Dr. Shane Simonsen, a dedicated researcher in human intervention and plant adaptation, dives into the urgent need for innovative agricultural practices amid climate change. He shares his journey from traditional academia to regenerative farming, advocating for the preservation of genetic diversity in crops. The conversation spans the interplay between technology and sustainability, critiques modern agricultural methods, and emphasizes grassroots initiatives for food security. Shane's insights encourage a deeper understanding of how human creativity can help our ecosystems thrive.
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Quick takeaways
Dr. Shane Simonsen promotes Zero Input Agriculture as a sustainable method that can thrive without traditional resources like water and fertilizers.
The podcast highlights the importance of integrating Indigenous agricultural practices to inspire modern sustainable farming and biodiversity preservation.
A focus on hybridization in crop development emphasizes human creativity's role in adapting agriculture to climate change challenges and ecosystem dynamics.
Deep dives
The Vision for a Sustainable Future
The podcast emphasizes the idea that another world is possible if we collectively work towards it. This vision is grounded in the concept of building a legacy that future generations can be proud of, highlighting the need for community involvement and shared responsibility. The host reminds listeners about an online book club for interactive discussions and encourages deeper exploration of transformative ideas. This approach to future building is framed as a hopeful and radical endeavor, emphasizing the importance of proactive engagement.
Zero Input Agriculture
Dr. Shane Simonson introduces the concept of Zero Input Agriculture, which operates without water, fertilizers, or pesticides, showcasing its practicality in sub-tropical Australia. He discusses his experiments with various crops, including creating hybrids and developing parrot-resistant maize, emphasizing the experimental nature of his work. The importance of understanding local ecosystems and biodiversity is highlighted, as he conducts research on what plants can thrive under changing environmental conditions. This method aims to create agricultural systems that are resilient to climate fluctuations while minimizing external inputs.
The Role of Intuition and Curiosity
Shane's approach to farming is characterized by curiosity and intuition, allowing him to explore unconventional solutions in agriculture. He emphasizes that human creativity can lead to new agricultural practices and relationships with the ecosystem. By trusting his instincts and experiencing natural processes firsthand, he aims to generate practical innovations in crop cultivation. This reflective and experimental methodology contrasts sharply with traditional rigid scientific approaches.
Learning from Indigenous Practices
The discussion touches on the historical agricultural practices of Indigenous Australians, illustrating how pre-colonial land management strategies demonstrated sustainable interactions with local ecosystems. Shane points to Bruce Pascoe's work that documents these practices, showcasing that Indigenous cultures had their own systems of agriculture that respected biodiversity. Understanding these methods can inspire modern-day agriculture to integrate traditional knowledge into contemporary practices. Revitalizing this wisdom is presented as a vital task for creating a sustainable future.
The Potential of Hybridization
Shane explains the significance of hybridization in crop development, arguing that it allows for the creation of resilient organisms capable of adapting to climate challenges. By crossing different species, he believes humans can harness ecological complexity to cultivate new crops that better suit local environments. This approach seeks to re-establish the intricate interactions between humans and their ecosystems that were disrupted by industrial agriculture. Consequently, the potential of conscious hybridization can transform agriculture into a more dynamic and effective practice.
Navigating Future Challenges
The conversation delves into the broader challenges posed by climate change and resource depletion, stressing the urgency to develop sustainable agricultural systems. Shane suggests that humans will inevitably face natural pressures that will force adaptation, leading to potential transformations in culture and society. By equipping ourselves with innovative agricultural solutions, the capacity to thrive amid uncertainty is increased. This mindset prepares us for a future where traditional models fail, encouraging resilience and creativity in problem-solving.
The climate emergency is impacting our entire eco-sphere. Plants are at the core of every food chain but we have no idea how fast they can adapt to changes that are taking place in decades where once they took Millenia. Which is where human ingenuity and intervention could be game-changing. If we put our minds to it, could we help plants to evolve in ways that serve the entire web of life?
In this regard, Dr Shane Simonsen is someone who has oriented his entire life to making sure that we have the right seeds to grow the food we'll need as industrial agriculture grinds to a halt.
In this regard, Dr Shane Simonsen is someone who has oriented his entire life to making sure that we have the right seeds to grow the food we'll need as industrial agriculture grinds to a halt. Shane has a prodigious output. When he's not writing his substack on Zero Input Agriculture - this means no water, fertiliser or pesticides, and the former of these is seriously impressive when you know he lives in subtropical Australia - or recording his Going to Seed podcast with Joseph Lofthouse, or writing Taming the Apocalypse as a non-fiction view of how the world could be if we got it right, or converting this into fiction in Our Vitreous Womb… when he's not doing all of this, Shane is farming in the aforesaid sub-tropical zone of Australia, exploring the means of production in their most grounded sense; creating parrot-resistant maize or hybrids from Bunya Nuts and Parana Pines - species that haven't been on the same continent together since the tectonic plates last shifted and Australia became separate from South America. Shane is a polymath's polymath: he has a PhD in biochemistry which means he can trace down ideas to their roots and then extrapolate back up and join them with other ideas to create something new. He celebrates the old gentleman scientists of Victorian times who may have been innately colonial products of the trauma culture, but they played at science, they did things that weren't obviously oriented to producing the next paper or winning the race to the next patent: they had fun, they followed their intuition and most of the really big advances in our technologies arise from them. Shane is also aware that most of the big advances in human evolution came when we were under serious pressure as a species.... kind of like we are now. So he's made it his life's task to find ways we can feed ourselves with low technology in a changing world. What species will survive and how might they grow? What hybrids can we intentionally create that will open up new spaces of possibility? How can we - how will we - transform ourselves in this changing world?