The RegenNarration Podcast
The RegenNarration podcast features the stories of a generation that is changing the story, enabling the regeneration of life on this planet. It’s ad-free, freely available and entirely listener-supported. You'll hear from high profile and grass-roots leaders from around Australia and the world, on how they're changing the stories we live by, and the systems we create in their mold. Along with often very personal tales of how they themselves are changing, in the places they call home. With award-winning host, Anthony James.
The RegenNarration Podcast
216. Allan Savory: On holistic management, scaling & a sense of survival
Allan Savory is a legend of regenerative agriculture - the ongoing force behind holistic management, a movement that has featured in so many stories on the podcast. Indeed, as we’ve travelled across the US / Turtle Island, we continue to hear such stories (including in last week's episode).
Longer-term listeners might remember my conversation with Allan on the podcast back in 2020. It still stands as amongst the most listened to, and my personal favourites. So as we neared Denver, Colorado, I reached out to Allan and the team at the Savory Institute. As it happens, Allan was about to front the next course at their nearby ranch. But by the time we were in the ‘hood, it was the week of Independence Day, and holiday movements had set in. So Allan, his wife Jody and I shared the intention to meet later in our journey.
Then, over the weekend just passed, we were privileged to visit Kelsey Scott at the Cheyenne River Sioux Indian Reservation in South Dakota (standby for that special episode soon). Allan came to mind there too, with a story I share here from Kelsey’s husband Monte. It reminded me of Allan’s story at the end of our conversation, on the profound place intuition has held for him in his life. Then there was the music he chose, which I was able to include at the end.
So with all that in mind, and as Allan approaches his 89th birthday, I hope you enjoy revisiting one of this podcast's very special conversations.
This episode has chapter markers and a transcript (available on most apps too).
Intro recorded 6 August 2024. Conversation recorded 22 November 2020.
Title slide: Allan Savory (supplied).
See more photos and links on the website of the original release, and for more from behind the scenes become a member via the Patreon page.
Music:
Regeneration, by Amelia Barden, from Regenerating Australia.
Faraway Castle, by Rae Howell.
Scotland the Brave, by Eric M. Armour.
Sourced from the Free Music Archive under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The RegenNarration playlist, music chosen by guests (thanks to Josie Symons).
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Allan Savory is a legend of regenerative agriculture, the ongoing force behind holistic management, a movement that has featured in so many stories on this podcast. Indeed, as we've travelled across the US / Turtle Island, we continue to hear such stories. Just last week, I shared with subscribers the few extra minutes with Canadian bison rancher Cody Spencer on how and why he has particularly valued the combination of holistic management and Nicole Masters' Create program. I also mentioned Kachana Station's gathering, which is on now, where Allan held a workshop, too, some years back. And the correspondence I continue to receive from people around the States suggests there are so many more who use holistic management as at least part of their kit. The evidence of its merits abounds. What a legacy. G'day, Anthony James here for The RegenNarration ad-free, freely available media, entirely supported by listeners like you. Longer-term listeners might remember my conversation with Allan on the podcast back in 2020. It still stands as amongst the most listened to and my personal favourites.
AJ:So as we neared Denver, Colorado, I reached out to Allan and the team at the Savory Institute. As it happens, Allan was about to front the next course at their nearby ranch, but by the time we were in the hood, it was the week of Independence Day and holiday movements had set in. So Allan, his wife Jody and I shared the intention to meet later in our journey. Then, over the weekend just past, my family and I were privileged to visit Kelsey Scott at the Cheyenne River Sioux Indian Reservation in South Dakota.
AJ:Stand by for that special episode soon. Allan came to mind there too, as Kelsey's husband, Monte, talked about an experience he had while tracking a mountain lion, when he found himself unsure of where the cat was but compelled to turn around and run for his life. When things felt okay again, he returned and found the lion had been perched on a clifftop right above him. It reminded me of Alan's answer at the end of our conversation here about the profound place intuition has held for him in his life. Then there was the music he chose, which I was able to include at the end. So with all that in mind, and as Allan approaches his 89th birthday, I hope you enjoy revisiting one of the very special conversations on this podcast.
Allan:And I remember thinking there why am I in the army? Why am I fighting in a war? Why am I doing all these things for politicians I don't believe in, policies I don't believe in? What am I prepared to do about this, the destruction of my country?
AJ:G'day. My name's Anthony James and welcome to a very special final episode for 2020 of The RegenNarration. Haul back through the spread of regenerative agriculture in recent decades. And Alan Savory is there. His global influence is hard to overstate. Here we chat about Allan's extraordinary life and the evolution of his insights that have proved so transformative for so many. Thinking holistically is one thing, but how do we actually manage our lives and societies holistically. A nd, ultimately, how do we engage the institutions that we've come to so distrust to enable regeneration at scale in whatever our role or walk of life, f ar from just in agriculture, but certainly not without it? Allan still believes it's possible, lays down the challenge and proposes how it might be done. Still going beautifully at age 85 and generously joining me online from his second home in Florida, USA, h ere's Allan. G'day Allan, thanks a lot for joining me. It's really quite something to be connecting with you directly, because I've connected with you so much indirectly through so many people in Australia.
Allan:Yeah, no, I've been there quite often, you know. Initially I took the decision to bypass Australia and just concentrate on the two Americas and Africa, because I was only one person, you know, trying to do an awful lot. And then Bruce Ward rang me once and that got me involved with Bruce and Brian Marshall. And then, the next thing, I went there for a book signing and we were met by over 300 people from every state except Tasmania, just trained by Bruce and Brian. That got things started there.
AJ:Wow, when was that?
Allan:Late 80s, probably yeah. And then you interviewed Terry McCosker, you know, who took over from Stan, and Stan, you know, worked with me for some years.
AJ:Yeah.
Allan:He was the government economist on the charter trials and although all the critics said the trials failed, et cetera, Stan left his job and came and got a job with me consulting.
AJ:For those who don't know, they're the trials that were through the 70s and we'll sort of come back around to that background as we go. But it's so interesting that he was appointed as sort of this independent arbiter and he's seen the success without clearly being overly attached to the paradigm from which he'd come, and could see what was in front of him and then adjust. And it's similar with Terry. And I'm really struck by these stories and you too, to a degree that you having come from the conventional space and being really committed to it. I mean, when Terry first came across the work of you and Stan, he thought it was bullshit, quote unquote. And you too, you were so committed to the ideology, if you like, of the time that it led to your greatest regret in the slaughter of the elephants, which we'll also come to. But the fact that these people yourself and these other people can change, can just see what's in front of them and go okay, new piece of information. Move as opposed to being defensive in their positions, it's so instructive.
Allan:You know, over 50 years ago, when the charter trials finished and we were having a meeting, there was a wiser farmer than me I never remembered his name, but a group of us were standing in Rhodesia and somebody asked me in the group and they said why are you up against such opposition? And before I could answer somebody, well, vested interests. And I thought of ICI, c, baga, you know the big companies and financial vested interests, because that's what everybody thinks of. And and I said no because to this day I've never been opposed by any company, corporate vested interest to this day. And when I said no, there was a farmer there who said Alan, you're wrong. And I said what do you mean? He said you're up against the biggest vested interest in the world. And I said I don't know what that is even. What is it? He said professional people's egos, biggest vested interest in the world. And I've seen it with the academic behavior to my work.
AJ:It's just academic egos, not about science at all there's so much attached to that, isn't there around identity and what you've constructed, your place in the pecking order, even to risk I mean, if you have that prism, to risk, relinquishing it, I imagine, can feel pretty catastrophic, even if you're really attached to it.
Allan:Well, look at what we're going through in America right now, with a president who won't yield. He's been defeated, every legal challenge has been thrown out and he's just refusing to accept that he's a loser.
AJ:Yeah, it really is. While he may be a sort of extreme manifestation, the fact that that's at play with us at large is really a message for everyone, and so your connection to your place you do a lot of work in now Zimbabwe.
Allan:Oh yeah, and I'm there half the year and I've just been there for eight months lockdown.
AJ:Oh, you were there for lockdown. I imagine that was good to be there for lockdown yeah. What's your sense of connection to that place?
Allan:Well, that's home. I mean, that's where I'm most at home, where I'm happiest in the bush, with all the elephants and the lions and the buffalo and the kudu and things around me. I mean, I've got all the game around me. I can sit and literally have my morning tea by my campfire and look at bushbuck and kudu and things, as I have my morning tea or my drink in the evening. You know when else could I do that? And then I actually really like the rural people, the tribal people. I just I like them. They're good people.
AJ:I mean, it sounds bloody wonderful, alan, so no wonder you love it. But it's so interesting that you, as someone who works with pastoralists and farmers, that you're relishing the wild, really says so much about how you go about pastoralism and farming well, don't forget, I didn't come from that background at all.
Allan:Don't forget, I was probably more extreme than even the vegans are. Uh, about livestock, uh, I was on record as saying I was prepared to shoot bloody ranchers because they were literally destroying our country with their livestock. And thankfully, I found out for myself that I was completely wrong and we absolutely had to have the livestock. And so you know that changed my whole attitude. And that was back in the 50s, that was in the 60s when I realized we had to have livestock.
Allan:In the 50s I started the really the game ranching movement. I've still got I coined those words game, game ranching to harvest the wild population in situ. And I've still got my handwritten project to start that in the Banguelo Swamps in northern Rhodesia. And I've got Sir Frank Fraser Darling's corrections of my English because I wanted him to put the project forward because he was Britain's or one of the world's top recognized ecologists in those days and I thought if he put it forward it would go, whereas I was a 21 year old kid, you know. But he didn't. He said I won't take your idea, you have to push it forward. But he corrected't. He said I won't take your idea, you have to push it forward. But he corrected my english and I still kept that document that's magnificent.
Allan:Our belief then was if we could get rid of the cattle we could save the whole situation, but of course that proved totally wrong, like almost everything I ever believed. Turned have drawn.
AJ:Well, there it is again the ability to be able to shift course and not be so precious about ourselves. So let's follow that thread. Alan, because I mentioned the elephants briefly, that was sort of a pinnacle moment of, I imagine, no less than a personal tragedy for you, because you were so committed to the task that what you were observing seemed to call for the mass culling of the mega fauna there. Can you run us through briefly what happened and how you felt about it at the time?
Allan:Anthony, that was just one of the awakenings of how wrong I was on that issue and people still are. They're still culling and that's the way we're going to go and I'm still getting abuse for saying I was wrong. It's amazing the abuse I still get for it but, that wasn't the only one.
Allan:There was a very emotional moment and I cannot remember I think it was it well, it was certainly before we learned how wrong I was about the elephant culling when I was sitting on the banks of the Amzingwani River in the southern part of what was then Rhodesia, and the river came down in flood and you know, men don't cry, but I just sat there and cried my bloody heart out as the river came down, muddy water and trees and, I think, a donkey floated by, because that was my country.
Allan:And I remember thinking there why am I in the army? Why am I fighting in a war? Why am I doing all these things for politicians? I don't believe in policies, I don't believe in what am I prepared to do about this, the destruction of my country? And at that moment I just I don't want to be dramatic or anything, but I literally just thought to myself if I'm prepared to give my life in the war I'm fighting, I'm prepared to give my life for this. And I really made up my mind then that, no matter what the opposition, no matter what happened, I would do everything I could to stop that and that would be my life.
AJ:You just felt like you had a direct moment of witnessing the destruction of a nation, of a country, and that's now what we know is on the line for all of us. That civilization, no less, is on the line, and I've been fascinated to hear you speak about how, in a sense, don't worry about the agriculture itself, because people have sustained agriculture in one form or another after civilizations have collapsed, but no one's kept agriculture with civilization, with cities and that's the challenge that we're faced with.
Allan:Some years ago, roger Brown here did a video of me. It was in the old tape days and he wanted it to be on sustainable agriculture, but it isn't. I've still got the video and it's titled Sustainable Civilization and we filmed that on the ruins of the Chacoan civilization in New Mexico here in America. And the point I was making is that we know how to sustain agriculture, but we don't know how to sustain cities. Throughout history, farmers have destroyed more civilizations than armies have done. Armies change them, but farmers destroy them. They never rise again.
Allan:And I was making these points and saying if we just abandon the cities, whether we're nomadic pastures, we can sustain our families. Whether we abandon cities in yucatan or, you know, tropical jungles, we can sustain small communities. So we've always been able to sustain communities, although we were still doing damage to the environment, but we couldn't sustain cities. And now it's become a global issue and it's tragic to hear the academia, which has moved mostly to cities, now talking about how people in the rural areas, who will suffer with climate change and things like that and I keep thinking you dummies, can't you get it that the people in the cities are going to die the worst deaths. They're going to have the greatest suffering. The people in the country, districts and so on basically still know how to look after themselves, how to grow food. People in the cities can do little more than just work a computer or a cell phone, or, you know, they're totally an urban environment. Now I doubt any of them could light a fire without matches.
AJ:Yes, it's ironic, isn't it, that the cities have become so dependent on being served by the regions.
AJ:I feel like they're the secure ones because, of course, they have usurped we have usurped the wealth and power. Okay, let's go back and fill in some gaps then around what built to that really incredible moment by the river for you, Alan, you were a bit frustrated at university with the silo disciplines and you'd come out and you're working as a ranger. You started to observe the decay of landscapes, defying conventional wisdom. What was building for you towards that moment by the river?
Allan:Well, you know, well, before the moment by the river, when I came out of university I just wanted to get. I only went to university to get older because of the minimum joining age in the game department was 25. And when I left university I was still only 20. But the colonial office very kindly made an exception and I joined when I was 20, which was the first time. So, as far as I know, I was the first new young university graduate, professional biologist, to join the game department. Now, initially, the first part of the first year, they just buggered me around, gave me all the dirty jobs to do and I loved it. So I was sent to hunt, you know man-eating lions and problem pigs and anything that the older guys didn't want to do and I just loved it.
Allan:But as soon as I could, I began to do serious work and one of the first things was to see for myself in wild areas the damage that fire was doing, because game management, wildlife management in the national parks today, over 60 years later, is still the same. It's stop poachers and burn the grasslands, burn the savannas to get a green flush of grass for the animals. So they're still doing that today and that's what we did. And we burnt mile after mile after mile of country as soon as the grass was dry enough to burn. But I was observing that and seeing the soil erosion and what was happening.
Allan:And so the first paper I published was on that. It was just field observations at that point on the damage that our policies as biologists were doing in future national parks. And I could not get that published at all because it couldn't get past any peers and it still wouldn't get peer-reviewed. And so that was my first experience of the peer-review process because I was absolutely right, but it couldn't get published. And now we know much more about it and I was spot on. So those observations I was starting to make literally within months of leaving university and then my career has pretty well been like that all along.
AJ:Yeah, and then you were at the point where, with that view of farmers and livestock and, by extension, elephants and so forth, that you felt like these animals had to be off country for it to come back, and then, in places where that started to happen, it didn't fix things.
Allan:Yeah, you know now I'm looking back on it all with hindsight and so on, but initially, you know, elephants were my big passion. I loved hunting elephants, I loved being around elephants, everything. And so I pretty well decided, okay, I'm going to specialize on elephants. And had I done so, I would have been the first person to do that and become an elephant expert. And so you know, when I'm shooting elephants I was doing stomach content analyses and then I was reporting that, hang on, these animals aren't browsing animals, they're grazing animals. Because I was doing stomach content analyses and then I was reporting that, hang on, these animals aren't browsing animals, they're grazing animals. Because I was finding this out from a stomach analysis and all the older guys were saying, no, no, they're browsing, they just graze a little bit. I was saying, hell, no, they graze. I'm finding over 60% of the diet is grass. That is grass.
Allan:And then, as I saw the land damage, and then had Frank Fraser Darling spend six weeks with me in the northern Luapula provinces of what's now Zambia, what was northern Rhodesia, and during that six weeks, where we were camped cheek by jowl in the same Land Rover, walking all the time time and every night talking around the campfire. I was on and on about how our management was worrying me, not the poaching, because of the habitat destruction I was seeing everywhere. And habitat is everything. Without habitat you don't have anything. And this was what was really obsessing me with that.
Allan:And it was at that point, literally very early on, when I decided I've got two paths ahead of me. I can either become an elephant expert, study elephants etc. But at the end of my life I won't have done anything to save them. Or I can start to study management, which I had no training for. I was trained just as a biologist, but I can start looking at our management which is causing the habitat destruction which will destroy these elephants, whether we stop the poaching or not. And I took that path. Now I'm very, very grateful. Now if I'd taken the other path, I would have had an easier life. I'd have got awards and, you know, been a hero and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but I wouldn't have saved elephants. Taking the path I did, it's been pretty rough but I feel good about it because it became much bigger. It's become saving humans, because human habitat was what we were destroying as well. So now my life is no longer about elephants. It's now about saving humans, but I still love being with the elephants.
AJ:No doubt. Yes, it's humans, because we're the custodial species, if you like too, isn't it? So everything else depends on us at this point.
Allan:Well, and we depend totally on habitat, which is what our universities can't understand and our scientists can't understand. And our scientists can't understand. You know, one of the points I make sometimes is the things we manage have these unintended consequences. And one of the biggest unintended consequences from a wonderful, well-meant effort is Nobel Prizes. Nobel Prizes, I maintain, have done unbelievable damage to humanity. Now, obviously I've got to explain that, because everybody thinks they're good.
Allan:When the idea was put forward of having a big prize for people doing exceptionally well in areas of life that were important to humans, to humanity, the best minds in the world decided on what to give Nobel Prizes for, and you know what they're for. Now you'll notice that they're for any number of things, but the two things most vital to humanity and civilization, without which you can't have a university, you can't have a choir, you can't have a church, you can't have a space program with the environment and agriculture and there's no Nobel Prize. Now, what that did, I believe, is it attracted our best minds into the physics, the chemistry, all the technologies. That's where our best minds went, and the guys like me were the guys that sucked time to. It Went very bright, went into agricultural environment. So we ended up the dummies, but we ended up working in the most vital area for humanity. So I really and truly believe that accidentally. It's tragic, but Nobel Prizes have damaged us it's so interesting I was.
AJ:I had a father who was very accomplished and took that lead that you were supposed to do in that era of going into those sciences that you mentioned. In his case he came out as a father telling me don't be a mug, go for business. That's where you'll get your dues. You'll make a mint if you apply yourself in business. Same sort of symptom that you're outlining. It's still detached from the base of what's fundamental to a civilization.
Allan:Yeah, yeah, we talked earlier about sustainable agriculture, sustainable civilization, but in an interview I did a little while ago by a very nice permaculture guy in Australia and I made the point at the end of the interview of how permaculture is a great movement, wonderful ideas Bill Mollison and others started that but it's not gone to scale and it'll never go to scale because it's institutions don't accept things like that until the public accepts, et cetera. But at the end of that interview I made the point that nothing is sustainable. So when people talk about because I was asked a question what did I think about somebody who has a website on sustainable business?
AJ:Yeah, Carol Sanford, I think it was.
Allan:Yeah, and in effect I said that's BS. There is no sustainable business in the world, there cannot be a sustainable business in the world until agriculture is truly regenerative. And my fear at the moment is everybody's bandying the word regenerative. My fear at the moment is everybody's banding the word regenerative. It's becoming regenerative, this regenerative, that it's going to become just a buzzword and that's going to be dangerous, because regenerative has to regenerate the environment, the oceans, the soils, the rivers, the soils, the rivers, the lakes, the life, the biodiversity, the communities, the economies, and almost nothing we're doing today is doing that.
AJ:And there's the way of thinking.
Allan:A point I made a little while ago in the Maloon talk, I think it was was that the solution which we eventually came to not the solution but the way to solve it that we eventually came to, of learning what is causing climate change, desertification, et cetera that could never have been discovered in any university.
Allan:No university could have discovered that because of the discipline approach. It had to be somebody that crossed all disciplines totally and not even in an interdisciplinary way, but literally just crossed all disciplines, looking for the clues anywhere, wherever they were. And also, we never could have solved it. I don't believe in one country and we certainly couldn't have in Africa, because some of the biggest clues I got with, thank God, because of the war and then my involvement in politics trying to end the war, then being forced into exile and because the whole of southern Africa was blocking me I was banned from setting foot on any campus of any university and the whole of Southern Africa. So I virtually had to get out of Africa and work from the Caribbean into the Americas and that got me into working in North America and some of the biggest clues were there. They had the research on long-established plots, removing all livestock that I showed in the TED Talk that were turning to desert.
Allan:I mean it was right there. They were attributing it to unexplained processes because they just couldn't conceive that conservation could cause biodiversity loss or resting the environment could cause loss of biodiversity in certain environments. They couldn't conceive of that. And then there were also cases like some of the national parks, the Jarkoan civilization, where they failed, where you had large national park service managed land worse than anything we had in Africa. Well, there were no elephants to blame, no cattle to blame, no sheep to blame. There was nothing to blame except the management. But they just cannot see it to this day. The clues were all over Now to solve that issue of rest causing biodiversity loss and to come up with a concept of partial rest, where you have animals on the land overgrazing plants but the land is overresting. That concept I don't believe we could have developed in Africa, because everywhere there are animals. You can't find land without animals. In America I got to areas of land where it was just like being at sea in my little boat.
Allan:Just not a sound, not an insect sound, nothing, just lifeless. And I'd never experienced anything like that in Africa. So when. I get to America, I could begin to find other clues.
AJ:So this is in the 1980s and it might be a good time to get a snapshot of what was animating you, the successes that had well, partial successes at least. You've talked well about how you continue to learn from mistakes along the way and fill gaps with different influences and experiences, but you were seeing the writing on the wall. Things were changing with the things you were trying to implement. So what was being seen, what was animating people? I guess what is a picture of the success that has really emphasised the point here and painted a picture of what's possible.
Allan:Well, what really happened was I brought Stan over to America, got him in and we partnered and Stan was a very good trainer and teacher and so we ran courses together training ranchers, and we forced them to come through financial planning before grazing planning and it was all just financial planning and grazing planning. And then I wanted to help universities, government agencies and Stan wanted to just run a business. So we parted and Stan ran a business and that became the one Terry Koska took over. And it was then because twice I had brought economists in to work with me Stan once, and previously an economist who'd opposed me in a law case, big case in Namibia, and then he had to drink coffee with me during the case and then joined me in business after the case. That's outstanding.
Allan:But anyway, the point I was making was twice I'd had economists with me, but both of them. There was a little bit of resistance because they were trained economists and I was doing a lot of new economic thinking. That's outside the economic thinking and it's in the holistic financial planning. Financial planning that's what enabled farmers to make 300% more profit in one of the university studies was some of that new thinking and I was finding a little bit of passive resistance there. So once Stan went on his own, I then said all right, now it's just me, and I brought in new economic thinking and in fact then broke through with the holistic framework which we hadn't had, and that again came about really by accident, as did the government training.
Allan:The government training came about because I had a knock on my door and it was two fellows from soil conservation service, ray Margo and Don Sylvester in Albuquerque, and they came to see me and I said what's it about? And they said we've just been at a field day in Texas and you were torn apart by Texas A&M and University of Texas etc. And they said there was a question at the end from a farmer that got our attention. And the farmer said look, all day you've been denigrating Savory and proving him wrong. And he said my question is how come, when we do what he says, it works? And he said these researchers couldn't answer that. And so they came to ask me and I said well, let me explain it to you. And I explained the thinking I had, et cetera. And then they said are you prepared to train us? And I said yeah, anybody. We've got to get this out to billions of people. We've got to break through and we've got to get it out. And so that's what led to them coming back about a month later and this USDA group that commissioned me over two years to put the 2,000 people through training. So that was almost accidental, but the framework that we now have to manage holistically, with the holistic context, the framework, the tool, the planning, grazing, etc.
Allan:About, again by accident, as so many things do. What happened there was at the time I was living in San Angelo and Jody, my wife, was with me, and there was a knock on the door and I went to the door and it was Bob Steger, professor Steger at Angelo State University, and the academics were so antagonistic and against me that I was very surprised to see him coming to my home in the evening and I said well, come in, bob, come have a beer. What is it? What's it about? And he said well, I've come to see you because we don't know what you're doing. He said three times you've visited our research station, we've told you what we're doing, shown you what we're doing. And he said you just tell us what the result's going to be. You don't ask us for the data and you leave. And he said each time we ridiculed you. What sort of scientist doesn't even ask for the data? He just tells you what the result's going to be. And he said so we ridiculed you. But he said every time, exactly what you predict is what happens. And he said what are you doing that we don't understand? And so I said well, let me explain.
Allan:And I was trying to explain how I was reasoning out complexity in ecological processes, tools, animals, etc. And you know I have a habit of grabbing a pencil and paper because I can often sketch things and it helps me or it helps the other person. So I grabbed pencil and paper and I drew ecosystem processes, four of them, and I said look, these are the four processes by which all environments function, these are the tools, et cetera. And I drew lines connecting them. And I said when you show me your research, I'm looking at the four ecosystem processes. I'm not listening to you and your talk about species. I'm looking at process. And when you tell me what you're doing, I'm thinking tools. What tools are you applying? What? Like throwing a pebble in a pond. What ripples will it have? What will the tendency of that tool be in this environment? And so when you, by the time you've shown me what you're doing, I can pretty well predict exactly what will happen. And that's what I'm doing Now, with these lines all over the paper.
Allan:When Bob left, I'm sure he was as confused, if not more, but Jodie, my wife who was observing. It was her. She said Alan, you need to capture that. Nobody understands how you're working this out. And so I kept that bit of paper and it became the holistic framework, because the next time I taught a group of people, I used it, I put it on the board and then I could see what people understood or didn't understand and I could change it. And then I could see what people understood or didn't understand, I could change it. And I just kept with people working. And then when the government came to me to train the 2,000 people, we were just training two, three groups a month, and so it rapidly developed, with literally 2,000 people helping me. Wow, and in no time at all the framework had developed, all except for the holistic context. That was the last piece we discovered. It was the hardest piece to discover.
AJ:All right. So this is how we arrived at the holistic management frame, and then holistic context. Let's go at the top, where the holistic context piece just fell into place and rounded the thing out. How did that? What was the trigger for that?
Allan:The trigger from that was one guy I was training. He was actually chairman of the Nature Conservancy and we had at the top because you have to be making decisions in an action and we always had an action and prove the profit or whatever, like everybody does meeting our needs, our desires or solving a problem, and that was the context for our things. And then we had landscape. You've got to have a certain landscape. And then we had profitability up there. The economic part of it had to be right. And then there's one guy in training said to me but you know, you, surely there should be something more to this. What gets you up out of bed and what gets you excited in life? What's life about? Dummy bang, not our lives. And that day it fell into place that's beautiful that night I thought over it.
Allan:Next day I had it. The holistic context.
AJ:Beautiful and in that sense it relates to everybody. It's not just land managers, and you'll say this to people. Now, to figure out what your holistic context is, your particular holistic context, run through that sort of universal message that's become now.
Allan:Well, that is the secret of it and it's absolutely applicable to you, to every human being alive. And I sometimes use a simple example because it's not about land, it's about managing holistically. So let me cover that first. That simply means like you, anthony, I don't know you, but I know that you've made 99.9% of the decisions in your life. You made them to meet a need, meet a desire or to address a problem you had. That covers 99.9% of the decisions you made. What was the context? It was the same. The reason for the decision was to meet that need. You see, that's where the trap we were in yes, so what we now do is say no.
Allan:There are only three things. We actually manage Everything. We make or produce. We produce food, we, we produce fuel. We produce all sorts of things machinery, space, travel. We make or produce those. Those things are not complex, they're complicated. I, I can't even make a toothbrush. Okay, they're complicated. Now, the three things we manage are ourselves, our families, our communities, our organizations, we. We manage humans, we manage environment or nature and we manage economies. You do not make or produce an economy. You do not make or produce nature, environment. You do not make or produce humans. Strictly speaking, those three we manage, and those are self what's the word? I'm looking for.
Allan:Self-organizing, self-organizing.
AJ:Thank you.
Allan:Those are self-organizing and thus complex, by definition, yes, and those we cannot do them, even with the most sophisticated integrated teams of scientists. We cannot do those when the basic decision-making of all humans, that core, ignores that fact. So we have now the concept of developing a holistic context in your life, or at a national level or whatever level, and that, very simply, it's not in any branch of science, religion or philosophy. It's a totally new concept, but it simply means a statement of how you want your life to be, not just a string of values, how you want your life to be based on your culture, etc. It's very personal. Now, then, it has to be your environment. Everything you eat comes from the environment, everything you throw away goes back to the environment. So, even if you're not managing land, it's going back to the environment, it's coming from the environment. So how must the environment be, even if you're not managing land? Well, it's going to have to be clean air, nutritious food, clean soil, you know et cetera healthy.
Allan:Okay, it doesn't matter what it's like now, it's what it's got to be like 200 years from now for your descendants to live a life like you want. Now there's another point of it. You, in your life, have got thousands of people you're dependent on. They're clients, they're suppliers, they're lawyers, they're government people. They're people you depend on or they depend on you. They don't actually make your decisions in your life, but you're so dependent on them. How are you going to have to be for them to be loyal to you? You're judged, at the end of the day, by your behavior, not your brand, your marketing, your words. You're judged by your behavior. So your holistic context is how you want your life to be supported by a life-supporting environment that will sustain that life for hundreds of years, and your behavior and how you're going to have to be. That's the holistic context. Now it gets a little more sophisticated at a national level.
Allan:Now, when it comes to management, anthony, there are two levels. You and I can choose to ride a bicycle, to work, change the bulbs. We can make these decisions. We can make them in our families. We can maybe make them in a small community. There it ends Management at scale, which is what we have to do to save Australia, to save, stop the mega fires, to save the world.
Allan:Management at scale is only done through organizations or institutions that develop policies and those policies dictate the management. And where we're going today is most of Australia, most of the world, is beginning to focus on farmers and individuals and getting them to change. That's good, but that will be incremental change and we know from the research that will take another hundred years at least for something like permaculture to become mainstream. If it ever does in a hundred years, I'd be surprised, right. So if you want something to go mainstream, which we have to do now, you have to address policies. That means government policies, and that's what I don't know. If you listened to the Maloon Memorial lecture, yes, that's what I spoke about, indeed. Now, I don't mind telling you I'm bitterly disappointed in Australians. I spent God knows how much time preparing that talk and you know I've had zero interest.
AJ:Is that right?
Allan:Yeah, apathy, total apathy. I thought you Aussies had some guts. Why hasn't somebody discussed that with your Prime Minister? Why haven't thousands of Australians rung up the youth activists in Australia that are demanding action by your government? Why hasn't somebody rung them up and said look at this talk. There is something you can do. Not one Australian I'm aware of has done that.
AJ:That's interesting.
Allan:Well, the other day, about two weeks ago, I spoke to the Irish community, the Irish politicians, and so far I'm seeing a better reaction there. So maybe there's more hope in the Irishman than the Aussies.
AJ:The spirit of the Irish is well and truly alive in Australia, so it's got to come here too. No, that's really interesting because I am seeing a bit of press about Ireland sort of across the board. Again it's a more holistic flavour, which is fascinating. But let's zero in on Australia while we're there, because your insight as an MP and president of an opposition party in the 70s in Rhodesia sort of makes you I don't know. It gives you a point of understanding of what politicians are grappling with. Brought this to the table with your Maloom presentation at the end, with your specific sense of what could be done at this level that they're not hamstrung, you could find a way to work the politics of the moment to make the holistic management response happen. It's worth running through briefly here.
Allan:Yeah, what I suggested there, and literally that's what I would do if I was still president of the Rhodesia party, as I once was. I would just carry on government as usual. Politicians can't take risk, so carry on, take the advice of your experts on the megafires and so on. Even though it's not going to work, it doesn't matter, carry on Now. It takes nothing but a little effort to say well, now, meanwhile, I'm going to form a small committee or body task force to start looking at a policy agricultural policy, really, it will be mostly for Australia that will address the megafires, the climate change, etc. And just that task force begin to develop that policy Now that can carry on. We would help with it.
Allan:Obviously, I would personally help with it because of the amount of experience I could bring to it, because we need desperately to get one country in the world to start addressing climate change. There's not a single country yet tackling the cause, and you would then be the first to do that and that task force would begin to do it and then people would see how it operates. It would bring in all your best Australian minds, all your experts, at the appropriate place, and you would develop a policy that your prime minister could then put to the nation or not, and the worst thing that could happen is you waste a million dollars and you waste a year of time. That's the worst thing could happen. The best thing could happen. You literally cannot put a price to it. You'd be the first country in the world to start addressing climate change, megafires and desertification. How the hell can you not do it? I don't understand.
AJ:And you've said that you would fully expect once the model's established, if you like, that the dominoes would fall.
Allan:Look, not a politician in the world knows what to do. Mugabe summed it up just in 1980, when he was prime minister. Our war had just ended. He was trying to govern. Well, people have forgotten those days. He'd appointed a white general, general Walls, to command the army. He'd appointed David Smith and a couple of others to his cabinet, and Mugabe made a speech in which he said we politicians do not know what to do.
AJ:Wow, he said that in a speech.
Allan:In a speech he said we don't have a bigger problem than our deteriorating environment and our rising population. He said we politicians do not know what to do. The only thing we can do is take the advice of our advisors, but when it goes wrong, we get the blame. That is true of every politician in the world, and there's not a politician today who knows what to do about climate change or desertification. And I'm offering them a way to see what to do which can be tried on the side, not approved unless they want to approve it. It's no risk. Now the first government to do that, I predict it'll start a domino effect because every politician doesn't know what to do.
AJ:But you're acutely aware and you've sort of alluded to it through our conversation that that's going to require a push factor, that is going to require people getting involved.
Allan:Well, it requires enough Aussies who care enough about Australia and the future to just go and see your prime minister and say why don't we do this? If five or six Aussies who care about Australia went and saw your prime minister and said that, what's he going to say? If you want to, you could put an interim step in there. Step in there, you could say look, if you don't want to do this immediately, why don't you have a meeting with Savory, with your top officials? Have a one-day retreat with him and see how it would operate. If they had a one-day retreat like that, they'd see exactly how it would operate and they would do it. I guarantee they would do it, because it's just simple common sense.
AJ:It's not wizardry. Hold your hat on that. We'll see what we can do. So let's get to the cause, though let's extrapolate that a little bit. When we say the cause of desertification, megafires, climate all very acute for Australia, but really everywhere now, isn't it? But, like you say, there's a feeling of being stumped at levels that actually carry the day. What to do about it? When we talk about the cause, we're talking about the way of thinking that you've spent those decades coming to on your own path, with interweaving with all these other paths we've talked about and more, the cause being our reductionist thinking, our inability to think in terms of holistic contexts, both personally and at a macro scale. You want to elaborate on that a little bit?
Allan:alan, yeah, could I, could I correct you on that? It's not our thinking um.
Allan:There's evidence that past people have thought much more holistically than we do today yes in north america, I'm told there are at least one tribe that used to try and think seven generations ahead. The consequence of any decision. There's lots of evidence that you know. I know from tracking and working with primitive people that people have seen their connection to the environment and that we're all one and connected. So we would be arrogant if we thought we're the first to think like that and thinking holistically.
Allan:Taking a holistic approach isn't going to work. It didn't work for them, it hasn't worked for any humans. It's not going to work. I'm not being crude here, but it's like taking a pregnancy approach. How do you mean pregnant or not? Oh, yes, you know. So it's like pregnancy.
Allan:You've got to manage holistically or you are managing in a reductionist, managed way that humans have always managed. So we've actually got to change management. We finally reached the point where denial is over and the majority of the sensible scientists in the world acknowledge that humans are causing climate change. Now there's only one possible interpretation If we acknowledge that we're causing climate change, then it means management is the cause. There's no other interpretation you can put on that. You can't then say fossil fuels are causing it. No, they're not. You've just said your management is your management, is how you decide your energy policies, and there are two policies of every government in the world that are destroying humanity the reductionist energy policies, the reductionist agricultural policies. Those two policies urgently need to be developed in a national or a global holistic context. Then young people will have a fighting chance. So not thinking holistically.
AJ:The decision making.
AJ:Do it, yes, yes exactly yes, and we talk about the place of First Nations people. In Australia, for example, it's an extraordinary period of sustenance, tens of thousands of years, but, yes, not with cities. So if we do want to try and bite off sustaining the picture we've got not broadly anyway the city-based culture. If we do want to try and bite that off, then we're looking at adopting these sort of approaches and sort of by illustration.
AJ:Fire is a really good one, I think, because it was so pivotal I mean, certainly here in Australia it was so pivotal to the success of those tens of thousands of years of Aboriginal fire, stick farming as it's called but does have an effect. So here and now might not be the appropriate course in the way that we're doing it with just to address, you know, stopping the wildfires or whatever other particular problem in the moment we think we're solving, but actually considering that it dehydrates land, it does cause emissions and so forth. So you can see how solving one thing bounces along and causes another. That's an example it seems to be real sort of acute current example in australia and elsewhere, where dealing with it holistically, making holistic decisions, require a different approach and this is where the livestock fits in, or or the megafauna frame, as we might think of it. In australia, the animals that used to be here comes in.
Allan:Yeah, you know you've got one of the best records of it and you're Tim Flannery. You know who wrote the Future Eaters.
Allan:I mean you need to perhaps interview Tim on this, because he points out that the pollen record showed that Australia was mostly a fire phobic vegetation before the Aborigines and after the Aborigines it became a fire dependent vegetation. He points out the big development of your mangrove areas around the coast. Well, what the hell else except silt does that to get the expansion of those? So you've got the knowledge there. You've got people who've written about it. Now, why the Aborigines used fire was because they only had stone tools and fire. Technology and fire. That's the same two tools that every nation has today technology and fire. All the climatologists in the world are trying to solve the climate problem with technology and fire. It's not possible. That's what I said in the TED Talk and not a single scientist has told me where I'm wrong. It's terribly important that we listen to it. You know, as you see, I get frustrated.
Allan:There was a delightful fellow here. I never worked with him, jim Teer. I heard about Jim, but he was a professor at Texas A&M and in the 80s, when I came here in that first period, I was down on King Ranch with Jim in Texas and he made a strange statement to me one day. He said Alan, either you are wrong and we will not be able to dig a hole deep enough to me one day. He said, alan, either you are wrong and we will not be able to dig a hole deep enough to bury you in, he said, or you are right and the world will not be able to build a monument high enough. And I said, jim, it's not about me, it's about saving everything. And I said what do you think? And he said I'm sitting on the fence. And Jim died sitting on the fence. And there's thousands of people sitting on the fence. They need to either show where I'm wrong or get off the goddamn fence.
AJ:Yeah, that's powerful. I hate the idea that we would go out in paralysis, you know, individually or socially.
Allan:Well we are.
Allan:We'll go tragically, because that's our nature and you know, when you have new discoveries, they are relatively new, the peers discuss them, there's conflict and argument, and then you get awards and so on and so forth. Periodically in the world and there've been very few occasions you've had new discoveries that clash with thousands of years of belief. Now, when that happens, you don't get that, you get condemnation. You get the treatment I've had for over 50 years. I could go on for half an hour of the things that have been done to me to try to close my business, stop my research. Blah, blah, blah.
AJ:That is all.
Allan:All right. So nothing has changed since Galileo Copernicus, the fellow Semmelweis, who effectively discovered bacteria when people didn't believe anything like that. He died in a mental asylum. Well, thank God, I was already insane 50 years ago, so I've survived that one.
Allan:But when you have new discoveries that fly in the face of human beliefs than institutions Remember we manage organizations. They're complex. When you form an institution, it takes on a life of its own. An organization takes on a life of its own. No organization behaves like a human being behaves even though it's full of humans, and organizations are almost incapable of common sense. You and I, any human being, can use common sense, an organization. That's extremely rare for an organization to be able to and one of the other.
Allan:What they call wicked problems, almost impossible to solve, is that organizations always reflect the prevailing thinking of society. So you can go into any government department or politicians or doctors office or anything, and they'll have the latest computers, the latest softwares, the latest cell phones, the latest everything. Because we believe in technology. People planted trees, so they gave a Nobel Prize for planting trees in Kenya. Okay, because people believe in planting trees, using technology to plant trees. We believe in technology, so you can do anything like that and even if it's controversial, it'll be accepted.
Allan:Now, if new thinking emerges, paradigm shifting thinking emerges that conflicts with thousands of years of human belief, then institutions lead the ridicule and the rejection. How is it here we are over 60 years later? How is it? Not a single cattleman's organization in the world has yet supported me? Thousands of ranchers have supported me. Not one cattleman's organization that I know of has supported me. Most have opposed me, and I'm just picking one. Environmentalists and cattlemen should have been the first to support me. No environmental organization has ever yet done so major one. They're just behaving normally when new knowledge emerges that conflicts with beliefs.
AJ:Yeah, is that to say, ellen, in your mind, that it needs more of us to shake off the institutions that we've lost trust in to be able to create a sort of a critical mass where either they change or new ones come about?
Allan:No, don't lose trust in institutions. We're describing wicked problems. You have to have them. We can only operate at scale through institutions. Now the wicked problems nobody's been able to solve, I don't know.
Allan:Right now I'm getting into speculation. Everything I've said to you up till now, I would stake my life on it. Now I'm getting into speculation. I believe I do not know. I believe the concept of a holistic context and the holistic framework will overcome this one of institutional stupidity. So what we've got to do is heed the research, the research.
Allan:Mostly I'm relying on people like Lord Ashby, his research. He looked at how truly new knowledge got into democratic society and he looked at Britain and America as his case studies over the last 200 years and essentially he could have been looking at Australia. It would have been the same. Essentially, what he found was, if it is truly new, like I'm talking to you about, it can never be brought in by your institutions. They will oppose it. Yes, it can only come in when the people in the pub at the cricket field are saying when are they going to do it? They will do it.
Allan:That's why I said to you earlier if just a group of australians will go and see your prime minister, request to see him and say we want you to look at something new. He probably will. You can do an intermediary step, that's. All it needs is the public to show that it is wanted. Institutions Institutions are close to change. We've got branches of some of the big environmental organizations actively cooperating, collaborating with the Savory Institute. Not the whole institution yet the fighting's gone internal but whole branches of institutions are beginning to collaborate with us. So the change is very, very close, beginning to collaborate with us.
AJ:So the change is very, very close. Yeah, that's interesting, Alan, your perspective over a lifetime of that broad arc of change. Can you believe it's possible?
Allan:It is possible.
AJ:You could bring it about. That's beautiful.
Allan:You've got enough following in Australia that you could bring it about. It just depends do you care enough? If you care as much as I did when I cried my heart out on the Amzangwani, you will bring it about, anthony.
AJ:Yeah, I feel that, alan, I really feel that.
Allan:Yeah. Yeah, but people have often asked me you know what's kept me going against such opposition, incredible opposition, for so many years.
AJ:Yes.
Allan:And I have thought about that question deeply because I've been asked it so often, and I answer it with one word care. If you care enough about Australia, you will do whatever you have to do, and so I'm putting that to you now. You've got an audience, you're a known person, you're an extremely good facilitator. I hear that. Listen to it. You've got the capability.
AJ:Do you care enough? I did note, you said that, and it's something that Nora Bateson, who's another sort of key figure influence person, I admire. In fact, the podcast I had with her I titled Solve Everything at Once, because she used that catchphrase in another podcast that I heard her in and I almost feel like this is Solve Everything at Once. You know Mark Two, but she comes to the same thing. She says at the bottom of it all is do you care enough?
Allan:Yeah, that's interesting. Somebody else should come to that, but I do. And when you say solve it all, I think I hate you. Know that, one solution or anything. And I don't have a solution or the solution. All I have is a way for people now to solve it that I would stake my life on. This is a way for Australia now to start solving the problems. You can either continue with reductionist policies and management or you can start to manage and develop policies holistically. It's a path ahead of you.
AJ:Ellen, to wind us up, what place would you say over the journey that I see you mention it in some of your writing gut feel an intuitive base to guide you in life. To what extent would you say that's been present for you and is a value?
Allan:Oh, I don't know. It has saved me in some dangerous situations Really, because I've lived more than nine lives, yes, I imagine, with you know, parachuting accidents and being shot twice, and I've had, you know, close shares with elephants, lions, buffalo, hippo, you name it, and there have been times where the sheer intuition saved me. But in the work it's mostly been just lots of thought, thought, observation, deduction, reasoning and people, other people talking with them, discussions around campfires, and the best ones where we've done the most learning. We've always those of us that were present have always said we never could have set this up. They always happen, like I mentioned to you, the two guys visiting me saying we've been to this field day in Texas. It just happened, like Bob Steger walking in and saying what the hell are you doing? You've been to day in Texas. It just happened, like Bob Steger walking in and saying what the hell are you doing? You've been to our research station. It just happened. You can't set them up.
Allan:So I'm very alert to that and when I was training a lot of people, often end of the day we'd all be tired and somebody would ask what seemed a stupid question and you could feel the groan around the room or somebody would say, oh for god's sake, shut up, you know, and I'd say, hang on. And I would listen, you know, because I'm very attuned to that, and often it's a side remark or something I'll pick up that gives me a clue, or it's the subconscious. So something is going on all day and I will have a sleepless night, or I'll wake in the night and I'm half asleep and, man, I'm thinking clearly differently and if I try to get in the habit of having a pad and a pencil by the bed, because sometimes in the morning I absolutely cannot get it again, yeah, me too.
Allan:Yeah, so I don't know what goes on.
AJ:We're complex.
Allan:I'm just a simple guy.
AJ:Yes, it's fascinating, though when you think about it sort of emphasizes the point yeah, don't go out in paralysis, to actually just get involved and see what happens.
Allan:Yeah, and not get heated. One thing I've been very lucky with is I don't get angry. It takes a tremendous lot to make me angry. I never, ever, lose my temper. So the worse things get, or the calmer I get, the more dangerous it gets the calmer I get. And the worse the conflict gets, the calmer I get. And I just wish we could all just be calm, because so often if you can just stay calm, calm, you can reason and talk to people because you know, at the end of the day, most people are good, most people are doing their best. We just get into these conflicts over management. That's what leads to conflict.
Allan:And I I've been with with, uh, one group I often talk about, where they told me to bugger off back to Africa. It was impossible to have agreement in their community. It was an angry community in America. It was just after the Timothy McVeigh bombing of a government building. There was a tremendous lot of anger and this group of about 35 men literally told me to F off back to Africa. Finally I said, gentlemen, let's stop this meeting. And they applauded. And then I said just you tell me it's impossible to have agreement. Will you work with me for one hour and prove me wrong, rather than telling me wrong. And then we just part. So they, literally having applauded closing the meeting, they agreed to work for one hour. Just prove me wrong.
Allan:And all I did was I couldn't ask that bunch of men to talk about love, caring family they would have ridiculed me even more. They had big belt, buckles, cowboy boots, hot bellies, you know, um and. And I just gave out sheets of paper and said I want you to be totally selfish. I'm giving you 10 minutes, whatever it was. I gave them a set time. I want you to be totally selfish. Think only of yourself. Write on this piece of paper what you would like to see in this community 20 years from now, after you're dead.
AJ:You know, 100 years from now, you're all going to be dead within 20 years.
Allan:I want you to write if you could come back 100 years from now, what would you want to see? And when I collected those bits of paper, you couldn't distinguish. Civil servant, farmer, bureaucrat, townsman you couldn't distinguish, they're all identical. The whole atmosphere changed. We developed a holistic context.
AJ:Ellen, amazing. What were some of the themes, do you recall, that were universal?
Allan:They all wanted to see a flight of geese over their homes.
Allan:They wanted to share their good neighbourhood around a barbecue. It was exactly the same things, the same culture, way of life they wanted to see. So now I had what was important to them in life and then I could say look out the window, look at that land and the condition that's in, because it was terrible. I said, 100 years from now, your kids are going to be killing each other. They're not even going to get that. And so we just carried on with agreement.
AJ:Outstanding. It's certainly something I've admired from afar. Alan your, I don't know fierce might even be the word fierce spirit, but mild-mannered engagement and obviously very articulate and considered. It's been an absolute pleasure to engage in this conversation with you directly, thanks a lot.
Allan:Thank you, because you just helped to get the word out. I love Australia, despite my comments about Aussies.
AJ:I think we appreciate a jab now and then.
Allan:Aussies and revisionists. You know it's like brothers. We'll fight, but if somebody tackles you, I tackle them Right on when somebody else isn't attacking you.
AJ:I will Exactly To take us out. I actually ask a guest, before we leave, to nominate a piece of music that's been significant in their lives. What comes to your?
Allan:mind, I've had a Scottish mother, so I'm always it's bagpipes. Or you know, scotland the Brave, really yeah. Or you know, farewell 51st.
AJ:That's great, I was very much Scottish.
Allan:I'm afraid my mother was such a proud Scot.
AJ:Was that a good connection? I know you grew up you relished your upbringing connecting to the wild. Was family a sort of key part of that for you as well?
Allan:No, I had great difficulties early. I was a cripple, I was a polio victim, I was very small and then, tragically, my mother became alcoholic during the war you know, the Second World War was on Both my parents were in the army and by the end of it she was alcoholic. When my father came back from North Africa, I didn't even know who he was.
AJ:Wow, it was hard years early years. Yeah, in that sense was the wild a portal to something rich and enlivening for you.
Allan:You know my earliest ambitions were typical of kids. In those days I just wanted to be a rear gunner and a bomber. But once the war was over, then I wanted to be a poultry farmer. I loved chickens, I loved animals. And then, you know, later I got into the bush more and more and more.
AJ:Yeah, there's that love and care at play right there, Alan. Thanks once again. I do hope we meet in person one day, but this has been very special. Thank you very much.
Allan:I hope we meet and if you ever want to come to the Victoria Falls, if you ever want to come to Dimbangombe. We'll put out the red carpet. We'll make you welcome.
AJ:Cheers Allan.
Allan:Okay, meanwhile get Australia going.
AJ:Yes indeed.
Allan:Thank you, thank you.
AJ:That was the legendary Allan Savory. For more on Allan, his books, the Savory Institute and its growing global network, including the Africa Centre for Holistic Management, see the links in our program details and you can hear more of our conversation in a special extra to this episode coming soon. I was happy to source this rendition of Scotland the Brave by Eric M Armour. It was from the Free Music Archive. A nd for your mother, Allan. Special thanks to every one of the generous donors, supporters and partners of the podcast for keeping the show going. It couldn't happen without you and doing it with you makes it so rich and uplifting. Of course, if you're able to join these folk in supporting the podcast, you can do so via the website in the show notes regennarration. com. Thanks for all your support and, as ever, for sharing, rating and reviewing the podcast. My names Anthony James. Thanks for listening.
