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Another World is still Possible. The old system was never fit for purpose and now it has gone- and it's never coming back.
We have the power of gods to destroy our home. But we also have the chance to become something we cannot yet imagine,
and by doing so, lay the foundations for a future we would be proud to leave to the generations yet unborn.
What happens if we commit to a world based on generative values: compassion, courage, integrity?
What happens if we let go of the race for meaningless money and commit instead to the things that matter: clean air, clean water, clean soil - and clean, clear, courageous connections between all parts of ourselves (so we have to do the inner work of healing individually and collectively), between ourselves and each other (so we have to do the outer work of relearning how to build generative communities) and between ourselves and the Web of Life (so we have to reclaim our birthright as conscious nodes in the web of life)?
We can do this - and every week on Accidental Gods we speak with the people who are living this world into being. We have all the answers, we just (so far) lack the visions and collective will to weave them into a future that works. We can make this happen. We will. Join us.
Accidental Gods is a podcast and membership program devoted to exploring the ways we can create a future that we would be proud to leave to the generations yet to come.
If we're going to emerge into a just, equitable - and above all regenerative - future, we need to get to know the people who are already living, working, thinking and believing at the leading edge of inter-becoming transformation.
Accidental Gods exists to bring these voices to the world so that we can work together to lay the foundations of a world we'd be proud to leave to the generations that come after us.
We have the choice now - we can choose to transform…or we can face the chaos of a failing system.
Our Choice. Our Chance. Our Future.
Find the membership and the podcast pages here: https://accidentalgods.life
Find Manda's Thrutopian novel, Any Human Power here: https://mandascott.co.uk
Find Manda on BlueSky @mandascott.bsky.social
On LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/mandascottauthor/
On FaceBook https://www.facebook.com/MandaScottAuthor
Manda: Hey people, welcome to Accidental Gods. To the podcast where we still believe that another world is possible and that if we all work together, there is still time to lay the foundations for that future that we would all be proud to leave behind. I'm Manda Scott, your host and fellow traveller in this journey into possibility. And as you will be aware by now, we absolutely believe that good podcasts are part of an ecosystem of ideas that have the potential to change the world, to shift us into the new system we so badly need. And for a long time, from before this podcast ever existed, Farmerama Radio has been a podcast at the leading radical edge, where food, farming and activism meet. In the early days, it was all about fostering the voices of grassroots, small scale farming, with monthly episodes featuring stories from the field. Then, in 2019, the co-founders Abby Rose and Joe Barrett produced their first in-depth series, six episodes called Cereal, which looked in depth at the whole process of creating bread from the seed and the soil and the farm, through the milling and the baking to the loaf. It was a huge hit. It was definitely transformative in my journey into understanding the depth and breadth of the problem that we face and the potential solutions. And then building off the success of Cereal, which won two Guild of Food Writers Awards, Abby and Joe went on to produce several more series, including their most downloaded, which was called Landed, and was a really powerful exploration of land ownership and colonial legacy in my homeland of Scotland.
Manda: And then in April of this year, Farmerama launched a new project called Cereal Revisited, which looked at the real world impact of their podcast and how Farmerama stories helped their listeners to take action, to have agency and direction and empowerment. This is a story of Thrutopian narratives actually working to change the world, and we are absolutely delighted to welcome one of the co-founders, Abby Rose. Abby continues to lead the podcast today and is both a farmer and a soil health advocate. She was named one of 50 New Radicals by The Guardian and Nesta in 2018 for her work developing simple apps that help build ecology, profitability and beauty on farms around the world. And then in 2020, she was named in CODE Hospitality's top 100 Influential Women in Hospitality. Farmerama Radio itself was named Best Investigative Work and Best Food podcast at the Guild of Food Writers Awards in 2020, and won the Best Environment and Natural World Podcast at the Independent Podcast Awards in 2024. So for a story that really gets to the heart of the power of story, people of the podcast please do welcome Abby Rose of Farmerama Radio.
Manda: Abby Rose, welcome to the Accidental Gods podcast. How are you and where are you on this very hot May day?
Abby: Thank you Manda. Great to be here. I am doing okay. I have young children, a young child, so it was a little rough night, but we made it. I'm in Spain actually in Mallorca right now, so that makes things very nice.
Manda: Yeah. And normally you're in Chile.
Abby: Well, I live between Chile and the UK. I spend three months of the year in Chile at the moment and more like nine months of the year in the UK. So both.
Manda: Right. And we'll get into that later. That's interesting. Alrighty. So given all that you do and the impact that it has on people, which we will definitely get into; I am so in awe of your capacity to really reach people where they are and then transform lives, which is where we need to be at. What is most alive for you right now, other than the fact that you were up most of the night with your child? And I only have a puppy and that was bad enough, so I have huge sympathy for that! And I'm very glad that you're here with us, sentient and alive and awake. Other than that, what is alive in the worlds that we both touch?
Abby: Well, I guess the thing where my energy has been going most recently is that we just created a research project called Cereal Revisited. And it's very alive for me because I got very excited by some of the insights and learnings from it. Maybe I should give a bit of an intro to what it's about, because in Farmerama six years ago, or at the end of 2019, we made a first ever series podcasts. So from Rama, we're committed to sharing the voices behind the regenerative or small scale farming movement. And this was the first time that we'd actually dug deep into one topic. And we did six episodes. It was called Cereal, and it's all about bread and then everything that goes into our bread. So we talked through the breeding and some of the crazy rules about seeds and what genetics you can share or not. And then the farming; how do people farm it and all the consequences of that. And then on to the milling, then the baking, and then also the health impacts and people eating it and the wider community around it really. And across those six episodes, we both showed the current commodity system that we're almost all part of and almost mindlessly part of. Certainly I'm very conscious of where my tomato comes from or my carrot comes from, but I hadn't been conscious of where my flour came from.
Manda: It's just a thing. Yeah.
Abby: Yeah. Because cereals are grown on such a large scale, they seem intangible or inaccessible somehow. So I hadn't really thought about it. But then I guess from 2017, 2018, I started meeting people and they were the people pushing forward what does it mean to have a localised grain economy in the UK? And so the other part of Cereal is highlighting those people.
Manda: I really want to go into those people that we highlighted, because it is revolutionary and it has clearly been life changing for them. But before we do that, let's have a little look at the team that is Farmerama and how you got to be even creating this documentary series in the first place. What made you think that we need to look at bread instead of, I don't know, milk or potatoes or carrots or something completely different? How did Farmerama arise? And who are you? All of the team.
Abby: Yeah. So it arose back at the end of 2015. Actually, my dad had in the early 2000 started moving to Chile and started farming there. And that was a completely radical, random thing from my point of view.
Manda: Moving from where?
Abby: From the UK. Originally from California, had moved to the UK in the 80s, built a business there, got out of the business and then decided to start farming in Chile.
Manda: Wow.
Abby: Yeah. Quite wild. Radical.
Manda: We could ask all of the reasons behind that, but let's stay with Farmerama for a moment because we could spend half an hour on that. So let's go.
Abby: Totally. But anyway, so that was my in to farming and it was being on that farm that I started to learn about farming. And actually around 2015 was when I was starting to ask quite a lot of questions. Because we had planted a lot of olive trees and some were doing well. We wanted to be, we said, beyond organic from the beginning. So we didn't call it regenerative at the time, but beyond organic. And we realised, oh, wow, this is incredibly difficult. It's difficult and there's a lot to learn and had so many questions. So I actually went along to a farm hack event in the UK. Farm hack was organised by the Landworkers Alliance and also it was together with the Greenhorns, I think it was called at the time, in the US.
Manda: Are these who became the Carbon Cowboys or even before that?
Abby: No greenhorns was like, maybe you could say it's sort of an equivalent to LWA, but in the US. Kind of building culture among younger farmers or farm interested people. So I went along to that and that's where I met someone called Nigel, who runs a blog called Indie Farmer. And we were chatting and it was amazing. The farm hack was one of the most mind boggling events at the time, because I think my perception of farming was that it was sort of mundane. I always cringe at the arrogance I held around it all; I just thought it was about moving animals in and out of a barn and I didn't realise just how complex and connected it is and what a system it is. So I went along to this farm hack and it was like, whoa! Mind blown. These people are so engaging. And they were doing like bubbling compost teas. And then they had a biochar stove that they were making. And we did some blacksmithing and weaving. And there were so many things going on and it was a whole community that had just been not on my radar. So Nigel and I connected. We had a great ceilidh, all that fun. I was already podcasting at the time about tech for good with a guy called Joe Barrett. He was the guy who was like super early to podcasting and he had already been doing it for a few years at that time.
Manda: Wow.
Abby: And so Joe, Nigel and I kind of all came together at this dinner and talked about starting a farm podcast. Because Nigel and I had had this experience, this farm hack. And then, you know, you leave and it's, it's literally like all of that innovation is just wiped off the face of the earth. You can't access the information. It's just not obvious. And it was amazing to me that all this kind of brilliance and ingenuity was so difficult to access for most people. So that was the start of Farmerama. And I remember recording the first episode, just sitting in a room, the three of us handing a little mic around. And that's where it started.
Manda: But it was good. I've been listening from the beginning and you were exactly that. You were speaking at the edges of where we were. You were saying things that were really radical. Because this is before Dirt to Soil came out. It's before really regenerative farming had been named as that. And I don't remember when that happened, but it was here, let me explain to you that soil is not just soil. It can be living soil or it can be an inert, growing medium. And you could be sequestering carbon. I remember around that time, it was the year after that, I went down to Schumacher, another mind expanding experience. And introduced to, for instance, David Johnson at University of New Mexico, who says that if every farm acre on the planet were to go regenerative and only get 1% carbon sequestration, which is pretty low for regenerative, we would be back at preindustrial levels of CO2 within ten years. And he was saying that way back then, and that's not applicable now because various people are throwing missiles around that make those numbers very different. But it blew my mind that this is here; we have these answers and nobody knows about them. And they were you telling people. I remember driving up and down the road and listening and thinking, oh, somebody's saying it! Yes!
Abby: Yeah.
Manda: So how did you go about deciding what to talk about? We'll get to cereals in a moment, but in the early days, before Cereals arose as that long documentary block, what were your criteria for picking people to talk to? Is it too far back to remember?
Abby: No, no, it's just I'm a very intuitive person.
Manda: Okay. It feels good, we do it.
Abby: Yeah. I always feel guilty when people try and come to me, come to Farmerama and are like, oh, we want to learn your process. And I'm like, well... I mean, we've tried to document a few things, but for me, the way we went about it was... So Nigel had already done some touring around and he had some recordings, so we included some of those. Then he actually stepped away from Farmerama within about a year and a half, I think. So then it was Joe and I. And actually most of the recording was got at different events. And so we would go along to events that were kind of aligned with what does a more ecological farming future look like? Or even general farming events. But it was about sitting and listening and then anything that sparked excitement within us, me, then we would go and ask that person afterwards, oh, can we just talk? You know, do a short recording about this and go into detail. So that was really how it was directed.
Manda: You had really good quality roving mics then. Either that or your post-production is brilliant, but let's not get into podcast tech because because nobody else except me will be interested. Okay, so then Cereals. How did you get to we need to understand more about how wheat is grown and how it is milled; what are the rules around it? You have to have a certain amount of protein because otherwise the Chorleywood process doesn't work. Tell us a little bit about the content, but tell us how you got there first.
Abby: Yeah, I think the way we got there was that by going to all these events, I started to build up relationships with the people who were pushing forward the thinking in the farming world. And so one of those people was Kimberly Bell, who started small food bakery. And she was kind of in real time coalescing or clarifying her thinking around all of this. As well as Josiah of Hodmedod's who has been involved in this kind of work for many, many years. And so they were talking about this stuff. And it was just at the time when Josiah had introduced Kimberly Bell and Martin Wolf, who was at Lakelands Agroforestry, and he had been growing this YQ wheat for a while.
Manda: Yes. Tell us what YQ wheat is.
Abby: Oh, so YQ means yield and quality. So it had been wheat that was a cross composite collection. So he had basically bred a series of, it was actually a collection of modern wheats, but many different varietals. And I think there was one heritage wheat in there as well. But crossed the genetics of these multiple wheats so that then he had what you call a population wheat, which essentially means that it's genetically diverse. So when you plant a field of this wheat, there's genetic variation in the field. And then he continued to breed it, choosing for yield as well as quality. Because so much of modern breeding is all about yield. It's just been one focus: yield, yield, yield. And that's why we end up with grains that yield really well, potentially on a good year, but then actually they are also taste pretty terrible or have zero nutritional value by the time that you actually get them into the flour. So all of these other impacts that come further down the line, if you have such a, let's say, a monoculture or one single minded focus. So Martin Wolf was starting to open that up.
Abby: And yeah, so the YQ grain, he then shared that with Kimberly Bell. And she started to use the flour and bake with it. And she's an artist by background, so she came to that as an experiment rather than like, oh, no, bread must be like this. It was more like, oh, I want to use this quality material. How can I make bread? And that questioning is so different. And she made some amazing, delicious loaves eventually. I think some of the first ones were disasters. But that's okay. And so it was through that kind of very clear journey and connectedness and narrative that we started to realise something's happening here. And this story needs to be told far and wide, because there is capacity in the UK to have a lot more of this localised grain economy and this diversity in our grains. Because ultimately, Professor Martin Woolf's insight, because he had come from a crop science background where he was essentially creating fungicides for wheat, and what he realised was year after year he had to create new fungicides.
Manda: They were out evolving him.
Abby: Yeah, the wheat was the monoculture, so it was all the same genetics. He only needed one fungus to come in and it just totally annihilated the crop. And then you need to keep changing and innovating and how ridiculous that was.
Manda: Also, it's destroying the biosphere and probably affecting people's health. You know, these are not good things to be spraying around.
Abby: No, totally. I mean, it's got many, many problems. But I think yeah, his key insight was just like, wait a second: why are we working with a genetic monoculture? What if we bring diversity into the genetics of the crop? Then the fungus will only affect some of the crop and we will still get a crop at the end. And so that's really where his key insight came. I mean, I shouldn't speak for him, you know. Listen to Cereal. And I would recommend listening to some of his recordings online. He passed away a few years ago now, but he's really an amazing person to understand.
Manda: Is anybody carrying on his legacy?
Abby: Yeah. Well, at Wakelyns, some of his children took over the site. It's in Suffolk and it's an amazing place to visit. It's one of the older agroforestry establishments in the UK.
Manda: I've seen a postcard of it, I've never been to visit, but a friend went to visit, came back with a postcard. And it's this little island of green. It's an oasis of life surrounded by industrial farming desert. Why are the people around there not looking at what he's doing and picking it up? Well, I mean, partly that's the thing we'll go into; I think it's an emotional response rather than a logical response. Because they are growing amazing stuff at a point when if this year turns out like last year, they will be growing next to nothing. Leaving aside the fertiliser aspect; there's just no water. And I've been to a talk with Josiah Meldrum and various people who had the YQ wheat, and what really struck me was they brought in modern wheat, and it was about 18in high on the stalk, because it's been grown to be very tight to the ground so it doesn't blow over or get hit by rain. And old wheat, which was like four foot high. And YQ wheat, which is a whole range of heights, from the very short to the very tall. And you could see the diversity in front of you. And then they were speaking to the bread makers who said... Tell us what the bread makers say about the difference between industrial wheat and YQ wheat.
Abby: Well, I guess my response would just be that obviously the YQ wheats, in my experience, the bakers are excited by them because they have a lot more flavour.
Manda: Small bakers are, but the industrial bakers can't use it.
Abby: Yeah. So they can't use it because essentially the protein levels are not high enough. And this is like an indoctrination of bakers, that you must have I think it's above 13% protein levels in your wheat in order for it to be usable to bake.
Manda: Because they use the Chorleywood process, which is basically designed to destroy your gut while pretending that they're feeding you bread. It's just horrendous, but it's very fast and you can do it on an industrial scale. Whereas if you're making sourdough, where you don't need the massive high proteins, you have to do it by hand and it takes a long time. Also, I remember being shown that modern wheats are designed to be a very particular structure, and they go through the the modern mills. And the YQ wheat isn't isn't the right size or the hull is too hard or something and they had to find actual millers who could mill it, and then bakers who were prepared to bake with it.
Abby: That's right.
Manda: And once they found those, that was great. But I also remember a guy in the audience who was local to here going, I want to grow this stuff. And everyone in the panel went, oh no, don't! We don't have enough millers and bakers yet. Do not flood the market with this wheat because you won't be able to sell it, and then you'll get distressed and you'll go back to whatever you're doing at the moment. Get yourself a miller and a baker and grow to their requirements, instead of just deciding to do it. Which struck me as, we need the whole chain. We need the people to be buying, we still live in the death cult of predatory capitalism, you can't just produce the stuff for free. So you need the whole chain. You need people who want this, to to buy the end product of the bread. Therefore, you need the bakers who are prepared to put in the time and the effort to make the bread. And then you need the millers who have the actual millstones to mill the wheat that you're producing, and then you can start growing the wheat.
Abby: Absolutely. And in a way, coming back to Cereal, we didn't know that going in. But in the end, from the research that was the most powerful thing in the whole series, that suddenly people were able to see the whole system and how it was all interconnected. Because episode four is called The Miller Is Missing and people basically became Millers off the back of recognising that missing link in the system.
Manda: Yeah, yeah, it was so exciting.
Abby: And you said what is most alive for me right now? That is actually what is most alive for me, is the power of telling a story that shows a whole system and how empowering that can be for people to start to understand, I guess, their power within that system. Because I think that's the thing, that when you start to see, oh, if I grow that type of grain, then that type of baker can do that, that type of Miller needs this. And actually we're feeding a whole linked network of people and the health benefits that come out at the end of that. It starts to make sense. And I think that's been very, very exciting to see. And for me, what's so exciting is also to recognise just how much we're taught, from a storytelling perspective, like the importance of the hero's journey narrative and that arc. And then through doing this research around Cereal and creating Cereal Revisited, where we elucidate and share different people's stories about how they've been affected, and they share about the power of this systemic storytelling for them. It really just shows like, actually, the hero's journey is one type of storytelling. It has a place, but it's a simplification of how the world works. And by reducing to that one form, in a way, we're kind of cheating people of actually just how powerful and interconnected collaborative effort you might call it. I don't want to call it community necessarily, because I don't necessarily know if they identify as community, but certainly it's like an interlinked system, collective effort, that produces this outcome. Which is alternative grain economies or emerging grain economies, and just how powerful that can be on so many levels.
Manda: Yes. And life changing. Really interesting. Because I was thinking the word community and then hesitating to say it. So what we have is a collaborative group of people. Because Kimberly Bell also was co-founder of UK grain, which is basically trying to take on that work from Martin and create lots of different land races. Because as the climate changes, not just the UK, but the whole world is changing, we're going to need genetic diversity very, very badly. To find the ones that will survive in whatever is coming towards us. So let's stay with the missing Miller, because that struck me as one of the things, I listened to that and there was a bit of me went, oh, I want to go and form a mill. And I can't, you know, I'm doing other things. But people did. You then went back in Cerials Revisited to someone who actually listened to that actual episode, and then went and actually found an actual mill.
Abby: I know! It is amazing.
Manda: It's amazing. So and then they have people who've listened to it, it might be Kimberley, I got a bit confused as to who, but they have visitors from all around the world who come to visit, because they've listened to it. Tell us about that, because that's just brilliant.
Abby: Yeah, I mean, that is an amazing outcome of Cereal. Many people who listened have then taken it upon themselves to, well, to act. I think that's something that I was surprised by as well, is that people were called into action even though there wasn't a call to action. But somehow this interconnected storytelling called people into action. And one of those actions that many people took was almost to do a pilgrimage to go and visit. Like they went to E5 bakery, they went to small food bakery. Maybe they went to go visit Wakelyns. You know, to go and see and understand what was happening in all these places that were shared about in the series and meet the people and I guess, connect with like minded individuals. But also just understand how is this working in real life? And so, yeah, many people who were featured in the original series told us how many people came to visit them and continue to today, because we still have people listening all the time, and for the first time. And then wanting to discover more and understand how it's happening. And as Kimberly says in Cereal Revisited, she feels a bit guilty today because, of course, her thinking has moved on.
Manda: Right. She's not using the YQ wheat anymore, for instance, and people are all excited about YQ and then she's moved on. Tell us a little bit about why. I'm quite interested in what ended up on the cutting room floor, so to speak; the conversations that you had that didn't come out in it, and whether there was anything... I mean, either they didn't come out because they weren't repeatable or they didn't come out because there just wasn't time. Is there anything in there? Start with why Kimberly moved on; she moved from YQ to..?
Abby: Well, I think the reality is that she's working with local farmers and wanting to work with local grains. There's no doubt there. And that doesn't have to be YQ. YQ is one example of all of these different grains and population wheats that are out there. It's one example of genetic diversity. And so she wants to heal the planet, heal people and that's what the genetic diversity is about. So she's happy to use a population wheat.
Manda: That comes locally.
Abby: Yeah. Any population wheat is fine. YQ was just, in a way you could say it's a good story. It was something that we could connect all the dots and make it really obvious how it came together. But I think she also acknowledges that her thinking has moved on, in terms of through the grain lab work she wanted to explore governance, for example. So they've done a lot of work around Sociocracy, so trying to decentralise some of the power structures within the organisations that are facilitating this shift. Because I think she really felt that she didn't want to be responsible. Ultimately, if it all came down to her then it would all end with her as well.
Manda: Yeah. You become the weak link in the chain just because you're the link.
Abby: Yeah, exactly.
Manda: And that's going to fail at some point. So yes. So you need to spread.
Abby: Yes. And it was always multiple people, but they're all over committed in a way. So we need to expand the community of people who are empowered to take action. And so she saw Sociocracy. This is my interpretation, I should say. Best to talk to Kimberly for exactly the words.
Manda: I intend to. Yes.
Abby: And also it was things like trying to understand, you know, in conventional breeding, they have a very clear financial model of how the breeders are paid. And that's through a clear kind of, let's call it a tax, on if you use that seed that's been bred by that breeder, then somewhere along the line, they get paid back a certain amount for every seed sold. But with population wheats there isn't that same kind of ownership of the breeding. And there's not the same clear way of having it be commercial or paying people. And as you said, we all live in this capitalist container. And so Kimberly can see that there still needs to be a way to have the breeders have a living.
Manda: Yeah. They still have to pay the bills, so we have to refund them somehow.
Abby: Yeah. Just like we want to give a fair price to the farmers. We want to give a fair price to the bakers. We want to be able to give people healthy food, not too high a price. So all of these things come into it. But you also need to have the breeders be paid and the millers. So how can we create new models that are able to be enriching for all in this network and system? And so I think that's part of where the governance questioning came from and starting to use sociocracy and looking at these different models. And I guess their most recent experiment, ongoing experiment, is the Nottingham Mill Co-op, which we do talk about in Cereal Revisited. And that's in action, so you can go visit it and they have a mill there that anyone in the community can come and use and start a business off the back of. And Emma, who is the missing Miller, who's the lady who started the milling business of her own. She does some of her milling there, but it's open to anyone. And the idea is there's space as well. There's all the baking equipment. So different people who want to get involved can start to bake there as well. And so the idea is providing this kind of cooperative community space, which opens up the possibility for many more millers and bakers locally, which then opens up the possibility for many more farmers to grow grain. And so it's like building the system through this openness.
Manda: Yes. And you get the ripple effect.
Abby: Yes.
Manda: And you probably don't know the answer to this, because it's a very recent impact. But the Straits of Hormuz closing, where there's one fertiliser factory in the whole of the UK, everything else comes through the Straits of Hormuz, which means it's not coming. And so I'm really kind of interested and also it's a bit like watching a train wreck in action, of what is industrial farming going to do this year?Because the entire financial model is going to break down. And not just the financial model, the growing model isn't going to be there. What do you do when your entire concept of what it is to grow is to take the inert, growing medium that you have created by ploughing endlessly and pouring stuff onto it, and there is nothing to pour onto it? And I don't know. We were at roots to regen a couple of weeks ago, a month ago now, and we were talking about this; is they'll import some, I don't know, chicken, poultry manure from the Wye Valley. So take it all the way from the west coast of England to the East coast, where there are no poultry farms. Spread it around. Tell themselves they're using regenerative farming, and when it doesn't work, they will tell themselves that regenerative farming doesn't work, therefore. When this is not regenerative farming, but it is the general concept; we don't use fertiliser, we just use organic manure instead. Please, anyone listening, this is not regenerative farming. But absent that, it's kind of interesting. Are you getting any whispers from the UK of are people more interested suddenly in regenerative farming model, or is that not happening yet?
Abby: Well, I think generally people probably had already bought their fertiliser for this year. So not everyone, but a lot of people. So the financial impacts are going to come, let's say September. They've harvested and then they need to buy fertiliser and that's when it's going to be more complicated. And I think, you know, if we look back at when the Ukrainian Russian war started, had a similar kind of inflation of fertiliser prices. And at that time, the main, yeah, exactly what you said: most people were looking for alternatives because it became financially impossible to use artificial fertilisers. And I think at that time, my impression was that a number of people did stick with that, and they did find it to be effective. It was just that extra bit of effort to go around somewhere in the community and find whatever that other animal farm was that had some spare manure. And can I have some of that, please? But yeah, I agree, it's a major oversimplification that is not inherently regenerative. It could be, I think it could be if what's going with it is the shifting of the mindset.
Manda: Yes, it starts inside. It's not just changed the parameters.
Abby: If that is the first step that people take and they start to ask other questions and think differently, then to me that is you are starting to be regenerative. But if you're not asking any different questions, you just are using a slightly different product and that's it, then then to me that's not regenerative. So yeah, for me, regenerative is very much it's about an approach and a journey over time. Less so about the action taken necessarily.
Abby: But I think the thing I always feel, and this is something I really learned from the early days of Farmerama, because actually the truth is, I learned it from one particular art project that I was part of that's probably the most influential thing I've ever done in the farming world. It was called a Field of Wheat, and it was run by Anne-Marie Culhane and Ruth Levine, and we were 42 people, and we were invited to all invest in this field of wheat in Lincolnshire. Farmer Peter Lundgren. And so we each put in £200, which to me at the time, this was maybe ten years ago now, was quite a lot of money. I didn't think lightly about it, but I did it. And the idea was that each of us involved invested this money. The farmer actually put in 50% in the end, I think, as well. And together we bought all the seeds and all of the requirements to plant this 20 acre field of wheat. And then we did all the decision making together online, and we used Quaker principles of how to do decision making to try and open up discussion and allow for the space for everyone's point of view and opinion to come in. And it was a real variety of people. Like, I think it was head of farming at I think it was Barclays or one of the big banks. And then some of the heritage grain breeders were part of the group. And then there was just more random people like me.
Abby: And the discussion opened up some things that I had never really understood before about farming, because I was just like, I go to the shop, I buy organic. And I just couldn't understand why anyone wouldn't want to grow organic. Why would they want to use pesticides? All this stuff that felt so harmful and kind of grim to me. But then through the discussion, the planting had happened very early on, so we hadn't yet got to choose the varietal of wheat. So we just planted this, I think it was Crusoe. I don't remember exactly anyway. And so then we got to about March and the farmer was like, we probably really need to put some nitrogen on now. And we had some nitrogen experts in the group from ADAS, and they had gone through and suggested we could put just 15% of the normal amount of nitrogen that the farmer would put on. So it was a hugely reduced amount, but it was still putting artificial nitrogen on. And we had to vote and we all discussed it online. And I actually couldn't believe it, but I voted to put nitrogen on the field. And that came from basically people like John Letts and people who knew a lot about heritage grains, who said, look, we've planted a conventional wheat variety. We have to recognise that if we don't put the nitrogen on, we may have a complete crop failure, and then the farmer is going to lose his 50% stake in this whole thing. So he put in way more than £200.
Manda: Yeah right.
Abby: So we need to be reasonable, you know, like we need to be practical here. And I just recognised in that moment that the decisions that farmers have to make on a day to day basis, it's like you make one decision and then there's this whole chain of events that happens, that you're kind of trapped in the system. Maybe you have machinery that you're paying the interest on year after year and you need to service that debt. And so you really are trapped in a system. So it was through that project that I really had a new level of empathy and understanding of the decisions farmers make and why. Before that, I think I thought they were like slightly, not bad people, that's wrong.
Manda: Psychopaths who decide they want to destroy the countryside?
Abby: Yeah, exactly. Something like that.
Manda: That is where we get to. Can I ask, did this carry on beyond the year? Because what would have been really interesting is go to the second year and go, okay, we're not going to plant that kind of wheat this time. We're going to plant something that doesn't need the inputs. Was that a thing?
Abby: So Anne-Marie and Ruth didn't continue. They they had funding for a year and they did all sorts of other things around it, it's an amazing, amazing project. But I did actually with a few other people create something we called Our Field. And we went and did it at Groundswell Farm, and they allowed us to have a field there. We started with heritage grains and did the whole decision making process. And I don't think we had much success growing grains.
Manda: Right. Because it's not just about the single field, that's the thing. If you're going to be regenerative, it's a mindset change. It's not just voting on what you plant.
Abby: And also there were all sorts of things that went on, you know, like some years you just have a bad year and that's just how it is. But you know, we definitely grew some wheat and we had some of it milled and some of it went to brewing. And so we ended up planting trees in that field, so it became an agroforestry project as well. So it did continue and we did have an ongoing conversation for quite a few years. And I'm forever grateful to Anne-Marie and Ruth for letting us kind of go on with their idea. And also to John Cherry and the Western Park team for letting us experiment in their field as well.
Manda: And Peter Lundgren for starting off on his farm, when I mean, that's a very vulnerable place to put yourself as a farmer who's made the decision.
Abby: I agree.
Manda: Wouldn't it be amazing if every loaf of bread that everybody bought had a similar collective input from the people who were planning to buy from that bakery, which I guess is what they're doing with the Nottingham co-op a little bit.
Abby: A little bit. Yeah.
Manda: If they can. And this is also what Hodmedod's is trying to do, is connecting the end consumer, which is person eating food, with the people growing it. I remember somewhere along the line Josiah saying he'd been somewhere in East Anglia and they'd made some bread in a farmer's kitchen with stuff that he'd grown himself. And the farmer sat at the table and wept because it was the first time he'd ever eaten something that he'd grown. And how do we get to a place where the person growing the food is not able to eat it. It is just very strange.
Manda: But what I'm getting from talking to you is the power of narrative. This podcast is devoted to thrutopian narratives, which is how do we get from where we are to a place we'd be proud to leave behind? And you are creating those narratives. With particularly Cereal Revisited, because it's got the long time span from the original six part series through to, okay, let's go back and talk to these people and see how they're doing. And generally speaking, unless an awful lot ended up on the cutting floor, where they are now is a more mature version of where they were then. You had Tom and Mary, who'd been kind of forced into regenerative farming, just because he's very open about the fact his mental health was collapsing and they weren't making money. And I've listened to him on the Farm Gate podcast. He was going out every morning, and they had pigs that they were intending and trying to do in a way that was more humane, and he was having to shoot a number of them every morning because they were eating each other. And that's just soul destroying.
Abby: Absolutely.
Manda: And most people who are involved in farming don't see that side of it. And then they moved to regenerative, having listened to Cereals, I think. And it changed the way that their world was and it changed their understanding. And now they're in a place where it sounds like his mental health is a lot better and their farming is completely different. And so we could perhaps use them as an example, but not if it's not appropriate. But the power of story to shift people's boundaries of what they think is possible. This is why we do this. This is where we're at. So I'm interested in what has been, that arc, but I'm also interested in where are you going now? What are the stories that we can be telling now? I have a larger question, which is how long do you think we got and how do we do this at scale? This is my endless question is, how can we do it at scale and in time? And you're doing it; Farmerama reaches a lot of people and has changed a lot of lives. It feels to me that scale is exponential with this. One person listens and they share it with ten people. We had an R number of three with Covid and it spread around the planet; if you have an R number of ten, you've got the whole planet in a very short space of time. And there will be drop offs, clearly, but how do we get to that R number that shares the stories in a way that really changes lives? Because you're making it happen.
Abby: I mean, I still think we're incredibly small scale. But I also am very interested in that question, you know, how to keep expanding the reach of this narrative and the story. And one of the key insights that I was told earlier on by people in the PR marketing world, was it's a lot about reaching niches and then having the niches starting to overlap at times. But speaking to people in their niche. And in a way, Cereal was our first niche, it was the world of bread and baking. Before that, we'd just been talking to the farming community in general.
Abby: And we did actually see a huge increase in our audience off the back of that. I mean, we had resources to increase our audience as well, but still, there was a huge amount of sharing from baker to baker. You know, suddenly people had the clear reason to share it with all the people in their community. And then similarly with things like, for example, Cultivating Justice, that's another one of my favourite series we've done. We did it in collaboration with the LGBTQ Group of Landworkers Alliance and also Land In Our Names, which is a black brown led group of young people in the UK, looking to get back on the land and be connected in that way. Gosh, you can see I've not got all the words right now.
Manda: You had no sleep last night. It's okay. Words are hard to come by under those circumstances.
Abby: We worked together with those two groups and put together Cultivating Justice. And that was for me, another radical storytelling. There were some things that were quite far out of my comfort zone and learning to be okay with that. And to recognise that actually within that community, it really spoke to those people and made sense. And also I loved the idea that the bakers who had been listening to Cereal and got into Cereal suddenly were listening to Cultivating Justice. And maybe also feeling equally uncomfortable at times or like, whoa, this is wild. But actually hearing and connecting with another niche out there and just starting to open up and connect these different groups and communities that are out there. So that's one thing that I've focussed on more, is how can we work to speak to these niches and then just trust that they'll kind of all come together and connect.
Manda: Okay. And are you seeing that happening? Did you have feedback after Cultivating Justice from people? Farming in the UK is just so straight and white.
Abby: Yeah, yeah. It's conservative.
Manda: It's terrifying.
Abby: Totally. Sometimes I picture some of the farmers I know that listen, who are maybe a little more straight laced, let's say, and just picturing them listening to some of the Cultivating Justice.
Manda: Or Land it. Tell us a little bit about Landed because I loved Landed.
Abby: Oh yeah. I was also slightly out of my comfort zone working with that too. So in Landed it's about Col gordon, who's returning to his family's farm in the highlands of Scotland. And he's asking this question, you know, is the small family farm a colonial concept? Because he's recognised that actually there's a lot of issues with the small family farms. I certainly have always liked to have this overly positive image that in the future, we could have all these small family farms and that's like a really positive idea of an ecological future for all. And then as he returns to the family farm, there's so many issues with that structure. Quite often you go to events and people will ask, well, what about the price of food? You know, the price of food from these small family farms is so high, it's inaccessible to many. We have a lot of food poverty. And it's a really difficult question. But to me, what's interesting is that, in a way, col's asking a deeper question than that, which is that the small family farm inherently in a way, you need to have food that's selling at a higher price, because of just the whole way it's structured. It's all part of this system that requires you to have these high priced foods so you can even make the farm run.
Abby: And so by asking these deeper questions, we realise that actually the small family farm, certainly in the highlands of Scotland, it's only really been a concept since the 1700s on. And before that there were completely different models of being on the land and being in relationship to the land. And not that they were perfect by any means, but just that actually the idea that the small family farm is a positive place for us all to get to is maybe something we should question more. And Col goes really deep across the four episodes and I agree, there are points in it that I think for many people, particularly white people in the UK today who may own land, they probably feel uncomfortable. Because actually, if you look at land in Scotland in particular, a lot of it was bought off the back of the end of enslavement.
Manda: And the Highland Clearances.
Speaker 3: Well, the Highland Clearances and the end of the government essentially paying off people who had owned other people as slaves, paying them off per head, which is outrageous.
Manda: Yes. So that they didn't have to lose financially when they were not allowed to own people anymore. It's just the fact that that happened is just so obscene.
Abby: And then they used that money, because even at the time, apparently it was seen as a little bit taboo, they used that money to then buy land in Scotland to kind of placate the whole thing, pacify this idea that that money was dirty. And so there's a lot of grief and trauma and difficulty, complexity, to that whole thing. So I was nervous putting it out, obviously. Nervous in a good way I think. It wasn't like I ever tried to stop it, we wanted to go to the difficult questions, but it's just like, how are people going to respond? But one of the things at Farmerama that we've always focussed on, is there is no enemy and that most people are good people inherently. Most people are good people, and that they're just trying to do their best for themselves, their family, their community, whatever their kind of circle looks like. And so we're not here to make people wrong, what we're here to do is show people how things have come about and allow them to make their own choices about how they want to interact with that kind of truth, I think, is what we're trying to say. Or questioning about how things have come to be the way they are and how we might want to change that. And I think that's really core to Farmerama storytelling. And I think that is core to what I feel is important for narrative to reach many more people, is to share in a way that allows for people to gracefully change their mind or change their mindset, without any needing to feel guilty about what came before. And maybe that's a privileged position to be in, because maybe the trauma isn't my trauma to want to work through. So some people may not feel that that's a fair approach. But that's just my experience in the world, that if you want to shift mindsets, then...
Manda: Then you don't do it by shaming people.
Abby: Yeah, you have to allow grace in that.
Manda: Okay, I just completely changed where we're going because this feels really generative. So now I'm thinking out loud, which is always dangerous, but let's go. So in my conversations with people, particularly people in North America, but everywhere, there is a sense that shame is a good thing and that we need to be ashamed of our past. And in my world, shame is a very, very toxic thing and it isn't helping us get forward. And appalling things were done by our ancestors. That's a given. It's also a given that every single one of us, somewhere in our ancestral past and probably many times are the product of a rapist and a person who was raped. That will have happened in our past. There is huge ancestral trauma on top of all of the colonial traumas. All of that said, we're in the middle of the sixth mass extinction and its 64 million years since the previous mass extinction. And any of those traumas happened in the last 300,000 years or less. And the most recent traumas, the Highland Clearances, enslavement, happened within the last 500 to 1000 years. In geological time scales that's the blink of an eye. And I am not minimising the trauma at all. But I am saying that we are facing extinction, and if we keep inflicting shame on ourselves and each other, you can't have a thawing. So Thomas Hubbell says that trauma is a moment frozen in time, and that we need to thaw that. And you don't thaw it by hurling shame at it. You thaw it by allowing grace and compassion and healing and connection with all parts of ourselves, ourselves and each other, ourselves and the web of life.
Manda: I live in a reality where we in the white, Western educated, industrial rich, democratic, WEIRD world, are carrying at least 10,000 years of separation from the web of life. Because our form of farming, which is 'I will decide what to plant and I will decide within this field boundary; I will own this land and I will do stuff with it', cannot happen if we are actually connected to the web of life. I don't know if you've spoken to Lyla June Johnson? I think you would find it really interesting. She did her PhD in indigenous landscape scale agriculture, which happens all over the world, and the evidence is all there now. But it's a co-creation with the web of life, where you take the whole of a coastline, for instance, and you build little reefs out into the sea. And therefore there's a lot more kelp, and therefore there's a lot more oysters, say, and everything flourishes because there's more biodiversity. And the humans take a little bit of that, but they don't take all of it by any means. It's a different way of looking at the world. And so we've just been discussing in Scotland, land was much more of a commons, and then the clearances happened. And then it became, certain people owned the land instead of the community has access to the land, which is a whole different mindset. But before that, there was the people share the land with the web of life.
Manda: And I am well aware that we're not going back to a forager hunter existence; that completely isn't a thing. And I am trying to think my way forward to what does an actual initiation culture; so Francis Weller talks about our culture as a trauma culture and indigenous cultures are initiation cultures. What does a 21st century initiation culture look like? And how do we create our food in a way that is actually working with the web of life, working with each other as human beings with all parts of ourselves? That is not shame led. Is led by grace and connection. And I don't know if your thinking is that far ahead, but I'd be really interested. Because you are working at that radical edge where uncertainty happens. And the emergence happens from that place of uncertainty. So I'm just throwing all of that at you to see what sticks and see where you can take it. And this is a place to experiment. And if you say something you don't like, we'll cut it out.
Abby: Well, what occurs to me immediately is in a way what I do is have an openness to those that are asking those questions. I think that's really the truth. And so what occurs to me immediately is actually Col Gordon, since the Landed series, has continued his questioning and his research. So for the last 4 or 5 years. And so I would say he's almost asking exactly that question that you just asked.
Manda: Oh I need to talk to Col. Okay.
Abby: And actually, we're just right now raising funding to do a next series. Landed Two. It's not going to be called that.
Manda: Right. Landed Revisited.
Abby: It's actually a completely new narrative. And he's just taken over running of the farm.
Manda: Stewardship.
Abby: Stewardship of the farm. Yep. And at that moment he also is recognising, you know, I think the stat is that indigenous communities steward 80% of the world's biodiversity on something like less than 3% of the land, or I can't remember. But it's some insane statistic.
Manda: But it's that order. Yes.
Abby: And so with that knowledge and concept in mind, that statistic in mind, Col is asking what can we learn from those cultures and bring to our relationship to land here? On where I stand on this piece of earth in the highlands of Scotland? Like, what does that even look like, to start to conceptualise that approach? And it's really interesting because in a way it's a relatively simple question, but it goes so far into the depths of all the systems we're part of. I was hearing some of the research and the people he's talked to, and I'm really excited by what he's uncovering as we speak, and what that series is going to share from his perspective. And I think in a way, we can only look at it from his perspective on his little piece of earth.
Manda: Yeah. And he can talk to the land. Because that land will have what it needs, which will be completely different to what land farmed by indigenous people in, let's say, South America needs. That's a different thing.
Abby: Yeah, totally. And he does actually have a connection with one community from the Brazilian Amazon, and it's a connection from his area of Scotland. They've had a connection over the last 5 or 6 years where they've communicated regularly and gone to visit each other. And so he has got connection with indigenous communities directly. But of course, what they practice and do in and along the Amazon River is wildly different.
Manda: It's totally different.
Abby: Than what makes sense in the highlands of Scotland today. And also there is there is a heritage in Scotland that is somewhat accessible. And he's done a lot of work to look through the archives and go through the history and speak to people who've been researching it, to really understand, well, what does it mean to be in relationship with land here? And what have we lost through the language? And so he's bringing together those different threads to try and understand, what does it mean to be in relationship with land here? And what does that look like, from this lens of the small family farm? That's how he's coming into this whole thing. And maybe that will break apart completely. But, you know, that's where he's starting. And so I think that's kind of speaking to your questioning, of what is the vision? Because I think that's what is really missing. It's all very well saying it's not working, but what do we do?
Manda: We have to give people a sense of agency.
Abby: And what can we live into? I mean, I don't know. That's part of the difficulty. And I think that's part of why Landed was interesting, because it really did help people say like, okay, so this is why maybe I can't see where I'm going. It's because it's complex and maybe the small family farm isn't the end result. So what is? And so this is the continuation of that thought process really.
Manda: So exciting.
Abby: Yes. So that is in the making. And will probably come out in under a year's time.
Manda: Oh. All right, I will hold my breath. That.
Abby: Watch this space!
Manda: Yes. And so we're going to have to wrap up soon. So where I've got to, from the work that you're doing, is that you have offered not just a critique of the system that is currently not working, you've offered people a sense of direction, agency, and empowerment and motivation. I have a favourite acronym which is MADE, which is motivation, agency, direction, empowerment. That this is what you need for thrutopian work. I can see the missing Miller. I can see that there is a part of the chain that I could fulfil. And you've had people do that and they went away and they learned how to mill the wheat that we needed, and they created a mill. And then the system has been shifted enough that there are now new regenerative things happening, because these are the steps that people need to see. The old system is not fit for purpose. But we don't need a utopian vision of a new system that's somehow completely unlinked, because otherwise we can't get there. And what you've offered with all of Farmerama, but particularly Cereals and then Cereals Revisited, is here are the steps. Here are the gaps. And as you said, you didn't have a call to action. But what I really got from Cereals Revisited, one of the many things, was that people had a felt sense of a yearning within them, of I want to be part of the solution. And here someone has just offered me a piece of the jigsaw that is missing, that I could craft and fit in, and I will throw myself at that. And then it's there. And then emerges the Nottingham Co-op. Now it's not just a mill, it's a co-op. And it's creating the ripple effects.
Abby: Agreed.
Manda: And I'm just enormously impressed and really happy that you're there. And other than Col and Landed, any ideas of where you're taking Farmerama next?
Abby: Well, we're going to continue. So I find part of what drives me in the day to day, is I really love being able to share the different current ideas and happenings that are going on, just in the day to day. And so when I'm going out and meeting with people, like, for example, the Cereal Revisited party that we had, and it was also the Farmerama 10th birthday party, I saw Ben Raskin there, who had actually been featured on the original, the very first Farmerama we ever made.
Manda: Yeah, Ben has been on this podcast, so we know who you're talking about.
Abby: Oh, yeah. And he's an amazing guy.
Manda: He is astonishing.
Abby: And we were just talking and he shared about the agroforestry project he's part of, and he shared that actually they were focusing on some of the timber side of things, because the small scale timber works is quite an interesting kind of new area that's becoming more important as agroforestry has become more important in the last ten years. So the little snippets like that, that I was completely unaware of. It's often not yet documented in a book because...
Manda: Because books take a long time to write and you have to have the bandwidth and the time.
Abby: Totally. Yeah. As I think you know, right. So I appreciate that. But also when you write a book, you have to have a lot of clarity of the idea and the idea has to have a certain amount of depth and breadth to it. Whereas with what we call our monthly shows, although they're going to be seasons, so like three months at a time, within those we offer 10 to 12 minute snippets of ideas and experiments that are ongoing. And so we are going to continue with that. So we'll do a summer season, which will be June, July, August, and then we'll do a winter season of three months as well. And I love that because to me, that's where some of the ongoing energy is kind of shared. And people get connected with the different ideas that are happening right now.
Manda: Yeah. Brilliant, brilliant. Oh, I am so looking forward to that. Excellent. All right. Well, that was fantastic. I'll let you go back to your sleep and your youngster. And thank you so much for coming on to the Accidental Gods podcast. I have wanted to talk to you for a very long time. So I'm going to also thank Rosie Baldwin for putting us in touch. So thank you Rosie. Thank you Abby. And I look forward to talking to you again in a while. Maybe we'll do a regular once a year or so, because that would be amazing.
Abby: Thank you so much. It's been brilliant. And thank you for your openness and exploratory nature. I really appreciate that, because it's just an exciting way to navigate.
Manda: It's lovely to find a fellow traveller. Thank you very much indeed. And there we go. That's it for another week. Huge thanks to Abby and everyone in the Farmerama team for all that you are and do. We have the ideas of thrutopian stories and thrutopian narratives and how we can make the change we need to see in the world, and Farmerama is doing it and has the evidence that they're doing it. Which is just so inspiring. I've put links in the show notes, and I thoroughly encourage you to go and listen to Cereals, all six episodes and then listen to Cereals Revisited. It's such an inspiring story arc in and of itself, and there will be things that you can share with people. If you listen to this podcast a lot, there is a chance that you live in a similar bubble to me, and you think that everybody understands about the difference between regenerative farming and industrial farming. The havoc of not being allowed to sell seeds compared to what the industrial farmers are hooked into, whether they like it or not. The really damaging impact of all that industrial farming is on the world and what regenerative farming could be. And then we come up against the knowledge barrier because knowing this is not enough. Being able to share it with everybody is what counts.
Manda: So if you can share this podcast with half a dozen other people who then go on to share it with half a dozen other people. If you can listen to Farmerama and share that with a different half dozen people who go on to share it with a different half dozen people, this is how we make the change we need to see in the world. So please follow up the links. Please check where you get your food if at all possible. If you have the means, please find the small bakers, the small producers, the small growers in your area and buy everything that you possibly can from them. Get to know them as people. Share the idea of this in your local communities. This is how we change the world. So thank you Abby and all at Farmerama for all that you're doing.
Manda: We'll be back next week with another conversation. And before I go into the credits, I want to thank all of you who responded to my request at the end of the solo podcast a couple of weeks ago, where I asked you whether it was worth doing. And I know that my out-of-office response and my email basically says "I'm never going to read another email again until the book is done", but I am reading them, and I am beyond grateful to all of you who have taken the time to write.
Manda: I have read every detail of every email with everything that you said, and it is worth doing. I am extremely glad about that. I will do more. I will also, as somebody recently suggested, probably do a series of short podcasts that lay the foundations in non rambling ways, for the people for whom this is not necessarily the water in which you swim, or the intellectual space in which you make your home. That was a particularly good idea. So watch this space. It'll probably happen later in the summer, and I'll probably put them out in the gap in September. There we go.
Manda: So credits: huge thanks to Caro C for the music at the Head and Foot. To Alan Lowells of Airtight Studios for the production. To Lou Mayor for the video. Anne Thomas for the transcripts. Faith Tilleray for wrestling with the tech and for all of the conversations behind the scenes that keep us moving forward. And as ever, an enormous thanks to all of you for listening and for sharing and for offering emails and for leaving reviews on the podcast app of your choice. That too, is really appreciated. And that's it for now. See you next week. Thank you and goodbye.