Dear Real Organic friends,

I have learned is that real organic is not a brand. It is a movement.

And this movement is connected to many other movements. It isn’t just about growing good food on one farm, as wonderful as that is. That one farm is connected to a community of eaters and farmers. Without eaters, the farm fails. Without other farmers, the farm fails. None of us can figure this out alone. An impossible task.

And our community is influenced by laws and social norms. We are all connected to the issues that challenge our country, from land ownership to the vertical integration of the food industry, to the concentration of capital in the hands of the few, to clean air and water, to climate, to nutrition, to our health, to the synthetic chemicals in all our bodies that didn’t exist 80 years ago. All of these issues are part of the integrated whole of our food system.

Real organic farming is about changing that whole food system for the better.

Perhaps the essence of organic thinking is to see the world as an interconnected organism. Gaia. The word “ecology” means “earth household.” Understanding that in reality, there are no isolated processes. Everything is connected. Organic farming is an attempt to embrace that understanding.

Today I am sharing two podcasts from the January Symposium. Both of them help to expand our vision, to see a bigger picture, to appreciate missed connections.

The first is our interview with Paul Hawken.

Author, businessperson, and environmentalist Paul Hawken.

“The climate movement will be the biggest movement in the history of humanity, not because somebody organized or because there is a leader, some Martin Luther King. It is because of weather, pure and simple. 
 

“It is because the science is going to change from conceptual to experiential.”
– Paul Hawken

Our second interview is with Kat Taylor:

Kat Taylor has spent her adult life working in three realms: Green banking, climate change, and regenerative agriculture. Again, these three “different” topics are intimately connected, and in this interview, Kat helps us to appreciate these connections. She is a leader in the Green Banking movement, reimagining the ways that we manage our money on a societal level. With her partner, Tom Steyer, she has worked to create engagement among voters to take back our government from forces that have lost their way. TomKat Ranch is her full-scale educational laboratory in California.

Green banker, climate activist, and regenerative rancher Kat Taylor.

“I believe Leonard Cohen said, ‘Look for the cracks, that’s where the light gets in.’ I think that’s true across the entire landscape of human activity right now. And we should take advantage of those openings to make real change.”

– Kat Taylor

Visit our podcast series for the most interesting journey you can find. Together, these speakers delve deeply into our time and place, searching for the next steps.

Please join 1000 Real Fans to support our work.

Dave & Linley

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