The River Is Our Blood: Kate McBride, Zach Bush MD & Dr Pran Yoganathan at the Reconnection Festival

We’re back at the Reconnection Festival for the last of three inter-related panel conversations, each building on the other. This one's on health, and features explosive revelations about a ‘Motor Neuron Disease alley’ linked to pollution and river degeneration in Australia’s Riverina agricultural district. Akin to the ‘cancer alley’ of the Mississippi River that transformed the life of our international guest, Zach Bush MD. Zach went on to found US not-for-profit Farmer’s Footprint, and has now shepherded it to five countries so far, including Farmer’s Footprint Australia.

Australia’s MND alley is just part of what Kate McBride is reporting on, and living, as a researcher with The Australia Institute and 5th generation farmer, born and bred on the half-million-acre Tolarno Station on the Darling Barka River. She came to national prominence unintentionally as the river ran dry and ongoing fish kills have followed.

Dr Pran Yoganathan, a Gastroenterologist and renowned voice of the 'regenerative medical movement', and also now a farmer, shares his experiences within the medical system in this context.

Our guests bring to light the urgency of revisiting our approach to medicine and agriculture, and everything else, and how we can do it. We hear profound stories of embracing our cultural roots, generating greater community advocacy, and collaborating across diverse viewpoints, right into the halls of power.

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).

Recorded in the northern rivers of NSW on 11 November 2023.

Title slide: AJ, Zach, Pran & Kate (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:
You can hear more of Zach in conversation with Tanya Massy, Ella Noah Bancroft and myself the year prior for episode 152.

Transcript

Kate: 0:00

What's actually kind of even more crazy is that when the river is sick, crime rate increases and life expectancy decreases. And I remember the first time I saw that I was like what? I just didn't get it. I wasn't connected to community and I wasn't connected to First Nations people really at all. And the more I got involved and taken out on country and explained this to, and Uncle Badger Bates has been a massive mentor to me. A nd I remember him saying that the river is like our mother and when she's sick we're sick. A nd the river's like the blood that runs through our vein. This really powerful language. But it's, like it's so clear. Y ou can see in the town when the river is sick that the community goes downhill.

AJ: 1:07

G' day, my 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 Becky. Thanks, Becky, for your very generous subscription this week and for committing to a year of it. If you're also finding value in all this, please consider joining Becky and a great community of supporting listeners, with as little as $3 a month, or whatever amount you can and want to contribute, contribute,. Members get advance releases, footage, photos, tips, invitations and my great gratitude. Just head to the website via the show notes regennarrationcom . com/ . Thanks again.

AJ: 2:12

Now this week we're back at the Reconnection Festival, the largest gathering of the regenerative movement in this country so far, for the last of three interrelated panel conversations, each building on the other - from culture to food and now health. So let's go back to November 2023 to the Green Room stage at the Blues Fest venue in the northern rivers of New South Wales. In a sense, there can be no greater articulation of our ultimate goal - someone get these guys off the stage. Security. There can be no greater articulation of our ultimate goal.

Zach: 2:55

DARREN DOHERTY (FROM THE FOOD PANEL, ON LAST WEEK!): He said. He said he thought that I was cooking on my perineum.

AJ: 3:06

Yes, live. So let's go again. In a sense, there can be no greater articulation of our ultimate goal as tending the health of all life. So, as we fare well our food panellists, as in real life, let's make the connection directly from food to health with our final panel discussion.

AJ: 3:27

Kate McBride is a researcher with the Australia Institute and a fifth gen farmer, born and bred on the half million acre Talano station located along the Lower Darling Barker River in western New South Wales. That gave Kate a direct and gutting experience of the river's mismanagement, resulting in it running bone dry for the first time in living memory and later experiencing a mass fish kill that brought her and her family unintentionally to national prominence. Though, kate Bride, she'd never see it again. Sadly, earlier this year, four years on from the first, there was another, even worse fish kill. Over the years, kate's been entrusted with ancient knowledge shared by legendary elder Badger Bates, and her focus has shifted from purely water to broader regional issues, particularly health. Kate produced a major report for the Australia Institute this year called the Unlucky Country. It showed enormous and growing discrepancies in the health of regional Australians, including in avoidable deaths and life expectancy. These are things that only a few decades were commonly the other way around. Please give a very warm welcome to Kate McBride. Applause.

AJ: 4:49

Dr Pran Yogathan is a gastroenterologist and hepatologist based in Sydney, with a special interest in the dynamic interplay between human consciousness, philosophy, psychology, nature, farming and health. He's a renowned voice of the regenerative medical movement that seeks to work with nature to enable that health and, in sentiments very familiar to Zac, pran aims to empower his patients to embark on a journey of self-healing, using the philosophy of let food be thy medicine. Dr Pran also passionately strives to revise current nutritional guidelines based on the most up-to-date research in healthcare and science. He talks about this in a popular presentation which you can look at online, called the Human Gut A Masterpiece of Evolution. Pran has also purchased a farm, I'm told, and sees stewarding land, animals and food production as vital in so many ways. Up from Sydney, please give a massive hand for Dr Pran Yogathan. Applause and, for the first time today, cheering. He says keep it short, but he knows I'm not. It doesn't work when I Please don't read that LAUGHTER when I say keep it short to Zac, you all know what happens. That doesn't happen.

Zach: 6:13

I can talk long. I'm asking you not to talk long LAUGHTER.

AJ: 6:18

Still not persuaded. Zac Bush became a highly decorated physician, as many of you will know, with multiple awards, before a growing set of insights built towards a moment of transformation. His touchstone insight was that we don't need to solve each of our many, increasingly prevalent diseases. We need to regenerate the source of our health and vitality. Since then, he's become an internationally recognised educator on the microbiome as it relates to human health, soil health, food systems, water systems and, of course, regenerative living as a whole. Laughter Now I do want to keep going for a moment, Please. Zac has said the microbiome is more responsible for our health than our genes and is actually the great coordinating force of biology on Earth, and that we're destroying it with our dominant agriculture and medical systems. But Zac has also been startled by the regenerative capacity. Since embarking on a film project called Farmers' Footprint, it became a global phenomenon, prompting the creation of Farmers' Footprint USA, Australia, UK, South Africa, New Zealand, so far with an abhorter project called Project Bio.

AJ: 7:32

Applause, and really that all just scratches the surface, Joining us from across the seas. Please give a warm welcome back to the poet doctor Zac Bush APPLAUSE. All right, Kate, let's start in the same place. Hey, what's occurring to you out of today. That sort of resonates with where you're at in the moment.

Kate: 7:59

Yeah, this is really special. There's more people in this room than there is in my local town of Menindy, so that's really special to have all of you coming along and, I suppose, listening to us, but having some incredible conversations. I suppose what stands out for me a little bit bang up here right now is I'm not a health expert and I'm also right at the start of my regenerative agriculture journey as well. I just have a bit of a story to tell, but I think it's important to recognise that you all have a really important story to tell and it doesn't matter whether you're right at the start or really highly acclaimed people in this space. We're all doing it in our own special way and I think it's really important to meet people where they're at.

Kate: 8:43

The idea of regenerative agriculture is really new out my way and, yeah, sometimes when you have these conversations, things don't work out, and I think, from a personal perspective, it's actually part of the reason that I've left my family property or got asked to leave, because I wanted to have some of these discussions and my family wasn't ready to do it, and I think out of that I've learnt the importance of language when we're having these discussions, but also meeting people where they're at and understanding as well, because while at the time when I wanted to have these conversations, I was probably pretty angry that no one was willing to have these conversations or even talk about the word succession or anything like that, but out of that I've come to understand why, and I think that's really important for us to do along our journey is work with people that maybe we don't always agree with, but also ask why are they in the position that they are in? And do it without judgment, applause.

AJ: 9:46

Thanks so much, kate. It's such a great place to start Because I recall Lucy Newsom's work and how I do you, if you just happen to be there. I mean I don't know there's 800 of you who's done the work on succession and where that's at in Australia and it's still 90% plus to blokes. Women are effectively still locked out, despite the fact they are arguably at the vanguard of the movement. But also Talano Station, it's worth saying, probably did have more people than this when it started. Right, it was like a town, it had multiple pubs and other things.

Kate: 10:17

Yeah, so Talano. I think back in its heyday it had a couple hundred people living on it and it had three pubs. It had the largest privately owned fleet of paddle steamers in the country, and I think it's really interesting to see our part of the world how much it's fallen. And the fact that the Minindi community is now known as where all the dead fish came from and yet went worth just down the road, was actually considered to be one of the potential Australian capitals back when we were deciding where to be, because so much wealth came out of that area.

Kate: 10:45

The idea of the importance of agriculture in Australia's history, and unfortunately now we've kind of forgotten that and we're often told that resources are what's driving Australia these days, but I think we've forgotten where Australia started. And of course, though, as well, our First Nations people were doing agriculture long before we were as well, and I think it's a really important discussion to have in the ag space of how do we incorporate First Nations knowledge and principles and understandings as we move forward, because I think working with Australia as a country sort of thing is going to be really important in empowering First Nations people in that space too.

AJ: 11:23

Well, they seeded that very wealth, didn't they? That we then harvested and I'm so conscious of your health report then as well, kate, in the sense that it paints that the trajectory is continuing of that decline. But we know that these extraordinary stories bring in the regions up too, as part of this movement and part of the stories that want to be shared more of. So it does go to say well, a, the importance, but also B, the possibility that it can be revived, and we're seeing the glimpses of it out there, including on these big stations in the interior, the glimpses of getting back to that in a non-extractive fashion. I mean, what a dream that would be. Hey, pran over to you. How's things landing with you with what you've come in with?

Pran: 12:04

Thank you and I appreciate you guys having me here. It's an absolute honour In terms of where I'm at. I think Kate mentioned the word anger and I think I've certainly gone through that process of evolution within my field of medicine. So I'm a gastroenterologist and it's a specialty that encompasses the gut. I fell into this specialty. It wasn't my intention to do it.

Pran: 12:30

However, during the course of this journey, I've realised how important this organ system is. We communicate through the environment in us. We communicate via the skin, via the lungs, but one of the sites where the environment touches us at a great depth is where food meets us, which is the gut, and so, through the process of just learning and evolution of my thought processes, I've come to the conclusion that these monocrop systems that we're creating in agriculture are fundamentally driving a monocrop system within our gut. You know Zach's work on the microbiome has been phenomenal and I resonate with a lot of his message that the microbiome is more important than we can imagine. You know I do colonoscopies for a living and as I've gone through the process, I realised that I wasn't really able to identify the pathology in a lot of cases, why people would present to me with distress, so we would label it irritable bowel syndrome or IBS and sometimes if there was macroscopic damage, you know, damage that we could see we would call it inflammatory bowel disease and then we'd treat it with medications. But it felt to me like there was something intangible that I couldn't see that was important.

Pran: 13:57

Then science slowly starts uncovering the importance of the human gut microbiome and how it intersects with human health, and so that's been a journey for me to learn about the microbiome.

Pran: 14:09

But when you think about it, we are more microbiome than we are human beings. I mean, we carry more bugs, especially within our hind gut or colon, than we do our own cells, and we're fundamentally a symbiosis, a community, and if we are destroying that intangible community that we can't see, then we have to compromise the barrier that is the gut and this destructive environment that we've created around us, this productivist mindset that we've taken of consumption without giving back then feeds back to us through the gut and it manifests in various types of illnesses, you know, from irritable bouts, inflammatory diseases, to systemic autoimmune illnesses and then subsequently metabolic dysfunction, where the human body fundamentally degenerates and decays. And that shouldn't be the course of our journey. I mean, life is a process of steps that we've got to go through and life isn't necessarily easy, but we should be able to do it with an able body, and that's been the journey I've been on. It's a regenerative medical journey where I'm trying to rebuild, utilizing nature from broken systems.

AJ: 15:29

I'm standing to hear that, pran, and I'm so conscious and it might not come out more here but the breadth of human history then, that you've been motivated to look over and draw threads through, it's fascinating. But I have to touch back on it, even just briefly. With what was the accidental falling into this space? How did it happen then? How'd you step in the shit?

Pran: 15:57

Yeah, it's great. Look, I've always been driven by logic, I've always been driven by math, and so I fell into medicine. You know, I make no secret of that, it wasn't a passion. It's very traditionally, culturally appropriate for a lot of Sri Lankan and Indian families, asian families, to be pushed into medicine because of the prestige. So it's something I did for my parents, then for myself.

Pran: 16:28

But when I applied the lenses of logic to the field of medicine, it seemed highly illogical and the rage, the anger that I felt that other colleagues couldn't see it. And over time I realized that the field selects for compliance rather than creativity and brilliance, and anyone with a mindset that we can do things differently, the paradigm should shift, is fundamentally pushed out, like Kate said, out of the system. So it's been a fine balance to be able to juggle staying within the system and then practicing in this regenerative way. But you know, if you're an empathetic individual which I'd like to think that we all are in this room and that's why we've been brought together under the same roof you can't help but feel absolute, to feel distraught at the amount of illness that we see, and in youth, in young people as well. You know people that should be able to go through this life and navigate this life with an able body. They're not able to do so.

Pran: 17:51

When I looked within my field, I turned to professors and highly esteemed clinicians within my field. The answers that I got really didn't fit. It was, you know, it was put down to genetics or you know better diagnostic capacity, but it seemed implausible to me that those could be the causes. So the further I've dug in to the root cause, I've just ended up in soil. Basically is where I've ended up.

AJ: 18:20

And you put yourself there physically too. It's so fascinating to instantly weave the thread through our conversations so far today. You know, the evidence doesn't cut a thing, and even the assumptions we make in evidence that you've articulated. But that how we'll wear ourselves to that in the face of, in some cases, clear indicators of change. Let's bring that to you. Zach, How's things landing with you at the moment? What are you picking up?

Zach: 18:47

Yeah, I think I got shat out of the system at this point. It's like, yeah, the cascade of events that happen in our lives in hindsight is always such a beautiful tapestry of left-hand turns that somehow becomes a weave, and I'm just so grateful that we are capable of completely letting go of what we believed before. You know and I think that's our opportunity in this room is you all landed here? And there's a tendency for us to look out in the world and then pat ourselves on the back of being like, well, at least these 800 people figured out a little bit of truth or we're seeing the patterns more accurately than the rest. The danger is that we settle in and, you know, think that we've done our work and you know we've gotten ourselves at least to the point.

Zach: 19:42

One of the books that I, you know, really pivoted my world was well, a series of books from my and Rand written in the 1950s to late 60s, and those books depicted this group of people that recognized exactly what's happening today. I mean, it's like she had an eight-ball and saw 100 years ahead. It was trippy when you read Atlas Strugged, like what she predicted governments would behave like and what the social pressures and social policing and all the stuff that we've seen in the last three years is just straight out of Atlas Strugged. So I started reading it again in about March of 2020 because I was so overwhelmed by the course of events that happened so quickly, in the way in which 8 billion people jumped on. One narrative was so stunning. And then, as you read her books again, she depicts this small group of people that looks around and says you know what fine, you all go that way, we're going to pull out and we're going to go over here and let you all crash. And that may be necessary, you know, but I I'm afraid that what she depicted was that there was an arrival point for that small group of people where they became enlightened and they went and created their little, you know, ashram in the Colorado mountains, as she described it, and I was born and raised in those Colorado mountains and I can tell you that there's not a single community that's actually demonstrating a healthy human relationship to self, and so I think it's desperately needed for us to bypass the judgment of there's governments and there's food systems, and there's industry, and there's medicine, and then there's us.

Zach: 21:16

You know, in some ways, I wake up every morning being like shame on me that I can look around and can see as much as I do and don't transform faster, you know. And so I wake up with a little bit of sense of just wonderment, feeling like I'm six years old, on the pillow every morning now and just curious about what the day comes. And then, by 10 am, I'm discouraged that I have. I just had a thought that I had yesterday, based on the same premises and beliefs that I held yesterday, and the fact is we are capable of transformation at scales that, when we reach our potential, we won't be sitting in a room like this, because it'll be irrelevant for us to sit, because we've just started dancing all the time and it just seems ludicrous to stick your butt in a chair anymore, because we could also be dancing, and to listen to people's words anymore becomes irrelevant, because we can do direct heart-to-heart connection in which we absolutely translocate all of our wisdoms, all of our insights and all of our capacity to see the beauty in the other person that's dancing across the fire from us. And so we need to make sure that this revolution does not stop right. And it's on us because we've been given a gift to see something, and so I think that's our challenge to one another and we need to walk into this with is. I can see you, I see your beauty. What are we going to do next? You know, and make sure we're pushing the envelope at the appropriate rate of blessing that we have in this room.

Zach: 22:52

Jombee and his work on that did re-do. Today is the voice of tomorrow for me. I want to get as quick as possible to the point where I start toning rather than talking, and it is said that that's maybe what the Lumerians were capable of doing. They didn't have spoken language, they toned to one another in communication. And it is also said that the Lumerian myth is actually talks of a people that were a representation of a fall from a previous people that were called the Pyramidic people.

Zach: 23:23

That may be 150,000 years back, so before our common era, which is, you know, the Khoisan people. I hear all the time in Australia that you have the oldest lived peoples and language and all that. I hang out in Africa and I got bad news for you. It's like actually quite a bit older over there, but so the Khoisan people, two different indigenous people groups, have 100,000 to 120,000 year oral histories and that's our birthplace, that's where we all come from. There's one birth canal on this planet. It's not like we all started popping up from the corn fields, you know. It was like we actually came out of the same birth canal that the microbiome birthed from.

Zach: 24:00

And when you sit and look back in time before that 100,000 year oral history of our common era, now there was a previous epoch and there was a nonverbal peoples that lived, that were fully telepathic, as it is said, and so we actually had a fall of intelligence or a fall of our access to the universal knowledge. When we started toning, it was actually a decrement in function and it probably mapped to some of the global patterns that were happening with the decrement of biology on the planet. As biology decreases, we decrease our intelligence, and we can talk about more of that later. But it's intriguing to me that we went from telepathic to tonal to spoken language, and the spoken language is probably 30,000 to maybe as far back as 100,000.

Zach: 24:55

But somewhere in that 100,000 to 50,000 years ago we started spoken language and then things completely went off the rails when we developed written language, and so we've been in this steady decrement of our capacity to communicate, and this is why I've become so passionate about the hug as a method of greeting, because it cuts past all of the things that you would like to say to me or I would like to say to you, because that's the lowest vibration way I can communicate. I'm a column of water that was designed to vibrate in a very unique frequency, which is often called love, which is the result of seeing beauty, and that is a very complex bandwidth that I've learned this year and we'll go into that more later too. But I'm very excited by the possibility that eight hours of talking to wonder and wonderment these panels are blowing my mind. You know, I feel like I'm hearing things from my own frontal lobe and it's so refreshing to hear it from another voice, a different perspective. It's teaching me so much today. So I'm so grateful for staring you guys down today to learn from you and experience that perspective.

Zach: 26:06

But a challenge to all of us to let's go get dancing again and let's open our hearts to the point where us walking into the room of government officials, us walking into the room of industry leaders, is enough to shift the atmosphere, as we saw Amanda do. She shifted herself and the room shifted. She went into a non-verbal, non-argumentative, non-intellectual approach to shifting an entire room of 150 stakeholders who were adversarial and, in a second, melted that. She's demonstrating our potential as vessels of water capable of vibrating in love to shift things instantaneously instead of waiting for the intellectual arguments to play themselves out.

AJ: 27:02

APPLAUSE. Thanks, zach, I want to. In a sense I feel like a good place to start, maybe because it draws the thread together in the context of this country is cognizant too of how you ended up lobbing into this, like your transformative moments around this, zach, with cancer alley that you stumbled on in the Mississippi, which you then traced out to the food systems and agricultural systems, and the sort of how you've come to be here. And I say this because where you're from, kate, we talked briefly about this last night. It's funny, it's just because the media doesn't do this. It just comes to our attention because bless Australian story on the ABC has Kate on it and as, almost as an incidental aside, we're talking about an MND alley, essentially a motor neuron disease alley, a seven times the national average incidence around Griffith but then broader around the Riverina where the Murray Darling and particularly Darling runs. And it's all triggered, well speculated, but increasingly the evidence comes into back. It triggered by blue green algae and other symptoms of runoff water, mismanagement and so forth, that we're setting up a similar dynamic here in our through bowl and our biggest water system. Then a few Kate didn't actually know this, so a few weeks after Kate was on again, which is only recently.

AJ: 28:28

So a couple of weeks ago a well-known identity in this country, fiona MacDonald, was profiled, and she has MND and she has a couple of professors that she's working closely with who are taking note of where the causes are coming from, not just doing the clinical trials and the drug things too. And bless those people too. Right same thing. We're all trying to come at this disaster of an epidemic, which is really just symbolic of the broadest suite that you alluded to, pran. But bless these professors. They are there, are going to the causes and this is what they're turning up. And, kate, you've been there. You've spoken to some of these people like, how's that feeling and how do you stitch together what you're learning at the moment?

Kate: 29:11

Yeah, it's really scary. So some of you might know, yeah, griffith out in New South Wales is seven times the national average of motor neuron disease and sort of people are saying, oh, we don't really know why. But it's interesting how locals and people you know that live in the area and have motor neuron disease recognise that something's gone wrong with our water. And similar things have happened out my way and Menindee, far west New South Wales. We're right at the bottom of the Darling Barker River and our river quality has deteriorated so badly in my life. The river that I grew up alongside is not the river that past generations have had and our rates of motor neuron disease are increasing as well. But what's really hard in this space is that governments don't even want to look into it, because it's kind of like if we don't actually give you the facts of, yeah, how much more likely you are to have it, then you can't complain and tell us what we have to do. And that's really hard, that sort of advocacy from a local level having to be in that space as well. But it is to do with water because, yeah, our rivers are sicker than they've ever been and the blue-green algae that we're constantly faced with, even now after a number of years of floods, and that's really tough, I think, to think about as well, because the river is. We're really connected to the river out that way and you learn from a really young age, growing up on the river, the respect for it that it can be a dangerous place, so don't go down there without a parent, and things like that, but then also that our, like the country, thrives off of the river. The river really is the lifeblood, and so, yeah, I went back home after finishing school down in Adelaide, to the property and the river that I grew up alongside wasn't there anymore and that was really hard to experience. And then there were just these tiny little pools that I remember we were like pumping out of and the quality of that water that we were like pumping through our showers and over our bodies, but then also out to our stock as well, and seeing the deterioration in our stock and the way in which the river brings people together. It's always been this type of you know, you meet along the river because we're out in desert countries, so it's pretty hot everywhere else, and that stopped happening when the river stopped flowing. And so, recognizing all these parts, these elements of it, that sort of tie in together. And I think then it comes to the health side of things as well is that when people aren't connecting and coming together, then their health and their mental health deteriorates as well, because you don't have that connection with other people and you might not see other people you know for days on end. So seeing that deterioration of our part of the world is really hard and the idea of, like modern neuron disease is so scary to me.

Kate: 31:53

And you mentioned my report on Lucky Country before. That's a report that I did looking at life expectancy from people in Sydney versus people in the far west of New South Wales, and I have a 5.7 years less life expectancy than people living in Sydney and I think that's kind of hard to think about. And you look at suicide rates they're about two and a half times the rates in Sydney. And so all this money that we're investing into, you know, suicide awareness and prevention and everything like that, our rates are increasing and so we really need to be looking at what's going on there. And I think you know the idea of having local solutions for local problems, because one size does not fit all and I don't think that's just in a health perspective. I think it's in food and culture and everything. If you listen to the locals, then you'll understand what they need and I think, yeah, it sort of comes back to that listening side of things as well.

AJ: 32:46

Yep, applause, yep, and in a way, it's unsurprising to hear that in a context of degradation to such extent that these would be the consequences. I want to stick with you for a moment, kate, because I feel like you know. You mentioned governments and the reticence to change this, and you can instantly map that back on our previous conversations as well. So, the National Farmers' Federation yeah, I know it's a key point in your conversation, but it's a key point in your life at the moment too, how they're engaging or not in this space and their connection with the National Party. But what I want to bring to the table en route to that is that ostensibly, there's an enormous crossing point and I wondered ah, is this an opportunity? Because the National Farmers' Federation produced a report on the health of farmers nationwide and they found it. So I'll tell these off for you A third of them considered self-harm or suicide in the previous year.

AJ: 33:52

Nearly half said the debt is so crippling they're on the brink of leaving it, and two-thirds feel like their work is not valued or understood. So you can map these onto each other, can't you? So on the surface, there was this enormous. Oh, maybe there still is. I like to think there still is opportunity to connect on what should be shared interest and goal and indeed universal shared interest and goal. But thinking of your report and that report, there they are. Yet you're finding barriers and you indeed you mentioned before dealing with anger and whatever. You have embraced ways to try to connect with people generally in your work in Parliament House this year and hope that that can get through somewhere. Give us an insight into how you're feeling now. What's worked, what hasn't.

Kate: 34:47

Yeah, so I often go head to head with National Farmers Federation because I disagree with a lot of what they do and I think sometimes they give farmers quite a bad name for themselves, not spotlighting things like regenerative agriculture and really those nice stories that we want to hear and see. Unfortunately, only time farmers seem to get a spotlight when there's a drought and the farmer can't afford to feed their sheep and cattle and the sheep are dying and that's a really heartbreaking thing to see. But unfortunately, yeah, a lot of Australians don't see true everyday farmers type thing and when times are good, and also those farmers that get to the point where their stock are dying in a drought probably haven't managed the land in the way that they should have. And we actually saw it out in far west New South Wales during the last drought where probably a lot more accustomed to drought than a lot of people and a lot of the old fellows were like looking at these signs that the country was giving them and going we need to get rid of our stock right now because tough times are coming. And that was really interesting to see as well, because those sort of the footage of dead and dying stock didn't generally come from the far west because people were ready, and I think part of its understanding or letting people know that our climate is changing and what to expect, moving forward and working with nature to some respect.

Kate: 36:06

But yeah, I do work with a lot of big variety of people, as you said, the Australia Institute, which is a progressive think tank, a fifth generation farmer, the kind of things that probably don't seem like they should always go with each other. But you said earlier and this is sort of my motto that I live by is that I don't have to agree with you on everything to work with you on anything. And if our values can align with something, whatever that might be, whether it's health or whether it's trying to prevent suicide in regional areas and things like that, I will walk into a room and talk to you about that. And I've sort of butted heads of David Little Proud, of Fabian in the past and things like that, and people go. He's a national party leader. How could you possibly work with him? And I was like, look, the things that we don't agree on, I leave at the door. So we're not going to talk about water and climate change and these type of things, but there are things that we can align on and actually have a discussion about, and that is what I'm going to go in there and speak to him about, and I think that's when we really start to see more things in common come out, having been willing to have those conversations with people that you don't agree with, because I think too often we're not willing to actually have those conversations and it's really sad to think about.

Kate: 37:24

But I think the voice referendum that just happened here was a big telling point, I think, for me in that space, because there was a lot of people in Canberra going it's going to get up or it's going to be tough but it could get up. And I was out in regional Australia and I was like they're not even having these conversations, no one is saying, no one is talking about yes, everyone's just going to go the no way. And we actually saw that happen. And it's because that we were so focused on these areas and in our little echo chambers that we didn't actually think to look further out and go. What's happening in an area where I'm not and that's what I try and do is bridge the worlds between Canberra, I suppose, at the moment, and the spaces that I play in there, but then also going back to those sort of routes of traditional farmers that probably are never going to change their way. But you need to open up these conversations one way so will say.

AJ: 38:17

Now, I was in the Kimberley and the Pilbara, so the north of Western Australia, and I was hearing the same conversations, but including with Aboriginal communities, including with Aboriginal leaders. And sure, most of them still said, when I eventually I'd listened, but firstly to your point and then asked given we're going to a referendum, will you all the same vote? Yes, and most of them would say yes in that context. But some said I'm not even enrolled to vote, I'm not going to bother. There was still that level of abstention and these are more the leadership of some of these communities. It's at least to say that there was ambiguity, that I mean there's just, especially, I think, when the further away you get from Canberra and maybe even Perth, there's lack of trust, there's historical context, there's all sorts of complexities. It's enough to say that it's nuanced. And I come back to Amanda's line earlier, not to. I mean, this is a bigger conversation, but this is what I thought a lot during the referendum Not to put people in a position where they choose a side. Yeah, so when it became it wasn't bipartisan. That's what we did. But we do know the ways people can come together and these are the sort of ethos around it.

AJ: 39:25

Pran, could I come back to you with a sense of? I mean, you haven't been shout out of the system, you're in there. What are you observing? How are you going about things? What are you observing in terms of what's helping and what's not, by way of bringing people on board or inspiring people? Do you have to go around it? In almost in classic systems thinking terms, don't confront the thing you'd like to see different. Go around it. What do you do?

Pran: 39:53

So my approach has always been look, we're going to have to understand the nature of the reality in which we exist first of all. So the way I approach it at a clinical level to get people to change behaviors is we'll talk about the nature of reality. What is it? And when you reduce reality down to its very smallest level distance or time reality actually disappears. The amount of energy needed to sustain these really small distances of time it's called the Planck scale and physicists talk about it reality disappears. So, fundamentally, we're in this holographic simulation and we animate these bodies through our soul. So these are the sort of levels that I try and reach.

Pran: 40:43

People at that do you believe in the concept of a soul and how does your soul feel? 50% of the people I scare, but I'm finding that we are starting to become more and more willing to talk on the concept of a soul. We've been socially engineered with concepts like well, at a dinner table, you don't talk politics, you don't talk money, you don't talk God, and this type of engineering means that you end up talking about things that don't mean anything at all, because, let's be honest, I mean, I don't think government's going to come in to help and Atlas Shrugged is a great book, but there are other books and other writers that have talked about a mode of governance called technocracy, as the monetary system fails around us due to the deeply centralized nature of the US dollar, which is unfortunately our reserve currency. Sorry, no offense to the US dollar.

Zach: 41:50

Only for three more weeks.

Pran: 41:55

You will find that there is just ensuing chaos globally, because this is the grease that runs the global world. It's in the era of globalization, so you'll see that they have to use a mode of governance called technocracy, where they'll weaponize science against the people. So these people that are bought into government are non-elected officials that advise government, and I don't think it's any surprise to anyone. But corporations sit over government, and when I talk to my patients about this, this is the depth that I've got to go to, which just means I end up seeing seven or eight patients in a day versus the 25 that I used to see.

Pran: 42:47

But Zach said something to me when we're out there in the back region, that my role as a doctor will come not just on a clinical scale, on a cold face. It's actually to talk at depth to people like yourselves on this that look, no one's coming to save us, we're going to save ourselves, and this is the approach that I've taken with my patients. Actually, the greater medical system can't understand these concepts as yet, but as things fail, people will emerge out of the rubble. I think those that have stood aside and let the herd kind of rush on towards this oncoming cliff stand. We're well placed. We're well placed to pull people out of this rubble, to help, and that's what we are. I mean, what is the purpose of life? All the purpose of life is service to fellow man, and that's the conclusion I've come to, and I'm in a great position in medicine to help.

AJ: 43:59

That maps on to a lot of what you've come to as well, Zach. I wonder what you're thinking after hearing this. If you want to communicate non-verbally, be careful what you wish for.

Zach: 44:21

Yeah, almost enough said there. I think it's just beautiful to hear it from both you, and I think what I would like to dive into over the after all of everybody gets some sustenance and we come back after a meal is give you guys a good sense of where the United States is right now, because I think there is this perception that it's the reserve currency and it's kind of in control of the global narrative and all that, and we see that shattering in real time and I want to catch you guys all up on kind of where we're at as a country that hasn't been hitting the CNN newsreels yet. But the excitement that I have is what's happening with this farm's footprint team, kind of leap frogging, what we've been doing globally with storytelling on a whole other level. And I'm very intrigued by what we're hearing here, because you've got stakeholders across the day here that really represent all the mechanisms that are going to create the change that you all feel is possible in your hearts and therefore you're here was represented on the stage today. You've got people that are influencing lawmakers. You've got people that are influencing industry. You've got people that are influencing the farm mentality. You've got people that are influencing consumer behavior and that transition from consumer to producer. You've got physicians, you've got the whole matrix is represented on the stage today and this is your home team, and I think that this group of farmers footprint are inspired to realize that Australia is at a very unique place to catapult this movement that's kind of hit the globe far more successfully than I anticipated but leap frog our current situation by really bringing a narrative through a cinematography technique that has introduced people to areas of experience that they've frankly forgotten about, and food is a good example of this. The chef's table is one that Dave Murphy and the team have been pointing to is a series that happened on Netflix that seemed like was about chefs or maybe about fancy food. So the reason it's now in series nine and one of the most successful pieces of content ever created on Netflix is because it tells of the human spirit behind the food and it introduces you that in the context of a beautiful nature. Every one of those episodes just takes your breath away with the place in which the person occurs, and this is happening globally.

Zach: 46:46

Now you see that the tourism is a good example of a map of human behavior, or human consciousness, maybe, or our current thought process and that if you come into Africa in 1995 or even 2005, the number one category for spending in tourism was eco-tourism, and so people wanted to go see the Silverback Gorilla, they wanted to go see the Zebra, they wanted to see the elephants, they wanted to see this. Today, in 2023, you've got 55% of the entire tourism spending globally, which is $255 billion a year Massive amount of dollars coming out of our pockets to do ethno-tourism the study of the desire to travel to the peoples in the place that you don't live. That's a very exciting shift. We're realizing that the elephants are spectacular and they can teach us something, but after 20 years of staring at the elephants, we suddenly learned that we didn't love each other and we couldn't see the beauty in one another, and that's shifting. In Australia, you are finding the beauty of your own story, of the indigenous peoples that have anchored this land for the last 60,000 years, and their storytelling maintained a balance with the ecosystems they lived within.

Zach: 48:13

It was mentioned earlier just how a smaller fraction of the earth is amenable to growing food about 1.30th or so. 97% of those arable farmable lands are now severely deplete or deplete of carbon and other nutrients, and so 97% deplete. We're down to 3% and it turns out that that's the exact same tragic number of our indigenous cultures. We've destroyed our indigenous cultures by 97% over the same 100-year period, maybe 200-year period, that we've done both soil and culture destruction and, as mentioned by our brothers and sisters from land this morning, that we are all indigenous to this earth and we need to quickly realize that and remember that and reconnect to the ancestors that we were welcomed into by the guided meditation from Jambi this morning.

Zach: 49:03

And my excitement is that, as we start to weave ourselves back into this reality and we do travel to one another to see the cultures, it should be noted that 80% of the biodiversity left on the planet is managed by indigenous cultures. 80% of the biodiversity left is managed by the 3% of humanity that's still connected to their indigenous culture. It's so super effective to be connected to land, to remember you are from here and to act in that way. You can manage so much, you can gift so much back to the earth and she will be so abundant in her gift back. And so I'm so compelled by this vision that's collectively coming out of your home team. Here it's already different. There's already a different future emerging and these people that are on stage are witnessing to you what you are co-creating within this continent, so I'll just honor all of you in that journey.

Kate: 50:08

And just on that, I think that's been a shift as well within Australia, because I was telling AJ yesterday that I found this raggedy old book at the station years and years ago and apparently it was actually written for Queen Elizabeth on her first trip over to Australia.

Kate: 50:22

So it was kind of like trying to explain I don't know Australia tour or something like that, and it was in like one of the first few pages and it actually said that Australia is a country where Australians spend their short holidays by the beach and long holidays overseas and none of them ever go out to see their own country. I was like that really hit me, because what that means is that we don't go out and see where our food is grown or anything like that, and I think there's been a bit of a shift to actually want to go out and see our country and recognize how beautiful and incredible it is, because so many people never do. And so I think that connection to not just our country but where our food comes from and also the people out that way as well, is really important and I think definitely needs to happen more in this country.

AJ: 51:09

It's been interesting for me to observe as someone who's I'd traveled the country. I said to Kate in turn, I'd traveled the country before, but I hadn't traveled to the people like producing and much less regenerating. And what I've learned and I guess mapped onto my own experience is there's a certain degree of assumed barrier, even intimidation, just within oneself. But both ways it's like the city folk don't understand whatever and the pastoralists are going to walk onto a pastoralist I'm just going to go and knock on your door. You know it feels so remote, literally and figuratively. I like to think that, yeah, those are the barriers that are coming down, and then all the more when it relates to the people who've been certainly here for tens of millennia and on that, Kate, you've been connecting really strongly as well. So I'd love to hear more about how that has come out of a cute disaster as well, hey. So what's happening with them and your shared space?

Kate: 52:07

Yeah, so when it comes to sort of my advocacy in the Darling Barker space and you have noticed that I call it the Darling Barker which actually incorporates the First Nations name for the river the Bakingji people out my way are river people, and so it's something that, as a community, throughout this battle for more water coming down our river, we've actually really been united in this fight for it, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, and that's been really special from a perspective of, like, I'm a farmer and so you know the family, as you mentioned, the property that I grew up on before, you know, used to be this big hundreds of people living on it, and so it's kind of the picture of colonisation essentially, and I'm really conscious of that as well. And so being in a space where I can come and actually work with Aboriginal people and like have a common goal that we're working towards has been really important and it's changed my life and my journey. No doubt I remember right at the start reading this report of Wulcania, which is actually my second nearest town now, and some of you guys might have heard of Wulcania before and it's a pretty sad little place. It used to be the fourth largest in the airport in Australia, talking about the manor wealth that came down there, and now the township of Wulcania has a female life expectancy of 42 and male life expectancy of 37 for men, and that's in Australia and people are totally shocked by that statistic. But what's actually kind of even more crazy is that when the river is sick, crime rate increases and life expectancy decreases. And I remember the first time I saw that and I was like what? I just didn't get it. I wasn't connected to community and I wasn't connected to First Nations people really at all.

Kate: 53:48

And the more I got involved and taken out on country and like explained this to an uncle by debates has been a massive mentor to me and I remember him saying that like the river is like our mother and when she's sick we're sick and you know the river is like the blood that runs through our veins and like this really powerful language.

Kate: 54:05

But it's like it's so clear you can see in the town when the river is sick that the community goes downhill and I don't think like our politicians or anything like that recognize that enough that these are real world impacts and these are people's lives. So it's definitely like I'm so privileged to have been taken out and shown culture in this space and I think in one respect, like the being able to listen to country and understand just a bit more, but then also just having that knowledge and connection to First Nations people, yeah, it's kind of like the only good thing that's come out of, I think you know, all these mass fish kills and everything like that is that our community has come together. And when you know government or government bodies come out, they used to try and separate us. And I remember Uncle Badger one day going no, we don't want black and white meetings, we are one community and we're going to come together and I just thought that was really special.

AJ: 55:02

Here's to that. All right, we're on time. But, pran, I want to come back to you for a last word. It could be potentially what you'd like to call for, even just out of what we've expressed here on stage. What occurs to you is what we could step up to in the moment, or it could even be just how you've got to land. You've picked up some land to Stuart too, and you've talked about the importance of dealing with animals. If you believe in the importance of the microbiome Like, take the tech. You wish to close us up in a minute or so.

Pran: 55:31

Yeah, my takeaway message has always been that we've, in that void of disconnect that Katie's spoken about, grew the corporate power of food, which drove industrial agriculture, and societal culture changed around us. You know, we see a generation that doesn't think twice about driving through McDonald's or KFC or shopping in a supermarket full of ultra processed food. So we're talking about a cultural shift which is required, which is a difficult challenge to take on. So you know, I'm realistic about the depth of the challenge. But my perspective has always been that we just do it one person at a time, it's just one block at a time, and I really don't think we will be able to implement this on a policy level from government. I think those days are long gone.

Pran: 56:29

And so it all comes back to community and understanding this larger organism that we live with, which is symbiotically this us, basically, and so we've all just got to plug away. But again, the societal engineering has been so strong that anyone who stands outside the herd is brought down. So it's an exercise in patience and it's really testing times, but we will emerge out of it. I don't have a unifying answer to your question, but I think it is a process of evolution. All I can do is change myself and anyone else I potentially come into contact with that. It's been my basic philosophy.

AJ: 57:13

The amount of times I hear that, Pran, yeah, thank you. Across all different contexts I hear that. What a great way to end up and what a great way to wind up our three panels, our three conversations. That was Kate McBride, Dr Pran Yoganathan and Zach Bush MD. For more on our guests, the festival and Farmer's Footprint, see the links in the show notes. I've put a few photos of this panel on the website too, and again more still, on Patreon, with thanks to subscribing members. Thank you to all you generous supporters for making this episode possible. If you've 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. Thanks a lot. Thanks also for sharing the podcast with friends and continuing to rate it on your preferred app or, hey, all apps you can get your hands on. 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.