We need to talk about your starving grandchildren.

Mike Berners-Lee's book, "There is no Planet B" is an absolute diamond of a book. Everybody ought to have access to copy to dip into. I bought several copies when it first came out (the one Dave is holding) and gave them away to friends and family, including my own original. I then bought the updated book a few years later. It's a great read.

I farm in the Sacramento Valley of California. My main crop is olives, which I process for olive oil. The biggest energy requirement on the farm is pumping irrigation water. Formerly I would buy electricity from the grid, but now my electricity is from on-farm photovoltaics. Once photovoltaic power became cheaper than the grid or propane-powered pumps (diesel pumps are illegal because of air quality) farmers started switching over. Even very conservative farmers can do the math--solar power in this sunny climate is the least expensive option for pumping water. It is gratifying to see arrays of solar panels installed all through this part of the valley.

How do I just have a think, without wanting to just have a drink?

My great grandparents actually practiced regenerative agriculture 150 years ago. Attempts by the US corporate agriculture industry to falsely co-opt the term to mislead us is disgusting. I grew up eating organic, pasture raised beef, organic rabbit, organic chicken and organic produce. I can’t afford to eat that way today so I grow what I can hydroponically, preserve what I can before it goes to waste, reduce my consumption of processed food, avoid dairy/corn/soy, and never eat fast food. 3-4 times a year I will treat myself to an organic, locally produced, pasture raised steak. I don’t feel deprived and I’m generally healthier than many people my age. We need to make lifestyle changes if we want to leave a livable world to future generations.

This is a really important episode, and touches a lot of topics - from veganism, to the problems in the food market, all of which result in poor angry farmers that don't earn enough, poor angry customers that pay too much, and a lot of climate change

A terrific video covering a hugely complicated and important subject in 20 minutes. First class.

In my region (south of Bahia) we plant cocoa within the forest (cabruca method), which keeps over 90% of the original animal biodiversity. There is virtually no additional income for the farmers (from mostly Europeans and US companies which control the processing) because of that.

I agree with you as a 4th generation tree fruit farmer who has had to leave the farm for work and sell for several blocks in the past few years to survive my question is how do we change anything if we are ruled by sociopaths?? The CEOs of these world monopolies have gutted any morality from governments they commoditized us we only exist to serve them and their greed. 😢😢😢.

My late Father-in-law was a PhD Soils Physicist - yes that is a real thing. Periodically when we were talking about agriculture, he would stop, shake his head and say "We never should have broken the sod." What he was referring to is possibly the greatest agricultural mistake ever made. The American settlers plowed EVERYTHING they could see without any thought or plan or strategy. That plowing was permanently destroying the vast grassland ecosystem which could have efficiently supported millions and millions of cows, sheep, goats etc. indefinitely if it had been carfully utilized instead of being plowed under. The tall grass prairie would have allowed us to avoid feeding cows human food and changed that ratio you described for the better.

As E.O. Wilson pointed out, global ecological diversity is critical to support the systems that support human life. Real wilderness and lots of it. Our farms must become more sustainable while half the world must be restored or left wild. Farmers will be heros (once they accept climate change is real)

I'm a student in an organic farming program and regenerative agriculture is a really cool concept. It's going to look different in every environment but that's the fun part.

in the UK, Hodmedod grows regeneratively and supports other locals who do the same. support them and others like them to carry forth all that you're learning here. the cool things with their products are that, 1. they are shelf stable, 2. climate adapted to the UK, and 3. you can grow out their food as seed in your own garden

I study permaculture and regenerative agriculture since early 2000s. Ten years ago I restored an old farm building with some land and now I grow all the fruits and vegetables needed for three families in less than 500 square metres (1/8 of an acre) recycling house waste, woodchip, vegetable residues. I know it's not the solution, but it helps mitigate the problem. As Paul Hawken says, growing your food is the single most useful thing anybody can do to mitigate climate change. We cannot wait for our leaders, we need action from below.

I grew up on a family dairy farm in California, USA. My family still raises grass fed beef. Having spent my life around family agriculture, I have to say that CAFOs are an abomination. They are a concentration camp model for livestock.

This got me viewing parts twice whilst I wasn't concentrating. Excellent episode. Just Have A Think when Dave isn't in demand elsewhere. Thank you to the funders

This is 'why' people should be converting their pretty ornamental borders and manicured lawns into a mixture of permaculture/rewilding gardens. No lawn - no mow, no chemicals, no monoculture area, and daving yourself a good deal of money not haing to fuel that mower. No annual flowers - you don't but limited lifespan plants that cost way more in terms of carbon emissions than they would ever make in terms of oxygen. I've worked in plant nurseries. I love that kind of work more than anything else - but it is wasteful and resource intensive. If you are a novice gardener who is a little nervous of starting out with food plants - Start with berry bushes first. They are the best elementary introduction into food production you can try. In the UK, the best berries are: blackcurrants, redcurrants (if you have a taste for them), whitecurrants, Autumn and Summer raspberries (be aware they spread. Dig up in Autumn excess numbers of canes. Avoid yellow raspberries, high production but insipid taste). Thornless blackberries (again, they spread, but the harvest size is excellent. Great if you want to keep bees). Tayberries and loganberries are productive, vigorous, and can be trained against fences and walls to save space. Aronias (sold in Morrisons very cheaply. Slow to get to a fruiting stage and not the biggest harvest, but a reliable and tolerant plant). Blueberries (acid soils only, or grow in large pots). Honeyberries are an acquired taste, very sour. Gooseberries (a reliable cropper in areas unaffected by gooseberry sawfly). And that's a lot of fruit you can get just from the very easiest plants. If you can plant a geranium, you can plant one of these. All you might need is a bit if very fine netting or fleece when it gets near harvest time to stop birds from nicking everything (as Wood Pigeons and Blackbirds can just eat more when there's more food around). When it comes to veggies, if I was a novice starting again, I would buy in a few easy edible leafy/tuberous perennials and self-sowing annuals. Claytonia - a small salad leafy annual with small pink flowers that seed everywhere. Great for shady gardens, whether damp or normal. Red-veined Sorrel - an easy perennial, attractive leaf, creeping plant, astringent leaves. Avoid if you suffer from kidney stones. Alchemilla mollis - highly tolerant native cliff-dwelling plant that survives any conditions. The leaves have a very slight down, but they're edible chopped up in salads. Perennial celery - it's really a short-lived perennial of about 3 years, but flowers in last year, sets lots of seed which you can sow again. Easy from seed. Sunchoke/Jerusalem Artichoke - all too easy, a few tubers yields better than potatoes. Very tall with small sunflower like flowers. Fat Hen - easy from seed, a sort of biennial/short lived perennial (collect seeds. for sowing next crop). Makes a good spinach alternative. Protein, iron, vit C. I wouldn't be without this plant. Ransomes/wild Garlic - great for damp, shady gardens. Tolerates regular flooding. Spreads well and needs less care than regular garlic. For those traditional annuals - the pea is the very easiest for a novice. Just follow the instructions, keep out of reach of mice in pots to begin with. (You have time to sow a couple more crops this dummer). Courgettes are another easy plant. 3 plants is enough for my family of 3. They need a lot of feeding, but this doesn't have to mean buying chemical feed (look on Robbie And Gary's gardening channel for the kitchen scrap method of squash/zucchini feeding. It has multiplied my yields). Lettuce - I grow these in a plant tower on a sheet of galvanised steel (slugs and snails really don't like galvanised surfaces, but they ignore copper bands where I live). Lamb's lettuce - treat as above. Radishes - I grow mine under dappled shade to avoid bolting, but they are prone to attack from mice. So I might grow these in a tower next year. Kale - gets hit a bit by slugs, but not enough to totally destroy them. The good thing is, you can carefully harvest leaves eithout killing the whole plant, keeping them alive for years. My ones are just setting seed so I can raise a new stock for next year. I am changing the game a little in my rewilded/permaculture garden and going a little into regenerative practices - by adding ducks (eggs in the incubator) and, later on, chickens. By getting together in neighbourhoods, creating a local strategy, learning techniques 'now' in your own garden (while your neighbours still think you're mad), you can make your locality more self-sufficient. Get into propagating those berry bushes as soon as they are old enough to bear it. Encourage assiciates to take and care for new plants you raise from cuttings. Become expert in those propagating techniques, and you become a supplier of food security in your neighbourhod. Knowledge is gold. The beauty of the plants in this list is that some of them can be grown 'under' larger fruit trees (such as apples, pears, plums and cherries). I grow my currants and gooseberries this way, and it's a good way to save space and help shelter the roots of your trees. Currants, gooseberries are very easy to propagate by hardwood cuttings. Rasps, blackberries, tays and logans propagate themselves.

I'm vegetarian, but you don't need to go that far, just have one meat free day a week. Try some new recipes and you will soon look forward to it. Then try two or three days a week if you like. Reducing a little bit will really help.

I don't know how this decision is made elsewhere in the world, but here on the Canadian prairies, nobody raises cattle, sheep, etc. on land with soil that's good enough to grow grain. Ranching is what you do if you CAN'T farm plants.

This is the type of content I expect from this channel. Thank you.

I'm glad that agriculture is getting attention. Given likelihood of decimation of crop yields given climate change, I think the general population will be forced into having plant-based diets (almost all calories/protein consumed) in the coming years.