Soil Is Everything: John & Molly Chester’s Biggest Little Farm

Biodiversity. Regenerative agriculture. Ecological sustainability. Carbon drawdown. Climate change reversal. These are popular themes that recur regularly on this show. But in practical terms, what do they actually mean? I wanted to better understand these subjects. Not from the perspective of an academic, scientific researcher or political pundit but rather from the direct experience of actual practitioners — people who live and practice it every single day — farmers. Nine years ago, personal chef Molly Chester and her filmmaker husband John Chester traded their life in urban Santa Monica for 200 acres of infertile land nestled in the foothills of Ventura County — an arid and desolate plot called Apricot Lane Farms. Hence began a journey to build a new life from scratch. The vision? An organic, biodiverse farm based upon regenerative principles, thriving in harmony with nature. It began with repairing the draught-laden, nutrient deplete soil, followed by planting 10,000 orchard trees. Rooting over 200 crops. Introducing a myriad of animals. Managing the chaos that ensued. And patiently stewarding the farm from inert to irascible and ultimately into what it is today — an awe-inspiring symphonic ecosystem in vibrant, sustainable co-existence with nature’s rhythms. Along the way, John chronicled every daunting, obstacle-fraught step, plying his storytelling skills and masterful wildlife cinematography to produce The Biggest Little Farm — an extraordinary documentary that evidences the planet's innate power to heal itself in synchronous partnership with humans devoted to restoring its precious biodiversity. Uplifting and wildly entertaining, it dispenses with the dystopia common among ecological fare, instead leaving audiences uplifted — and in love with the hard-earned possibility of positive change. I was quite moved by this film. Compelled to know more, me and my team spent a day touring Apricot Lane — an educational and eye-opening experience that left me with a deep appreciation for the Chester’s achievement — and the nuanced complexity of their mission. In the wake of my visit to Apricot Lane, I posted images from the experience on Instagram, accompanied by an expression of gratitude and respect for manifesting what environmentalists unanimously urge mandatory to repair the rapidly vanishing biodiversity of our precious soil (literally the planet's microbiome). To sequester carbon and create sustainable food security. And to serve as a viable model for the future of farming. John and Molly didn't just protest climate change. They got to work, taking an action-based stand against the glyphosate-laden, chemical-based industrial, conglomerate owned, seed-controlled, GMO-infused, animal intensive CAFO factory farms that monopolize our current food system to the great demise of human, animal and ecological health. More than anything, Apricot Lane proves that regenerative farming isn't just possible, but profitable. And that it doesn't just work, but exceeds conventional methods by yield volume and nutritional density metrics. Meanwhile, it controverts planetary warming by drawing down carbon and building long-term, natural resilience against pestilence, drought and soil erosion without the products and practices ‘BigAg' wants you to believe are mandatory. ... Enjoy! Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Speaker 01

  For me, this film is a love story, and it reflects the love of this farm and this piece of nature that we've experienced. And so I would love if people walk away inspired to begin to create that connection in some very small way for themselves.

• 1:23Speaker 02

  And I would say that no political or religious side owns the conversation around the planet. I would say all of us innately know that we are dependent upon the finite natural resources of this life-giving blue marble floating through space. And allow yourselves to be made fun of for desiring a vulnerable reconnection back to nature. And when someone tries to bring up the ideas or the conversation around economics, or practicality, or logic, stay focused on that reconnection.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  Because I feel ultimately what we're all starving from starts with that reconnection to nature, and then from there, to each other.

• 2:14Rich Roll?

  That's Molly and John Chester, this week, on the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:30Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. How goes it? What's happening? Rich Roll here, your host. So about a month ago, I watched this documentary called The Biggest Little Farm. It's the story of this couple, Molly and John Chester, who have this dream of owning a farm, not just any farm, not just an organic farm, but a farm based on regenerative principles, run, conducted in alignment with nature. No pesticides, no GMOs, no chemical fertilizers. And what unfolds over the period of watching this movie is the incredible and very hard-wrought

• 3:10Rich Roll?

  eight-plus-year journey that they undertake to transform this 200-acre plot of what is essentially completely desolate land and turn it into a thriving biodiverse ecosystem. And I was very moved by this story. It's beautifully shot and chronicled. It's emotional. It's educational. It's super entertaining. It's just beautiful. And it left me wanting to know more, not just about Molly and John and this farm. It's called Apricot Lane. It's about 30 minutes away from my home. But also to learn more about many of the issues and themes that recur on this show. How a regenerative farm actually works, how you

• 3:54Rich Roll?

  actually create, foster, and maintain biodiverse soil, what is entailed in sequestering carbon, and how difficult and complex and nuanced it all is, not from the perspective of a doctor or an academic or a scientific researcher, but from an actual practitioner, somebody who lives it up close and very personal every single day. So a few weeks ago, me and my team, including Joy and Nick from Joy Cafe, the vegan restaurant in which I'm a partner, we spent the better part of essentially an entire day touring the farm with John. And I gotta say, the experience exceeded all expectations. It was

• 4:39Rich Roll?

  incredible. It was eye-opening. It was inspiring. And then we followed it up with this conversation. And I can tell you that I learned a lot, and I'm better for having spent time with these people and their team. I've got quite a few very important prefatory remarks I want to say about all of this before we dive in, mainly because I know there are some hardcore vegans out there who were upset with my decision to visit this farm, and I want to address it. But first, let's take care of some business.

• 5:16Rich Roll?

  Okay, so, some of you may know that after visiting the farm, I posted a few pictures on Instagram from the experience, along with a caption explaining how much I learned, how much I enjoyed the experience, and how much respect the work that John and Molly and their team have done to do what so many said was impossible. To accomplish, basically, everything that environmentalists and health advocates unanimously urge must be done to improve our food system, and repair the rapidly vanishing biodiversity of our precious soil, the planet's lifeblood, to create food security, and sequester atmospheric

• 6:00Rich Roll?

  carbon by pivoting away from the glyphosate-laden, chemical-based, industrial, conglomerate-owned, animal-intensive, CAFO factory farms that dominate our current system, to the demise of human, animal, and ecological health. And returning to regenerative principles, natural rhythms, and perhaps most importantly, to serve as an example that sustainable practices not only work, but work better than conventional methods by increasing yields, producing more nutritionally-dense fruits and vegetables, drawing down carbon, and building resilience against things like water and soil erosion.

• 6:43Rich Roll?

  And the thing is, if you want to support practical solutions to climate change, these are critical and proof positive practices that several past podcast favorites, people like Zach Bush through his Farmer's Footprint Organization, and like Paul Hawken through his Project Drawdown, David Bronner through Climate Collaborative, and also like next week's guest Ryland Inglehart through Kiss the Ground, all vegans by the way, stridently and passionately, these are people who advocate that this is one of the most important movements that we must embrace if we want to solve climate change, and not just maintain, but rebuild and secure the planet's beautiful, robust biodiversity.

• 7:25Rich Roll?

  In any event, that Instagram post was mostly well received, but was also met with a very loud, and I think it's fair to say angry, response by certain strident members of the vegan community, expressing disappointment, betrayal, and even calls to cancel me because apricot farms, albeit predominantly an agricultural farm that produces an incredibly wide variety of organic fruits and vegetables, also makes use of some animals, pigs, chickens, sheep, cattle, as part of the soil regeneration process, and that a small number of these animals are later sold for food.

• 8:05Rich Roll?

  So let me first say this, I get it, I hear you, I understand the response, and I appreciate and deeply respect your passion. I consider myself a compassionate vegan. I don't like the idea one bit that any animal is slaughtered, no matter how it's slaughtered, and no matter how much it was loved and cared for during its life. I made the choice to not participate in that cycle over 12 years ago, and...

• 8:33Rich Roll?

  I would like to think that if I was John or Molly, that I wouldn't make that choice, but I'm not them. I'm not a farmer. And although, yes, I am of course aware that there are veganic farms, I can't say I truly understand the difficult realities of actually running a farm day to day. What I do know is that as much as we would like to believe that these issues are binary, they are not. Nothing is truly black and white. And if your perspective is that you cannot, or you refuse to learn from somebody who has different ideas than you, that has an experience-based perspective that differs from yours, then

• 9:15Rich Roll?

  that's your loss. So I refuse to stand in judgment of these people. In fact, I have great empathy for them. People who are not keyboard warriors, standing on principle without action, or criticizing without doing. But instead, people on the front lines, who are actually living in the solution of climate change reversal every day. On the black and white issue, as I said, I consider myself vegan. Maybe not vegan enough for some of you, but vegan nonetheless. But also somebody whose allegiance is to truth over dogma. And the truth is that no matter how vegan you are, none of us, none of us are exempt or immune from harm or negative impact. If all you eat are fruits and vegetables, that's

• 9:57Rich Roll?

  great, but don't delude yourself that your lifestyle is entirely cruelty-free, because harvesting produce results in countless animals, rodents most predominantly, having to be killed. If you're procuring your produce from a conventional farm, you're not only participating in that cycle, but also contributing to soil depletion by way of monocropping, to the pollution of the water table by way of chemical pesticides, and a whole litany of other harms. My point is rather simple. None of us, none of us are holier than thou. And that we can all do better, be better, I certainly can. But to do that, we must choose to learn from those who know more about these issues than we do. And most importantly,

• 10:41Rich Roll?

  have empathy and respect for people who might not align perfectly with your perspective. But also have something valuable, maybe even critical, for us to hear and learn from.

• 10:53Speaker 02

  A central tenet of veganism is compassion, not just for the animals, but for each other. So, let's all try to practice that a little bit better. Because what the world needs now more than ever is empathy, surely for the animals, but also for each other. This is me, and Molly, and John Chester.

• 11:21Rich Roll?

  Well, I'm delighted to have you guys here. I love the movie. I think it's quite an accomplishment. It's such a beautiful, amazing story about so many subjects and themes that are central to this show, from environmentalism, to creativity, to balance, to overcoming obstacles. Like, it's all packed into this really finely honed and really fantastic story. So, first of all, congratulations. It's quite an achievement.

• 11:52Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 11:53Rich Roll?

  I don't know what is more of an achievement, the movie or the farm? Probably you'd say the farm, but I think they're both, you know, quite up there.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  Thank you very much.

• 12:02Rich Roll?

  How do you think about it? Because now you've had some perspective, it came out in May, and it's been a minute.

• 12:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, the film was predominantly carried by John, and so you'd have to say which was harder, because for me, definitely the time that John was crafting the film was a difficult time, because we had still the full breadth of the farm and that.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, the fact that we're still married is probably the crowning achievement.

• 12:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I can imagine. Just the sheer stress.

• 12:33Speaker 01

  And a three-year-old at that time, or two-year-old, or whatever. He's four now.

• 12:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, but I would, you know, so for me, the farm was something that I was more on the inside of, but for you, which was harder?

• 12:45Speaker 02

  I can't even pick. I mean, I think it all was. I think the meaning behind the pain that we were feeling was driven by the farm more than anything else.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 12:56Speaker 02

  I think the farm is like, the farm is the child you're raising that you'll do anything for, you know? And I think that's probably the greatest crowning achievement.

• 13:06Rich Roll?

  Well, the movie chronicles basically an eight-year period from like 2011 to essentially present. But from what I understand, you didn't actually make the decision, although you'd been documenting everything all along, you didn't actually make the decision to move forward with a full-fledged documentary until you were at like year five, right?

• 13:29Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah, it was, I never wanted to admit it to anyone else or to myself because I wasn't even sure if the farm was going to work and nor did I want to get trapped in this idea of making a story about, you know, a husband and wife team, sort of fish out of water story that I feel like had been told of people moving from the big city to. I wanted to tell like a deeper story about nature and this interconnectedness and these mutualistic relationships, but I didn't know as a storyteller really who the players were. But by year five, it became very evident which, you know, which animals, which elements of biodiversity were actually balancing our farm against these epidemics of pests and disease. And then I was like, wow, I've actually inadvertently been shooting a lot of these

• 14:14Speaker 02

  keystone players. That's the story I want to tell. And I spent the next three years really, really focused on making it as cinematic as possible so that it was worthy of, you know, a film.

• 14:26Rich Roll?

  And there's this moment where you have this realization that you're actually one of the antagonists.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. Right. I didn't realize that until a couple edits in telling the film during the editing process and I was sitting there and I didn't include my skepticism. Is that what you're talking about?

• 14:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 14:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I realized.

• 14:46Rich Roll?

  You thought you were all in.

• 14:47Speaker 02

  I thought it was, yeah.

• 14:48Rich Roll?

  So I started reviewing the footage.

• 14:49Speaker 02

  I was so excited to be able to present this film where I was like this great idea, this idealist like my wife and who was so optimistic and the truth is, is that I was, you know, both, but I was also very skeptic and scared. And so I was constantly questioning whether or not I was going to be let down and be told at some point that Santa isn't real.

• 15:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 15:08Speaker 02

  So I put that in the film.

• 15:10Rich Roll?

  The hero, I mean, who do you think is the hero in the movie? Is it nature? Is it soil? I mean, there's a, there's a, there's a beautiful, you know, humility to the whole thing and this theme of. Of arriving at this place where you realize like you can't, you can't conquer this thing. You have to collaborate with it. You have to like be more in the allowing and kind of gracefully dance around its edges rather than trying to kind of harness it and, and force it to succumb to your will.

• 15:41Speaker 02

  You said it. I think the, for me personally, I think the hero is our humility within the admission of our vulnerability and need for nature. I think that was the part that was hardest to learn. And then nature can become a hero if you're willing to connect with it in that vulnerable way. And you know, where I'm from on the eastern shore of Maryland, you're kind of shamed out of that whole idea by being called a, you know, hippie or a tree hugger. So you don't get to go deep. But yeah, that's my personal, what's your?

• 16:12Rich Roll?

  What do you think?

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Um, as far as the hero, well, if I just look at it for just flatly and think I'm watching a film and what excites me. I mean, you really do, all of the characters of nature are what you celebrate and come through and pull it off. And so I would definitely say from the coyote to the ducks, I mean, the moment when the ducks unfold out of their coop and you see what their purpose is, you want to cheer. I did. And I got to just watch it because I wasn't editing it. So I had that experience of just wanting to cheer. So I would definitely say the nature characters.

• 16:48Rich Roll?

  Most, I mean, this is fundamentally, I mean, it's entertainment, it's educational, it is an environmental documentary. I think it's fair to characterize it in that way. But most environmental documentaries are very educational. There's a lot of talking heads. There's a lot of charts and statistics and research cited and expert testimony and the like. And you made a very conscious decision to not do any of that. So talk me through that a little bit.

• 17:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, you know, I grew up watching films about nature and I think what I have noticed in most documentary, a lot of times what happens is a byproduct of sort of taking a position as a storyteller is you create a polarization around the issue. And with the environment, what I feel like the missing, the missing element in the story of the ecosystem is one where we're not acknowledging that fear driving the conversation. We're not acknowledging the destructive pattern and response that both sides have to fear. One side gets mad and blames the other and the other side shuts down.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  And what we need is a culture of great curiosity, not confrontation. Because the missing element is this, is a society that is encouraging innovation. And that's what we've lost, is this innovative way in order to sort of interact with the ecosystem. And so I wanted to make sure I told the story that would open people up to the, to the, to the element of change that I experienced and that was, I fell in love with it, so I became more curious about it. And so, as a sort of a book that Wendell Berry wrote, called It All Turns on Affection.

• 18:44Speaker 02

  And I, and I think that, that that way into this conversation is so important. And so telling a story where there's experts and pointing fingers and assigning blame only does more to divide us in a time where we need great innovation and bipartisan buy-in. Yeah. What do you think, Molly?

• 19:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would agree, definitely. And to kind of bounce off of what you were saying about... Curiosity, we were just talking about that yesterday with children that this generation, because there's so much screen time, not that screen time is a bad thing in and of itself.

• 19:19Rich Roll?

  It might be.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, maybe so. But that it limits that ability to be curious because you just have a video image in your head of how to play, so you act that out rather than creating and having that spark of inspiration. So I do think that the film's curiosity can stimulate that in us and that feels naturally good to us.

• 19:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you fall in love with the process, you appreciate all the obstacles and, you know, what it actually takes to accomplish what you've accomplished without fear mongering and without, you know, playing the victim card, like the planet is the victim and we're bad and there's a lot of shaming and a lot of, you know, sort of dystopian narrative surrounding it, rather you fall in love with possibility and it's very hopeful in that regard.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah. What I liked, I spent time on the website for the movie today and what I didn't realize until this morning was that you have like these curriculums for kids, you can download these programs that basically, you know, take a classroom through an educational experience, you know, as a microcosm of what you guys have learned.

• 20:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that's a new thing that started with the film.

• 20:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, the impact campaign with the film was something we thought about before it even released and, you know, really giving teachers a chance to be able to sort of take some of the things that are introduced, ideas that are introduced and sort of turn them into lesson plans, but, you know, there's so much science behind every frame of the film, like you could, there's like a, there's a couple of scenes like between ants, aphids and ladybugs and it's like three seconds, but there's, there's a whole sort of lesson that creates a lens of understanding of how the entire ecosystem works, just in that. And so without getting too heady in the details with the film, you know, we've just, that's, that's all part of that impact campaign afterwards.

• 21:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Did you have to resist the temptation?

• 21:22Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh.

• 21:23Rich Roll?

  In making the movie to not, you know, dive into that? I mean, we were, when I, when we, when we did our visit the other week, I think I said to you something along the lines of like, well, in the movie, like it all, you know, you, you, you, you're. Very conscious of making sure that that everything you say and everything that you show is very grounded and relatable. But then in talking to you, you were going off on these crazy monologues. I was like, this guy's like, knowledge base is like 10,000 times what you would suspect by watching the movie alone.

• 21:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:55Rich Roll?

  Not to say that you dumbed yourself down, but you were like trying to make sure that that, you know, you were, you were, you weren't trying to impress people with how much you knew, you were just trying to create that like emotional and intellectual connection with the work.

• 22:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I felt there was a real, it was, it was hard at times because I was, yeah. Here's what I learned, though. We, for the eight years in leading, in doing this farm, we were touring people around the farm. Occasionally we would do tours. And regardless of what they believed about the environment, or whether they, you know, believed there was climate, climate change was related to human impact or not, how they felt about veganism, vegetarianism, or animals. There was this, well, this takeaway that a lot of them would say to me after the tour, and it broke my heart, but it's, it's, it was a lesson. And that was, they would say, wow, so it's all, it's all connected. And I'm like, we've not been meeting people where they are since the beginning of this conversation.

• 22:53Rich Roll?

  Because that's the fundamental core message of all of it.

• 22:57Speaker 02

  Right. But what does that look like? No one's ever been able to show, show an audience, in my opinion, what interdependent, interconnectedness is. We talk about it, we say words, but what is, what is this, what is this thing? And you needed to give it players and actors, and in a way mythologize it with things they can relate to. So rather than pick like an Asian citrus psyllid as a character, I pick an aphid, because people know what an aphid is, or rather than pick a tamarixia, which is, you know, sort of attacks the Asian citrus psyllid, I pick a ladybug. So it's, I was trying to discipline myself into using these keystone players in nature

• 23:42Speaker 02

  that people already know. And now I've got the Serengeti built, and I can go deeper and get into the science and get more into the details, but. I needed to meet people where they were, and that's not to say dumb it down, but that's to really just give people the chance to have it visualized.

• 23:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, and anthropomorphize the whole thing.

• 24:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, to, I mean, the biggest anthropomorphization I made was when I tried to claim that a rooster impregnated a pig. I apologize for that.

• 24:09Rich Roll?

  Which created a lot of confusion.

• 24:10Speaker 02

  If you're still explaining that, if you're still explaining that to your husband as to how that's not possible, and I will say, kids never ask me if that's possible. It's usually someone who is in their 40s or 50s. But yeah.

• 24:22Rich Roll?

  Who, yeah, and we won't spoil it for people that haven't seen the movie, but remember, remember what we just said when you watch it. Well, let's, I want to get into the broader environmental discussion and, you know, the themes of sustainability and regenerative ag and all the like, but let's, let's walk our way up to that. I mean, this whole thing really begins with you, Molly, and a dog named Todd. So let's, let's start at the beginning for people that haven't seen the movie to kind of contextualize everything.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  Sure, I, I was a private chef before a farmer. And the reason why I got into cooking in the first place was that I dealt with some different health issues in my twenties and started to make that connection about how what you eat really affects how you feel on the most fundamental level. And going deeper and deeper into that brought me to a love of food and culinary school. And there I learned about the fact that it wasn't actually even the choices you're making in the kitchen, although you can soak and sprout and ferment and do all of these things to increase the nutrient capacity there. But it's actually the choices the farmer makes because you have to start with nutrient dense food in the first place.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  So once I went there, I started cooking for clients from all of those different perspectives. And we started visiting farms to find farmers who were cooking in the way that were really treating that top 10 to 12 inches of soil. In the regenerative way to then allow the nutrition to be available to the plant. And once we found a few that were really great in the region, but we couldn't find someone who was doing really great eggs. And we started to say, what if we did really great eggs? And simultaneously, our dog was, had severe separation anxiety and we could not figure out what to do with this barking dog. So we thought that would solve that problem as well.

• 26:17Rich Roll?

  Right. Yeah, you're living in a, in a small, I don't know, like a one bedroom, two bedroom apartment in Santa Monica and you essentially get evicted because Todd won't stop barking.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 26:27Rich Roll?

  Right? Which kind of accelerates this whole thing. But where, when, what was the first, when, when was the first moment where you kind of looked at each other and said like, let's be farmers or?

• 26:38Speaker 02

  We had talked about it for a long time and we're telling everybody about it. And that was the thing we, we agreed on is that we weren't going to let people, because they would be like, what do you guys know about farming?

• 26:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:48Speaker 02

  Why, and we were just like, let's not let people like shame us out of this. We didn't know that word back then, to be honest. But we were like, let's just keep telling everybody. And so we would say it with a straight face. And then around the time that Todd got evicted, we had also, you know, met someone who was looking to invest in a farm, believe it or not, of this type and knew that the future of food was all about, you know, of creating nutrient density, right? And creating a regenerative ecological impact. And so it just was a weird thing because we were only thinking we'll go get five to 10 acres somewhere. And so that all happened in this, we were in disbelief for weeks after we had this conversation.

• 27:31Rich Roll?

  So this person that was interested in backing a farm like this, what convinced that person that you guys were a good bet? I mean, you're coming into this with like no experience, right? How did you tip that scale and make this person believe like, you know, we're the ones that you should get behind?

• 27:49Speaker 02

  We created a three-page document with pictures.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  Five-year plan that he still laughs about.

• 27:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, he still laughs about it. And we were like, and then we're going to do this and then we're going to do this. And I don't know. I mean, well, he really connected with Molly on the food part.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  There was a really, really deep fundamental connection about the importance of fats and the importance of proper farming and all of these things. So. From there, it grew outward and it really, back then, it was hard to find people who were in that same space.

• 28:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  So I think we saw there was something that was sparked there and the trust was able to build from there.

• 28:26Rich Roll?

  And then you set about trying to find a farm to buy or what did that look like?

• 28:30Speaker 01

  We had many arguments on the way.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, we had a breakdown on the side of the 101, not a car breakdown, but literally mental. We're like, what are we doing? Why are we doing this as we're going to meet our first real estate agent?

• 28:42Speaker 01

  No, you were saying that.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  What's that?

• 28:44Speaker 01

  You were doing the what are we doing and why are we doing that?

• 28:47Speaker 02

  No, no, oh, I'm sorry. I thought that was clear. That's always me. I'm trying to be the voice of reason. But yeah, and then, so we looked at several farms and then landed this one, this real estate agent kept telling us, you've got to see this one farm. It's like, I've been trying to sell this farm for 12 years. And we're like, that does not sound like a good farm. So we kept ignoring this offer to go see this place. And we finally just said, let's just go see this farm that Terry's talking about. And we drive up to the front gate and we look at each other and we're like.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  We have to make this happen.

• 29:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. We got to make it happen.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  It was like when you walk into a house you know you're going to buy. It was just that feeling was overwhelming and we thought we saw bees.

• 29:28Speaker 02

  We thought we saw bees and we were so, we didn't realize how dead the soil was. We didn't, we couldn't see, it just looked like Maryland back. I just, we hit it at a good time.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  Spring, rolling hills.

• 29:40Rich Roll?

  200 acres.

• 29:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And, and when I visited, I was amazed at how, I mean, desertified soil aside, like how much of the structures that I saw were there when you first visited? Cause it's, it's incredibly beautifully and well-appointed.

• 29:57Speaker 02

  It was an old.

• 29:58Rich Roll?

  From the gate, from, even from the gate, like everything about it is like really well-done, beautiful.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  The, it was originally, it was a lemon farm and they were breeding like thoroughbred racehorses there. So there was a whole nother agenda with this, with this place. The fortunate and unfortunate thing is it had been sitting on the market for so long and it was 2000, you know, coming out of 2009, right?

• 30:20Rich Roll?

  Right. And foreclosed on a couple of times.

• 30:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, and the previous owner was really looking to get rid of it. So there was just a sort of converging of sort of moments for us. But it was, the structures on it made it appealing for where it could go in 10, 15 years, but it definitely made no difference to how healthy the farm was going to be.

• 30:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  Right? So is it, like I say, old horse farm?

• 30:48Speaker 02

  Abused pastures and fences.

• 30:50Rich Roll?

  So you jump on this thing and I'm just like, what's the first day like? I mean, we didn't even say like, you're coming from a filmmaking background.

• 30:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:59Rich Roll?

  You worked on nature documentaries and all kinds of different, you know, sort of cinematic, animal, nature-based projects. But you're not coming from, you know, some kind of regenerative farming background, other than growing up on the eastern shore.

• 31:13Speaker 02

  On the eastern shore, yeah, where I thought, because I live near chicken farms and drove tractors on a couple of like corn farms that I knew farming, but I didn't know anything.

• 31:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 31:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know. Day one was like, wow, there's a lot of avocados. And I remember picking up a lot off the ground going like that was going to end? And I was like, oh, we have an endless supply of avocados. But the idea of like what we were really up against didn't come into focus until we really got Alan involved.

• 31:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. But I would say there was this feeling, almost like it only happens a couple of times in life where you literally feel so buzzily alive, like a dream just came true. You know, it's one of those moments.

• 31:55Rich Roll?

  This is your past.

• 31:55Speaker 01

  Yes. And I can even remember waking up, John couldn't be there yet because we had so many things that were still in irons in the fire because we didn't know this was going to happen. And I wake up and I'm sitting there and I'm like, oh, my gosh, this feels like a fantasy, almost like how the girl in those silly movies finds out she's a princess. It's like, I found out that I was a farmer.

• 32:21Speaker 01

  It felt so good and so alive. I can remember the calla lilies and the smells and still sometimes I'll smell a smell on the farm and it brings me back to that very first day. It's so good.

• 32:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, I mean, you maintain that level, at least by appearances from watching the movie, you maintain that level of enthusiasm pretty much throughout, which is kind of like, I look at it like you're this constant in that regard that, that, that John is always measuring himself up against. Yeah. In the sense that like, you're holding that, that place of like, hope and perhaps, you know, some mix of, of idealism and naivete.

• 32:59Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 32:59Rich Roll?

  But that's the strength that like John needs to kind of keep moving forward.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:04Rich Roll?

  Is that fair?

• 33:05Speaker 01

  Very fair. And I think, you know, in so many ways, John, I, I remember meeting John for the very first time and it was like when my life started, you know, it's like I needed his grounding to deepen that nature that is me. And without him, I was in culinary school, so I had to be away from him for a period of time. And I was up there and I can get so just like into what I'm doing that that's all I do. You know, I'll just, I was up there, I was learning about food. I'd do food on the weekend all the time. And one day I was like, man, I've lost my sparkle or something. Something's missing. And I was looking out the window and I remember thinking, oh, my sparkle is John. Like that's

• 33:49Speaker 01

  his, something about the energy that he brings to my space makes it come alive. So yes, there's idealism and a lot of naivete.

• 33:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  But his deepening makes me deep.

• 34:01Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah. You complement each other in that way, right? Well, there's that really fun montage early in the movie where you're like, we're gonna make tomatoes, I'm gonna do this, it's gonna be like that. That's real. This shouldn't even have been a cartoon. I just didn't have it. Which, I mean, I just, from that, I just take like, you know, an optimistic enthusiasm and perhaps, you know, some level of idealism. So you go into this whole thing with that idealistic streak of, we're gonna do this differently. We're not gonna use pesticides. We're not gonna use chemicals. We're gonna, we're gonna do this strictly in adherence with regenerative principles. Like what was the mission statement? And, you know, what was it like to try to hold that line as, you know, obstacles started getting thrown in your direction?

• 34:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, that one, I, I think that because of the food, there was, as for as idealistic as I can be, I can also be extremely stubborn. And in that sense, I did know where I wanted us to head. I knew, so when we had all of these older farmers telling us that we can't do what we're doing, or trying to like, tone it down a little bit, or whatever, none of that felt right. So the compass was locked from the beginning. And that's so helpful in any vision, you know, that you know, from a seed, you're not going to change from what your ideals are there. And then it gets complicated because we did have the ability

• 35:27Speaker 01

  to move quickly. And that makes you have so much opportunity, and nature is so much opportunity. And when you open Pandora's box, you're like, in the middle of that. And then that's when all hell breaks loose.

• 35:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah. How early on do you bring Alan into it? I mean, he, you know, in this kind of hero's journey, this like Joseph Campbell, you know, architecture, he's definitely like the Yoda.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. And he was, he felt like that.

• 35:54Speaker 02

  With a buddy, just like, a lot more cursing.

• 35:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 35:59Speaker 02

  You know? So that was like, pretty soon after we got there, Molly scoured the internet, but also got connected with, through the Demeter organization, which is biodynamic organization, that there was this great consultant named Alan York, who'd done all this work all over the world on vineyards, if we could, you know, convince him to kind of like, get involved with this project, because it wasn't a vineyard. And so it truly was like, another like, hero's journey thing, where he refuses the, the call, like, three times. He's like, you guys want nothing to do with this, you don't know what you're getting into, you have no idea how long it's going to take, you know? And Molly was her persistent hummingbird self, where she just kept coming back with the same enthusiasm, piercing. I would have

• 36:42Speaker 02

  been like, oh, well, this guy's a, you know, grouch, I don't want to deal with this. He doesn't believe in us. Let's find another way.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, and he was, he was amazing. There was definitely just this kindred nature. I have so many wonderful memories from the very beginning of

• 36:56Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  mapping things out. We mapped all of Block M out on this big piece of paper. We sat in the middle of the block that had no trees. It was all dust and colored it with, or drew it out with crayons and came back in and almost as an exercise colored the whole thing in with different shades and things. And I can't find it. I don't know what that thing is.

• 37:15Rich Roll?

  Oh, no.

• 37:16Speaker 01

  But there was so much with him that was simple. And I think that goes back to what we were talking about with John with filmmaking. Anytime something has got, gone through the whole process and come back to simple. It's like how you watch a figure skater and you're like, oh, I can do that because they make it look simple.

• 37:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  And he was there. So he would leave us every time he, he left with an outline of what he wanted from us. And it was something that we could do. And I just, that was like the Bible for me. I would go step by step through it to make sure we were on track. And at that point, we had no, we had some compass of our own, but not really. The level of depth of what he was talking about was for sure over our head to a certain degree until you experience it. But it was, it, it, him feeding it to us in the way he did. It's like a guru who only gives you what you know you can do.

• 38:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  But it set us to then finally find our own compass through living it out.

• 38:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, I, I, I think of him as coming in with these core tenets, which are basically like biodiversity is king and, you know, soil is everything, right? I mean, it kind of distills down to that. And then he throws these, you know, obscure sort of Zen Cohen-esque like sort of statements at you that confound you. But he is kind of that high watermark that you're, you're trying to like, live up to the standard that he set. And it's a thing that is, that is perhaps simple, but also very much not easy.

• 38:50Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh.

• 38:51Rich Roll?

  I mean, it's the, it becomes like the ultimate whack a mole situation.

• 38:55Speaker 02

  But not at first, you know, and the one other thing that he did that like spoke to me as a filmmaker, because they're, and I see it with you, you have a great aesthetic. And I see that that must motivate you and inspire you. And I think Alan would always say, regardless of the science of what we talk about, the most important thing is that we make it beautiful. Because the beauty is what is going to encourage you. You don't want to be here and look as deeply as you need to look into this to find these solutions. You need to create beauty. That cultivation is full of endless possibility. And I'm like, I can get down with that.

• 39:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 39:32Speaker 02

  And that was something that made it fun while trying to build essentially this immune system that was the science in the soil. And Alan was never shy about making that as important as anything else that we were to do.

• 39:47Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  And I can remember in the early days of Alan, John and Alan would be down on the ground, digging in the soil, looking at things. And I'm looking at the to do list like, guys, we gotta go. We have all this stuff to get done.

• 40:00Speaker 02

  But I was like, learning everything in that moment with him. He was teaching me everything.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  And that goes back to John being my dad. He was there digging in the dirt, going deeper and figuring it all, figuring out everything we needed to really go where we were going.

• 40:15Speaker 02

  Father would say, don't ask Alan so many questions about soil today. I'm like, but it's all about the soil.

• 40:22Speaker 02

  She's like, yeah, but then we talk about the soil all day long. And I'm like.

• 40:26Rich Roll?

  Well, I want to get into the soil. But before we do that, I think it would be prudent to get clarity on what it means to be a regenerative farm and what the differences are between regenerative principles versus an organic farm versus a biodynamic farm versus a conventional farm. Can you kind of break that down?

• 40:51Speaker 02

  I think I can break down three of those. I think biodynamic and regenerative can kind of be the same in a way. But so in like an industrialized monocrop farm, it's all about trying to grow high volume product for as cheaply as possible without any type of reverence for the nutrient density of the food and the health of the soil. So you end up creating this extractive method of farming that's just pulling and robbing, you know, the regenerative power of soil out in order to grow food cheap. But you get this, you know. Lesser tasting food that is lower in nutrient density.

• 41:31Rich Roll?

  How much, what is the difference in nutritional density between the produce that you grow versus a conventionally grown avocado or orange or peach or whatever?

• 41:41Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, it's hard to sort of put a one quantifying number, but like our eggs have, you know, three to five times the vitamin A, higher omega three to omega six ratio, higher lutein. So there is quantifiable nutrient analysis that would change farm to farm, soil to soil. And then those are all the things that go into helping us fight, you know, degenerative diseases, right? I'm not sure if I answered the question.

• 42:10Rich Roll?

  No, that answers it.

• 42:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's also challenging right now to research really anything with regards to food because one, it's conventional is pumping N, P, and K and other, another suite of nutrients into the trees.

• 42:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 42:25Speaker 01

  And those, so when you test, that's not where you're really going to be able to see it as clearly of what's different. But what you can certainly tell is that flavor comes from that difference. So when you eat an apple from a farm that's focused on regeneration, it has a depth of flavor that you can't get anywhere else.

• 42:51Rich Roll?

  We've been sold this story that in order to feed the planet and meet the demands of, you know, quickly rapidly exploding global population, that conventional practices are the only way to get it done, that we need to avail ourselves of the pesticides and sort of chemical laden fertilizers that are required to monocrop at scale. But the truth is something different altogether.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, so that narrative requires, first of all, that we are taking, we're taking for granted that this idea that there's a food shortage globally is the truth, and there's not. So that, that's not true. There may be food supply issues for certain countries, but those are usually politically related. We throw away, what, 30, 40% of the food in this country as, as UK.

• 43:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, food waste is, is, it's one of Paul Hawken's, you know, top contributors to.

• 43:50Rich Roll?

  Climate change.

• 43:51Speaker 02

  Absolutely. The methane that goes from, that burns off just from, you know, decomposing, improperly decomposing food and garbage dumps is, you know, outweighs sort of the climate issue with cows that we have. But I think the narratives around economics are also very short sighted in that like, okay, if we're looking for the profitability of a farm that's going to transition to regenerative practices in three years, maybe there's an argument. But at the same time, are we ignoring the dependency on the finite natural resources for which we grow food, feed a nation, create both biosecurity, national security,

• 44:32Speaker 02

  and deal directly with the public health issues related to food? Like, we are looking at this in completely the short sighted, wrong way. We're, you know, we've desertified what a third, or lost a third of our topsoil in the last 260 years, deforested 46% of the trees, and we're ignoring our dependency on healthy soil. So these narratives don't include the long game. Like, right here in Ventura County, we're not going to be growing food in Ventura County in 30 years. There's no, there's no, there's no water. Regeneration is not happening in that we're not capturing water, putting it back in the ground for future farmers to grow with, let alone all the topsoil that's washing

• 45:17Speaker 02

  out to the ocean every time we grow crops without using cover crop. So what is the economic viability of a people who can't feed their people? And I think that the conversation has to change around admitting to ourselves that we are dependent upon the finite natural resources that we have been unconsciously allowing to be destroyed.

• 45:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And it becomes a national security issue.

• 45:45Speaker 02

  Absolutely. You know, Germany posts the war. I mean, that was one of the big issues. They were cut off from their food supply. And, you know, China right now is realizing how incredibly dependent they are on outside food sources to where they're not allowing any land to be developed. They're saving it all for agriculture. You know, Ventura County has got an amazing, you know, rich valley for which to grow food, and 85% of it is shipped out of the county and 60% is shipped out of the country.

• 46:14Rich Roll?

  Right. What is the, how do you explain the difference between regenerative farm and an organic farm?

• 46:22Speaker 02

  So organic is, the organic requirement is that you can't use synthetically derived, you know, pesticides, herbicides, and you can't use synthetically derived fertilizers. So it, while it helps to not further destroy biodiversity, it doesn't take into consideration soil health at a fundamental level where you're really truly regenerating it, nor does it really take into consideration of the habitat restoration that needs to happen on farms for biodiversity to thrive and create an equilibrium. So it's a step. It's kind of like the Prius, you know, it's a step. It's a middle, middle of the road step. It took us a long time to accept organics.

• 47:06Speaker 02

  The cool thing about regeneration is that I think it's much more visually understandable for people because it really is now, you're creating a flywheel system that is in line and biologically mimicking the planet's natural ecosystem. You're creating a system that is prioritizing soil as, as king, the grand alchemizer of all death back into life, making it, those decaying plant and animal matter, making them available for future life. And once you get that pump started, you begin to realize the regenerative effects of biodiversity and topsoil and how we have all been able to live on this planet and what makes it so different than Mars and the moon.

• 47:50Rich Roll?

  You've just got to work your ass off for like a decade.

• 47:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, at least in a, in a farm that had been extractively farmed for 45 years, yeah. But there's, you know, there's some spots in Maryland I know about that have a, you know, an eight-year head start on where we are. It's not like this everywhere and everyone's story is going to be different and the length of time is going to be different.

• 48:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So.

• 48:13Rich Roll?

  You're new on the farm, you bring Alan in, he's putting you to work. What are the, what are the kind of unforeseen, you know, things that start get, started, start to get slung in your direction?

• 48:24Speaker 02

  Like the problems that happen?

• 48:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 48:27Speaker 02

  Well, mainly Alan was there during the golden period of, I think, idealistic enthusiasm and excitement. And he described it, he say, he actually said this, just to set it up, he goes, "The first two, three years, you're going to be so full of excitement. You'll think, how could anyone not ever take part in this life? Then around year four and five, you're going to see all these problems, you're going to be like, or year four, you're going to see all these problems. You're going to be like, we have screwed up and, you know, we need to turn around and go back." He goes, "But I promise you by year five, five into seven, you're going to see the return of the biodiversity. It's going to help fight those wars against these epidemics." And so we were here, he passed away, year two.

• 49:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 49:09Speaker 02

  So in the beginning, it was all about just ripping out crops, putting in culverts and, you know, building fences. It was barely about agriculture.

• 49:16Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 49:16Speaker 02

  It felt like it was more about infrastructure.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  It's just organization at that point. And then, then all hell breaks loose.

• 49:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, as soon as the cover crops started.

• 49:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:26Speaker 02

  We created the worst epidemics, you know, from gophers to pest issues.

• 49:31Rich Roll?

  Well, talk about cover crops, because I think, you know, we give lip service to that, but I'm not sure people really understand what that means and why it's so important.

• 49:39Speaker 02

  Well, the main goal, the main problem with our farm is it didn't have soil. It had dirt. So it was lifeless. And plants build soil, right? And they are essentially photosynthesizing, pumping, you know, a liquefied version of carbonic sugars into the soil. Feeding microorganisms. These microorganisms are these alchemizers, turning death back into life, like turning death back into available nutrients for future life. So we had to make sure there was no bare soil. That was rule number one with Alan. No bare soil ever. That's a complete violation of our standard. So we were planting, you know, a mix of legumes and grasses. Not only are they rebuilding the soil through that process of feeding microorganisms,

• 50:22Speaker 02

  they're creating porosity, so allowing water and rain to seep in, right? They're increasing biomass and organic matter, which helps to create a sponge-like effect with soil. Like, an interesting anecdote is we increased soil organic matter between, or up to 3% in the seven years. A 1% increase in soil organic matter per acre has, first of all, requires 21 tons of atmospheric carbon to be drawn down in order to build that. But it also has the water-holding capacity, that 1% per acre of about 16,500 to about 25,000 gallons of water in the top four inches. So you're holding swimming pools of water with every one of the increase.

• 51:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, one of the, sorry to interrupt, but that was one of the things that was super impactful when we visited. It's a pretty stark contrast when you're kind of up on a high hill and you can see the surrounding farms and how different they look to yours. And you were talking about how, you know, when the rains came, we had heavy rains this past winter, that the, whatever topsoil existed on those surrounding farms just got washed away and gone.

• 51:30Speaker 02

  In a half hour.

• 51:31Rich Roll?

  Goes into the water table or whatever, whereas your farm was able to just hold all of that water and create this amazing aquifer.

• 51:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, and like, probably a sponge-like layer of that was kept in the top 12 inches and whatever it couldn't hold went back into the ground, deep into the aquifer to recharge it. So you're, you're building soil, you're sequestering water, and then you're actually, these plants that we thought of as weeds, but these weeds and these grasses and legumes are actually helping to surface and cycle nutrients. Like, persilin is a weed to people. And we look at it differently. It's, when you have an acre of persilin, that's 400 pounds of potassium you have living on the top of your soil, and as that decays, it sort of filters down past root zones and gives plants an access to potassium, your crop plants. So you're building the fertility, right?

• 52:22Speaker 02

  And then you're also creating habitat for predator species of insects that are fighting the pest species of insect.

• 52:28Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 52:29Speaker 02

  So it took us three or four years to see the ladybug population come back to such a number that it could override the ant population that was protecting the aphid population.

• 52:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah, right.

• 52:41Speaker 02

  Right? And that's like to say, oh, I'm just waiting three years while this destruction happens for nature to return is not a conversation you can have with a lot of people.

• 52:49Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 52:50Speaker 02

  It's a scary proposition, but it ecosystem response to these issues takes a long time, especially when you don't have the habitat in place. But now the habitat's in place. You've got this cover crop. It's part of the habitat equation. It's not the only thing. And so the next season, when the pest outbreak happens, you've got predators that are like, oh damn, I need to have extra babies. I see this happening. We're going to have more, lay more eggs here. Literally the ladybugs will lay their eggs right in the middle of an aphid population.

• 53:16Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 53:17Speaker 02

  And the ants, and no one's wiser. They're running around trying to protect the aphids and they have no idea that in a few, you know, weeks, there's going to be this hatching colony of ladybugs right in the middle of their house.

• 53:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 53:29Speaker 02

  It's brilliant.

• 53:30Rich Roll?

  I mean, it becomes this, this like almost game of three dimensional chess, right? You're, you're sort of, you're sort of lording over this symphony and trying to figure out how to conduct it. And the minute you kind of figure out a natural solution to one of these problems, it just creates another problem. And the human instinct is to like, let's crush that problem and, and it will go away. Like this very like dualistic sensibility that the way to solve that problem is by doing this without an appreciation for the domino effect that that occurs. And it's a journey to understanding that, that, you know, the interconnectedness is so much more profound than you can imagine.

• 54:14Rich Roll?

  And the implications of everything are almost impossible to track because they're so. They're so profuse, right? So whether it's the ladybugs, or the aphids, or the ants, or the bees, or the the birds who are, you know, now eating all the fruit, and then all the snails that come out, like, it's just a constant learning curve of trying to figure out how to like, corral all of this and get it to work in harmony, right? And, and part of that is just patience, right? And getting out of the way.

• 54:45Speaker 02

  Totally, and I think, you know, we all are looking for the right and wrong ways to navigate our lives and to be able to identify, right? This is right, this is wrong. I believe this, I believe that. And we try to oversimplify this thing called life with these right and wrong perspectives. And what nature teaches you is that it's all about consequences. And consequences are, are the truth, and consequences are not always going to happen in 30 minutes, they may take 30 years. To understand the decisions we make and the consequences of those requires great patience

• 55:27Speaker 02

  and observation and humility to know that the answer may come in a time that we are not comfortable with.

• 55:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 55:33Speaker 02

  And so, to begin to realize that nature also does not have a reason, necessarily, a yes or no reason, or a right or wrong reason why it does something, it really, truly just works off this consequential sort of system of events, is to free yourself from having to know what's right and wrong, and just be, be very disciplined to possess the skills, I think, to observe and acknowledge when you've come to that conclusion. And, and from there, you can say you've got some sort of information to make the next decision with.

• 56:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, a big thing of the, a big theme of the movie is, is, is having that humility and investing in curiosity and observation as, as fuel for innovation, right? Like, how can we just stop and really pay attention to what's going on here and get, you know, as granular as possible and as curious as possible? And, and that's kind of, that's the, you know, pardon the pun, like the fertilizer for finding the way forward, like the sustainable way forward.

• 56:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, and being, surrounding yourself in a community and a culture that supports that. And that's the trick, right? That's what we've got to get to because I think we're all desperate. There's so much fear out there with what's happening, even whether you believe in man-made climate change or not. It's undeniable that we're all a little bit like, whoa, that hurricane was a little stronger this year at windstorm.

• 57:03Rich Roll?

  Only been 10 fires in the last month.

• 57:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, I don't know if, I'm just gonna say, I don't know if man created that, but I know that that doesn't feel right to me. So, yeah, we have to acknowledge together that that is something that is prescribing or signifying an imbalance. And there's a reason for the imbalance. That's what we should get curious about. We had an earthquake, pretty big one, right? Like, not too long ago, biggest one in like, what, 20 years? My son was in the living room and he was freaked out and he was asking me a million questions and I'm like, telling him it's gonna be okay. And I'm like, you know what? Do you know what an earthquake is? And he's like, no. And I'm like, let's watch a little video and let's learn what's happening. Immediately, 30 seconds later, he was completely calm. He had been able to visualize what was happening.

• 57:51Speaker 02

  It answered enough questions for him to sort of feel connected to it. And I think the things we are afraid of, we can no longer turn away. We must be curious and not confrontational.

• 58:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah. In terms of surrounding yourself with a supportive community, Molly, what was it? What was the reaction of the surrounding farms and farmers when you guys moved in and started doing things a little bit differently?

• 58:19Speaker 01

  You know, it probably could have been more aggressive. People would kind of leave us alone to a certain degree, but it definitely wasn't. We were doing something very different and nobody understood what we were doing. And we, you have to deal with that feeling of a little bit, not embarrassment, but you're just kind of on the outside of the situation and you really just have to pull the resources from yourself and the community that you find. You know, in other ways. And it's a challenging thing to go about that. I mean, John and I have always spent different times not with our people necessarily.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  And so you're, you sort of are an island and that's not, it's not ideal. You wanna, everyone wants to live in a community.

• 59:08Rich Roll?

  But now with the movie out and all of that, like you're like, ooh, it's celebrity. Like, has it changed? I mean, they must be, especially when their soil runs off in the rain and yours doesn't, like, they have to be thinking, well, what is this, what are these guys on to? Like, are they, are they, are they demonstrating that kind of curiosity now?

• 59:26Speaker 03

  I think, yeah, it got better a little bit before the film.

• 59:28Speaker 02

  And yeah, I'll give them a little credit, but I think a lot of it was, well, you can't feed the world with this way of farming. And I'm like, well, that's an interesting, I wasn't trying to feed the world, I was just trying to feed my community. And is that enough? You know, in my head, I'm thinking, I didn't say that because I was like, oh, well, I guess you can't feed the world. She's right. But there now, after about six years, they started coming around and asking questions. And we never have, like, looked at the way our neighbors grow as like, pointing fingers at them and saying that they're wrong. Because they're responding to a vote that we have all culturally supported. And that is like, I just want my food cheap and I want to have my blueberries in the wrong time of year. And,

• 1:00:10Speaker 02

  you know, so they're just responding, just like Monsanto. It's like, it's really easy to like, point fingers. I don't agree with what Monsanto's doing, but they are a product of our own making. So, we never really preached to our neighbors. And our neighbors now are seeing the health of our plants and realizing we're not having these certain pest issues. And they're like, so tell me about, you know, the, the ducks and tell me about this. And that's great, because that's what we need. We need that open dialogue. And that was before the movie. So, and to give them credit, now after the movie, they're probably just like, I don't know what they're imagining. But, but I will say, there has been a transition of appreciation.

• 1:00:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's cool. Well, let's talk about, let's talk about soil. I want to dive deep into that. Soil is everything. And part of the process of restoring this soil has a lot to do with,

• 1:01:08Rich Roll?

  The composting and the composting tea and it's kind of an amazing elaborate thing that you guys constructed as part of this whole journey.

• 1:01:17Speaker 02

  So, um, yeah, I think so. There's a couple of different ways we build soil. One is cover crop. The other is straight compost, meaning like we'll bring in everything from horse manure to the cow manure on our farm to landscape scraps and turn that back into um, sort of a soil compost. And then the third is like the top secret ingredient of our farm is this vermicompost operation, which is essentially compost where worms are doing the work of breaking down organic matter. And the cool thing about worms is that they're inoculating that soil with up to 48 different types of bacteria.

• 1:01:59Speaker 02

  And then from those castings, the worm poop, we then brew a tea, a compost tea, which increases the diversity and microbial microbial count of the of the of the brew. And then we literally inject that as a homeopathic sort of level of injection, a small dose into the irrigation water to put all these warriors, these microbes back out onto the soil to go to work, you know, creating that flywheel effect of breaking down decaying matter. So those are like our three components to sort of helping build and establish diverse, you know, microbial soil.

• 1:02:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we had the opportunity to to put our hands in the worm compost.

• 1:02:41Speaker 02

  Right in the pool.

• 1:02:41Rich Roll?

  And actually, yeah, it like it smelled, it smelled great. It smelled like, like really good coffee grounds or something like that, right?

• 1:02:49Speaker 02

  There was some coffee grounds.

• 1:02:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I don't know what that was.

• 1:02:51Speaker 02

  We do that, we do, we feed the worms coffee because it keeps them working a little bit.

• 1:02:57Speaker 02

  Not true, not true, anthropomorphized.

• 1:02:59Rich Roll?

  And then you take like, it has a, it has a porous bottom to it. This, this sort of carafe where you're creating this compost and you take like a couple of inches off the bottom, right?

• 1:03:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, once a week.

• 1:03:09Rich Roll?

  And then you put that into this kind of brewing machine that creates the tea.

• 1:03:14Speaker 02

  Giant 500 gallon tea brewer. Yeah, sorry if I oversimplify the steps. Now, it's like cooking.

• 1:03:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. And yeah, exactly. And then we, it's a big old jacuzzi full of air, lots of aeration stones. So we want to create these aerobic conditions to avoid a domination, domination of the anaerobic bacteria.

• 1:03:35Speaker 02

  And that's for 24 hours, that's brewing. And then it gets, like I said, injected into our irrigation system or sprayed in a foliar way, like on the leaves. Because plants are like eight to 10 times more efficient in absorbing nutrients through their leaves than through their roots, which is pretty crazy.

• 1:03:58Rich Roll?

  Right, yeah, I wouldn't have thought that.

• 1:03:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, and another thing it does is it colonizes the leaf surface with a diversity of bacteria that helps to prevent these epidemic fungal or bacterial outbreaks on the leaf. So you're creating competition by spraying it right onto the leaf itself.

• 1:04:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:16Speaker 02

  Right?

• 1:04:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it actually was really difficult to get the vermicompost bin working properly. It's an art and it really is like making sourdough bread or people that make kombucha or all of these things. And so it's doing the same thing that we are doing with our body by adding those fermented products into our body. That's that we're doing that exact same thing with the land on a bigger scale.

• 1:04:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, soil is the gut lining of the digestive tract.

• 1:04:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I was just gonna say, there's so many parallels between the two. It's like this microcosm macrocosm thing with in the way that, you know, we try to buttress our own, you know, personal immune systems. It's basically the same process of creating biodiversity either in the gut flora or in the soil, which is the microbiome of the farm or the planet.

• 1:05:04Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:05:05Speaker 02

  People always ask like, oh, I don't know if I could farm. I don't know if I could do what you guys do. But anyone who's been through a health crisis and has then addressed their food choices as a way to cure their health issue automatically has a four dimensional understanding of how soil works. And this has been tested time and time again with interns and apprentices that start on our farm. The ones that have been through a health crisis begin to understand what we're talking about when it comes to soil within about 24 hours. The ones that have not been through that, it takes weeks for them to really understand what we're talking about. And that's what Molly offered to me because she went on that health journey.

• 1:05:48Speaker 02

  And then when I changed my food, I changed the way I thought. It changed the way I saw the world. It changed the way I felt. And so I was convinced that there was a connection to gut microbiome and all of those things. And then I'm like, oh, the soil is the digestive tract of the...

• 1:06:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:06:05Speaker 01

  So we were just feeding and cooking for the land.

• 1:06:07Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:06:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's cool. Well, one of the things that Alan makes clear early and often is that you need animals. He doesn't quite know why.

• 1:06:18Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:06:19Rich Roll?

  Or what that means, or...

• 1:06:20Speaker 02

  Or doesn't know how to take care of them. He's just like, go get them.

• 1:06:22Rich Roll?

  But he's like, you need them. So let's talk about the animals.

• 1:06:27Speaker 02

  So the relationship between ruminants especially and soil is a mutualistic relationship that is the basis for soil's real healthy diverse existence. Because, you know, like the rumin of an animal, like a cow or sheep, they don't actually eat grass. They take the grass and they drop it into the fermentation tank that is their stomach. There's four chambers. And essentially, it's the microorganisms inside that fermentation tank that actually break down that grass and release these volatile fatty acids into the bloodstream of the animal, which is the food. And then, all the while, their rumins are multiplying

• 1:07:12Speaker 02

  these microorganisms. And then excess amounts of these organisms come out with the poop and land on the soil. And those same microorganisms go to work doing the same thing on the gut lining of the earth. And so, you know, that relationship is really, really important. And, you know, obviously also too, the manure of animals is how we farm, pre-chemical, you know, period 75, what is almost 100 years ago. And so without animal input, you are reliant upon these synthetically derived chemical fertilizers like ammonium nitrate, which is, you know, uses petroleum, vast amounts of petroleum to make. So, yeah, they're

• 1:07:55Speaker 02

  a big player in that. Also, when a cow like goes and bites a piece of grass... You know, I've heard it's saliva, but also it could be the tugging method of as the cow bites that grass, the root response of that plant is, oh, God, I'm getting pulled out, and it shoots the roots deeper.

• 1:08:10Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:08:11Speaker 02

  And so as you send your cattle through these fields and through these orchards, you're creating this response where-

• 1:08:17Rich Roll?

  It's like a stress response that creates resiliency.

• 1:08:20Speaker 02

  Exactly. They're driving the roots deeper in response, and also they're just making those nutrients in that grass leave more readily, more readily available to the soil because it's been sort of predigested and pre-broken down.

• 1:08:36Rich Roll?

  To be fair, there are veganic farms, right? There are people that are, that are, that have farms that are strictly on vegan principles that aren't using animals. And I don't know the specifics of how they make that work, but do you know anything about how, how they function?

• 1:08:52Speaker 02

  I, I don't, but unless they're, you know, at some point along the way, unless they're using a synthetically derived ammonium nitrate, which is heavily petroleum-based, a relative reliant, then they're using another form of vegetable that is then using that ammonium nitrate at some point to grow. So I don't know enough to, to, to comment on it, but the complexity of the soil system is only informed this way through animal interaction.

• 1:09:27Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:09:34Rich Roll?

  So you've got cattle, you have pigs, you have ducks, you've got chickens, what else, what other animals you have? You have-

• 1:09:42Speaker 02

  Cows, pigs, ducks, chickens, sheep, guinea hens, and then guardian dogs.

• 1:09:47Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:09:48Speaker 02

  I don't think I missed anything.

• 1:09:49Rich Roll?

  Guardian dogs.

• 1:09:50Speaker 02

  A four-year-old kid.

• 1:09:51Rich Roll?

  That look a lot like my dogs.

• 1:09:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:53Rich Roll?

  And a horse, right? So, one thing I want to talk about. Is the reaction that that I got on social media after posting on Facebook and Instagram that I had visited the farm. For the most part, there was a huge outpouring of of love and support. You have a lot of fans of the movie, a lot of people seen the movie and they were super excited about the fact that we were getting together. But there was a a very loud kind of vocal minority of of like sort of a subset of the vegan community who was very upset. And and that that upset is rooted in the fact that not necessarily that you have the animals

• 1:10:35Rich Roll?

  on the farm, I think, but that some of these animals are are sold for slaughter and food. So I wanted to give, I want to talk about this, I want to have a mature, you know, kind of like dialogue about your reaction to that, and I'd like to share a few thoughts as well.

• 1:10:49Speaker 02

  I just really, there's a lot of people listening, they just went and turned the volume up a little.

• 1:10:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It's funny, like, I don't court drama on this show. I actually got in my way to avoid it. And there were a lot of people, actually, who were who were kind of upset that I haven't, that I didn't respond immediately to that. Because I wanted to do it in this context where we're we're having an actual, like, grown up discussion about it. Yeah.

• 1:11:15Speaker 02

  So there's a lot. Well, I think we should cover two things. We should definitely cover, like, the health perspective. But I think I need to sort of set the stage first and just say this. First of all, we do not believe that there is any one singular dietary agenda that is right or wrong. I think we need vegans, we need vegetarians, and we need meat eaters. But here's the thing that I can say for both Molly and I. We absolutely, if we're going to be eating animals, you, we cannot allow food, animal meat, to be raised in this cheap and inhumane way. Period, end of story. The reverence is tipped way far away from where it should be for the sacrifice made.

• 1:11:59Speaker 02

  We can get into the other stuff, you know, as we go deeper, but I think first and foremost, that's how we feel, and in no way are we trying to convert people who are vegans into being meat eaters. In fact, we have a lot of vegans who work on our farm. Yeah, so I'll just sort of set the stage with that.

• 1:12:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think, and like you, I think you told me Gene Bauer visited the farm as well.

• 1:12:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, Gene Bauer, who does Farm Sanctuary. Because he was, he, after, after seeing the movie, he goes, wow, I'm really interested to understand soil, because I don't think I really understood the relationship to the impermanence of life and building healthy soil. And we had this incredible visit, and he was really great and gracious, and I, we shared with him our experiences. And I, and I think that's the way it should be. I get very nervous, as does the ecosystem, when any one thing, an idea, an ideology, you know, starts to take over without understanding the consequences of that ideology. So I think it's something to be learned from the ecosystem.

• 1:13:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:05Rich Roll?

  Is it possible to, and this is just, I don't know the answer to this, but would it be possible to, you know, find a place like Farm Sanctuary where these animals could then go afterwards? Or is selling those animals for food like a critical economic aspect that contributes to the long-term viability of you being able to continue to farm?

• 1:13:26Speaker 02

  Well, if we, okay, if we allow the, the argument for animals, the especially ruminants involvement in building healthy soil, including ducks and their rich nitrogen poop that they've taken and converted dead snails to, you know, rich nitrogen poop to fertilize trees, if we allow that to be something that we all can at least agree needs to happen. If I have, first of all, I am a meat eater, so I'm not denying that, right? But I, if I have 25 cows that I'm using to help build soil, and then at some point all those cows become geriatric, and I'm now having to lift them up and carry them over to the water trough, because they all end up with some form of arthritis at some point.

• 1:14:10Speaker 02

  Now, my, my days are being taken with caring for, you know, this, all these sick animals. I'm no longer in a sustainable model of farming, and I become overwhelmed mentally and financially, and my reverence is to just let that animal die a natural death and not do anything with its body. I can put it back into the soil and let the onus of responsibility of how that death was turned back into life, or I can acknowledge that part of living is being a part of the impermanent process and taking that animal's life at a time when I feel like it no longer is able to live in a way that is regenerative on our farm.

• 1:14:51Speaker 02

  And this is not going to satisfy everybody's argument about this stuff, but you know, the hoarder situation from which our dog came from is an example of someone who was not letting go of some of these very sick animals that she had contained in her house, 300 dogs, and was keeping them alive far beyond what was humane for those animals. And so there is some issue here where if we don't address the requirement for the impermanence of life, we're all in trouble. Another point I want to make, and we talked about this, you and I, on the farm, is that, again, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna tell you, your audience, something that not many farmers would ever admit, okay? This happens on all farms.

• 1:15:30Speaker 02

  If you like eating avocados, for a farmer to grow avocados financially, especially biodynamically, where we're enhancing the ecosystem and helping nature, we have to grow at least 20 to 40 acres of avocado, and we have to, you know, sell those directly to our market, or to our consumer. So here I am, farming 20 to 40 acres, that's gonna require me to kill at least 35,000 to 40,000 gophers to protect those trees, hummingbirds accidentally when I spray a non-synthetically-derived organic spray, accidentally killing bees, accidentally killing ladybugs, and intentionally killing ground squirrels.

• 1:16:11Speaker 02

  So there are, you know, 50,000 to 100,000 deaths that happen just to grow avocados. And my point is, is that none of us are getting out of this without blood on our hands, it's just at what point and how connected were you to the process, but that doesn't excuse you from the reverence and the responsibility for life.

• 1:16:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think there is a misplaced delusion that pervades a certain segment of the vegan community who have kind of...

• 1:16:42Rich Roll?

  Trick themselves into believing that because they're not eating animals that they've opted out completely from this cycle of life and harm. And I think that that's just not, the facts don't bear that out. And no matter who you are, and no matter how delicately you dance on planet Earth, we're all contributing to harm in some way. And I think it speaks to this broader issue of the complexity of all of this, right? Which is, that's basically what the movie is about. It's, this is incredibly complex and dynamic. And the minute you think you have your, your hands on it, it will surprise you in a new and different way. And, you know, my allegiance is only, I said this to you the other day, is only to truth.

• 1:17:24Rich Roll?

  And I'm always trying to check dogma as much as I can. And I consider myself a compassionate vegan, but I'm not under the misapprehension that because I only eat, you know, fruits and vegetables and grains, that that is not contributing to, you know, in some negative way towards, you know, these problems that, that we all care about and that we're trying to, to reverse. And I think having a mature, you know, perspective on that is more beneficial than slinging arrows at people and calling people names. And I, I just think, you know, people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. And the moment that you start to think that you're better than another human being, or holier than thou, or stand from a place of judgment, is the minute that we lose that ability to have empathy. And empathy is what

• 1:18:09Rich Roll?

  we need right now. That is what the world is starving for. And if we want to see our way forward together collectively, we have to figure out how to unite around our shared principles, to do what's, you know, in the best interest for the preservation of the planet, and to do it in the most compassionate way possible with an appreciation for the challenges and nuances and complexities of all of this.

• 1:18:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. Really well said.

• 1:18:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Very well said. Molly, what do you think? Can we just end the podcast there? You know, and it's, it's tricky. And I will say, I said this to you earlier, like, it was painful to, you know, see those comments because I, you know, I'm a member of that community. And to see them turn against me as if I betrayed them was, was upsetting to me. But it also made me think, like, where, would I do things differently? Would I have not visited you? Would I not be having? No, it's like, these are conversations that I want to have. And if there's a certain... Sector of the population that isn't unhappy with it, then that's an issue that they're gonna have to deal with.

• 1:19:09Speaker 01

  Good for you. That takes a lot of courage.

• 1:19:11Speaker 02

  It does. And I mean, we get very occasionally called murderers, you know, and that's really hurtful, especially given how hard we work to create this, you know, regenerative, environmentally enhancing farming system. And it's thankless in a lot of ways. But, you know, it really does beg the question of like, where does life start for people? Like, does it start at the ant? Does it start at the cow? Where does it start? Because does it start at the bacterial level? Because you're eating, you know, on one apple, like 100 billion microorganisms when you eat that apple. And those microorganisms are dying so that you can ultimately digest that apple at some point. I, I think it's like, I hope for people to become really curious.

• 1:19:53Speaker 02

  And the vegans that have come and, and been very curious have walked away, I think, with an, maybe not entirely changed. I don't want to act like we've changed anyone, but they've walked away with an appreciation for the complexity of the thing we're all here on this planet trying to understand. Because clearly, none of us understand it. We don't know how it works. We don't know how to fully replicate it. It's hilarious to me that we're trying to think about ways to colonize moon, the moon and Mars. Like, we're gonna get up there and like, re-engineer this beautiful, life-giving thing that has never received carryout. Not one day have we received a delivery from another planet for the food that we were given. It is a renewable source of death and life in a sort of infinity sort of symbol.

• 1:20:36Speaker 02

  And we need to take appreciation for what that really means before we try to, you know, evangelize our own ideology. We should all be humble students of this, you know?

• 1:20:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I think that what's, what's interesting is, is that we're all on board with, with, you know, terraforming Mars. Because it's sexy. You know, it's like, ooh, that sounds cool. And yet, we have so much difficulty getting people behind the idea of regenerating our soil, which is doable and right in front of us.

• 1:21:08Speaker 02

  Well, we would have to, in order to terraform Mars, we would have to kill a lot of things in order to make that happen. Because there's, I mean, we would have to bring death to Mars in some way. Like, it's so much a part of, I mean, Matt Damon grew the potatoes with his poop. That is, that is the decomposition of something that was eaten by him and then, right? So, it is hilarious, right? We talked on the hill at the farm when you visited, I said, it's like, Going up to Mars and the moon and trying to start it all over is like saying to your parents who just gave you a car for free, you're like, no, thanks, Mom and Dad, I'm gonna go build one out of stone and I've never even figured out how to put oil in the one that you gave me. So I wonder when they get there, if they are not gonna look

• 1:21:50Speaker 02

  back at this beautiful blue and green marble and be like, oh, damn, maybe, maybe that was, maybe that was a better, better place.

• 1:22:01Rich Roll?

  How many, how many regenerative farms are there right now, like in California or nationwide?

• 1:22:10Speaker 02

  I actually, I know from a biodynamic perspective, the biodynamic, there's, you know, a couple hundred. I don't know the answer to the regenerative farm, but there are, there are a number and larger than ours, like in thousands of acres, you know, Gabe Brown is one that I'm sure you've heard talked about on this podcast, Will Harris of White Oaks pasture. There's a number of operations that have been doing this far longer than Molly and I that we've actually learned a great deal from and reading their books and listening to their YouTube videos and stuff.

• 1:22:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah, Joel Salatin is probably the most well-known or famous.

• 1:22:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, and we started it with like, listening to Joel's stuff and reading Joel's, Joel's books and, you know, borrowed from all of these guys. That's why we never really beat the drum of like, saying we're all biodynamic, you know, 24/7. It's just a method that we pull from, but I don't believe it's the only way, nor do I believe that, you know, holistic or permaculture or anything is one, one, one right way to do it. You should borrow from them.

• 1:23:07Rich Roll?

  Well, I've had Zach, Dr. Zach Bush on the podcast a bunch of times, who's very passionate about this subject, podcast favorite, you know, regenerative farming, Farmer's Footprint, the work that he's doing with that organization, I think is incredible. Ryland Inglehart is coming up soon and he's got Kiss the Ground. Like, there are, there's a lot of innovation in the nonprofit sector that's trying to raise awareness and education and kind of promote this way of, of, of producing food. But what are, like, what are the barriers that are out there right now that are preventing more farmers from embracing this way of doing things?

• 1:23:48Speaker 02

  Well, from, from young people or farmers that want to actually acquire land, I think there's one barrier there and that just being able to acquire the land to do this, that's a huge barrier. And the other is that farmers that are in the midst of deep financial debt because of the loans that they've taken out in order to grow high-volume commodity crops can't just do an about-face very easily and would make, you know, argue that point. But here's the thing, if they, if you don't want to see it, you certainly can come up with a million reasons why it's not possible. What I have seen personally in the last eight years, especially in the last year since the films come out, is the increasing number

• 1:24:33Speaker 02

  of people who own land and are looking for young farmers to partner with to farm their land in the same way that we're doing it.

• 1:24:39Rich Roll?

  Ah.

• 1:24:40Speaker 02

  I've also, crazy as it is, like, these organizations, these nonprofits that are like land trust groups that go and acquire land to preserve it, have suddenly realized that the land that they buy and preserve is better preserved if put in the hands of a regenerative farmer. And so there are these lands acquisitions being made by these land trusts, and then they're finding partnerships with regenerative farmers to farm it because they realize that regenerative ag is one of the best methods of environmentalism and the preservation and rebuilding of the biodiversity of the land meant to be protected. So, I see great hope in this dynamic. I think for anyone that's looking to do this, it's about talking

• 1:25:22Speaker 02

  about it and telling people what you want to do, and eventually you will find and be connected to those opportunities. You know, that's, that's sort of my best assessment of the landscape.

• 1:25:32Rich Roll?

  What is the, what are the numbers in terms of carbon and water sequestration on your farm?

• 1:25:38Speaker 02

  So, like, well, from a numbers perspective on like what we sequestered in water this past year?

• 1:25:44Speaker 01

  Or how far beneath our allocation, that's interesting.

• 1:25:47Speaker 02

  Oh, okay, yeah. So like, one of the things we were told in the beginning is like, oh, you guys are going to grow cover crop, you're going to take a lot more water, you're going to be drawing all this water from more park. And we were like, oh, man, I don't know. Is that true? Well, you know, so we start the farm and within a year and a half, we're like everybody else in California, especially Ventura County, required to reduce our water use by 25%. And we get an allocation based for our farm, based on the crops that we grow, not on cover crop.

• 1:26:16Rich Roll?

  So basically, the government says, this is how much water we're going to give you.

• 1:26:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is the amount you're allowed to use, the number of acre feet that you're allowed to use.

• 1:26:25Speaker 01

  Or you get taxed.

• 1:26:26Speaker 02

  Per year, you get, yeah, you get paid a penalty.

• 1:26:28Rich Roll?

  I gotcha.

• 1:26:28Speaker 02

  And also from us being like wanting to be these eco regenerative farmers, it's like, kind of like, would be humiliating that we're over using water. So we establish our cover crops and within two years, we never went really over, but within two or three years, after the 25% required reduction, we're 10 to 35% under our water allocation every single year. And we grow more stuff than any other farm, you know, acre to acre comparison in terms of biomass. So in that time period, we are using less water, right? Regenerating our aquifers, so we're actually giving back where other farms that are not using cover crops

• 1:27:10Speaker 02

  are allowing both topsoil, soil nutrients and water to rush out into the ocean, right? And so here we have this system that is regenerating itself. There was one other fact, you asked a question.

• 1:27:23Rich Roll?

  The carbon.

• 1:27:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, the carbon thing. So the cool thing is that we've increased that soil organic matter by 3%. And a 1% increase per acre of land of soil organic matter requires the drawdown of 21 tons of atmospheric carbon. So across the farm, it's 3% and in some areas higher. So just our contribution is 3%, right? That three times 21 tons per acre of carbon that we've pulled out of the atmosphere. And I never even talked about that in the film. Cause I didn't want the film to be all of a sudden mischaracterized as this environmental film that was purely focused on the carbon issue, which is the elephant in the room. But it is a byproduct of regenerative farming.

• 1:28:06Rich Roll?

  Right. That's amazing.

• 1:28:09Speaker 02

  Right?

• 1:28:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's pretty incredible.

• 1:28:11Speaker 02

  So I every once in a while allow ourselves to have a campfire and not feel bad about it.

• 1:28:16Rich Roll?

  How many young people do you have working on the farm right now? Woofers?

• 1:28:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, woofers. Like 150 have passed through.

• 1:28:25Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:28:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we have a duplex house where they stay. We have apprentices.

• 1:28:29Rich Roll?

  They actually live on the farm.

• 1:28:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, they, it's either, it depends on how many woofers we have, based on how many apprentices, based on how many beds. But all of those, so you start with our farm by coming in and going through a three-month woofer program. And it's really somewhat, it's fully structured, whereas some other farms aren't. And so they come and they work five and a half days a week and they're rotated through the different departments. They meet with one of the 12 team leads that we have each Wednesday to learn some aspect of the farm in depth. And it's, you learn a lot through that program. From there, we then take on different apprentices, once they have a specialty. And oftentimes, those apprentices end up becoming full timers beyond that.

• 1:29:15Speaker 01

  So we have this wonderful avenue to find all of these young minds, and sometimes not young, different people that come through that program. It really works for us.

• 1:29:24Rich Roll?

  Did you get like a crazy increase in the influx of resumes when the movie came out?

• 1:29:30Speaker 02

  One of our, yeah, our director of operations, Trevor, who used to be a woofer, and now he's like the center, center spoke of the wheel and has taken on the operations position. Came into my office yesterday and he's like, "So I'm gonna need some help going through resumes now. Would it be okay if we have Sophie do the first round of interviews? Cause like, it's definitely," he goes, "Did the film release in Germany or something?" I go, "Yeah." He goes, "Okay, there's like these, like this European influx." He goes, "There's like 50 emails today."

• 1:30:01Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:30:02Speaker 02

  So that's cool. And the cool thing is, we're able to be a bit more choosy in terms of the qualification. And we're not looking for people who are experts. We're looking for people who have the right perspective, the right openness and willingness.

• 1:30:16Speaker 02

  And so I wanted to say, like, you don't have to be an experienced farmer to get the opportunity. You just have to. Really be the right fit for our, you know, our, our organization.

• 1:30:25Rich Roll?

  It is cool that there's so many young people who are into this.

• 1:30:28Speaker 02

  And that's what gives me the most hope.

• 1:30:30Rich Roll?

  It's very hopeful.

• 1:30:30Speaker 02

  It really, I have to tell you, like, they know more about me. I'm, when I was 35, I started learning about stuff soil. They're in their twenties and they're like, they know way more than we did.

• 1:30:39Speaker 01

  They also hold us to a standard.

• 1:30:41Rich Roll?

  Well, they care. When I was in my twenties, like, it's like, I can't think of anything I would have been less interested in.

• 1:30:46Speaker 02

  Right?

• 1:30:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:46Speaker 02

  It somehow is like, it's, it's become cool and they're curious and they have access at their fingertips to the right information and the wrong information too sometimes. But they've, they've just got it, man. And people say, how are you, how are you guys even hopeful after all that you know? And I say, the more connected we've become to nature, the more vulnerably connected, the more hopeful I've become. The opposite of what I thought. It's like, I realize the healing power that is innate within it. If we allow it to do its thing and allow ourselves to be dependent on it.

• 1:31:24Speaker 02

  And then coupled with the influx of young people and how interested they are and how much reverence they show for it. I have way more hope about what's happening on this planet than I did eight years ago. And I'm seeing the, the adopt, people adopting regenerative practices and understanding it at a much wider sort of audience view. Then, then organic has been able to sort of gather since the seventies when it started. I'm watching in five years, people suddenly understand more about farming just from the regenerative model. That's much more visual than the word organic. We are at a fever pitch pace towards a solutions generation that is all about innovation.

• 1:32:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's very exciting.

• 1:32:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. And they also, what they have that I think I didn't, a lesson I didn't know when I was younger is that they know, I see a problem. And now what are my steps that I can put into action? And when I was young, I had a situation where I was nine years old and went to like a, a camp weekend thing with school. And the leader of whatever session we were going to do during the day led us up into the mountains. I can remember the crystal clear blue day and proceeded to tell us that if we didn't change our ways, that in 50 years, there would be no more earth to inhabit.

• 1:32:43Rich Roll?

  He's got more time on that prediction.

• 1:32:46Speaker 01

  I was terrified. I sat there. I can remember. I mean, it was like full on panic attack for me. I just had like the hairs on the back of my neck were standing up. I couldn't figure out why nobody else was worried about it. I can remember literally the snack that my mom picked me up from that place. It was like burned in my head. And for years and years, it proceeded the same way. I was terrified every time I heard of climate change, anything like that. The ozone layer was during that time. I would hear about that and get terrified. Finally, I was in culinary school in New York City, and it was the time Inconvenient Truth came out. And I was walking around the city, looking at all these posters everywhere. I could not get away from it. And finally, I thought, okay, Molly, you're a grown woman.

• 1:33:30Speaker 01

  Go see this movie and face whatever's scaring you. So I went and I sat in the theater by myself and watched this movie. And I got to the end and I thought, well, that's a big problem. It's a problem. But now what, just like many, any other number of problems we have, nuclear war, desertification, anything. And so what can I do to apply and try to make this better? But somehow, these young kids, they skipped all of those 20 years of me floundering in fear. And they just kind of have gone right from I see a problem and now I'm going to work on a solution.

• 1:34:04Rich Roll?

  Well, two things. I mean, first of all, you're definitely, you've found your path.

• 1:34:08Speaker 01

  Yes, for sure.

• 1:34:09Rich Roll?

  Confirm that. I think second to that is that, you know, with our generation, there was no clear path, you know, and that's very different now.

• 1:34:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that's, thank you.

• 1:34:19Rich Roll?

  And these young people, they don't have to suffer that trauma. They might be angry because they've inherited, you know, problems that they didn't create. But there's a, there's an instinct and a motivation and a desire that's, that's like, you know, coming from a very beautiful, heart centered place.

• 1:34:35Speaker 01

  Yes, I think so too.

• 1:34:37Rich Roll?

  So I am hopeful.

• 1:34:38Speaker 02

  You know what I was like, I think, and I hope I didn't say this already. I hope you can edit it out if I did. But like, I think there's, there is something to what's happening right now. We were the generation, I think, that was pursuing meaning and purpose. And there is like this, there is this hint of an acceptance around and this drive for reconnection. I think all of this, the confrontational elements of what we're doing and creating a side and an idea and grouping it up as a community is really, we're looking for connection. Sometimes it polarizes us from other people, but ultimately, the reconnection conversation is a missing part of the triangulation of a happy, filled life, meaning, purpose,

• 1:35:21Speaker 02

  and reconnection. But the reconnection part requires that vulnerability, and I'm seeing that in the young people that come to our farm. They're willing to be a little bit more vulnerable, and that's a humility that you want to embrace.

• 1:35:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, you didn't say that earlier in the podcast, so we're not editing that. But also, yeah, I think we've never been, despite how connected we are digitally, I think there's an epidemic of loneliness and disconnection right now, and I think that's fomenting a lot of the angst and anger and depression and kind of, you know, mental lack of ease that people are suffering from. And, you know, what I see in your example is that that connection begins with connecting to our natural environment in the most deep and profound way. And then it can extend to, you know, our loved ones and our families and our communities, et cetera. But you really need all of it, I think, in order to be a

• 1:36:18Rich Roll?

  fully-integrated, self-actualized human.

• 1:36:20Speaker 02

  It's so true. And honestly, that's what forced Molly and I, you know, the more we depended upon the ecosystem and were failing in that dependency, the more we had to depend on each other. And the cracks in our relationship were like immediately exposed through that journey. And it made us face the fact that if we were going to keep it together, we had to figure out how to be vulnerable with each other.

• 1:36:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So the land forced you. It was its own, like, sort of therapist.

• 1:36:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:36:54Rich Roll?

  It was either going to crack you apart or it was going to bring you closer together.

• 1:36:57Speaker 01

  Oh, for sure. Yeah, we definitely reached the edge and had to find support to figure out how to navigate through layers of emotion. I mean, When you're in, when you're farming, you have to be face to face with grief in a way that I had never experienced before.

• 1:37:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:13Speaker 01

  And if you don't process that grief, you're not going anywhere.

• 1:37:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:17Speaker 01

  And so that, that was a, that was a big lesson, but it's honestly what the soil is. It's the processor. They say about children, the best thing you can do for them is to help create a good digestive enzyme, because that's what they kind of are always.

• 1:37:32Rich Roll?

  Let them get dirty, let them eat the mud, all that kind of stuff. Well, the movie makes it look like essentially every single night, you're being woken up at three o'clock in the morning because there's some cataclysm that needs some crisis.

• 1:37:44Speaker 02

  That's actually, that's actually true. I mean, it's for real. Like, it was terrible, the first, like, five or six years. We had, the fences weren't right. There was, if there was a problem to be had, it was happening. Like, I'm like, how, there's no way we can continue to, anyway, so I didn't want to interrupt, but that part, we left a lot of that out, or no one would ever want to farm if they knew how many times.

• 1:38:04Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow. Because I, I thought that you were like, all right, you're just picking the moments where you had to wake up, but these are, you know.

• 1:38:10Speaker 02

  It could have been eight hours of just complete sheer terror and all the reasons not to do this. But it's not also reflective of the real experience, and that is, it is more balanced and beautiful, too.

• 1:38:20Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:38:20Speaker 01

  It weirdly goes cyclically, is what I've found in chaos, is that even all those years of chaos, it's like, oh no, here it comes, and you'd be woken up, and woken up, and woken up, and then all of a sudden, you'd have like a week where you could sleep through the night, and you like, get yourself back, and then all of a sudden, it comes again. So if you, you kind of learn even, and probably it's like that in war, or with children, or all that.

• 1:38:42Rich Roll?

  Do you have like PTSD from that?

• 1:38:43Speaker 01

  A little bit.

• 1:38:44Rich Roll?

  When it's going smooth, you're just waiting for some disaster to happen.

• 1:38:48Speaker 01

  I know it's restoring you, you have to breathe in the restore.

• 1:38:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, but also, it's not like it's better. People are like, oh, it's probably better now, it's much easier. It's crazy. It's actually not, I wouldn't say it's easier, or it's all better. The way we view problems have completely changed. I'm not running around wasting my energy on the fear of what that problem indicates now, because I've experienced it to know that. That's one of those I can kind of let and live with for a bit. Rather than spend all that energy and the worry that turns into a fight at night with your wife over something else because of all that stress. So we're spending less energy in this state of fear. It's all the same stuff. We just didn't know what to be scared of. We were like literally kids and then walking into the haunted house for the first time. I'm just like scared of everything, you know? And I, and I do think there is something to that.

• 1:39:33Speaker 02

  And that's living through the rhythms of life in one spot. We traded an experience of being able to travel around the world and do all these really interesting things for one that put us in one spot to go far deeper than we ever expected. And you really do face all those elements that constantly keep you awake at night and you realize you can't live with them. You can't live in that state of fear.

• 1:39:58Rich Roll?

  I want to put my film door hat on for a minute and get into the, the technical aspects of, of what was demanded of you to actually make this movie. I mean, to refresh us, this is an eight year period. You've chronicled it from when you were living in Santa Monica all the way through to the present day. I think you told me you have like 800,000 clips or like

• 1:40:20Speaker 02

  Couldn't remember.

• 1:40:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly. 90 terabytes of like footage. And it's this, I was surprised when you told me that's, that a huge portion of the, of the movie is shot on an iPhone because you remember the very cinematic, um, high speed photography of the hummingbirds and the bees and the insect and all that kind of stuff. But those are just kind of punctuation marks.

• 1:40:43Speaker 02

  It's a bit, yeah. The iPhone footage sort of does Band-Aid within, between scenes and even in shots. Because it was what I would have at the ready or another crew member would have to film something that was happening in, in the moment. It's funny, the one thing I had to teach my 20 something year old farm team was to not shoot in Instagram mode, like vertical, but to shoot horizontal. So once I got that taken care of, I started actually having access to more footage. But um, yeah, no, it was, um, there was a lot of times where I was just like something bad was happening and then I would just like film it or something beautiful was happening. And I would just have to remember that, oh my gosh, I should just capture this because I may never see it again. So I was amassing all this footage the, the whole, the whole time.

• 1:41:29Speaker 02

  But the way we got like The really cool stuff was I would see these patterns, like there was a Cooper's hawk that every time I walked by her nest, at the time of year that she had, you know, babies in there, she would dive bomb me. And I'm like, I should probably shoot that because that would be a great shot to put in at the time that I'm trying to explain that the Cooper's hawk dive bombs starlings. So I have these perspectives that are impossible to get unless you're tapping into a rhythm and occurrence that's already happening. And then to simplify it, like with the Greasy and Emma relationship, which is a pig and a rooster, there's a scene in the movie where they kind of go to sleep together. They like

• 1:42:12Speaker 02

  bed down and there's this whole little ritual thing they do and this dance. I watched that 35 times, you know, as I would go out to feed him and I'm like, man, I should probably shoot that. But since they did it repetitively in the same way, I was able to predict how to cover it, you know? And so it made it look like I was using like, you know, these like, uh, these, these like, uh, kids in animal suits, you know, because of the, just the accuracy of the, of the shooting.

• 1:42:38Rich Roll?

  What is that relationship between Mr. Greasy and Emma?

• 1:42:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42:41Rich Roll?

  I mean, that's just, that's the heart of the whole movie for me. Like Mr. Greasy, I'm all about him.

• 1:42:46Speaker 02

  I know. Yeah. I mean, as you should be. I mean, when, when you can land a beautiful babe like Emma and you're only about a pound to her 650. Um, yeah, that relationship was one of mutualistic necessity. Um, Greasy would hide behind a 650 pound pig in order to avoid being eaten by coyotes every night. And he was such a scraggly and ugly rooster that he was one that was kicked out of, uh, the flock with the rest of the birds and he found his way into living with this pig.

• 1:43:20Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:43:20Speaker 02

  But there was a dance that had to be performed every night in order for him to get access to the house. And so all I can say is, man, love is real, dude, and you can't, don't judge it.

• 1:43:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So you're sitting on top of all of this footage. Like, how do you begin the process of trying to identify a narrative?

• 1:43:39Speaker 02

  Well, we went through this to get geeky about it. We spent at least two years prior to the year and a half edit process. I spent two years with two different assistant editors, literally stringing out every sort of these fat cuts. So we had like, I had a 14 hour fat cut of just cows. I had a six hour fat cut of just hummingbirds and babies. And then I had like a nine hour fat cut of everything that involved Greasy and Emma. And I gotta tell you, I started this whole-

• 1:44:13Rich Roll?

  Just release like that, here's nine hours of this, and just put it up on the internet.

• 1:44:18Speaker 02

  But it was like, other than that, it would have been 90 hours. Like, I had to narrow it down. But Molly, very kindly, like, when I told her, I'm gonna make this film. She got me the Werner Herzog masterclass. And I watched it, and like, I don't know, eight minutes in, he's like, "I feel sorry-"

• 1:44:32Speaker 03

  You had a mark to kill yourself.

• 1:44:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, "I feel sorry for filmmakers who think that 650 hours of footage is going to make a great film." I'm like, "Oh, my God, I've got 650 months of footage." I was like, I stopped, I even never finished it. I stopped watching his masterclass after that, and then just went back to work to getting the footage.

• 1:44:50Rich Roll?

  Well, even though you didn't decide to make a movie until you were in year five, you had the awareness or sensibility to be documenting it all along. So even if you won't admit to the idea that you were gonna be making a movie, you were planning on making a movie.

• 1:45:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I never raised really, you know, the funding for it until the year, year five.

• 1:45:07Speaker 01

  But I will, I don't, that's entirely true, because in the beginning, I can remember Alan, I mean, a lot of that very beginning footage is only iPhone.

• 1:45:16Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:45:16Speaker 01

  Because then Alan would say, "You have got to document this." And John was like, "No, I don't want to do it. I'm not gonna do it."

• 1:45:22Speaker 02

  I'm not doing this anymore.

• 1:45:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, he really was over it.

• 1:45:25Speaker 03

  He's like, "Man, you're gonna regret this crap. You're out here, you have no idea this, what this shithole's gonna turn into, man. It's gonna look like the damn Garden of Eden."

• 1:45:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:34Speaker 03

  He would say that constantly, and I was just like, "Ah."

• 1:45:36Speaker 02

  Just teach it.

• 1:45:37Rich Roll?

  Did he ever steer you wrong?

• 1:45:39Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:45:39Speaker 02

  Not even with that. No, right down to the years of how he would feel. Like, I can't wait to get to year 10.

• 1:45:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, there are certain little things we've now ventured out and chosen to do different with Alan. And it's like, almost like you're, you know, your dad.

• 1:45:53Speaker 02

  I hear his voice in my head.

• 1:45:54Rich Roll?

  Oh, that's gonna bite your ass, man. So when Alan passes away, why did you not go try to find another version of Alan? Like, you still, it seemed like you were still pretty young in your, you know, kind of learning curve.

• 1:46:08Speaker 02

  We've tried, yeah, we've tried, but only would find pieces of the puzzle. Like, we would bring in, you know, I've talked to several really well-known pasture consultants. And I realized very quickly that all three of them gave me three different ways of doing something. And you can drive yourself nuts with, you know, entering into the world of consultants. And you shortly realize that you, it's ultimately up to you at the end of the day. So we did try to replace Alan in a way, but no one kind of like had his,

• 1:46:40Speaker 02

  you know, his kind of mantra that informed, helped us inform our own intuition. You know what I'm saying, driving it?

• 1:46:48Speaker 01

  I think that we were weirdly at this place where if Alan had stayed alive, it would have been interesting to see what would have happened. Because I can remember struggles where we were starting to come into our own. And Alan may have disagreed about something. And we'd get a little tense there. And I think that if he had stayed alive, we either would have had to have it out about certain things. And him let us have the freedom to do what we need to do. Or else, I don't know that we would have parted ways. But at some point, we kind of outgrew certain elements of the knee. We were, even though it did not feel at all like we were ready to have our wings, in a very spiritual sense, it feels like Alan's exit was also came with a knowing

• 1:47:33Speaker 01

  that it was the time that we were gonna be fine. If we just flew.

• 1:47:37Rich Roll?

  I prefer that poetic interpretation. Like, there is, there is this idea of like, you know, the universe doesn't give you anything that you're not ready to handle. And even though it might have felt premature, it was sort of like, okay, time to put your, your big girl and big boy pants on and like, own this for yourselves instead of deferring to somebody else.

• 1:47:55Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:47:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, we had conversations amidst the fights at home where it was like, you know what? This is not the time to hedge on anything. It's about going really, truly, the whole saying, go big or go home, like. We can't, we can't begin to be conservative in our estimates of the need at this point. We must continue to go crazy here.

• 1:48:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:15Speaker 02

  And that was like the best thing I think we both did for each other is that we maintained that level of commitment to, and you brought it up earlier, not putting a foot on either side of the circle. I learned that very early on from a holistic vet and he's like, look, you're going to continue to have these problems because you keep straddling the line. And you just tell me when you're ready to be, you know, in the, when you're ready for preemptive healthcare. Like we can talk about that, but I can't help you with these problems that you're creating by straddling both worlds. There's a time for antibiotics, there's a time for those things. I'm not saying that, but if you're relying on that to cover your tracks and the poor decisions you've made leading up to that, you learn nothing. And we decided that we weren't gonna, and we had people on the farm, when we had massive

• 1:48:59Speaker 02

  epidemics of morning glory, we were like, you need to spray glyphosate. We were, they were trying to convince us to spray Roundup and it took us five years to get to this point for someone to say that. Ultimately that ended that relationship, but we didn't have the solution. He had a solution.

• 1:49:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:15Speaker 02

  We just had a will to sort of keep walking down that path until we could find it.

• 1:49:19Rich Roll?

  I mean, that would have been a bridge too far. Like every value would have gotten tossed out the window to make that decision.

• 1:49:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's the choice, it's like parenting that you have to make a choice whether you're going to control or whether you're going to kind of unfold. And if you unfold.

• 1:49:36Rich Roll?

  Tell me about it.

• 1:49:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a whole lot more tricky, you know, but ultimately you have an established relationship that you actually can pull into when the going gets really, really, really tough. And so we made that choice and when you make that choice, I mean, all the horses are running wild.

• 1:49:54Rich Roll?

  When you're in the, when you're in the thick of the film production aspect of this, how did you remain mindful about how you balance the needs of the film versus the needs of the farm?

• 1:50:06Speaker 02

  That was really hard on the, on the crew because I kind of sidestepped my way into this project, meaning where the editing process started and that was a year and a half. That was, so it was, it was challenging enough just to be shooting while also farming. But then during the editing time, I was real, I was in the barn. That's where we cut the film.

• 1:50:24Rich Roll?

  You've got like a whole production house.

• 1:50:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, we've managed two, two horse, horse birthing stalls with, you know, literally kick dents like marks from hooves being bashed into the walls or all over the walls. But I would run, I'd, you know, there'd be an animal emergency of vet, you know, like a vetting thing or calving thing, lambing thing. And I would go out and I would be in that and I would be covered with, you know, all types of fluids and come back and sit down in the edit. And the editor, Amy, who is from suburbia Maryland is looking at me like, are we, are you, is this, yeah, we, we, are you just, are you good? Is this, is this good? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. So back to, let's go back to the first act. And like, just trying to get it in where I could, it was really difficult. It was hard on the crew because I think, you know, their needs didn't always, you know, maybe get met

• 1:51:11Speaker 02

  and it slowed down like the, what we were doing on the farm. But I knew that I, I'm like, I got, I'm like, just please stay with me on this. Once we get this done, you will see what we've done. We, we, none of us have, like to see it in 90 minutes, what we've done in eight years was overwhelming for us and our team. Like, our team was like, I had no idea what we were even working on here. Like, we, they had an idea, but like, not the, not the level of transformation that we were all a part of.

• 1:51:40Speaker 01

  I had probably seen the film a hundred times by the time we showed our crew and we rented out a little theater to be able to show them all. And I sat in the back and about halfway through, I was like, man, I have this huge headache. What the heck is going on? And all of a sudden, I realized that I was holding back crying and I cried the rest of the film. And I'd seen it a hundred times. And it was just because to see it and experience it with these people that we had walked through that, it was unbelievably overwhelming and powerful.

• 1:52:11Rich Roll?

  Did you know that it was going to connect with broad audiences? Or like, what was your sense of like, how the movie was going to do? I mean, we could, I want to talk about Telluride and Sundance and all that kind of stuff, but even prior to that, like?

• 1:52:24Speaker 01

  I knew, I knew. John's abilities and I knew that he had never, I started to see the team that was coming around him this time and I was seeing it be different as far as this might actually be something that people can see. So they actually even get the chance to see who John is.

• 1:52:44Speaker 02

  This isn't John's like little hobby project in the garage.

• 1:52:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, or just other things that he's done that have had a certain level of exposure, but I could see that the exposure might start to build bigger. But I would say that I truly always knew that it was going to be really, really good.

• 1:53:00Speaker 02

  See, this is ridiculous to me.

• 1:53:01Speaker 01

  No, no, but.

• 1:53:02Speaker 02

  But it's so true. She says this stuff to me and I'm like, what do you, how do you know?

• 1:53:06Speaker 01

  But here's what I did know. I had this feeling that it may not come out of the box and just like blow the roof off of the world in that sense, that it might be a slow build for it to go out and out and out and out. And that has been what's happened. But when we show it, when somebody gets in the theater, they are moved in a way that is just so satisfying to see John be seen in that way. And that, I mean, obviously what we're sharing is important to us, too.

• 1:53:35Rich Roll?

  In the edit, did you bring some wise counsel in to help you, you know, sort of objectively make decisions? Like who's your board of advisors when it comes to the creative aspect of how you crafted this movie?

• 1:53:47Speaker 02

  That's a great question. Well, Amy Overbeck, the editor who I've worked with on three other films and a TV series. Joy Keckin, who was actually involved early, early days with David Simon on Breaking, the very complicated story of The Wire and all the different characters. Keyword, just so many characters. How's that going to work, right? So she was brought on early on to help me weave through stuff. And I brought in Mark Monroe, who's a really good, well-known documentary writer, consultant, who's worked on tons of different films. I mean, most notably recently was like Icarus, et cetera. And Erica Messer, who was executive producer from The Day, who's been a childhood friend of mine, but also from The Daywoman,

• 1:54:30Speaker 02

  is like, you're going to tell, you need to tell this story and you need to make sure that Todd starts it off. This whole story starts with your commitment to Todd and the fact that you're not willing to break that commitment and that will drive you to this innovation. It's so true. It's about keeping your foot and your deal, right? So. She's a big showrunner, right? She's a, yeah. Criminal Minds or whatever. Yeah. Shows on television for like 50 years. Yeah, she is, and she's very young, too. But yeah, she's amazing and very experienced, but someone who I've relied on heavily. And then I brought in Sandra Keats around year five and a half, who's a producer, had worked in documentary for long enough to know that she wanted to be out. And I heard of Sandra, and I heard she was quitting, and I'm like, oh, wow, she sounds perfect, though.

• 1:55:15Speaker 02

  She's really into like farming stuff. And they're like, yeah, no, you're not gonna get her. She's quitting, and she's gonna become a goat farmer. And I'm like, hmm, I might have something. Challenge accepted. That sounds perfect. So she's like, I'm driving to Pacific Northwest, I'm done, but I'll stop by the farm. And I'm like, excellent. Yeah. And so she did, and she didn't leave, and helped me produce the last two and a half years of the movie. And a number, a number of other people. But here's the thing I did that I didn't do on any other project to the extent that I did this one. And that was like, I knew with this project, more than anything else I'd ever done in

• 1:55:54Speaker 02

  my life, that this was incredibly special, and that I had captured something that had never been captured before, and that the only reason it wouldn't work would be because I got in my own way. And I made the testing part of this way more extensive, testing it with audiences than I had literally had the physical, mental constitution to handle. Like, I showed it to so many just really tough critics, audiences privately, small groups of 15, and then multiple groups of like 100 or more, and just took the beating

• 1:56:36Speaker 02

  for months, trying to figure out where the common issues were. What were the big issues? Oh, man, I mean, the debates, I can't even go there. There was more of the cosmos in it. Yeah, there was a little bit more, and the original film ended a little bit more on the nose with this whole like idea of sort of.

• 1:56:57Speaker 02

  Solidifying that the biggest little farm is really a, an example of a microcosm of the larger planet. And we are probably in this, all these people listening to this podcast right now that are alive, will never know another planet that is a farm in the entire universe. And that it is as special as that. And the point of the film is to, is to really say that. So I pulled a lot of that out. Right. Then there was a lot- I mean, the film, the film says it. It's just, you don't have to like-

• 1:57:30Speaker 01

  It's not as on the nose.

• 1:57:30Speaker 02

  Put it on the nose at the end.

• 1:57:31Speaker 01

  But if you watch, all the way to the end of the credits, you do back up to the earth.

• 1:57:35Speaker 02

  I got the earth back in. Yeah. I did get the earth back in. But then I think also, like, questions around like, you know, there should be more data, there should be more experts, there should be more, really of a polarizing commentary made on environment and climate. And then there was questions about, well, I think it should be very few, but we would get people saying, well, I want to know more about you and Molly. And I can see that, that compulsion to want to know more. But as soon as we open that can of worms, it becomes about John and Molly. But I'm telling the whole story of what was happening behind closed doors. If you watch the film three times, you see it. It's all

• 1:58:20Speaker 02

  there. I'm just telling it through the stories of these animal arcs. Right. And I didn't want to take, to me, that was the easy road. That was the, that would have been the easier thing to do. And so I think, you know, just staying really disciplined. And like I said, if there is something to be told, I had it like written in the edit room, if there is a story to be told, it must be told through the eyes of the animal, through the eyes of nature, is what it actually said. And that was very difficult to make these compelling, human condition like sort of statements, you know, through a lamb that had been orphaned. Yeah. And how that related to Molly's and my journey, you know. But those were more interesting and compelling ways to say it.

• 1:59:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think it would have been easier to make it about you guys and that would have been compelling in its own right, a very different movie, but you make this, you basically make this ensemble piece.

• 1:59:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:59:12Rich Roll?

  Where, where, you know, you're featuring all these different animals and, and, and really like, you know, creating empathy for them and humanizing them in a certain way.

• 1:59:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:59:23Rich Roll?

  As all pieces in this, in this grand like interplay.

• 1:59:25Speaker 02

  And actually back to, not to bring it up again, but back to like, you know, the, the conflict or the, the assault that you've received around, you know, the vegan versus meat eater debate, I've done more, I think, to advance the non-meat eating movement in creating an empathy and sensitivity for the, that these are alive thinking beings. So, you know, say what you will, but I, I think in a lot of ways, people have actually questioned how much meat they eat after seeing this. And I think that is a really good step towards where, where we need to find this balance that we're all heading for.

• 2:00:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, certainly, you know, you have deep relationships with all of these animals in a way that, that, you know, you're connected in a way that almost nobody is. So you get into Telluride.

• 2:00:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:00:19Rich Roll?

  That had to be exciting.

• 2:00:21Speaker 02

  It was amazing. We found, found out the film hadn't even really been finished. And we were told that, you know, just so you're clear, like, you know, accepting Telluride, which is an amazing, amazing opportunity, sort of a tastemaker festival. They don't accept a lot of documentaries. I think, I could have this wrong, I think it's like five.

• 2:00:42Rich Roll?

  And they don't tell anyone who's in the festival.

• 2:00:45Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:00:46Rich Roll?

  They just show up.

• 2:00:47Speaker 02

  You literally can't tell anyone until the day you show up that you're in the festival. I told my mom, which was a great risk because she uses Facebook.

• 2:00:52Rich Roll?

  [laughing]

• 2:00:53Speaker 02

  In ways that are inappropriate at times. But so, yeah, that was really exciting and we, you know, had never shown it to an audience outside of these test groups. And I remember we show the film and I have, I see all these somewhat, you know, jaded documentary filmmakers who I know, watching the movie. And I'm like, oh God, here it goes. And.

• 2:01:17Speaker 02

  Lights come up and we got swarmed in the lobby and like everybody in the lobby is crying. And I was like, oh, I'm almost gonna cry. I walked out, I got to the, I went out the exit door and I was just like, what the hell? Oh, my God, it's like worked, it worked. And then Ryan Werner, who was a publicist at the time, came up to us and said, you guys, you gotta see this. And like, I'm still processing the experience. And he goes, look what Variety just released the review of the film. And it was the most incredible review that you could ever ask a critic to write. And it was just like, we both were like, what the hell just happened? And you felt the shift where this thing now was like, thank you, I got it from here.

• 2:02:03Speaker 02

  Right? Because you're pushing these things up these mountains all along. And that's how I feel like I've always experienced as a filmmaker. And you felt the shift. And I just saw so many different, you know, individuals who'd been seen so many different stories be affected so profoundly that they couldn't control themselves. And I was, it was just, I mean, what, it was such an amazing thing.

• 2:02:22Speaker 01

  There in that screening, Mark Monroe was there and he was sitting next to this like really older crusty guy that was like, kind of like a farmer guy or something. And he said that at the very end.

• 2:02:33Speaker 02

  Well, the guy didn't say anything the whole time.

• 2:02:35Speaker 01

  Nothing. He was silent.

• 2:02:36Speaker 02

  Arms crossed really tight, same like face the whole way through.

• 2:02:40Speaker 01

  Mark was for sure that this guy did not like the film. And he gets to the end, the credits roll, curtains go out, and he turns over to Mark and goes, that was a good goddamn film.

• 2:02:52Speaker 02

  And he hit Mark in the chest.

• 2:02:56Speaker 01

  So right there.

• 2:02:57Speaker 02

  He had no idea who Mark was. He said, man, that was a good goddamn. That's as good as it's gonna get. And then you had, was there a bidding war right away? No, they're not technically supposed to, you know, you're not supposed to like accept sales or bids on a film at that point, but there were definitely.

• 2:03:15Speaker 01

  I tell you right.

• 2:03:15Speaker 02

  I tell you right, yeah. I tell you right, you're not supposed to be selling. And there's no paparazzi, there's none of those, no red carpets. It's very low key. The distributors are there. Oh, they're there. And we started having loose conversations and hearing the grumblings. And then it, they were like, well, once you get out of the festival, we'll really start that. But then it got into Toronto. So we waited until Toronto to have those conversations.

• 2:03:38Rich Roll?

  I see.

• 2:03:39Speaker 02

  And we were told all along the way that each one of these festivals means that you're not going to get into the next big festival, you know, and that was kind of, there was obviously all

• 2:03:46Rich Roll?

  You kept getting it, yeah.

• 2:03:47Speaker 01

  We got in all of them.

• 2:03:48Rich Roll?

  It's interesting that you were at Sundance because I wouldn't, you know, after being a tell your, you know, tell your.

• 2:03:52Speaker 02

  That's what I was told. And I was like, all right, Mark's like, it'll never happen. Mark's done it a million times. It's very rare, very rare, and I respect that, and he's right. Then it got into Toronto, and then it got into Berlin, which shouldn't have happened, festival. And then it got into Doc NYC, and we were like, well, there's no way. It's been in like five.

• 2:04:12Speaker 01

  And it was opening night at Doc NYC.

• 2:04:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it was five festivals, or four or five major festivals, and then we got into Sundance. I'm like, what in the heck? Like, no one, at that point, then even like, you know, any jaded individual left on my team was just like, oh, I don't know what the hell this is.

• 2:04:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm done.

• 2:04:31Speaker 02

  I'm done trying to be, I'm done trying to capture your expectations.

• 2:04:35Rich Roll?

  You, you do something very interesting, which is you decide to, to go with Neon for distribution and, and move in this kind of, you know, down this theatrical road. It would have been very easy for you to sell to Netflix.

• 2:04:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:04:50Rich Roll?

  So walk me through like, how and why you made that decision the way you did.

• 2:04:54Speaker 02

  Well, I knew, like, I, I knew from the beginning, and that this is, you know, an audacious thing to always say as a filmmaker, we all want our film seen in a theater, and I felt a lot of shame in being, in beating that drum and saying that that's where I wanted this film seen, it was made for that. It's an important enough subject that it must be, we, it must be shown in an environment that gives it a classic sort of stamp, and it's best experienced at that, in, in that sort of group environment. And I have nothing against any of the, the streaming services, I just knew that I didn't want it to become, get lost and be viewed initially in that form.

• 2:05:36Speaker 02

  And I was told all the reasons in the world why that was a bad idea, it was incredibly naive. And I'm like, well, I've been hearing that for eight years about farming. So I'm kind of immune to that kind of advice anymore.

• 2:05:47Rich Roll?

  Well, the risk you take is that you get a very short tail. Like, you know, for a documentary to perform at the box office is extremely difficult. And so these movies, you know, are there for a week or two and then they're gone. And you've kind of lost that opportunity to create media intrigue around your movie. And, you know, it'll kind of eke its way into a streaming service. And then there you are thinking, well, was that just a big ego thing?

• 2:06:10Speaker 02

  Exactly. And it didn't feel like ego to me, ego to me at the time. It really felt like I wanted it just to have that classic presentation because I knew then it would be treated seriously. And for its streaming life and its DVD life and that kids would see it. And that was really ultimately my agenda is that it's made for a very wide audience, like a Pixar film, you know, sort of does for animation, right? It has that very wide audience, but I knew ultimately kids would be the thing that would change the needle, you know, move the needle for this whole conversation. And so I went with Neon because they came into the room with their entire team. Tom Quinn brought everybody out, like there was like seven or eight of them.

• 2:06:55Speaker 02

  And they were just really enthusiastic. They definitely got it. They saw the importance of its cinematic release. And, I mean, we had other pitches, we had other offers from other distributors who wanted to do theatrical. So it wasn't like they were up against just streamers. But that was an easy decision at a certain point.

• 2:07:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it seems like they also had a plan in terms of kind of the educational piece.

• 2:07:25Speaker 02

  They were, yeah, they knew that was important.

• 2:07:26Rich Roll?

  And realizing that, you know, this was going to be perhaps, you know, a longer, kind of slower burn.

• 2:07:32Speaker 02

  Yep, yep, they have, there's, you know, Dan O'Meara is there, has experience.

• 2:07:38Speaker 02

  In that space and they, you know, Tom had, Tom Quinn had been involved with, you know, Food, Inc. and Super Size Me, you know, and had a long history in food, food, food-related films, but also films that sort of did sort of create, stir around conversations in the environment and food. So I liked, I liked that and they, they understood the value that the impact was really what it was going to be. And cool thing is we raised a bunch of money in the beginning before the film was even released and sent 10,000 school kids to go see the movie.

• 2:08:08Rich Roll?

  Oh, that's cool.

• 2:08:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's been, that's been great and that really helped, I think, everybody see the power that this has over young people. Cause they're like, oh, kids won't sit still for it. And I've watched, you know, audiences of 650 kids in middle school just be like, not say a word the entire time and teachers like, we can never get them to shut their mouths. You know, and I think that's, that was really cool.

• 2:08:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, my daughter who I brought to the farm, Jaya, I mean, I can't get her to walk, watch a documentary to save her life. And I was like, you're gonna watch this movie because we're going to the farm and this is our homeschooling daddy-daughter experience. So sit down. Like, I had to like force her, but it didn't take very long before she was just like all in, like she just was all in and it was like, oh, you know, like she loves animals and, you know, it was, you know, it was a cool experience for her. So I get that part of it.

• 2:08:56Speaker 02

  That's amazing.

• 2:08:57Rich Roll?

  So we're, we're tiptoeing up against Oscar season now. Like, do you find yourselves like fantasizing about that kind of stuff? Or do you be like, I can't think about that or like, that's too crazy or, you know, where's your head with all of that?

• 2:09:10Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 2:09:11Rich Roll?

  I mean, it's, it's tricky, like, you know, if I say anything, I'm gonna jinx something.

• 2:09:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, like I think, look, what we've, this is gonna sound so diplomatic.

• 2:09:19Rich Roll?

  The success is so crazy already.

• 2:09:20Speaker 02

  I know, exactly. Like, it's like, who, I, this has been amazing. I think if it were to be lucky enough to be considered, that would be great. It would be great for the message. It would be great for the awareness on an international level. And by the way, the film's being released in over 22 countries theatrically. And that number keeps going up, which is great. Even China, Japan, Australia, New Zealand. So like, it's really great. But, you know, to have that nod for this film would be great for that reason. But, you know, I can't say that our lives would be better for it. But of course, I think, you know.

• 2:09:58Speaker 01

  I think it can win.

• 2:09:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:00Speaker 01

  I do.

• 2:10:00Rich Roll?

  Good for you.

• 2:10:01Speaker 01

  I really think it could.

• 2:10:02Rich Roll?

  See, there it is. This is what I was talking about at the beginning. It had to be that like pillar of like optimism.

• 2:10:08Speaker 02

  And I'll play my, there's many great films out there. Mal, you don't understand the dynamic of this. It's a dog eat dog world. But I mean, but we're, you know, we're trying. We're going around and doing the thing that you do, just, you know, share it with, you know, Academy members and.

• 2:10:22Rich Roll?

  Tis the season.

• 2:10:22Speaker 02

  It's important and I owe it to the film to do it. It's hard to put yourself out there and be like, please like me again. You know, I thought like I avoided that once I left filmmaking, became a farmer. But I'm really intrigued by the idea of continuing to make films now, especially around this space. You know, I had a good experience. I lost, you know, like, it's like childbirth, right? After about nine months, you forget the pain you go through and then you have another kid.

• 2:10:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:48Speaker 01

  Easy for you to say.

• 2:10:49Speaker 02

  Right, exactly, as a man.

• 2:10:50Rich Roll?

  So are you like, are you already like, ah, the next movie?

• 2:10:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, I am. I am now.

• 2:10:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:55Speaker 01

  We had to work really hard on the farm to figure out how to even get through the process of this movie. And so we now have a structure that enables John to be connected on the visionary level, which he, I absolutely am completely reliant upon him for, while having our operations not suffer. So, and storytelling, I mean, how many people get to have a master storyteller folded into their mix to be able to tell the importance of what you're doing? So I think we'd be silly not to have that be fully expressed in whatever it should be.

• 2:11:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, that's, that's the Archimedes lever that can really move the needle in terms of awareness and education. You know, there's what you're doing on the farm, but how do you scale that, right? And you scale it through your storytelling skills and acumen. You know, when I visited the farm, you're also like an incredible tour guide. Like you took a ton of time with us and, you know, showed us everything and explained everything. And I was like, this should just be. You've got to find a way to to provide more of that. I mean, I don't know how much of that you do, but like this is, you know, this is an opportunity because of the notoriety and kind of profile that you have as a result of the movie to, you know, leverage the farm beyond just what you're doing in the soil to really, you know, educate future generations

• 2:12:11Rich Roll?

  of farmers and just educate people in general so that they can be better equipped to vote with their choices and their dollars. Absolutely.

• 2:12:20Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 2:12:21Speaker 01

  This ability to have a storyteller there also enables us to maintain the authenticity of what we do because of that scaling piece. If we tried to scale and scale and scale and scale and scale and that was our focus, we would lose, we would lose some of that connection.

• 2:12:35Speaker 02

  It's the lore that's been lost. That's what's, that's, we don't have the innovation from the past. I don't have a hundred and five year old farmer to talk to. And so this generation's job is to capture the stories and mythologize this new lens of seeing in a way that we can pass on. And they, you know, there's nothing wrong with using, I think, storytelling for that. And I do feel a burden of responsibility not to turn my back on the opportunity I've been given to convey that message.

• 2:13:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, a big part of the movie is you trying to figure out stuff on your own. You have what Alan is telling you and he's full of wisdom, but there are blind spots there as well. And you're kind of stumbling through this. And it occurred to me like, why isn't there basically like a rulebook for this that could have told you ahead of time, this is what's going to happen, here's what you do. And now you're in an opportunity with the experience that you that you've had to kind of canonize this and, you know, create a roadmap so that other people can mimic what you've done and kind of avoid some of the difficulties that you had to weather.

• 2:13:43Speaker 02

  Right. And mimic to a degree because it's all like very unique, right?

• 2:13:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's going to be different.

• 2:13:47Speaker 02

  Right. But like the lenses, like being able to like define what the words like mutualism even means or biomimicry or symbiosis, like those are the three lens we lenses we put on in the wake of every decision. And That suddenly becomes your way of seeing solutions that don't require an expert. It's crazy, right? And Alan used to always say that to me. You don't always need an expert for every problem. You just need to think about it in the context of these three different things. So yeah, I mean, I think the storytelling enables a visualization of what that filter looks like.

• 2:14:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And the teaching isn't. So basically what I get from that is that the teaching isn't just about when this happens, here's what you do. It's about a way of thinking and about like a certain way of problem solving that requires you to think differently.

• 2:14:37Speaker 02

  Exactly. One size, one way of parenting is not a fit all approach. Each kid within your family needs a different thing. You just need to have the filter of first, I love this kid. I promise I love this kid. And then you start to see the opportunities within that love for this child to sort of connect with it. But it's going to be different from your son or your daughter, or one son to the next son. And

• 2:15:01Rich Roll?

  The principles are also kind of oddly and curiously applicable to the workplace, too. Oh, my gosh. How do you manage a team of people? And how do you like, there's all this sort of, there's a surrender aspect. There's the allowing. There's the be curious. You know, all of these things I think are powerful tools that that are that have applications, you know, not just on a farm, but in our everyday lives.

• 2:15:24Speaker 02

  I'm going to say one thing, and I want to turn it over to Molly, because this is the area that she's really, I think, focused on. The first eight years for us was about building the immunology of our land, recreating an immune system that could sort of buffer itself against these epidemics. And what we realized is that it was incredibly reliant upon the cohesive sort of cohesiveness of the team think and the way that the team viewed each other and viewed the goals. And that was not something Molly and I were good at navigating. And that's where Molly has really stepped into this role, the next level of immunology for the farm. And that is, you know, how we, how we work our culture.

• 2:16:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that's pretty much it. It's just basically you have to... Yeah, you... So, we did... Going through the film was really hard on our team. And so then, as operations had to come fully in my court, I was able to, one, look at the whole, which is something that, as we were co-leading, that's... You don't actually get that opportunity as much. And then, just like the coyote, like you wrap your arms around the whole thing and kind of find the purpose in each person. But then, my days are basically spent working with the team to either help increase assertiveness on one side or increase empathy. It's like each person is just needing one or the other to be able to find connection and communication.

• 2:16:51Speaker 01

  Because ideally, they're working as a self-sustained ecosystem. So, they don't need me. If I'm... Most of my job is turning them back on themselves, either individually to find their instincts for the ones that have challenges with that, or turn them together to each other to trust each other, to have the hard conversations. So, it's... I love that because I'm getting the different version of what we did with the soil and what I do raising a son and what we do in our relationship. And now, it's just applying that there. But ultimately, they're going to work me out of a job in the sense that I'm going to have more time to get my hands in the dirt after I go through this process because they won't need me as much as they did.

• 2:17:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's the real plan. I foresee a Harvard Business School case study.

• 2:17:40Speaker 02

  It's really been amazing to watch.

• 2:17:42Speaker 01

  It's really fun. And it's just taken like, you know, 20 years of therapy for myself.

• 2:17:46Rich Roll?

  Of course.

• 2:17:47Speaker 02

  That's it. For the bargain price of a house.

• 2:17:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:17:51Rich Roll?

  All right, we got to land this plane. But I want to kind of end it with final thoughts on what it is that you most want people to take away from this movie and your experience.

• 2:18:06Speaker 01

  Do you want to go first or last? I feel like you need to go last.

• 2:18:08Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:18:09Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:18:09Speaker 02

  I'll take your advice.

• 2:18:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you take the phone. Put the pressure on him.

• 2:18:12Speaker 01

  It's his art.

• 2:18:14Speaker 02

  I might just say ditto after.

• 2:18:16Speaker 01

  No, I'm just going to keep it really simple. That for me, this film is a love story and it reflects the love of this farm and this piece of nature that we've experienced. And so I would love if people walk away inspired to begin to create that connection in some very small way for themselves. That's it.

• 2:18:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:39Speaker 02

  And I would say that no political or religious side owns the conversation around the planet. I would say all of us innately know that we are dependent upon the finite natural resources of this life-giving blue marble floating through space. And allow yourselves to be made fun of for desiring a vulnerable reconnection back to nature. And when someone tries to bring up the ideas or the conversation around economics or

• 2:19:20Speaker 02

  practicality or logic, stay focused on that reconnection. Because I feel ultimately what we're all starving from starts with that reconnection to nature and then from there to each other.

• 2:19:35Rich Roll?

  It's a beautiful place to end it, my friends. Beautifully put. I applaud you for your commitment, not just to the planet, but to educating people. I do think this movie is a remarkable achievement and it's impacted so many people. I know it's going to continue to do that. And also for, you know, the courage and vulnerability to share so much of yourselves and to put so much of your own personality and private lives into, you know, into this story. I think it allows people to connect with it and see themselves and reflect on, you know, our own relationship to our environment and our communities. And I think it's really cool. So I'm really, I'm really proud to have had you guys here today and really, really

• 2:20:21Rich Roll?

  happy to talk to you and share your message.

• 2:20:23Speaker 02

  You're an incredible human being and like, you're so easy to speak with. You should do this for a living.

• 2:20:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so the movie is going wide on Hulu on November. This week, right?

• 2:20:37Speaker 02

  This week. Yes, November.

• 2:20:39Rich Roll?

  Wednesday, maybe?

• 2:20:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's in beginning of November.

• 2:20:41Rich Roll?

  Beginning of November. All right, this is going up in mid to late November, I think. I don't know the date specifically, so by the time this is up, it will be on Hulu. That's probably the easiest way for people to see it, right? Or it's on Amazon Prime and all that kind of stuff, too.

• 2:20:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's on Amazon, it's on Google Play, all that stuff. Then can I tell you one cool thing?

• 2:20:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:00Speaker 02

  The, there's a live orchestra scoring of the film that's gonna happen at the Wiltern in LA on December 4th, which is cool. So the actual conductor, who wrote the music, is gonna be there scoring the film live to picture while audiences get to watch it at the Wiltern on December 4th.

• 2:21:16Rich Roll?

  That's very cool.

• 2:21:17Speaker 02

  I'm so excited about that. And Jeff Beal, who's the composer, amazing, talented guy, is putting this together. So if you haven't seen the movie, great way to see it.

• 2:21:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, for sure. Yeah, cool. Is it, are there still tickets available for that?

• 2:21:29Speaker 02

  There, there might be still tickets available, yeah. They're just, I mean, as we're speaking today, they're going on sale this week.

• 2:21:34Rich Roll?

  Cool. Well, I'll find that link and I'll put it up on the show notes. So if you're in LA, go check that out.

• 2:21:39Speaker 02

  Cool. Hopefully you can make it out and see it.

• 2:21:41Rich Roll?

  All right, you guys. Peace. Thank you. All right, you guys. Plants. That was it. We did it. That was John and Molly Chester and me. I found it fascinating. I hope you guys enjoyed that. If you haven't already, please check out The Biggest Little Farm. It's available on Apple TV, Amazon Prime, a host of other platforms. It just debuted on Hulu, so pretty much everywhere you enjoy your streaming content. And hit them up on the socials and let them know what you thought of today's conversation. You can find The Biggest Little Farm on Instagram @TheBiggestLittleFarm and on Twitter @BiggestLILFarm. And you can learn more about

• 2:22:21Rich Roll?

  The movie and the work that these people are doing at biggestlittlefarmmovie.com. If you'd like to support the work we do here on the show, subscribe, rate and comment on it on Apple Podcasts, share the show on social media, subscribe to my YouTube channel. You can also subscribe to the show on Spotify and Google Podcasts, and you can support us on Patreon at ritual.com/donate. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today. Jason Camiello for audio engineering, production, show notes, interstitial music. Blake Curtis and Margot Lubin for videoing and editing the show. Jessica Miranda for graphics. Ally Rogers for portraits. DK for advertiser relationships and theme music by Analemma. Appreciate all of you people. Love you guys. I will see you back here next week with a great episode.

• 2:23:06Rich Roll?

  It's sort of a twofer on the regenerative agriculture theme that we're doing here with Ryland Engelhardt. He's the face of the family-owned group of restaurants known as Cafe Gratitude and Gracias Madre. He is also the co-founder of Kiss the Ground, which is all about regenerating our soil and creating greater biodiversity. He's a super cool guy. He's a friend. It's a great conversation. Here's a clip to take you out. Until then, let's all try to live a little bit more in harmony with nature. Peace. Plants. Namaste.

• 2:23:39Speaker 04

  The principles of sacred commerce, or the basic messages, how can you run a business and also awaken the presence of love? And we do see the positive impact of creating a space that uses language intentionally to uplift people and to remind people of their greatness. That was kind of the biggest spiritual epiphany of my life, was that love is not something found in a person, place, or thing. It's something that is ever-present in our heart, and it's always available as a gift.

• 2:24:18Speaker 04

  And it costs nothing to share it. And, yes, we have lots of things that get in the way of that. But if I was to die tomorrow, what I would want people to know and what I would hope that I demonstrated to a fair amount of the interactions that I've had would be like, wow, there was love present that was being given freely from that human being.