David Montgomery - Co-author of “What Your Food Ate: How to Heal Our Land and Reclaim Our Health”
Sustainability, Climate Change, Renewable Energy, Politics, Activism, Biodiversity, Carbon Footprint, Wildlife, Regenerative Agriculture, Circular Economy, Extinction, Net-Zero · One Planet Podcast
English - August 24, 2022 12:58 - 1 hour - 56.4 MB - ★★★★★ - 1 ratingEarth Sciences Science Education Self-Improvement Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
David R. Montgomery teaches at the University of Washington where he studies the evolution of topography and how geological processes shape landscapes and influence ecological systems. He loved maps as a kid and now writes about the relationship of people to their environment, and regenerative agriculture. In 2008 he was named a MacArthur Fellow. He is the author of award-winning popular-science books (King of Fish, Dirt, and Growing a Revolution) and co-authored The Hidden Half of Nature, The Microbial Roots of Life and Health and What Your Food Ate: How to Heal Our Land and Reclaim Our Health with his wife, biologist Anne Biklé.
“When you dig into the medical literature, 7 out of 10 of the leading causes of death in the United States are diet-related chronic diseases. And so one of the hopeful messages that I think comes out of The Hidden Half of Nature, Growing a Revolution, and What Your Food Ate is that what we do to the land, essentially we do to us. And what's good for the land is good for us.
So if we think about farming differently, we can actually enjoy ripple effects that are not only beneficial to the farmers in terms of reduced costs for fertilizer, pesticides, and diesel - the three of the big costs in farming today. If we can farm and grow as much food using less of those kind of synthetic inputs, we'll all be better off. And farmers will be better off and more profitable, but it could also translate into better human health outcomes at a population level.”
Photo credit: Cooper Reid