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What If More Life On Farms Solves Everything?
Description
Soon after last week's special episode dropped, the messages started coming in. One from a paid subscriber (thanks Dominique Hes) commented on how the first 25 minutes or so alone was so impactful, that I needed to write up a summary on Substack. That, I did. And it made me think some of you might appreciate just that part of our conversation carved out on the pod, to share more easily, hear again, or cut to the chase of it if you don’t have an hour to listen to the full episode.
My guest was former star USDA scientist turned whistleblower, now farmer and independent researcher in South Dakota, Dr Jonathan Lundgren. The episode was titled You Want Evidence for Regen Ag? Here It Is.
Today, an excerpt from about 4 minutes in. It leads off with the latest on the Executive Order for regenerative agriculture that Lundgren was pivotal to. We go on to talk about the enormous body of evidence that secured it. Before rounding out here with the beginning of Jon’s incredible, tumultuous personal journey, from the USDA times to the 10th birthday celebrated just last month of his Blue Dasher Farm and independent research foundation, Ecdysis, host of the extraordinary 1,000 Farms Initiative.
“Mr. President, the most striking data we have generated from our work is that row croppers in the U.S. have twice the asthma rates, 3 times the clinical depression, 3 times the cancer rate, and a 2,600 fold increase in Parkinson’s rates compared to the rest of society. We are killing our farmers.”
“We've got hard data. This became the largest database of regenerative food systems in existence. It's the third largest bio-inventory ever conducted by humans. And the data is like, what these farmers, I mean what they've developed is real. We're not making this up. It's true, it's scalable, it's transferable. This is the answer that we've been looking for.”
To hear the conversation in full, including more of Jon’s story and how this research and community action is developing in Australia right now, head to episode 319 on the website, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
If you’d like to go straight to a particular part of our conversation, or essentially view a table of contents, you can navigate via the chapter markers and transcript.
Recorded 27 August 2026.
Title slide: In the Oval Office. That’s Jonathan Lundgren on the right, Will Harris to his right (sourced from Lundgren’s post on his website)
Please share this episode and/or the related Substack posts below where you can. And thanks for listening!
My Substack post summarising some of the latest research and developments in the US and Australia: We’re Killing Our Farmers: While the evidence for regenerative agriculture is flooding in
And the previous one, that led to this podcast: Two 'Regen' Farmers Walk Into An Oval Office Debate Blind-Sided – and exit with the 'most support we’ve ever had
Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, subscribe if you can, from as little as abo