Charles Massy gained a Bachelor of Science at Australian National
University (ANU) in 1976 before going farming for 35 years and
developing the prominent Merino sheep stud “Severn Park”. Concern
at ongoing land degradation and humanity’s sustainability challenge
led him to return to ANU in 2009 to undertake a PhD in Human
Ecology. Charles was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for his
service as chair and director of a number of research organizations
and statutory wool boards. He has also served on national and
international review panels in sheep and wool research and
development and genomics. Charles has authored several books on the
Australian sheep industry, the most recent being the widely
acclaimed Breaking the Sheep’s Back, which was short-listed for the
Prime Minister’s Australian Literary Awards in Australian History
in 2012.
Nicolette Hahn Niman served as senior attorney for Waterkeeper
Alliance, running their campaign to reform the concentrated
production of livestock and poultry. In recent years, she has
gained a national reputation as an advocate for sustainable food
production and improved farm-animal welfare. She is the author of
Righteous Porkchop and Defending Beef, and has written for numerous
publications, including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times,
HuffPost, and The Atlantic online. She lives on a ranch in Northern
California with her husband, Bill Niman, and their two sons.
Booklist— "In the last few decades, a growing movement toward
pesticide and GMO-free farming practices has been blossoming
throughout the world as a counterbalance to corporate-driven
agribusinesses. Piggybacking on terms
like sustainability and permaculture, veteran
sheepherder and author Massy refers to these environmentally
friendly methods as “regenerative agriculture,” and he offers
inspiring testimony here on how he and many of his fellow
food-growing Australians have transformed their farmlands by
respecting the native ecosystems that surround them. In three
richly informative sections, Massy recounts the background story of
how aboriginal sustainable land use eventually gave way to what he
calls mechanical agriculture practices; demonstrates how balancing
five landscape functions, such as solar energy and water cycles,
can revitalize the soil; and gives abundant examples of Aussie
farmers, including himself, using these practices with great
success….[Massy’s] message about the dire need for
sustainability is one that all readers concerned about food and the
environment should closely heed."
Kirkus Reviews— "An Australian sheepherder and range specialist
looks at his home's biotic communities and how to improve their
health with a more thoughtful kind of agriculture. Arachnophobes
take note: There's a reason you want to see a lot of spiders in the
tall grass, for, as Massy (Breaking the Sheep's Back, 2011, etc.)
instructs, it means that good things are happening. 'To sustain
millions of spiders,' he writes, 'there must be a corresponding
diversity in the food chain, and healthy landscape function above
and below ground.' Such a healthy landscape, argues the author in
considerable detail, cannot come about through what he calls the
'more-on' approach to agriculture, piling chemicals atop
increasingly unproductive soil, but instead is the result of a
‘regenerative' agriculture that necessarily happens at a small
scale. The larger scale is what modern agronomists insist is needed
in order to feed a growing world population, but at a cost that may
be too great. As Massy observes, a livestock grower will always
seek to save the herd before saving the range, no matter how
shortsighted that strategy may be in the end. The author's prose
can be arid and technical at times, as when he writes, 'at a global
level, non-regeneratively grazed livestock emissions are a huge
source of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.' At others, he
sounds like a modern butterflies-are-free avatar of Charles Reich:
'an Emergent mind combines elements of the previous Organic and
Mechanical minds, but its true difference is an openness to the
ongoing processes of emergence and self-organization.' The
circularity aside, Massy's book is a useful small-is-beautiful
argument for appropriate-level farming that people can do without
massive machines or petrochemical inputs. Though less elegant than
Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson, he certainly falls into their camp,
and their readers will want to know Massy's work as well. A solid
case for taking better care of the ground on which we stand."
“Part lyrical nature writing, part storytelling, part solid
scientific evidence, part scholarly research, part memoir, [this]
book is an elegant manifesto, an urgent call to stop trashing the
Earth and start healing it.”—The Guardian
“Charles Massy has written a definitive masterpiece that takes its
place along with the writings of Aldo Leopold, Wendell Berry,
Masanobu Fukuoka, Humberto Maturana, and Michael Pollan. No work
has more brilliantly defined regenerative agriculture and the
breadth of its restorative impact upon human health, biodiversity,
climate, and ecological intelligence. There is profound insight
here, realized by thirty-five years of farming on the ancient,
fragile soils of the Australian continent, discernment expressed
with exquisite clarity, seasoned wisdom, and some breathtaking
prose of poetic elegance. I believe it takes its place as the
single most important book on agriculture today, one that will
become a classic text.”—Paul Hawken, author of Blessed Unrest;
editor of Drawdown
“I first met Charles Massy in 2015 when he visited the ranch of the
Africa Centre for Holistic Management in Zimbabwe. Building on the
work of many people, Massy has now written a compelling and
comprehensive book on the importance of management being
holistic—and how that will ultimately lead to a regenerative
agriculture capable of restoring even the most degraded ecosystems
and marginalized land in any climate and at any scale. He has
done this with wonderful stories that take us on a
journey of ecological literacy, supported by evocative insights
into landscapes, science, and practical farming and
living. Call of the Reed Warbler is a massive
accomplishment and contribution to our collective work of building
a new agriculture, a new Earth, and renewed human society and
health.”—Allan Savory, president of the Savory Institute
“This book will change the way you think about food, farming, and
the place of humans on the planet. Introducing us to leaders of the
regenerative agriculture movement, Massy offers real hope that we
may yet fashion a society that gives more than it takes.”—Liz
Carlisle, author of Lentil Underground; lecturer, School of
Earth, Energy, and Environmental Sciences, Stanford University
“Conceptually rich and filled with examples of diverse innovators,
Call of the Reed Warbler is the most comprehensive and engaging
book I’ve read on regenerative agriculture. Charlie Massy contends
humans have morphed from an ‘Organic mind’ into a ‘Mechanical
mind,’ which is now evolving into an ‘Emergent mind’—a change in
consciousness that embraces self-organizing processes. He shows how
the minds of the innovators in his book were opened to three key
processes: First, they began to understand how landscapes function,
how ecological system work, and how they are indivisibly connected.
Second, they got out of the way to let nature repair,
self-organize, and regenerate these functions. Third, they had the
humility to ‘listen to their land,’ change, and continue to learn
with that same openness. Massy concludes we can heal Earth, but
only by transforming ourselves and our connections with the
landscapes and communities in which we live. This book is a
thoughtful step in that direction.”—Fred Provenza, professor
emeritus, Department of Wildland Resources, Utah State University;
author of Nourishment
“Charles Massy is a leader in the regenerative agriculture movement
in Australia with a message of hope for everyone. Using
his arid homeland as a touchstone, Massy thoughtfully
counterbalances the damage done by industrial agriculture to our
land and our prospects with evocative examples from around the
world of a hopeful way forward. His beliefs are grounded in
practical experience, his vision clear, and his words
inspiring. Call of the Reed Warbler is a
must-read!”—Courtney White, author of Grass, Soil, Hope
“Call of the Reed Warbler not only heralds the sound of an
ecosystem functioning but also of a world awakening to regenerative
agriculture. Charlie Massy is Australia’s equivalent to Thoreau and
Leopold and a practical regenerative farmer to boot. I can’t think
of anyone better equipped to pen a book like this, and to do so
with such scholarship, integrity, and rollicking prose is a credit
to Charlie and those whose journey he’s portrayed. Easily my ‘Book
of the Year.’”—Darren J. Doherty, founder, Regrarians Limited
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