And why understanding it is so important?
By Georgia Wingfield-Hayes
In a recent interview for the brand new Winglewood podcast ‘We Are Carbon’, Caroline Grindrod, founder of Primal Meats, talks about her work and the mind-shift required to enable us to work with complex systems, be it land, animals, or the human organism.
“A lot of society is still dominated by a rational, reductive mindset, but when it comes to a living system this can be very detrimental because we are not machines – our bodies, like all ecosystems are adaptive, emergent and self organising.”
Caroline Grindrod
Caroline started out her life with a great passion for the environment and animal welfare. Following her early career in nature conservation, she then married into farming. This gave her the opportunity to explore nature-friendly farming. “I developed a deep passion for sustainability and healthy food,” says Caroline. “This is when I started the meat business to support this type of farming.”
It was from here that her ideas really started to develop. A key insight within her work is the recognition that separating food production and land managed for wildlife, has an inherent flaw because we share one climate, one hydrological system and what you do in one area can’t but affect another. It is Caroline’s belief that we can do both better, together.
Epigenetic is a subject that Caroline finds fascinating. Epigenetic is the science of how gene expression is controlled by environmental factors, not by the mere fact of a gene existing. So genes are switched on and off, depending on what is going on around an organism, what nutrients are available, the quality of water, sunlight, etc. So if we want to produce healthful food we need a healthful environment.
We can’t separate our food from our health. We’ve been treating the symptoms of dis-ease without understanding that we are part of the greater system. Caroline is really excited about the discoveries being made around the human microbiome and epigenetic expression. “We know we become sick because of our environment. We are what we are eating and the environment in which it is being grown,” she says.
Food that is grown in a chemically-based agricultural system, where the soil does little more to hold up the plants and NPK (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium) fertilisers are spread on the fields, are poor in minerals, vitamins and phytonutrients. Plants can only be really healthy when grown in healthy soils. Then all the nutrients they need are available to them and they can produce defences against pests and diseases. These complex plant chemicals are part of what keep animals and people healthy too.
“The soil and our gut biome are one and the same thing,” continues Caroline, “so it is no wonder that we see such health issues. We’re importing so much food not knowing how it is growing.”
Caroline describes the way in which she works with farmers and landowners in order to get people thinking like an ecosystems. Farmers need to be able to handle complexity, which requires a willingness to learn from nature rather than trying to control her.
“If we try and use prescriptions, rules and templates for living systems, that’s when we get it badly wrong, and I believe that is the root cause of the problems of modern agriculture,” says Caroline. She goes on to explain that modern farming still works largely from a rational, reductive science perspective. How we think if we apply ever more complicated technologies, micro-managing systems that we will get repeatable results, but this is not possible when working with living systems.
Managing life’s complexity requires a different mindset. Rather than working with fixed rules and prescriptions we work with overarching principles. Through training and support we work with farmers so they can apply these principles in their unique context.
The regenerative agriculture movement is increasingly gaining traction, but one of the major problems with the large-scale adoption of these methods is that if those adopting them don’t make the required mindset shift, then they will be forced into the old rational, reductive methods of working.
We are seeing this already. Many people think that regenerative agriculture is just about fixing the soil, but we have to consider the whole system and how all the parts are related.
‘Managing complexity requires a different mindset.’
If we don’t foster a paradigm shift in thinking then the golden opportunity offered us by regenerative agriculture and holistic management risks getting reduced into a self-limited approach.
“Thankfully,” says Caroline, “more and more people are waking up to working with complexity.” This is where the question about the sustainable nature of meat production comes in. With a rational mindset, we have ended up believing that efficiency comes in the form of intensifying systems.
Before the industrial revolution we didn’t have problems with emission of carbon. This isn’t just because we weren’t burning fossil fuels. Carbon has come to have a bad reputation as the cause of climate change, so all sources of carbon, including methane from cows has come to be examined. And while intensive meat production is deeply problematic, and not just in terms of emissions, to make the animals, rather than the systems the problem, is a grave mistake.
If we look back in history we find that the great plains of America were home to millions of buffalo, indeed the number of cows now in America is not that different from the number of buffalo that were. These buffalo didn’t create climate change because they were simply part of the carbon, cycling in balance on our earth.
Animals breathe out CO2, plants breathe it in. Animals emit methane and, in a healthy soil, methanotrophs break it down. In a healthy atmosphere the hydroxyl pathway also breaks down methane. A healthy soil, teaming with life and covered with plants, keeps the soil cool and retains water. This creates a healthy hydrological cycle which keeps the whole planet cool. Whereas bare soil does none of that, plus it re-radiates immense levels of heat back into the atmosphere. These are just a few examples of how, with modern agriculture we are crippling earth life support systems and contributing to an unstable climate.
“We’ve decoupled the system,” continues Caroline, “We’ve shot wild herbivores, and housed domestic ones, we’ve ploughed soil, exposing the microbes, releasing the carbon. There is less transpiration from plants and trees. CO2 is not being cycled into the soil. Manure gets stored in huge piles releasing methane. Ultimately you’ve got a system that is no longer able to regulate itself.”
“So we can see how we can’t compare one apple with another. Food is either being grown in a way that it is taking up healthy nutrients or it’s taking up a toxic load.” says Helen.
“An apple grown on a tree that has fungi growing around it’s feet is going to be very different to one grown in a chemical system, yes,” says Caroline. “It’s the same with your environment – the water you are drinking, how much you get into nature, the electromagnetic fields all around you…”
Helen goes on to ask about veganism as a movement towards positive change. “Vegan, vegetarian, these are all movements that are very important in helping us move towards a holistic way of looking at things,” says Caroline, “but it is a partial view of a bigger picture and when it is taken out of context it can be taken very negatively. What is true is that we are doing animal agriculture in a totally unacceptable way.”
Caroline goes on to explain that we can’t separate animals out from plants, because that is working once more from a reductive perspective. Within natural ecosystems, fertility which comes from the cycling of carbon, is largely dependent on animals consuming plants.
“Everything is utterly entwined, to say we are only going to eat one of those groups is a lack of understanding about whole-system-function,” says Caroline. “When do we decide what animal or life form counts? Where do we draw the line of value? I don’t see any way of segregating any of it. We need to see ourselves as part of the system and look at how we interact with it. We need to make sure everything is in balance. Everyone needs to get a proper understanding of whole-system-function. Everything needs to work together. If you decide to eat no animals fine, but animals are involved in the system.”
Finally Helen asks Caroline what she sees as the biggest challenges going forward.
“The mindset shift,” says Caroline simply, “How do we best advance people’s thinking, to shift to understand how whole-system-function, just works better. Farmers could be the best holistic thinkers ever, but if consumers and companies don’t understand this then… There is a lot of work to be done here, to think differently and teach others to think differently.”
Listen to the entire interview on ‘Understanding Regenerative Agriculture’ with Caroline here:
Read more about the podcast ‘We Are Carbon’ on their website www.wearecarbon.earth.
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