Arden Anderson, Ph.D. D.O. holds a Bachelor’s degree in agricultural education, a Ph.D in biophysics and a D.O. in medicine. He currently works in general preventative and nutritional medicine, while still consulting for some of the largest and most progressive farming operations in the world relating to biological agriculture.
His keywords are: holistic farming, sustainability, healthy bacteria in the human gut and in the soil of the earth. Plus the correlation between personal human health and planetary health.
He has visited NZ numerous times and has a growing following within the farming and horticultural sector here.
When young his father let his cows out of the barn to graze the pasture, so as to eat herbs and what we would term weeds and as a result they became more healthy and produced a healthier milk.
That any health or animal disease has to be correlated to soil science and the quality of the make up of the soil, its balance and the microorganisms and the nutrition in that soil.
He studied under Dr Phil Callahan the author of 'Tuning into Nature' that showed that insects only attach sick plants, which was blasphemy to the chemical industry as that conflicted with their addiction to selling chemicals.
Arden Andersen, said he went to university to understand soil, its nutritional value, balance, then to animals and health, finally to humans and our health. Which he calls biological and holistic medicine and that everything is connected within the web of life.
We learn that manufactured urea and ammonia nitrate does produce at first, fantastic results when it comes to growing grass BUT, the actual dissolved solids and the tangible feed value goes down. You gain on the swings but lose on the round-abouts.
Some salient points from this interview:
Calcium is the foundation for a healthy pasture and the biology in that pasture and environment as well.
Fontera is NZ's largest buyer of micronized calcium carbonate, and they are adding this to the milk as our NZ cow herds are not obtaining it from the feedstock they eat. It is a deficiency in the soil.
In the USA cows live to only 18 months old - and then 'burnt out' sent off to the abattoir, where once they lived for up to 12 years of milking and giving birth to calves.
He emphasizes that we must look at our human gut microflora, if we use anti biotics we will kill off all the good guys, so it is with what we do on the farm with our soil. Heavy fertilizer usage is unbalancing the land - all the way to the cow manure, that does not break down fast, due in many cases, to the use of antibiotics!
Listen to how organic dairy farms in the USA survive without chemicals and antibiotics and are one of the fastest growing areas in the milk industry in America. Organic Valley Coophttp://www.organicvalley.coop/about-us/overview/our-history/
That in America there is now between 4% and 6% of all milk being organic.
It is important for people working with the land producing crops and grass to take brix readings. These tell you quickly how healthy your plants are.
Also, Arden is very up to date with GE and GMO's. He categorically states that GE is not needed, and that to have GE crops to save the world from starvation is an absolute lie.
Non GE crops resists droughts in the USA far better as in the huge drought of last year when GE crops failed for need of far more water to grow. Also, yields of GE crops are nowhere near as good.
http://organicconnectmag.com/wp/arden-andersen-phd-do-the-root-of-good-nutrition
Why has Graeme Sait not been recognised by the Nobel Committee in both Sweden and Norway? His knowingness could revolutionise farming globally and reclaim back our biosphere.
The Philosophy of Farming and Our Intimate Relationships with the Land and Biota. One day we will realise that our life has to embrace the 'Ecology of Commerce' and this will be one of the greatest break throughs in consciousness.
Can one man make a difference? Is it possible that one persons knowledge and enthusiasm can produce a counter tipping point to farming and land management into a new upcycle, where in a few short years, soil across our whole country can be revitalized, rivers, lakes and aquifers cleaned up, less live stock, (cows) needed but enabling far higher productivity? More Co2 from the atmosphere being sequested by the microflora, the mega trillions of bacteria and fungi that live and comprise the soil? Resulting in more sustainability across the ecosphere?
Why? Because science is belatedly realising that the answer is found in the soil - healthy soil.
Correlate this with the gut flora that we have in our colon and intestines, where 100,000,000,000,000 (100 trillion) microorganisms breakdown the food we ingest.
We’ve only recently begun to understand the extent of the gut flora’s role in human health and disease. Among other things, the gut flora promotes normal gastrointestinal function, provides protection from infection, regulates metabolism and comprises more than 75% of our immune system.
Dysregulated gut flora has been linked to diseases ranging from autism and depression to autoimmune conditions like Hashimoto’s, inflammatory bowel disease and type 1 diabetes.
When we tie these two relationships of the microorganisms of the soil of our planet and the our gut microflora in our intestines, we note that both are becoming more acidic as a result of the 'input's we use. We are using too many chemicals and other ingredients, thus both are becoming infected with declining health.
When we treat the land and our body temple with the respect and reverence they are due, gigantic changes can happen that benefits the whole, and that change can happen fast!
Yes, there is another game changer coming through, at a grass root level and its called biological farming, which is bringing a holistic perspective of balance, to how we relate to all aspects of bringing forth the earths bounty. Resulting in healthier more vibrant pastures, vegetables and fruit, which in turn when eaten as food, a far more healthier body, be it an animal or human - results.
This is based on recognizing all the biota above and below the soil and its dynamic balance and how all the many cycles of nature interrelate. That being a holistic perspective of the web of life.
Listen to a revolutionary land management system that is being taken seriously by thousands of South African farmers, Woolworths throughout South Africa and Dole Corporation in the USA. With the uptake of millions of acres in Australia and now more NZ farmers awakening to its profitability and potential in this country, this method opens the door to a more organic world view.
Including new ways for humans to eat and drink locally grown sustenance that can help us lose weight, become more vital, add years to our life and grow young again.
Graeme Sait ex New Zealander, Australia's Key Note Speaker on Holistic Health, soil, animal and human nutrition.
http://www.nutri-tech.com.au
GreenplanetFM listeners this week have a rare opportunity to get their heads around carbon trading. Is it just a bullshit scheme carefully designed by left and right western governments to get corporate polluters off the hook? Or ought we to give the market approach a fair go? Or have we waited too many years already waiting for carbon trading to improve the climate??
Dennis Frank interviews someone with a career history as both a carbon trader and analyst doing carbon accounting of biomass processing systems in many countries. Ruy Korscha Anaya de la Rosa has been one of the people performing the measurements and calculations of carbon emissions in a variety of environmental contexts.
Ruy has worked as project manager of a number of greenhouse gas emission reduction projects in developing countries. He graduated MSc in Sustainable Energy Technology from a university in the Netherlands. He's currently a PhD candidate at Massey University in Wellington, researching the global-warming mitigation potential of biochar systems and the implications of biochar in carbon markets. He has lived in this country 3.5 years.
Carbon markets include both carbon-offsetting and cap-and-trade. The Kyoto Protocol produced a carbon-trading system based on carbon-equivalence polluting rights, rather than the original pollution-fines system agreed by the G77. The change was made to secure the agreement of the USA. Ruy says carbon-offsetting is vulnerable to fraud & speculation. Cap-and-trade was designed to permit business as usual under the guise of greening industry.
We must differentiate global-warming from climate-change. Climate-change is natural and it occurs gradually all the time. Currently however, it is being forced by global-warming that is the result of greenhouse gases being pumped into the atmosphere – primarily by polluting industries.
The inherent resilience of Gaia as a biosphere in dynamic equilibrium is consequently endangered. The inexorable trend of global-warming is driving the planetary system towards tipping points which we are now likely to encounter within our life-time. The global climate will then tip away from the stable state that has existed since the last ice age ended about 12,000 years ago, bringing an end to agriculture that we rely on to feed us.
Ruy says the Kyoto Protocol Clean Development Mechanism website provides different methods to account for carbon emissions (presumably depending on technology & environmental situation), that provide the operational instructions for carbon accountants. But most of the CDM methodologies were designed to just measure combustion, so he has progressed to the LCA framework.
LCA stands for life cycle assessment, which is the technical methodology used to evaluate environmental impacts of products (goods and services) along their whole supply chain, from "cradle to grave". Thus it is a more holistic perspective, Ruy says. What's more, it is the true cost accounting that the greens have been advocating since the 1980s.
His career path as a professional insider has made this accomplished young man wise for his years, and he tells us of serious concerns he now has about the way things are going. He says his field is still too young to have experts. It lacks transparency and paper standards are not being put into practice.
To those of us familiar with United Nations chronic bureaucratic dysfunction, this is no surprise. He has also arrived at our long-standing view that addiction to economic growth is the real source of the greenhouse gas problem.
He comments on James Hansen's alternative solution to that problem: fee & dividend, which is similar to what Al Gore has proposed. He identifies a flaw in Hansen's design. Dennis & Ruy discuss Hansen's critique of cap-and-trade. The floor of that market seems to be designed to ensure perpetual pumping of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at the amount fixed to equal current production when the Kyoto Protocol was adopted.
Ruy tells us that reading Hansen's book influenced his thinking, as did his climate change concerns for his 3 year old daughter.
Ruy is part of Transition Towns Wellington & the Wellington Time Bank, 350 Aotearoa and Generation Zero.