idea.
[00:28:34] Are We Feeding Our Souls or Just Our Stomachs?
[00:28:34] Alan: Uh, we, we could frame it under the banner, no till. Essentially, all these different brands are expressing something that I like to shroud in what's known as an indigenous knowledge concept. It's called the seventh generation principle. In other words, if I do something as an intervention into Mother Nature, will this not only benefit me, But will it benefit [00:29:00] up to 7th generations downstream?
[00:29:03] Alan: If yes, go ahead and do it. If no, then don't do it, even for yourself. So, you know, in the context of an agriculturalist or an, even an urban person living who's got a small little garden outside, if you want to cut down a tree, ask your question, are you doing that selfishly? Or is that going to suit the 7th generation?
[00:29:25] Alan: If yes, it suits them, cut it down. We might plant another one or another two, but it's the fundamental need of having this consciousness that we are all in a collective evolution, and this generational consequence is critical to what we do. Modern man is not so comfortable there, me, me, me, I, I, I, we've got to go from the I to the we.
[00:29:56] Alan: We're in this. This is what this time is doing to us. This is what [00:30:00] COVID did to us. It's making us aware that we, we, Mother Nature, all four kingdoms, are in this as a collective. The more I can do for you, the better it's actually gonna suit me. Because hopefully that framework becomes your framework. And when we as a collective, as a species, are all trying to serve each other, different game, completely different world, different outcome.
[00:30:29] The Spiritual Aspects of Farming
[00:30:29] Sadaf: So there's a lot of different like approaches to this and like I know you recently wrote a book about agroecology. Can you like give us just like a highlight of the different types, uh, because you seem to have studied almost all like organic, biodynamic, permaculture. And uh, agroecology.
[00:30:47] Alan: Holistic resource management.
[00:30:48] Alan: Yeah. The agroecology.
[00:30:51] Sadaf: So what is agroecology?
[00:30:54] Alan: So if we look at the evolution of the agriculture, it went from agriculture, agri business, [00:31:00] agri power. The way forward out of it is through agroecology. So we'll hear in all four of those, uh, steps, the agronomy remains consistent. And we change culture to business, to power.
[00:31:15] Alan: But now we're at that point where we are acknowledging we cannot compromise the environment. So it's agro ecology. Our agri, the agronomy, has to be mindful of the, of the environment. It's an exciting time. It's abundantly clear that farmers are saying my, uh, my farm is suffering. There's very little biodiversity.
[00:31:45] Alan: You know, they grow, they mow their croppers, modern farmers. So I'm a carrot farmer, or I'm a beetroot farmer, or I'm a dairy farmer, or I grow peaches. There's four domains in agriculture. [00:32:00] Grasses and grains, livestock, the tree and the vine, and the annuals, our vegetables. And ideally, all farms, particularly the biodynamic farms strive for this, is combining those four domains into a living organism.
[00:32:20] Alan: where each of those domains functions as an organ. So if, for example, the trees that I've grown, some, for some reason, suffered, maybe there was hail. I'm also growing my vegetables, and my beetroots will, will, and carrots will not be subject to the influence of the hail. Therefore, I can still eat, I can still market, I can still generate an income.
[00:32:44] Sadaf: So you're saying that all the different types of organic and regenerative agriculture methods, they employ this where they want to have like mixed farms that, that grow, that have animals and that also grow different types of [00:33:00] crops and plants. But in, in modern farming, of course, we know that's not the case.
[00:33:05] Sadaf: Like you've seen like fields of corn and fields of wheat. And so you're saying that, that this is what they share in common, but how is it different? So like, if you were to tell me, what's the difference between like the way the agroecologists farm versus the way the biodynamic guys farm? I guess I'm just thinking from a consumer perspective, like there's all this stuff out there.
[00:33:24] Sadaf: Like, just like to give us an idea, like what, what's the difference?
[00:33:29] Alan: So, so, so, so. There are these different approaches, and I like to call them brands. You never know why does somebody align with a particular brand. Why did I choose Ray Ban and you chose, I don't know, is it Prada? Because somehow that brand speaks to you.
[00:33:49] Alan: So every soul is at a specific point in time with his or her consciousness, and they then align with a particular [00:34:00] brand that allows that expression of consciousness. To be realized into matter. We're all evolving out of whatever bread that is. Into a common seventh generation principle approach. The royals voice of agriculture is biodynamic I think there's very little doubt You can't in a sense.
[00:34:24] Alan: I as yet have never found something that Has said, you know, the biodynamics is a bit iffy. I'm going to follow that brand because biodynamics was never a brand It was a mode of approach And biodynamic is put in the context of bio for life, and dynamic is consistent change. So the biodynamic of that hundred year ago period is relatively similar, but it's manifest in a changing time.
[00:34:58] Breaking Free From Empty Nutrition
[00:34:58] Sadaf: How did we come to this? [00:35:00] Because clearly somebody thought that this is a better way of doing it. This is a more efficient way of farming. And, and given that you studied agriculture so deeply and have so much experience there, just tell us, like, how did we get to that?
[00:35:14] Alan: We got there through what we described in the evolution of agriculture.
[00:35:20] Alan: We went from agriculture to agribusiness. And it's way easier to just go grow carrots. Then it is to have carrots, and beetroots, and spinach and onions, and then the animals, and then the trees, and then the vines, and then the grains, and the grasses. Complex. So, yeah, if I can manage to get a skill in a particular one of those, then, uh, yeah, my chances of financial success.
[00:35:52] Alan: I compromise on my environmental success, and invariably I don't have much social, uh, success. Complex. [00:36:00] So, yeah, it might be prudent to put it in the context of the threefold social order, where we've got a threefoldness that, in a sense, is separated into the following three entities. The first one is the free spiritual life.
[00:36:19] Alan: No one really has a right to tell me what to believe and how to believe in terms of My origin and my relationship with those principal forces that emanate out of the cosmos. The second one is in the, in the social sphere, under the banner of what's called the sphere of rights, often determined under the term, uh, our political right.
[00:36:49] Alan: Because politics essentially is saying to us, we have the right to choose. So I, I want to take the, the concept of political out of. [00:37:00] or party out of the political domain. Not about the party, it's about the having the choice to afford a particular lifestyle. And the last one is the economic realm, and that's where the brotherhood of man is expressed.
[00:37:15] Alan: Ideally, Like I was saying earlier, the more I can do for you, the more you could do for me, the more we could do for our neighbor, the more as a collective we can do for the village, the more we could do for our locality, for our province, for our country, for the planet. So it's all a bit of a mindset shift that fundamentally we all need to take.
[00:37:41] Alan: I was exposed, if I can, to share the story of the allegory of Plato's cave. Allegory, uh, is another way of saying a story. So Plato, over 2, 000 years ago, looked, he's a philosopher, [00:38:00] a scientist, he looks into the world and he kind of has a question, why do we behave like we do? And he gave us a seven page little story.
[00:38:12] Alan: And he expresses the story where we're all living in a cave, bound to a wall and looking at the cave wall. Behind us is a fire, and on that wall there are entities which are showing us what they want us to see as the world. So there's a picture of a, of a tree. The light of the fire shines onto the tree, and it's manifest as a shadow on the wall.
[00:38:49] Alan: We look at the shadow and we say, Let's name all these things in the world. That's a tree. That's an insect. That's a car. That's a everything that we try to name.[00:39:00]
[00:39:02] Alan: Who are these chaps who are behind us? Showing us all these things. It's the system. It's your schooling as system, your education, your universities, your media, your ministries from churches. It's those corporations in this day and age. Radio. Show. all of these manipulators of what they want us to perceive as reality.
[00:39:32] Alan: One guy breaks out of the cave, goes past the fire, goes out into the light, and the light is represented of the realm of pure idea, the shift in consciousness. And the guy there, by the time he's adjusted his eyes, he's, wow, this is the real world. And he goes back down to his partners, colleagues, species in the cave and says, wow, I've been out [00:40:00] there, I've seen what there is, this is, these guys are manipulating us.
[00:40:05] Alan: And they all say, forget it China, not like that. Why would they want to do that to us? They're only here serving our best interest, and they then want to attack that guy who's trying to enable the shift in consciousness. That's where we are today. We're sitting in Plato's cave stalk. And we've got the media, we've got the governments, we've got the corporations, we've got all these entities, our schooling system.
[00:40:32] Alan: When I was studying with my professor, we were talking about N, P, and K with fertility. I wanted to put my hand up to say, wow, look how bright I am. I've been trained before. I understand N, P, and K. They're minerals that feed plants. And my professor said to me, Alan, I think you've been educated to be stupid, which is a symptom of the allegory of the cave.
[00:40:57] Alan: So, of course, my ego, my lower self, eh, now I'm [00:41:00] bruised, why would you say such a thing? And when I was then able to sit back in my higher self, he said, we are asking for the expression of N, P, and K as minerals, but how did, how do we achieve those is through living processes. So there's a living nitrogen process that happens in the soil.
[00:41:23] Alan: There's a, a living, a potassium process, and when those processes are manifest by microorganisms, they liberate the mineral. It's a completely different outlook.
[00:41:36] Sadaf: Yeah, that's so fascinating. You know, um, Alan, I actually looked into this and I was listening to this lady talk about the role of microorganisms in, in minerals.
[00:41:46] Sadaf: And she was saying that when you add NPK fertilizer to the plants, the plants become lazy because they have, it's kind of similar to us, right? Like we have this processed food, we become lazy and then we grow and we become bigger. Actually that we, [00:42:00] we see that, uh, you know, we see that around us like a rise of obesity, diabetes, like all those.
[00:42:05] Sadaf: health conditions, but it's similar in the plant where they're growing bigger and they might be looking, uh, you know, like just on the outside, they look bigger. And so we assume healthier, but actually what it's doing is that it's making the plant lazy. So they're not now working for their food through the microorganisms because they're getting it like, and because they're getting it so easily through the NPK fertilizer.
[00:42:31] Sadaf: And then when that does in turn is it kind of lowers their immunity, similar to us. We're not exercising. We're eating processed food. We're getting this nutrition very easily. We're growing bigger, but we also have like, uh, low resilience and resistance and it's not just, I guess it's not just physical resilience and resistance.
[00:42:49] Sadaf: It's also mental, right? Like we see it in the rise of emotional, uh, challenges, mental health issues.
[00:42:56] Alan: So you remind me of the story when, uh, Dr. Steiner. I [00:43:00] had gone to the coast in Europe with Dr. Pfeiffer, because Dr. Pfeiffer was entrusted to take biodynamic agriculture to America. And Dr. Pfeiffer asked Steiner, why is it that modern man, and we now have to go back a hundred years, why is it that modern man suffers the inability for the following three, your imagination, your inspiration, and your intuition?
[00:43:29] Alan: Steiner answered him. It's a question of nutrition. So have a look where we are as a species today. Why are we not inspired? Why we don't have an imagination? Where is our intuition? It's being compromised by our nourishment, and that's what the system is doing in the cave to us. Never about that. We are feeding you all these prefabricated foods.
[00:43:55] Alan: We are making, like you said, life much more easy. So, another [00:44:00] thing that arose for me when you alluded to what you did in, in the context of making plants lazy. So when we're pouring, for example, the N, P, and K into a, a, a water medium that would then nourish the plant, the plant doesn't out of its own necessity determine, actually I've got enough nitrogen, I don't need any more.
[00:44:24] Alan: It assimilates that because it's in the water medium, and those NPs and Ks in plant foods that it's assimilating, create an imbalance in the amino acids within the plant. And when an insect comes to that plant, there's this absolute abundance of food for it, in the form of an amino acid. And so they attack the plant.
[00:44:49] Alan: And then the farmer says, wow, I've got insects attacking my plant. I need more chemicals, more herbicides, not herbicides, more pesticides, insecticides, fungicides. And it's like a [00:45:00] vicious circle. So there's a famous, uh, French, uh, scientist, um, Chavoussou, who came up with a concept of trophibiosis, that a plant is only as healthy as the biology in which it grows.
[00:45:16] Alan: And a healthy, on a healthy plant, a pest will starve, because there's nothing for it to eat.
[00:45:22] Sadaf: Sorry, can you repeat that again? What is that called? Troph
[00:45:25] Alan: Trophibiosis.
[00:45:27] Sadaf: Okay, what does that mean?
[00:45:30] Alan: It's this, uh, relationship between nutrition Biology and health. He captured it and he framed the term trophobiosis.
[00:45:39] Alan: But the concept he was working with was the biology of the soil and the plant of course. And the link then, you see, again, healthy soil, healthy plant.
[00:45:55] Sadaf: And then there's also like fewer pests, is that what you say?
[00:45:58] Alan: There are no pests. [00:46:00] There's very, or let me be a little bit more clear. There are very few pests.
[00:46:05] Alan: And that's an absolute reality. I've proven that for myself time and time again. As my soil is developing, uh, into a healthier state. The incidence of insect pest and disease is minimized.
[00:46:19] Sadaf: Thanks for listening today. I hope you found today's episode insightful and inspiring. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a friend.
[00:46:29] Sadaf: Subscribing helps a new podcast like ours immensely. And until next time, don't be a sheep, keep questioning, stay curious, and never stop exploring the extraordinary. Stay tuned for part two. Where we delve deeper into this topic.