Crazy Wisdom
How can we make our forests resilient again? - Gabriel Bolzani
- government
- brazil
- 1984
- authoritarian
- agroecology
- bravenewworld
- growyourownfood
- thepandemic
About this episode
This episode focuses on self-sufficiency through living off the land and growing your own food, agroecology and restorative farming, escaping the control of governments worldwide, and basically living a life that allows you to thrive physically, all of these in light of the events of the pandemic. Enjoy!
(2:50 - 3:40) The difference between city and rural life, and how that contrast, unwittingly, showed Gabriel the difference between learning about a course in college and actually living the reality of said course.
(4:33 – 6:10) Now that the world as we know it has ended, what shifts in thinking and culture will have to be made to enable people thrive in the coming age?
(7:42 - 8:34) The ethical, nutritional, and environmental benefits of oysters and growing oyster farms.
(10:52 – 12:56) How Gabriel restored a portion of land that had been severely degraded from years of serving as pasture for horses and was unable to grow grass and made it rich, fertile farmland with more than a hundred varieties of plants, including fruit trees and cash crops, all within a year.
(14:19 – 19:29) How human activities affect ecology; how pests and insects interact to contribute to nature’s ecology
(22:22 – 27:01) Will more people embrace retiring to the country to farm their own lands and grow their own foods? Will the events and fear-mongering by governments worldwide, during the pandemic, cause the shifts necessary to make people seek self-sufficiency? Brazil as an example of how culture, if strong enough, can influence government directives; Are we currently living in an Orwellian world or a Huxleyan world?
(27:45 – 30:01) There’s nothing wrong with vaccines, but given everything we know about COVID, does everyone have to take it? Given that we don’t know the long-term effects, is vaccinating everyone, including those who have already had covid and those who haven’t had it, worth the risk?
(30:37 – 37:19) Organic vs inorganic farming; given that there are harmful organic pesticides, is organic farming really all the PR surrounding it makes it out to be? How do practitioners of agroecology cope with abstinence from the use of pesticides? How does this affect their crop yield and their ability to make a living? How do we incentivize restorative agriculture on a large scale?
(46:48 – 53:09) How some commercial farmers are implementing regenerative agricultural practices. How money can help the incentivization of restorative farming. Are conscious consumers really making a difference or are they just being ripped off by capitalists trying to take advantage of their guilt? Does knowing the process of how food is made really change consumers’ relationship to food? Or is convenience the driving force?
Episode transcript
Welcome to the Crazy Wisdom Podcast. So you might have noticed that the world has gone a little bit insane. And to get through this in a way that is sustainable and maybe even joyous, we are going to have to find some crazy wisdom. Which is why I named the podcast Crazy Wisdom. And I try to find guests who are both contrarian and right, as well as people who can help us to understand how we can get through this period of both acceleration as technology accelerates, and maybe even a little bit of darkness, as well as some of you may have been noticing, really crazy stuff is happening right now. So my goal with the show is to empower you with crazy wisdom and give you the tools to figure out how to do it on yourself, because we can't rely on too much these days. So with that being said, if you like what I'm offering with this show, I'm on Twitter to Stuart Alsop III. My DMs are open. I'd love to hear from you about how this show has affected you. Thanks. Have a great day.
So I just want to give a little bit of an introduction to this episode I did with Bolzani. Bolzani is someone I met through another interview I did down here in Curio Sheba, Brazil. And ever since Corona March, I've been thinking a lot more about what resiliency means in a time of acceleration. And to me, the pandemic was a clear sign that the government doesn't really care about health as individuals. It more is concerned with power and political initiatives, political incentives, and where those lead. So for me, I'm trying to plan for a future in which the government doesn't really have my best interest at heart and what it means. And so Bolzani was far ahead of me and basically just went out into the forest, got some land that had been totally destroyed, and learned how to rebuild it so that he can provide food for himself and also to the city of Curitiba using a small farm organic model. And so I learned a lot on this episode about what it means to find resiliency because we have, you know, we have some basic needs as human beings. We have food, water, energy, shelter. Very simple stuff that not a lot of us think a lot about because we've had it for so long. And those things are might change in the future. And so I hope this episode is of value to you and maybe you can start thinking for yourself about what it means to find resiliency as we make move into this next stage of human evolution. So hope you enjoy.
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