Ep. 14: Books Broaden Sustainability Perspectives with Natalie Nesburg

Voiceover (00:06):

Resource-positive agriculture describes what we all want, a food and farming system that makes full and responsible use of the natural world. In this podcast, I’ll explore how agriculture can be a force for good on everything from the environment to people and our society. 

John Mesko (00:32):

This is the Resource Positive Agriculture Podcast, and I’m John Mesko, your host. A really exciting conversation today. My guest is Natalie Nesburg, who is the Potato Sustainability Alliance Data Specialist. Welcome, Natalie.

Natalie Nesburg (00:46):

Hi, John. Thanks for having me.

John Mesko (00:49):

We are excited to get into this today. Natalie, thank you for your energy around this topic. We’ve been talking, and you and I have, for a while now, been talking about doing a book review or having some kind of conversation around books. We are both readers, and we have been sharing with each other some of our favorites. And so this is an opportunity for us to share with the rest of our resource positive agriculture community some of the things that we’re reading and learning about and thinking about. And the book that we’ve chosen to discuss on our first book discussion podcast is called Healing Grounds: Climate, Justice, and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming. And it’s written by Liz Carlisle. I actually am somewhat familiar with Liz. I worked with her in the past, a number of years ago. She was one of the speakers at a conference that I put on in a previous position in my career.

(01:58):

Liz has a very diverse and very broad background in agriculture, a little bit like Natalie. She comes from a non-ag background and has been learning about and studying and writing about and conversing about agriculture and its impacts on the environment and vice versa for quite a while now. So this is a really, really fun topic to get into, and we’re looking forward to it. But even before we get into the details, Natalie, why don’t we discuss a little bit about why we would have a book conversation? Why would we want to get into sharing with the folks that are listening to our interest in this book or any other book for that matter?

Natalie Nesburg (02:51):

Yeah, I think we’re really lucky in our positions to work with a lot of expertise in our industry on sustainability. People who are at the top of their fields working every day with issues of sustainability. So we’re sort of in this bubble and I think books offer another medium that can be used to add to or offer a new perspective on the topics that we work with every day. So I just consider it a new opportunity to learn more, and I think I definitely absorb more knowledge when I read. It’s my favorite medium, as you said, so I’ll find any excuse to talk to someone about a book. So I’m really excited to talk today about this book.

John Mesko (03:34):

Well, I agree with you. And so much of what we do at work is deep in the weeds. We’re working on the details. We’ll talk a little bit about some of those issues today. A book can take us out of that. A book can take us out of that focus on the daily issues of the workplace or the daily issues of the topic that is, in our case, potato sustainability, and shine a light on a different perspective or from a different perspective. I think of books as a source of ideas, and this book has a lot of great ideas. I feel like some of the things that are important to keep in mind as I talk about this is this is food for thought. PSA’s not going to endorse… I’m not endorsing this book at all, but it is a really interesting narrative, and it brings up some topics and connects some things that we don’t typically think about, or I haven’t at least.

(04:45):

It’s food for thought. And I think of it almost like an all-you-can-eat buffet. When you walk through the buffet, some food items are appealing and you tend to maybe take a little more of them. Other food items may not be your favorite, and so you may avoid them altogether or just sample them a little bit, leave them for others to consume. And so I think it’s the same way with ideas. Some of these things will be the main dishes. Some of these things will become things that you and I and others find really valuable and really enjoy and take on some of those things and inculcate those things into our work, into our lives. Others will be more side dishes and will just take as it appeals to us at the time.

Natalie Nesburg (05:37):

Yeah, I think this book has a lot of history and a lot of science into the origins of what we now today call regenerative agriculture. It’s essentially a collection of Indigenous, Black, Latinx, and Asian soil stewardship stories that illustrate the diverse origins of some of the practices that we see at the forefront of terms that we’re using in sustainability like regenerative and organic. So I think it is really important to note that and note that we’re not looking to speak for these perspectives, but to reflect on where we see their influences in the terms that we use when we say regenerative or organic and how we see the terms in our program work and what we can use what we’ve learned as we continue to grow.

John Mesko (06:23):

Well, I really like you pulling that perspective out. The title of this podcast is the Resource Positive Agriculture Podcast. And one of the things we talk about regularly here is really boiling down or trying not to get stuck on any one term or description of a set of farming practices that brings about a desired outcome. I mean, we talk about sustainable farming or sustainability, we talk about regenerative practices, we talk about climate-smart agriculture now is now being thought of as a new kind of category for how to farm. We used to have organic, and now we have regenerative organic. So the terms are actually being combined, which is kind of interesting. I mean, this is one of the things that jumped out at me, my first impression reading this, is that we really, as humans, like to boil things down into straightforward, isolated categories. But nature is a system. Nature’s a whole system that operates together.

(07:45):

We talk about cover crops or we talk about water quality or we talk about organic production or we talk about biodiversity or any of these issue areas or specific practices, no-till, or whatever the case may be. And we talk about them as individual isolated components because we have to. It’s the best way to understand them. But oftentimes, I think we lose sight of how all of this is really part of a system.

(08:17):

And I think this book brings that out more because it extends beyond the biological, ecological system and talks about how human beings are part of that system, and the way we think about agriculture, the way we think about food, to your point earlier, I think that looking at this system with our own experiences and backgrounds as part of it is an important component of talking about resource positive agriculture.

Natalie Nesburg (08:55):

Yeah, I think that’s something that stood out to me as well is sort of the philosophy of looking at regenerative agriculture as the full, interconnected system as opposed to discreet, isolated practices. And there was a quote that I liked from the book and highlighted, which was that “These farmers and scientists understood regenerative agriculture not as a menu of discrete isolated practices from which one could pick and choose and then tally up into a sustainability score. Rather, they saw regenerative agriculture as their ancestors had, as a way of life.” So I think that full picture perspective is really important to keep in mind.

(09:34):

I know, as you said in my role, I can definitely get in the weeds as we have a grower self-assessment survey and work with other KPIs to try and tell the sustainability story. But that’s one thing I like about our role is that we do get to incorporate other program elements that help tell more of that full sustainability story, including grower stories on our website or having dedicated working groups focus on areas where narrow measures might not encompass the full picture. So we have a water team that’s working to define water stewardship in a way that accounts for regional variability of resources and other areas of communication where we can help close that cycle amidst having sustainability scores that can be used to support that full narrative.

John Mesko (10:28):

Absolutely. Of course, the scores that we come up with, there’s nothing wrong with doing that, but I think one of the things that this book highlighted for me is that can’t be all that we talk about. That can’t be the end of it. It’s an important component in agriculture. More and more we see the supply chain looking for a metric that they can use to report to investors and consumers about how food products or consumer goods in general are being produced and the impact of that production and those practices on the environment. Very important. Very important to calculate a metric. But what I found interesting, and this is something you pointed out to me as a real interesting piece, was that when we expand our thoughts to look beyond just North American English-speaking kinds of terminologies around agriculture, like we’ve been saying regenerative or climate-smart or whatever the case may be, there are other languages that use words that in some ways bring in this systematic or some of the human dimension into this.

Natalie Nesburg (11:43):

Yeah. So one thing the book did really well was sort of highlight or note that it’s important to be mindful of the language that we use because it can impact how we manage our lands, especially when you’re focusing on the actual relationships between plants and the soil and the numerous types of relationships in an ecosystem. So the book had really good examples from Japanese, Spanish, and Anishinaabe, which talked about terms that are used within those cultures to reconnect to the full picture of where your food comes from and appreciate where it comes from. And it’s not that we don’t have the vocabulary to do that, it’s just not something that is instilled from the start, where it was interesting to learn about some terminology that is available to sort of help interpret and make those connections from the start in these other languages.

John Mesko (12:47):

As we were talking earlier, getting ready to record this podcast, I’m not going to make any attempts at pronouncing these words, but there was one particular word from the Japanese language that I thought was really interesting where it describes an approach to food and gives a cultural perspective that teaches people that the whole system is connected to the core life force that makes you. So, again, we are a part of that system that includes carbon atoms and bacteria and organic matter and nitrogen and all of those aspects, but it includes human beings as well.

Natalie Nesburg (13:32):

Yeah, I think language is very important because it sort of shapes our ability to interpret, be able to understand and communicate some of these concepts where we see now, as we sort of talked about earlier, there is a range and a morphing of some of these terms, where regenerative and organic are being combined, where having access to those terms is a benefit, but it can also add confusion to understanding the full picture when you do have all these little components that you can focus in on. So it sort of goes both ways, but it’s very interesting to think about, especially as we look to communicate a sustainability story.

John Mesko (14:16):

I agree. I thought it was really important to highlight this here as well. But another thing that came out in this book, and I think maybe is worth a little bit of time in our discussion, I guess maybe back up just a second. For those of you that don’t know Natalie or don’t know me and haven’t been around PSA and haven’t seen us maybe present at conferences or whatever, we are from different generations. Let’s just put it that way. I grew up on a farm in the sixties and seventies, to put it in perspective for folks, and have been around agriculture my entire life. My career has been in agriculture, I’ve been a farmer. I have really immersed myself in agriculture, through and through, completely.

(15:09):

I had somebody ask me one time when I was farming… I was doing something on the farm. I don’t remember what it was now. But they said, “How did you know to do that that way?” And I couldn’t answer the question because no one ever taught me. I don’t ever remember learning it. The process or procedure we were talking about, was something that was just part of me from my very, very beginning of life. Because again, I was born and raised on a farm, and that’s been my whole existence. Natalie is relatively new to agriculture. Maybe Natalie, some of the things that you read in this book and we talked about, had this generational question highlighted as well. Maybe you could talk a little bit about that.

Natalie Nesburg (15:53):

Yeah, I think one thing that this book did really well for me was sort of put into words a lot of my passion or desire around agriculture, where they mention a lot of times that there’s a belief that it’s a fundamental human desire to be connected to where our food comes from. And that rings true for me because, as John said, I don’t come from an agricultural background. I don’t have family members who used to farm, as far as I know. And my educational background is in environmental science with a concentration in water resources. So I always thought I’d be in a canoe taking water samples or doing aquifer testing. But I think life has a plan, and I ended up working on a small nonprofit community farm where the goal was to teach people where their food comes from and how to grow their own food.

(16:48):

So I think that was an incredible learning process, but it did spark an incredible amount of passion for me and sort of revelation-level type of moments where it’s like, this is really important, and this is sort of a core of a lot of our beings that isn’t like as talked about as well. Because before, I didn’t know a lot about it or everything that went into it, and then all of a sudden I was the one planting and growing and harvesting and giving the produce away and teaching people how to grow their own food. So it was really a learning journey. But I am glad that I am where I am now.

John Mesko (17:25):

Well, I think it’s a great point that you bring up, Natalie. For a good bit of my career, maybe half of my career or more, I have been working in different ways to better understand how farmers make choices, how they choose to buy a product or how they choose to change a practice on their farm, or how they choose how much to spend on an acre of land or a particular seed product or a piece of equipment. It’s a big topic of conversation within agriculture because, of course, everybody would love to understand that more perfectly. It’d make a lot of folks’ jobs in the agricultural industry much easier if they fully understood that. I’m not going to get into the full spate of difficulties in getting that understanding, but we talk a lot about it. It involves education, knowledge, and helping people be informed about a new product or a new technology, or a new practice. Certainly, that’s part of it.

(18:26):

Part of it also may be the long-range goals that the farm has on the land or in the business, those sorts of things. There are a number of factors that go into how a farm grows and develops or how a farmer makes decisions. But another one that nobody can really put in a box because it just simply takes time, and that’s the generational change, the generational change from one farming generation to the next. And my observation, and it’s just my observation, is that the generation of folks that Natalie is in, your generation, Natalie, probably has the potential and may actually impact or influence more change in agriculture than any other generation previously. The kinds of things that you found interesting, the kinds of things that drew you into agriculture, the connection to food being a huge part of that, that’s unique to you in some respects, but I’ve run into many, and I’m sure you have too, people of your generation that that resonates, that has value, and that’s going to be coming through in the coming years, in my opinion. Your thoughts.

Natalie Nesburg (19:44):

Yeah, I completely agree. I think that there’s a lot more communication around the topic of sustainable agriculture and focus on where our food comes from. So it’s definitely an emerging topic that consumers are starting to think about more too, which is connected back to the communication of sustainability and why it’s become big in the industry as well, is that consumers are starting to care. And I think that is sparking a passion for people who don’t have a background in agriculture to start getting involved and learning more about where their food comes from.

John Mesko (20:23):

Absolutely. And I think that you’re a great representative of that perspective, and it’s very important for you and others to be open and share some of those perspectives. Because, certainly, as we were saying at the beginning of the call, it’s easy for people, myself included, to kind of get in a rut or to get into a thought process that is just, today’s going to be just like yesterday. I’m going to continue to do the same kinds of things. And we certainly need to be not only open to but accepting and incorporating new ideas and thoughts and information as we go. So this is very, very important, I believe, to the future of agriculture, and really tying back to what we call this podcast, the Resource Positive Agriculture Podcast.

(21:16):

When we say resource, we’re talking about all of the things that we deal with in sustainability, soil, water, air plants, organic matter, and all those good things. We’re also talking about people, talking about people, their histories, their stories, their motivations, the things that they’ve learned, the things that they haven’t learned. Those are all resources that go into agriculture and the production of food and how we think about it and how we distribute it to our world. And so when we move resources, all resources, forward in a positive manner, we’re going to have good outcomes for agriculture.

Natalie Nesburg (21:55):

Yeah, I agree.

John Mesko (21:57):

All right. Is there anything else, Natalie, that strikes you that we want to leave folks with as part of this conversation?

Natalie Nesburg (22:05):

I think, just reiterating again, the sort of full picture of agriculture that we work with every day, whereas as an organization, we do need to get into some of the specifics of each focus area to be able to communicate that. But I think one thing that I know I’m always thinking of and that you always have to think of is how all these components are interconnected, and they work to help each other, and how we can continue to communicate that and tell that story is really important.

John Mesko (22:40):

Well, I agree, and that’s what makes my job, working with PSA and working in agricultural sustainability, it’s what makes it interesting and exciting because the work that we do is expanding in its scope. It’s expanding in its importance. It’s expanding in its relevance to farmers and consumers and really everybody. So agriculture is becoming a super fun topic to be working on, and this conversation fits right in with that. So thank you, Natalie, for joining me on the podcast today.

Natalie Nesburg (23:17):

Yeah, thanks for having me and talking about books.

John Mesko (23:20):

We’ll have to do another one. I’m looking forward to it. But this one, the book we’ve been discussing today is from author Liz Carlisle. It’s called Healing Grounds: Climate, Justice, and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. And if you have a book suggestion that you would like to pass on to us, we’d be interested in hearing what the folks who listen to this podcast, hearing what you’re reading, and what you find interesting, send it our way. You can reach me at mesko@potatosustainability.org. You can reach Natalie at natalie@potatosustainability.org, and we’d love to hear from you. So thank you. This is John Mesko and the Resource Positive Agriculture Podcast. 

Voiceover (24:11):

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