#075 Regenerating Civilisation
Allan Savory on holistic management, scaling & a sense of survival
Haul back through the spread of regenerative agriculture in recent decades, and Allan Savory is there. His global influence is hard to overstate. Here we chat about his extraordinary life, and the evolution of his insights that have proved so transformative for so many. Thinking holistically is one thing. But how do we actually manage our lives and societies holistically? And ultimately, how do we engage the institutions that we’ve come to so distrust, to enable regeneration at scale - in whatever our role or walk of life? Far from just in agriculture, but certainly not without it. Allan believes it’s possible, and proposes how it might be done.
“And I remember thinking there, why am I in the army, why am I fighting in a war, why am I doing all these things, for politicians I don’t believe in, policies I don’t believe in? What am I prepared to do about this? The destruction of my country?”
Allan’s the founder and President of The Savory Institute. He’s also Chair and co-founder, with wife Jody Butterfield, of the Africa Centre for Holistic Management back home in Zimbabwe. His TED talk has now been viewed over seven million times. And his most valued award was Australia’s esteemed International Banksia Award (picture below) for the person doing the most for the environment on a global scale.
This episode marks what would have been the 77th birthday of the bloke who introduced me to systems thinking and living 20 years ago – a man who somehow did find his way in academia, albeit in notably different ways, the late Professor Frank Fisher. I couldn’t imagine a more fitting guest to mark the occasion, than Allan. We met online for this conversation on Saturday 22 November 2020.
Pics below: supplied. Click on the photos for full view, and hover over the image for descriptions where they’ve been added.
Get more:
Tune into the special extra with Allan, ‘The Domino Effect’.
The Savory Institute - including Allan’s famous text and a new handbook, courses, global network etc.
The Africa Centre for Holistic Management.
Allan’s 2020 Tony Coote Memorial Lecture for The Mulloon Institute (lecture starts 7 minutes in).
And you can find episodes with some of those mentioned in our conversation (such as Terry McCosker in ep 67 & the Henggelers in the Kimberley in ep 25).
Music:
Faraway Castle, by Rae Howell & Sunwrae.
Scotland the Brave, by Eric M. Armour. Sourced from the Free Music Archive under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.