Soil and Human Health
by Amanda Rowland
If we all ate food grown in biologically rich soil, how would this affect our lives, our communities and the natural systems that sustain us? As Amanda discovered, to approach this question a whole-of-landscape and a whole bodymind approach is required. The human heart nestles within the economic and environmental incentives driving an emerging carbon economy. We humans are being dragged kicking and screaming into a quantum world to grapple with the complexity we must embrace, in order to survive. Amanda creates a rich, organic brew that is biodiverse, funny and full of unexpected synergies, to create her own vision of earthly wellness. Tune in and listen on….
Episodes
-
Before and After
Once there was a beautiful bit of land called Yanget east of Geraldton, named for the local, water-loving bulrushes. Rod O'Bree and his family have spent the last 15 years learning how to rehydrate and restore fertility and abundance to this land and that of the Chapman River Catchment. At the...
-
System A and System B go to a Farming Workshop
Have you ever been to a sporting event when the teams have run onto the ground, but the game isn’t on? Amanda took herself off to various Agricultural workshops and field days in country WA in February and March. She mills around the packs, does a bit of crumbing work, and wonders where the ball…
more -
Dandaragan Moments
In the middle of February, I had two wonderful days in Dandaragan, Western Australia, talking about Regenerative Agriculture with the Soil Farming Restoration crew and attendant farmers and agricultural workers. Dr Christine Jones worked her magic on Day 1 with an in-depth look at the microbiome…
more -
The Mysterious Death of the Spanish Dancers
A new consciousness of the world we (Western) humans live in is emerging - and I am determined that nudibranchs will be front and centre of my attention. By showing interspecies sensitivity in my efforts to engage with these creatures I am atoning for past insensitivity and exhibiting what Merlin...
-
The Regenerative Garden - Episode 1 The Regenerative Gardener
On May 11, 2022, the Museum of WA, Geraldton hosted an evening on Climate Resilience. The event was sponsored by the local DPIRD (Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development) and organised by Sara Walker and the museum team. Amanda Rowland, local writer and podcaster...
-
What Happened After the Dance
Amanda goes to a Conscious Movement workshop and uncovers another pathway to expanding consciousness. As her bodymind experiences shift, she ponders the inadequacy of words to express wordless knowledge. Along the way she enlists Nora Bateson, Moshe Feldenkrais and Bill Callahan's help.
-
The Elder and the Shadow
What does it mean to live life seriously? Amanda listens to Tyson Yunkaporta and Jordan Hall talk, giving her a startling insight into Indigenous traditional lives. Do some of us have to wait until the end of life to find out what living life seriously means?
-
The Wolf
Amanda continues her exploration of Stephen Jenkinson’s sublime ‘wonderings’ while experiencing life in WA’s ‘best’ rehab public hospital. She worries about the quality and relevance of the physiotherapy and Occupational Therapy on offer and tussles with her own tendency towards being...
-
Plants and Patterns
Amanda asks: what does LESS look like? And decides the only thing she can do to deal with what is happening in the world is to pay more attention to what her local plant life is telling her. She zones in on these plants and tries to discern deeper patterns that lie beyond the scope of her...
-
Many Seeds Make Light Work
Amanda muses about a workshop she is developing (and has just delivered in Geraldton) covering ideas to do with helping non-indigenous folk connect to land, using the garden as the starting point. She uses tools gleaned from a recently completed Holistic Management course, Regenerative…
more -
Assume You're Wrong
When working with nature we need a plan a, b and c - and beyond. In other words, assume your initial action is wrong and monitor the situation with a mind to re-adjusting your actions as stuff you cannot possibly predict unfolds.
-
Many Tribes One Resource
In which Amanda struggles to make sense of her experiences on a patch of land in her home state of WA - and concludes that the environmental aspects of regenerative/holistic agriculture cannot be decoupled from its social and political context: they are the same conversation. She pays attention…
more -
The Potentiality Industry
When ancient wisdom and new knowledge is packaged for the 'you-can-change-your-life' industry change happens - but not like it says it will in the marketing blurb! Amanda exposes herself to more paradigm-busting thinking and allows big wisdom beamed in via Stephen Jenkinson, Tyson Yunkaporta and...
-
Wilding
Tyson Yunkaporta just keeps on giving, and my garden teaches me something about the wider world of broadacre agriculture.
-
The Cultural Interface
Where two cultures meet and decide to join forces for the enrichment of the land they share
-
Under New Land Management
Th new normal is with us. Are you in alignment with 20th or 21st century thinking? Are you still tinkering around the edges of the old systems or taking the leap into the world of the Circular Economy? Soil and Human Health draws a line under the old and finds new beginnings.
-
Once Upon A Time Part 2
Amanda ventures further into once-upon-a-time land, inspired by a long dead relative she encounters near Greenough, WA, and a friend's approach to history that insists on bringing the stories of the colonial past into present day consciousness.
-
Once Upon A Time Part 1
Amanda ventures into the long-ago, inspired by a friend's approach to history that insists on bringing the stories of the colonial past into present day consciousness.
-
The Inland Starts Here Part 2
The Jones brothers, inspired by Col Stanton, are introducing erosion control, land interventions at Boogardie Station, out of Mt Magnet, WA. As Henry gets serious about documenting their work, Amanda finds synergies between the Jones' and the Pollocks' efforts on Wooleen Station. She voices the...
-
The Inland Starts Here Part 1
Amanda spends a few days hanging out in station country with the Jones. The land at Boogardie Station, out of Mt Magnet, is getting a restorative and rehydrating make-over. At the same time as a wild dog and grazing-animal proof hub is being constructed with neighbouring stations, the brothers…
more -
What is the Noongar word for sheep?
Amanda and Ersilia leave Geraldton for Morawa, get lost on the dirt roads somewhere northwest of Perenjori and eventually find themselves at a shearing shed in Bowgada. Over the course of a few days she learns again how good it is to be welcomed into a developmental process that has a big vision,...
-
Carapace
Amanda looks back to the early 80's and an experiment in self-development that almost kills her. Clearly she lived to fight another day and a years sojourn in country Victoria gives her a first taste of rural living that she is still drawing on for inspiration today.
-
The News From Dandaragan
We visit 'The Mount' in Dandaragan, a farm that is trialling regenerative farming practises and see what some applied earthworks following Peter Andrews' brilliant hydro-logical thinking can do to sort out a long-running erosion problem. While there, we investigate the Smith family's strategies…
more -
Relaxing with Sheep
Ancient Chinese saying: Relaxation is who you are. Tension is who you want to be. In which Amanda gets to see a de-stressed mob of sheep really enjoying life in the wheatbelt near Perenjori, and a working example of a tool of Holistic Management in the form of a grazing plan. Along the way I come...
-
From Consumer to Citizen
Is the human species being given a bit of a hint about something at this point? Amanda draws a long bow between viral pandemics, dust storms and fake food and decides that the consumer needs to get a grip. She has a few suggestions involving a Refractometer and a Brix reading that could give…
more -
The Reset The Answer is Carbon
Welcome to The Reset: words to help us restructure our world from the inside out. This episode is called The Answer is Carbon. It was kick-started by a conversation with a very knowledgeable agronomist, then de-railed by a free-thinking, carbon market philosopher and finally pulls itself together...
-
The Reset Transition Part 2
In Part 2 we follow Phil the farmers journey as he finds his horizons expanding in unexpected ways working with holistic agricultural processes.
-
The Reset Transition Part 1
Transition Part 1 talks about one couple's transition from conventional to biological farming practices and a bold new regenerative venture brewing on a farm out of Perenjori.
-
Subtle Energies
In which Amanda learns about love from a pot plant and discovers that Subtle Energies are being used to increase productivity on farms and stations across Australia. All because Queensland based Terry McCosker and his future thinking business, Resource Consultancy Services, have joined forces…
more -
The Reset I Dream of Snake
In this episode Amanda responds to the viral pandemic through the medium of a night of vivid dreams and then shares with you some more from the thoughts of Zach Bush MD, an inspirational champion of microbial activity as a template for human existence.
-
Pre-Season
The supply chains are broken, the farmers can't get their glyphosate or pre-emergent herbicides. Will this be the season where biological farming takes a giant step forward? Amanda explores the interesting space that lies between conventional and Regenerative approaches to broadacre farming and...
-
23 The Big Regen Part 1
What happens when a group of Regenerative farmers and thinkers get together in a larger group, and put all their projects on the table, using their talents, connections and expertise to help each other out? The pace of change is already pretty breath-taking - will this small band of…
more -
22 So It Begins
The Fall of the Berlin Wall becomes today's metaphor for unexpected and wide-ranging change coming our way. As big money starts looking for the next Big Profits, it inadvertently becomes a potential force for good in this emerging new world. We dwell in the disruption, the abandonment, the…
more -
19 Road Trip
Amanda sits in the back seat of a Holden Statesman - the chosen town car of WA farmers, listening and learning as an entrepreneurial farmer and a Rangeland ecology scientist trade stories on our way to visit a few farms . One is a full-on fence-to-fence conventional cropping operation and one has...
-
18 The O'Leary Factor
Long-term agricultural investment has been growing under great new management at Macquarie Bank's Agricultural division! Yay!....but Amanda's excitement barely made it to the end of the day after a conversation with a cluey mate and a bit of a think. She had to wise up to what this investment was...
-
17 Thank You, Monsanto
Zach Bush, MD and merchant of well-being, lays out the whole sorry saga that is glysophate/Round Up and the story of chemical farming. What Monsanto and the glyphosate saga has helped into existence is a completely new understanding of the role played by the enteric system, the gut and the human...
-
16 The Third Way
Science has met, has even hopped into bed, with spirit - but there are those who would still rigidly separate the head from the heart, the body from the soul and glorify the practices that maintain these separations. So, under the banner of Holism, let's demystify spirit/energy/the whole damn…
more -
15 The New Wesfarmers
In which Amanda travels to the southwest to investigate a new WA agricultural company with the potential to inject new energy into the shrinking communities and tired earth of the WA Wheatbelt . She is introduced to the principled ideas of Agricultural investors Commonland and gets to listen to...
-
14 From Landscape To Land
In Australia, we are guilty of romanticising ecological destruction. In this case, a painting spotted on a station owner's wall in the Murchison, WA brings some of Amanda's cultural blind spots home to roost. She shares her own journey from ignorant to less ignorant while contemplating the art of...
-
13 Wild Dogs
When it comes to sheep in the Rangelands, WA, when is a 'good' dog a 'bad' dog? Is it really about dogs, or is there a bigger picture we need to be looking at when we decide what needs killing on pastoral country. Amanda muses on the language, politics and economics of baiting dogs and gets a bit...
-
12 The Vegan Factor
In which Amanda looks at the fall-out from the Live Trade export ban in 2011, tries to work out what sustainable agriculture would look like and draws startling connections between artists and farmers as primary producers sitting at the bottom of the food chain. And has a bit of a go at those...
-
11 The Medical Model
In which a friend gets a bad diagnosis, lives until she doesn't, and does it all on her own terms in pretty good health - considering.Amanda reports on her friend's battles with those in the medical profession who found it hard to deal with a patient who insisted on following her own intuition...
-
10 The Roo Industry
Why aren't we all tucking into the most abundant, most nutritious and tastiest meat that Australia has to offer?Amanda considers the red tape and the animal liberationists. She identifies and defines the Skippy Paradox, the double think that sees roos as both the sacred emblem of Australia, and…
more -
9 A Prophet For Our Times
Ron Watkins has been practicing regenerative-style farming for so long that he is practically in a class of his own. Why the hell isn't he Australian of this Year in this, or any other year? He is exactly the kind of mentor we need when we are looking at ways of restoring and healing our...
-
8 Black, White And Organic
John Thompson, descendant of convict and settler colonials and John Mogridge, a Bibbulman Boodja man call a series of meetings in Midland, Perth offering conversation to better understand local Aboriginal culture.I sit through a first meeting, cycling through emotions from delighted to enraged…
more -
7 The BS
In which Amanda reflects on the way language is adapting to reflect the changing landscape of health and wellbeing - and tries to separate the good from the stupid. She takes issue with words like 'healer' and explores a few modalities that have risen to tackle the demon of complimentary…
more -
6 The Joys Of Bacterial Sex
Amanda talks to more WA based regenerative agriculture champions and is terrified by irrefutable data presented on the state of industrial agriculture by Darren Qualman. On a more positive note she meets Brent Burns from Landsave Organics and NZ soil expert, Nicole Masters who introduces her to…
more -
5 One Paddock At A Time
Climate Change for all its horrors has given Amanda a secret thrill - the idea that every molecule on this planet can be accounted for within a closed system is astonishing. But it does raise the issue of personal accountability. Amanda dives deep into her suburban past, links it all to...
-
4 Measuring The Unmeasurable
Amanda has a close look at nature and enjoys a bit of spadework in Buntine before referencing some big thinkers, like Roger Crook, who are looking at the future of the wheat belt, asking questions like: What is yield and how do we judge resilience in the agricultural world? She ends up thinking...
-
3 Rebirthing
Writing in the third person - possibly to free up storytelling - Amanda takes a break from agriculture to talk about a period in her life where she sheds her glasses and a carapace at a Down To Earth Festival in rural Victoria and takes a hard right down a different road.
About this show
If we all ate food grown in biologically rich soil, how would this affect our lives, our communities and the natural systems that sustain us? As Amanda discovered, to approach this question a whole-of-landscape and a whole bodymind approach is required.
The human heart nestles within the economic and environmental incentives driving an emerging carbon economy. We humans are being dragged kicking and screaming into a quantum world to grapple with the complexity we must embrace, in order to survive.
Amanda creates a rich, organic brew that is biodiverse, funny and full of unexpected synergies, to create her own vision of earthly wellness.
Tune in and listen on….
Hosted by
Amanda Rowland