Farmer Angus on why regenerative farming is an agricultural solution - podcast episode cover

Farmer Angus on why regenerative farming is an agricultural solution

Aug 18, 202520 min
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Episode description

From stockbroker to soil-builder: Farmer Angus explains how regenerative farming heals the land, creates better food, and offers a sustainable future for people and planet.More Jerm Warfare: https://www.ukcolumn.org/series/jerm-warfare

Transcript

Regenerate regenerative waiting here for Angus. It is a holistic way of growing food that focuses on repairing and improving the land. And I think that is Angus arriving right there. Testing and mixing issues breaks. I'm with my friend Farm Angus.

I am a farmer. I'm a regenerative farmer. 20 years ago I lived in London. I was a stockbroker for Goldman Sachs. I've had a very interesting 180° travel from my belief system when I was at Goldman Sachs to now we use animals as part of our regenerative programme. So this whole idea that car farts are killing the world is total rubbish. Animals rejuvenate and regenerate. And, and just one macro point I want to make is I've banned the word sustainability on the farm.

So the reason I banned it is because I don't believe there's anything, anything anywhere in the world we want to sustain today. Nothing we want to sustain. Everything has got to be made better. Jeremy, you tried a beautiful afternoon to come here. Just prepared these steals for some rebos. Come and have a look here. Climb up here. These are chicken feathers. Am I good to go? Yeah. These are chicken feathers from a free range abattoir in South Africa and the rest of the

world. 85% of chicken feathers become feather meal which is fed back to chickens. What we do with it is we mulch in our vineyards. So those are young vines, old vines we we gave last year. So if you look here, this is last year's feathers that are broken up. OK. Now unfortunately on camera, you can't smell anything. OK, but this, this beautiful rich earth that is from chicken feathers breaking down.

So in Europe and in the US, you're not allowed to use any animal waste for anything, OK. And then these, these are the fresh, fresh feathers that we've put around the baby, the baby plant. There's a farmer I know in Eastern Cape who gets 2 lemon harvests every year. The question was what the hell does he do? How does he do that? He mulches his orchards with sheep's wool and, and, and so accordingly he was getting this unbelievable fertility from sheep's wool.

And I tried to find sheep's wool, couldn't find it. Then these Kenyan farmers, these Maasai farmers came here and said why are you stuffing around with sheep's wool? Just get chicken feathers. So were you five years into using chicken feathers in our vineyards? Why do you have? Italian because I'm trying to learn Italian. I used to have Russian, but it's Russian. I don't have the time to learn Russian, so now I'm trying to learn Italian.

Why? Because Zulu was the first language that I spoke and I can do well with languages and Italians, I want to speak Italian. This is what you need to focus on. Can you see that? Yes, OK this is exhibit one in the human beings are committing species wild suicide scenario tell. Me more. Look at it. It's a global use of pesticides over the last 30 years. OK, if you had had your child's placenta analysed, you'd find 162 artificial chemicals in

there. Breast milk's got 280 or something in it. Breast milk's God's purest creation, and it's contaminated. Where's the watermongolani? OK. And the waggons. The salt waggons there. I want to show my friend. OK, Mangolani, this is my friend Germ. Can I tell you there are a lot of fat cattle in here? Hey, please send me a WhatsApp quickly. Now to say slaughter, because even some of these oxen are starting to look really fat. Hey, how's life look for

something here? OK, this is interesting. You see, these are nodules. OK? These nodules are filled with risobacteria. So this is a plot. It's called Lupin. It's a legume. See, I'm breaking off. See, See. See these these guys. OK, these pink nodules. This is a brilliant sign. What it means is that the, the, this plant is fixing nitrogen. So nitrogen is the most available thing in the sky. The sky is like 70% nitrogen, very little oxygen.

So in a, in a regenerative system, you want as many legumes as possible, but they don't. So, so the fact that we've got the legumes and that they're nodulating is amazing. So what happens if they called a rise of bacteria lives in the roots that's in that pink thing and they then pull the nitrogen out of the atmosphere and make it available for themselves and for the other plants in the area. That is a very that's germ. Thank you for being here, buddy.

That makes me so happy to see. OK, Germ, come and listen here, buddy. OK, So what percentage of antibiotics do you think go to animals? I know the answer OK, it's about 80 to 90. Percent, 90% of antibiotics go to animals and only 10% to humans. And why is that? Because animal agriculture is ordained. That or humans have ordained that animal agriculture should be done in their toilets. That's what they are.

They're in their toilets, so that's why you're using antibiotics, because they're sick and challenged. So we, these animals, I can't say will never have an antibiotic, but most of them will never, ever have had an injection in their lives. These animals, most of them will never, ever get an injection. I think year to date we've injected one, OK? And there's two reasons for it. The first is we move them twice a day, every single day, to

fresh pasta, OK? At the same time, we wait six weeks before they come back the same spot. So the parasite cycle's broken. That's reason number one reason #2 is this thing OK? It's called a free choice. Mineral lick works as follows. All soils are deficient. All plants growing in the soil are deficient. All animals eating the plant are deficient. Deficiency manifests as disease. These animals, they have the intelligence to know what they, what they're missing.

So they come in here, they push up with their noses, then they'll self medicate, OK? What is this like minerals and salts? A. Whole range of different minerals OK. And they lifted up on the air. Push up their noses. This is this is for example, kelp hof kelp hof, diatomaceous earth. This is a Pat Colby, Australian vet dolomitic lime, copper sulphate, sulphur dust. So the the the the principal germ is is the principle is 30% of what they take in fixes the internal imbalance.

The rest comes out the back end biologically available. And that goes back into the soil. In a biological form, that's key because it's been through a human process. No chemicals. That's why it's so good to pee on your plants, Jim. You know you're giving, you're giving, you're giving them biological nutrients. Angus, what sort of beef is this? So these are the the smaller ones are limousine Simontola crosses. This guy's a limousine Red Angus cross. So you can see he's very muscled, OK.

But if you look at his back, he's almost got this line, looks like a hamstring line. That's not he's not fat yet. OK, So he'll slaughter. There's this magnificent carcass. But beef, you need fat. That's where the flavour is. OK, so these things are hopelessly too small. Are you aware that you've lost all vegan audience right now? What I can tell you is last week, last week, my staff got paid out 650,000 Rand in carbon credits. What's what's that?

What's that in dollars? I think it's they got the same, I got the same 1.3 million Rand in total payout. So it's maybe $80,000 something, they get $85,000. I'm not sure. The exchange rate is 90,000. Whatever the the the maybe it's a bit less cheap as my maths is appalling. What is the exchange rate? And you had Goldman Sachs? 20 years ago maybe. So the point is that that that we would never been paid those carbon credits if we hadn't increased the carbon in the

soils. And how do we do it through animals. Whereas on the vegan way, you can't increase the carbon, you can only burn it up because you have to use artificial fertilisers. So. So germ purely from a regenerative a, a, a, a regenerative aspect, veganism is disqualified. Yes. It looks like a fat. There. It just turned its head. You got it. Yeah, there it is. Turn its head again. Yeah, owls have chased it out of that ficus there. That's that. The crows chased it out.

Now the poor owl, it's broad daylight and it's traumatised by the crows. OK, Jim, so these are free. Range. Are you trying? Are you trying to be funny? Free range is consumer fraud. Free range is what you think you're buying when you buy chickens, when you buy eggs. I love my honey. I love my beautiful. Oh yes, that is so lacquer. That is a back rub. I've never lacquer If you UK kind of people know what lacquer means. But lacquer is is better than nice.

I mean, the free range is genuinely consumer fraud because because with free range, they you, you're expecting to find this green fields, moving animals, but you're not free range. They live in a big barn. There's a tiny little opening on the side of the barn. There's no incentive for them to go out. And ecologically speaking, free range is as bad as caged. Why? Because they're manure builds up in one place. Your housing's not mobile.

Look at this, the housings mobile, you see the cattle move every day. So, so, so animals are part of regenerating an ecosystem. But the way animals are farmed, it's not regenerating anything because the manure is kept in one place and then it's a huge problem dealing with it. So do these chickens move also? Every single day we move these egg movies. So it helps the grass also. Of course, this is all natural, naturally grown Hala Mahanis. How many chickens have you got here, Angus?

In total in the form 6000 hens, but in in this batch 1000 hens. So then obviously this makes the eggs premium? But they're more nutrient dense than other eggs. We've done amino acid profiling on them and the other eggs are dishonestly priced. The cost of of the waste of the of the of of tidying up the waste that's not in the price, yes, must be taught. Come if you look here, Jim, OK, If you feel there, that is the totality of her breast. Do you feel how little meat that is?

Yeah, She's a laying machine. She's not a meat machine. It's like eating a marathon runner versus a sumo wrestler. But she lays a lot of eggs. But she's a laying machine. OK, let's go watch this be Moses potting the waters. Moses called the Mitsubishi Moses. You've also got pigs, but we don't have enough time not to go look because the sun's setting. Pigs, dude. We haven't even really spoken about wine, and we haven't spoken about Robots tea either. So I launched a wine brand last

year. It took me 15 years to get the wines up to a standard that we were comfortable to release. One of the things we've done in the vineyard, if you remember that the vine is the plant of Dionyses just grows down straight, straight down. What is the opposite of Dionyses? Apollo. So we planted cypresses as the Apollonian tree. So it's the energy up and energy down little bit of balance.

Oh, and those mountains, by the way, on the on the on the on the far distance across there is the reals mountains. Then that is Haldebach, Stellamosch Mountain, Fronchuk Mountain, Simmons, Bach, and if you look carefully you can just see Table Mountain under the clouds over there. It is Devil's Peak just sticking out under the cloud. So you also form pigs. Yes. So we are one of three people who produce pigs outdoors.

You wouldn't believe it. With weather like this, everyone should have their pigs outdoors, but they're all in cages. But we are the only guys who cure without adding nitrites. Nitrites and phosphates and germ over here, I'll put a little packet of goodies for you to take home. Salami sticks for germ. This is our tagline. Get the real story, Know your food. And we're the only guys curing without adding nitrites, nitrates and phosphates. So there's some salami sticks

for you. That is chorizo. Oh. God, that is delicious. OK. Actually, it's all delicious. This is called Salomeeti. And then here are some frankfurters for you, young man. Nice. Roller for your son? Yes, he's a he's a growing boy. He's a growing boy. Thank you, Angus. OK, Jim, the burning question in this country in agriculture is why since 2010 have 56% of the cattle farmers and 54% of the beef farmers, I mean cattle farmers and grain farmers gone

bust? Because capitalism is a system that is the primary producer with sand as lubricant. OK, it might be a grotesque metaphor and I couldn't say it again. In the capitalist system, the primary producer is the worst possible position to be OK, so by me spending huge amounts of effort and time and money on a brand, I'm a price maker and not a price taker. Why the What's actually going on?

Because germ, they have not been able to increase their prices off the farm gate, but their labour costs have basically doubled, their fuel costs have doubled. At the same time, the retailers in the feedlots are making millions more just a You're a commodity producer. What was? It Yeah, there we go. We are regenerative farm. As I explained to you earlier, I've banned the word sustainability because it's a defeatist belief that everything is OK as it is.

In my opinion, everything should be better on whatever metric we look at. We can only do better. I mean, maybe we could go worse, but why would you want to have, you know, more infertility, more cancer, more plastic in the oceans, more plastic in our bodies, So more use of pesticides, Yeah. It's healthier in the long run. And it's a, it's, as Catherine Austinfitz says, this is how you get off the central control grid. You become, you actually become healthier, correct?

And you require less of the pharmaceuticals. It's going to say what I did on Sunday. Yeah, we have a little family tradition where when it's, if it's a birthday of somebody, they request something. So I read last year for my birthday had requested a 24 hour digital detox. So no one in our family, my 3 kids, my wife and I looked at the screen for 24 hours. Gee, oh, that's why you didn't reply to me. Jim, I can't tell you how wonderful it was. Time just slows down, literally slows down.

It's incredible. We have no idea how overstimulated we are. So farmers are attacked, no question. I think 4000 farmers have been murdered, but black farmers and white farmers are attacked. And the attacks on farmers, I don't believe they've got anything to do with race, but they've everything to socio

economic stuff. So the farmers perceived to have money and they're also perceived to have guns and cash on their farms, OK. So that's why many, many years ago we said we're no cash farm, OK? Whereas literally up the road from me, they murdered a guy because he was paying out in cash to steal his cash. So. So we are a criminal society in South Africa where criminals are not punished.

So, so. But there's another underlying tone which is like farmers are white and they kind of deserve it. But what they don't understand is when you kill the farmer with with it's black or white, you've basically killed all the farm labourers too. Yeah. How much of that do you think is foreign influence foreign backed to to destabilise? Well of course the the the the the CIA and MI 6 are fully behind. The EFF is a destabilising force because it's Brit. It's anti bricks.

All the British government can do is destabilise. They've even destabilised England. I lived in England for five years. OK England is not the same as it was 20 years ago. The British have destabilised their own country. So mad at this. We, as in every human, are all farmers by proxy. You, by virtue of choosing where your food comes from, have chosen your farmer. And the farmer is either regenerative or destructive. So we can literally eat our way to a better world.

How's that for a beautiful, uplifting message, my man? Angus. OK. Thanks everybody. Jim, you're the best.

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