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The Sustainable Hour no. 595 | Transcript | Podcast notes
The health of our bodies begins with the health of the soil beneath our feet.
This week on The Sustainable Hour, veterinarian, nutrition researcher and regenerative agriculture advocate Gundula Rhoades joins us for a fascinating conversation that connects farming, food, health, climate and community in ways many people have never considered before.
Gundi’s journey began with a personal family experience when her mother was diagnosed with cancer. It continued through decades of veterinary practice, managing an Angus cattle property in northern New South Wales, studying soil science, animal nutrition and human nutrition, and ultimately writing her book The Food Solution.
Along the way, she came to a simple but profound conclusion: how we farm matters.
It matters for the health of our soils. It matters for biodiversity and ecosystems. It matters for climate stability. It matters for local economies. And it matters for our physical and mental health.
Gundi explains how the microscopic life in healthy soils helps make nutrients available to plants, animals and ultimately humans. She argues that modern chemical agriculture has disrupted many of these natural relationships, with consequences that reach far beyond the farm gate.
The conversation explores regenerative agriculture, organic farming, gut microbiomes, nutrition, mental health, local food systems and the importance of supporting farmers who work with nature rather than against it.
The discussion also touches on PFAS contamination. Danish organic farmer Jesper Andersen from Birkemosegård shares his experience after discovering PFAS pollution on his property and in his livestock. His story highlights how widespread these chemicals have become and why growing numbers of people are calling for stronger action to prevent further contamination.
One of the themes running through the entire conversation is hope. Despite the scale of the challenges, Gundi believes solutions are available right now:
• Support local farmers
• Buy food grown with care for the soil.
• Grow some of your own food if you can.
• Rebuild our relationship with nature.
As she puts it, “Be natural. Eat natural food. Slow down. Trust nature. She’s got it.”
→ You can listen to Gundi’s podcast The Regenerative Vet
→ Gundi’s book, ‘The Food Solution’, is available on goodreads.com
. . .
Meanwhile, Colin Mockett OAM reports on encouraging climate developments from Europe, the United Kingdom and China, where governments are strengthening climate targets and accelerating efforts to reduce emissions. He also highlights a surprising list of nations that are already carbon negative and reminds us how poorly Australia continues to perform on carbon emissions per person.
→ You can read the full transcript of Colin Mockett’s Global Outlook bulletin below.
The programme opens with a reflection from Mik Aidt on belonging, connection and what our relationships with animals – in this case his own dog Joey – can teach us about our relationship with the living world around us.
. . .
Towards the end of the program, we return to a question that affects every one of us.
Many people have been led to believe that if we simply buy organic food we can protect ourselves and our families from harmful chemicals. Organic food remains an important step in the right direction. Yet PFAS chemicals and pesticide residues are now found across the globe, carried through water, air, soils and food chains. These contaminants have become so widespread that individual consumer choices alone cannot solve the problem.
Ultimately, protecting public health requires action at a societal level. Governments have a responsibility to phase out and ban persistent toxic chemicals that accumulate in our bodies and ecosystems. The challenge is larger than any one household. It is a question of protecting the foundations of life itself.
SONG
We end the Hour with our song ‘Taste for Zero Waste’. More songs from The Sustainable Hour here.
“It’s a way of trying to share my knowledge, and to give hope to other people. And, do I lose hope? Often! And then I pick myself up again and say: No, this is too important, you know, because the solutions to our global problems are just here.”
~ Gundi Rhoades, veterinarian, author, and a believer in regenerative farming and the importance of looking after our soils
→ Subscribe to The Sustainable Hour podcast via Apple Podcasts or Spotify
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We at The Sustainable Hour would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we are broadcasting, the Wadawurrung People. We pay our respects to their elders – past, present, and emerging, and extend that respect to all First Nations people.
The traditional custodians lived in harmony with the land for millennia, nurturing it and thriving in often harsh conditions. Their connection to the land was deeply spiritual and sustainable. This land was invaded and stolen from them. It was never ceded. Today, it is increasingly clear that if we are to survive the climate emergency we face, we must learn from their land management practices and cultural wisdom.
True climate justice cannot be achieved until Australia’s First Nations people receive the justice they deserve. When we speak about the future, we must include respect for those yet to be born, the generations to come. As the old saying reminds us: “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.” It is deeply unfair that decisions to ignore the climate emergency are being made by those who won’t live to face the worst impacts, leaving future generations to bear the burden of their inaction.
“The Indigenous worldview has been marginalised for generations because it was seen as antiquated and unscientific and its ethics of respect for Mother Earth were in conflict with the industrial worldview. But now, in this time of climate change and massive loss of biodiversity, we understand that the Indigenous worldview is neither unscientific nor antiquated, but is, in fact, a source of wisdom that we urgently need.”
~ Robin Wall Kimmerer, weallcanada.org
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→ The Guardian – 2 June 2026:
It has the highest levels of toxic Pfas in drinking water in Scotland. But how did this remote island become awash with forever chemicals?
“Scientists believe they may now have found the cause of Fair Isle’s pollution – and warn that it should be ringing alarm bells in other coastal areas.”
→ Earthday.org – 15 May 2026:
How soil and solar can pay farmers back
“Explore how regenerative agriculture and solar power can help farmers cut costs, diversify income, increase yields, and give back to the planet in the process.”
→ Earthday.org – 22 May 2026:
The global debate over glyphosate
“Glyphosate has also become one of the world’s most debated farm chemicals because of concerns about how its use affects soil, water, and people. At the center of the debate is a difficult food-system question: can the world reduce its reliance on chemicals like glyphosate while still growing enough food for a rising population?”
→ Earthday.org newsletter on Linkedin
→ Reuters – 16 November 2023:
EU to renew herbicide glyphosate approval for 10 years
The European Union will extend glyphosate’s authorisation for 10 years, even though its member states failed to agree over the active ingredient in Bayer AG’s Roundup weedkiller. Glyphosate has proved divisive since the World Health Organization’s cancer research agency concluded in 2015 that it was probably carcinogenic to humans.
Babies, plastic pouches and microplastics:
What parents should know about Nestlé and Danone’s baby food
By Greenpeace
From toys to bottles, blankets to clothing, babies are surrounded by plastic. No human born today can fully avoid it, and yet our children may be more vulnerable to its possible impacts. When I made my way into the baby food aisle as a new parent, I was shocked that the image in my head of mini glass bottles and boxes of baby cereal lining shelves had been replaced with rows of plastic pouches. The plastic campaigner in me saw one thing – a mouth full of microplastics.
Every day, millions of babies around the world happily snack on pureed food packaged in “squeeze and suck” plastic pouches. These colourful and convenient meals-on-the-go dominate the baby food aisle of supermarkets worldwide, and have become a staple for many families. But growing concerns about our daily exposure to plastic and harmful chemicals raise a big question for the global consumer goods companies driving the baby food pouch trend. Could Nestlé and Danone be exposing babies to microplastics and harmful chemicals? Brace yourself, parents: what we reveal in our latest report…sucks.
→ Read more
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TRANSCRIPT
of The Sustainable Hour no. 595
António Guterres, UN Secretary-General: (00:00)
Cooperation over chaos. We are all in this together.
Jingle: (00:06)
The Sustainable Hour. For a green, clean, sustainable Geelong: The Sustainable Hour.
Tony Gleeson: (00:27)
Welcome to The Sustainable Hour. We’d like to acknowledge that we’re broadcasting from the land of the Wadawurrung people. We pay tribute to their elders – past, present, and those that earn that great honour in the future. We’re broadcasting from stolen land, land that was never ceded. Always was and always will be First Nations land. While they were living the ways that they have for millennia, they developed an ancient wisdom, a wisdom that’s based on nurturing both their land and their communities. And in there, in that wisdom, there is so much for us to use as we face up to the climate crisis.
Mik Aidt: (01:24)
If you have a dog, I bet there’s been a moment where you and your dog looked into each other’s eyes and felt that sense of connection. That feeling, the deep feeling that you understand one another. That there is this deep feeling of love and respect. And it’s not something that needs to be spoken aloud, it’s simply something you feel.
There’s a sense of security being expressed without words. And in fact there’s something we can learn from that. If you’ve experienced having a dog or the cat, then you know that it’s deeply rooted within us that a large part of what life is about is our relationships. Knowing that we can rely on one another, we trust one another. And so there are the you know, the familiar rituals.
If you are Joey, which is the [name of the] dog in my home, those rituals involve for instance going for a walk in the park, throwing a few balls, stopping by the rubbish bin because we’ve picked up some poo and also some plastic litter, things like that. And those regular rituals give life meaning. It feels good when we’ve done what we’re meant to do. There’s a deeper feeling underneath which is all warm and loving. That feeling of belonging, of friendship, safety. I think there’s probably many dog owners out there and cat owners and pet owners who relate to what I’m talking about here.
And my point here really is that exactly the same thing applies to what we call nature out there. The life that surrounds us. Because nature really is just another word for all the life that surrounds us. There is a deep underlying love there. And as soon as we begin to sense it and be conscious about it, hearing it in the bird song, or feeling it, even in the way the plants emerge and grow, expressing the power of life itself, designed to be part of all these greater cycles, the familiar rituals, the carbon dioxide being breathed out, taken up again by the plants, breathed out by us and our dogs, all these different processes that create balance on this planet.
And maybe it sounds strange, but I genuinely experienced that when you zoom out from that love you feel for your dog or your cat or your pet in your home and you extend that feeling to all the other living things, all the life happening outdoor in nature, in the garden, in the park, in the forest, in the ocean, wherever it may be, it’s all connected. It’s all part of the same story of connectedness, of trust, of how we need one another, and ultimately that we are in love with one another, in love with life on planet Earth. This little tiny blue dot in space where we live, suspended in a vast darkness.
And firmly grounded in that feeling that life itself is the foundation of our entire human existence. And at the same time, the reason that we’re here, of course, it really doesn’t need to be any more complicated than that. That’s what it’s all about. It’s why we’re here. We’re here in service to life on planet Earth. Right, Joey?
And speaking of that life on planet Earth, let’s hear what’s been happening around the world. Colin Mockett OAM is ready with our news bulletin. Colin, we are all ears!
COLIN MOCKETT’S GLOBAL OUTLOOK (05.26)
Thank you, Mik. After a Danish doggy poem, I feel quite conventional here, even though I’m starting from a very odd, you might think, occasion. Because my roundup this week begins in Boston, Massachusetts, where the state capital, Boston, has been taken over by seven thousand Scottish football fans.
And they may just be heralding the end of the Trump political era, according to some American political commentators. Here’s their logic. Those seven thousand fans, calling themselves the Tartan Army, arrived in style. They reportedly drank the plane dry of beer on their way over.
And then they hired 20 school buses to be used during their stay to get them around Massachusetts. In Boston they’ve taken over the city centre with a charm offensive like no other. They’ve bought the Glasgow habit of placing traffic cones on the heads of pompous statues. And most of them aren’t staying at hotels but in Airbnbs in the communities. They all wear kilts.
They’ve got some 50 pipers amongst them who lead them marching through the streets, singing their football songs and chanting. Boston’s publicans are absolutely delighted because they’re filling the pubs around the clock, singing and dancing, and again it’s all being reported and resonating around America, the takeover of Boston by Scots.
Boston again reportedly had to bring in shipments of beer from Canada to cope with their thirst. And if they’re approached by the police for anything, even when they’re found putting coning statues, they simply sing songs to the police and then give Scottish fan shirts to wear over their uniforms and the police put them on.
Their accents are charming everybody, and understandably they’re dominating the news media in America, both the mainstream and social media, which love their chants and their good humour, which underlies everything they do. And several of their chants are anti-Trump. But they’re in very irreverently funny too. So they’re succeeding where lots of late night
Comedians have failed in America in getting Americans to laugh at their president. One of their favourite chants, which has been repeated over and over again in the media, goes, He’s orange, he’s bald, he prefers them eight years old. Donald Trump! Donald Trump! Then it’s repeated again and again and again.
And when it’s repeated and picked up by a stadium of 60,000 people and they’re all singing the same thing, it goes worldwide publicity. Now, the hard logic of the thing is that Scotland did win its first match against Haiti and they play Morocco next Saturday, and such is the support that they’re getting from Americans, they may well progress further in the competition.
And who knows, this is sort of taking the thing further. There’s a possibility that in two and a half years we may be reporting that the Trump era’s demise was started by a tartan army of drunken Scots in Boston in 2026. That’s the effect that they’re having at the moment in America, where it was once MAGA crazy. They’re now tartan crazy, and if they carry on this way, they’ll carry on, yeah. But now to other news. There seems to be something in the air at the moment because three significant groups are looking to strengthen their climate targets. Maybe it’s because we’re getting closer to the COP.
But let’s start with Europe, where this week the European Parliament voted to lift its climate target of reducing network greenhouse gas emissions by ninety per cent compared to 1990-levels. To set that new target they needed to amend the EU climate laws. And this vote to amend the laws was won by 413 votes to 226 with 12 absence. So they almost achieved a two to one majority. And that shows where where the issue is seen in Europe.
Then in the UK, which no longer considers itself part of Europe, the UK proposed its seventh carbon budget this week, and that’s an 87 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2038 to 2042. That’s measured against 1990-levels. The standout figure on this paper was that the government has valued peatland restoration and woodland creation.
At around about £50 billion. That’s £50 billion in benefits by 2050. They’re re-evaluating the value of their land and why they’re working so hard to save it. But then also this week in China, the nation is already exporting climate-saving measures around the world, mostly by the number of solar panels and EVs that they’re selling us.
But behind this China is instigating currently its 15th five year plan, which is a huge document that covers everything from housing and education to manufacturing and defence strategies, all with the aim of and I’m quoting, ‘making major new progress in building a beautiful China’.
In the area of climate change, the plan didn’t announce any new targets, but instead pledged to peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. Now inside those figures, it said that China would strive to beat both of those target deadlines with the aim of quoting again.
“Guaranteeing access to clean air, uncontaminated soil, and safe water for all of its one point four billion people”. So they’re saying we’re not changing our targets, instead we’re working on reaching them faster. And it was very much for internal consumption because they’re saying that it’s all for you we’re doing this.
And finally, we tend to think that global leaders in climate action are Scandinavians because Denmark, Sweden and Finland are always predominant. Sweden’s recognised as the closest to net zero, aiming for a full climate neutrality by 2045. But figures released this week show that eight nations led by Bhutan and Suriname are already carbon negative.
That’s because their forests absorb more greenhouse gases than their small economies emit, which is a status also achieved by Guyana and Gabon. The World Economic Forum, which rates the nations according to their carbon emissions, also listed the small volcanic island of Comoros and then Madagascar, then Niue in the South Pacific and in South America, Panama.
To make up the eight nations which are carbon neutral at the moment. Panama has a population of four and a half million people and around 65 per cent of its land mass is covered with rainforests. That means it didn’t take a big effort to achieve net zero. But still the Panamanian government plans to reforest 50,000 hectares of land by 2050, enhancing its status as a carbon sink. And that shows exactly the correct attitude needed from nations if we’re going to negate the threat of global warming.
Incidentally, to put it into perspective if you like, of the 196 UN nations, Australia rates at 182 on that scale, making us 14th from bottom globally for our carbon emissions. But Australia’s ranking drops considerably on a per capita base, where we achieve bottom place with emissions regularly exceeding 14 tonnes of CO2 per head of people living in Australia annually.
And that sobering figure ends my roundup for the week. I just hope that they’re listening to it in Canberra.
. . .
Jingle: (15:19)
Listen to our Sustainable Hour – for the future.
Tony: (15:26)
Our guest today is Gundula Rhoades, a veterinarian with a special interest in animal and human nutrition. That extends to how we actually farm, and the negative or positive impacts about how we go about that. She has worked as a vet for 35 years. She’s also studied soil science with a pioneer in that field, doctor – the late Dr Elaine Ingham, who’s the founder of “Soil Food Web”. She’s also written a book called ‘The Food Solution’ and runs The Regenerative Vet Podcast. So you certainly keep yourself busy, Gundi?
Gundi Rhoades: (16:13)
Yes, well I can’t help myself! I’ve done a bit. Which is both a blessing and a curse, you know.
Tony:
I think we’re all nodding to that. Okay, so tell us your story and the influence that it has been on your life. Obviously Dr Ingham has been one. But yeah, it’s not the path that a vet would usually take, the one that you’re going down?
Gundi: (16:45)
Yes, and yet we all should. So, my story, along those lines, probably starts… I grew up in a big city, but always had the love for nature. So I became a veterinarian. Studied the science of veterinary medicine, and while I was at university, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. So she was probably the investigator who started to ask: why? I was 20 years old. I had no idea about food or nutrition. I think nowadays 20-year-old people would have much more an idea about diet than we would have like 40 years ago. But my mum started, she is a teacher, so relatively inquisitive, she started asking ‘Why did I get cancer?’
So she started to follow whole food philosophy. So this is then… my inquisition into food started 40 years ago. But as a town person, and as somebody that is young, know, mother put some food on the table, that’s what you eat, you don’t even ever think about it, you know.
And then the 40 year journey as a jack of all trades and a master of none, sort of started… I have been working constantly as a vet for 35 years, and then my life took me to Australia. So I was from Germany, moved to England, learned the ropes, met this Australian guy from a cattle property, and we got married and I moved over to Inverell and I’m still there until this moment in time.
And so, his family had an Angus cattle breeding operation. And how life had it, my father-in-law who was running the whole farm, died relatively early on, after I arrived on the scene, and by then I had – you know, like – I was pregnant with my second child. And suddenly the boss of the whole enterprise was gone, throwing my then husband and myself into that role of running the farm.
And of course I had not much of an idea, but then, you know, run a few years ahead, you know, like, and I had my own clinic on the farm. The marriage eventually fell apart and I ended up with this acreage, you know, like, relatively large property with Angus cows, and a vet clinic, and eventually got a few kids – to run by myself, and I never ever pretend that I did a good job. You know, like, I had no time, had no money, I didn’t have the fencing skills, or the skills to repair a four-wheeler motorbike. You know, I would nearly start crying when the lawn mower broke down.
However, I was a veterinarian. I was doing cattle work and horse work and sheep work and dogs and cats and, you know, eyes and ears and skin, and internal medicine, and ruminant nutrition, and dabbling with artificial insemination in horses, dentistry, horse dentistry, dog dentistry, you know so, we as vets in the country, do, you know, like, we become… I wouldn’t say ‘Jack of all Trades’, we are actually masters of a lot, you know, while you can’t really… I would not call myself a master in anything.
But you get this sort-of weird broad picture of how bodies work, you know, and in different animals, you know, from… literally from a bird over a snake to a ruminant and a dog and a cat. And humans in the middle of that.
So, life happened … and I was on this farm, trying to run it. All my bull calves were gone. I didn’t have any bulls to sell anymore. Just fair enough. So I thought: what else am I gonna do with it?
And I thought well I’ve always been on the green side of, you know, very fond of nature and the environment. That is also a European thing, you know, where in Europe, it’s especially in non-England Europe – England has caught up a bit, you know, but like 30 years ago, 20 years ago, you know, like, especially Germany or Scandinavia, you know, was much more environmentally aware than let’s say, you know, Australia was.
So I decided to convert the farm to organic – a little bit by, you know, not having any money to put fertiliser out anyway. The last check I think I wrote for the farm was for super phosphate before I knew how soil works. And $70,000 worth of phosphate poured onto the property. So that was all gone and I had no money to do it with. So I thought: Well, let’s do organic.
For the five years. And, you know, so practically, leave. You know, like, but. Leave a lot to be desired for. I learned about soil and about different grasses and how the whole ecosystem of grasslands work.
Simultaneously, I’m in this little country town of 15,000 people and there’s not much, if you know in Inverell, there’s not much around… The next slightly larger city is 90 minutes away.
So we are literally quite isolated. As a scientific nerd, observer, I observed that the health of the human population was going downhill, which sort-of linked back to my critical view about nutrition since my mother had cancer when I was 20.
Suddenly the people who came into my room in the vet clinic, they all had their own story. And people in the vet, because they don’t see the links, suddenly you know the people talking in the vet clinic talk because they don’t feel as threatened as they would in the doctor’s surgery. So you get it all you know, like they see a doctor, the stories, you know, of the cancer that the husband has, the heart attacks, the Alzheimer mother, you know, the father with Parkinson’s and then the children with behavioural disorders like autism, you know, our vintage, you know, young.
So I really started to question what was going on.
Like we when we were young, we had one child in our class with asthma and suddenly I’m signing everywhere my sons or my daughter wants to go on school excursions. I have to sign off, you know, that they don’t need the EpiPen, you know, that they’re not allergic. And it’s just like, what is happening here? So it’s a shifting baseline syndrome where now nearly all the young people think it is normal to asthma, depression, anxiety and endometriosis.
So the baseline has shifted, but some that we have autistic children, know, and somebody that has lived a few decades, you think, no, no, no, this is wrong. We must acknowledge when it’s wrong. I went on to a journey. Then we are hitting the drought in 2018 and 19 and I still had my farm and everything was dying around me. The climate discussion came into the whole thing as well. What have we done to the climate? Having been very aware of how climate is changing and impacting the farmers in my district
So. How many had sunspots, know, it’s just a normal natural cycle and I thought ‘mmm, No!’
I don’t know. I think this is human behaviour induced change and I would wake up in the morning, see like we all went through these bushfires, you know, in 2018 and 2019 and very early 2020 and thinking, have we humans really done this?
You know, so let’s assume we have because we are generally not treating the planet kindly, you know, with our behaviour. So let’s assume that we are guilty.
So then what could we do about that? And then the whole regenerative agriculture, of course, you know, having started with organic farming and then learning about regenerative agriculture, I started to, you know, to talk about soil and soil as carbon sponge. Also Walter Jehne came into the equation. I don’t know if you’ve heard of him. He’s a Canberra based soil scientist. He is all about about water, so I’m now in regenerative earth, you know in the charity sort of, I’m a part of that you know, but he and Philly are the main centres you know of this organisation, so from him I learned about the water cycle soil level. And what that has to do with society.
So I started to write a book. While I was writing the book… – it was called ‘The Food Solution’ – I started to question about the soil and then what happens with modern farming. I probably started in … maybe 2016-2017, you know, to those pesticides that we then discovered did a lot of stuff in all of these different aspects came together. Yeah. So really dive into those pests we are using, things started to click in my brain. the declining mental health, declining physical health, the declining environmental health. I examined and learned what it meant for the soil. You know, no micro-fungal organisms. Compacted soils.
Then, you know, the truth about glyphosate came out, you know, like what does this actually do? Since I published my book, Stephanie Seneff had her book, ‘Our Toxic Legacy’, which just confirmed everything, you know, that I was thinking. And then I started to examine, it’s for the soil. What then does it mean for the food that we’re producing? And what does it mean for the climate?
And then it all came together. And we might not even put the economy in there, which is so global now, but we know that the answer to many problems is actually local. It all got me back to it really matters how we farm for the environment, for our health, for the economy. For the survival of of ecosystems, It really matters how we farm.
Colin: (27:09)
That’s wonderful, Gundi. Look, but you can’t leave it there. You’ve got to take us right the way through before we start discussing the different things that you came out with and the different solutions that you found. Have you still got the farm? How did you change it? And did it work? Or you know, what happened to you personally before we start talking about the after effects?
Gundi: (27:37)
To me personally, I ran out of money and energy in 2021. As I had three children to feed and to look after and a vet clinic with 12 employees, you know, I burned out – and ended up in burnout. So that day being in a one woman show, I decided I couldn’t do it all and it broke my heart. You know, like, I could cry when I think about it that I had to sell the farm, but I could not keep it. You know, so I was heading towards, I decided I… It really noted and I, you know, I would concentrate my efforts onto educating people and getting my, you know, concentrating on my vet work, but also concentrating on nutrition and that the acres that I had left after all of these years, know, a thousand acres and debt. You know, it was too much for me. So I decided to, to live, you know, which was super, super painful, but that’s what I did.
Colin: (28:46)
Tell me, did the new owners carry on with your ideas or did they go back to more conventional farming?
Gundi: (28:52)
Conventional farming. I went on to the place one week later to pregnancy test some cows and I saw the sprays go around and I literally screamed. So the Roundup – and I apologise to the land. So I ‘m not in the position to say “I will protect you any longer.”
It’s a huge discussion about how we farm you know. I can’t say look at what I did you know like I did this much better than all of you not at all, you know I just want to be really humble about this, you know like farming is very hard and the profit margins are low. But I have a lot of contacts in the regenerative agriculture field and I know a lot of the people and so I was dabbling it you know like I got the rotation grazing started.
So great things have started, but no, personally, me, failure. I did not do a good job on the farm. I honestly didn’t have the money, the power to really continue that.
So I can only offer my knowledge that I learned from being a vet and being a medical person and having had enough insight into farming that I feel nearly unqualified to talk about it. But I think, I… And I looked at it, you know, like have I actually got the right to advise anybody on this? And I came to the conclusion that there’s not many people that know about medicine and the body and the gut microbiome and the neurotransmitters intimately and also have an idea of how farming actually happens and the consequences that you’ve been very much part of a lonely path probably.
Tony:
Once you have the knowledge about how that all interacts comes a responsibility to have discussions around that. What’s that been like for you?
Gundi:
I’m drawn between… you know, like, I think I know why thoughts and that I think the public know about and then it seems to be in some way say, hey, it’s all your fault. Do you know what I mean? some really worth facts You know, so I always like to say, I don’t want to offend anybody and the farmers really got hoodwinked into the they do now. know, of farming after the second world war, you know, when we had all these pesticides hanging around from the war machinery, the organophosphates against insects, know, the glyphosate was because of And then we thought, look, you know, this is a really good idea, you know, and we don’t have the shikimate pathway so we can drink it, you know, it’s fine for us.
So farming got perverted into thinking that this is you know, that’s what they can do. And for a while it worked. But then in America, you know, when you look at all the big area of the Midwest, you know, where through the bison, there was this super fertile land created and within years of starting chemical agriculture, they had famines, you know, and they can’t grow anything anymore on the whole soil. A similar thing happened here in Australia as well.
I feel… connecting links between medicine and farming and it needs to be heard and it has to be said because research I found. Medicine is about treating symptoms. Nobody is looking where the breakdown of this was. Why? Why do we have an avalanche of all these diseases
I, you know, in my veterinary medicine as well, am aware of these diseases, you know, and I think canola is at the centre of this and how we grow it. It’s not, you know, like we are cottoning on to that there is a link between high sugar or high starch diets and between maybe canola oil and diseases, but this is only the tip of the iceberg. It really goes more down. The broccoli is not a broccoli anymore. Why? What actually happened? And this is where it’s fascinating what I found out there.
Colin:
Just as the current war between America and Iran has caused a surge in people buying electric vehicles, I understand it’s also caused a surge in farmers moving away from artificial phosphates and other chemicals on the farms. And earlier this week there was a Rachel Ward Australian Story about how she changed her Tasmanian farm completely along the lines that you’re talking about. But the difference is, she completed it, and it it helped her her mental stability as well. But that’s where my next question is for you: Basically, you’re now a very changed person. You’re a mother who’s an author, and a vet. And you’re no longer running a property, a farm property. But how has your research on the farm altered the way that you live your life now?
Gundi: (34:38)
Well, I then studied animal nutrition and human nutrition to be more qualified to talk about that. I mean my own whole life, how I nourish myself, what I eat, the food I buy… That’s been for a long time, that I try to get local food, organic food, and live what I preach there.
So now I have… The way I do medicine is different because now I look for true etiology rather than prescribing a tablet or an injection. I’m trying to give my knowledge to other people.
You know, like, why does a dog have an ear infection? Why did a person get psoriasis?
I guess I treat myself that way, you know, when I have got knee pain, I know, you know, like, I’ve eaten too much of that, you know. And I’ve started to have a nutrition consultation business where I now consult to people. Because what I found is very different from what doctors are even allowed to say. You know, what I am saying they would actually lose their license if they do.
So it’s a constant way of trying to educate to share my knowledge and when I find something else… to share, and to give hope to other people. And, do I lose hope? Often! And then I pick myself up again and say, no, this is too important, you know, because the solutions to our global problems are just here.
Mik: (36:02)
Gundi, I would like to introduce you to a Danish farmer who I met just a couple of months ago, and just briefly hear his story out, and then let’s discuss a little bit in-depth, because I know you have a lot of experience in this field, the topic of PFAS.
Jesper Andersen: (36:37)
PFAS means man-made combination of more than 2,000 different connections of chemicals, and nature cannot break them down. So they end up in the nature, in our bodies and in the end they will be a cause of sicknesses and other challenges in our health.
I got to know about it a few years ago when the Danish state wanted to make research on my property because I’m a coastal farmer and I have grassland along the coast that my cattle graze. And I thought there was no harm, everything would be fine, but no. The result was that the land was quite polluted, and my animals were full of PFAS. So they were put in quarantine for 13 months, and I was totally destroyed with that knowledge.
I’ve been living all my life with organic production. So knowing that actually I had animals polluted, and that I – without knowing it – had been selling meat with a pollution that was really destroying my mind.
So I started to work with these things and I have not been to university or anything, so I have another way of getting into things. So I found out, where did the pollution come from and how was the wind, how was the coast, and I made a lot of research and a lot of tests with my animals and with the soil, and that gave me peace in my mind, because I could see it was only certain areas that were polluted, and that I could keep on my production with a good feeling.
And then I called in the minister to show him what I had been doing. And he was amazed, and he took it back to the parliament. And I hoped that they would do something immediately, but the world is challenged at the moment. So it was not the first priority, but they gave some millions to further research. And of course that’s a step in the right direction. And I hope that very soon they will have a more serious opinion about these things, because it’s an ongoing pollution, and nobody is really aware how bad it is.
In Europe and in many countries we have put our investments, get our products from China and India and other Asian countries that are polluting heavily without looking at the nature and the environment. So these chemicals will come back to us as a surface pollution floating on the seas. So slowly we get it back to where we live. And actually in 2023 there was a research made on 20 nations measuring PFAS in the bloods of the people. And they found that people in Greenland, that is far away from everything. They had the highest pollution in the blood in the world at that time. And that was really surprising and scaring. And that’s because, well, nobody really understood at first. But of course, when they’re the last in the food chain, eating ice bears, seals, whales and very big fishes, that’s where the PFAS ends. So of course, they were the ones that got in trouble with that.
So if we look like 20 or 30 years ahead, we can see at that time I guess a heavy pollution of our oceans, and I think also that the world population will start to decrease, go down maybe drastically because more and more will not be able to have kids, we will have more and more infertility, and we will have a lot of cancer to fight with, and maybe also new diseases that we don’t know about today because this will have a big influence on our health.
Mik:
And on our mental health, speaking of yourself, because it’s it’s not a good future to look into.
Jesper:
No, it can be a very sad story to look into, a sad future, because many people, don’t know what to do. And sometimes when I make speeches for people, they start to cry and say, ‘what can I say to my kids?’ And ‘what can we do to change this?’ But if all of us in the whole world take a little step in the right direction, change our habits, change the way of living, eat the right things, and choose the right clothes, and whatever, every… It’s actually the people in the world that have the power to change things. So if we all take a step to the side, it will change a lot. It will have a huge influence. So it’s the total power of all people that have to rescue the world. So I can only ask people, do the right thing now.
Mik: (41:43)
Danish farmer Jesper Andersen who owns a farm called Birkemosegård. It’s an organic farm, as he said. So the big question to you, Gundi, is: now, what can we do?
Gundi: (41:59)
Oh, so much! We can do so much! I would love again to be an organic farmer. I would just jump in, it’s just circumstances, didn’t allow me and hats off to anybody who’s an organic farmer.
As I like to say, you know, like, once you realise that A) the power is in our hands and everybody’s, you know, it’ the consumer choices we make. I might, know, like Colin, I might not be a farmer anymore now. But what I buy, I can either choose to buy the non-organic egg or the organic egg. 40 per cent of the landmass on Earth is under agriculture. It is a lot! You know, like, 40 per cent of it and how we farm really matters.
So if we do organic farming, regenerative farming, whatever label you want to give it. So if we work with the soil, like, I spent some time in India, we made a little movie there about natural farming in India. I went to Tanzania and we started a project there and I was glad to be part of that.
So how do we know soils nowadays are dead, they killed by the chemicals that we put onto them. Glyphosate, Roundup, is an antibiotic, it’s an antifungal, it’s an antiprotozoal and an anti-plant chemical. That’s what’s happening all over the world on the land. We are killing the soil. With the soil being dead, we lose the capacity to incorporate water into the soil. We… capacity to water. Glyphosate rounded. So when we put that which is the soil. So we said soil loosened water. So the water is in the atmosphere, now, like making the climate more extreme. The soils that are dead, that are not covered by green land, by green plants, you know, re-radiate heat, you know, with very ferocious strength heating up the atmosphere.
The carbon that was in the soil is now in the air. So it’s not only fossil fuels, but it’s like from the… Simultaneously, all the nutrients, and this is where sort of like… my scientific work comes in, you know, all the nutrients that we humans and animals need for our life are all bacterial products. So B-vitamins, exclusively: bacterial products. Where are the bacteria? They’re either in the rumen of a ruminant, but even better: they’re in the soil. Who makes all the minerals available to the plants so that the animal, or us, can eat it? Magnesium and zinc for your mental health.
It is the bacteria who do the work for us, but we kill them. It is bacteria that do that job. It’s fungal spores that bring it from a kilometre away to the plant and then they deliver it into the plant and the plant eats the bacteria. bacteria up and down the plant spitting out there all of the nutrients that they make. We have bacteria and microbiological so we have not understood. We didn’t see the impact that they eat the bacteria and go up like a yo yo. We have not understood that.
So if you as a consumer choose to buy food for healthy soil, you will get the nutrients that you need. You are bypassing probably the whole of the pharmaceutical industry, which is one of the biggest drivers nowadays of industry. The agri-pharmaceuticals, pharmaceuticals, the petrochemicals, none of these have very nice intentions to… really – so bypass them all.
When we get restore soil by regenerative farming… Which can be as simple as… Yes. Chemical, the pharmaceutical, the chemical. So bypass them. We restore farming. Pushing cows in a rotational grazing system, you know, like, from one little strip to the next to the next to the next – creates organic matter is created in your soil and you’re getting biological life, biological nutrient cycles working again.
You know, like, if I may mention mental health there, you know, like, we…. There is bacterium in our gut called Lactobacillus Routeri, which makes oxytocin, which is our feel-good, our bonding, our love and empathy hormone. Nobody has got it anymore nowadays. Why? Preservatives and glyphosate. Because with your daily bread, you are eating glyphosate, which kills your gut microbiome, and there goes your Oxytocin, but there also goes your Serotonin. So I think… how many million people? Four million people in Australia are on psychopharmicals! Yeah? So that’s a lot of impact that it has, and all of that, you can just bypass by eating food from your local farmer if you can.
Mik:
Gundi, you need to say that one more time slowly so everyone gets it. Because I think so many of our listeners have this feeling how important it is that we move away from all the aggression and over to a more kind, caring and loving community. So, you talked about a hormone. What was it again? And that hormone – we are in deficit of it?
Gundi: (47:03)
Yes, we are. We are in deficit of a lot of hormones and a lot of vitamines and a lot of minerals. So let me say this slowly, because this is really important, and this is impacting on every person that does not eat wholesome food that is grown on soil. Because you must get those nutrients from somewhere. You don’t get them from the water, you don’t get them from the air. You must get them from the soil via the plant, and then via – either the plant gets eaten by an animal, you know, by a cow and you eat the beef, or you eat the plant. But you must get those nutrients that are produced by the soil.
So let’s just do one of them. Tryptophan is an essential amino acid, that is a building block of protein, of every protein, but it’s a direct building block of serotonin, which is our happy drug.
And most people, four-five million in Australia nowadays, are on serotonin uptake inhibitor. So they make… these drugs make that little bit of serotonin which you might be left in your body last longer. It is an anti-depressant. And we are dishing it out, like lolipops, now to animals too.
Dogs with anxiety, and cats with anxiety, and we are giving them the same drugs.
So, Tryptophan… When I wrote my book, I discovered Tryptophan, I thought, ah! it is in the meat! But then somewhere I started to realise it’s not produced by any mammal. The cow is a mammal. And so, who makes it?
And so my research found that it is actually exclusively a bacterial product. So therefore, if we spray the whole world with an antibiotic called Roundup, it does really matter.
It matters if we grow a tomato in healthy soil or if you grow it on a hydroponic system, you know, where they get water and a few minerals pumped up into them. Tryptophan is missing.
So then, if you are lucky enough to have enough tryptophan in your diet and you do eat it, then it needs the gut microbiome to convert this tryptophan into serotonin, and then it runs up your body into your brain and makes you happy.
Yeah?
So I can now give supplements to cats or to dogs, you know, or to humans – as tryptophan – to give them what we should have had in the first place. So you put that on a global scale, you have a lot of answers, you know, and this is only one little part of it.
You can do the same game with magnesium. You know, if you lack magnesium. Like, how many people nowadays are on magnesium supplements? You get nervous, anxious and aggressive if you don’t have it, right? Where does it come from? From the soil. Who gets it from soil into your food system? It is the bacteria! We killed them. Does it matter? Yes it does.
You do the same with zink. You do the same with all the B-vitamins.
I just spent a weekend at the Mind Foundation in Sydney where all the functional doctors talk about autism and mental health in people. You give those children those supplements that I found out where they actually come from. You know, I didn’t find out, I read it, I got the knowledge together from different, I put the puzzle together.
Ah! So if the bacteria makes the vitamin B1, and now this or this behaviorally challenged child gets B1, and suddenly gets better. Aha! It was missing! Why was it missing? Because we destroyed the organism that made this in the first place.
So the Lactubacillus Routeri that I mentioned before, you can still find it in the Amish people, in people, like, in the Andes, you know, in remote communities, you would still have this.
So I learned oxytocin is made by the brain. That’s it! Oxytocin is our ‘letting the milk down’-hormone, it’s the love and empathy hormone, it’s a bonding hormone. If women sit together – they are chatting, we have oxytocin, you know, a mother to the child, couples between each other.
It is our love and empathy and feel-good and purring – you know, like, talking cat language – hormone. So… Then I suddenly discovered and learned: Oh my God, oxytocin is unregulated by Lactobacillus Reuteri. And then research said: we don’t have that anymore.
Hardly any child in Western societies has got this anymore. Is it significant? I would guess. I would bet it is!
So now I just learned a recipe how to make yogurt with Lactobusalis Roterae. You could sell that yogurt as as ‘the love yogurt’. Right? No, but so it’s on every corner of our nutrition, we are missing all of these things because so the right nutrition, we’re missing the soil.
So fix the soil with regenerative agriculture, with inoculants, you know, and without nitrogen fertiliser that comes from Iran, because now we can’t get it. And this is where it enters international politics. It costs money to get… You know, nitrogen fertiliser. The natural cycles don’t need nitrogen fertiliser. We’ve got bacteria in the ground that do that for us, you know.
So, life is microbiological… We have got a trillion, ten times as many gut microbiome cells, bacteria, in our gut than our own body cells. We are run by those little organisms. Yet we are killing them. Every slice of bread you eat. We are farming now, and we are harvesting wheat, for example, or canola, with spraying Roundup. So we are spraying it out, so the grain sucks it up, and the grain dies. So the metabolism stops, and you eat that. So what does that do? You know, like, we found research… – you eat that bread, that wheat, with glyphosate, and your bacteria die, and you don’t have gaba anymore. Gaba, again, is a drug that we give out like lollipops now for against anxiety. It is a calming hormone. So we are destroying, you know, the biological basis of all of our lives, you know, with that.
. . .
Mik:
That’s how many hormones and chemicals we can squeeze into one Sustainable Hour. However, Gundi, it sounds to me like you have so much to tell that we need to invite you back for more in-depth details. I love how you connect how we eat and what we do the choices we make in the supermarket with the people that we become. That it actually influences our hormones, which influences our behaviour. Interesting!
Now, Gundi, to sum it up, can you give us just a brief advice and I say, you know, us the community, the listeners, a brief advice on this topic and then we would like to ask you one last question before we go?
Gundi: (54:19)
Yeah. Buy local and buy from farmers, they don’t have to be certified organic, they just have to you ask go to the farm. You have a farmers market, if you are lucky enough to have one. Ask if they spray, if they don’t spray and you can trust that, you can normally get a feeling of you can trust from those people. And nature with your body will actually heal you anyway.
Whatever disease you have, that I’m treating also humans, you know, like, amazing, you know, when you put people on the right diet, high blood pressure is gone, inflamed skin is gone, the depression is gone. Have hope, but you’ve got to get to the bottom of it. And the bottom of it is natural food, like nature has always done. We’ve never ever in life on Earth have we destroyed life with chemicals, it’s a… Diabetes is gone. I am hopeful. Just history of man have we destroyed the basics of our life with some chemicals, you know, which we are doing now.
The PFAS, you know, and the chemicals and the plastics and the pool of that is on top. But, you can tolerate much, much better, you know, think in your personal life, it is a high stress environment now. All at the top of that. What I’m saying is tolerate stress. You can deal with anything. We just get given the right ingredients and you can have a brain that is more or less functioning on a calmer manner. Popping pills all the time. You know, like, I could, I can talk, that’s what I wrote about it. So I’ve got a podcast so much to the basic is very simple: Go back to nature. What would we have eaten before we started farming? Just ask: ‘What about 12,000 years ago?’
Mik:
Repeat for us again: What’s the podcast name?
Gundi: (56:19)
The Regenerative Vet. So there I have an hour to talk about what does glyphosate do or why is it so important to. not use it. It is important to nature. So find a local farmer, grow your own vegetables and if you eat meat, eat meat from a grass, ruminant. And grass-fed is really important because when you eat animals, you eat what they’ve eaten
Actually very simple. Like just go back to grow your own grass-fed beef or sheep. I’m lucky I get my meat from my friend Glenn, you know, and he is a nature lover. These cows just do not see a chemical. His soil is healed. It functions and so does his water cycle, you know, like there’s lots of birds and bees on his property and that meat doesn’t do much environmental harm. Some environmental harm, but we need to eat something. We can’t just all give up and commit suicide and die, you know? So if we have to eat something, what is that least harms the environment?
So he’s his water cycle. There’ll always be It’s a food. And then I think grass ruminants, if done well, are on the top of my list. Non-chemicals, they look after themselves and they’re very nourishing. And then from properties like that. So now spray free, organic or grass fade, grow your own, slow down.
Mik:
And speaking of be’s, Gundi, if you were to boil all this down into one single sentence, what should our listeners be?
Gundi: (57:48)
Be natural, eat natural food, slow, calm down, trust her. She’s got it.
. . .
SONG:
‘Taste for Zero Waste’
Verse 1:
Bring your keep-cup, take a stand
Say no to plastic, give the planet a hand!
Refuse, reuse, let’s compost too
One small change, yeah, that’s how we do!
Pre-Chorus:
Feel the joy, feel the grace
Living light, no money to waste!
Join the wave, it’s taking place
Lots of things happening in this space!
Chorus:
Zero waste, gives you a better taste
Of life in a nutshell, when we do it well!
Less in the bin, more in your soul
Step by step, we’re in control!
Verse 2:
Got my plate, and my coffee cup
No single-use, I level up!
Farmers’ markets, bulk-buy store
Supporting local. And waste? No more!
Bridge:
Picnics with Costa, reusing with style
Swap and share — it’s all worthwhile!
Wash those dishes, ditch the trash
Sustainable living, making a splash!
[Short instrumental intermezzo]
Final Chorus:
Zero waste, gives you a better taste
Of life in a nutshell, when we do it well!
Less in the bin, more in your soul
Step by step, we’re in control!
Outro:
One small step. And then one more
Reuse and refuse, like never before
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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