Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature

In the burgeoning field of biomimicry, bioneers are designing a technological civilization that harmonizes with nature’s operating instructions. Inventor Jay Harman models the forms and dynamics of water with astounding results. Chemist Paul Anastas is re-inventing a “Green Chemistry” that transforms how we make things. Imitating nature is paying off for the economy, people and the planet.

Amy Emerson, Director of Clinical Research at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS); Martin Lee, Director of Project CBD; and Ralph Metzner, legendary psychedelic research pioneer, share their insights into the state of knowledge about the potential curative properties of psychedelic substances.

There are two great Will Allens in organic agriculture. One is a 6’7” former professional basketball player and founder of Growing Power in Milwaukee, the renowned urban agriculture training center. The other Will Allen is an organic farming pioneer and activist who started out as a professor at UC Santa Barbara, but was fired and jailed for his anti-Vietnam war activism. No longer able to work in academia, he took up farming following in his father’s footsteps.Will’s zeal for justice and reform was transferred to agriculture. He founded the Sustainable Cotton Project (SCP) in 1990, which helped farmers transition to organic while reducing farmworker exposure to pesticides. SCP created markets for organic cotton selling to major manufacturers like Patagonia, Esprit, Levis, Marks and Spencer, and Nike.Understanding that war creates more victims than heroes, Will became a founding member of Farms Not Arms (now the Farmer Veteran Coalition), which helps veterans heal from the trauma of war by training them for jobs in agriculture.Will moved from California to Vermont to farm and became active in the Vermont GMO labeling law campaign. He farms with his wife Kate Duesterberg on 40 acres, producing a diversity of vegetables and fruits, grains, oil sunflower, dry beans, and ornamental and cut flowers. The farm has a certified kitchen producing organic products, and an organic coffee shop. The Cedar Circle Farm educational program hosts over a thousand school kids each year.I sat down with Will at the 2016 Eco Farm Conference to talk about his work with Regeneration Vermont that promotes climate-friendly agriculture, social justice for farmworkers, stewardship of the natural environment and the production of healthy food. At the age of 80, Will is still a vital and transformative force, steadily pushing the food system to be more accountable, more in tune with nature and to be in service of human and ecosystem health.Listen to the excerpt of my interview with Will Allen below.

In times of strife, how can art serve as a healthy catalyst for positive transformation? Join San Francisco City Art Commissioner Dorka Keehn in a conversation about the frontlines of cultural revolution. With: Favianna Rodriguez, a renowned transnational interdisciplinary artist and cultural organizer focused on social change.Recorded at the 2015 National Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, California.

"A worldview that understands indigeneity is a paradigm of regeneration, a worldview rooted in enduring values in what we call our original instructions, common themes of reciprocity, of gratitude, of responsibility, of generosity, of forgiveness, of humility, of courage, of sacrifice, and of course love. But these values are not just words, we need to live them."We’re all indigenous to planet Earth, but we’ve not been acting that way. Cultural ecologist, indigenous scholar and activist Dr. Melissa K. Nelson reminds native and non-native peoples alike that we all need to re-indigenize ourselves by learning and practicing nature’s operating instructions and the Original Instructions for how to be a human being. At this unprecedented moment of globalized environmental breakdown, it’s going to take the best of Western science and the indigenous science of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) to navigate this evolutionary keyhole.

Our misbegotten industrial food system is one of our greatest vulnerabilities. Its dangerously fossil-fueled, toxic, monocultural and centralized. The real cost of cheap food is very high to both people and planet. Urban food innovators are designing vibrant new local food economies built on environmental and ecological integrity, sustainability, diversity and equity. Join author Michael Pollan, Fair Food Foundation CEO Oran Hesterman, faith-based change-maker James Ella James and student leader Victoria Carter for a smorgasbord of nourishing morsels from the emerging locavore movement.Find out more about Michael Pollan at his website, and the work Oran Hesterman is doing at the Fair Food Network website.

John Todd, an ecological designer in the field of biomimicry, imitates nature's evolutionary genius to serve human ends harmlessly, using nature's processes as the design for buildings, technologies and practical solutions to environmental devastation. Educator David Orr suggests that true ecological design can take place only in a society willing to ask, "How would nature do it?"

Ecology is the superb art of interdependent relationships. Author and physicist Fritjof Capra, Native American educator Jeannette Armstrong, and medical researcher Jeanne Achterberg describe the complex and interconnected relationships inherent in living systems that can help heal our environment, our societies, and us.

Activists, scientists and grassroots groups are leveraging new technology and collaborative networks to accurately monitor the quality of the environment, expose governmental and corporate abuses, and enable large-scale ecological research to understand the web of life in the age of climate disruption. Hosted by Teo Grossman, Bioneers Director of Strategic Network Initiatives. With: Severine v T Fleming, Farm Hack; Shannon Dosemagen, founder/President, New Orleans-based Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science; Brian Haggerty, co-designer, USA National Phenology Network, a multisectoral climate change research program using citizen scientists to monitor seasonal behavior of U.S. flora and fauna.

First Peoples have long used key sacred plants as powerful healing tools and to communicate with the "mind of nature." In this truly unique session Bioneers associate producer and editor of Visionary Plant Consciousness J.P. Harpignies and ethnobotanist/artist Kat Harrison hosted deeply experienced practitioners of sacred plant traditions from the International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers, including Mazatec Elder Julieta Casimiro; Maria Alice Campos Freire, a Madrinha in Brazil's Santo Daime Church; traditional Cheyenne dance leader, sculptress and writer Margaret Behan Red Spider Woman; and Bernadette Rebienot, Omyene healer and master of the lboga Bwiti Rite.