Regenerative Health with Max Gulhane, MD
I speak with world leaders on circadian & quantum health, metabolic medicine, regenerative farming in search of the most effective ways of optimising health and reversing chronic disease. Contact me regenerativehealth@proton.me
Regenerative Health with Max Gulhane, MD
Why Regenerative Farming & Nguni Cattle | Dr. Max Gulhane
I present nine reasons why you should support small-scale regenerative farmers and why South African indigenous Sanga cattle could be the best animal for regenerating large tracts of poor quality grazing land found in places like Australia.
This talk was recorded live at the Eastwell Farms HEART Summit in Kin Kin, QLD in March 2024, a weekend promoting regenerative farming, nutritious food and optimal human health.
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All right, welcome everyone. My name is Dr Max Colhane, and today I'm going to be speaking about nine reasons why you should consider supporting regenerative animal agriculture, and then I'll talk a little bit about why I think Nguni cattle are a very important piece of this puzzle. So you might be wondering why and what is a medical doctor doing standing at a farm field day? Well, I have a interest in holistic health and I believe that farming, specifically regenerative animal agriculture, is a critical part of human health and societal health. So I'm a general practice registrar and I have a podcast called Regenerative Health that discusses these similar topics, and I have delved into and interested in how all these different factors overlap and interact to get us closer to optimal health individually and as a society. So a key concept that I always come back to is that human health is not able to be separated from the health of the environment and of animal health. So what I mean by that is that we can't be thought of as an independent or disconnected from the land that grows our food and the animals that we consume. If the animals that we're consuming are sick, if the land that they animals are grazing on is sick, then we are going to become sick and we can't keep thinking about us as separate from this system. And if we consider or look at one of the key reasons why certain people are overweight, metabolically ill and diabetic, the processed food that they consume is so disconnected from this natural cycle, from this natural process, and I believe that that is one of the key underlying things that we need to fix if we want to get people healthier and better. So what this means in practice is that we need to be eating our species. Appropriate diet, we need to be eating animals that are eating their species. Appropriate diet and the ecosystem needs to be grazed or used in a way that is in harmony or consistent with the animals and appropriate human management. So what that means is that humans, we need to be eating ruminant meat and, although not the topic of today's talk, it's something that I've spoken at length about both in previous talks and on my podcast with various podcast guests.
Speaker 1:But it is undeniable and inarguable that eating and consuming ruminant herbivores was a essential part of human diet and human evolution. So the value that we get from consuming an animal that provides us with bioavailable protein, fat-soluble vitamins, water-soluble vitamins, trace minerals and all these other nutrients can't really be overstated, especially when we're looking back at the anthropological data, the paleoanthropological data. It's quite unequivocal. So we need to be eating ruminant meat, but if our animals are going to be healthy, they need to be eating their species appropriate diet. They have a rumen. That means they need to be eating grass. That means they're not supposed to be eating grains that are contaminated with herbicide or anything else or other products of industrial agriculture.
Speaker 1:So ruminant herbivores eat grass and we eat ruminant herbivores, and the ecosystem requires ruminant grazing to be managed appropriately. And there was no better example of this in the American west where, when it was colonized, the depth of the soil in certain places was, um, you know, meters deep, and this was a byproduct of intensive grazing and followed by long periods of rest. So the the act of having these animals on the land was building the nutrients of that soil, it was building carbon, it was fixing all these essential, important nutrients into the soil. So that is what I invite everyone to think about, which is for this cycle to work harmoniously and for the ecosystem to work harmoniously, harmoniously, and for the ecosystem to work harmoniously, we need to be, everyone needs to be engaging in the most ancestrally appropriate niche, and inevitably that includes, or that involves, as less amount of human intervention from things like synthetic herbicides and pesticides as possible. So what I want to talk to you today about and is give you nine points that I have come up with that are, in my mind, compelling reasons to source regeneratively raised animal meat and why consumers might consider this type of food as opposed to grain fed beef or opposed to meat raised under confined fed conditions or any other conditions. And I really think that this might be useful, especially for those of you doing direct to consumer or paddock to plate operations, to think about your marketing and how you can help to communicate the value of what you are offering to society and communicate that more clearly.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to talk through nine points. The first one is animal welfare. The reason why I've put this as number one is because the mainstream narratives that are collectively attacking animal agriculture and meat consumption from various angles, one of the most common ones is this idea that these animals are mistreated, and anyone who has visited Bryant's farm or visited any other regeneratively regenerative operation will attest to the fact that that these cattle are cared for immensely well and incredibly well. The what I like to say is that they have one bad day in their whole life and that is the day that that they get processed. But every other day they are happily grazing on lush pasture, moved around regularly, able to express their natural tendencies as cattle interact with their, with their children, their calves. They all exist in a mob together. So animal welfare is a critical part of this picture because we need to help to communicate to people that this is a highest form of welfare, considered food, and I like to say that I agree with many, with the vegan movement, in that I don't like to consume and I discourage people from consuming animals that are raised under confined, fed operations like pork and chicken and that are, as a result of that environment, necessitated to be injected with or provided with antibiotics, growth promotants, all kinds of other chemical inputs. So animal welfare is key in my mind, and this process of regenerative grazing respects animal welfare, I believe, as one of the highest principles. And these are two photos of one of Clyde Biggs of Nandi and Goonies in South Africa with one of his beasts, and Bryant with one of his Brahmin cows.
Speaker 1:So the next point is in environmentalism and again I'm emphasizing this is the second point, because these are the most common talking points in the mainstream about why we shouldn't be eating red meat, why we shouldn't be eating ruminant animals, and I believe this image and this diagram really encompasses what I believe is this blanket approach to environmental thinking, and what it illustrates is that everyone is having their attention directed to this extremely reductionist measure of, or proxy of, environmental health, which is carbon dioxide emissions and, you know, which is, incidentally, a byproduct of of human and animal respiration. So, but that's another whole topic that we won't go into today. But amongst this preoccupation, this myopia, this narrow-minded thinking, it's to the detriment or the ignorance of these other critical environmental impacts and considerations that we need to be thinking about and that are relevant to our local communities. And these are things like water cycles, like our soil health, like the biodiversity of our pasture and our land, like ecotoxicity and the overuse of herbicides and glyphosate, like atrazine, that are having real impacts on the ecosystem, that are having real impacts on the ecosystem and, obviously, human health and all these other more human impacts of environmentalism.
Speaker 1:So what I believe is that regenerative animal agriculture is the real environmentalism and it is doing the most important environmental work because the principles of regenerative agriculture, as it's implemented by Bryant and others, is that it doesn't involve chemical use, which is what is occurring in these broad acre cropping operations, which is producing the food that is supposedly environmentally friendly, which, again, if you've visited one of these farms and you've seen the alternatives, it's so obvious that which one is environmentally considered and which one isn't. And it's the approach that involves the large grain harvester, the massive spray rig and acres and acres and hectares and hectares of monoculture. That is not environmentally considered, that is not environmentally sustainable. That is what we need to be moving away from and we need to be moving towards regenerative animal agriculture as the real environmentalism. And I like to really again invite people to visit one of these farms, visit Eastwell Farms, and really see these happy cattle grazing in this model. And it becomes a real absurdity to think that that is somehow damaging the planet. And I think a lot has gone wrong in the thought process if these natural herbivores eating their natural diet is somehow being thought of as something that needs to be reduced or eliminated. So regenerative animal agriculture is the real environmentalism and until more people understand that, um, we're going to get confused. We're going to be eating, um more products of monocrop agriculture and we're going to be getting more obesity, diabetes and metabolic disease. So that is a really important point that I hope people can can think about it. And and look, I'm not the first person to say this. There's amazing talks by pioneers, especially like Alan Savory, who's done an amazing video on this that when we turn our view from this abstracted, globalized view to a local view and we consider the health of our soil, the health of our local area and environment, then this all makes so much more sense.
Speaker 1:All right, so the third point is meat taste, and it is something that is quite subjective, but everyone that I know who has tasted meat that has been sourced from a regenerative farm and believes that that is amongst the best meat they've ever had, and I think there's a couple of reasons behind this, and it it actually speaks to what stacy talked about yesterday with this idea of, um, you know, secondary metabolites, but truly the, the quality of the, the taste of the meat, is reflecting the, the polyculture of grass that these these animals are eating, um, as, and the degree of freshness of that that grass that these animals are eating, and it translates to an amazing depth of flavour, and farmers like Jake Walke have made the point about how the industrial food system has, especially with regard to chicken, has selected for blandness and moisture as kind of an end point that they want to create, a product that they want to create, whereas the beef that is raised regeneratively is the exact opposite. It is uniquely tasty in its own special way, and that is going to reflect the fact that these cows are all eating slightly different diets depending on which farm they are, depending on the location that they're at. But I like to think of it as a like cheese, like fine cheeses. Each one is slightly different. Each one is a little bit unique and tasty in its own way. So, so, just like you know, you can have aged cheese, aged wine.
Speaker 1:Um, I find that the taste of regenerative beef is, uh is, you know, is delicious in, especially depending on on where you buy it. So what? Why that's important is because we, you know, so many people are used to eating beef that has been raised, um, or they might have just bought from, uh, woolworths, where they might have bought from the main, the supermarket, um, and maybe people are used to a generic flavor, but I didn't don't think that that is the norm and and back when, um, when animals were all fully grass-fed, then then beef had a more beefy flavor and regenerative farming brings that characteristic flavor back, and that's again something that I prefer and I really encourage people to try. And maybe, if you've never eaten a lot of fully grass-fed beef and you're not used to that flavor, it is something that you can definitely come to enjoy and come to appreciate particularly so and again, that's my subjective opinion, but I know a lot of you here highly prefer, or would definitely prefer, eating fully grass-fed beef for their taste. And that was some some beautiful, uh, just some photos of. On the left is what was cooked for us yesterday by the very skillful chef matt, and that is some eastwell sirloin, and on the right is some walkie beef from, uh, I think, cooked by ann walkie. So yes, it's a, it's definitely a culinary experience.
Speaker 1:So the fourth point is meat nutritional quality and this idea that when the animal has been eating its natural diet, its ancestral diet, a fully grass-fed diet, that the quality of that meat is going to reflect a higher quality. And there's many ways of looking at this, and the most commonly talked about is an increase of the ratio of omega-3 to 6 polyunsaturated fatty acids, and particularly the, the enrichment of these omega-3s that we get when the animal has been fully grass-fed, compared to omega-6 fatty acids, which is going to happen when animals are fed grain in feedlots to finish them in their life. So the obviously seafood is going to be the most abundant source of things like dha and epa, those omega-3, but when we're eating fully grass-fed beef, we're also getting more than we would from feedlot beef. The deuterium is something that I spoke yesterday about, and the researcher, dr Laszlo Boros, has written an amazing paper that investigated the ability of that animal to of dairy cattle particularly, to concentrate or deplete its, its products, its milk, its meat, of deuterium. And so they found that that fully grass-fed beef is going to be more lower in deuterium and that is going to potentially have implications for human health compared to fully grain-fed beef. And look, it's a very complex way of really looking at an obvious point, which is the cow was not supposed to be eating grain. The cow did not ancestrally eat grain. The the nutrient quality of that meat is simply going to reflect the fact that if it has been eating an inappropriate diet, it's it's not going to be as as high. So there's also been a lot of other work on this topic. I believe Stefan van Gilt is one of the the leaders in this to to really make the case of of the nutritional superiority of fully grass-fed beef. But, um, I think it is another reason, or it's another. It's intimately tied to the nutritional quality. So taste is they're both intimately linked. So when we have a piece of meat or a piece of fish or that tastes better, it is our body's way of recognizing and understanding that this has got a higher nutritional density and nutritional quality.
Speaker 1:So, cost, now, cost is a topic that is one of the most common protestations of people when they're thinking about fully grass-fed beef. And, again, like I mentioned yesterday, it is simply a matter of financial priorities and I believe that people who care about their health, they care about the health of their family, their children they are going to make a priority to buy fully, fully grass-fed beef. And the beauty of meeting someone like bryant, then, and getting to know them and having access to to them, is that you can buy in bulk and you can buy a whole cow, half cow, quarter cow and fill your freezer with that meat and the benefits of the costing, benefits of buying more meat means that it makes this type of diet and this type of food sourcing that much more affordable. So you typically get a cost per kilogram for a half carcass or a whole carcass and obviously the more you buy, the cheaper it gets. But that simply reflects the fact that you're taking the whole product. You're not necessarily just wanting the ribeyes, you're not just wanting the porterhouses, and you get a cheaper rate because you're taking everything. And again, it's a skill that I think has been lost, particularly in the sport age, is to be able to use all those cuts. But it's, it's fun to experiment with recipes to use the slow cooker, to use the barbecue and to make stews, to basically make use of the whole animal and the. Again, the nutritional content of those secondary cuts is not diminished compared to the ribeye and the, the porterhouse. So it just takes a bit more skill and a little bit more time and effort to to learn about that. But it it allows you, it unlocks this new cost effectiveness of, of eating this type of of of food, this nutritious, um, high, high quality food. So, um, again, cost is something that you can play into your favor when you buy, buy in bulk. So transparency and purity.
Speaker 1:Now, this is a topic that I think is becoming more and more of interest to people who want to know exactly what they are eating. And this is it's a legitimate concern because, as the industrial food system has taken off and continues to expand, under the scientific investigation of food scientists and other form of agricultural scientists, who are essentially finding new ways of influencing or adulterating I'm using the word adulterating in a way that means, not necessarily intentionally, but to facilitate some form of animal agricultural industrial outcome, like you know, reducing disease or whatever else. But all this, all that to say, is that things like chemical use, vaccine use and other forms of intervention that didn't exist for the duration of our human consumption of these animals, that's only going to increase and it has unknown consequences. And I think this idea of, you know, using gene technology on cattle to specifically vaccinate against certain diseases. And what are the consequences of consuming meat like that? It's an unknown, unknown.
Speaker 1:So many people are interested in preserving access to meat that they know doesn't have those type of contaminants in it. And look, another aspect to this is the the consumption of meat that has been grazed or a consumed grain with glyphosate and other kind of herbicides. I mean, I'm not sure to what degree that is being bioaccumulated and then passed down through the meat. So if we don't want to find out and um, I do believe that the animal is probably biotransforming a significant degree of the these herbicides, but um, suffice to say, if we can prefer, if we prefer not to um, have any chance of consuming these types of, you know, compounds that are toxic to human health, then it makes sense to source your food from a farmer who, you know for a fact, hasn't been engaging in or using the any kind of agricultural chemical in in the raising of their animals, and that is, uh, you know, that's very reassuring to a lot of people. And I think if you want complete control over what you're feeding your wife, who's pregnant, or your you know, infant son, it's to me it's a no-brainer that we want to be 100% sure that it's the same cow that our you know, great, great, great grandparents, ateparents ate, that we have always eaten, and it's free from these novel compounds that are having known adverse effects on human health or just generally unknown, and we don't want to be the guinea pigs. So transparency and purity is a key reason to meet your farmer and buy directly off them. A key reason to meet your farmer and buy directly off them.
Speaker 1:Extending that idea is this idea of food security. Particularly during COVID, we learnt again maybe in the US more so than here in Australia that the consequences of a centralised supply chain and processing food supply apparatus is that when there is a bottleneck, like a massive processing centre that can get shut down for biosecurity or infection control reasons, then that threatens your access or can threaten your access to meat and to the food you need to nourish yourself. So you can secure food security by buying a freezer, by filling that freezer with a half cow or a whole cow, and so that is something that's reassuring to a lot of people to be to be able to know that they're not at the whims or the vagaries of what is happening and perhaps in the economy or in the area at that time, and have a buffer of you know, three months, six months worth of of nutrient-dense food that they can rely on. So food security is again, depending on what happens geopolitically, it is another attractive reason to buy fully grass-fed beef in bulk. So economic empowerment and this is zooming out and really focusing on the human implications and the economic implications of what happens when we focus in on small community production of food.
Speaker 1:I've, particularly I've used this photo and it's it's the White Oak Pastures store and White Oak Pastures is a fully grass fed regenerative farming operation run by this de-agriculturalization, de-industrialization of the USA. Again, it's happened more there than it has here, but the offshoring of many economic what was previously economic powerhouses and agricultural power, and they suffered because these towns lost people to the cities and the town suffered massively because it was essentially an economic drain from these centres. So what? This? Bringing back regenerative agriculture that uses more human labour, back regenerative agriculture that uses more human labor, it uses more skilled labor. It in in bluffton particularly, but not not only that. In other places too, it is acted as a draw card or a economic lifeline to the, to towns, because people have to be employed and people have to live there and work there.
Speaker 1:And this regenerative farming has acted as a anchor back to the society to attract people into these rural communities and empower them in a way that they might not have been at all before. So I mean the economic empowerment message is also happening on an individual scale and it's also about financially supporting the change that you want to see in the world. And what you can do by buying your meat from Bryant, and regularly, is that you are voting with your dollar for the world that you want to see. And taking it back to that second point about environmentalism, if you want to live in a more sustainable but regenerated world, then there's no good, you know, tapping on your keyboard. Uh, you know, while you drink your starbucks coffee about it, you, you should go out and spend your money, um, and empower the, the people who are doing this, this work themselves, you know, doing the hard yards. So it's all a part of what I believe the direction we need to go to, collectively and individually, which is decentralising this agricultural system and reversing the trend of centralisation towards monocropping agriculture that has occurred over the past 50 years agriculture that has occurred over the past 50 years. So walking that process back is how we empower these farmers, how we get access to this nutrient-dense food and collectively move towards a more healthy society. So don't underestimate the power as a consumer and as an individual, in in in potentiating and driving and incentivizing the rollout or the development of regenerative operations. And maybe you buy your meat once a week and then, or once a month, and then you buy it once a week and then you know your family does that. But if enough people do, then regenerative farming becomes incredibly attractive and that allows them to buy more cattle. It allows Brian to regenerate more grass to expand his operation into surrounding lease blocks, surrounding farms, and that organic demand is really how we change things. So it starts with a drop but there's reverberations and there's ripples across the whole pool when we empower and make these economic votes with our dollars.
Speaker 1:So the final point is animal husbandry, and I make this point because often there are special breeds that regenerative farmers are cultivating or stewarding as a part of their operation. So one of the breeds, particularly in that I'm interested in and that I'm going to talk about soon, is the, this ingoony cattle, a form of sangar um, african cattle, but in places like the usa there's there's bison, and people, regeneratively, are raising bison, and when you buy the regeneratively raised bison meat, it's again promoting and helping facilitate the preservation of these breeds, which is important for cultural reasons as well as environmental and agricultural reasons. So let let me talk about I'm going to talk about nanguni now and the. I'm going to explain to you why I'm so interested and passionate about this breed. And and again it's like well, why? Why is a doctor, uh, having choosing to talk about or advocate for one cattle breed over over another? And let me explain to you why I believe it's so interesting and so important.
Speaker 1:So these cattle, this Sangar breed of cattle, are essentially descended from cattle that migrated down from Northern Africa, ethiopiaopia over a period of of 3 000 years. They traversed down through incredibly difficult and harsh environment, and the process of migration with these tribal people, the zulu people and and other tribal people before them, was that it acted as a selection and it acted to select specific traits in these animals that I believe are incredibly valuable, and they were valuable to the Zulus in Africa, but they're actually also valuable to us as modern day people in Australia and other countries across the world. So the types of trials or selection presses that these cattle had to go through included predation so imagine the weak or the slow cow got taken out, it got eaten by jackals, lions or other forms of diseases, rinderpest or biological selective pressure that was made sure that only the most robust cattle were able to survive, and it also included temperature and climate and the fact that in various parts of Africa that it's incredibly dry and alternative're, it's incredibly dry and in, alternatively, it's incredibly wet and and humid. But all of these required specific, again, adaptations to select for traits that um could allow these, these creatures, to survive. So, in addition to these natural selective pressures by mother nature, there was also human selective pressures, and and I say when I describe this, I talk, talk about the harsh hand of nature, but the gentle hand of the zulus, and what I mean by that is they were selecting for specific traits, things like um, docileness, their ability to exist in their community group, in their camp, without, you know, bucking or goring anyone, so and they would have been eaten, simply eaten any animals that were having a difficult temperament or weren't conducive to this tribal, harmonious, tribal life. So those, those twin pressures of natural selection from mother nature, and this tribal selection has kind of given us a creature that is incredibly fit for purpose and incredibly suitable as as a, an animal and what, the way I think about it is, this is technology, and it is the most advanced technology that we have, for both human food but also for for land regeneration. And again, just because it's uh, it wasn't synthesized in a lab. It's not, um, you know, made of silicon chips and metal. It is the most advanced technology that mother nature has come up with for um, for this, this purpose.
Speaker 1:So let me explain some of the characteristics of these cattle and why I think they're relevant to Australia and to, again, regenerative farming, particularly Because what I like to do and I do this in clinical medicine I do this when I'm thinking about a health problem or solving for disease and preventing diseases. How can we attack this from a first principles point of view and not reason by analogy? And just because it's been done a certain way, then that isn't necessarily why we should continue to do it. And an example or what I like to say is that there were no ruminant, large ruminant herbivores on the arrival of the colonizers of Australia. There's no reason why we need to be biased towards Angus or Hereford or any other form of British breed. We really need to be, I believe, looking at what is the most suitable breed for the environment.
Speaker 1:And when we choose a breed that is most suitable for the environment, we are going to be doing the highest amount or highest degree of animal ethics, because there's nothing more unethical other than, you know, obviously directly harming the animal. There's not a lot more harmful than simply choosing an animal that is unfit for the land in which you're raised because it's simply, um, you know, it's like putting a child and and in an environment not feeding them. If you put a cow that doesn't have tick resistance in an area of endemic that's endemic with ticks, then they're going to suffer. And they're not going to suffer, um, they're going to suffer because they don't have the natural attributes to resist or deal with that environment. So let me talk about I'll talk about now the attributes of Nguni, particularly so tick resistance is a massive thing attribute that they have. And they have this tick resistance because they've developed certain sebum or excretory glands that is toxic to ticks. They've developed specific hair composition that again makes it very difficult for ticks to to settle on their their skin. They've adapted very, very movable or ability to move their skin so they can flick off things like ticks. So so that makes them very, very again suitable to humid areas or areas with high tick burden.
Speaker 1:The fertility of these animals is unprecedented, and the ability of Nguni cattle to essentially calf year on year, every year, for 17, 18 years up to, in some cases, is is, again, is unprecedented. The, the reliability of um, of both, that that early maturing cow and then having a cow every every year means that, um, it's the value that you're potentially getting is enormous. The other implication, or the obstetric advantage of these cattle is that they don't get stuck, they don't have obstructed labour, they don't need pulling and, again, it's a byproduct of that environment that they were selected in, and very quickly, any cattle that had obstructed labour would have died along with their offspring. So the need to pull cattle is almost non-existent in Goonie and I'm told that that feature or that attribute is preserved in cattle who are in crossbreds. So even if you're breeding a different bull over an Nguni cow, I'm told that the offspring that cow will maintain a very easy calving. So easy calving, fertility and consistency of reproduction, when we think about that. For for the males, um, again, I talked to clive biggs, who's one of the expert breeders in in south africa and he has incredibly mountainous, rocky terrain and his bulls, um, his, his one bull is servicing 90 females and he's walking up and down this, uh, this incredibly steep land over a period of of of months and, without losing condition, is able to service that number of females. So it's truly remarkable when we, you know, again, I've heard stories of other breeds, of the gentleman getting puffed out and kind of walking behind the females after maybe servicing only 20. So that's something to think about is how prodigiously fertile these animals are.
Speaker 1:The other points that I think are going to be relevant is the fact that they have a smaller frame size, and what that means is that you can potentially get a large amount of animals in a given area and therefore aid in the land regeneration, the. The land regeneration is also improved by the fact that you don't have to drench them or you don't have to use chemical, because their dung that they use, that they're going to deposit on the land. If that's free from chemical, then its ability to aid in this land regeneration and building of the soil microbes is going to be improved. So I think that's a little appreciated point, which is if the least amount of chemical that you can use, which is afforded by the animal's inherent characteristics, is actually going to accelerate the your grass growing ability as a farmer, and accelerate the goals of regenerative grazing, which is to grow grass and to build soil carbon. So that is another perspective on the attributes of the creature as, again, it's a tool of land regeneration. I'm also told that, in terms of the return, in terms of the amount of beef per hectare, can't beat in goonie and the. That is a function of their feed efficiency. So how much feed that they're consuming per body weight is is amazing, so that they're not maintaining or they're not consuming a lot of food to maintain a whole bunch of of tissue. That again means that you can potentially make a whole, make more money for, you know, for the less amount of of animals.
Speaker 1:The other point, in terms of the, the benefits of these, the in guni specifically, are that they have and maybe, depending on your perspective, it is either disadvantage or an advantage is things like their, their hide color. So the hide color is a product of their, their tribal breeding, and it became desirable from a tribal point of view to have a wide range of colors. But what it essentially means is that they are unique and you, instead of, or whereas, uh, you know all black cattle you might have to brand or um, you know you can't identify them in africa. They're specifically that. It's a natural defense against theft, because each one of these coats is completely unique and it's very, very difficult to you know. Steal one and try and tell someone that you know it's not their cow because, again, they're so unique.
Speaker 1:What that means is that as you guys, as farmers, you guys have you got a couple of choices about how to benefit from a goonie in your herds. And again, this is this is not an area of specialty, but just from talking to different farmers people have found benefit from adding an Nguni bull or Nguni genetics into their herd and simply benefiting from those traits. But others have maintained a full-blooded Nguni backbone of their herd and then crossed animals with a more like an Angus or other kind of British breed and then sold those terminal size into the commodity market. But doing things like paddock to plate to me in a regenerative way seems to be the most ideal to benefit from this Nguni. Because talking, talking to to customers and um, that if they they know, they understand the values, then they're going to pay that and they don't mind that these traits are, um, you know about these unique traits and it gets to maybe the final point, which is the meat quality and fully grass-fed in.
Speaker 1:Goonie tastes amazing. It doesn doesn't taste worse, it tastes better and that is something that you know, is a common misconception, I think. So I've tasted Nguni from up here at Eastwell and then down in Albury and it's an amazingly tasty meat. So fully grass-feeding it and hanging the carcass is always going to help, no matter what breed you're raising. But I really think that the ingoony does have a unique flavor.
Speaker 1:So I hope, I hope, that uh gives you an idea about the, the different reasons why you might consider this breed. And and again, let's, let's uh put biases or reasoning by analogy aside. And if we purely look at this from a first principles point of view, I think it makes sense. It makes sense from an economic point of view, from an animal welfare point of view, from a sovereignty point of view and being sovereign or independent from reliance on chemical inputs because you're running the correct fit-for-purpose cattle for your environment. And finally, I really think this is uh there's a case for nguni as a genetic endowment, and what I mean by that is, if this truly is this most advanced technology for raising human food and for regenerating the land, um, then, which I believe it is, that has been honed over thousands of years of natural selection and cultural and Zulu selection, then you know there is some degree of obligation to preserve these incredible genetics and that's why I respect the work of, you know, edward Rouse, who has brought these embryos over from Africa, and he's doing amazing work and maintaining the purity of a herd. So all these reasons to love Nguni and, yeah, consider adding that to your operation.
Speaker 1:So if you want to learn more about Nguni, I've done five episodes now on the Regenerative Health Podcast with Jake Wolke, with conservationist and photographer Ed Schroeder, with Clyde Biggs, who of Nandi Nguni's who have featured a couple of those photos before. With Brian, who's my fifth, fifth episode and that was a great episode and story about Brian's past and his journey, and with Edwin. So I'd really encourage you to check those episodes out if you're interested in learning more about Nguni and potentially adding Nguni to your herd. And I'll also make mention of the Health Summit. So Regenerate is the first one we hosted last year in August in Albury and we had a Q&A panel with Edwin Rouse, with GT Ferreira, who's another experienced in guni breeder from africa, and it's a provides a good another good question answer or um information about about the breed we.
Speaker 1:I'll let you know that our next event is happening on the 21st of april in melbourne. So if anyone is in melbourne or trying or flying to melbourne, then it would be great to see you there. And we will be again covering these pillars of circadian and quantum health, carnivore and ancestral diets and regenerative farming. So check out the youtube, check out the youtube of, of my, my channel, and of um, of the regenerate channel, to, to learn more. So that is all that's what I've got to say about nangooni. Hopefully it's made you think a little bit about other breeds and maybe why or how we can optimize or our operations using something that is a breed that, like nangooni, that is so fit, fit for purpose. So that's my youtube channel, my podcast links, instagram and twitter, and then, yes, my email address is here if you want to contact me. So thank you very much.
