Just weeks ago, I published a piece on Substack titled: Two 'Regen' Farmers Walk Into An Oval Office Debate Blind-Sided – and exit with the 'most support we’ve ever had’. Those two farmers are legends. Will Harris from White Oak Pastures in Georgia, and my guest today, former USDA scientist, now farmer and independent researcher in South Dakota, Dr Jonathan Lundgren.

Jon’s story is the stuff of blockbuster films – kind of like the Michael Lewis stories that inspired The Big Short and Moneyball. Jon was a gun researcher with the USDA, but as he came to find deep concerns with chemical use in agriculture, he came to find deeper concerns with the political suppression of that research.

It was actually while receiving a distinguished award from another President that it hit him, ‘playing by the rules of the game wasn’t going to change how we produce food.’ Profound upheaval ensued. He quit his job and began planning what became a successfully crowdfunded farm and research foundation, propelled by a vision to transform food systems.

Just the other day, Blue Dasher Farm and Ecdysis Foundation celebrated their 10th birthdays, and a brewing paradigm change in food, farming and the health of people and planet.

And the Foundation’s 1000 Farms initiative, whose extraordinary findings proved pivotal to the Executive Order that emerged from the Oval Office that day, and now believed to be the largest database of regenerative food systems in the world, is going global, including to Australia, without any cost to farmers, or for that matter, to the rest of us.

Jon joins me at dusk on the farm.

If you’d like to go straight to a particular part of our conversation, or essentially view a table of contents, you can navigate via the chapter markers and transcript.

Recorded 27 August 2026.

Title image by Katie Bell at the Regenerate Conference 2024 (where ep231 was recorded – A Force for Mending?).

Register your farm via the 1000 Farms link above.

Update on the situation at Kachana Station, as a bid is launched to save the donkeys. Thanks to everyone who has responded with your support.

Music:

Open Wide, by Russo feat. Roy Dotan (from Artlist).

Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.

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Hit play, share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, subscribe if you can, and enjoy the hundreds of episodes available.

The RegenNarration is independent, ad-free and freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, gain access to a great community and some exclusive benefits, and help keep the show going - on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find writing too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks for your support!

Claire Scobie was a successful professional at the top of her game - award-winning author and journalist, and founder of Wordstruck, a narrative-based consultancy working with prominent companies globally – when a single moment cracked something open, and she found herself in a ‘devastated place’. There began the deeply personal odyssey told in her new book Wild Hope: Stories of living and leading in uncertain times.

The blurb reads:

As old certainties fall away, Claire and her husband move to Gumbaynggirr Country on the Mid North Coast of New South Wales, where he is from. From there she meets filmmakers, farmers, CEOs, Elders and shopkeepers everywhere who are asking, what now?

From the push to make rivers swimmable again, to people-owned power, and children speaking Gumbaynggirr in a Coffs Harbour school hall as if the language never left, she learns what happens when people stop waiting for perfect solutions. Together, they are living proof that, beneath the radar, thousands of people and communities are changing things from the ground up.

And that’s not the half of what Claire found along the way, as she and her husband, prominent Gumbaynggirr man and former Australian Senator, Aden Ridgeway, unexpectedly found themselves entwined in this journey together, back on Aden’s Country, striving to understand what lies at the heart of regeneration.

If you’d like to go straight to a particular part of our conversation, you can navigate via the chapter markers & transcript.

Recorded 19 August 2026.

You can pre-order the book now, with a 20% discount direct from NewSouth books.

Launch events and other info.

Claire’s Substack. Including a piece she wrote about our conversation.

Music:

Desert Horizon, by Nolan Nova (from Artlist).

Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Hit play, share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, subscribe if you can, and enjoy the hundreds of episodes available.

The RegenNarration is independent, ad-free and freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, gain access to a great community and some exclusive benefits, and help keep the show going - on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find writing too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks for your support!