A Feast of Transformation: Laura Dalrymple, Matthew Evans & Darren Doherty at the Reconnection Festival

Feast on our next conversation at the Reconnection Festival, the largest gathering of the regenerative movement in this country to date. This time, we’re talking food, for which the 800 people present were joined by a few more visionaries: 

• Laura Dalrymple, founder of the extraordinary Feather and Bone in Sydney 
• Matthew Evans, author, TV host & farmer at Fat Pig Farm in Tasmania, and
• Darren Doherty, founder of the globally renowned Regrarians out of Central Victoria. 

The general trajectory of the conversation was ‘what’s hot, what’s not, what’s working and what’s next?’ It broaches some of the tough stuff regarding how we navigate the complexities of the global food system to foster a healthier society and planet? This includes challenges related to meat debates, food production health crises, and economic barriers. We also delve into the treasure trove of stuff that’s working well. Which sums to a call to further reconnect with the journey of our food from farm to fork (and far beyond), even amidst financial hurdles and a world in flux.

Head here for automatic cues to chapter markers (also available on Apple and some other apps, and the embedded player on the episode web page), and a transcript of this conversation (the transcript is AI generated and imperfect, but hopefully serves to provide greater access to these conversations for those who need or like to read).

This was recorded live at the Green Room stage of the BluesFest venue in the northern rivers of NSW on 11 November 2023.

Title slide L-R: Anthony, Darren, Matthew and Laura (pic: Olivia Katz).

See more photos on the episode web page, and to see more from behind the scenes, become a member via the Patreon page.

Music:
Green Shoots, by The Nomadics.

Regeneration, by Amelia Barden, from the film Regenerating Australia.

The RegenNarration playlist, featuring music chosen by guests (with thanks to podcast member Josie Symons).

Find more:
Farmer’s Footprint Australia.

You can hear more of Matthew Evans with Anthony for episode 60, on his book On Eating Meat, and episode 138 on his following book Soil (by a very active Swan River / Derbal Yerrigan in Perth / Boorloo).

Transcript

Matthew: 0:00

And doing it through food actually at a table, because everybody, lots of people, don't want to be at a boring talk fest like this, right, you know, like it's not their bag, right.

Darren: 0:14

You're doing great Anthony.

Matthew: 0:19

I mean, this isn't boring, but some of them are. Not this, not this, not this. AJ: You can't un-hear what you've heard Matthew. MATTHEW: yeah, anyway. MUSIC: I feel the music in my soul filling up again like rain upon the desert sand, not a day too soon

Laura: 0:50

Well the first thing I'd say is it's incredibly heartening to even be at an event like this, like when we started about 17 years ago, something like this was completely I mean, nobody would even have considered doing something like this.

Anthony: 1:14

G'day, m y name's Anthony James and you're with The RegenNarration exploring the stories that are changing the story for the regeneration of life on this planet. It's independent, ad-free and freely available thanks to listeners like Ru Gale over in New South Wales. R Ru Thanks, for subscribing to the podcast this week and for your great correspondence. If you're also finding value in this, please consider joining Ru and a great community of supporting listeners with as little as $3 a month or whatever amount you can and want to contribute. Members get footage and photos and invitations, tips and great karma. Just head to the website via the show notes RegenNarration. com forward slash support - and thanks again.

Anthony: 2:01

This week we're back at the ReConnection Festival, the largest gathering of the regenerative movement in this country so far, for the second of three interrelated panel conversations, each building on the other. This time it's on food. Again, we're in the flow of conversation above all, but the general trajectory is what's hot, what's not, what's working and what's next. And again, I introduced the conversation and our guests at the outset, so let's get straight into it and head back to the green room stage at the Bluesfest venue in the northern rivers of New South Wales, where 800 people are gathering round once more. Now, with the cultural foundations of Reconnection laid, let's delve into where food fits in. Coming into today, the Farmer's Footprint team sent this around.

Anthony: 2:57

Food isn't just about sustenance. It's a powerful force that brings us together, transcending borders, cultures and languages. It's one of our greatest connectors, a true common thread. Whether it's a family dinner, a shared meal with friends or a simple act of breaking bread with strangers, it's a reminder that we're all human, bound by our need for health and nourishment, a reminder that we're all intrinsically linked. So for the next 45 minutes or so, let's explore how our choices about food can shape a sustainable and equitable world. And to do that we've got another three wonderful guests I'd like to introduce to you.

Anthony: 3:38

Laura Dalrymple, with Grant Hilliard, runs the nationally renowned Feather and Bone Providores out of Sydney. It's an organic, biodynamic, whole animal butchery sourcing pastured meat and poultry directly from local regenerative farms, no third parties, full transparency, a revolution in our food systems. Laura and Grant are also educators about the ethics of eating meat, activists for a better way of farming, and encourage all us eaters to become ambassadors for a better future. Their book, the Ethical Omnivore, is a user-friendly recipe and handbook to that end. They're going back 15 or so years. You wouldn't have predicted it. Laura was a graphic designer and Grant was a filmmaker. How they and regen ag generally have come so far since then. Please welcome Laura Dalrymple. Applause. It was also Laura's birthday, I believe a milestone birthday last week, so let's give her a big birthday cheer here.

Laura: 4:40

CHEERING. You're not supposed to say things like that.

Anthony: 4:43

I didn't say the number. LAURA: embrace it. AJ: embrace it. Matthew Evans farms with his wife, Sadie Crestman, and their son at Fat Pig Farm in Tasmania. He's also a chef host of the popular TV series Gourmet Farmer and documentaries What's the Catch? And, For the Love of Meat. He's also the author of many books, including the Real Food Companion, on Eating Meat, and Soil: the incredible story of what keeps the Earth and us healthy. Matthew frames soil as a story of bombs, civilisations, falling gods and pestilence and redemption. It affirms our growing understanding of soil and our treatment of it as being at the heart of our mental, physical and spiritual health, and in profound ways. And when we talked about it for the podcast last year, he told me this is the exciting time, so I'm really looking forward to having you here, Matthew. Please welcome Matthew Evans APPLAUSE.

Anthony: 5:46

And Darren Doherty is a fifth-gen land steward and founder of the globally renowned Regrarians. He's also a Collingwood Footy Club diehard, so he's kindly managed to squeeze this in between high-rotation replays of the AFL Grand Final. I'm told Darren's been involved in the design and development of well over 3,000 mostly broad-acre projects across six continents in more than 50 countries, ranging from the Kimberley cattle stations to Estancias in Patagonia. He's also worked in eco-villages and many a family farm, along with agroforestry and education projects, and he too, like all our guests so far today, hasn't got there on Easy Street. Personal transformation has been at the heart of the enormous transformations Darren has assisted in the broader world and also, like our other guests, and the farmers footprint team, for that matter, story is central to his work.

Anthony: 6:39

In 2015, Darren's wife produced a feature documentary called Polyf aces: a world of many choices, streamable also via his website. That's how we first met, as it happens, when I introduced the film's premiere in Melbourne, so it's great to be back with you, Darren. Please welcome, Darren Doherty. Applause. Al right to kick off. Could I come to you, Laura? And similarly, let's just run out of the gates with how what you felt coming in and what perhaps you've even been doing prior to coming in has landed with what we've heard and seen and felt today so far.

Laura: 7:17

Well, the first thing I'd say is it's incredibly heartening to even be at an event like this.

Laura: 7:22

Like when we started about 17 years ago, something like this was completely I mean, nobody would even have considered doing something like this, and to have a broad range of people come together to discuss these ideas was just, you know, not on the radar at all. In fact, you know, no one could even communicate properly to pull together an event like this because there was no internet. You know the interwebs didn't exist. So it's incredibly heartening to see this and I think, as the previous many people in the previous panel said, it's an indicator that there is a subtle shift happening and that's cause for great celebration and optimism. I think we see it on lots of different levels. Where I work, which is very much at the coal face of consumer or consumption, really, I work with retail consumers and chefs as well, and you know that's a very different place from, I think, some of the other participants here, and I see change occurring slowly. It's difficult, but it is happening and it's really encouraging.

Anthony: 8:32

It's a great place to start and, taking stock that it's in the slow boil that we talked about in that first panel and that's how you've witnessed it happen, you can miss it with the acute tragedies that will come across our lens too bloody often. I think we could talk about media in a whole other panel really, but to be aware of the slower moving train that we're on and that it is moving is a really good launching place, I think. But I'm also acutely aware that you're finding, like our previous guests, impasses of sorts as well. So let's come back to that.

Anthony: 9:06

That's important to talk about Exactly and we'll do a similar thing. We'll move on through that. Let's hope we will continue to do it in broader life. Matthew, over to you. What's your perception?

Matthew: 9:16

My perception is there's so many yellow barinas, way more yellow barinas than there used to be. That was a reference to Jade. Look, I just got introduced by one of the organisers as a soil nerd and I didn't have to hide Like I'm a farmer in southern Tasmania and I'm so into soil health, which is so intricately tied to human health, to nutrient densities, to saving the planet. And I got introduced as a soil nerd, not just to a couple of people, but to Zac Bush himself, and I could hold my set up high rather than having to shrink back into the corner and go sorry and apologise. So I'm feeling good, applause.

Anthony: 10:04

You did say to me too that you went to your publisher for soil, and that goes back what? Five years or something. So even five years ago you went to your publisher and thought they'd think you were crazy, and while they might have, they also said yes. So similarly, there is a slow creep coming up around us that can surprise still, it seems. Yeah, here's to that. Darren over to you.

Darren: 10:28

Hi everyone. I think my perception is probably a bit of a slower burn. I started on this journey in 1993. So like I was saying before 17 years, back in 1993, even the internet was very nascent. The good old days in the internet, the good old days where the that sort of thing.

Anthony: 10:51

I'll stick it. More about the guy of mind that we were intending with the internet. Yeah, there you go.

Darren: 10:56

So it's sort of like I often say I try not to get excited, because so often when you get excited you get let down. And I still find that I mean I've worked on some incredible projects and, like a lot of us, we've worked with incredible people and so on, and I won't say that they always let you down, but sometimes they do, and I've had that fairly recently with some projects, and I think that's the nature of this space. I mean it's still we can't be unrealistic about where we're at and this is still, to use that word, a nascent space, unfortunately. And being someone who seems to work at that edge, I'm often called upon quietly to go and do these jobs. People, you hear it, you know they get so excited about what they want to do and blah, blah, blah, blah and then you go, oh, so I don't need to bring things down. But there's also, I mean I'm working on some incredible projects. The one I'm working on in India at the moment is we're going to I was showing Laura earlier.

Darren: 12:05

I mean we've, over the last six weeks, since I led a nursery, a farmer nursery training course in Meghalaya in the Northeast, we've got eight million trees planted in nurseries. And that's. That's not me, that's farmers. We went oh, here's a course, here's how you might put a nursery together. And 25 of them farmer nurseries emerged and made it out of bamboo with a machete. It's like, how good is that? So that sort of thing is yeah, it's interesting, isn't it?

Anthony: 12:41

Like it can light a spark that you never would have expected when you don't expect it, and it can disappoint when you don't expect it, so you keep it level.

Darren: 12:49

Yeah, exactly yeah. That's what my mother's good for.

Anthony: 12:53

Yeah, bless them all, laura. It's a segue of sorts, isn't it? Launch into where it's really rough around the edges for you at the minute.

Laura: 13:04

Well, I'm a butcher Some of you who came in late might not have heard the introductions and, frankly, to be sitting here feels, as it often does in these situations, just a little bit dangerous Because, as we all know, meat's been getting a pretty bad rap lately. In fact, I often feel like I'm, you know, from the gun lobby or something, when you tell people you're a.

Matthew: 13:27

Luckily you're on the North Coast and they're all meat eaters up here or here.

Laura: 13:33

Yes, so, as Matthew will tell you, because he's spent a lot of time looking at this and talking about this, meat ain't meat, right, there's meat and there's meat. And you know, jade referred to this, so now I've lost my train of thought. So, yeah, so as a butcher, I can tell you that what I see one of the areas where there's a problem and again it's been referred to in the previous talk and I'm sure it'll be referred to a lot as we continue is that there is a While, on one hand, there's a great sort of opening up and embracing of new ideas and the concept of connectedness and the urgency with which we need to deal with the problems that we face. But at the same time, when people are frightened, they contract, and so what you see is you see people scuttling from one end of the spectrum to the other, and so people get anxious and frightened. And when you're in that state, you look for binary solutions which seem easy and which you can grab onto quickly, because they feel like they might change something quickly and you feel frightened and you want to take urgent action. So in my world, in food, and particularly in meat, people say you can't have meat, and so you get these really binary solutions and you lose the nuance. And so for me personally, that's an issue.

Laura: 14:51

A lot of our customers, a lot of the people who come to us, are people who are coming to us because they're having a health crisis, and that's a knock on consequence of the way we produce food. That will obviously be talked about in the next session. But also, the truth is there is a, you know, there's an economic crisis happening for a lot of people. So we and I think I'm kind of speaking to the preaching to the choir here we're all here because we care and we're trying to do something about it, and a lot of my customers are the same. There's a lot of people out there who are not hearing this stuff and they don't feel. They feel they don't have access, they feel they don't have the wherewithal, and so how we actually get through to those people because that's how we'll make change that's a big topic.

Anthony: 15:38

It is Well, it's Matthew's wheelhouse, so over to you.

Matthew: 15:41

Yeah, so I'm very lucky because I grow food and I cook food. I'm a chef by trade and so actually in the business of pleasure right, my job is to sell pleasure, and you're going to have some really earnest conversations today. But at the coal phase, when we have people do our farm, or when I get to cook at events, we actually are putting something, getting people to do something very personal, which is to put something in front of their face, you know, chew it, getting all of the smells, all the textures, and swallow it. It's one of the most personal things you can do. It's very visceral, and so I'm in the business of selling pleasure and that's intimately connected to the source of our food.

Matthew: 16:22

But the tragedy for me is that and I'm glad you brought that up about the cost of living crisis because only 8% of the world has a choice what they eat. 8% 6% of the world has ever been on an airplane, right? So we're talking pretty low numbers. So we are in a very, very, very privileged position. You've paid to come here today, so you're in the extra privileged position. You're not one of the one in 10 Australians who have food insecure this week, or one in five Tasmanians who doesn't know where one of their meals is coming from this week, and so I'm very concerned about this underclass. But I get a concern because my jobs are growing food, we have a market garden, we have a farm and we have a restaurant, and the worst paid people in Australia, when the stats came out last year or the year before, might have been the worst.

Matthew: 17:09

Well, ignore the poets, right, because they don't make any, but there's one, there's always one. Don't let any of the microphone. I mean, I love poetry, but they don't sell many. You know it's hard to make money, so ignore that. But the lowest paid people in Australia are market gardeners, right. The second lowest are farmers and the third lowest are hospitality workers, and so we've actually got this whole underclass of people who are underpaid.

Matthew: 17:41

But it spreads further than that. You would have seen the supermarket workers some of the lowest paid in the country. Meat packers and butchers some of the lowest paid in the country. The people who drive your food around, because a lot of it has to get trucked around some of the lowest paid in the country. So we actually have this entire underclass of people who are in Australia, that are in the food system. You know are the people who are going to help you get food on the table. So for me, that's where the crunchy bit comes is how do we get good, nutrient dense food on the plates, not just a whole bunch of privileged white old people like me, but how do we get nutrient dense, fresh, seasonal food in front of the people who most need it really, who are the disadvantaged and who don't have necessarily very good access? And I'm going to pose that and I'm never going to be able to answer that question today.

Anthony: 18:33

Yeah, well, it certainly crosses over with your experience, laura, doesn't it? Which is a representation, perhaps, of the premium price model of getting this done which we're all seeing, and it's coming more and more to bear. It's not going to cut it. There have to be other ways, other than lumping a premium on the price of food, to be able to feed the people we want and need to. So when you talk about cost of living crisis, then it's really interesting to me in a sort of a big, broad way, like, on the one hand, yes, and we all know it and we're all in it On the other hand, we here, this privileged cohort, have bigger houses than ever, bigger cars than ever, biggest storage, and you know, I could go on yeah, and, and so what are?

Matthew: 19:19

we spending on the cost. Well, the cost of living crisis and the economics of this, when you actually dig down, is not that food is needs to be made cheaper? Is that food should be more expensive? Because, essentially, cheap food has subsidized the property boom, because people have the money to spend elsewhere. So why is there a cost of living crisis? Because rents have gone up, because interest rates have gone up, mortgage has gone up, property prices have Gone up. None of that has anything to do with the food that farmers grow, and and so the reason people can't buy food is is because cheap food has subsidized the property boom. Essentially, that's it's.

Laura: 19:54

You know it's not just my view. Yes.

Laura: 19:56

Yes, it's sort of a well you know, indeed a good economic argument, yep and the other thing obviously about that cheap food is that you know it's an artificial. It's an artificial construct because you do actually pay the same amount for the food. It's just that you pay that in environmental Reparations, in health impacts. You know you pay it further down the line in your taxes. So you know it's an artificial idea that we don't, that we don't pay for it up front.

Laura: 20:21

We do a thing with the farmers, we work with where and it's really it's a really tricky thing the economics of Sourcing food and distributing food and marketing food and retailing food. It's, it's a really difficult thing. One of the problems also is that there are these really complex supply chains. You know and, and, and. So if you actually pay a fair price to a farmer and that price is reflected in the product, then you can't operate according to the structure that exists, that, the conventional market structure that exists. So we don't do that, we operate outside that.

Laura: 20:55

So what we do is we work with farmers to say what is it that you need to continue doing the environmental services that you perform and to produce nutritious food and make your Environment resilient, to sequester carbon, to store water, etc. Etc. And have a fair life. And then what do you need to do that? And then we work out what we need and we just do that. We don't worry about the system. At the moment in Tasmania I understand that you can they're selling lambs for $2 a kilo. So we've gone from this incredibly high prices that they were selling for recently to almost nothing.

Matthew: 21:27

It's cheaper to pit for them to just compost. You can buy a sheep for $2 a sheep.

Laura: 21:31

Yeah, yeah okay. And I'll that an older animal yeah.

Matthew: 21:35

Yeah, well, no, even young ones, young with us? Yeah, so the ones that aren't being shot in the paddock.

Laura: 21:39

That's it. So it's an insane system that we operate by. It is.

Anthony: 21:44

I know farmers, all the Haggerty's, for example, that some people know well, in Western Australia, in the wheat belt, they're having to offload sheep that are producing extraordinary wool on the one hand, and and land regeneration. So we need these animals in the landscapes that they have this relationship with, but they're having to sell them off and they get nothing for it, and it's getting to the point where they have to pay to do that. So, but even in the, in the more mundane ways, it's loaded the wrong way. The way you articulated how you do it, lord, that's the heart of the model what is needed, work off the ground and and what is needed for the health, landscape, communities, food and Draw out from there, as you have done, and then, yes, you grappling with the nature that we're in this incumbent system. So it's a big issue and I want to come to you, darren, on it, because I know you've thought a lot about this over the years too. But I want to do it by also drawing out something before I forget it, in a way that you said, laura, at the start, where you talked about the stress.

Anthony: 22:44

I think people are feeling that. That what makes people retreat and we've heard about in the previous panel to binary Solutions would be solutions to aggro, stress, overwhelm, like all those things, and we know very well all the things that bring that Disposition. I mean we heard about a lot in the culture panel so there are ways to trigger that more in people or ways to trigger something else in people. So it infers a lot of care and I've raised that because, again, it can feel hard If you can find it with situations you hate and I say situations, not people, situations you hate and and a put under stress yourself. I want to draw that into the conversation. But head to you, darren, with regards to these. But your experience of this stuff.

Darren: 23:34

Yeah, um years ago I did a. I did a talk at buying ears. That was pretty. We're talking about being shit scared in front of 5000 people and One of the stats that I was looking at the US food system and these what I would call these structural impediments and In 1970, before Earl Butts became the Secretary of Agriculture Under Nixon and I think he is a really key figure in the in where we're at now One person's decision-making right well, that's interesting to the whole, so it could go the other way on that, yeah well, that's right.

Darren: 24:11

I mean I'll go just a segue for a moment. If I go back to Adelaide Stevenson's run back in the 50s, yeah, what was his name? There was a. What was the guy's name? He wrote a book anyway, malabar farm, louis Bromfield. He was being purported to be Adelaide Stevenson's Secretary of Agriculture in the 50s and you know you talk about Moments. Yeah, and that was when industrial agriculture and Organic agriculture under the Rodell Institute, as it was starting. I mean, you know, these are moments with really key figures. That's why politics, in spite of what we don't like about it, actually matters.

Anthony: 24:53

Policy matters, right, it affects people and to think that then you wouldn't want to miss those moments. Well, we have.

Darren: 25:02

So, so back then, back in back at the time of Earl Butts becoming Secretary of Agriculture, farmers, the proportion of the retail dollar that a farmer got at the farm gate was 40 cents in the dollar. Yeah, and then by the time I gave my speech in 2013. It was seven cents in the dollar. So you know, the terms of trade, as we would call them, are appalling. There's no price parity and All of the other costs, because fuel was cheaper and all the rest of it. So the structural, the structural parts of it are missing. But the other thing that I think, food is cheap. But Going to that, stat that the share that the farmer actually gets of that dollar is diminishing. So, even though food is cheap, they don't get very much of it.

Darren: 25:53

So it's sort of understandable why and as someone who brought Joel Salotin here however many times from 2009, and to really big audiences the reason why people came was because they were looking for an out right, because they looked at this guy oh, I've got 5,000 people who buy off my 100 acre farm and I'm turning over. He's boasting almost, but it's not an ego driven boast, it's an encouraging boast. This is what you can do if you work directly with people, because that's the problem. It's the middle of what's being taken from you as a producer and that's a structural impediment. So All right yeah.

Anthony: 26:43

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Given that, Darren, could I stick with you for a bit and ask you for a sense of when you've sort of given us a glimpse or two already, but a sense of what's going well, what you're seeing work and what cues can we take from?

Darren: 27:04

that, oh, there's an enormous number. I mean, I look at our own context. We sort of withdrew from the broader world in a sense and developed our own network, as you can these days, and every day that grows and every day we see any number of people around the world who are taking various paths. I think you know, when I was listening earlier to the people speaking before, one of the big things that I am very passionate about is enfranchisement. I mean, one of the I'll use the word that's not allowed at the conference in Cairns next week is colonization. One of the and I'm working in India this has become. It's a recurring theme.

Darren: 27:50

You know, we've just been through, as we talked about when we had a meeting online the other day about the voice and all of the colonization issues that many of us have perhaps not thought about but have come and to me that's a story about enfranchisement, and I see that a lot of people are being re-enfranchised. They're taking a close look at the way they participate in the world with themselves and with each other, and that's been super encouraging. So we're seeing a lot more of that People owning their own context, understanding it. As my friend Javon Banakavich says, if you aren't designing your life, then someone else is. That's where a lot of it's got to, and if you don't own that, then you'll never plan your way out of it. There's a planner speaking, right, yeah, which you can. Yeah, well, all you can do is try, right.

Anthony: 28:50

Yeah Well, you guys are cases in point, and so are many of you I know out there where you are finding ways. Notwithstanding, matthew, what are you observing on that front? Stuff you're seeing really work. Well, we could take cues from.

Matthew: 29:06

I think what we sometimes lose sight of is how things have changed. I spent four decades in the food industry, so train as an apprentice chef in 1983 or something like that, and so, and we sometimes, like we used to, we used to cut the middle out of silver beet. We call silver beet spinach, and we cut the middle out of silver beet and we chop it up and steam it and put it in morne sauce and call it fennel morne, because none of you knew what fennel was. We used to get this thing from France. It was called a truffle substitute. It was you had to do under the top of the tin and the bottom of the tin, because it was tin shaped. It even had the ripples of the top of the tin in it and you had to push it out. It was like a hockey puck. It was like more Michelin tire than Michelin man Michelin restaurant and you would slice it up and put it on top of patty and call it truffle, because none of you knew what truffle was.

Matthew: 30:02

And now I see this beautiful farmer's market just down the road here where you can chat to the person who's grown the food. You've got the farm, which is a great teaching space, but also it's an incubator for people who are actually wanting to get into growing food, and so your average person. There are a lot of food deserts, sadly, in Australia, but most people have access better access to good food than they did in my youth 1970s. Canberra was my youth and I remember doing a cooking competition. We got extra points if we used local produce. It's all now local produce, like then May, like in 1984 or whatever it was. I could buy local produce from Canberra was apple juice and parsley. You go to the epic farmers market now it's incredible what you can buy. So all of this is just chipping away, chipping away, chipping away.

Matthew: 30:58

And it's a bit like my job on our farmers to watch grass grow Like it's. Actually you can't really see it grow, but when you step back and you wait a season or in my I guess with all my years since I had brown hair, I can now see the grass. The grass has grown in terms of people connecting to a valuable food system. But how you make that more the norm and more widespread, I'm not sure how we do that, and part of it is through regulation, part of it is through encouragement. You know it's stick, carrot and stick, I guess, from governments.

Matthew: 31:35

But it's all of you going out there because you're here for a reason and so you probably don't need any convincing, but it's all of you leaving here tonight and saying well, tomorrow, the day after, next week, I'm gonna make conscious decisions about not only my purchasing and what I do in my garden or in my farm or in my community. But who am I gonna talk to and say look, this is important. When they come over to your house for dinner and doing it through, food is actually at a table, because everybody, lots of people, don't wanna be at a boring talk fest like this. Right, you know? Like it's not their bag, right?

Darren: 32:11

And they're like you're doing great Anthony.

Matthew: 32:19

I mean, this isn't boring, but some of them are. Not this, not this, not this. You can't unhear what you've heard. Yeah, anyway, what I? You know what I mean. You know what I mean. But you have someone over for a meal and you say I got this from the. You know that woman up the road who has the pastured chickens. Or I've got, yeah, I grew this myself, or I swapped this with my neighbor, you know, and this comes from a regenerative farm just on the other side of the Great Divide, whatever it is. And that story tied to the meal is the way, I think, you change people's behavior on the ground. So we do need people up here. They're politicians and bureaucrats, but we really need you also on site. So we'll see.

Darren: 33:04

Yeah, yeah, yeah Doesn't. Sometimes when you do that, you sort of spill your food's gone cold by the time you go through it, you've been to his farm.

Matthew: 33:14

Yeah, when I went to India, everything was room temperature, so you must be used to that.

Anthony: 33:21

Matthew, yeah, take a drink. Well, because I want to stick with you for a bit and just run, because you said the word story amongst that over food, and you said the word story and it's obviously something that's pivotal here too, because Farmers' Footprinters are so taking that platform forward. You're someone who's drawn on that for a long time in different formats. How does story reach people best?

Matthew: 33:42

So I think story reaches people best when it becomes personal, so when they can relate to it in some way, and that's why for me, it works.

Matthew: 33:50

Through a meal or through a visual experience, like being on a farm or being on country. It is the easiest way. But the other way is to, I guess, to try and convince them that this matters to them in some way. And I know they're gonna talk oh, I'm presumably gonna talk about all this later which is how the influence of soil on food and food's influence on us, and so then I think, a lot of people, despite our best interests, we're very self-interested. But when you realize that something you eat can have an impact on your gut microbiome, which can have an impact on your mental health, then you suddenly go oh, it might be worth having 30 different plant foods in my diet this week, or it might be worth having liver in my diet because of all the vitamin A and D and whatever an iron that I can get in my diet in a very small period of time, and so making it, I guess, relevant to them. And people are interested in the stories that relate to them very personally.

Anthony: 34:53

Very good. Thank you, laura. Related to this you felt through your experience, again frontline with a lot of people, that we underrate the influence we have in these ways. Can you speak to that for us a bit, that you believe that we don't quite understand the power we could hold?

Laura: 35:16

Do you mean as individuals? Or in the jobs that we do.

Anthony: 35:20

No, it's the people you meet. Yeah, yeah that you felt that there's an understating amongst the cohorts that come to you in terms of how they feel they can make a difference.

Laura: 35:32

So I think, yeah, I think that's true. I think a lot of people feel profoundly disempowered.

Anthony: 35:37

Yeah.

Laura: 35:38

They feel very disconnected. I mean food. It's ironic, isn't it? Because food is probably the most powerful way to connect people of anything. It's the one thing that we all do. Well, it's not the only thing we all do, obviously but we all eat right.

Laura: 35:55

And food connects. It connects energy, health, education, culture, mental health, land, agriculture. I mean, it's the one thing that brings all of those things together. It's the most powerful Trojan horse you could possibly have to actually get people thinking about those issues. But I think we've become so disconnected and so disenfranchised in relation to food that we feel stupid. It's like when you go into the bottle shop and there's 500 bottles of wine there and you think I don't know which boo that one it's like, because you feel like an idiot. You don't know, you know.

Laura: 36:30

So I think a lot of people feel that way about food. So we have people coming into our shop and they go I'll just have a steak, please. And you go really, how about? You know we're a whole animal butcher so you could have all of these wonderful things, you could learn about all these different things that you could be cooking. And while we're at it, let me tell you the story of the farmer who grew this and where they are and how they grew it and what this means and what this means for you.

Laura: 36:55

When you eat it and you engage them in this story and they walk out and they feel like they've just been given. I mean they probably, after they've talked to me, they probably feel like they've been given a lecture, but anyway, I think they also feel like, hey, I know something now. So they go out and then they feel empowered with knowledge. They might choose never to come back because God, if that woman, if she's there again, I'm not gonna go back. But they also might think, you know, actually I know something, so now I can make a much more. I can make a much more conscious and empowered and educated choice, and whatever choices we make, we want them to come from a place of knowledge and understanding, and so I think that's, you know, I think stories and so on have a huge thing, but really we do see that people feel like they don't have the power and so and it's not surprising, because people don't really know very much about food anymore Most people like, not us.

Anthony: 37:51

That's the role you're playing. It's just interesting how your spirit picks up as you relate that. So it's something that you've really enjoyed in that 17 years, or whatever. It is Well for me personally.

Laura: 38:03

I mean, I had you know, I had my road to Damascus moment when I started working with farmers and I-.

Anthony: 38:10

Me too.

Laura: 38:11

Yeah, and you know, you go to these farms and the farmers would explain how everything is connected. And it was such. It's such sort of basic, fundamental, principal knowledge. It was talked about a bit in the previous talk, which you obviously deal with in that transferral of pleasure. You know when people come to your farm and but when you hear it and you see it in action, you see the proof of it.

Laura: 38:34

I mean, I would go to farms on many occasions in different seasons and you'd see the farm that you're visiting but you know, bursting with life, even in difficult seasons, and the neighboring farms are these deserts. You know, and you think how is it that these farms season in, season out? Don't look at what this person is doing and say, that's smart, I need to be doing that as well. But you know, we have we have patterns of behavior and systems of being that are incredibly hard to shift. So, even when the evidence is staring you in the face, you can be healthier, you can make more money, you can have a better life. The world can be better 100%.

Anthony: 39:17

There's a reason why People don't see it. This panel and all the last one no one used the word show people or evidence. They didn't use the word evidence. They didn't say show the people evidence. That doesn't do it. We know that and you've experienced that too.

Laura: 39:28

You've got to turn them on and make them excited and inspired.

Anthony: 39:32

Well, spirit bang again. You know it's that line from Oral over West. Biodiversity is a manifestation as well. I could say everything is Darren to you on that. You're thinking stuff already. I don't even say anything. Do I Go ahead?

Darren: 39:45

I was just I was actually thinking when it was Lisa who made poly faces, not me. I should just say that oh yeah, thank you, lisa Heenan, by the way. Yeah, I was thinking about when we went to Polyphase Farm in Virginia I think about 10 or 11 times while we were making that film and-.

Anthony: 40:04

That's Joel Sellatons, for that. Yeah, yeah, well, a Sellaton family, the Sellaton family. Yes, thank you, not just.

Darren: 40:08

Joel, thank you, but anyway, we got introduced to his neighbour, a guy called Oakley, and Oakley's in the film, and everyone was surprised that. The Sellatons were surprised that we were able to get him in the film and Oakley. So the Sellatons road. You have to go over a little bridge and it's called Pure Meadows Lane, right? How nice is that, Right? So Pure Meadows Lane you have to go over a little bridge and it's a public road, but it doesn't really look like one, and it's a through way, and Oakley has to go through that to go up to his paddocks up the back. He's been doing that for 50 years, every day, to go and check his cows, which is about the same time, and he's the same age as Joel and Theresa and he's been doing that every day. And this is the evidence point.

Darren: 40:56

It was only the year that we were there, which was 2014, that he finally said you know what your grass is looking? Pretty good. How about you? How about now? This is where the rub was. How about you have some of your people come over and manage my farm for me? Not me change? How about I just abdicate? I'm not going to be the one that changes. You put your people there and that's not a. You know Oakley has his context, everyone does, but it really I mean you know you've got 30 people right. I don't know if anyone's been to polyphase. It's just one of those places which is super vibrant and it's what you would like to see agriculture behave like and feel like, but and Oakley's one old guy driving in his beaten up pickup truck with shitty looking cows having a bad life. Yeah.

Darren: 41:56

I mean I say that with a heart for the cows and for the landscape, it's well, it's. As someone who grew up with livestock, it's terrible to see any animal being in distress, you know, and there's a lot of that and humans yeah.

Anthony: 42:14

And for all that, maybe that's you know Oakley's in his context. Maybe that is his change, that he opened the gate.

Darren: 42:22

Well, sometimes it is and it's it's a. I often get asked the question about people who, because you know you talk about, we've talked about structural impediments. Well, you know there's a. There's a land access affordability crisis as well which, you know, most people it's never talked about. You know the housing, the housing affordability crisis is there. I remember I went out to Bruce Maynard's last year for a private tuition on low stress livestock handling, which was great and anyway, out at Bruce's and he was saying you know, what we need to do is remove, because I don't know if anyone knows this, but it costs. If you buy rural land or agricultural land, it's a 50% deposit, Right.

Laura: 43:06

It's like commercial.

Darren: 43:07

And even poor bits of land are 10,. Well, five to $10,000 an acre, right. So if you, and because of the just the sheer numbers of production that you need to do, especially if you're in the commodity game, you got, you know it's a really it's not compelling, you know you put it down as a business plan, you go, nah, this just ain't gonna work, right, which is really sad. Yeah, so that's a serious issue for people, and so I often get people who say, well, I'm just gonna lease, right. Well, what's the game then? Well, you've got a person who you're gonna lease property from. What about the infrastructure that needs to be put in that it'll enable that property to be quote unquote regenerative, right, that takes investment. Who's gonna make that? Who owns it?

Darren: 43:59

You know there's all of these questions which are really difficult, and that's, you know, in a lot of the, let's say, the romantic regenerative narrative, of which there's plenty, there's that sort of stuff which is not necessarily talked about, like all the fence that you've gotta put up, you know livestock, or all of the work that you've gotta do. I mean, you'd know that from setting your place up that, just how much that took and how much, and probably because I don't know your situation, but you probably bought capital to the game which enabled you to do that. If you were every other person, then. So making that transition is really, is really difficult, and doing it on owned land and that's, yes, exactly which is part of the whole colonial thing, right? Like a farmer in Iowa said to me years ago, so we didn't up from Europe 150 years ago to not own land.

Anthony: 44:54

Yeah, yeah, this is so important to bring up and it relates back to the first panel where we did talk about investment bodies and so forth, and, given that's untenable, there does have to be a paradigm shift in that domain. But then I wonder, beyond that, in a sense, with the whole ownership thing period, when we're talking about decolonizing, as we have to do, like it's fundamental to this, and we've sort of covered that off a little bit here. Matthew, I'm coming to you next with some of the native grain stuff that you've seen too, and perhaps that's a nice way to go at this. But to what extent do we have to face down what we all know, inherently to be true, that ownership of nature is a furphy?

Darren: 45:45

Could I just add, there's a great book that written by the late Arthur Hollands is called the Farmer, the Plough and the Devil. And when Arthur died he left his tendency in the UK and England to his youngest children and they then, at that point when Arthur died, the landlord decided that he wanted to sell it off to become a golf course or something right, and the 8,000 people who had multi-general rationally bought stuff from Ford Hall Farm got some of them lawyers and bankers and so on, and this was their yogurt. Don't take my yogurt away from me. My mother gave me, introduced me this or whatever. So that's a story of what I call the reverse of feudalism, because 8,000 people bought that farm. So that's a. I'm not saying that's the solution.

Anthony: 46:47

There are examples of where people are cracking it Just before you go on. I have to try, and I only heard this yesterday on the beach through Late Night Live. Bless Phillip Adams legend that there was a story, a town in the US, and I can't, no, sorry, mexico, sharon. Almost the entire avocado supply chain comes out of this place.

Darren: 47:07

Not Australia's, but almost For one day Super Bowl.

Anthony: 47:11

It's extraordinary, isn't it? Yeah, and they have banned it because essentially, a whole it was embroiled in the cartels and so forth. So this whole town of only but still significant 20,000 people overthrew the governance structure, the cartels. They've banned the sale of avocado because that's inherently mixed up in it, and they've got back to more diverse holdings and ways. This is actually happening right now. That's 20,000 people doing that there. It's amazing In the face of, I mean, you couldn't get stiffer opposition. That's fine, all right, laura, first, then we'll go to Matthew.

Laura: 47:47

I was just gonna say that that's what happens when people feel a connection. You know, people don't do people. If they don't feel a connection, they don't engage at that level, and so that's what we have to foster in relation to food. We have to reconnect people with understanding where food comes from, and if they give a toss and if they, as you said, if it's personal, then they will act. They'll do all sorts of things.

Matthew: 48:08

Yeah, and they was framed quite or beautifully in the first session, whereas, you know, can I be a good ancestor and I thought that was a much better way of framing stuff that I've been thinking about. So on our farm, when people come to our farm, we can actually see the Southwest Wilderness. It's called, you know that's what it's actually called. It's a World Heritage Wilderness Area, I think. It's called Wilderness and people have this idea of wilderness that it's untouched by humans. So there's only been humans changing that landscape for 50,000 years. Right, that's a lot. I can't even count the generations that that would be it's you know. And so when we work our land, we and I've never thought of it as being good ancestors, but we work the land and we think I can't think, I don't think I could go 5,000 years ahead. You know I can't go, certainly can't go 50,000 years ahead, but people have been feeding themselves there for 50,000 years. So can people feed themselves from this patch of land? And I only can go 500 years as far as my brain can work, and I think that's, I guess, how we think land should be framed.

Matthew: 49:12

Because, just to put this in context, growing food farming right farming is just intercepting. It's plants and animals that are growing and we just intercept them between when they come into the world and when they're completely rotten. Right, that's essentially farming. You need to eat them before they're rotten. Plants and animals. So we can grow plants and animals because the world's done that for 450 million years.

Matthew: 49:36

Right, we know the world is designed for that. We can't mine forever. We know that. You know we can't build cities forever. We can't even do electric cars forever. There's limits to all of those things. But farming can be done in theory, forever. But how you frame that and how it actually gets done practically because farming's done a lot of damage over the last 10,000 years, in particular 12,000 years is that we maybe need to change the way we're growing food. But the theory is that we can, definitely, because soil, sunlight, air and water grows plants and plants grow animals. They all soil, plants and animals co-evolved. So we just need to work out a system to allow that to happen while not buggering up the tiny fraction of earth that we can actually grow food on, which is about 1.32 or 1.35th of the planet, which is actually useful for growing crops.

Anthony: 50:32

Matthew, can you do something for me in 30 seconds or less?

Matthew: 50:37

No, I'm not good at doing this, probably not.

Anthony: 50:39

What am I doing? Sadie just wrote an email bulletin from the farm talking about the Yambola story and how that's connected native grains well, sharing of country and then native grains harvest out to a new First Nations bakery in the heart of Sydney.

Matthew: 50:57

Yeah, so native grains, so crops, grasses that have evolved in this continent, that are used to the vagaries of the climate in this continent, like Mitchell grass, and we are using some button grass actually at the moment for a function we're doing in Sydney. So, yeah, bruce Pascoe's Black Duck Foods has been trying to commercialize this, trying to work out how you can grow these perennial grains. So these are grasses that you don't have to plant every year. Like wheat, most things that you want to eat are annuals. They're rubbish in terms of looking after soil and how to manage landscapes because every year you've got to plant them. Every year they want to die, so you've got to struggle to keep them alive and then you've got to try and kill everything that wants to out-compete them. And then every year you harvest them, kill them and then you have to plant them again. A perennial grass lives on you to give you just go and take the top off, take the seed heads off, so it makes sense ecologically. It's not over the most of 30 seconds.

Matthew: 51:46

Anyway, black Duck Foods are doing this, trying to do this commercially. They've also got Yambola, which is a place in New Bombala in New South Wales, on board to help grow these crops. They're harvesting them, they're milling them and now there's a bakery run by Native Food Ways, an indigenous-led bakery, and it's in the heart of Sydney, in the Winter Garden, using those grains in some of their products and they're also using I had a bunionut pie there the other day they use salt-bush bread, all these beautiful things. So they're taking stuff that is designed to grow on this continent, that we know can be grown without damaging the continent, and trying to commercialise them and put them in front of the rest of us who haven't, and put them in a modern context. So it's not trying to eat them like Aboriginal people did 250 years ago.

Anthony: 52:28

Indeed, though we might hear from someone later why that might have merit too. But anyway, it's also worth saying that it's in Aboriginal hands, as opposed to a booming already booming Native Foods market that isn't large, that almost entirely isn't. So this is a revolution in multiple ways now. So we're out of time, but I feel like I have to come to you, laura and Darren. This is your task. Can you look at you?

Anthony: 52:56

Just in response to that Okay, but try and do it together so it doesn't take twice as much time. I wonder if I will do you even. I wonder if you want to land just a few key words, even as to what you need most to help what you're doing.

Laura: 53:15

Okay, now I'm lost for words. I think we need a national food policy and without that, you know, we've got one hand tied behind our back because it sounds extraordinary to say we don't.

Anthony: 53:28

It's just insane. But anyway, let's do it.

Laura: 53:30

It's just insane. So I mean so, all the wonderful young farmers who I come across, who are reimagining the way we might grow food. I want the same number of inspired young economists and lawyers and all of those people also working to create a regenerative future in all of those rooms that Amanda talked about. You know, we need that energy there as well, because we need it's a pincer movement. We need a grassroots generation, but we also need the regulation and the policy. I think there was that.

Laura: 54:03

Well, they used to say it's the economy stupid. That was Clinton's campaign, wasn't it? Well, it's actually, you know, the economy and politics stupid, because we need these things together to actually make the change. And Matthew said and I was going to say as well, I think if there are 800 people in this room, that's 800 people who can go out and talk to another 100 people. I mean, this is how we make change. I think one of the things we all have to remember is we have to be accountable, and that's we have to demand accountability from the people who sell us our products and services, in this case, our food. Ask the questions, always ask the questions. Demand accountability, but also demand accountability via self Prosecute. Every decision you're making. Is it the best decision? Does it align with my values? And now shut?

Matthew: 54:53

up. So it's not just farmers, so not just farmers who are being good ancestors.

Anthony: 55:02

That's it absolutely. I'm so glad you ended on that, laura, because your line at the Convergence Conference run by RCS Australia a year and a half ago, I think it's true to say that's where you use that metaphor of each of us being ambassadors for this and then each of the people we know could be too. It's a lovely metaphor to use. Darren, you've really got a few keywords.

Darren: 55:26

Well, like Matt, I started off as a chef as well. Yeah, how about that? And what I do is I don't cook for people much, except on my paris, on my barbecue.

Laura: 55:41

I fancy that bbq.

Darren: 55:44

But I think where I get to is just having the care to cook is something that a lot of people are not doing, and even if it's just a salad, even if it's just taking the time to be and sit with, if not your family if you're not able to do that, it's just with somebody else and just have that table connection. Maybe more than some people are having sex.

Anthony: 56:11

They go together w ell. DARREN: sorry about that.

Darren: 56:17

LAURA: Good answer. DARREN: Yeah, be romantic with it.

Anthony: 56:21

Here's to romance. Al right, that's a wrap. Great note to end on. Thanks. Please thank our guests, Laura Dalrymple, Matthew Evans, Darren Doherty. T hat was Darren Doherty, Matthew Evans and Laura Dalrymple. For more on these folk and festival organisers Farmer's Footprint Australia, s ee the links in the show notes. I've put a few photos of this session on the website too, while again you'll see plenty more on Patreon for subscribing members. A nd, speaking of which, thanks as always to you, generous supporters of the podcast, for making this episode possible. If you have been thinking about becoming a member or other kind of supporter, I'd love you to join us. Just head to the website or the show notes and follow the prompts - and thanks again. Thanks, too, for sharing the podcast with friends and continuing to rate it on your favoured app. Yes, it all helps. The music you're hearing is Regeneration by Amelia Barden from the film Regenerating Australia, and at the top you heard Green Shoots by the Nomadics. My name's Anthony James. Thanks for listening.