What Nature Teaches Us About Ourselves

If you are looking for some thoughtful conversation around how to better connect with nature and help heal the planet, attend HMI’s free Earth Day Conversation with Fred Provenza. Many people know about rangeland ecologist Fred Provenza from his critical work on helping livestock producers understand the intelligence of livestock and plants to improve the health of all members of this symbiotic community.

His book Nourishment published by Chelsea Green has brought these ideas to a larger audience who now better understands how good grazing management can help improve animal welfare and health, but also how that translates to human health and wellness.

With consummate skill Fred weaves these topics into a rich tapestry of acknowledging how through understanding nature’s relationships and wisdom we can better understand ourselves and our role in helping to improve life on Earth. The mitochondria that spreads throughout Fred’s writing is his vulnerability and his hope—a potent mix in these turbulent times.

Over the intervening years since Nourishment was published, Fred has expanded his thinking and will be sharing insights from his latest essay, “Cosmic Dreaming: Memories of a Moment on Earth.” In this essay Fred focuses on how our separateness from nature and community has negatively impacted the health of all of us individually and as a nation. He quotes Buckminster Fuller, “I live on earth at present, and I don't know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing—a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process—an integral function of the universe.”

This recognition of our connection to nature as the basis of human health and thriving is integral to the Holistic Management® Framework where we take into account the health of the 4 ecosystem processes in all our decision-making to develop symbiotic relationships that can improve the triple bottom line health of planet, people, and profit.

Healthy Community = Healthy Lives

It is through deep understanding and caring that we can develop such symbiotic relationships. Fred argues that it is imperative that we take the time to do because “studies of people in 26 countries show that strong family ties, and the presence of older adults in the lives of adolescents, is associated with nearly a 50 percent greater likelihood of flourishing.” The same is true with livestock who also ideally live in extended families where they teach their young which plants to eat and in which quantities to be healthy.

But as Fred also notes, only 4% of the beef calves in this country get to actually experience that healthy lifestyle because the majority of those calves are quickly sent to feedlots and fed unnatural and unhealthy diets of grains and additives to quickly put on weight for maximum profit for the feedlot operators or shareholders in those companies. This is not a regenerative agriculture model that supports the health of animals or communities.

Not only does this diet rob the animals of their health, but also the health of the humans that eat that meat. Fred writes, “Phytochemically rich diets bolster nutrition and health and protect livestock from diseases through antimicrobial, antiparasitic, anti-inflammatory, and immune-boosting properties. Humans benefit as the phytochemical richness of meat and dairy promote our health by reducing oxidative stress and inflammation and strengthening our immune system.”

Many Holistic Management producers have come to learn about Holistic Management and Holistic Planned Grazing because they want to raise healthy food for themselves and their community. They have experienced the health crises caused by unhealthy food and habits and have made a commitment to health to supporting their natural and human communities. They understand the mutual interdependence we share with the natural community, that we are a part of the natural community and must be better partners to survive and thrive. There is a sacredness and a purpose to these relationships.

And, those relationships and decisions are transformative. “Growing, hunting, gathering and eating plants and animals is the experience of endless transformation,” writes Fred. “As I eat, energy and matter in someone becomes this entity I call ‘me’—which will, in the flicker of a cosmic eye, return to earth to become plants that nourish animals. In pondering this mystery, we may with gratitude come to realize that all life is sacred.”

While we all crave certainty, Fred encourages us to embrace the mystery of learning from nature and our community each day. “When we embrace uncertainty, mystery, and wonder, we are at our most powerful to discover and create endless opportunities to address the issues of the day,” he writes.

If you are ready for a conversation about community and connection, plants and animals, form and function, join Fred and HMI at this free webinar and be prepared to have your mind and heart expanded.

Deepen your journey of co-creating healthy land, healthy food, healthy lives today and register for this free webinar.