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And now on to the show.
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From KevinMD, I'm Dr. Kevin Poe, and this is the podcast by KevinMD.
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Welcome to the podcast by KevinMD, the only daily medical podcast where we share the stories
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of the many who intersect with our healthcare system but are rarely heard from.
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Now here's your host.
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Hi, and welcome to the show.
1:03
Subscribe at KevinMD.com slash podcast.
1:05
Today we welcome back David Kundiff, physician and health reform advocate.
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Today's KevinMD article is Echo Villages and Organic Agriculture, a scenario for global
1:16
climate restoration.
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David, welcome back to the show.
1:19
Thank you very much, Kevin.
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So what prompted you to write this article about Echo Villages and Organic Agriculture
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Well, I have six grandchildren.
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They range in age from three to 12.
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And for the last several years, five or six years, I've been concerned about them in
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researching climate change.
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I went to the intergovernmental panel on climate change.
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They're a agency of the UN and they're tasked with coming up with all the dreary data about
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what's happening to our climate biodiversity.
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I think they may also look at global pollution and the poly crises that go along with life
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now and that we're trying to change.
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But we haven't really made a dent in the rise of greenhouse gases.
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So in this intergovernmental panel on climate change document, I found five scenarios.
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The current scenario is human extinction by the end of the century.
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And the best case scenario is called climate smart agriculture.
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So I looked into exactly what that is.
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It doesn't have a legal definition.
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But in fact, it includes or can include chemical fertilizers, glyphosate, roundup, the
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notorious herbicide, GMO seeds, fungicides, and so I was astounded that they didn't model
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global organic agriculture, which would to me be the best case scenario.
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And my article appeared in the journal Curious in 2023, it's titled Connecting Climate
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Change Mitigation, the Global Land Regeneration, Doubling Worldwide Livestock, and Reduction
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of Early Deaths from Non-Communicable Diseases.
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So that this analysis that I had published showed that switching from our current chemical
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agriculture, which is over 90% of the world's agriculture, uses these chemicals and pesticides.
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So switching from them to organic would be going from our current situation of putting
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about 12 gigatons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere from agriculture, the agriculture
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that depletes the soil, as well as puts all this carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, goes
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from that to decreasing a net withdrawal of carbon dioxide of 24 gigatons a year.
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So this totals a difference of 35 gigatons a year of greenhouse gases coming out of the
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atmosphere and into the soil.
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So this led me to see, well, how would we be able to actually move toward this better
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That just for a reference, the amount of gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent that we put
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in, humans put into the atmosphere each year is about 57.
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So if you take away 35, you're reducing the human cause to greenhouse gases by more
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And the additional benefit is that we don't eat food that's made from all these chemicals
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like pesticides and seeds.
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So that's what I model.
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And then to look how are we going to be able to do that with the agriculture, it would
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be a lot more work to have global organic agriculture, but if that's what we need to survive.
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You suggested that switching to bio-intensive organic farming can sequester nearly 98% of
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projected greenhouse gas emissions.
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Is that number correct?
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That was even before I published that pre-print only with organic.
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Now bio-intensive takes it further.
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Organic regenerative, you could say, is now used a lot.
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It's kind of on top of organic.
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Organic is just what you're not doing.
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You're not putting fertilized chemical fertilizers, pesticides and so on.
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Regenerative is to have cover crops, to rotate the crops, to not till the soil, which releases
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a lot of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
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And several other things beyond organic.
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Now, bio-intensive agriculture, I first found out about when I spent about two and a half
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months at the farm in Tennessee, which is one of the original eco-villages dating back
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from the 70s, and I had wanted to actually retire there because I liked what they did
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so much, ecologically and otherwise.
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And I learned to do bio-intensive agriculture.
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It's promoted by John Jubbins, who's in Willett's, California.
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He's done much more work in the developing world than he has been able to in the United
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He's taught bio-intensive agriculture in 150 or more than that, countries in the world.
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So the difference, bio-intensive agriculture uses no fossil fuels.
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No tractors or any of that heavy equipment that compacts the soil when it goes over the
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It's not good for the soil.
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So it uses hand tools.
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The garden beds are double dug, which means that you get a broad fork of about five feet
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with about five prongs in between.
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It's very hard work.
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I was sweating heavily.
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So if bio-intensive organic agriculture decreases emissions, why did the IPCC fail to model
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a global transition to exclusively organic agriculture?
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I tried to get that from them.
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I was in email correspondence with one of their leading scientists who came from New Zealand.
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And I couldn't get a straight answer of why they didn't model global organic agriculture.
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Maybe we can find out now if somebody responds from there tells us.
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So I hope this gets to the IPCC so that they come up with a response.
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So you talk about the grow bio-intensive method previously in terms of how that can reduce
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You also propose replacing cattle ranch evictions with pilot echel villages, right?
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So what exactly is an echel village and what would that look like when scaled up?
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OK, well, the echel village, well, I was looking for a way to implement what's needed.
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You know, I first found out what's needed is the organic agriculture and then, you know,
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And we need a lot of people in those eco villages.
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So I modeled having about 1,000 people in each eco village.
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And those eco villages would do regenerative energy.
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So solar and maybe wind and hydro and water energy and any other regenerative energy.
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And they'd grow food bio-intensively, organically regeneratively for themselves and for the
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neighboring communities.
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And when I modeled doing that with half of the human population, 4 billion people in these
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eco villages, which would be wonderful places to live, by the way.
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I, in fact, I wanted to live in one and I will if I get an opportunity.
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So that then that would drop the amount of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere a year, 98 percent.
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I mean, you get half the people into eco villages that aren't using cars or other fossil fuels
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getting down to, you know, adding bio-intensive, you can actually draw a net amount of greenhouse
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gases out of the atmosphere and into the soil per year.
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Are there any parts of the country or the world of that matter that has a scaled up vision
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of what you talk about, a collective of eco villages?
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Any places where we can see that in action?
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There, there's an eco village network globally started, I believe in the 80s and it's still
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still going, adding eco villages.
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However, they're, they're not to the size that, you know, we need to scale it up to actually
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reverse climate change.
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There's, I've seen a number, maybe 20,000 of them.
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I, I lived in the farm in Tennessee, one of the, one of the, you know, first and it was,
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it was great at the beginning, it was a commune and they grew their own food, they,
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they built their own homes and so on.
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Now the eco villages are have many fewer people in them and it, so it needs to scale up
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more than, than ever, needs to be a new scale.
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So that a thousand people in an eco village, you can really have a community that is a wonderful
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place for young climate scientists and or activists to thrive and to take care of other societal
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problems, like bring in the homeless and deformally incarcerated and maybe major mental illness
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and, you know, put them all to work because there's a lot of work to do bio intensive agriculture
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and, and that's a good way to, to reverse our, our current epidemic in obesity type two diabetes,
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heart disease, all the chronic diseases would, would benefit from hard physical labor on a regular
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basis. That's the way humans evolve. They didn't evolve sitting in, inside and screens like we're
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doing now, although, you know, there's an all we do, but, you know, we've got very dire projections
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from the institute of health metrics and evaluation about where humanity is going.
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In physical wellness, we need to move to metabolic health or, or increase metabolic health
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and that, that's mainly diet and exercise and, you know, what I'm modeling would be good for both.
14:34
We're talking to David Cundiff, physician and health reform advocate. Today's Kevin M. Diarticle is
14:40
echo villages and organic agriculture, a scenario for global climate restoration. David let's
14:46
end as always with take-home messages they want to leave with the Kevin M. Diadins.
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Okay, well, there's hope. There's hope for humanity, but it will, it will take some major changes.
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I would like to see, there are three, well, there's 17,000 acres of national park service land in
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West Marin, I live in Marin County, and the nature conservancy has bought that land or is in the
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process, it's not a done deal, but they, they're getting that land on, on the understanding that
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animals in their production of methane, that that's bad for the climate. Well, it's not,
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you know, my article showed that and the modeling shows that, and so I'd like to see Robert F. Kennedy
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Jr. stop the the takeover of this land by the nature conservancy and make model eco villages there.
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Three eco villages, 17,000 acres, and to have a demonstration of how you can model reversing
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climate change, and that can be copied by eco villages all over the world.
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David, thank you so much for sharing your perspective and insight. Thanks again for coming back on
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the show. Thank you for listening to the podcast by Kevin M. Di, to share your story and appear on
16:22
the show, visit KevinM.D.com.