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. 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 (there's a photo on the episode website linked 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.
Title slide: Allan Savory.
You’ll see a terrific selection of other photos on the website (supplied).
Music:
Faraway Castle, by Rae Howell and Sunwrae.
Scotland the Brave, by Eric M. Armour - Sourced from the Free Music Archive under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Find more:
You can also hear a special extra to this episode with Allan.
The Savory Institute, including Allan’s famous text and a new handbook, with 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 my conversations with some of those mentioned in our conversation (such as Terry McCosker in ep. 67 & the Henggelers in the Kimberley in ep. 25).
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