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"Charles Massy has written a definitive masterpiece that takes its place along with the writings of Aldo Leopold, Wendell Berry, Masanobu Fukuoka, Humberto Maturana, and Michael Pollan. No work has more brilliantly defined regenerative agriculture and the breadth of its restorative impact upon human health, biodiversity, climate, and ecological intelligence."-Paul Hawken
In Call of the Reed Warbler, Charles Massy explores regenerative agriculture and the vital connection between our soil and our health.
It is the story of how a grassroots revolution-a true underground insurgency-can save the planet, help reduce and reverse climate change, and build healthy people and healthy communities, pivoting significantly on our relationship with growing and consuming food.
Using his personal experience as a touchstone-from an unknowing, chemical-using farmer with dead soils to a radical ecologist farmer carefully regenerating a 2000-hectare property to a state of natural health-Massy tells the real story behind industrial agriculture and the global profit-obsessed corporations driving it. With evocative stories, he shows how other innovative and courageous farmers are finding a new way.
At stake is not only a revolution in human health and in our communities, but the very survival of the planet. For farmers, backyard gardeners, food buyers, health workers, policy makers, and public leaders alike, Call of the Reed Warbler offers a tangible path forward and a powerful and moving paean of hope.
It's not too late to regenerate the earth. Call of the Reed Warbler shows the way forward for the future of our food supply, our planet, and our health.
"Part lyrical nature writing, part storytelling, part solid scientific evidence, part scholarly research, part memoir, [this] book is an elegant manifesto, an urgent call to stop trashing the Earth and start healing it."-The Guardian "In the last few decades, a growing movement toward pesticide and GMO-free farming practices has been blossoming throughout the world as a counterbalance to corporate-driven agribusinesses. Piggybacking on terms like sustainability and permaculture, veteran sheepherder and author Massy refers to these environmentally friendly methods as "regenerative agriculture," and he offers inspiring testimony here on how he and many of his fellow food-growing Australians have transformed their farmlands by respecting the native ecosystems that surround them. In three richly informative sections, Massy recounts the background story of how aboriginal sustainable land use eventually gave way to what he calls mechanical agriculture practices; demonstrates how balancing five landscape functions, such as solar energy and water cycles, can revitalize the soil; and gives abundant examples of Aussie farmers, including himself, using these practices with great success….[Massy's] message about the dire need for sustainability is one that all readers concerned about food and the environment should closely heed."-Booklist
"An Australian sheepherder and range specialist looks at his home's biotic communities and how to improve their health with a more thoughtful kind of agriculture. Arachnophobes take note: There's a reason you want to see a lot of spiders in the tall grass, for, as Massy (Breaking the Sheep's Back, 2011, etc.) instructs, it means that good things are happening. 'To sustain millions of spiders,' he writes, 'there must be a corresponding diversity in the food chain, and healthy landscape function above and below ground.' Such a healthy landscape, argues the author in considerable detail, cannot come about through what he calls the 'more-on' approach to agriculture, piling chemicals atop increasingly unproductive soil, but instead is the result of a 'regenerative' agriculture that necessarily happens at a small scale. The larger scale is what modern agronomists insist is needed in order to feed a growing world population, but at a co
In Call of the Reed Warbler, Charles Massy explores regenerative agriculture and the vital connection between our soil and our health.
It is the story of how a grassroots revolution-a true underground insurgency-can save the planet, help reduce and reverse climate change, and build healthy people and healthy communities, pivoting significantly on our relationship with growing and consuming food.
Using his personal experience as a touchstone-from an unknowing, chemical-using farmer with dead soils to a radical ecologist farmer carefully regenerating a 2000-hectare property to a state of natural health-Massy tells the real story behind industrial agriculture and the global profit-obsessed corporations driving it. With evocative stories, he shows how other innovative and courageous farmers are finding a new way.
At stake is not only a revolution in human health and in our communities, but the very survival of the planet. For farmers, backyard gardeners, food buyers, health workers, policy makers, and public leaders alike, Call of the Reed Warbler offers a tangible path forward and a powerful and moving paean of hope.
It's not too late to regenerate the earth. Call of the Reed Warbler shows the way forward for the future of our food supply, our planet, and our health.
"Part lyrical nature writing, part storytelling, part solid scientific evidence, part scholarly research, part memoir, [this] book is an elegant manifesto, an urgent call to stop trashing the Earth and start healing it."-The Guardian "In the last few decades, a growing movement toward pesticide and GMO-free farming practices has been blossoming throughout the world as a counterbalance to corporate-driven agribusinesses. Piggybacking on terms like sustainability and permaculture, veteran sheepherder and author Massy refers to these environmentally friendly methods as "regenerative agriculture," and he offers inspiring testimony here on how he and many of his fellow food-growing Australians have transformed their farmlands by respecting the native ecosystems that surround them. In three richly informative sections, Massy recounts the background story of how aboriginal sustainable land use eventually gave way to what he calls mechanical agriculture practices; demonstrates how balancing five landscape functions, such as solar energy and water cycles, can revitalize the soil; and gives abundant examples of Aussie farmers, including himself, using these practices with great success….[Massy's] message about the dire need for sustainability is one that all readers concerned about food and the environment should closely heed."-Booklist
"An Australian sheepherder and range specialist looks at his home's biotic communities and how to improve their health with a more thoughtful kind of agriculture. Arachnophobes take note: There's a reason you want to see a lot of spiders in the tall grass, for, as Massy (Breaking the Sheep's Back, 2011, etc.) instructs, it means that good things are happening. 'To sustain millions of spiders,' he writes, 'there must be a corresponding diversity in the food chain, and healthy landscape function above and below ground.' Such a healthy landscape, argues the author in considerable detail, cannot come about through what he calls the 'more-on' approach to agriculture, piling chemicals atop increasingly unproductive soil, but instead is the result of a 'regenerative' agriculture that necessarily happens at a small scale. The larger scale is what modern agronomists insist is needed in order to feed a growing world population, but at a co