Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Now, this harsh statement, food, soil, will or kill you or heal you.
It's really true. And it's true on many different levels.
The end goal is to have a world with zero chemicals, with zero pesticides, zero chemical fertilizers, and it is 100% possible to do that. I've seen farms all across the world that show that you can feed the world. And I'm talking about really feeding not only our current population, but like even three times the population we have today. We can perfectly feed them regeneratively organic. 90%, and that's 90% of our happiness hormone, serotonin is created in our guts. So if you want to be happy, you have to take care of your gut microbiome and take care of the little creatures and eat foods that's full of these creatures. So don't wash it too much, don't sterilize it, otherwise those creatures will go away. Don't nuke your soil. Well, the next step is, if I eat non organic foods, I might not be killing my child, but I'm harming my child. Because there are enough scientific evidence that shows that you have more chance of your child being autistic, more chance that you, your child will have a neurological disorder.
But even physical, especially for baby boys.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: You'Re standing in the grocery store with a baby crying in your arms. In one hand you've got an organic tomato, and in the other hand you have a conventionally grown tomato.
Well, what if the choice between those tomatoes wasn't just price and taste? What if it's also about healing your gut, healing your soil locally and maybe even the world? Today we're going to talk to the man that's behind that very idea. Louis Diego, welcome to the podcast.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: Hey, Rich and Shelly, so happy to be here. Love what you're doing, so super glad to have this conversation with you.
[00:02:06] Speaker C: Yeah, we're really excited to chat with you as well. So tell us about that quote.
What drove you to say that? How can the simple choice of a tomato actually be that important?
[00:02:22] Speaker A: Yeah, well, the thing is, people have hectic lives. You have kids hanging around, you have a job you need to go to, and then you go to the supermarket to have your food as fast as possible, and you don't have really a lot of time to think. But then you are there, you see organic products, non organic products, and they pretty much look the same.
And you not knowing why you're choosing something this non organic tomato could be cheaper.
And then you could say, well, I'm just going to take the cheap option. But you don't know what actually you get into your hands. You don't know what's hidden behind that tomato. And once you know the truth behind a tomato, it will scare the shit out of you. And that is really something that people need to know, that it's not just about a tomato, it's what's behind it.
[00:03:26] Speaker C: Well, that is really important. And I think that's part of what drives us on our farm. To be regenerative, to not use the. The chemicals, to not spray, to not do the things that. That potentially make farming easier for us.
We work really hard not to.
[00:03:48] Speaker B: Yeah. And we got into farming for that reason because we weren't sure what we were getting. So how did you get into farming?
[00:03:57] Speaker A: Yeah, so my. My two grandmothers actually were farmers. They grew up on a farm. Farmer's daughters. And they. They had to move to the city because farming was becoming less profitable.
There was this get big or get out happened in the United States as well.
Happened in Belgium too, in Europe. And I always was fascinating about food. And for me, freedom has always been something super important from since I was 16, 17, 18 years old. And for me, growing your own food was like printing your own money. It was like, this is like the biggest freedom you can get. Because in a. If you think very naive, why do you go to work to earn money? And why do you earn money to buy food? But if you just grow food, you don't need to work. So it was like a very naive way of thinking that. That got me interested in the first place. But then when I learned more about it, it just became so fascinating to. To take a seed, you put it into the ground, and a couple of months later you have a tomato or you have something beautiful. It' miraculous. It is something in your own control.
If you plant a tree and you get walnuts, a couple of years later, it's. It's pure magic. And I'm somebody like. Like a lot of people who, when they see problems, they want to solve them. It's something inherently human. And with. With a lot of protesters on the streets, they're protesting against stuff. I also was one of them. I also protested against different kind of stuff. Could be the climate, could be injustice, could be a lot of stuff.
But a lot of the time you don't see things changing. You know, if you're just screaming on the streets, nothing.
Some things can change. It can help. It's good that people are doing it. But a lot of people get this burnout because they don't feel they have a grip on it. And it's important to look at your own circle of influence. What, what can you change? And the easiest, but also the hardest thing to change is yourself, of course, and your house where you live in and your garden. And if you don't have a garden, your balcony or even your windowsill. And that's exactly what I find so reassuring for myself, that no matter what things are going on in the world. I just planted a tree five years ago, and I see it growing.
It's just that tree is cooling the climate. That tree is providing healthy food, it's providing shelter for animals.
And it's like, okay, I might not be like, saving the world in a big way, but that one tree at least is already growing. And now that one tree have already become thousands of trees. And yeah, it's something you can control. And so that's what I love about it.
[00:06:58] Speaker C: That is really cool. So you've, you've also said that soil might kill us or heal us.
Again, big statement. How, how is soil that important?
[00:07:12] Speaker A: Well, if you look at it, and I know people in, in all kind of industries where they, where they work, if it's in aeronautics or in, and creating tech companies, we all depend on the same thing. We all need breakfast or lunch or dinner. We all need that. If you don't, if you don't have it, you can't code your rocket ship that will go to Mars. You know, if, if you, if you don't have food, you can't perform well. You can't do an operation, you can't fix that car. You need to be fed. And food comes from the soil. Now this, this harsh statement, food, soil will or kill you or heal you.
I, it's, it's really true. And it's true on many different levels. So I traveled a lot through the United States, visited more than half of the states, and I was really touched about, about the dust boil bowl, for example.
Really touched me to hear the story that's not that old, actually, and, and, and heard how it really devastated and entire communities that made a lot of people very, very traumatized.
And to see that today we're creating the same conditions for this dust bowl to happen again.
I've, I was talking to an American lady and she told me two weeks ago, well, Louis, I'm glad to talk to you about soil because just yesterday there was a dust bowl that passed through my village.
And she was like, why do we learn history to learn from our lessons, right? But we didn't and so it can literally kill us by dust storms, but also landslides and erosion and mud going into your living room. So these are like the very visible things that could technically kill you, but it's also in the most invisible part of the soil that it can actually heal or kill you. And that's the magnificent world of microorganisms, little soil creatures that are either there and that are the key to your health or that are absent, which will be the key to your demise.
And if you combine a dead soil with no microorganisms and full of toxicity because of all the chemicals we put on it, then that is literally slowly killing all Americans, all Europeans right now.
[00:09:55] Speaker B: I, I couldn't, I couldn't agree with you more so far.
[00:09:59] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:10:00] Speaker B: Oh, this. Yeah, couldn't, could not agree more. And we, we talk a lot here about food and some oftentimes we even talk about food as, as our, for our health, you know, and our microbiome. You talk about the soil and the microbes that are in the soil. And over the course of the last 10 to 15 years, you know, we are all learning about the microbiome within our gut. You know, I'd love to talk about what you think about the, the, the gut microbiome axis that we have going on and the, the what we have between the soil and ourselves.
[00:10:45] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm, I'm really glad that you bring that up because that's so true. It's, it's this saying that or your food will be your medicine, or your medicine will be your food. That's the saying that's more than a thousand years old.
And that's exactly what I 100 believe in. And that is the pharmacist of the future is the farmer pharmacist. You know, those are the real growers of medicine. And food needs to be our medicine. And food actually is our medicine if we eat the right food.
And, and why is that?
One of the most shocking things that somebody once told me and I'm not gonna now gonna tell you, is that Rich and Shelly, you too are no human beings.
Just like me, just like the listener, we are not human beings. We exist of more non human cells in our body than human cells. And the first time you hear it, it's like, I'm not a human. What did I do wrong?
They by accident.
But once you, once you know that, it doesn't make sense to put like this hand sanitizers on your hands to kill all the bacteria because it's like we already have hand sanitizers on our, on our hands, they are already protecting our hands. Of course, if you're doing an operation, you disinfect your hands situation when you do need to do that, but not if you go to the Walmart and you have to disinfect your shopping cart. It's total BS because you're actually doing more harm than good. And that's the big problem with people, is that they are fighting germs, but they're actually fighting the good germs that are actually protecting you. So every time you put on these hand sanitizers, you make your hands sterile, and then the bad guys will have actually more chance to do harm.
And of course, a lot of hand sanitizer is actually also very poisonous for you.
So it's, it's, it's bad in a lot of ways. And this hand sanitizer is like an analogy what, what we're doing to the soil. If you put hand sanitizer on the soil, which are called pesticides, then. Then you kill the beneficial organisms in the soil. And, and plants actually needs these beneficial organisms, need fungi and bacteria to feed them, but also to protect the plants. They protect the roots and feed the roots of the plant in exchange of food. The plant gives up to 40% of the food that the plant makes. It gives it as a presence to the soil life. They're like throwing a giant party in the soil.
All this soil life is invited. And what do you do if you go to a party?
[00:13:42] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, yeah, Right?
[00:13:44] Speaker A: Yeah, you give a present when you're invited. You, like, bring a bottle or bring.
[00:13:49] Speaker C: Sure, yeah.
[00:13:50] Speaker A: Nice. And that, that's what's happening in the soil. These, these microorganisms, they. They give a present. And that present comes in in the form of. Of food that the plant root can not access, but these little creatures can access it. They also protect the plant, not only the roots, but also the leaves. So even through the leaves, the plants give up food to feed this beneficial organisms. So they will protect the leaf.
It's like you would give me a donut every day. I love donuts, you know that. Give me one donut every day, an organic one, of course, and I'm super happy. Now imagine, Rich, that you give me a donut every day, and we're walking on the street together and there's like a guy that's bullying you.
What am I gonna do? I'm like saying, hey, Rich, he's my friend, you know, he's giving me a donut every day. I'm not gonna let you Bully my friend and, you know, push him away. And that's exactly what's happening in the soil when. When the bad guys are coming to the roots of the plants to, like, attack the plants via the roots or via their leaves. This beneficial microorganisms are saying, hey, what the heck are you doing? I'm getting free donuts every day. He's my friend. And gonna, like, kill them or push them away. And you could also say it's a very egoistical thing to do because these microorganisms will say, well, if I find a way to create more space for the plant root, it will have more roots, so it will give more food, it will give me more donuts, and the plant will grow bigger. So I'll be able to invite all my friends and family to also get the donuts. And so they come to the roots, get more donuts, and before you know it, the plant is bigger, healthier, and also protected.
So what's the connection between that and human health is you have to imagine the following.
Imagine a grocery bag.
A plant root is like a grocery bag.
What happens if you put that grocery bag inside out?
So you put your hand inside the root as if it is a grocery bag, and you take it inside out.
What you become?
Can you guess?
[00:16:09] Speaker B: You're gonna have to help me on that one.
[00:16:10] Speaker C: I don't know.
[00:16:12] Speaker A: You get the human guts.
Ah. The human guts is the inside out of a plant root. And first time I saw that, it was like, makes total sense.
So these plant roots have this beautiful friendship with. With the microorganisms that feed them and protect them. But if you look at our guts, like a plant root of the central root, and this little root hairs, we even have it in our gut. It's called villi and microvilli. This little things going, going out. And every inch of our gut, there's an entire new village of microorganisms doing all kind of beneficial things for you. Because our ancestors for the last hundred thousands of years, they've been putting leaves in their mouths, little berries and eggs, worms, whatever they could find. And they were full of microorganisms. And these microorganisms, they kind of made a deal and they say, hey, Shelley, can I live in your gut? In exchange of a little bit food and shelter, I will take more B12 out of the food you'll eat. What do you say, Shelly?
Absolutely, like, deal. All right. And this microorganism will stay. Another one will come and say, shelly, I've got another deal for you. I'm going to make more iron out of your food. Can I stay?
[00:17:31] Speaker B: Yeah, right, yes.
[00:17:33] Speaker A: And before you knew it, hundred thousands of years have passed and we're now full of microorganisms keeping us healthy, getting more nutrition out of our food, but also protecting us. So our, our, our gut has all little holes in it, and there needs to be a liner on these holes, otherwise we'll get leaks. And the bacteria, beneficial bacteria, will create this liner. But what happens? We are sterilizing ourselves by sterilizing our hands, sterilizing our food, sterilizing everything.
And Americans are champions in that even more than Europeans.
[00:18:11] Speaker B: Very, very, very good. Sterilizing things.
[00:18:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
And, and so what happens is that they're leaving because they get all kind of poison. If you put fungicides on the food you eat yet this will kill the beneficial fungi or pesticides will kill the beneficial bacteria and they will leave and then they will, yeah, let the gut unprotected. Then you will have little holes, then you have leaks, then you have a leaky gut. And a lot of chronicle diseases actually start in the gut. More and more doctors nowadays are saying that in the future most of our diseases will be treated via the guts. The gut is called the second brain. And even if, even if you don't care about health, which I think everybody cares about your happiness, eventually, eventually everyone.
[00:18:59] Speaker B: Cares about it, sometimes it's a little too late.
[00:19:03] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it's true.
But it's not only health, it's also happiness. 90%, and that's 90% of our happiness hormone serotonin is created in our guts. So if you want to be happy, you have to take care of your gut microbiome and take care of the little creatures and eat foods that's full of these creatures. So don't wash it too much, don't sterilize it, otherwise those creatures will go away. Don't nuke your soil, otherwise there won't be any beneficial organisms there because we need as many as we can get. And you won't get there by drinking little yogurts from the store where it says, yeah, probiotics. And they will probably help a little bit, but you need real food, which are having like gazillion of this little microorganism, not like two or three that they put in those yogurts.
And that way you will replenish your guts. You will be more happier, less depressed. Because depressions are also linked with gut health. You have the brain, gut axis. And once you know this connection, once you know that everything you do to the soil and you do to the plants, you do to your guts and to the rest of your body, then it really doesn't make sense to poison the soil. Because if you poison the soil, you poison yourself and eventually you'll get sick.
And you can't be free if you're sick.
[00:20:25] Speaker C: And turning this now to a financial look, you've said pay the doctor or pay the farmer. Yeah, talk to us about that. How, how do you, how do you see that?
Is it, is your statement meaning more that regenerative agriculture costs more to the consumer than conventional agriculture, like that organic tomato costs more? Or are you, are you looking at it from a different perspective? Like what exactly are you meaning? Pay the doctor, pay the farmer?
[00:20:59] Speaker A: When you look at the price for a regenerative tomato, and I'm talking about regenerative organic tomato or a chemical tomato that's regenerative organic tomato is super cheap. It's hundred times cheaper than, than a conventional one. At first sight, doesn't look cheaper, but in reality it is. And that's the nice thing.
So I own a landscape architecture firm. We design landscapes for average Janes and Joes, but also for billionaires and everything in between, ranging from small gardens to private islands. And those people can be on the left side of politics. Right side of politics, can be very religious, can be atheistic. I see them all in every form and color and net worth. And that's very nice to see this biodiversity and different kinds of people.
But they all have a thing in common and that is they all want their children to be happy and healthy. There's no parent that doesn't want a healthy child. And there it is where it all begins. And if your, your question, pay the doctor or pay the farmer. It all starts even before you're, you are born.
It starts before you're pregnant. Even in an ideal world, nine months prior to pregnancy, the woman, but also the man should avoid any chemical treated foods. It should eat everything organic because sperm quality goes up when you start to eat organic.
[00:22:40] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:22:41] Speaker A: You have more chance as a woman to get pregnant if you eat organic. It's very logical because if you get toxic, toxin, toxic substances in your body, your body needs to put your energy into fighting these toxic substances. And you're, if, and if you, you're too toxic, then your body will say, look, I'm, I can't reproduce right now because I'm in stress and I, I'm not gonna let you get pregnant because your body is full of shit.
[00:23:13] Speaker C: Right?
[00:23:14] Speaker A: It's horrible to, to Raise a baby in a body that's full of toxics. And so that's like the first thing you need to do. And then especially during pregnancy, that's. Fortunately, it is well known now that you shouldn't smoke and drink during pregnancy. I know chain smokers who like, from the second they know they're pregnant, they're like, okay, now I stop to smoke completely. It is easy actually for them to do that. They try to stop a million times before, it never worked. But from the second they become pregnant, they're like, okay, this is holy. If I smoke, I'm killing my child. Well, the next step is if I eat non organic foods, I might not be killing my child, but I'm harming my child.
Because there are enough scientific evidence that shows that you have more chance of your child being autistic, more chance that you, your child will have a neurological disorder.
But even physical, especially for baby boys, they have more chance to have hypospadias or cryptor kiddie.
It's deformation of the penis.
So if you get a baby boy with that, then you have to spend the first years in the clinic to operate that. It's not a nice start. If you have a baby, you want good times, you want to sit in front of the stove and you want to have fun. You don't want to sit in a hospital.
So it's not only horrible for the child, not only horrible for yourself, but it's also horrible for your wallet.
Especially if you live in a country where not all the health bills are paid by Social Security system and you have to pay it for yourself. Especially in those situations. You need to take your health in your own hands because it could cost you your house. If you, you have a child with, with hypospadias or another disease that can easily be prevented. And it's just something that hasn't gone mainstream yet. People are only waking up little by little by. It's like with smoking. The tobacco industry for more than 50 years hit the fact that tobacco is harmful. They tried everything.
It's beautifully written in a book called Merchants of Doubt. Not sure if you heard that about.
[00:25:39] Speaker B: The book, don't know that one.
[00:25:41] Speaker A: But it's like a script that lobbyists and giant corporations use to make sure that their product keeps being sold.
Although that it's known that it's bad for humans, it's toxic and can even kill you like cigarettes. But asbestos as well. And they, they, they have the exact same script to say no, no, no, no, no. But there's this Science scientist that says it is not harmful cigarettes or asbestos. And of course, these scientists are paid off by them. And the funny thing is, if you, if, if you read the book, then you see that the same scientist who's like, first denying that cigarettes are bad wasn't also denying that asbestos was bad, was also denying stuff about the climate.
So it was like the same scient stuff. And then, of course, yeah, if there is doubt, that's why it's called merchants of doubt. People are like, yeah, but maybe cigarettes are not that bad after all. And today, to this day, asbestos is still allowed in the United States and in Europe and a lot of countries, it's banned because we know it's super carcinogenic. And so, yeah, we have to take our own responsibility. And okay, your, your kilogram or your pound of tomatoes might cost a couple of cents more or, or a dollar more, depending on how much you buy. But if you know how much, yeah, risk prevention you're doing, then it's really worth it. I, I don't eat regular apples anymore. I just can't. I, I, I know how many times they're, they're sprayed. I was like, in an apple region in, in Belgium. And just being outside, you inhaled pesticides and like, no, I just can't do it anymore.
[00:27:29] Speaker C: So. Merchants of doubt. And you, you mentioned that with the, with the cigarette companies. We've, we've done quite a few podcasts where we discuss the, the glyphosate roundup, same story, Monsanto Bear, where we, we talk a lot about where, where we believe the science has shown that these things aren't good and not just, not just the soil that we've talked about already here, but just like this stuff is still on the products that you're eating. Right.
Do you.
One of the, one of your ideas is that I think at least is that maybe there's some, some way that conventional agriculture and more regenerative organic agriculture somehow work together. And I, Is that, is that true? Did I, did I miss, did I miss that? Or like, when I saw that, I'm like, how is, how does Louis put that together that, that we are able to work with conventional agriculture somehow? Like, I, just. Because we see it more like the merchants of doubt now are Bayer and Monsanto and the big chemical companies that are saying that, that, you know, well, like in Missouri where we are, we, we hear these, these ads on television. Keep glyphosate in our state. Your farmers don't need to be told what to do.
And there are they're lobbying hard. Bear is lobbying multiple states, Missouri being one of them to change the laws where the, so the lawsuits that Bear has, has received or Monsanto is because of a labeling issue, a failure to warn issue with the epa. So they're trying to change the laws at the state level in our, to make it where the companies won't be sued. So we get this, you know, keep glyphosate in our state. Advertisement all the time. Like I just, I'm, I'm trying to put it together. Do you, do you really see and, and help me understand how conventional ag and regenerative ag or organic or organic we.
And I read that part of your book. I understand the, the what can happen with regenerative and non organic but like in my mind we don't spray any, just don't pay the government to certify us organic. Right. So I'm, I, I think organic when I say that. So you're right. So like how do, how do these two, like you've got this, this behemoth, this giant in, in my mind monster of conventional agriculture. But that monster is feeding the world. Like how do we, how does this change? How do we find that yellow ground? Where's that middle ground?
[00:30:22] Speaker A: Yeah, no, very good question. And, and it's so important to, to, to discuss that the end goal is to have a world with zero chemicals, with zero pesticides, zero chemical fertilizers. And it is 100% possible to do that. I've seen farms all across the world that show that you can feed the world. And I'm talking about really feeding not only our current population, but like even three times the population we have today. We can perfectly feed them regeneratively organic. And that's, that's, that's the end goal.
And if we're now talking about labels, you just started talking about labels, then it's important to see where we need to go. So organic agriculture should be like the bare minimum that should. You know, when you put car, a car on the street it needs to pass these crash tests. You know, you can't put a, just like a rubbish car on the market.
If you put a crappy car on the market and say yeah, but it needs to be accessible. We need to like feed the world and make sure everybody is able to afford a car. So let's put a $5,000 brand new car on the, on the street that will like have a failure of the brakes and will crash into somebody, somebody else or a child playing along the street. We're Never going to let that happen. We have the safety regulations, which is super good.
You don't want to live in a world where you don't have those. Right, right.
But we need those crash tests for, for our, for our food as well. And that's like organic is the bare minimum. And it's not even enough because in a lot of organic farms, they, they still use pesticides from the same giants like Bayer, for example.
They sell just organic chemicals.
A lot of the time they're better than the conventional ones, but they can also be bad. So they're not only good, but buy organic. Please buy organic. It's already like one certainty in your life. Look, look, look to find the label or look to find a farmer who you can trust. Like you, for example. And you just talk to each other, you can watch the farm, talk to each other and see, okay, that guy has, or that girl has, has good intentions and, and, and, and is not spraying. And this way you feel safe. That's the beginning. If we want to have a label, then the true label should be not regenerative. Because now everybody is saying that they're regenerative. It's just a word that everybody's free to use.
What we need to use is regenerative organic. We need to put those two words together.
I've seen an organic farm in Spain that's stealing water from a deep aquifer was like paying off the, the water police they have in Spain to like make giant profits and like kill the earth and put a lot of plastic on it as well. And then they sell it as organic. And I go to my store and I buy an organic broccoli. I'm like, who? I'm saving the world. But in fact, the extractive practices could still go on. So organic is already good base. And most organic farmers are very trustworthy. But you know, if you have a label, you can always like go to the edge of that label. And look how, how far can I go without breaking the rules? So we need regenerative organic. And your question? Well, can, can you like, reconcile regenerative, organic and conventional?
Then I'm always looking at we need to take the good things out of conventional. And what are the good things? The mechanization. They have fantastic machinery that are sometimes not used in organic farms.
And you can, you can modify that machinery that will actually help the transition. It's thanks to direct seeding machines that you can now stop plowing the soil. And a lot of people say, yeah, but if you stop plowing the soil or tilling the soil, then you need glyphosate.
Total bs. You don't need glyphosate. You, you have techniques to do it. You can use glyphosate or you, you're not informed or you're lazy.
Those are, those are the two things. Or you're, you need a fast buck, otherwise you can't feed your family. That's also a very valid reason. And that's why, like in the beginning of my journey, I was angry with farmers. I thought, well, farmers are the problem, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then I, I, I talk to so many farmers and I see that they're often really pushed in a certain direction. They're really stuck in it, they're locked in, they have large amounts of debts. So it makes no sense to be angry at a farmer. Because in my opinion, the true heroes of the future are farmers. The future literally depends on good farmers. So we need to work together with farmers and we need to help them to make this transition.
And in order to work together, you have to understand each other. That's like the first step of peace building. Even if you meet somebody who like, you, totally not agree with, you still can try to understand that person. And that's something we, we forget a lot.
I, I sometimes meet people who like, I totally not agree and I will probably never agree with them, but still, I'm always curious to talk with those persons and say, okay, but I'm curious, why do you do this? And then a lot of the time when you know why they're doing it, you kind of understand, okay, now I understand why you behave this way. I still not approve it, but I understand it. And, and I can still respect you for, for, for why you're doing it. I'm not agreeing with you, but I, we, we can have this mutual understanding and from that you can build together. That's peace building, but that's also building bridges and working together. And with, with a lot of farmers, it's practically not possible to, to stop using chemicals right away. And for that they need a transition period. And it depends a lot on the economical reality, on how long that transition period will take. I know farmers who've done that transition period in one year, in three years and five years. But I also know people who are like transition people, tradition transition period for the last 20 years, and they're not there yet, but still they, they chop their pesticides usage usage in half, which is already fantastic. I'm, I'm, I'm still not going to eat food from that farm personally.
But, but in a global scope, that's already fantastic. If all farmers would already cut their pesticides usage in health, that would already be a giant win. And sometimes we need to be patient.
We also need to be impatient, of course, and to really push forward what we need to the things we need to change. But this respect for farmers who really need time for that transition is super important.
And also we need to find a way to incentivize those farmers to make that transition. And you have two ways to do that. One is to simply pay more for the food because money helps.
And that's something a consumer can help with.
That's also something a government can help with. I'm not against the government because it's the government that created in the United States the Clean Air act, for example.
Fantastic. Without the Clean Air act, we'd all be inhaling polluted substances from factories and from whatever. It's thanks to governments that we still have fish in the ocean.
So I'm, I'm, I'm, it's sometimes double, sometimes government interventions are not okay. But in the case of that we had the Clean Air act, now we need a Clean Soil Act. And once we have this then, then the ball will start rolling and the industry will be, yeah, will be needed to pay more for the food. So that's one thing. The second thing we can do is we can incentivize farmers to save money by just working differently and spreading knowledge. For example, we've done several farm trainings where we gathered a lot of farmers together and show them information on how they can actually work together with nature to create more profit. And once they start doing that and see, well, if I can make nature work for me for free, then I don't have to pay extra diesel, I don't have to pay extra chemicals because nature is working for free.
Once they realize that, that they can make more money that way, then a lot of balls get rolling as well. I know farmers who can buy a Mercedes highest class you can imagine every year by just working together with nature. So that's also a nice incentive.
[00:39:48] Speaker B: Well, yeah, it is.
Mercedes every year they wouldn't do great on these county roads.
[00:39:59] Speaker C: Right?
[00:40:00] Speaker A: Four wheel drives.
[00:40:02] Speaker B: Exactly. So when we were in, when he was still in the Air Force, we lived in suburbs, you know, or, or in military housing on, on military base most of the time. Especially if we lit while we were living in the States, we had, we were growing something we would grow, I mean we went to Lowe's and bought five gallon buckets And I would go, we would grow tomatoes in those.
We had baby swimming pools with our herb garden in them in the backyard that also had a swimming pool, you know, because we. A privacy fence. You know, we were totally in the suburbs.
Or a small garden of some sort with at 1.4 chickens that I'm pretty sure we weren't even allowed to have. You know, but I brought them home because we needed chickens. And, and you know that chickens are the gateway drug to farming in general.
And so, so we did. And.
But of course, you know, we're kind of those people that are.
Do things even if you're not allowed sometimes.
That said, you know, you talk about using our lawns. There is so much, so much yard space in, especially in the United States, maybe in your country as well in Europe.
[00:41:28] Speaker A: Maybe less than in the United States, but still too much.
[00:41:30] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:41:32] Speaker B: And maybe starting to utilize for everyone to start utilizing the land that they actually have.
[00:41:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
There is a saying, and the saying goes like this. Grow food, no lawns. And I actually went in the parliament of our country and, and tried to propose a law to have less lawns. It was very funny.
I actually also sent a letter to our king to say, hey, please remove your lawns. You have too many lawns. And it was, it went viral before, like social media and virality in the normal media. It was really, it was fantastic. We really created a movement. It was called Bye bye grass. Grass in Belgium means. Yeah, lawn, not smoke.
I'm not sure if you would say that in America, but.
So Bye bye grass. Bye bye lawns.
And to just show that it's, it's possible to have a much better alternative because lawns are actually super expensive to, to maintain. And it's a status symbol from the Victorian age in a time where land was so expensive that the rich people said, oh, the land is so expensive, but I can afford to have grass and I can afford to pay people to have scissors because lawnmowers were not invented yet to cut that grass. Look how rich I am. They didn't have Bentleys and Rolls Royces at that time, but they did have lawns. And now everybody wanted that, of course, because it's a status symbol. Like how a truck is now a status symbol or a Mercedes or a nice Chevrolet.
And. And everybody like, said, okay, now I also want the lawn. And now we all have a lawn that we're like, okay, why have, why do we have a lawn? We don't even remember why we ever started to have a lawn. And of Course, lawns are nice to play football or, or badminton or play around or have a party, but if you look at the amount of lawn you have, you don't need any. All that lawn. And it's. Even if you want to keep most of your lawn at the edges, do something else. And, and there are different techniques to mow your lawn to make it a little bit longer so they have deeper roots. So if there's a dry period that you won't have like red lawn and because it all dies and in America even have this spraying companies that go and spray your lawn green again. It's like the most stupid thing that I've ever seen in my entire life. I understand where it comes from, but it's like, it's just like, how is it possible? Who invented that?
And it's less work because a lot of Americans and Europeans as well, they, they, they mow their lawn every day or nowadays have these lawn mowing robots. It's already easier, but you can have so much more. It's proven that this, the sterile green concrete, it's what I call it lawns. Green concrete is even bad for your mental health because we need to have different layers. And it's so easy and so nice to. Not only for yourself, but also for your kids or your grandkids to, for example, put on raspberry bushes on the edge or put on some apple trees, put some strawberries on it, put some lavender and rosemary, some herbs you can put in your food.
And, and it's just so amazing how many possibilities there are. And the nice thing with these plants, they're perennials, so you only have them to plant them once. Tomatoes and all these other annual plants, it's much harder because you need to keep on maintaining it. If you harvest the tomatoes, you. At the end of the season, you have bare soil, which can become a nuisance or can become full of weeds, which don't really exist. But anyway.
But if you grow, if you, if you grow bushes that provide food, little berries or, or nut trees or fruit trees, they don't have any maintenance and they keep on producing food no matter what happens. That's why I'm a huge fan of Was funny.
I have a friend that's an impact investor and she's investing in a lot of companies that create a positive impact. And she was complaining to me and then said, well, Louis, I have this brother who is always nagging me because he wants me to invest in defense.
And I was like, yeah, but say your brother that, that he's Right. We need to invest in defense. And, and she said, what do you mean? You're like, you don't know anything about defense. You, you're a tree guy. What are you talking about? And I say, no, no, I know a lot about defense. She said, defense? You three guy, tell me.
And I said, yeah, well, if hits the fan whether you're gonna eat your lawn, no, investing in defenses, investing in food security is investing in trees. You know, during the war, what did they do? They went into the forest to grab every nut they could find. They were super happy that there were people 100 or 200 years ago who planted nut trees and were like, wow, I am safe. They were their entire programs to do that. But right now we don't have any food security.
You know, you know, if you're the head of a family or the couple that's heads of the family, a thing that we all know is that you need to have a savings account. You know, if, in case something goes wrong, you have like your nest egg. So when, when something goes, goes wrong, you need a new car or your washing machine, like, yeah, it's destroyed for some reason, you can buy a new one.
But imagine you're a mayor of a town and your responsibility thus is you're like the father or the mother of that town to keep your children, your citizens fed.
What's the first thing you need to think about? Well, you need to have this bank account for if hits the fan, you know.
[00:47:50] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:47:50] Speaker A: And what is that bank account?
All our fields are now addicted to fertilizers and to pesticides. If we would have a problem with distribution of that, then our fields will simply stop producing any food. You can't plant, plant seed in a toxic soil and expect to grow healthy food. It's impossible. But if you would have an emergency food forest, which are trees that are beautiful, that are cooling the climate, that are providing food for little animals, biodiversity, all these benefits also very nice to walk into. I love to take a walk in the woods.
But that also provides food at the same time, even if war never breaks out for the next hundred years, our grand grand grandchildren might be in a perilous situation for some reason. You never know what crazy things can go on. You never know.
And then you have this forest that's providing acorns, walnuts, apples, this very high caloric food, high in proteins as well.
Chestnuts that you have the safety net. That's the first thing I would do if I, if I were to become a mayor. I would make sure that if Would hit a fan. Well, don't worry. We have this emergency food forest and maybe I won't never use it. Maybe our children or grandchildren will never use it, but our grand grandchildren might. And we have to make decisions now for them because sometimes trees take time to give food. And so for defense, that's like an amazing thing to do on a large scale. But also, also for yourself. I know a lot of people who.
[00:49:34] Speaker C: Who.
[00:49:37] Speaker A: Were still alive during the second World War, and what did they do? They were like, oh, the first thing they did was they planted like eight walnut trees on their property. You know, they knew how it was to have hunger.
So, so it's so obvious that we need to do that. And worst things happens is that it will remain peace. And you have a beautiful tree and you have nuts falling on the ground.
[00:49:59] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:50:00] Speaker A: Worst case scenario, very bad.
[00:50:01] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly.
So we did a bit of math on our last podcast and I want to, I want to hit you with our math and get your reaction to the, the, the, the solution that we came up with. So one of the things we looked at was back in the 1930s in the United States, 6 million farms, and now in the United States, there's less than one and a half million farms.
We looked at the amount of food that we produced here on our farm, and we didn't look at everything. We just looked at beef, pork, and chicken. And we saw that we produced Last year about 36,000 pounds of food from our farm.
And we do that, although we have 160 acres, we only use about 100 of it.
So we said, okay, if we took a, and tried to replicate what we're doing with a 100 acre farm, and that farm could produce at least 36,000 pounds of food, how many farms would it take to, you know, produce the amount of food that is normally being produced right now?
And because what we found was that of the 100 billion pounds of food produced in the United States, 99 billion of it is from conventional industrial type agriculture. So we, our thought was, what would it take to shift that totally, like completely. And when you, when we worked out the math we came up with it would take 2.76 million farms like ours, so less than 3 million farms like ours, we would be able to produce.
We would be able to replace basically the industrial farming system with a, or an organic regenerative farming system, like what we run here, and that then from an acres perspective, right now we're farming about 150 million acres in the United States. And that would have to Increase. But it would, it would need about 275 million acres, you know, 2.76 million farms at 100 acres each. So you need about 276 million acres, which is totally doable from an acreage perspective in our country. So to us, the idea that, you know, it can't be done. There's too many, you know, we just produce too much food.
You know, you can't, you just can't get rid of the industrial agriculture system.
[00:52:53] Speaker B: Organic regenerative ag is too small. That's cute. But we, we're trying to feed the world. So therefore we, we can't be replaced in the way that we're. We're doing it conventionally because that's just too small and it's not so scalable.
And we often say, while the way we farm might not be scalable to the size that commodity farming is, it is very replicable.
And if we could take back some of the land that we have in monocrops in this country, corn, soybeans, primarily, and turn that back into, whether it's orchards. Orchards with something else, graze the orchards, turn it into grazing land with COVID crops. There are so many other ways to farm other than. We all know that, you know, monocropping is it. That's.
To me, that is the, the number one primary problem that we have is the monocropping.
[00:53:59] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:53:59] Speaker B: And so, so what we ended up.
[00:54:01] Speaker C: With was, you know, we sat and calculated through our maths and, and we said, basically we raised the BS flag. We think that this, it can't be done. You know, you're cute, but. But you could never feed the world. To me, it's like, that's, I think that's bs and we could do it with less farms than what we had in the 1930s.
[00:54:25] Speaker A: So I'm. What are you.
I'm glad that you said it because I was like, I was like about to say is the biggest BS out there, that you can't beat the world Regeneratively organic. It's. If you look at the numbers, you can do it. You can even feed more people than we have today on this planet. Regeneratively organic. Easily.
And there are, There, it's. There are so many things you can say about it. And one of the most important things is that first and for all the math you did, I have to see it in front of my eyes to really check it out. But the big scope of what you're saying is correct, that you don't need definitely to be scalable.
I really love that you say that, Shelley. It's replicable is important, scalable can be important, but replicable is also very important because what, what do you need as a farmer? You need to have a healthy family, you need to have a good family, you need to feel good, you need to be happy in what you're doing. And most regenerative farmers are now are the happiest farmers out there.
That's, that's just a fact because they're in tune with nature, they're making more profits a lot of the times.
And, and they, they know they're, they're, they're also being respected a lot. So that's beautiful to see. And, and so it's, it's not about how much tons per acre you can get, it's about the quality of your life. That's like number one thing. It's always about that. And we might fall in the trap that my truck is bigger than your truck, so I'm cooler than you are.
But once you get over that, it's about quality of life. And the second thing is it's not about the tonnage per acre, it's about the amount of nutrients per acre.
[00:56:25] Speaker C: Love that.
[00:56:26] Speaker A: That's an entire mindset shift as well.
Because what do I care that you grow so many tons per acre if like 30% of the tonnage is water, there's, it's not nutrients, it's water. So woohoo, you have so many tons. Woohoo. Wow, you're so cool. But let's take a look at it. Let's look at the nutrient density and then I can see well my crops, I have a little less tonnage per acre, I have to admit that.
But if you look at the nutrients, I have more nutrients per acre than you.
So who's the winner?
Right now the winner is still the guy with the more tons per acre because we still sell food per ton. That's, that's a huge problem. But we're working on that. For example, Edacious, a lab in, that's based in Boston, they're building very cheap sensors to or, or lab tech to, to check very cheaply how nutrient dense product product is. And once that will become cheaper that what, what's his goal is then then we'll be able to see well, your grain is bollocks, your grain is fantastic. So your grain is only great D for example. And we're gonna sell it at a lower price than your grains. And then the farmer who farms regeneratively organic will have more nutrient dense grains. And those grains will be sold for much more money. And that's where we are getting to.
It's all about what's inside of it.
[00:58:08] Speaker C: Yeah, that's great.
[00:58:10] Speaker B: Wow, that's really great.
That's a technology that is really coming online.
[00:58:14] Speaker A: Well, it exists today. The only problem is, is that lab tests are expensive. I don't know the exact number, but to just put a price on it, let's say if you do it right now, it costs thousand dollars per test, but if you can bring that to $1 per test or even $5 per test, then it's way cheaper. And that's why scalability is important. Maybe one day we'll have smartphones where you can have a nutrient density sensor on it with near infrared, for example. I'm just saying something loud right now, but one day that might be possible.
We now have LIDAR on our iPhone, so why not a nutrient density sensor one day? And then you can like be in that supermarket and say, oh, that's, that's not even an apple. It's like just. It looks like an apple, maybe smells like an apple, but it's just has the shape of an apple and it's just an empty casing. And the thing you find the most of is chemicals and water.
So that's an entire mind shift. And that's where your health will also come from. Because you might need to only pay one tomato instead of three tomatoes. And you're gonna have the same amount of nutrients and you're gonna have none of all the toxins.
[00:59:37] Speaker C: Wow, that is something that would be really cool.
I added to our stage a book, SOS Save Our Soils by Louis de Jaeger. Talk to us about this a little bit.
[00:59:51] Speaker A: Yeah. So when I started out my journey to want to know more about farming, I had so many questions and I didn't know a lot of it about it. And I went on a crazy adventure.
Talked to a lot of farmers worldwide, ranging from hippie farmers to large scale farmers. Also talk with the guys from Bayern, Monsanto to also listen to their side of the story, which is pretty interesting.
And I.
My goal with this book is really to make people aware about what food is. What is food? What is farming? What are the important things you have to think about? Because most people don't know a lot about it and it's normal we don't learn it at school. And these very beautiful topics we just discussed, like the connection between soil life and plant health, between human health. And so you never hear that on the television. All right. At Least never heard it on television or heard that from on schools or even biology classes. Even my biology teachers, they. They don't know about that because it's. It's recent.
And my goal is for people just to understand it because if you are informed, then you can make better decisions. And it's not only about information, it's also about inspiration.
When you watch the news, you would become very unhappy because everything around us seems like it's going to. You know, and then you just become depressed and you become paralyzed and you would stop doing anything.
With this book, I'm showing that there is no doom and gloom in farming. There is doom and gloom, but the future is bright. And there is a lot of positive, good examples of farmers that are showing that it's possible to do some things differently. And it's. It's another narrative. It's. I don't like. I don't like the doom and gloom. It doesn't make me happy and it doesn't help me. It maybe helps me to make me angry, and then that anger will propel me to. To change something. But you only need that so often. But then you need inspiration and you need solutions. And the nice thing about the book is that I've talked to people in usa, in Central America and the United Kingdom and Europe and Africa.
And so I take people on an entire adventure with all these different farmers. Also personal emotional roller coaster. I remember when I went out of the headquarters of Bayer Monsanto because Bayer bought Monsanto.
I was shaking. I was. I was really emotionally devastated afterwards. So it's really also an emotional journey.
And you also get to meet so much amazing people. I think that's maybe my favorite part of the book that you meet such an ins.
So much inspiring people.
And I first thought that we need to change the world by spreading the knowledge that if people would know certain things, that that's all there is. You know, I just tell you, you know, smoking is bad for you. Look, these are the studies. So you're gonna stop smoking? No, that's not how it works. Try that.
We need inspiring stories. And. And it's actually knowledge is important, but it needs to be combined with inspiration. And. And there are just so many interesting, inspiring people I met that I take the readers of SOS Save Our Soils with me on. On that journey. And one of my favorite examples to. To give you one is a guy who lives in Italy. He's a farmer, an organic farmer, and he grows apples. And the. The certification guy said, hey, guy, I found the pesticide Residues in your apple, they're not organic anymore. It was like, oh, oh my God, what do I do now?
And he had two options. Or he would leave his valley, where he grew up, his favorite place. Or he would try to do something about the drift of pesticides of his neighbors. And he got together with the local pharmacist, had an info info evening, and had the pharmacist like find some research about pesticides and just presented it to the community and say, look, the an apple orchards are like one of the worst sprayed places ever. And I said, look, we are, they're using that pesticide, that pesticide, that pesticide. Well, that pesticide is causing leukemia for children. That beside is causing Parkinson's for all of you. It's predicted that by, in 30 years, like more than half of the people will have Parkinson's because of this.
And then so after this info evening, those guys were like, oh gosh, of course we're gonna like do something about that.
How on earth would you not do something about it? And the cool thing is they voted it and they just voted to make their entire village pesticide free. Can you imagine that? Just by one guy.
And so that's, that's only like one of the, the amazing stories. And for me, the most important thing is not knowledge anymore. It is still important, but empowerment is the most important thing. And we as a human, everybody, every individual, has unlimited potential to change the world. Unlimited.
And we can do everything.
You can do everything. And that's the nice thing. Once you realize that and you have this inspiration, this spark, you find out what your role is in to changing things. And it's combined with knowledge because you also need knowledge. It's important to know what you're talking about. Then you can stand on the barricades, then you can go talk to politicians and say, look guy, this company is poisoning us. You have to protect us. You politician, you work for me. You work for us. Because we are literally paying your bill.
We are paying your, we are paying you to represent us. And we as a, as a population, we do that. The population is the leader. Politicians are followers, not the other way around.
[01:06:01] Speaker C: Right?
[01:06:01] Speaker A: And we have to remember that. It's actually pretty stupid to say I'm against government because they work for you. And we have to control government, not the other way around. And we are much more powerful than we think. So we need to step up and say, hey, we don't want our food to be poisoned anymore, so create the Clean Soil act, for example.
[01:06:25] Speaker C: Right? Wow. And I think I was going to say to you, I think that my favorite part about your new book is that you didn't just present it as data. You took us with you as you traveled the world and through America and into Canada. And like, that would just, it made it much more engaging so that it didn't feel like I was reading some kind of medical journal or science book or something. I, I felt like I was going with you on the journey. So I really appreciate the, the method that you took to present the information and it did make it more consumable. It was, it was, it was very, very nice. So here again is the, the, the picture of the book. When does it come out?
[01:07:11] Speaker A: So it's released on the 24th of June.
Then it will be available through Amazon, wherever you live on this planet. It will be delivered like super fast on print or as an ebook, depending on. On what you like.
[01:07:27] Speaker C: Wow, that is awesome.
[01:07:28] Speaker B: So it'll be available on Kindle as well, huh?
[01:07:30] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. Yeah.
[01:07:32] Speaker C: Perfect.
[01:07:33] Speaker B: I'm a big Kindle fan.
[01:07:34] Speaker A: Okay, cool.
[01:07:36] Speaker B: Good.
[01:07:36] Speaker C: Are you going to read it? Are you going to do an audiobook?
[01:07:39] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. That's one of the plans, yeah.
[01:07:41] Speaker C: Oh, that'll be nice.
[01:07:42] Speaker B: Fantastic.
[01:07:43] Speaker C: I, I love listening to you talk, so that would be nice to hear.
[01:07:47] Speaker A: Even though my accent is not some accent you're used to.
[01:07:51] Speaker C: I think it's, I think it's awesome.
[01:07:52] Speaker B: Yeah, it's awesome.
[01:07:54] Speaker C: Yeah. We've spent enough time all over the world that I, I don't mind it at all. So where else can people find you? Like, if they want to look, look you up and see what you're doing and, and follow you. How. How can they find you?
[01:08:05] Speaker A: Well, I'm pretty active on social media, so best thing is to follow me via LinkedIn or X or Facebook, like I'm like, on most social media platforms or via my website, LouisDJ.com okay.
[01:08:19] Speaker B: Okay, we'll make sure that all of that is in the, the description of the podcast, the video on, on the YouTube.
[01:08:26] Speaker C: Yeah. And for those of you watching on YouTube, we've gotten a comment recently about how, like, you can't imagine why there's only a couple hundred people watching as we talk about really important topics and we do so in an intelligent manner. I appreciate the comment very much, but I would say, man, the best way that you can help that is to share it. Just go down While you're in YouTube, hit that button and hit share. And not only are you sharing it on your social media, but you're telling the platform itself that this is something that is worth looking at. And on the other podcast platforms like Spotify and Apple, the best way you can help us out there is to just tell other people about it. There's really no other way that podcasts grow other than hearing about it from someone, word of mouth. So that is something that you all could do.
[01:09:19] Speaker A: That's so true. And, and you might think, oh yeah, hit the subscribe button or whatever, it doesn't make a difference. But I have a friend who's an activist and, and she's like really fighting against pollution and she tried to be in contact with. With politicians and get into the European Parliament and she couldn't have access to it. So she, she shared like what you are doing right now shared a video and just by it going viral and a lot of people sharing it and liking came onto the radar of the European Parliament and she was invited in the parliament to. And that's not because of her. It's because of her, of course, but that's because of the listener or the watcher of that video. Because that's like the simplest thing you can do. You can go to the Walmart and buy an organic peanut butter instead of a non organic. That, that's already an effort. But to press a button and hit like and subscribe and share, it's super easy. But it makes a world of difference. So do it.
[01:10:17] Speaker C: That's awesome. Thank you.
[01:10:18] Speaker B: You're absolutely correct. And that's a great note to. To end on. Louie, thank you so much for hanging out with us again today. And well, for the first time today, that's what I normally say. Thanks for hanging out with us today. This conversation has been enlightening and inspiring.
[01:10:37] Speaker C: And totally enjoyable and very enjoyable.
[01:10:39] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I had a good time as well, so thank you for being such a great host and maybe see you next time I drive through Missouri.
[01:10:47] Speaker C: Oh, that'd be great. Really cool. Yeah. Thank you.
[01:10:49] Speaker B: And until next time, y' all.
[01:10:52] Speaker A: Bye, yo.
[01:10:53] Speaker C: Bye.
[01:10:53] Speaker A: Bye.
[01:10:53] Speaker C: Bye, y' all.
