Because that's not an easy thing.

deeply traumatic process.

But then there was a moment, and I honestly can't remember because the weeks are so full that they seem to be like the length of universes.

I can't remember whether it was six months ago or a year ago.

It doesn't really matter.

But there was a moment where, for several years now, it's been tough wild fun on all sorts of levels, from actually solving the problems to ending up as a kind of spokesperson for something which is highly nuanced in a world of slogans.

I've got a very thin skin.

feel we're progressing? Is this some progress? Are we getting there?

If you think about the levers we need to pull next in this journey, or the levers we need to pull more, what do you think needs to happen? Is it more access to capital? Is it centering farmers in decision making? Is it enabling policies? Is it all of that?

Well, speaking from a wild farm perspective, what we have been working on for the last several years now is the two branches of this problem.

One of them based on some very lonely and dark days that I had when I was farming in France when everything was going wrong.

and I had a very sort of brutal experience of why pharma mental health is so poor.

And so the first thing I think is building a community structure that empowers people to do something different because doing something different when all your neighbours are not and doing something different when you're really up against it financially speaking is an act of great bravery and we need to recognise that in our farmers and help them do that.

So one is the community support structure.

The second thing is the economics, because if the economics don't work, then all that's pointless.

I just wonder if you sense that your background in music has informed your approach to farming.

How does where we are right now play out with human history?

Well, I, I think there's, um, there's a, a longstanding narrative which portrayed nature as something that was out to get us, um, rather than nature's default setting of abundance.

In fact, there was a...

Whe- when, um-In the '70s during the last oil shock when it became clear the extent to which our, our, our food system had become oil dependent, and therefore the oil shock became a food shock.

Uh, but there was a, there's an article in Time magazine about that, and it sort of begins about how, you know, ever since we sort of chased around after wooly mammoths and tried to scratch a few grains from the earth and all this, w- you know, the, the threat of hunger has been on our backs, and this real kind of thing of, like, this hostile nature, and it's just not like that.

I've seen it my, with my own eyes many times just how, how quickly nature comes roaring back if you give it a chance.

Like the land wants to heal if you give it a chance.

that-lack of understanding come from? I mean, would you talk a little bit about chemistry versus biology in, in the food system?

Tell me about it.

Yeah, well, I became convinced from, from the Albert Howard book that, um, that integrating livestock was gonna be a really critical part of bringing soils back to life.

You know, when the, before the sort of Great Plains of, uh, of the West of America were plowed up, there was this deep, deep black soil there.

Uh, and the reason it was there was because of eons of herds of, of bison going across these grasslands and this symbiotic relationship between grass and herbivores, grass eaters.

You know, if those grasses didn't wanna get grazed, they would have evolved spikes.

It, it was a completely symbiotic relationship, uh, and, and leads to the extraordinary buildup of fertility over time.

And so I think it's important to say that we have a bizarre situation, which is one of the unforeseen consequences of the post-World War II farming system and the mountains of cheap grains that accumulated as a result of its, ostensibly its success, uh, which has created a whole livestock industry and, and feedlot beef and, you know, all the issues in the River Wye and all of this grain, you know, half of our grain harvest going into animals, and that remains to me something which needs to be addressed.

Can you tell me more about how you think about value? I mean, personally, what, what do you value in, in your life? What does it, what does it mean to you?