Jason Bradford: “A Hybrid Path to the Future of Farming” | The Great Simplification #24

[@GregoryJWalters]

A very moving and informative Interview. Mr. Bradford's work and commitment to young persons working on the farms brought tears to my eyes. Thank you Nate and Jason for your Virtuous being!

[@Forbyio]

Looking forward to the next level of farming where culture and community are integrated into our work.

[@rttptt3710]

I loved this.

[@Rosemountainfarm]

Shazzaammm! Home run this week! As an Appalachian farmer, home run!!!!

[@markusklein881]

Well done Jason/Nate - navigating through complex subjects. Universities are crucial to educate the generations to come - however, they should live up to their original idea - being UNIversal means connecting the dots rather thinking in a box.

[@penegue]

Thank you Nate and Jason

[@KingdomExplorationLLC]

Nate, you get it! Keep the amazing truth coming!

[@EricVulgaris]

Despite all our accomplishments as a species, we owe it all to about six inches of top soil and the fact that it rains.

[@Rosemountainfarm]

My favorite quote!

[@JoshFlorii]

Man this guy got me fired up!

[@zpettigrew]

I've been saying this for years. Start, or attempt at least ONE experimental "Game-B University/Prototype". Maybe cap it at 150 people? We need to start prototyping and experimenting this NOW. Forwarding this idea has been like herding cats.

[@anabolicamaranth7140]

I’ve been thinking the same thing, as it is we’re all in on the current system.

[@zpettigrew]

@@anabolicamaranth7140 I've been sketching out ideas for how something like this could be accomplished. Collectively, we should have started years ago. I'd like it if Nate started discussing ideas like this. To be honest, as a professor with a sizeable following - he has been in a far better place to forward these ideas and start "recruiting" or organizing a project like this. It seems like there is a hunger for something like this. Especially post covid. A "college" where people can experiment with being detached from the system destroying the world. How to grow food optimally, how to set up clean energy systems, how to keep social cohesion etc. Perhaps even how to restore damaged ecosystems. Leaving the bioshphere better than the way we found them? Then the "graduates" can take turns guiding other groups interested in doing the same - but don't know how. NOTE: the math on this would scale. The ecosystem restoration and academic end would allow for Grants and public funding. I really think something like this would be incredibly popular with the youth of today. They need something that has been stolen from them - mentor ship and leadership in a better direction. HAHAHA! Could even make a reality TV show out of it! [joke].

[@Ghanzo]

One thing about trophic pyramids. All energy contained in all food was sourced from photosynthesis. Plants make sugars and half of those flow OUT the roots, to feed the microbiology. So the next level after plants is bacteria/fungi then nematodes, then insects

[@squeaker19694]

There's a growing desire among the young people to live a more simple rural life. First there was minimalism and now Cottagecore is a growing trend, and has become highly romanticised, at least among young women. They are all hooked on social media but they wish they weren't. They want it to be taken away because they cant stop themselves but realise how hollow their lives have become. It looks like the youth are going to get what they wish for. I live on a beautiful farm on the southern most tip of western Australia. A very isolated part of the world. Perfect climate at present but there's been a drying trend over the last 30 years which has improved the climate, but I wouldn't want it to dry any more than this. I love growing my own food. That part is very fulfilling but wish there was more a sense of community around the agrarian way of life. People are still so used to not having to exert themselves to have their needs met and would rather drive into town to buy everything. I think modern living has robbed us of our creativity and ingenuity because it's too easy to just go and buy something to fill a want or need. Nothing gives me greater joy than creating something out of natural materials I already have when I can't afford to buy it. I'd hate to be so wealthy that I couldn't justify making it myself because it would rob me of the joy and pride that comes from making it myself. And I often wish my house was a lot smaller than it is. Big houses are an energy drain in more ways than one. If many people out there think like me, then they might be pleasantly surprised at how happy they become when they have to simplify. provided they are able to feed themselves that is. Most people here in WA have sold their backyards to fund making their houses bigger!

[@briken2539]

Super interview! Does the USA lead in youth who understand the future is rural? Here in the Dominican Republic, we're looking for youth with that level of acceptance. How does popular music relate to this alternative view of possible future?

[@christianrobertdemassy900]

thank you for all this Nate. have you ever spent some time in the works of David Fleming ?

[@JoshFlorii]

The beacon/centers Jason describes are exactly the "proto-B" concept (from the game-B idea). People are thinking about it, but not many.

[@plaiche]

+1

[@AlexanderGould94]

+1

[@zpettigrew]

I know. I've been trying to forward this idea for years. Change will have to happen bottom up. Not top-down. There just isn't time.

[@markeverard1930]

Many thanks, Nate! Don’t suppose you’re going on the Joe Rogan Experience any time soon?

[@joshuaderrick5899]

Would love to get in touch with Jason. I'm a 24 year old PhD student that's been interested in farming my whole life, but never had the resources to commit to it.

[@shantiharris2996]

Most communities have "community gardens" for free. You could start with a productive vegetable garden.

[@joshuaderrick1774]

@@shantiharris2996 Ive been doing this at a community garden in Baltimore for the past two years

[@jato72]

I remember Jason's interview with Jay Hanson! IIRC Jay Hanson (RIP) predicted nuclear war this decade. With war in eastern Europe, I am starting to wonder.

[@SeegerInstitute]

We have to completely rethink employment to create a hybrid model- less gross income, better quality of life, more local production of both food and community ie: entertainment

[@CarolPrice4p]

If lots of us work the fields in the mornings and drink beer, we might have a nice sleep in the afterrnoon😊

[@TennesseeJed]

Nate rocks!

[@boombot934]

Thank❤🌹🙏 you, Jason Bradford and Nate👍! 🐵🐔🐶🐷Animal agriculture must cease to exist, please try 🥦🥕🌽veg vegan menu! You'll like it! 😊

[@SeegerInstitute]

The base of the tropic pyramid is the micro biome

[@notafantbh]

Wish people like Jason and Nate were the kind o people making decisions in this world instead of nationalist warmongering psychopaths

[@mikeharrington5593]

The future could be rural if economies accept that degrowth & de-industrialization are a necessary part of significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, it's idealistic to believe that countries would willingly return to a type of labor-intensivw pre-Haber-Bosch national agriculture because it cannot feed 8 billion

[@iutubiutampoc]

He says he cares about biodiversity, but he is for animal agriculture which is the leading cause of species extinction, habitat destruction and ocean dead zones.

[@tjoenpauker2585]

isn't this not the way creating more blue regions in the world?

[@derekmiller8564]

It's not ZOO OLOGY ZO OLOGY

[@jarendrew9245]

I'm really not following this logic at all. A more rural future? It makes way more sense to me to have a more urban future. You expect 8 billon people to all have their own farms? That sounds like an absurd amount of redundant infrastructure. Everyone would need their own roads, their own sewer systems, their own watering and irrigation systems their own tractors, their own equipment. However you feel about industrial farming, and it how it needs to be reengineered, it makes way more sense to scale up rather than decentralize and scale down at individual level. If you were going for computing power, would you hook up 10 laptops together or create 1 super computer? Why would it make sense to have 10 small processors doing half the work of 1 super processor. And what about the massive amount of ecological destruction to create all these small redundant farms? The deforestation, the carbon from all the cars people will need because no one can walk anywhere ( because it's rural). The fact is cities have a drastically lower carbon footprint per person. Walkable environments, condos instead of disconnected houses which mean way less infrastructure per person. You need far fewer stores, hospitals, fire departments per square mile in urban environments. I could see a future where there is a larger rural environment and a much larger urban environment and the elimination of the suburban environment which is the worst of both. Nate you really need to have a new urbanist on to explain all this to you. And also need to talk to your boy Daniel about the meat biz, he probably has something to say. I'm not even a vegetarian but the reality is meat is an incredibly inefficient way of gaining calories it's just physics. Talk about soil, isn't 1/3 of the current land being used to grow food for animals and something like 90% of the calories are lost to heat energy by the time it actually gets into your body? It may not be the future you like, but I think a more urban, more walkable, more vegetarian future is far more realistic than a car dependent, redundant , ecologically destructive rural future.

[@jato72]

"You expect 8 billon people to all have their own farms?" Not exactly. Not everyone is going to make it into post-industrial civilization.

[@enchemin5652]

You forget animals normally eat and process vegetation humans cannot consume. All the while feeding and watering the soils that will feed them with their excrement and urine. And this vegetation has a cooling effect by absorbing the sun’s energy while providing shade.

[@arb0r]

I think you got the point, there needs to be a lot of experimenting with all the questions you raised in mind. Country side like we do now needs cars, how do we do without. Doesn't need to happen instantaneously but we need to prepare. How do we do housing. What if there are migrants/refugees? Sanitation? Hospitals? Insurance? What do we keep, what do we do without in terms of useful infrastructure? Both in physical world (highways) and social/economy world. Army? Banks? Weapons? Seed farms? Wormfarms? Computers? Composters? The only thing we do know, I feel, is that we have to do it somehow.