Show Notes
Our imagination has been captured by stories of rewilding ecosystems… What if we told you that farmers can rewild soils? About half of the world's habitable land is used for agriculture, either for growing crops or grazing livestock, meaning farmers have an outsized responsibility for the complex webs of life that make up the soil. So in Part 2 we’re starting with people. We’ll travel from farms alongside ancient Gondwana rainforest, to rainy green fields north of London, to small-scale growers in India. We’ll unpack the consequences of the Green Revolution on biodiversity, ecosystems and communities, and meet the farmers who are turning things around.
Featured talent in this episode (in order of appearance):
Eli Court CEO, Soils for Life
John Cherry Founder, Groundswell Regenerative Agriculture Festival
Joshua Gilbert Worimi cattle farmer, academic and author, Australia’s Agricultural Identity: An Aboriginal Yarn
Gabrielle Chan Farmer, political journalist & author of Why You Should Give A F*ck About Farming
Sam Vincent Regenerative farmer and author, My Father and Other Animals
Siddhesh Sakore UN Land Hero and Founder of AGRO Rangers Donate to AGRO Rangers to support small-scale farmers in India to transition to agroecological practices.
SOIL: Rewilding the Underground is created and hosted by Freya Mulvey, produced by Jess Hamilton, and mixed by Adam Connelly. Our theme song is Daisies by Cooee, a project by Kirli Saunders and Mark Chester Harding. Our podcast artwork is by Mark Chester Harding. We acknowledge and pay respect to the traditional custodians of Country across this continent for their care for lands, waterways and soils for millennia and ongoing.
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SOIL was made possible thanks to the generous support of everyone who donated to our crowdfunding campaign, our talent who shared their voices, and the many soil organisations, individuals and friends who have helped us along the way.
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More from SOIL: Rewilding the Underground
Bread. How did something so basic, so fundamental, get so complicated – and even start making us ill? This is the question that underpins ‘Cereal’, an investigative series from our friends at Farmerama Radio that uncovers the polarised world of bread, and its connection to seeds, soil, our health and food systems.
In honour of World Soil Day, we're sharing 5 things you can do to help soils:
Humans can’t create soils on our own, but we can create the conditions for life underground to flourish. In our final episode, we look at existing mechanisms to scale practices that support the restoration of degraded soils - like improving soil testing, research, carbon farming and natural capital frameworks. We feed chickens with kids and hear about government schemes to rewild daycares, and we speak to tech and data experts who are recording the sounds of the underground to restore soil health. Finally, we hear an important call to bring the natural world back into our songs, art and culture, to be guided by First Nations knowledge, and to connect with, restore and protect the life beneath our feet.
We cannot survive without the intricate network of life in soils that underlies 95% of the food humans consume. In this episode, we trace global food supply chains, visit an independent butcher and meet farmers and eaters doing things differently. We hear the challenges facing small food business and abattoirs in Australia to small-scale farmers in India, and learn of inspiring alternatives, like community supported agriculture (CSAs), holistic policy approaches, and education programs supporting the transition to nutritious and secure food systems.
We’ve already started to feel the brunt of anthropogenic climate change, and our relationship with soil may be crucial to our way through. In this episode, we’ll hear how soil stores carbon and fresh water, how it’s connected to droughts, dust storms and deserts, and why a dusty or concrete landscape is hotter than one covered in trees. We unpack the science behind the small water cycle and sensible heat coming off the land. And we’ll hear stories of farmers working together to rehydrate and regenerate the land, and others banding together to change policies and systems.