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[Got Creepy Crawlies?] Author Vicki Hird, author of Rebugging the Planet: The Remarkable Things that Insects (and Other Invertebrates) Do – And Why We Need to Love Them More, shares her wisdom, knowledge, and insight about the integral ecological role of invertebrates and how we can help them recover after a devastating century of anthropogenic chemical-driven destruction. Vicki informs us that bugs are essential to global ecosystems, and that without them nearly 90% of flowering plants would die off! From the inspired works of Leonardo Da Vinci to the nearly indestructible Tardigrade (or “water bear,” which can survive unbelievable extremes, including radiation and the vacuum of space!), and from soil-based invertebrates to those living in the fresh water world-wide, our lives, culture, and fundamental reality of life as we know it are inextricably woven with our planet’s bugs.
Thus, Vicki encourages us to “be the voice for the bugs” and to “rebug” our yards, our communities, our agriculture, are society, and even our politicians and our consciousness! She discusses the importance of purchasing organic fruit, chocolate, and coffee in order to financial support agricultural methods that disallow the application of toxic chemicals, and encourages us to create chemical-free pollinator habitats at whatever scale we can, paying special attention to planting the “flat-topped” umbelliferae like yarrow, angelica, fennel, dill, coriander and cumin. She invites us to this and other “rewilding” actions in her book, which is published by Chelsea Green Publishing.
About Vicki Hird
Vicki Hird is the Strategic Leader for Agriculture at The Wildlife Trust and Head of the Sustainable Farming Campaign for Sustain: The Alliance for Better Food and Farming, and she also runs an independent consultancy. An experienced and award-winning environmental campaigner, researcher, writer, and strategist working mainly in the food, farming, and environmental policy arenas, Vicki has worked on government policy for many years and is also the author of Perfectly Safe to Eat? The Facts on Food.
Vicki’s passion is insects. The first pets she gave her children were a family of stick insects and she had a giraffe-necked weevil tattoo for her fiftieth birthday. Vicki also has a Masters in Pest Management and she is a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society.
Resources & Related Episodes
X/Twitter: @vickihird
Instagram: @vickihird
35% Discount at Chelsea Green Publishing – use code: YOE35
Episode 126 – Dr. David Haskell, author, Sounds Wild & Broken
Episode 124 – Nick DiDomenico, Co-Founder, Drylands Agroecology Research
Episode 121 – Oliver Retzloff, Proprietor, Wild Nectar Flower Farm
Episode 102 – Julie Morris and Louise Chawla, People & Pollinators Action Network
Episode 94 – Tom Chi, Founder, At One Ventures
Episode 28 – Scott Black, Executive Director, Xerces Society
Transcript
(Automatically generated transcript for search engine optimization and reference purposes – grammatical and spelling errors may exist.)
Welcome to the YonEarth Community Podcast. I’m your host, Aaron William Perry. And today we’re visiting with Vicki Hird, the author of re-bugging the planet. Hi Vicki.
Hi, good to be here. It’s great to visit with you and what we’re going to be talking about today is obviously one of the most important topics for our entire global community and planetary situation. So I’m really, really excited we have this opportunity to visit with you.
It’s great to be here. I have been so pleased with the reactions to the reports and people’s interest in it. So it’s great to be speaking about it.
Wonderful. And I think for fun, we’ll maybe refer to this episode as our creepy crawly episode.
As long as you don’t put noses in there because they’re not nasty.
Not at all. No, we’d love it. Maybe we love it creepy code. Yes.
Vicki herd is head of the sustainable farming campaign for sustain the alliance for better food and farming. And she also runs an independent consultancy and experienced an award-winning environmental campaigner researcher writer and strategist working mainly in the food farming and environmental policy arenas.
Vicki has worked on government policy for many years and is also the author of perfectly safe to eat the facts on food.
Vicki’s passion is insects. The first pets she gave her children were a family of stick insects and she had a giraffe necked weevil tattoo for her 50th birthday.
Vicki also has a master’s degree in pest management and she is a fellow of the Royal Entomological Society and Vicki as you and I were just discussing before we began to record.
Today is your first day. Congratulations on a new job as a strategic leader on agriculture at the wildlife trust. So that’s wonderful. Congratulations.
Thank you. Yeah. Been a busy busy day, but it’s good to be there.
I’m so sure and yeah, thanks for taking the time on day one to visit with us and really excited to dive into this and and to kick things off.
I’m just going to ask you a very open question. Like why why bugs? Why does it matter? What are we talking about?
Well, I think there’s such a critical part of our ecosystem, part of our lives. And one of the reasons I wrote the book was because I don’t think enough people recognize that or realize that.
Although I think that’s changing. One of the reasons also that I wrote the book because I think people are beginning to be interested.
There’s been a lot more wildlife programs that cover invertebrates. There’s been books. There’s been like citizen science where people get involved.
And I think we need to tap into that and understand what it means for people in terms of their lives, their politics, their consumption.
So I wrote the book with that in mind, but also with the idea of making bugs their role and their brilliance and their beauty a bit clearer.
So as a paperback, it’s not, you know, it’s not a huge tone with loads of pictures, but there’s a lot out there on the invertebrates.
But I just wanted to sort of distill it in one book with loads and loads of tips for what you can do as well, which was key for me at the campaigner.
I always want to communicate what you can do. But they’re also in trouble. That’s the other reason.
Absolutely. Yeah. And we’ll be talking about that. And just, you know, those of our audience who are watching the video version of our discussion.
This is a copy of the book. This is actually a galley advanced copy.
And yeah, the cover is so beautiful with all of this.
It is nice, isn’t it? Yeah. The diversity there. And it’s not just insects. That’s the important thing. Insects are critical.
But all the other invertebrates, the species without a spine in our rivers, in our seas, on our land, in our soil.
They’re everywhere, almost everywhere. And they’re really critical. And combining them with the fungi, we certainly won’t be here without them.
Absolutely. Can you give us the bad news? Where are we in terms of what’s happening with the invertebrates right now?
Yeah. There’s some really scary long-term trend studies, which shows over decades how the number of species and diversity of species has been declining.
Where they’ve been actually looking. And that’s not everywhere. So there’s a big gap in the data, a big gap in the research, which I think scientists globally are beginning to fill.
You know, in the last five years, there’s been a massive scientific recognition of the problem. So they’re starting to look how we can fill that.
It’s probably enough just within the side. You know, one of the things we’ve been researching on invertebrates for the past 200 years is how to kill them.
How to get rid of them? How to zap them? And now, you know, there’s a lot more money and research going into how to protect them, how to avoid destroying their habitats and their lives.
So that’s really exciting. But it doesn’t mean there’s gaps. But what we’ve seen is the combination of factors. There isn’t one single thing.
But we know that several different factors have been creating this big long-term decline in many species and many critical species.
But also species that we love, you know, butterflies and mayflies and all sorts that we actually love because of how beautiful they are.
But also they feed other things that we think are beautiful like birds. And obviously they have critical functions in our food system.
But climate change, habitat loss, losing their habitat. And I’d have it being fragmented, which means they’re really isolated.
They’re doing well in one patch, but they can’t get to the next patch to mate, to recolonize, to feed, to have a refuge.
They haven’t got that corridor. Those fragmentation are really, really problematic, particularly in farmed land and land, which has been heavily degraded through usually farming.
But other reasons as well, like mining and development and encroachment from cities and towns.
So those two are biggies, but also pollution. Pollution coming from pesticides, fertilizers, manure, particularly in river and marine environments, which have so many invertebrates in them, critical invertebrates.
And so that pollution, but it’s also things like plastic pollution and noise pollution.
And so these biggies, you know, climate change is a critical one because they’re such small animals.
Their surface to volume ratio is very high, so they can lose heat and lose walks very quickly.
So they can be particularly badly impacted when you’ve got extremes that they weren’t predicting.
At the same time, insects and invertebrates can adapt. They’re known as radar tool.
They produce millions of offspring every year, many of them. So they can adapt.
But if we change it so fast, as we are with the climate change, and have attack loss and pollution incidents, then it’s very difficult for them.
And they just crash. They don’t thrive and they don’t move around as they should.
And so that’s one of the things that we can all do something about, having gardens, having green spaces.
Yeah, absolutely. You know, and as as you and I previously discussed, we had a Scott Zershi on the podcast series,
the executive director of the Earth, excuse me, Scott Black, the director of the Zershi society.
And in that discussion, we were talking about the what looks like potentially the sixth great extinction.
Yeah, very scary, very scary.
I’ve heard some pretty staggering figures around biodiversity and biomass reductions.
And he mentioned in Germany, a study showing something like 75% decrease in flying insect biomass.
That was a big one. Yeah, that was one that triggered a lot of media interest. Yeah, it was scary.
What’s your what’s your read? What’s your take on where we’re at worldwide in terms of some of these percent changes?
Well, they are beginning to sort of do collective analyses of all the studies and suggestions that 40% are at risk of going extinct.
And some of these will be ones that we haven’t even discovered yet.
You know, there’s invertebrates even around us that we haven’t discovered yet in these soils.
But in places in the global south in South America, there’s millions probably that we don’t know about.
So it’s hard to say, but there are 40% has drawn from a lot of studies that we’re potentially seeing massive extensions.
And then there’s the sort of problem that you get when you get sort of extensional crashes locally.
I mean, locally it could be in a nation or in a region.
And, you know, we talk about foods and, you know, we love foods. It is chocolates and coffee.
They rely on a very tiny fly to be pollinated.
And if you lose that fly for other reasons, for deforestation, for pollution, mining elsewhere,
you’re not going to get the chocolate and you’re not going to get the coffee.
So it’s things like that.
And it is quite scary when you look at the figures about deforestation and removal of wetlands, critical wetlands in places.
And we’ve done a lot of damage already in, I live in the UK, in North America.
You’ve got a lot of clearance already, but you do have your wilderness areas, which are amazing.
Refuges and all wilderness areas are much smaller.
But we’re trying, but there are some really serious alarm bells ringing that we’ve got to all act on.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, wait a minute.
So it’s one species of fly that pollens chocolate worldwide.
It’s a tiny, tiny fly.
I think there’s probably different species worldwide that have learned how to do it.
But from where chocolate originally came from, which I think might be Asia, but I might be wrong about that.
But yeah, it’s tiny.
And so, you know, you can’t have another kind of species doing it, because they’ll be too big,
or their wings will be too long, or they won’t have the right mouth parts.
You know, these evolution of relationships between bugs and plants have been over millennia.
And you know, you can’t recreate them that easily.
However, adaptable invertebrates are.
But what we’re trying to do, in some plots of the world, where they’ve lost their pollinators, like in China,
they’re actually doing hand pollination.
And they’re developing robotic bees.
I talk about that in the book, actually.
I think it’s hilarious.
You know, the millions that will be spent, and the resources, like metals, that will be used in creating robotic bees.
When we’ve got something on tap that is free, replicates itself, does the best job,
and gets right to the heart of the flower.
You know, we should be protecting the bees, and the other pollinators,
absolutely without fail, rather than investing billions in robotic bees.
Or spending millions in hand pollination.
Is suitable in some circumstances, when you want to do things differently.
But it’s not a solution to world hunger without pollinators.
Oh, my gosh.
You know, this reminds me of an episode we recently did with Tom Chi,
who has a company called At One Ventures.
And he’s tracking all kinds of emerging regenerative technologies.
And he was talking about, in the energy industry,
there was a multi-billion-dollar carbon sequestration plant that was funded by one of the big oil and gas companies
that sequestered or has the potential to sequester the same amount of carbon
as something like approximately 137 beavers.
Beavers, right? Animals that do their things are free.
And we don’t have depreciation.
We don’t have machinery that’s wearing out over time.
And so…
A lot of cement probably involved in that.
Lots of cement, which is unbelievably bad for climate.
Yeah.
So, yeah, if and as we’re getting more intelligent and harmonized
with the natural brilliance genius of all these different species and their roles,
I think they’re going to do so much more in the way of restoration and regeneration
than probably, you know, many more technology.
Lots of say we shouldn’t do anything.
Absolutely.
Yeah. But there is actually billion spent on that,
which could be used to really reinforce the existing systems,
the natural systems that can do it so well, like forests and woods and beavers,
as you say, they’re amazing keystone species.
But so wood ants, you know, making sure the wood ants can survive.
They provide an environment in woods, for instance, up in Scotland,
which provide a really balanced environment of pest predators and pathogens
and herbivores, making sure that the forest survives well.
When you take them out, the forest declines and you get over abundance of pest species.
So those keystone species exist in the invertebrate world,
as well as the mammalian.
Yeah. I mean, carbon capture and storage, which is possibly what was being referred to there,
the carbon. You know, it’s still untried.
It’s still untested at scale.
And they’re pouring millions into it, subsidies.
Our taxpayers’ money is going into that.
So it’s really, it strikes me as interesting what you mentioned about the wild open spaces
here in the United States versus the smaller versions in the UK.
I’m curious from a land use perspective,
what would your policy recommendations be in a place like the UK given?
Yeah. Yeah.
How do patterns have already been deployed?
Well, we’ve got a very dense population in the UK.
You know, we haven’t got as much land as you have to have wilderness areas
that are genuinely left to rewild themselves and maintain themselves
to a strong degree.
But what we’ve done with our natural spaces,
and our natural parks, our parks that are supposed to be protected,
is not particularly well.
I mean, seriously not.
And you use them in ways which many think are deeply unsustainable
and certainly don’t retain a nature and wildlife that we need to provide that refuge for those species.
So there’s a lot of campaigns to reinforce the rewilding approach to natural environmental, natural areas.
And then there’s a whole spectrum.
Like if you’re going to farm in those natural parks and nature parks,
which we tend to have to because we’ve got a very large population that needs feeding
and we don’t want to throw food from elsewhere too much,
to do it in ways which protect nature.
And you can do that.
You can do nature-based farming with a lot of really great habitat for,
and rotations in the farm system,
which can actually retain a really good population, diverse population of invertebrates,
which will also help you when you farm, you know,
like that pest predators, you know,
they’re brilliant at doing what they do in a farm situation.
But actually introducing that into systems which have been farming cheap for a long time,
or intensive cereals, et cetera,
it takes a lot to change the culture and the habits,
and also the supply chains and the buyers.
So it’s a complex picture we weave if we’re going to try and do more wilderness areas in the UK.
There’s a lot of opposition, there’s a lot of pressure.
It’s a bit of a hot topic here in the UK.
But that’s why I mentioned it.
You’ve had your wilderness for many years created by politicians and maintained,
which we can be envious of,
but we don’t necessarily have the opportunity to completely recreate.
Perhaps a shout out to Teddy Roosevelt.
Absolutely, yeah, he’s a bit of a call.
But we have, you know, we have done things here.
We have green belts, we have natural parks,
but they are under a huge amount of pressure.
Amazing.
Well, I want to be sure that we’re talking about the invertebrates in soil and water,
but before going there, the flying ones,
the ones perhaps many of us might think of more immediately.
You know, I drive through the Midwest,
so regularity.
And I’ve really noticed these past few years that we get far fewer bugs on the windshield
than we did last driving there as a kid.
And around here, lately in Colorado,
I’ve been actually thrilled to see more bugs on the windshield
as perhaps morbid as that might sound or counterintuitive as that might sound.
What it essentially implies is that the populations are stronger, right?
Stronger, absolutely.
You know, it’s funny.
That was the subtitle of the book originally.
When I recently put it to Chelsea Green,
it was so great in accepting it.
They said, maybe the young people won’t know what you’re talking about when you say
and how to get the bugs back on your windshield,
because we haven’t had them for so long in the UK.
Unless you’re in an amazing organic farm or one of the good parks,
it’s very rare to get bugs on your windshield.
But funny enough, we have a bug life,
which is a conservation organisation for invertebrates.
They do a splatter campaign every year,
and they get people to print out a splatter test
for their cars.
And then you drive for a while,
and then you send it in the results.
And it’s citizen science with the splatter test.
But I think, you know, that’s an indicator if you’re getting more in Colorado.
That’s really great.
But I think the intensification of our farming systems,
the neatness of it, the chemicals,
the reduction in edges and woodlands,
all massive factors in that, you know,
the invertebrates just have got a chance.
Wow, I love hearing about the citizen science work.
We did something here for organizations,
and the city of Boulder,
with different organics, soil amendments,
and people who are testing for carbon sequestration
and wildlife.
Oh, great.
Really a lot of fun to participate in that.
That’s cool to hear about.
We’re actually starting to talk here about people getting money off their water bills
if they have soil in their gardens,
because people are starting to, you know,
too much concrete or tiling or even worse,
plastic grass.
You know, they’re terrible in all sorts of ways,
but they really don’t absorb the water.
So you get, you know, potential flooding and things like that.
So it’s an interesting fiscal measures
that could help drive people towards that.
And more carbon, knowing that they’ve got more carbon,
we’re exciting people, I would have thought.
So that’s really clever of Boulder.
Oh, that’s amazing.
How far along is that after that?
Not very far as far as I know.
I saw a headline.
I thought I was very excited about it.
We need to push it.
We need to push those things.
You know, getting those nudge things
that can help people make decisions differently.
Although I think we should ban plastic lawns.
Sorry, that’s it.
I don’t know if we’ll get that,
but you know, there’s all sorts of things people can do.
Even if they’ve got concrete,
they can put pots, do a lot.
You know, if they can’t get rid of the concrete,
they can do an awful lot for the bugs.
Absolutely.
What are some of the techniques
if folks have a lot of concrete they’re dealing with?
Yeah, well, we’ve got actually Chelsea Green
who published a brilliant book by a guy
and I’ve forgotten his name right now,
but I can share it with you.
He’s done that balcony gardener
or something like that.
He’s got brilliant ways of producing amazing abundance
in pots, in planters,
and even on a balcony you can produce a lot of food
and a lot of flowers for the pollinators.
And that book’s got loads of ideas
and there’s a lot on the internet as well
about how you can raise a lot of plants
in diversity and diversity is key to protecting the bugs.
So if you have a garden with mostly concrete,
you can put a huge amount of plantas,
you know, raised beds with soil,
so you get the soil bugs as well,
and healthy soil gives you healthy food.
But even if you can’t be raised beds,
you can do a lot of pots.
You know, if you’ve got a small yard,
you could have 50 pots all producing different things
and flowers at different times a year.
And having that year-round flowering
could be really important for the invertebrates
in terms of a refuge, food source,
nest thing, areas.
So there’s a lot you can,
everybody can do something.
Yeah, absolutely.
I’ll do something.
I love this.
And I’m starting to envision slogan,
save the chocolate fly.
Yes, yes.
Plant it, plant it.
Plant something in a garden, save the chocolate fly.
Well, that might be more to do with what you,
you know, what you buy,
so your lifestyle,
because that’s as critical as what you do in your area.
So how you purchase chocolate,
you know, go for organic and fed trade,
and shop around, shop around,
and find out what they’re doing
to actually reduce chemical use,
because there are chemicals used in these systems.
And chocolate and coffee can be grown
in really great agroforestry systems,
because they’re shade plants.
So it’s really great if they mix forestry systems
producing coffee, cocoa,
and fruits,
and that could be really beneficial
for the communities producing it as well.
Mixed outcomes,
feeding your local communities as well.
So I’ll ask you questions of your shopkeepers
and your retailers.
Love it.
Yeah, you know, Vicki Maya,
my permaculture teacher,
the late Scott Pittman,
give him a big shout out,
he fits in consulting work
for the Mars company decades ago.
At the time, they were monocroping their cacao
and experiencing all kinds of issues.
It doesn’t work.
Monocrops eventually don’t work, I think.
Yeah, he basically went in
and recommended multi-story…
Yeah, exactly.
3D growing, yeah.
Brilliant.
It’s really good.
So chocolate coffee,
and I’ll just give a quick shout out.
We’ve done episodes with Dr. Bronner’s
and with Equal Exchange,
their co-op with chocolate and coffee offerings
that we can all select.
And of course,
recognizing the power of our consumer demand,
in addition to our engagement with governance
and policy and all of the things
we can do in our own yards and neighborhoods
and gardens that really forms this,
I think, trifecta.
And I know, Vicki,
you speak to this a lot in terms of calls to action
and maybe we’ll repeat this at the end of the episode.
Okay.
It looks with it, but I was struck
when we were chatting earlier
about your way of framing
what people can do about these issues.
Yeah.
It’s a bit overwhelming, isn’t it?
The global crisis,
and right now we’ve got unbelievable climate extremes going on.
And that’s going to accelerate.
So people might get a bit overwhelmed,
but I said to people,
have a bit of a plan.
If you have got,
you understand the role of invertebrates
in our environment.
They are absolutely critical
for our pollination,
for our soils,
for our water systems.
They do amazing filtration.
But most importantly,
they provide nutrients for the food that we grow.
Anyway, loads of ways in which they’re critical.
And also for our clothes,
and the wooden chairs we’re sitting on,
we wouldn’t have any of that.
So if you care about that,
have a little plan.
And the plan can be,
like what you’re doing in your house,
or your garden,
or your local park,
or even just the verge,
outside your block of flats,
or if there’s a space
that you can actually start to talk to people
about doing something on.
So that’s,
have a plan for doing something in your area,
or your garden,
or your house,
even protecting the spiders,
which are really great fly control as well.
So I have something for your place.
Something about your life cells.
So we talked about, you know,
going fair trade, organic,
start to ask questions,
start to explore,
where you can buy directly from the farmer,
because then they’ll get more reward
for what they’re doing.
So they’ll be able to do it better.
They can transition to what we call
agro-ecological farming,
which is like organic.
And if they get such a tiny percentage,
that they usually get from a very complex supply chain,
and then retailers
who are incredibly cutthroat at the other end,
and all competing with each other
to get people into the doors.
So it’s very complex and costly chain.
So farmers often get very little.
So if you can buy direct,
or go through something called a better free trader,
then you are making a big difference.
But it’s not just food as well.
It’s also about what food you buy.
You think, you know,
things like everything from the land
has an impact on invertebrates.
So when things are very, very impactful on the land,
for instance,
livestock products,
palm oil,
oil seeds,
they’re all coming from either very intensive systems,
which require a lot of feed into the livestock,
or produced using deforestation
or destruction of really important weapons.
So thinking about what you buy as well.
And there’s loads of tips and ideas.
This isn’t a,
you must kind of think,
it’s just think about what you buy,
how it’s infected the land.
And so I give a lot of tips in the book.
But think about eating less and better meat,
fresh where you can.
Junk food is really bad for the environment and the bugs.
So that’s the second thing.
And then I would say,
what you’re wearing,
and you’re, you know,
you’re clothes,
what you purchase,
all that’s important to you.
Because a lot of that comes from the land.
And then the final thing,
so that’s the second thing,
your lifestyle.
And then the third thing,
is your politics,
you as a citizen,
how you can influence your local politicians
in how they manage the parks,
or how they help people to choose differently.
And then nationally,
you know,
to national estate or national level,
how you can work with organizations,
writing letters to members of parliament or representatives.
And being the voice for the bugs,
and you can be a voice,
if you join together,
you can be a powerful movement.
And in the book,
there’s loads of organizations you can join.
And international ones,
as well as local ones.
And joining together can be very powerful thing
to counter the might of some very powerful organizations,
corporations that want the status quo,
you know,
want to be able to continue to use chemicals
that we know are harmful,
or continue to drive production in a way which we know
is the wrong direction for protecting our soils
and protecting our invertebrates.
I’ll leave it there,
but those three things have a little plan
how you can be a citizen,
be a lifestyle,
change,
and what your place is.
Thank you.
It’s so wonderful and inspiring.
You know, we’re actually,
maybe I’ll pick this up
in our behind-the-scenes piece that will record
after the main podcast interview,
but we’re working on a resource for neighborhoods
and homeowners associations to…
Ah, brilliant.
…and rules to affect this kind of systemic change
at the local level.
And perhaps we can talk about that later in terms of something
we might collaborate around,
because the way you’re articulating this
and the work that you’ve been doing is so connected.
We’d love to collaborate around that.
That’ll be great.
I mean, what people can do in their gardens?
I mean, particularly, I know the UK best.
You know, there’s incredible resource there
to link up habitats.
And so, yeah, with the local parks and local spaces.
So there’s a really amazing refuge
that urban spaces can provide if we get it right.
Yeah, and I’ve got to ask,
you know, we’ve done episodes here at the Regenerative Farm
where I’m located with Nick D. Domenico,
and Mursuit Pulaski,
and also a neighboring flower farm
with Ollie Redsloth,
and his partner, Eric,
and my goodness,
the scenery in those efforts.
Yeah, and so beautiful.
And we talked about some of our favorite species.
And I’m curious,
for you where you’re located in the north of London
with your garden there,
what are some of your favorite species?
Yeah.
I do get asked this,
and I’ll find it so difficult.
I find it so difficult.
But I will say,
you mentioned my weevil that I’ve got on one shoulder,
which is a giraffe necked weevil from Madagascar.
On my other shoulder, when I’m 60,
I’m going to have a cockroach,
because I always say cockroaches.
I think they might be June bugs,
or Mayflies in America,
and different names.
They’ve got many names,
actually, the cockroach,
around the world.
But they’re incredibly beautiful.
They’ve got on the most insane antennae
with sort of feathered antennae,
particularly males,
bigger than the females.
And they bumble around,
and they’re big, big animals.
They’re just beautiful,
so I will get that.
But it’s not my favorite.
I don’t have a favorite,
but in my garden,
I get very, very, very excited
when I see hummingbird horn moths.
And I got one the other day,
and I was,
it’s partly because I’d left some weeds to grow,
which they like to lay their eggs on,
and I watched it laying eggs on my cleavers,
which is what the weeds were called,
and let them grow.
So I do let weeds grow,
and I don’t necessarily call them weeds,
they’re just, you know,
happy plants,
and they produce a lot of flowers,
some of them.
So it was feeding,
and laying eggs,
and I was just in heaven.
And I put that on my Twitter feed,
and my Instagram,
and it’s just like,
you can hear my excitement.
It was really,
because they’re so big and beautiful,
and they look like hummingbirds.
And they’re not that much smaller
than hummingbirds,
and they’ve got unbelievably fast wing beet.
And they’ve got incredible proboscis,
which can make them allow them to reach deep,
deep flower nectarine,
nectarines,
deep flowers.
So, and they’ve developed that,
as we’re saying,
over millennia,
to be able to do that purpose,
you know,
have that purpose in their relationship.
And we get loads of hoverflies,
which I love as well,
and they’re so brilliant.
And a lot of people,
and miss out on the sand,
hoverflies,
so often use hoverflies
as something about
talking about
re-bugging attitudes.
Because some people will say,
a hoverfly,
like a hornet mimic,
hoverfly,
which can be two centimeters long.
It looks big,
and it’s striped,
like a bureau,
a wasman,
people be frightened.
But if you know,
it’s just a big fat pollinator.
And it’s amazingly beautiful,
the way it flies.
So, I use that as, you know,
getting children,
don’t get the fear in children,
talk to them,
that’s a hoverfly.
And even if you see a wasp,
they’re not going to hurt you
if you don’t hurt them.
And, you know,
trying to re-bug attitude
through seeing things,
and taking a photograph,
and sharing it,
saying,
these are credible,
these ants,
they’re not going to do any harm,
let them be,
or if you can’t let them be,
shut them out,
but don’t use chemicals,
and so on.
I get a lot in my,
rather wild garden,
as you can imagine.
I love it.
Do you have,
are there particularly favorite
plants or herbs
that you plant in your garden?
I’ve got an awful lot of,
um, alkinets,
which I haven’t planted at all,
and any gardener will,
probably gassed with horror,
because it’s an incredibly
pervasive weed.
It produces very tiny blue flowers,
and a lot of,
um, plant matter,
which you can actually,
um, compost,
it’s a brilliant compost plant,
um, to make,
compost tea,
in, in permaculture,
and use that lot.
Um, but the,
all the animals love it.
The tiny, tiny flowers,
I think,
how on earth can that be,
a big hornet pop,
but they love it.
And so I do like that,
and I let it flower every year,
um,
but I,
all sorts of,
it’s salviers,
and, um,
I do have some roses,
and lilacs,
that come and go,
depending,
depending on the year,
or whether I’ve pruned them properly.
I’m not a great gardener, to be honest.
Um, but the, the key to gardening for invertebrates is diversity.
You know, wherever the question, the answer is diversity, and no chemicals.
And when you buy plants, try and avoid ones that have been growing
with chemicals, if you can ask questions of your garden centre, and avoid peat, as well, peat, in the UK and definitely across the globe. Peats are being taken up to provide fuel and to provide
medium for growing plants for horticulture and that is destroying one of the most biodiverse
and carbon rich habitats on the planet. The amount of carbon in a peat bog is extraordinary
and the amount of wonderful invertebrates and plants as well but we’ve got to avoid peats so if
you’re going to a garden centre say I want it peat free please and chemical free.
Yeah absolutely it’s so I guess heading in the direction of soil and some of the whole invertebrates
up the soil ecology. Tell us a bit about that and what’s going on there.
Yeah well I mean I did talk about earthworms quite a lot in the book. One of one of the things that
alarmed me particular I think it was one of your big magazines had a huge
to call it a episode of the magazine which was all about the impact of planet change on the
earthworms because earthworms it found in almost all habitats around the globe because they
and worms they provide such an important role in the soil not only not only by making a habitat
through it and creating spaces for water and air to penetrate which is absolutely vital to make
a good soil for plants to grow in and for other animals and but they also provide an incredibly
important environment for the microbes and the fungi and the spore spores of the fungi to they
actually they’re also they’re like truckers they’re like the big truckers in the soil environment
taking nutrients and taking spores and taking microbes from one place to another and inoculating
another place which may be as low on them because they’re sticky they’ve got sticky epidermis
and also in their stomachs as they ingest plant matter they you know defecate an incredibly rich
soil improver which is full of invertebrates full of sorry microbes and important things so
that those invertebrates like ones anemotodes are critical but there’s also a wonderful thing if
you ever get a chance to look online to look for images of springtails you’ll fall in love
you’ll never see them unless you have a really good camera but you can see them online because
they are beautiful they are so cute and they are a form of invertebrate that does a really
important plant matter of digesting process and in the soil everywhere springtails are everywhere
and they’re very important and they also fell in love with tardigrades which I think might be
called water bears or moss piglets which are great and they are important everywhere as well they’re
found everywhere and they’re almost indestructible they’ve found that they can be completely
desiccated for decades and come to come alive again and radiated and all sorts so tardigrades
or water bears are another favorite of mine but there’s so much in the soil and so when we
just heard the soil if the soil is already well looked after disturbing it with flying or tilling
isn’t a disaster but it does have an impact but where you’ve got soil that’s been completely
overworked you know chemicals poured on year in year out month in month out that has such a
bad impact you know those chemicals and the disturbance that the risers fear which is really
important you know my mycelium of the fungi on which is a critical part as are the invertebrates
can all be disrupted and the invertebrates can be harmed so you’re looking for systems of farming
which are already creating good soils and yeah so yeah soils above them but yeah people often
don’t think as they’re walking on soil what’s going on underneath but there is a whole citizen
readown there of invertebrates working with the fungi and everything else to keep us safe and
keep us fed and healthy I love it you know and Vicki talking about the water bears
hmm yeah I’ve got a got a cuddly one somewhere it’s gone missing but somebody knitted me one
and it was so lovely I heard they can survive in space they’ve yeah they they have taken them
up there and brought them down again and they they’re a pretty instructional and as such they’re
providing incredible research material you know their genes and how they do it and the chemicals
you know within the system as are many you know like the fungus well and invertebrates that can
withstand freezing you know there’s quite a few actually soft bodied invertebrates they find in
the Antarctic and Antarctic environments which can freeze during the frozen month and then
unfreeze the chemicals that they use and they they’re little bodied to do that extraordinary
yeah real brilliance in in the way they’ve been evolved over millennia you mentioned in in
the book bio mimicry which is a lot of folks are familiar with more people are learning about
and it reminds me of that because some of the sort of antifreeze yes and a lot in some of these
species we might be able to learn from it yeah actually and also bio mimicry in terms of
like some of the cuticles and the the makeup of the excess skeleton which covers all invertebrates
insects adult insects and they’re looking so much at how to recreate those incredibly robust
materials which you know we could create I don’t know other things that we need as we go forward
you know in which are also carbon based not you know fossil fuel bait you know in a good way
and clever yeah there’s there’s a beetle called the diabolical lion clad which is a big
big beetle and you can roll over it with a car and it won’t get destroyed because of the way
the layers have been made and you know the the whole chemical makeup and structures extraordinarily smart
and they’re learning how to do drones by looking at how flies fly you know and how termites
create their termite mouths that are incredibly sophisticated temperature and water control
and using the external climate to maintain the the temperature and moisture in in ways that
mean that they can create huge colonies and huge amounts of babies in the way that they do
which you know they can be destructive and in the UK we don’t have termites I know they can
be destructive force but some we’re the biggest destructive force in reality so we should be able
to share space with them if we can absolutely speaking of these large colonies you also if you talk
about super colonies and there’s mentioned in southern Europe there’s a super colony of ants stretching
some 3,700 miles yeah it’s amazing and I hope and the like and it’s you know and if they
meet each other even if the thousands of miles away if they meet one from you know that may have
been carried you know we we do a lot of species transfer through our trading systems and our
journeys you know traveling and the holidays and stuff so if you get an ant traveling to the other
part of the world if they happen to be from the same original species they’ll say hi you know how
are you like you know arsenal supporter will say hi to another arsenal supporter of the other side
of the world but if it’s a Manchester United supporter and if it’s you know there’s an ant from
a different species even though they look pretty much the same to us they’ll fight but they can
recognise each other so well because they have such brilliant communication tools honestly we think
we’re brilliant with the internet and all you know we telephones and all that you know they did it
well before us they they have so many tools to communicate especially in the the um social
classes like the wasp the ant there are spiders that are social as well um and bees and termites
and there’s so clever so many different ways of talking to each other and creating a work um
uh set up that they all know their role they all know what they’re for be it nursing the babies or
fighting off intruders or collecting food or being the queen yeah it’s but it’s all through
communication and genes and uh it’s so clever i i just in the respect i have for them since like
before i had it anyway but since doing the book and you know delving into the new research
of doubt there since i lost did deep research it was just astounding and you’re right the answer
amazing you know and termites too they if for created huge colonies over very vast areas all the
same family amazing yeah i love the analogy of the uh sports fans yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
folks who don’t some other Manchester United and don’t listen to the BBC sport updates uh
talking about football um not American football but soccer yeah and uh yeah that’s brilliant
it’s a fun way to think about that yes yes and they have to fight because they’ve got to
protect their you know their space you know it is in nature i you know air and you know this there
is a huge amount of collaboration but there is obviously conflict as well you know that’s that’s
how it is we’ve all seen the amazing safaris in Africa are on on their wonderful nature programs
and that you know the lion getting it’s it’s prey that happens but i think an awful lot going on in
nature is actually collaboration or you know leaving each other you know giving each other space but
it’s incredible the collaboration between invertebrates and plants since we already know about
pollination but there’s many more ways they collaborate and humans as well you know i talk about
in my book where humans using invertebrates like um i think it’s the weaver ants which um in
Asia they’ve learned over many hundreds of years to use the weaver ants to stop if it can create
huge colonies of weaver ants in their fruit plantations and the weaver ants stop the other
invertebrates and other species that would take the fruit and and uh cause uh economic harm
to the foreman so they look after the weaver ants in these huge colonies of beautiful
nests that the weaver ants create at just one example many many out there oh my gosh well
i want to ask you about water species but before we go there let me just remind our audience uh this
is the YonEarth community podcast i’m your host Aaron William Perry and today we’re visiting
with the author of rebugging the planet vicki herd and vicki i’m i’m so thrilled to to share that
this book is published by our friends and partners at Chelsea Green publishing and i want to give
them a shout out along with a few of our other partners and sponsors of our podcast series um by the
way you can get a 35 percent discount on this and any of the other Chelsea Green books audio books
etc going through our YonEarth dot org website linking on our partners and supporters page
if you’d like to and uh that we have uh in addition to Chelsea Green we have purium organic super
foods to thank they also are offering a special uh discount to our friends and network we’ve got
earth hero the sustainability home goods and uh yard care company waylay waters uh biodynamically
grown uh hemp infused aroma therapy soaking salts earth coast productions our uh technology
and video production partner uh soil works are biodynamic um soil additive blends and of course
are many ambassadors uh especially those of our ambassadors who have joined our monthly giving
program and if you haven’t yet joined our monthly giving program and you’d like to you can just
go to YonEarth dot org click on uh the donate or support button and set it up for whatever
amount you’d like if if you want to give it $33 or more per month as a thank you will send you a jar
of the waylay waters soaking salts to not only help support some of the biodynamic and regenerative
farms we’re collaborating with but also your own health and well being and of course I also want
to be sure to share that uh vikis work can be found at rebuggingtheplanet.org and on social
she’s at at viki herd that’s v i c k i h i r d on instagram twitter and now this is the first time
I’ve said this ever thread um so check her out there and uh before we got recording we also um
discuss viki nibug life dot org dot uk as a great resource now I want to be sure to emphasize
in the back of rebugging the planet not only are there a number of rewilding actions
that you can take listed out and describe but there’s also a whole bunch in the way of resources
and additional um places and organizations and people you can explore to learn even more about
all of this that we’re talking about and yeah viki such a joy to have this chat and so let’s we’ve
been talking about the invertebrates and the air the invertebrates and the soil let’s
let’s talk about the water for a while yeah yeah well i know it’s hard to um exaggerate the role
that the invertebrates have i mean it the interesting thing is there aren’t any insects by one
in the oceans in the in the properly living in the oceans and that was one of the things i
actually found out right in this book which is fantastic there’s something called the sea strider
which has very long legs as you can imagine and i think the name is used in a lot of games
you know gaming things online gaming so if you look up strider sea strider you might get to a
game before you get to the actual bug but they live in the ocean they feed on detritus and um
little fish and uh other it um they’re animals but in the oceans it’s mostly other invertebrates
not insects and that’s an interesting question why but people have to think they have the answers
but there’s a huge amount of vertebrates and the tiniest ones are so critical such as the
zoo plankton because there’s a zoo plankton everywhere in the in in the marine environment
and they have a relationship with the fight of plankton which is the tiny plants in the in the
marine and and these are so critical for the way in which the um sees work and the marine
environment works in terms of absorbing CO2 and turning its plant matter and the zoo plankton will
eat some of that plant matter and create nutrients for other plants and that very delicate and complex
system can be threatened by climate change as we know it’s heating the seas and there’s a real risk
if and and also fishing habits and uh wailing removing large amounts of the species within in that
complex environment can have a really destructive impact on those invertebrates that play a critical
role and also obviously a lot of invertebrates form the most of them form the beginning of the
food chain in the marine environment so if if you like fish you’ve got to like the invertebrates
or the invertebrates that make sure that the fight of plankton if they’re herbivorous fish
and so on and so on it’s a quite you know it’s unbelievably complex but all the way up to the
large whales you know they some of them actually directly eat the krill which is the
tiny prawns that some of them live on it seems incredible so the largest animals on the planet eat
as smallest but they rely on the krill which is tiny invertebrates so in the marine environment
unbelievably important but not many insects but in the in the freshwater habitat um you’ve got
so many insects which do a very critical process of turning the plant matter which often arrives
in the in the marine environment into more digestible smaller pieces for the microbes and
um uh digesting um uh fungi and microbes to do their work without it being broken down
and it won’t be easily accessible to those microbes and then that releases the nutrients again
for future plants to be grown um within that water habitat or in banks or in you know
that water is withdrawn for putting on um fields to grow our food um but they also do a lot of
cleaning they’re filtering a system so we used to rely very much on uh read beds and invertebrates
to do the filtration um of water coming out of you know our um water closets and our um sinks etc so
they were uh critical and little animals called rotifers which I talk about in the book
they’re called rotifers because they’ve got a little head of cilia which looks like a crown
and the cilia are used to to filter in um like a bit like you might think a jellyfish which is
also very important um marine environment uh invertebrates but those cilia are drawing the
little bits that we want to draw you know want to take out of the system so i mean it the water
environment you know you’ve got your molasks you you know your bivoules you’ve got your
invertebrate and it insects um larval forms if you like dragonflies or mayflies they live most
of their life in the river and they’re beautiful but they’re incredibly voracious carnivores they
will eat an awful lot of animals in that system um which is important part of the system because
you need to you need to have for instance you could say the mosquito larvae eaten by the dragonfly
larvae so there’s a wonderful web on in the in the freshwater habitat and if you’ve got a pond
you’ll have seen that and all the molasks like the snails water snails and slugs and if you don’t
like slugs in your garden create a habitat for the leopard slug because the leopard slug will eat
the other slugs anyway there’s again it’s a it’s a common thing and a lot of um church degree
in books some of the church degree in um organic gardening books for instance give loads of ideas
about how to to best create a garden which uses nature to control you know the the whole nutrient
the pests the disease brilliantly and and they do so but the you know the water habitat it
absolutely critical to be stopping polluting it in all the ways that we do all over abstracting it
um and that that’s very difficult and we’ve seen right now we’ve seen droughts and floods
in extreme situations which we need to really start to do something we need to stop climate change
you know or keep it within 1.5 degrees in order to stop it getting worse um and then manage the
transition to agroclogical farming and rewilding and nature-based solutions to hold the water
where it lands that’s critical you know upland of a town if you if you haven’t got the trees there
the water would just rush out and flood the town that’s very simplistic but it’s actually true
um so put the trees back and you could do trees with food as well with agroforestry um and you
can do farming well that will retain the the water as well by making sure you’ve got cover crops
during the winter months again that’s you know there’s a lot it’s tough to try in my book what
can do but it’s not necessarily for farmers because there’s a lot of farmers out there they
lot need detailed information but it’s interesting to know what farmers can do and why you should buy
from them if you can yeah absolutely but you thank you for that and and look I think for all of us
we’re all one way or another putting consumer demand signals into the global economy and you know
we think of the webworks of the ecological relationships and we very much have webworks in our
economic relationships as well absolutely you know you mentioned in the book that at least
$57 billion per year of food that we trade in the formal economy is completely dependent on
invertebrate pollinators and ironically so many of the very large companies and global corporations
that are doing so much of our food production and food processing continue to be the major
users of certain toxic chemicals and or are requiring farmers that supply them to utilize
certain toxic chemicals and I wanted to point out not not to shame and blame or or call out
necessarily any particular company and and I know that in virtually every major company right now
work is being done on the inside by people who understand that many of these practices and behaviors
can be done better and need to change and of course we see more and more farmers transitioning to
regenerative practices which is beautiful yeah I just want to share right because you you make
this express and I think it’s important we really understand this you say agricultural commodity
traders are now the most powerful companies in the industrial food chain six companies control most
of the global food trade and earned somewhere around three hundred and eighty billion dollars
and these are twenty eighteen numbers yes it changes Ukraine invasion differently yeah
for the world’s largest the privately owned company cargill we’re at a hundred and fifteen
billion at that time so you know just tell us from your perspective what what what is this yes
why do we need to know about this there’s so many problems with it um I mean it could be just
I could just boil it down to money and power um you know they they’ve taken so much power out of
the farmers hands and out of the citizens hands and out of although you think you’ve got a huge
cornucopia when you go into the shop it’s actually a lot of the same stuff just packaged up to make
you buy it um but they’ve taken power from the farmers consumers and the governance the you know
our governments hands um because they’re so they’re supernatural they’re international they don’t
necessarily do but any government tells them um and they take an awful lot of the wealth of the food
system um and I think if we don’t start to control them that’s a really big pot you know it won’t
this won’t work because they’re driving a demand globally and particularly in air as well which
haven’t had this um for highly processed foods for um very you know junk foods as you call
a high-foot fatty sugary salty foods that come inevitably from big monocultures heavily chemically
sprayed monocultures because farmers have to produce it very cheap raw materials for this junk
food to go to fill the supermarket shelves instead of the food ingredients which we use to just
have access to mostly you know I’m not against treats I’m not against ready meals it’s just the
volume of it the dominance of it is a big pot from and that’s what feeds Cargill and the others
pockets because they that’s what they trade in and they’re so powerful it’s deeply worrying and
we need to take that that power through what we buy and you know trying to purchase as I said
earlier fresh if you can or at least minimally processed and ideally go through a great trader like a
shop that you know buys from um local farmers um I’ll just you know just do a bit if you can um but
also it’s healthier for you if you don’t buy very highly processed foods um which are being
increased increasingly dominating across the globe um that’s what we want the UN and other
global institutions to address um and start so to really celebrate and protect and nurture
local food systems um wherever they are and those farmers that should be at the heart of that
and be able to produce diverse produce not huge cheap raw material monocultures
for these enormous companies you know this this is happening in South America it’s happening in
Asia but it’s you know it’s already been well established in Europe and North America and so we
you know we’ve pop model this approach we need to really unmodel it model a new approach and we
can do that absolutely yeah you know I um I’m so struck that throughout the food supply chains when
we’re looking at regenerative practices and really healthy and nutritious and what we might
call it slower food practices yeah um you know the margins are not that great
they don’t quite yeah for the giant corporations these highly processed foods have actually very fat
margins and interestingly as you mentioned they also are among the primary contributors to many of
the health and emotional and even mental health um epidemics we’re seeing worldwide as I wrote
absolutely YonEarth when we’re getting that that candy bar or that can of soda for a dollar or
two or a pound or two or a euro or or whatever a year or two um it’s doing two things it’s it’s
maximizing the flow of that dollar right back to the giant corporations and because of special
formulations in the the sugar the fat and the blending it’s causing us almost like an addiction
to want to buy the next one is absolutely it credibly addictive and that’s exactly how they’re
not you know them they know this the companies know this they and that’s what’s grown and grown
and grown it’s it’s playing on a physiological trick in our bodies which comes from when we need it
a bit of sugar um you know we’d find a hive you know wild honeybee hive and would be ecstatic but
you don’t get you know now we’ve got honeybee hives in our fridge effectively um in the form of
soda and uh heavily fatty sugary salty products it’s it’s it’s a it’s a disaster for the planet
and our health and I also think they’re investing heavily in non soil-based systems you know in
the UK there’s an awful lot of interest in first-call farms and hydroponics and I think they probably
have their place you know we’ll have to do some of that but to have a non soil food system entirely
feeding us worries me deeply because of the microbiota that’s in our in our stomachs and
and actually our whole body’s a full of other bugs you know we have a whole community in us
and to that’s partly from our food system and removing that it’s an untold unknown impact I think
yeah and we’re seeing a lot of research around um neuro biochemical performance cognitive
performance yes exactly yeah it’s all connected it’s all connected and it’s connected to the soil
and the bugs in the soil and the bugs stomachs in the soil I think yeah people don’t like to
think about that but it is true and it’s healthy it’s not unhealthy um yeah it’s amazing it’s
amazing you know I spoke with a colleague a number of years ago who had fled the big corporate
ag world and was doing work in the regenerative ag world more recently but he was connected to
one of the giant fast food companies laboratory where they concoct the blend of about 25 chemicals
for the french fries and I won’t name any names yeah yeah gold marches or whatever but uh
basically what they did was uh determine the blend of chemicals that would act on the bodies
neuro biochemistry in the very same way that heroin opioids um scary yeah yeah and advertising is
like that as well they the advertising is so and marketing and promotions so sophisticated we don’t
realize that we’re being manipulated you know even I you know I’m susceptible we’re all septum
we see adverts every time we step out the door or or turn the telephone or put the um a game on
for our kids the advert and promotion is is driving us to buy these things in a way we don’t really
realize it making us feel good you know if I buy that product makes it feel good I’m smarter I’m
healthier I’m muscular or I’m you know it’s brilliant absolutely brilliant if we could turn that
brilliance into something else to driving us to produce to actually rediscover cooking and eating
ourselves it would be it would be so great but then they won’t make their money from that I mean
it’s fair to say that as you said that the supermarket don’t make a huge amount of money in the UK
we did a piece of work um at the end of last year that showed just how tiny amount of money goes
to the farmers they’re less than one peat and far less than one pee for a for a loaf of bread
an 0.09 pennies which I can’t imagine the sense but it’s almost nothing and cheddar and carrots
and apples they got almost nothing the supermarket didn’t get that much either but they’re so large
that you know they can get a lot but there’s an awful lot in the middle which takes the wealth
so it’s not as simple as saying supermarket’s bad farmers need more you know it’s something
that we’ve got to get our governments to do something about have fairer supply chains where
farmers get the a decent reward for producing agroecologically and uh looking off their animals
if then all this kind of so it’s a complex thing which you can’t all do as consumers we can do
something but we really need to demand more of our governments absolutely absolutely let me let
me show this other passage from your book that’s 10 companies Nestle Papsico Coca-Cola Unilever
Denon General Mills Kellogg’s Mars Associated British Foods and Mondelez control almost every
large food and beverage brand in the world and then make as you mentioned if we’ve been discussing
they make some of the largest profit margins in the food chain and you also mentioned that
just 30 global supermarket chains control a third of the global retail food markets so yeah this
is extraordinary and look some of these companies um denon or Unilever are actually already doing some
work in the regenerative agriculture state fail receiving some movement and we need a lot more and so
yeah to your point the consumer demand and the pressure on policy are the I think the two levers
and I love your commentary about the advertising the the storytelling messaging the power here because
what what we’re anticipating is over the next few years we’re going to see a whole lot more
of really effective storytelling and messaging coming from the regenerative and stewardship
oriented businesses that’s great that’s great and ideally they will be able to tell a story which
will be about about the health of the soil and the health of them the wildlife including the
invertebrates but also the health of your body and in a way that really um drives it in the right
direction so drive consumers in the right direction without making them pay a fortune I mean one
of the one of the problems is you know the really good stuff costs more which is crazy it’s
it’s and they have to declare themselves whereas the bad stuff they don’t have to declare that
they’ve got this that and this chemicals you know in the production um they might have to do
the ingredients for this but they don’t talk about which near Nikos and I didn’t sector sides were
used in the production that you know whereas organic producer has to certify organic something
really unbalanced about that but the future hopefully that will shift and more and more people will
be able to afford really you know good regenerative agricultural production absolutely absolutely
well it’s it’s Vicki’s such a joy to have this opportunity to visit you and of course we’re
going to after wrapping up our main podcast episode we’re going to take a few minutes with our
behind the scenes chat for our ambassador network again if if audience you would like to join the
ambassador network please go to Yunderth.org and you’ll get that journey started with us there
and uh so Vicki before wrapping up here and and transitioning to that um I just want to thank you
of course for joining us and I’ll close it and uh give you the floor if there’s anything else
you’d like to share or say with our audience please the floor is yours. I I would I would say if
if if if you’re listening or watching if you can be an ambassador for the inverse words in
whatever you where you can that will be really great one of the things that often happens with
children they adore inverse words they’re fascinated by them but as they get a bit older they get
a fear and that fear usually comes from older people so try not be the person that gives them
that fear but gives them the fascination and maintains that fascination but also with your colleagues
with your family um in your community and your parish your churches talk about the importance of
the invertebrates if you can read about that in the book or on my website um their role in our
lives it’s so critical so be bug ambassadors if you can and and have a bug plan just three things
you can do over the next year and uh that will be really great but spreading the word is critical
yeah absolutely brilliant brilliant well thank you so much Vicki my pleasure
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