 we often hear the expression seeing is believing and I flip that and I say no no no no and I now get it believing is seeing because we believed it that people were dying because of scarcity and therefore that's what we saw when clearly we there was more than enough and more than enough potential for all of us and that we were creating the human-made systems that denied people the power to access that food. Francis Moore LePay is my guest on this episode of Inside Ideas brought to you by 1.5 Media and Innovators Magazine. Frankie is the author of 20 books including The 3 Million Copy, Diet for a Small Planet. In 2017 she co-authored with Adam Eichen Daring Democracy, Igniting Power, Meeting and Connection for the America We Want. Francis is co-founder of the Food First, a small planet institute which he leads with her daughter Anna LePay. Frankie is the recipient of 19 honorary degrees and the right livelihood award often called the Alternative Noble Prize. The 50th anniversary edition of the extraordinary best-selling book that taught America the social and personal significance of a new way of eating, one that remains a complete guide for eating well in the new millennium will be released September 21st 2021 just days away. This edition features a new introductory chapter, simple rules for a healthy diet, a streamlined easy-to-use format, delicious food combinations of protein-rich meals without meat, hundreds of wonderful recipes and much more. It boasts 85 updated plant-centered recipes including more than a dozen new delights from celebrity chefs including Mark Bitman, Padma Lakshmi, Alice Waters, Jose Andreas, Bryant Terry, Molly Kutzen and Sean Sherman. Most importantly it features a new introductory chapter emphasizing how the conversations, lifestyle choices and impacts we can have on our food system are in this critical year 2021. Equally if not even more crucial to consider as our culture shifts to more sustainable plant-based eating based on imposing threats of the climate crisis that threaten our society and our world. I have an older version, a copy here of the 20th anniversary edition diet for a small planet but I really would like to welcome Frankie. I hope it's okay I can call you Frankie to the show. Yes please do thank you. Welcome and I really appreciate you taking the time in this busy time of 50 anniversary. My god how did this journey come about? Well it came about because I was a kid of 26 and I had just come out as we did here in the United States. A lot of us came out of the 60s with a great deal of hope and in the sense that we had had a civil rights movement that was succeeding and passing new legislation on voting rights and civil rights and that we had come out of a decade of growing social movements, women's movement, environmental movement and so much hope that I wanted to be part of and so I enrolled in a graduate program in community organizing which is what I had done in the war on poverty, Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty and I wanted to continue that but somewhere in that first year 68-69 I just felt like I wasn't going deep enough Mark. I was still not sure was I going to the roots and so I said okay I made a promise to the universe you know that I wouldn't do anything to try to save the world until I had a better understanding of root causes how do we get here and I had the good fortune of being able because then you could live on one postdoc salary my husband was a postdoc and fellow at UC Berkeley and we could live on his meager income and live fine and so I could just do what I wanted to do and guess what I had access to all of the tools in the UC Berkeley Agricultural Library so that's where I hung out with a friendly librarian you know this is before the internet and even before handheld calculators I had my dad's slide rule which probably most of our listeners learn you know what that is so fortunately I had access to these terrific resources in the friendliness and the helpfulness of librarians and I literally kind of was putting two and two together because we were told that great suffering was present and ahead of us because we were hitting the limits of the finite earth and Paul Ehrlich at Stanford had just published a population bomb and it was just exploding and there was also a doctor and called the paper the Tragedy of the Commons Garrett Hardin wrote about that same time the late 60s saying that any resource that was shared in common would inevitably be overrun that's just who we are our selfish nature we couldn't cooperate to save our resources and so there was a great sense of doom of just we were you know we were really you know lost I mean we were just and at the same time there were famines in Africa that were reinforcing this idea that we'd hit the earth's limits and that famine was inevitable and later than there was this doctrine of the lifeboat ethic that was even worse saying well we're going to have to let many people die because we can't feed everyone so I thought oh if I could just dive into food what's more basic nothing's more basic besides of course food air and water and I thought oh if I could understand why hunger is this really true and you know hunger food is quantifiable we all relate to it we all are interested in food right it's it's we know what what good nutrition is all of that's known so if I could figure this out that would unlock the mysteries of economics and politics and I would have direction that's what I wanted I wanted to know a life path that made sense so there I was and really very soon in that process I was just shocked because I said wait a minute there's no scarcity yes there's the experience of scarcity but we're creating that but I really got very clear that there was enough food for us all and if you weren't eating it wasn't because of any absolute lack of food it's because you didn't have access you didn't have power to access the food that is being grown and so pretty soon in the process I started saying hunger is not caused by scarcity of food it's caused by scarcity of democracy because that was my shorthand for every one of us having voice which is to me the ultimate definition of democracy nobody is left out um so that was the beginning and and I was terrified Mark that you know maybe I've misplaced a decimal point or something but you know I've come to believe over the years and I'm curious if you would agree with this that there is something really helpful about fresh eyes about somebody not trained as a nutritionist not trained as a developmental economist and just coming in and saying oh is there enough you know and so I think in some ways my lack of training with an asset because I can see right in front of my eyes there it was and and later in life and this is a theme of all of my my more recent work is that human beings are very special in the animal kingdom with our complicated brains we don't see the world as it is but as we are and that we see through filters and we literally can't see what doesn't fit inside our filter and so we often hear the the expression seeing is believing and I flip that and I say no no no no no I now get it believing is seeing because we believed it that people were dying because of scarcity and therefore that's what we saw when clearly we there was more than enough and more than enough potential for all of us and that we were creating the human-made systems that denied people the power to access that food and so I that's become a theme song of my life you know the believing is seeing and I often have have stories simple stories to tell about myself that I could share or not but um that um is still true today that that or even truer than ever um and it explains I think so much about our avoidance and our conflict is that we live with these filters and we don't recognize that uh we are what as I quote Albert Einstein though because he is very credible and he says it is theory which decides what we can observe and that is a way of saying it so that was really the beginning for me and shaped everything going forward and originally you know I just wanted to share with friends because I thought I had great news Mark guess what you know it's not inevitable we human beings are creating this terrible flight of hunger so we human beings can change it we're not fated to to hunker and so it was in the beginning it was just wanting to share wanting to share that that we had the power and so I did a one-page handout and then you know you probably had this experience oh I should know a little bit more about that you know and then I should know a little bit more about that and so it kept growing and then got into the hands of a British implant in the US uh Betty Ballentine who she and her husband co-founded Paperback Publishing in America and so my fate was that my little beginning manuscript got into her hands via a friend and uh she said well you know um can I tell you a story about when I got to thank her just a few years ago she died at almost 100 but I went to visit her to thank her again and I went to her home in New York and I said Betty why did you take a chance on me I hadn't published anything not even a letter to the editor of a newspaper and she just twinkled and smiled and she said Frankie it was your ideas it was your ideas if you couldn't write the book hey I could do that she said so that was when publishing was really about people who really cared and wanted to get transformative ideas out and I just love that she had confidence that the ideas were more important than whether I could do a good job in writing and so we agreed on every word in the book well we discussed this before we started the recording but um I have an old first edition my grandmother had and she had a lot of her recipes that she even kind of tweaked and fine-tuned off of that and it was very tattered and torn and pages yeah and she she'd even written on the pages and I still have it um I was I was only one year old when it came out 1971 but you were at the crux of a really a lot was going on in the world as you mentioned um you know a few of the trendy things that that we hear about or might might associate with as you know the the launch of the Quarter Pounder for McDonald's was in 1971 Starbucks launched in in 1971 with the their first Starbucks coffee and establishment Willy Wonka the movie came out which was three million US dollars by Quaker Oates but also there was some things happening just before that like the Earthrise the first catalog image of our planet came out um December 24th 1968 and then a few years later one at one year after the book was published the first catalog image of our complete earth the blue marble came out as well and there was this big thing that I also see in what your your story or kind of hear out in the story you just told about your research and that that you went to kind of get this expertise or this kind of better look into the food systems and to the basics of our life and I had this wonderful luckily Berkeley in the library and the probably the the plethora of information and resources you you had there was amazing but as you you you got into that there instead of going in deeper with these blinders it's almost like you had this overview effect this cosmic perspective as well that gave you a bigger picture or a bigger history of kind of where the food systems was coming from and and where what the trajectory you were seeing at the moment where it was going and um how how there are some really weird things in there and I saw so I see a couple of things not only a fabulous time that you were around were all these very similar to what we're experiencing now these these moments of unrest where we have Black Lives Matters we have Asian racism we have the inauguration we have a lot of craziness going on in politics but also the COVID and humanity in general not just the United States is filling this dis-ease with what's going on with our systems what's going on with our democracy what's going on with our food systems that's meant to sustain us or to give us our basic energy source but yet it's creating enormous amounts of human suffering and dis-ease in the world and creating huge climate catastrophes out of that and I think you were seeing some of that then but that leads me to this this true question this first really important question you've been doing this now in September 50 years and you've been talking about not just food and had your food books but you've been talking a lot about activism and democracy and how we can play an active role and kind of shaping our future and then 2020 we were hit with this pandemic and some craziness I want to know all these 50 years has that proven to be a better model for life has there proven somewhere in there some nuggets of wisdom or some systems or models that can help us weather storms or weather pandemics or weather crazy times like this a little bit easier that prove to be a better a better model to get us on the right side of history or on the right side of the future we want to reach that's a big question and what comes to mind I've been really thinking about the role of fear because 1969 leading up to the publication of my book that was an era as I mentioned that was driven by fear that we have hit the limits I mean I knew young women who didn't want to have children felt it was unethical to have children fear that that was evil in fact that you were overburdened the earth so it was a very fear driven time that actually distracted us from the deeper relational understanding that hunger was a product of our relationships with one another the rules and norms that we create and we can't blame nature we can't throw it that way so fear was a handicap at that time the way it was used the question for us right now is that fear is very appropriate can we use it for wisdom is it ever been possible in human history where people were terrified and actually energize them to clarity not to blame either blame the earth's limits or blame each other as so endemic in our culture that Donald Trump has encouraged but rather to see once and for all that we sink or swim together it's all related since we're all connected we're all implicated and we're also all potentially part of the solution so that's the challenge for this moment can fear serve a very different energy and that's what I hope that my work will always contribute to and because we know the solutions there's much loss that has already happened as a result of climate catastrophe and economic you know economic concentration it's already cost lives and great losses of the natural world but it's not all lost obviously we still have a chance to save a great number of species including our own so that's that's my short and I mean my overall answer is is that how do we turn fear into constructive where we see and to me it's it's so interesting about diet for a small planet because that word small could be taken to mean scared skimpy right not enoughness or it could be taken to mean what I really wanted to mean is diet for a related interrelational planet that were small in the sense that we're all connected and therefore were all implicated in all part of the solution and so I want to emphasize that that I reject the the small is the great a great title I still like it and it maybe it was inspired now that you mentioned it from the first time we saw the go our little our little globe you know that but hopefully that little globe encouraged us to see our solidarity possibilities you know that we're all in partnership to save life on this little sphere so I totally make sense and and I'll tell you I mean because that's all I can go from is the way I hear it and it is exactly what you said so it's this kind of this the earth rises the the blue marble it's showing us yeah it's not small because we're scarce and we we're you know but that we're all interconnected we're all humans on the spaceship earth and and oh this is another beautiful thing I like about all your books but especially diet for a small planet is that it it is the whole planet even though it's very much Berkeley in the United States and it's America you never took that full view that okay it's just America America America it's really this whole planet and how even in America the diets in America are really influencing things all over the world and they're interconnected that it's really this system this symbiotic earth but also the spaceship earth as a buck minister Fuller so nicely put it that where you know we're on this spaceship earth he I think he was a second person to coin the term the first person was Kenneth Boulding who is an ecological economist that originally coined the term but I I really love the fact that you kind of give us this whole perspective that we're all drinking the same water we're all breathing the same air we're all eating the same food and it's you know no matter how big our small planet is eventually there is no place to hide from the finite resources of this planet and the interconnectedness of humanity one from another now we're really here to talk about diet for a small planet but you have another book hopes edge that you did with your daughter Anna and in there you also you kind of traveled the world and you met amazing people and you heard other stories of farmers and people around the world dealing with issues on food systems Wangari Matai noble laureate tree planner a wonderful woman who who just says we need more trees we need to heal our soils we need to get restore the soil and or in our land and and really kind of get these basic rights back something's missing and did amazing things but you have stories like that where you says you know we're not this isn't planet america this is planet spaceship earth you know and the the basic when we break everything down our our economies are really food our basics our energy source is food and the how can we do it in a better way how can we have a diet that works on on a planet that's interconnected and so there this 50th anniversary is not just the same a new printing or a new addition you've actually done some updates you've taken us out of what you've been and and fine tuned it to the younger generation as well but also added some extra voices and so i'd like to hear maybe a little bit about some more things that went in there if you don't mind and and what we can hope to expect and why it rings just as true as it did 50 years ago but it's it's one that you're a lot of people are saying boy we've been talking about food for 50 years what why is this the first time i'm hearing about this yes yes yes you know i the way that i put it in myself and in the book is that yes in 1971 when the book came out the plant centered eating moving to i call it now plant and planet centered eating was a great idea it was a good choice it was very helpful then but now is an absolute necessity for life on earth that it so it shifted from a positive thing to an essential an absolute central step and largely because of climate catastrophe pending and and that all is all also connected to the destruction of rainforests and species decimation and so i begin with the early in the new chapter for the new edition i quote david attenborough the esteemed national historian who says that we are on the brink of the sixth great extinction and he very much says that without changing the way we eat to free up vast amounts of land to re re re re inhabit with diverse species the all because we've wiped out so many that we we really are lost so in that especially added to that the impact of of climate heating so it's just the sense of urgency and the sense of the more rich various reasons why for health reasons ecological reasons economic reasons climate reasons that a plant-centered diet is a one way to make a significant dent in fact on the climate question i quote professors at university here in the united states who said that that if we really shifted to a plant-centered diet that that would be the equivalent in climate correction to taking all of the traffic off the roads in worldwide it's it's that kind of of impact because food and agriculture our food system contributes 37 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and among those is methane particularly from from cows and methane packs a particular climate punch if you will so that there's extra gain by by limiting certainly um beef consumption but in general livestock offers such a way you know that bang for your buck if you will or bang for your shift that um that I I I feel like yeah it's every reason in the world I could go on about health and and cost and every all different dimensions that I bring forth in the uh kind of list of why we are shifting to a plant-centered diet yeah that one of the biggest um fallacies or kind of misnomers that we've been led to believe over the years is that the automotive the oil, coal, and gas industry the fossil fuel industry are the biggest cause of human suffering and environmental ecological destruction greenhouse gas emissions uh don't get me wrong they're they're on the list they're probably eight nine or ten on the list of the top ten but the one that really affects us all and creates the most amount of human suffering greenhouse gas emissions and environmental destruction is really agriculture seafood food and beverage industries and the high processing the type of aromas flavors pesticides chemicals fertilizers and fossil fuels that go in to keep this this entire industry afloat and running this big capitalistic machine I so I think that's a big mistake or that people kind of thought you know it's it's not it's not food but it's actually our food that we touch every every day hopefully hopefully we're all eating a couple times a day and it's our basic energy source you know they um we have to regulate our body temperature 98.6 degrees to keep keep our body warm and our motor running and the way we do that is food food and water and they call it a measurement of energy a caloric unit or a calorie and I by no means please I don't want anybody to count calories I don't believe in it at all but what I want you to know is that's the basic energy source of humanity it's it's what's regulates our body temperature and it's a measurement of energy and the basic energy source for humanity isn't fossil fuels and it isn't cars and it isn't gas it's it's food and water and so you hit on the nail and the reason it ties to economics and democracy is because that's the basic driver of of life on earth and so it automatically makes sense to tie into that the the shift and I don't know if you would like to go into this a little bit is that in 2008 we had a big huge shift where pretty much all investments during the financial crisis in 2008 kind of shifted from from financial markets to tech markets to real estate markets to anything to do with our food systems and it really turned food into a commodity but even back in 1971 there were some strong things going on where this this beginning of shift of turning food into a commodity into certain things which when you turn food into a commodity the people who produce the food are so disconnected from the food because they're being run by investors and commodities and stocks and trades and things that we cheapen food I often say I have an addiction to cashews and sometimes I have my addiction so bad I'll pop a handful of cashews in my mouth while I've just eaten a whole tree and I've just probably wasted the maku maku fruit which is on top of the cashew and I paid a one euro for it I'm in Hamburg Germany and I paid one euro for it no way is that the true cost of of a handful of cashews and we're not paying the true cost the natural capital the resources and all this and and the short of it is is when we cheapen food we cheapen life and I just want everybody to be clear if we cheapen life we're cheapen us we're cheapen humanity and so I I really think that you're you've touched upon it and you talk about it you tie into many other things with democracy with food what are some other learning lessons that we where we can really see food as a powerful thing where we can get control back of our democracy of our life of our infrastructure our futures well I want to start by by underscoring and you've what you said really sets me up for this expression that moving our diet plant centering it planet centering it I mean by that you know it's effect on climate and species decimation so this notion that our food choices affect the earth but the great thing for me is that it's a win win win win because we now know that as you were saying our diet the commercial diet the agribusiness concentrated offerings are an increasing threat to our health that now the leading causes of disease are all such as heart disease and many cancers are food related that food is implicated in their cause the degradation of our food the ultra processing of our food robs us of essential nutrients and so by centering our food our eating in the whole foods plant world we you know there's just such a win to our health there's such a win that we go back if we especially if we attempt to buy as possible and support small farmers and if we choose non-pesticides that is organic which you don't you couldn't even choose that and you know when I wrote the book we didn't have a label here that said organic that didn't come really until the very turn of the 90s right so now we can choose that and no with every extra dollar we might spend or euro you might spend you are making a difference you are voting for the world we not only want but we have to have to survive you're voting to you know those extra dollars if you have them but also to point out that that our grain feds meat centered ultra processed diet also costs us especially here in us because we have such a such a terrible health care system that it costs us a lot of money to pay for the disease the diabetes and heart disease etc and that it's caused by this grain fed meat centered you know ultra processed diet so there's just you know we have to keep that in mind when we put a few extra euros on the table so to speak on the counter to pay for our richer more satisfying more healthy diet we're also reducing costs elsewhere and I just want to tell a little story about this is global a few years ago I was in touch with a doctor in southern India who said to me yes you know 20 years ago my patients were coming to me because they were literally lacking calories but today even in southern India not a center of industrialized you know west that people now come to me because they're suffering diabetes and heart disease and when my daughter and I were in India we'll never forget this image we were in very rural part of India driving along and there were these stand of eucalyptus trees they themselves are implants from the country and on these on these trees were ads advertisements for pepsi pepsi you know when India is famous for these delicious indigenous mango juice and lychee food and yet they were getting hooked on the you know on this hyper sugary you know hyper sucrose drinks and so that's what I mean you know that that the cost is is is certainly greatly greatly increased from when I wrote diet for small planet and these multiple layers of environmental devastation not just climate warming directly through these emissions but through deforestation I just learned recently that by best estimate something like 80 percent of deforestation in the amazon which is I think the largest rainforest in the world 80 percent of that loss is for cattle grazing and feed crops right so it's directly we are contributed as we choose that diet we are contributors to the world we don't want and I don't like to play on people's guilt but just to offer people real choice that and that's why I started with food you know because we make those choices as you said every single day and so I've often thought of it as a string around my finger you know just oh yeah every day I'm making a choice it's either either promoting a better world for all including me or not and there's not a lot we do every day you know we can't change our solar panels I look up because we have some but I can't add more every day but I can I can choose a plant-centered diet that is a whole foods and supporting farmers who aren't going to be exposed to pesticides because there's such poison in going on in the world today by cancerous cancer causing pesticides you know what what a funner more beautiful way to to do it then by by eating you know and taking that control back so so many times in our world in our history in the big history of our of our planet we have seen more than 20 civilization collapse we've had more than 20 civilizations in our world that aren't here anymore Incas Aztecs Meyers early Mesopotamia the Greeks the Romans on and on and they're no longer here and all but two are no longer here because of an ecological or environmental collapse and that has to do with the way they produce food the way that they treated the environment the way that they they lived and these were civilizations that were pretty advanced and pretty innovative and had infrastructure and and were doing some fabulous things they're no longer here anymore and so I I think that this this key or this area that we've hit upon with food and that's importance in our world and and how we can contribute with what we eat in our diet every single day to make a big impact that we're on the right side of history that we don't end up in a collapse or that we don't lose our civilization because it's seems to be like we're repeating some of the same mistakes you see you mentioned Einstein earlier his you know definition of insanity problems theory is basically we we can't solve the the the problems that we created with the same thinking and that when we created them we have to think differently we have to come up with some better solutions and in our agriculture food and beverage industry industries that are out there we're really still stuck in the dark ages the middle ages and in a lot of respects when it comes to processing and producing food the way we do monoculture farming the way we use pesticides and chemicals I mean around the same time Rachel Carson's book came out you know silent spring talking about pesticides and chemicals and and and things that we're doing to our planet do you see that there's a way that we can have a stronger influence to shift those industries and regain some of the control of our food and shift those diets that even if the whole world were to switch to a plant-based diet or to really a plant-based diet that we would have enough options and enough benefits and enough power to support the world to do that and what are your thoughts and thinking on that on on kind of that transition and some tools to help us to to feel more empowered because it seems like in some respects people are disconnected from food and and they feel helpless they feel like that's in someone else's hands yes that's a perfect introduction for me to share that over the years I really struggled to answer the questions what does humanity need beyond the physical what are the essentials that every human being needs and my tentative I it's always tentative and push back please but that it comes out in the trilogy of that we need a sense of agency in the end of the words power that human beings aren't happy if they are muscled that we need meaning beyond just survival surviving is not enough we need a larger meaning and we need to feel connected with others in that power and larger meaning and actually I still get chills when I say this because I it's so true for me and I think it's true for you mark it but it's true for everyone I know that we need to feel those three elements and so for me food off is one channel in which we can meet not just our physical needs but this deep emotional psychological human need for power meaning and connection and and so on a daily basis we can literally taste it as we make conscious choices and feel good about ourselves that you know our our dollars are our euros are trickling back to a shift that's healthy but in addition and in addition not but in addition and in addition we can feel simultaneously that we are contributing to social movements and I can really talk mainly about my own country that we are losing our democracy long before Donald Trump and I just to give you one horrifying statistic that in the decade after diet for small planet was published the number of firms corporations that have lobbyists full-time lobbyists in Washington DC grew 14-fold because the the what's called the chamber of commerce here had set is had asked a very respected jurist to write a blueprint for how and the much beleaguered businessman in America how can they and corporate America listen to that 14-fold increase in the number of lobbyists and I hope you in the European community don't allow the kind of pressures from corporate lobbyists that our system allows but that is just a horrifying statistic and that now in Washington I loved it I hate to say remind people that there are now almost two dozen lobbyists most of them corporate for every single person that we voted for to represent our interest in Washington so that is the depth democracy deficit the challenge for and so that's why I feel like I'm walking always on two feet that and I've been very committed to the democracy movement and wrote a book with someone 49 years my junior and we agreed on every word we met marching for democracy in Washington we wrote a book called daring democracy really helping people see what we can do now and how exhilarating it is and so we talk about the thrill of democracy because you know often here in this culture at least democracy is presented as this dull duty that you perform occasionally you know every couple of years and you know it's the dull like the dull veggie you have to swallow to get your your yummy sugary dessert and none and none and what we argue is that actually being part of a vibrant democracy in which you have a voice is a human thrill you know that you meet strangers you wouldn't have otherwise and you see parts of yourself you wouldn't have known we're there and on and on so that's really what what led into the co-creation of a website called democracy movement dot us and to allow people quickly to see where they can participate I love that and I appreciate you bringing that up because believe it or not all of this ties into an economic model economic models that we've we've experienced since since the book came out and way before our world was kind of pushing back and filling disease at extractive economies and capitalism and democracies that don't work for us anymore and so I followed your work I followed your activism and what you do and it's almost like you're you're kind of a different form of I guess Al Gore you're you're empowering people with with training and tools not only through your websites and through your writings but kind of how can they become active how can they see things differently think critical how can they regain some of that democracy and I have to be honest I take a little bit I'm not negative but sometimes I wonder do we have democracy yes there's such a thing and I love the fact that when Biden got into office and I'm so glad he did because I hated the Oompa Oompa that was in office and all the horrible criminal things that that happened well while he was in an office rolling back the EPA and trying to leave the Paris Agreement on and on that that Biden doubled down he jumped back into the Paris Agreement he started to get back into all the things we need to do for energy and environment and and really saying this is important this is important for us but the one thing I'd also hope that he would do is and I hate to bring up Al Gore again in 2000 wasn't it 2000 the dimple chat and the election of Al Gore and in George Bush we didn't figure out how to figure out how to fix the voting system then and we didn't figure it out this last year with Donald Trump and Biden with all the drama around there I would hope that I was hoping that he would like we're never going to have this again we've got to fix our problems we've got to fix the system on voting and we're in the 21st century let's get it worked out and so I guess my question is can you give me some hope do we have democracy or are we still very much teetering on on democracy well first let me say that democracy for me is a journey as one of our first or I'm very first I think African-American federal judge William Hasty said democracy is a it is lost and never fully won its essence its eternal struggle and but that's that good struggle as our our hero John Lewis we put it but the idea that democracy is never finished it is always even going forward or backward and yes it's been going backward however you know on the voting per se in our country the so much of what has happened in the last year is a campaign of I believe it must be deliberate lies because there is a website that is sponsored by a conservative organization the heritage foundation which documents voter fraud instances and if you look at just the headline of on that website heritage foundation that it confirms this oh my god you know here on fire there's a problem but actually my partner and I Richard and I went into their database and even their database trying to prove fraudulent activity shows that it's totally insignificant and so we wrote a blog together which our listeners could read it was something entitled like the real fraud is the scare about voter fraud and if you just google my name you could see that but it's it's it's an invented problem in in the United States that the voter fraud is insignificant so I just want to really make that clear that that has been a political tool to promote that lie so I do think that democracy is a journey and right now one of the biggest questions for democracy is how do we deal with lies because in our country and now with social media lies according to an MIT study they speed six times faster than truth that if you know one flies the other just crawls along and so as democracies we say oh we can't interfere with freedom of speech so what what can be done and I I uh written about it uh I don't know if it's published yet but my model or not model I don't think my motto is lessons not models we just take lessons from one another but New Zealand that ranks fourth in the world right under Scandinavia in the quality of its democracy on the number of scores New Zealand has a system let me just briefly describe it it has a a panel of respected um um board members it's called you can google it and look uh broadcast standards um authority bsa broadcast standards authority and so you have a board of people led by a judge and citizens it doesn't like the government doesn't go out to look for lies citizens can say oh this is a lie and it's dangerous and you need to look into it and so they do every single one of the complaints uh the alerts and then they judge whether or not to have it removed and since 1989 only 11 percent have been removed that shows it's very cautious but that puts everybody on notice right that they could be caught and so something like that I think we have to evolve if lies travel six times faster than truth and we're in this and in our country has been so damaged by lies under the uh Trump administration and now continuing on the lies about a voting system I really appreciate you clarifying that and I am sorry if I've gotten you off track at all going into democracy I know we're here to talk about diet for a small planet but they're they're so interlinked and I mean we could actually have a whole another podcast just on ecological economics which is what what are the models that can help us uh to be on the right side of history what can help us with more resilience in the future and it sounds abstract when you say ecological economics but it's really about those basic resources of which we've been talking about this entire time breathing food water which are the basic sustenance of of humanity do we have the basics to have the energy the food the water the the basic needs that that we need to continue to be around for to sustain ourselves for future generations but also to to have that resilience and hard times like pandemics like climate crisis is where Germany I don't know if you guys have heard about it but Germany was extremely hard hit with flooding and things all created as a ripple effect through the climate crisis which originally began with deforestation and agriculture ruining our soils using too many chemicals and pesticides weakening the soils and and the whole of that but also because temperatures are rising there's more humidity there's more heat in the air there's more moisture in there and so the storms become greater and we have these supercell storms or rain bombs that are a thousand kilometers long type of a bathtub or swimming pools of water that dump just out of one little spot you know hundreds of thousands of liters a second and the ground is not ready because it's been over farmed with monoculture and the the infrastructure of our place places here in Germany and around the world it's not just Germany aren't prepared for such things and this didn't happen just overnight it's happened over time but started with agriculture food and beverage industries and how we feed ourselves and and these infrastructures and so I I know we don't have time now but I eventually would like to have you back and talk a little bit more about the the ecological economics and some different models that are emerging out there that that are being adopted by people like Biden and President Biden and future politicians and leaders coming down the road that have this much bigger picture of of how we can give give humanity more resilience around the world because even though we've been discussing a lot focused on the United States and we've have some examples in different countries we're all intertwined on this small planet and the food that we eat in the United States or in Germany is often produced in other parts of the country at an environmental impact at a climate impact and eventually there is no place to hide from climate change so we've got to come up with this more global model or a model that looks at how do we protect everyone on this planet earth and and that leads me to really my hardest question for you today it's the burning question WTF and it's not the swear word even though this last two years maybe we've been pulling out our hair and saying that it's really what's the future's plural and even maybe more to be more specific what I mean by that I'm looking for it from you and answer what does a world that works for everyone look like for you well I you touched on this what does an ecological economy look like I think the biggest barrier to forward on so many aspects of our survival is the mythology around the market economy and I grew up you know right after during the Cold War and there's this myth that we only have two choices either we have a market economy with a rule but that rule is highest return to existing wealth all markets have rules we had this very very damaging one that was the has been the primary rule and and then we were told more or less directly that anything that bespeaks of a democracy setting boundaries around a healthy market serving all of us in sustainably earth that's communism but that leads the government the only alternative is government doing it and we know that doesn't work we know that fails so hey it may not be perfect but this free market economy is the best we have so that's the trap we have to we have to avoid and constantly develop language ecological economy a truly democratic economy sustainable economy in which we we do have a voice in setting the rules we we all the citizens what serves all of our interests and that does not mean government doing everything but it means our public sphere setting and enforcing the rules and so we've had some taste of that but in our country that's been an attack as you mentioned earlier on environmental protection agency which is already way too dominated by by the pesticide industry etc so really their democracy for survival has to be one that is based in ecological thriving and in which we are setting rules so that we can all thrive including truth so we have to make sure that we now that we know that on the internet that that lies speed speed ahead a way a way of of communicating the reality to all of us and so I think that breaking that grip of this myth of the free market is central and then giving examples and that's what I do in the new chapter but I try to do in the new chapter of the new book the 50th anniversary you know give examples of what does it look like to gain income that you need for your family but do it in a way that is nurturing and in fact healing the earth and so I got really taken by the practice of agro forestry a number of years ago and agro forestry all it means is that hey we used to think that trees and crops compete so we have to have monoculture no it's not true that actually trees and crops complement one another and you can have higher yields if you have trees and so makes so much sense that the other reason I love to tell the story and to be an advocate for agro forestry is because its success one of its biggest successes is in the poorest country in the world Niger in Africa and over a few decades they have moved not not everywhere but moved through last time I looked it was a couple hundred million trees mixed in with the crops and have proven how that can work and spread now in other parts of Africa so I include that example and I asked one of my sources one of the scientists will tell me a story that kind of captures the heart of that and he said oh yeah well I just met this little boy who said yeah if my mom and dad don't have food right now then I can just go out in the field and grab some fruit and it's a very practical story but that is we do have examples of organizations here the Savannah Institute in our Midwest but I also was struck that Mexico which you know I think of is not the industrialized super concentrated economy that there they have been supporting in some level it hasn't gone as smoothly as I wanted and as thorough as I wanted but supporting small farmers who are experimenting and moving towards this mix of trees and crops agro forestry so and I know there are a number of Scandinavian countries that are supporting this and so I think that there's so much we can learn from the movements from the bottom up like the landless workers that Anna and I visited in Brazil the landless workers movement that they have a new ecology center agro ecology center where they can get information about how their farmers and their are umpteen million and I forgot the number but small farmers throughout you you've done amazing work over the years and you and Anna both have worked with Mark Shepherd on or regeneration agriculture and and he has wonderful books but there's also this one straw revolution you wrote the four word in there from Masan Ubu Kuka I'm not even sure how if I'm slaughtering his name but it's basically um is it Korean farming or is it Japanese I think he's Japanese right that he's Japanese yeah funny that uh it was a long time ago that I wrote that forward I'm glad you reminded me because I'm going to get in touch uh and make sure I get the copy of the new book to him and find out what he's doing because he was a real hero to me when I wrote that and it's been probably uh 15 years and I always confuse the two because I use I'm a sixth generation organic farmer Germany's largest organic farmers and I've switched to regenerative organic practices and we use a lot of agro forestry and um almost permaculture practices but we use Korean natural farming practices and to try to bring indigenous microorganisms back into the farm area and keep what's what's indigenous there and it sounds kind of magical but it's it's it's really not it's it's a way to do a very natural process that's uh works well with the soil and our biome and so I always confuse the two but I I've not only as Mark Shepard contributing a piece to my book menu b but I'm hoping to convince you and Anna as well to maybe give a blurb from one of your past works and the book as well because it's about uh a different lens on how we see our food systems and the complexity of of global food systems reform reformation and how we view that vital part of of our world and I really want to thank you I have just really three last questions for you um before we say goodbye and they're they're not for me they're for my listeners and it's really if you had one message that you could depart to my listeners as a sustainable takeaway that has the power to change our life what would it be your message that we have power that every choice we make changes the world around us and the more that we can bring positive joyful energy to that the more that others will want some of what we've got right I mean we it's not as we know that we are going to affect everyone who touches us the spirit through which we act in the world we want people to think oh I want some of that you know not it's not a you should it's a we can look at the richness of life if we embrace a relational worldview in which we know that every choice ripples out and we can meet these needs for power meaning connection so that's really the core theme song of my life and in doing that really in community so that often it only takes one buddy you know but find someone else who who is a fan of yours mark or you know who you can connect with and say okay together we're going to make this commitment and we're going to share thoughts about what happened and who we met and how it made a difference so that we feel part of community because I think we are social creatures we believe in and we made that we need that community so I think that idea that every choice matters we have power and we can in community even if it's only one buddy we need that and so it's this power meaning and connection that a relational worldview offers this diet for a small interrelated planet offers that I want to emphasize that is amazing I mean your inspiration both your children are are active in one way or the other and their talents and abilities and it's something to be proud of about but you have also inspired not just me but thousands of other people around the world to have a different lens not just on democracy but on food and on how we view and see our world how we think critically how we can find the tools that are around us in the communities to really create the futures we want and I thank you for that but the question is how would you to those new young innovators that new young generation that's out there the Greta Thunbergs and even younger who are emerging um what should they be thinking about or what if they want to make real impacts in this world what advice do you have to push them to steer them to look to that they're dealing with today that you may have given to others over the years to help them say okay here's how you can make an impact or here's how you can empower your life to take a different stance well i'm going to return to this theme of thinking of democracy as a living practice i call it living democracy and so we can't uh embody any way suggest that democracy is over there you know for those politicos but it is an everyday practice that does involve the ballot box however and so really reclaiming democracy as a thrilling practice not simply a dull duty and and that it is a journey and that it that it's absolutely essential that that for all we can practice as you do you know as a farmer and and that we can we can embody through our food choices um a positive relationship with the earth we have to be part of changing the rules changing the norms uh that is what is allowed it's not enough just us as individuals but we have to change the pattern and that means social democratic social change and so that in our country especially sidelines corporate voice and embraces the citizen voice so i just couldn't underscore that enough that whatever we're doing in our environmental organizations and our food organizations that that we add that democracy piece and so we created a website here for the us called democracy movement dot us so that anybody anywhere in our states can plug in and there's a map of the of the states but i'm sure in your more democratic countries because we like so far behind i think we rank about 30th and Germany's way ahead of us but um but wherever we are we can improve right the voice of our democratic entity that uh can set the rules and that's really what we need now wherever we are on that continuum to set new rules new norms that um protect the earth and all those intricate relationships in the soil that you're the mic down to the microorganisms um so that but let me just say because i know we need to close that that um underneath it all is our willingness to step outside of our comfort zones to set step outside of where everybody agrees with us and that means one thing courage because we are so social you know we we hear oh we're so self-interested no no no we are so social that it's very hard to break to do something you know that is outside of our our um social group and that takes courage and so uh number of years ago when actually i was listening to it in an auditorium here in Boston where Al Gore was speaking and he wasn't in my view nailing it you know really to nail corporate power as as as one of the big obstacles and so i wanted to get my hand up but i couldn't because in my row everybody was like almost bowing down to his feet Al Gore and so my heart started going like this and so mark i said okay you're the one who reframes let's reframe that as inner applause and so i reframed terror fear as inner applause you know when when you do something today that makes your your heart pound you know oh am i going to look silly or feel really sure wrong and i got my hand up Al Gore didn't call on me but i knew that i i by reframing fear as pure energy and this is what i learned from regard to time rethink reframing fear as pure energy that we can either use to run in the wrong direction or to break through and this is the time i'm going to start crying but this is the time when our fear energy has to be put to good use not into just fear for fear stake and making people feel trapped but fear as energy to get us out of our comfort zones into doing that which we thought we could not do and there we need new buddies or gutsier than we so we want to be courageous bring into your life those who are gutsier than you are yeah there is an immense power and that vulnerability and harnessing that fear into into the right questions and the right energy to move forward to break through so i really appreciate you sharing that and that was actually my last question i was going to ask you what have you experienced in your professional journey so far that you would have loved to know from the start and i believe from the way our discussion started we talked about fear and i think that you realize that there is a dual edge sword a dual dual sided coin as well and we can use it for bad ways or we can use it to be extremely powerful empowered and change our lives and and harness that energy and i appreciate you sharing that thank you so much frankie for letting us inside of your ideas it's been a sure pleasure we could talk for hours and hours i want to pick your brain and get all the other great wonderful things you've experienced over these 50 years but i know you're so busy and everybody's vying for your time i wish you the most success come this september 21st on the launch of the 50th anniversary of diet for a small planet everyone please go out get a copy take a look at it try the recipes but more importantly take frankie's advice to heart embrace that fear use it as a strength and have the courage thank you so much frankie what a great honor and i'd love talking to you so thank you for all you do and all the wisdom that you've gained to your listeners you offer so much thanks so much and you have a wonderful day bye