Tag: environment
Doing your bit for the Environment?
by Georgia Wingfield-Hayes
Part 2 of a 2 part series
Is eating meat, as we are told, bad for the environment? The quick answer is, there is no quick answer. Farming systems differ vastly in terms of carbon, biodiversity and animal welfare. So, let’s see if we can unpack this issue in brief.
When it comes to the meat, less is more. As we learned in Part 1, replacing intensively reared and highly processed meat with high quality, nutrient dense meats, from regenerative, organic and nature-based farming systems, means we don’t need as much animal protein to fulfil our dietary requirements. This forms part of the equation of regenerative living. So, what are the arguments that tell us that eating meat is an environmental no no.
Argument No 1. Land Use
Beef and lamb production occupy large areas of land that could otherwise be used for growing crops or rewilded. This seems like good sense, we can feed more people off less land with crops and rewilding should restore biodiversity. However, not all land is suitable for cropping and rewilding is a young science making some serious mistakes in not understanding the herbivore’s role in ecosystem restoration.
Meanwhile, let’s not forget that a certain amount of animal protein is essential to good health. There are no examples of vegan diets in indigenous cultures.
A macro-issue here is the linear nature of western thinking. X hectares of land could produce x amount more food if we grew crops not meat. But that thinking doesn’t ask what does x piece of land want to be? Can we foster a healthy ecosystem and fit our food systems into that? This non-linear, holistic thinking requires a lot more head scratching and acceptance that we never have all the answers, in a life-long apprenticeship to nature.
Are the former great plains of the USA more suited to crops or rewilding? Or could we use regenerative livestock farming to restore the health of the prairies? All is possible, it depends on what our imagination allows. One thing is for sure, rewilding such semi-arid lands without a healthy population of wild buffalo, elk and wolves, will see it turn to desert.
Herbivores are essential disruptors. Wild herbivores in the presence of predators will keep an ecosystem dynamic and soils healthy. In the absence of predators, disruption becomes excessive and causes degradation of land. In regenerative farming we aim to mimic a healthy level of disruption in order to rapidly regenerate the soils carbon, life and depth; grassland plant diversity and root depth. All of which massively improves soil water retention and the diversity of invertebrate, insect, small mammals and birds.
Upland Britain is not viable for crop production and overpopulation by deer prevents forest regeneration. We can fence off areas, plant trees and allow rewilding to occur, as is already being successfully done by organisations like Reforesting Scotland, however, in the long term, this rewilding will not create optimal biodiversity without a healthy balance of herbivores and predators (wolves, lynx and bears), in the mix. Without these the result will be closed canopy forest, with little in the way of grassland and wildflowers for pollinators.
Is it possible for us to move beyond the siloed thinking of either-or, food or rewilding, and see an integration of the two? We believe it is, what’s more we see this as crucial. Insect populations have crashed alarmingly in recent years; 60% or more in 20 years to be precise. While the finger rightly gets pointed at the use of pesticides in agriculture, we must also acknowledge that 97% of the UK’s species rich meadows have disappeared in the last 100 years. Wildflower meadows are an essential part of our landscape and can only be engineered by herbivores. Dung from these herbivores, is another essential element of a complex ecosystem, providing food and shelter to dung beetles and other microfauna and mycorrhizal networks, which help building soil carbon.
In 2016 the UN estimated that we have only 60 harvests left in our farmed soils, if we continue with current practices. So, rewilding vs cropping isn’t the question? Farmers shifting to regenerative arable systems are discovering that they require livestock – grazing herbal leys, as part of their arable rotation, in order to build fertility. Animals are essential to chemical free farming.
Argument No 2. Methane: Burps, farts and manure
The UN estimates that 14.5% of global carbon emissions come from livestock production. Here we need to go back to feedlots vs 100% grass-fed as spoken about in part 1. Feedlots mean large amounts of land gets used to grow grain, in order to feed cattle. The manure from these animals then has to be dealt with: spread back on land, piled up to decompose or put through a bio-digester where at least methane and other gases are harvested as fuel for other uses. Run off from effluent pollutes rivers and ground water. But none of these things are an issue in systems where animals are 100% grass-fed.
Three important things are consistently overlooked in the overall analysis of meat production and climate change:
- The most carbon rich soils are grassland soils.
- There is no upper limit to how much carbon can be sequestered in well managed pastures.
- A soil’s water holding capacity is a direct function of soil carbon.
The soil water infiltration rate of Gabe Brown’s ranch, pre-regenerative farming was 1/2 inch an hour. The rest ran off the land. Today that has increased to 8+ inches an hour. That water, held by soil carbon is part of the climate change debate that is overlooked at our peril. If we are going to cool the planet, we need soils that hold water, and soils covered by plants. Bringing trees into these pastures improves this picture still further.
The argument that cows produce methane and therefore, let’s get rid of the cows, is a perfect example of linear thinking getting us into trouble. The prairies of North America were home to 30-60 million buffalo before Europeans embarked on their slaughter. In Europe our landscapes were once a mosaic of woodland and pasture expertly engineered by deer, horses and bison in the presence of predators. The methane output of cattle is a problematic partial picture, we need to look at complete carbon equations for whole farming systems, alongside biodiversity, water, etc.
Tilled soils, for example, have half the carbon of an average productive pasture. Regeneratively farmed pastures, however, keep on sequestering carbon. There has to date been a gross underestimation of the carbon sink potential of pastures, which outstrip forests. On the regenerative farm, White Oak Pastures in Georgia, USA, they have shown that not only does the sequestration of carbon into their regen-soils balance the methane output of livestock, but in fact negates 85% of the farms total emissions.
Summing Up
While the finger is being pointed at meat, we miss the point that the way most food is farmed is causing a climate, environment and biodiversity catastrophe. All farming needs to change drastically for the sake of human health and the planet; and we need to stop seeing these two things as separate and understand that the health of the biosphere and the human body are one and the same. Macrocosm – microcosm.
Herbivores are essential for the rapid rebuilding of carbon rich soils. They are our best tool in the regeneration of complex and complete ecosystems from the ground up. To us here at Primal Meats, it makes sense for this regeneration to include food production. Keeping people in relationship with land and food providence. A world where land is either intensively cropped or rewilded, while people eat lab-grown meat, will not only be deeply spiritually impoverished, but the chronic health problems we are facing today will only get worse.
One final note. Food waste is still a big issue in the UK and one of the best ways to get around food waste is to buy food whilst it is still in the field. This is exactly what we do with Primal Steaks Club. You buy part of an animal, so that when it goes to slaughter, every bit is already destined for a customer. All fresh and no waste!
Referencess
Study: White Oak Pastures Beef Reduces Atmospheric Carbon
https://blog.whiteoakpastures.com/blog/carbon-negative-grassfed-beef
Soil Carbon Cowboys
https://savory.global/science_library/soil-carbon-cowboys
What’s your Beef
http://kinnebrookfarm.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/whatsyourbeef.pdf
Is Grass-Fed Beef Really Better For The Planet? Here’s The Science
Restoring the climate through capture and storage of soil carbon through holistic planned grazing
https://savory.global/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/restoring-the-climate.pdf
Eating Meat Is Bad for Climate Change, and Here Are All the Studies That Prove It
The fight to save vanishing wildflower meadows
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-61869167
UK’s flying insects have declined by 60% in 20 years
Methane Madness
The last few weeks have seen a fascinating public response to Arla Foods’ – a farmer-owned dairy cooperative—announcement that it is trialling the methane-suppressing feed additive Bovaer on 30 UK supplier farms.
The public pushback has been astonishing, with a mass boycott of Arla food products and a sudden raising of awareness of the issues.
For several years, I have been discussing the limitations and risks of a climate response that is so narrowly focused on Carbon (Methane is part of this ‘carbon tunnel vision’ as the gas is measured in carbon equivalents in climate models/calculations). I covered my concerns in this article last year.
In the article, I explore the risks of oversimplifying complex systems, particularly in relation to the functioning of our living planet. I draw attention to the dangers of focusing exclusively on a limited aspect of the intricate dynamics that make up our climate, especially considering that our scientific understanding of these systems is still in its infancy.
We covered this in some detail in this series of articles a few years ago.
When this partial understanding of how the planet works is then baked into policy and backed up with a new economic system, we have a serious problem. As we have seen, corporations and entrepreneurs will scramble to get to market with the next ‘solution’ that could change the world. Unfortunately, they are right. It could change the world, but not for the better if it is based on a faulty premise. We don’t need any more solutioneering; we need to address the multiple root causes of this complex problem.
The pushback against Arla has been largely attributed to a bunch of conspiracy theorists pedalling ‘misinformation’ on X. This assumption is yet more evidence that the industry is not grasping the mood of the Nation and their growing instincts that ‘the science’ (that is essentially conducted by the companies who are bringing the products to market and regulated by organisations with questionable ties to the industry) is perhaps not as robust as we would like!
The facts and details of what people are sharing might be incorrect, but the assumption that companies are spinning the climate narrative to benefit themselves is bang on. People are not stupid; they can spot that ‘big food’, ‘big agriculture’, ‘big pharma’, and now ‘big climate’ are embarking on a gaslighting exercise of the highest order.
Conversely, and equally as worrying, is the general public’s seemingly blind ignorance about how our food and farming systems currently work. Perhaps it is because I have been ranting about the state of our food system for nearly three decades, but it is astonishing to me that most people think that their 95p a pint supermarket milk comes from happy cows grazing peacefully in flower-rich meadows and that this new methane additive is messing with a pure unadulterated natural product!
It doesn’t take much digging to find out that this is not how most dairy farms manage their cattle, and there are some serious concerns about the ethics and environmental impact of high-production dairy farms. For those of us who have been buying and promoting organic and pasture-for-life products for a long time, this is incredibly frustrating to watch as it unfolds.
I hope the boycott of Arla milk will highlight the fabulous dairy farmers who do indeed rear their cattle in high-welfare, organic, and extensive pasture systems. Instead, it seems to be mostly driving supermarket buyers to switch their brands to other cheap supermarket milk that is anything but Arla! Ironically, some fabulous Arla farmers who run pasture-based organic systems will probably suffer from this boycott, too.
Of course, some excellent dairy farmers will be found amongst the huge dairy supply chains of the major supermarket milk suppliers. There will, however, be quite a number of large-housed dairy units where the cattle never graze in a field. These systems generally use highly concentrated feeds grown from ecologically degenerative arable systems. Such systems often have questionable ethical practices, such as calf separation at birth, an overreliance on antibiotics and fertility hormones, and cows being treated like production machines where yield is prioritised over metabolic health and longevity. For these housed systems where the cow is decoupled from the methane-oxidising grassland environment, you can see why there is a case to be made for the use of methane inhibitors!
Methane inhibitors are a mechanistic response to the mechanisation and decoupling of what should be a natural system: cows eating diverse pasture and producing nutrient-dense milk. Caroline Grindrod
But a better response, of course, and one I have committed my life’s work to support, is to buy our meat and milk from pasture-based, organic, and ideally regenerative systems. In these situations, the methane emitted is simply a natural part of the carbon cycle.
Primal Meats does not and will never sell meat from animals that have been fed methane inhibitors. Instead, we dedicate our climate response to promoting and supporting farming methods that achieve net zero by redesigning their systems to ones with minimal inputs and managing their land to sequester carbon, improve water cycles, and naturally oxidise methane.
Pasture for Life has posted its stance on the website, which I encourage you to read
And you can find a list of Pasture for Life certified dairy https://www.pastureforlife.org/where-to-buy/where-to-buy-dairy/
Patrick Holden the CEO of the Sustainable Food Trust has also written an excellent response to the Arla debacle.
Doing your bit for the NHS
by Georgia Wingfield-Hayes
Part 1 of a 2 part series
Have you ever tried eating only one of two types of foods, day after day? Your favourite food perhaps? Avocado on toast or chocolate? Soon you become so sick of those foods, that you can’t stand the sight of them. This is because our bodies are full of intelligent feedback mechanisms that tell us that we need something else, we need variety. If you’ve been overloading your liver with rich foods, for example, you will, if attuned, crave dark green leafy vegetables and other bitter foods that help the liver decongest.
Animals are exactly the same. Animals that grow up on a wild diet, learning what to forage from their mothers, are highly attuned to the foods in their environment and know what they require to maintain optimal health; they also self medicate with specific foods when necessary. Plants high in tannins like willow, for example, help combat intestinal worms.
Feedlots v 100% Grass-Fed
It is easy to assume that because we see cows and sheep in fields, that these animals spend their entire lives outside. But almost all cattle and sheep, unless certified 100% grass-fed, are fattened on grains before going to market. This change in diet might only be for a few months, but it dramatically changes the nutritional profile of the meat.
When herbivores (sheep, cattle, etc.) are fed 100% on wildflower rich meadows with access to hedge and tree fodder, their meat mirrors the complex nutrient profile of their forage. When we eat this meat we receive these nutrients, densely packed in muscle and organs.
Omega 3 and 6, for example, are two very important fats or lipids in the human diet. Omega 3 makes up around 35% of the human brain, a lack of which causes depression and impairs cognitive wellbeing. While both these omegas are essential to health, what is key is their ratio to each other. Too much omega 6 and not enough omega 3 leads to inflammation in the body – the precursor to chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease and all else that falls under the umbrella term – metabolic syndrome.
A healthy ratio of Omega 3 to 6 is deemed to be between 1:3 and 1:4. The same ratio is found in 100% grass-fed meat. Grain-fattened meat, on the other hand, contains a ratio of between 1:15 and 1:55. The higher ratios being seen in beef animals fattened on dried distillers grains.
Omega’s: the tip of the iceberg
A herbivore’s gut microbiome adjusts to its diet from an early age, so one can only imagine the shock that it, and the animal’s digestive system, liver, etc. receive when shifting from grass to grain. Animals lose their freedom of dietary choice, and movement both of which can cause a deterioration in the nutritional quality of the meat. Expert in ecological medicine, Dr Jenny Goodman is of the opinion that such animals will verge on pre-diabetes and be more prone to infection.
The problem in part, is that meat generally has never been considered much more than a source of protein, iron and vitamin B12. All meat still gets lumped together on our supermarket shelf and in our consciousness. But grass-fed beef and lamb take meat as a food, to a whole other level. Apart from omegas 3 and 6, there are much greater levels of the health-giving conjugated linoleic acid (CLA); long chain saturated fats; vitamins C, E, K, niacin, folate, and B12; and finally, phytonutrients.
Phytonutrients compose of a vast array of compounds that are directly acquired from plants and absorbed into the body. These have powerful anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties and are essential in preventing and fighting chronic diseases including: cancer, heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, all types of infections and neurological diseases. When we eat the meat of animals fed on a diverse, natural diet then we receive these health-giving properties in a highly absorbable form.
The 3 leading causes of death in the UK are: dementia, heart disease and stroke. All strongly linked to diet, in particular the omega 3:6 ratio and phytonutrients, both essential in preventing these diseases.
Joining up the Dots
Addressing our environmental crises; our society’s physical and mental health; the cost-of-living crises and the struggling NHS, requires us to join up the dots between these issues. Healthy eating is about enabling passionate small producers to reach customers, in order that people get back in touch with where food comes from, and the fantastic taste and quality of food produced in non-intensive farming systems. Health is a by-product of such a relationship.
Countries like Finland and Brazil see feeding their children a free school lunch made from wholesome produce every day, not as a cost, but an investment. Food habits, be they in humans or herbivores, are developed when we are young. Our microbiome is shaped to fit the foods it meets in its development. If those foods are highly processed and high in sugar, then that is what we will crave. Whole foods, made into delicious meals on the other hand, create a health-giving relationship between body, microbiome and food, and we will crave what we need, rather than what we have become addicted to.
The cost-of-living crisis and the NHS would be greatly alleviated if the British government made free, wholesome school meals a priority. What’s more, if they followed the Brazilian model, 30% of that food would be sourced from local small farms.
Alleviating the stress of the cost-of-living crisis might also help save the NHS on its current biggest cost – mental health and stress-related illness. Connecting small producers with consumers, creating more intimate relationships between land, food and people would do much to aid the epidemic of loneliness. Nearly 4 million people in the UK are reported to experience chronic loneliness. Social isolation, loneliness and poor social relationships are understood to create a 50% increase in the risk of developing dementia, a 29% increased risk of heart disease and a 32% increased risk of stroke. Add into this equation the nutritional quality of food, and it’s no wonder we have the health crises we see today.
While politicians might be slow to join up these dots, here at Primal Meats we are doing what we can to bring the super-nutritious grass-fed meats of passionate small producers to conscious consumers such as you. Please check out our individual farm pages to learn more about our producers and THANK YOU for your support!
References
Health-Promoting Phytonutrients Are Higher in Grass-Fed Meat and Milk
Nutritional Comparisons Between Grass-Fed Beef and Conventional Grain-Fed Beef
Effects of Omega-3 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids on Brain Functions: A Systematic Review
Is Grassfed Meat and Dairy Better for Human and Environmental Health?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6434678
Loneliness and Social Isolation Linked to Serious Health Conditions
Facts and statistics about loneliness
Stress-related illness the biggest health expenditure in the UK
School Lunches in Brazil: From Local Farms to Children’s Plates
The true cost of globalisation
By Caroline Grindrod
We are in the midst of a cost of living crisis and face unprecedented disruption to our food and energy supplies.
I’ve been banging on about the looming food catastrophe for more years than I like to remember. I’ve made myself wholly unpopular with my family and friends and become accustomed to the eye-rolling or glazed looks this issue generally elicits.
In the crazed competition for efficiency and cost-cutting, we have stripped out every slither of redundancy and resilience from our food and energy systems. Globalisation has undermined healthy, resilient local rural communities worldwide with the promise of a better life as a serial consumer. Efficiencies will keep costs low, and technology will make our lives easier, leading to more leisure time with more money to spend.
How has that worked out for you?
In the west, globalisation has negotiated unrestricted access to freely available cheap labour. Facilitated business with countries with poor environmental protection willing to exploit their natural resources and pollute their rivers. If you measure success in terms of economic growth, globalisation has been a huge success.
Blissfully unaware that globalisation has eroded the very essence of what really matters about being human, we consumers have all become comfortably numb from the anaesthetising effects of materialism. Eventually, however, these externalities are going to come home to roost.
Aside from the utterly heartbreaking human suffering and tragic ecocide that has resulted from the economic ‘growth at any cost’ agenda, infinite growth on a finite planet is just not a sensible long-term business plan! Globalisation only works when the whole world is playing nicely together. Sadly, like a tired and hungry bunch of toddlers, when resources and relationships come under strain, there are inevitably going to be tears.
That time is now.
In this three-part series, we will dip into the economic, social and ecological implications of globalisation and propose a possible alternative way forward.
Globalisation started with a simple sales pitch; that lifting people from ‘poverty’ is a good thing, and that this is done by creating jobs and making stuff cheap.
In ‘sacred economics’ Charles Eisenstein states that the concept of poverty has been badly misunderstood. Helena Norberg-Hodge further illustrates this in the film ‘economics of happiness’ where she explains how western culture and globalisation have systematically undermined the happiness and resilience of the rural communities in Ladakh.
In many rural village communities where most farmers are subsistence farmers, the families may be living simple lives, but this must not be confused with being ‘poor.’
The services upon which we spend our hard-earned, stress-sweated cash were freely available as part of the rich community culture of exchange. It deepened the interdependence of all in the village and made them highly resilient. Everyone had a value, and everyone had a role. The village would collectively look after the children and share labour at planting and harvest; elders would offer counsel and carry forward the stories from past to present.
There was no need for nursery fees, and expensive counselling sessions, no time-saving junk food, no membership fee for a brightly lit gym, and no trendy brands or costly cars to prove our worth. The needs that these paid goods and services attempt to meet were freely available to the community so no money changed hands. This led to westerners declaring the villagers as ‘living in poverty’ and in need of ‘education’, ‘support’ in the form of cheap ‘stuff’ and access to jobs in the city.
Many of us find it hard to imagine life in a village in the foothills of the Himalayas, but we too had elements of this gift economy in the UK not so very long ago.
My Grandparents were some of the happiest and healthiest people I have ever known. Bringing up five children in a council house in Newcastle couldn’t have been easy on a carpenter’s wage. But my hard-working and resourceful Grandparents had a large back garden where they grew nearly all of their own – pretty much organic – vegetables. What food they didn’t grow was purchased from the local butcher or foraged from the hedgerows.
The broth pan was always on, and nothing was ever wasted. Clothing and shoes were the best they could afford, mended and valued highly. The bus and ‘shanks pony’ was their only form of transport.
Holidays were few and focused on the UK countryside – anywhere with fruit-laden hedges – and my Grandad thought nothing of cycling 100 miles at the weekend on his fixed-wheel bicycle with his fellow club members for ‘relaxation’ and catching up with his mates. Gran was an enthusiastic member of the WI, and her preserving, baking and pickling capabilities knew no bounds. She was undoubtedly an invaluable member of the community, and to me, her skills were more inspiring than any power-driven female entrepreneur.
In their family, there was a culture of love, laughter, respect and values such as; don’t waste anything, look after your stuff and treating others as you hope to be treated yourself. My amazing parents passed on the benefit of this grounded start to life by bringing forward many of the same values and resilience.
How could it be possible that things have changed so dramatically in my lifetime?
The resources available to the average family have expanded beyond all recognition. Iphones, giant TVs, multiple cars per household, dishwashers, takeaways, foreign holidays and food costing less than a quarter it did in the 1960s as a % of the household income.
Globalisation has made all of this possible. But at what cost?
We are sicker, lonelier and unhappier than at any other point in time that we bothered to ask people. We have outsourced the true cost of our comfort and convenience to far away parts of the world where it’s still legal to exploit people and the environment. This has led to a decoupling of our standard of living from what our planet can actually sustain.
The fragile globalised ‘just in time’ food system is at breaking point. And the collapse was inevitable long before Putin rolled the tanks into Ukraine. 1,2
Over the last hundred years, we have shifted from a gift and community-based economy where the forms of capital were diverse and culturally fitting for the community’s needs; to a monoculture economy based on just cold hard money. People, animals and the planet have suffered as a consequence.
Whether it has been deliberate or an inevitable by-product of the mechanistic paradigm of the world is a matter of debate; for a global money-based economy to work best, it first needs to undermine the services that are freely given in a cohesive traditional subsistence community. Services such as childcare, mental support, food exchange, fuel harvesting and building infrastructure don’t get captured on a balance sheet and cannot be taxed.
Measuring the success of a country by measuring economic growth is absurd. Every time someone has a heart attack and is prescribed a drug, every time a tanker leaks oil and requires a vast cleanup operation and every time a hard-working couple invests their life savings into their dream business and it fails – GDP increases.
Due to subsidies, cutthroat competitive efficiencies of scale and other complicated factors, it makes good economic sense to grow chicken in America and send it to China to be skinned and then back to America to be sold. 3
It explains why it is cheaper for the remote rural communities of Ladakh to buy butter from across the world rather than buy it from their community. And could be something to do with why severe sanctions on unfriendly countries could mean that we are effectively sanctioning ourselves into extreme food and energy shortages!
I had been hopeful that the climate crisis would bring in a new way of doing business that helps to reduce emissions and increase biodiversity. But, unfortunately, the new carbon economy has been designed from the same mechanistic paradigm of the old ‘economic growth at any cost’ accounting system.
It has been assumed that you can take an elegant holistic living system that has evolved harmonious interdependent systems and climate cooling efficiencies over millennia, and account for it in a spreadsheet of simplistic carbon equivalents. This is an insult to nature’s intelligent design and highlights to me that we have – surely – reached ‘peak’ reductionist insanity. 4,5,6
The same machine thinking has designed our food system. It is justified to ship lamb from New Zealand to the UK because it has a smaller carbon footprint but it escapes us that this undermines the biodiversity of the uplands because shepherds need to ‘get big or get out’ in order to compete. Of course, there are many issues with the current way we farm but as we will discuss in the next article we could be evolving a more agroecological approach within the current decentralised and resilient model. Unfortunately, the need for small-scale farms for diversified nutrition security is now considered a quaint thing of the past.
The next looming social and environmental car crash could be the yet uncalculated negative impact of switching from petrol cars to electric cars. The growing demand for electric car batteries leads to unprecedented demand for nickel and cobalt and new mining opportunities are being exploited on the deep seabed.
”Most of the cobalt used in batteries today is claimed by China from mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where extraction has come with human rights abuses and environmental degradation.
As pressure mounts to claim terrestrial minerals, commercial interest is growing to extract resources from the deep seabed, where there’s an abundance of metals like copper, cobalt, nickel, manganese, lead and lithium. Investors already expect profits: One deep-sea mining company recently announced a plan to go public after merging with an investment group, creating a corporation with an expected $2.9 billion market value.” 7
Lithium is an essential metal for electric car batteries and the surge in demand has led to a so-called ‘white oil’ rush unleashing a mining boom that promises environmental destruction wherever it is found. 8
And my personal favourite was the VSCO girl craze that led to teenage girls thinking they were environmentally conscious and saving turtles because they bought branded hydro flasks and metal straws. 9
Unfortunately, you can’t shop your way out of ecocide, no matter how trendy it is!
The problem with all of these so-called environmental solutions is that they all come from the same stable; globalisation.
We can barely keep up with what’s happening in our own neighbourhood these days. We are so distracted by one crisis after another – or high-profile divorce trials – that keeping tabs on the environmental damage and social exploitation caused by companies selling eco ‘solutions’ is to all intents and purposes; impossible.
Even if we were to assume that large corporations were genuinely interested in regenerating the planet and improving people’s lives more than ensuring their shareholders are satiated, who is going to regulate them that doesn’t have a vested interest? When a government’s only language is economic growth, its main job becomes removing barriers to allow money to flow!
How do we citizens know what to choose to ‘do good?’
The promised lifting of poverty that sold us globalisation hasn’t been delivered. It has kicked the can of paying the true cost of things down the road until we have run out of tarmac. The true cost of the social and environmental consequences is now crashing down upon us.
There’s plenty of alarming research out there warning us of the fragility of the just in time food system if we choose to look for it. But we don’t. Instead, we ignore the problems until we can’t ignore them anymore. When fuel reaches £2 a litre, baby formula is missing from the supermarket shelves, penicillin isn’t available from the vet, trucks carrying our food won’t start because they have run out of AdBlue, your car won’t run because of a part not arriving, and health services fail due to a shortage of computer chips from Taiwan…..
Just like we cover up the gaps in the supply chain by spreading out the remaining available brands on the shelves, the potentially catastrophic consequences of a failing global supply chain are masked until the very end leaving you utterly unprepared.
So what is the alternative? It might be too late to arrest the terrifying looming food crisis but we can and must start now to build a better more resilient model. 10,11,12,13
Complex systemic ‘wicked’ problems cannot be solved with yet more mechanistic responses.
As the author Marriane Williamson says;
‘the best ones to drive us out of this mess are not those who drove us into the ditch in the first place’
It’s high time for a new paradigm of doing business and supplying food. The emergence of regenerative leadership, regenerative design and regenerative business offer a potential glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.
Authors of ‘Regenerative leadership’ Laura Storm and Giles Hurthchins say;
There is no doubt. We are living in a time marked by great upheaval and volatility. Leaders – both political and business – are being forced to cope with rising challenges: resource scarcity; high levels of stress in the workplace; disruptive innovations; social inequality; constant competition for top talent; rapid digitization and globalization; mass migrations; fragile supply chains; mounting social tensions; political extremism; and much more.
On top of all this, the climate of our planet is breaking down and we are facing what scientists have called the sixth mass extinction.
Our production systems are based on a linear, take-make-waste approach. Our financial systems based on short-term profit maximization that ignore life and debase human integrity. Our organizational systems are dominated by hyper-competition, power-and-control hierarchies, and rising stress.
We need a new approach that values life. A new leadership logic where organisations flourish, ecosystems thrive and people feel alive. This is what Regenerative Leadership is all about.’’
A sustainable business might aim for ‘polluting less’ and a regenerative business will be aiming to support the restoration of planetary systems.
It might seem like an impossible task to change the huge corporations that currently dominate the marketplace but maybe we don’t need to start there. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are responsible for approximately 70 per cent of the global pollution and just shy of 17 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
There is a short window of opportunity to encourage the emergence of regenerative leadership within SMEs to generate the sorts of changes that could lead to a positive tipping point that opens up a new path for humanity and our planet.
To operationalise the goal of regenerative business presents three regenerative strategies of “restore,” “preserve,” and “enhance” beyond “exploit,” as shown below. 14, 15, 16, 17, 18
If SMEs can rapidly climb the regenerative ladder of “restore,” “preserve,” and “enhance” as a spectrum of opportunities toward the goal. Regenerative economic approaches could help both society and the planet thrive in the long term. 19
What if instead of centralised control by corporate giants who exert a disproportionate influence on the supply ecosystems, we could create a decentralised network of SMEs working like a web to restore planetary functions?
It might sound like an ‘airy fairy’ vision but it’s one increasingly being taken seriously in our business world as leaders struggle to deal with the current volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous landscape.
Forbes magazine recognises the potential for this new paradigm of doing business;
‘’What if companies reinvented their supply chains and business practices so they function altruistically like a forest? Then they will operate as regenerative businesses that give back 10x and even 100x more to society and the planet than what they take from it.’’ Nature is generous—a virtue you don’t associate with the cut-throat corporate world. Forest trees magnanimously share information and nutrients with each other using a deep network of soil fungi.
What if new economies regenerated the cultures that globalisation degraded and recognised more diversified forms of capital such as the eight forms of capital in permaculture models. And valued financial capital alongside; material capital, living capital, cultural capital, social capital, experiential capital and intellectual capital. 20
What if like Bhutan, instead of valuing a country’s success in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) we measure ‘Gross national happiness” where sustainable development takes a more integrated approach towards a nation’s progress and gives equal importance to non-economic aspects of wellbeing. 21
And what if the universal patterns and principles of the cosmos were used as a model for economic-system design to build healthy, and sustainable systems throughout the real world.
As highlighted in the Guardian piece ‘globalisation the rise and fall of an idea that swept the world’ It was only a few decades ago that globalisation was held by many, even by some critics, to be an inevitable, unstoppable force. “Rejecting globalisation,” the American journalist George Packer has written, “was like rejecting the sunrise.”
Natural intelligence guided our planet to have the exact climatic and atmospheric conditions for human life to emerge. Through photosynthesis, complex biodiversity and cooling hydrology we had the perfect habitat in which to thrive. Over the last few centuries, we have exploited this living organism to the point that we have reversed these processes and created an almost uninhabitable place to exist.
My hope is that we humans can evolve quickly enough to recognise the arrogance of assuming we know better than nature with our technologies and scientific advances. And to see the error of valuing only what we can measure with our mechanistic worldview at the expense of all that really matters to humans such as happiness, feeling healthy, close communities, authentic interactions, fulfilment and beauty.
As the sun sets on the ‘growth at all cost’ era of globalisation, and society has moved through its collective ‘dark night of the soul’, we must ensure that how we build our businesses and money systems is in service to people and the planet and uses nature’s wisdom and logic as a template.
Caroline X
Read the entire article with references on Primal Web (signing up is for free!)
Carnivore diet
A helpful tool for wellbeing, or should we write it off?
By Teri Clayton
Disclaimer: Please seek the advice of a healthcare professional, registered nutritional therapist, nutritionist or dietician before making long term changes to your diet, particularly if you are planning to cut foods out. This article is an opinion piece for information only; the author does not endorse, recommend or advocate any specific diet.
There’s no doubt about it; we are now in the midst of an explosion of interest in nutrition and its effects upon individual well being. Many recognise that there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to diet, and people are trying to find what works for them. For example, few had even heard about the ‘paleo’ diet ten years ago. Yet, nowadays, this diet is well known and has all kinds of additional variations, such as the modified paleo diet, autoimmune paleo, essential paleo, ketogenic paleo, primal paleo and others. People used to think that the paleo diet involved eating loads of meat and not much else and were concerned about the long-term effects. Yet the paleo diet turned out to be more nutritionally balanced than most people thought and seems to be a very suitable diet for some people.
The carnivore diet, which includes only animal foods and products, is now in the spotlight and is facing dramatic criticism like the paleo diet once did. But, is this criticism warranted, or could the carnivore diet eventually be accepted as a helpful wellbeing tool, in the same way that paleo now is?
We have all heard and likely believe that fruit, veg, and fibrous foods are good for us, but many trying the carnivore diet find that they don’t get along well with these healthy foods for many varied reasons. How is that possible?
In a fascinating interview with Joe Rogan in October 2018, Dr Rhonda Patrick says this about the carnivore diet:
‘I think that the most important question really is what is attracting people to try the very restrictive diet, that potentially could be dangerous, without published evidence, or any long term studies.’
Dr Rhonda Patrick – October 2018
She then goes on to say:
‘It seems as though a lot of people are drawn to it because they have some sort of auto-immune problem and so they try this diet and it improves their auto-immune symptoms and I see that seems to be a common theme’
Dr Rhonda Patrick has done extensive personal research on the carnivore diet and has some concerns regarding the changes that occur in the microbiome of people on a carnivore diet. Saying that it could increase putrefactive bacteria that ferment amino acids, potentially increasing the production of cadaverine and putrescine which are genotoxic. She says that lactic acid producing bacteria that feed on fermentable fibres normally limit the growth of putrefactive bacteria and these fermentable fibres are missing in a carnivore diet.
Through the anecdotal information we currently have available, some people with auto-immune symptoms notice that when they cut out plant-based foods, their auto-immune symptoms disappear. A well-known example is Mikhaila Peterson and her Father Jordan Peterson, who both claim that the carnivore diet has alleviated their auto-immune symptoms.
If people struggling with crippling chronic disease claim any diet makes them feel well again, relatively quickly, it’s a compelling reason to at least consider its relevance and place as a dietary tool for wellbeing.
Dr Rhonda Patrick hypotheses that the benefits that appear to come from the carnivore diet could be explained by caloric restriction, which puts the body under stress, as with fasting. This supports various positive effects, such as clearing away cells that cannot activate the stress response pathway (like cancerous cells) and may even re-programme the immune system by clearing away faulty auto-immune cells. However, it may be possible for people to obtain the same results with a less restrictive diet, so this is an avenue that needs to be explored.
When it comes to the carnivore diet, we are still in the very early days of assessing how useful it might be for supporting people’s wellbeing. Shawn Baker, an American orthopaedic surgeon, elite athlete and ex nuclear weapons launch officer, is one of the biggest proponents of the carnivore diet. Shawn says that we should use diet to move people from diseased to healthy and that it is impossible for us to know what is the best diet for anyone to follow long term. In thousands of anecdotal cases, Shawn has seen the shift from ‘diseased to healthy’ in those following the carnivore diet.
This all enters a whole new dimension of complexity when you begin to factor in the quality of meat being consumed.
Fascinating research now suggests that meat and dairy from animals fed solely on rich, diverse pastures contains concentrated amounts of plant nutrients (1). These phytonutrients include terpenoids, phenols, carotenoids, and anti-oxidants and form an important part of the diversity that we consider beneficial for our microbiome and health.
Is it possible that we can get at least some of the benefits of plants through meat and dairy from animals that have eaten a truly diverse and natural diet? Could this be why some people get such impressive results on the carnivore diet and yet still others struggle? If so, then ensuring you source your meat from farms that are not only rearing their cattle and sheep on a 100% grass-fed diet but that manages pastures for a high level of biodiversity in plant species could be a sensible idea. Buying from a range of regenerative and nature friendly farms in different regions of the country who graze different species rich pastures and habitats could be a great way of ensuring you are eating a wide range of microbiome benefiting phytonutrients.
Despite all the unknowns surrounding what constitutes a genuinely optimal diet long term, one thing is for sure; we are beginning to realise that diet is complex and unique to each individual. Though people think of the carnivore diet as too restrictive, couldn’t the same be said for veganism?
We are fortunate indeed if we get to choose what we eat and when, a luxury that is perhaps not widely appreciated. It matters what we eat and it matters why we eat it, but maybe one question we are not asking enough is:
What food can we eat that can be grown in harmony with nature? Can we grow/produce/raise food that increases biodiversity, the food system’s resilience, builds soil, supports evolution, produces nutrient-dense foods, and leaves the land better for future generations than we found it?
If we choose, then perhaps this is what we could choose, and maybe we’d all be healthier for it too?……
References:
What is Complexity?
Caroline talks about her work and the mind-shift required to enable us to work with complex systems, be it land, animals, or the human organism.
Human Health and the Microbiome
By Teri Clayton
If you are interested in the world of human wellbeing, nutrition or healing, then you will have undoubtedly come across some of the exciting discoveries about the human microbiome and its effects on human health.
Even the most basic of understandings reveals that the microbes living in our gut must digest our food to some extent and produce various metabolic by-products. It, therefore, follows that microbes must have some impact on our nutrition. The extent of this impact is now turning out to be nothing short of spectacular!
Though it is abundantly clear that the microbiome has powerful effects on our wellbeing, health and ability to heal, it will be a long time into the future before we start to more fully understand the ever-evolving complexity of the microbiome in relationship to human form and function.
The microbiome is unique in each and every individual, and even within individuals, it’s constantly cycling through different expressions.
When scientists first began to identify that certain microbes seem to confer certain health benefits, such as the reduction of asthma symptoms (1), alleviation of anxiety (2) and may even contribute to creating healthier, thicker hair growth in the case of Lactobacillus reuteri (3,4) it opened up a world of opportunities in the world of medicine and dietary supplementation. Science is now discovering a role for the microbiome in obesity, auto-immune disease, atherosclerosis and increased blood pressure. It has been observed that lower levels of certain bacterial families such as Veillonellaceae sp are associated with increased blood pressure for example (5).
When it comes to the microbiome, we could tell you about which organisms have been shown through science to do X,Y and Z, and what probiotic formula contains these microbes. We could go on to talk about the field of proteomics that reveal that the gut microbiome produces a core of around 1000 proteins that have bioactive functions in the body (5), or discuss the findings from the field of metabolomics, to discuss all the various metabolites, produced by the microbiome and their potential roles (6). This, however, would lead us down yet another reductionist dead end.
We need to understand that to see the microbiome as separate organisms producing various proteins and metabolites misses the broader (and more powerful) picture.
Instead, we prefer to adopt a regenerative, holistic approach that encompasses not just individual organisms but also considers their complex relationships, forms and ever-evolving functions.
So how do we do that?
In true regenerative agriculture meets with regenerative human ‘style’, we want to invite you to see the microbiome through the expansive, amazing and seemingly miraculous lens through which we view ecosystems – the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
When it comes to seeing the microbiome through a holistic regenerative lens, you have to see yourself as part of nature – a walking ecosystem interacting with everything you exchange information with.
We believe that the most powerful approach to feeding the microbiome is the same as how we feed the soil in regenerative farming systems –
We work WITH natural ecological principles facilitating the creation of maximal diversity.
What we eat obviously has a powerful influence on the microbiome and research suggests that a diet rich in polyphenolic compounds seems to offer it the best food!
Polyphenols are micronutrients that naturally occur in plants. There are more than 8,000 types of polyphenols, which include: Flavonoids like quercetin and catechins in fruits.
Yet fascinating early stage research suggests that these polyphenolic compounds could potentially be obtained from meat and dairy from livestock that graze pastures rich in diversity (7,8). The farmers who supply Primal meats work hard to maximise pasture diversity as guaranteed by our PRIMAL promise.
Want to learn more? Why not take our free course ‘Microbiome Basics’ on our online community Primal Web!
References
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFcphkad_nY&ab_channel=NationalNetworkManagementService
- https://atlasbiomed.com/blog/stress-anxiety-depression-microbiome/
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3547054/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24675231/
- https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fchem.2017.00004/full
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7281736/
- https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2020.555426/full
- https://www.primalmeats.co.uk/grass-fed-meat-so-much-more-than-a-source-of-omega-3/
Fast ‘slow food’
Yes Really!
We know that those following an ancestral health diet are accustomed to slow cooking and extensive amounts of time preparing meals but many of us are busy right? We’ve specially designed our ‘Paleo’ range of sausages and burgers with ‘busy super bodies’ in mind.
We’ve followed the principles of the Paleo diet but these sausages and burgers are also suitable for the following ancestral health diets: Primal, Keto Bulletproof and anyone who needs to be gluten free.
The range of sausage and burgers are completely grain free, nitrate free, contain NO preservatives or chemical nastiness, fillers, binders or starches – we use only seasonings and ingredients you would probably have at home.
The Taste Test!
The taste test ‘team’ declared them tastier than any other sausages and burgers they had previously tasted. (The team = Me, Stephen, our three children, all the butchery team and everyone at the BBQ we invited to test them !)
It is worth noting if you’re used to a normal juicy sausage then our Paleo sausages may be more dry in texture but there’s certainly no compromise in flavour.
In addition to the natural herbs and spices we use, we have ditched the potentially harmful ‘table salt’ and exchanged it for the nutrient dense Himalayan rock salt.
If you are in danger from the well-meaning but incorrect ‘salt is bad’ myth then do yourself a favour and read this.
Our burgers and sausages contain no grain or starch so are VERY low carbohydrate. If you eat a high carbohydrate diet, lowering your carbohydrate intake can help your body better regulate your insulin response and blood sugar control. This plays an important part in maintaining your weight as well as the prevention of chronic disease, including diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and possibly even Alzheimer’s disease, among others. If your blood sugar is always elevated, you’re at an exponentially higher risk for dozens of diseases.
Our burgers and sausages contain NO GRAINS so are GLUTEN FREE. Grains contain anti-nutrients that – in many people – aggravate the gut causing symptoms such as bloating and gastrointestinal discomfort. In traditional diets, these anti-nutrients were neutralised through traditional culturing and preparation techniques. Gluten and other anti-nutrients have been associated with numerous health problems including;
- Irritable bowel syndrome
- Fibromyalgia
- Dermatitis and other skin conditions
- Multiple sclerosis
- Peripheral neuropathy, myopathy, and other neurological disorders
- Schizophrenia
- Depression
- Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
- Ataxia
- Type 1 diabetes
- Autism spectrum disorders
- Ménière disease
- Endometriosis
- Insulin resistance and inflammation
We think these sausages and burgers will rock your socks off and can make a convenient and comforting addition to a health diet. Take a look below for a recipe suggestion.
Veganuary or Regenuary?
Veganuary or Reganuary; The devil in the detail of the truly ethical choice.