In Episode 3 of the Subsistence Crop podcast, Dr.Dominic Corva, Kaid Chapman, and Caleb Chen sit down with permaculture expert Dan Mar. Dan Mar is a lecturer in the Cal Poly Humboldt Cannabis Studies major and the programs environmental stewardship Ace. In this episode they discuss: Environmental stewardship and Dan’s Personal journey, permaculture and regenerative agriculture in cannabis growing communities, Cannabis cultivation in the hills, the regenerative conference, regenerative practices, Sustainability and environmental stewardship in agriculture.
Dan will be the keynote speaker for our Cannabis and Environmental Stewardship Symposium on April 5th, 2024.
Subsistence Crop Podcast Season 1 Episode 3: Dan Mar, Permaculture expert, Lecturer for Cannabis Studies
Intro 00:02
Hi everyone and welcome to Subsistence Crop, a podcast cultivated by the Cannabis Studies Lab at Cal Poly Humboldt, where we talk about human cannabis relationships beyond commerce and prohibition.
Dominic Corva 0:05
Well, today we have us with us Dan Mar, our lecturer in the Cal Poly Humboldt Cannabis Studies major, our environmental stewardship ace. Really, really happy to have you with the program, Dan, and really happy to be able to sit down and have a little kind of getting to know you session with Kaid and Caleb here also on the mics.
Kaiden Chapman 0:29
Hey,
Caleb Chen 0:29
Hello.
Dominic Corva 0:31
And I think we’re gonna keep it, you know, pretty straightforward and just start by asking you about your background and how you your journey to becoming our environmental stewardship, major ace? Where would you look at the beginning of that, and what are the broad outlines of that story?
Dan Mar 0:53
Well. It started in my grandparents’ backyard. When I was a little kid, they, um, they grew a lot of their own food. In the middle of the San Fernando Valley, they were first generation immigrants. And even though I didn’t know it, I was absorbing that from them, growing food, making compost, maintaining things, fixing things, because you didn’t have enough money to buy new things, you know, just being more resilient, and more sustainable in their finances, which was also translating ecologically too because they were growing food. And it was a small little suburban property, but still, like, was full of plants and full of bees and insects and birds. And it was really far out. And then from there, I took the traditional, you know, I went to you know school and public school and was searching for something. I found I love science. Loved it so much that I was the kid who wanted to go camping. So I could like walk around and find cool stuff. And then, you know, look it up in a book kind of thing. I got this subscription to National Geographic when I was a kid, instead of Mad Magazine, you know, stuff like that. And then I graduated high school, I went to UC San Diego, I went from the San Fernando Valley to San Diego. And I went from, you know, a pretty small high school to a campus with 30 – 40,000 kids, and I was in an auditorium. And if I wanted to talk to that professor, it was like, good luck. If you’re not in the top 5% You don’t get the talk the professor go talk to a TA and I’m like, This is not what I want. so I bailed and I took a road trip and I looped all the western states, and I needed gas. And I got off in Arcata and I was coming from the north and I got off and I come off at sunset and I’m like, is that a skate park? And then I transferred and I’ve been here ever since 1997.
Dominic Corva 2:53
1997 is when you landed?
Dan Mar 2:56
I landed in 97.
Dominic Corva 2:57
Arcata had a skate park back then.
Kaiden Chapman 2:59
Yeah, we still do.
Dan Mar 3:01
I havent been there in a while.
Kaiden Chapman 3:02
Yeah. That’s really cool.
Dan Mar 3:04
Yeah .
Dominic Corva 3:05
Kaid you use that skatepark?
Kaiden Chapman 3:06
I do not. But I’ve definitely seen it. And my guess it’s a new one. I don’t think you can see it from the free way.
Dominic Corva 3:12
I’m sure it’s probably a different one.
Dan Mar 3:13
You get off at sunset? And it’s right there on your right by the tennis courts? Yeah cool.
Dominic Corva 3:17
Nice.
Dan Mar 3:18
Nice. Yeah.
Dominic Corva 3:20
So you transferred to then Humboldt State University.
Dan Mar 3:23
It was HSU. And I still call it HSU.
Dominic Corva 3:25
Yeah,
Dan Mar 3:26
It’s kind of funny. Yeah, yeah. I transferred to Humboldt State. I was studying wildlife and fisheries.
Dominic Corva 3:33
There you go, Yep.
Dan Mar 3:34
So full on sciences. I needed a job. So I was looking around for a job. And then I got somehow I landed with work study in a school. And just totally out of the blue was never on, like the teacher track. Really enjoyed that. And the teachers like, well, you know a lot about science, why don’t you teach the science to the kids? And so I started doing that. And next thing I know, it was like, I was a science teacher.
Dominic Corva 4:03
How many? Go ahead.
Kaiden Chapman 4:04
I was gonna say for what age?
Dan Mar 4:06
That was a charter school. And at that time, when I rolled in there, that was 99. There was about 25 kids. And it was fifth through like 10th. Grade was the group of kids they had. And I stayed there for 13 or 14 years. And when I left, it was a full on K 12. Charter School, and I was teaching high school biology and chemistry.
Kaiden Chapman 4:31
Wow, that’s cool.
Dan Mar 4:33
Yeah. So that’s how I got into teaching. But I kept the passion of science alive, not just through my teaching, but through exploring this county and this northern region, the state and the other neighboring states. And then I discovered permaculture and then I started doing that in the summers because I wasn’t teaching and then that just kept evolving to where I had this clientele who was like, No, don’t go back to teaching and I was like, Yeah, I’m kind of getting burned out on the system. And then I just shifted to permaculture full time. And then last year, I had lunch with Dominic. And so that’s my circle.
Dominic Corva 5:14
So there was well, I mean, it sounds like there was a demand for the services in this area. For you know, what was that like? Like, who needed permaculture instruction?
Dan Mar 5:28
Well, you know, permaculture has been around for a long time, Bill Mollison. He, you know, put this together back in the 70s, after Australia had its dust bowl, and they’re like, whoa, we need to do stuff differently. We can’t follow America’s lead and just go to chemicals. That doesn’t work. How can we do this different? How can we do ag different. And so that’s when it started. And I realized a lot of the stuff that I was interested in, and then a lot of stuff that I was doing, like I was doing landscape maintenance, you know, and I was doing mow, blow, go stuff to, you know, kind of helped me pay the rent. And it was just obvious, like, let’s do something instead of cut lawns, you know, let’s, instead of putting in another escallonia hedge, let’s put in a native hedge, or let’s plant some fruit trees, you know, stuff like that. And so people were transitioning, because we were going through the cycles of El Nino La Nina, but then we were hitting these drought periods, you know, 2013 and 2015. was, that was heavy. People ran out of water. Yeah. Especially in the hills. And when I studied permaculture became a designer, that was my track was water. It was all about the water. And so that’s how I got into working with cannabis farmers was water.
Dominic Corva 6:40
Yeah, that was gonna be my next question. What were people growing in the hills? But I am I’ve been aware of this, you know, move – interest in and then what I would call like, almost like a social movement within kind of cannabis growing communities on the on the West Coast, it toward principles of regenerative agriculture, and more than sustainable approaches to the environment. And I think I, I might have noticed it, maybe in 2015 2016. When did you start notice, I guess, like, because this happened, like almost like in the middle of the green rush, when, like, a lot of the opposite stuff was going on. But there started to be like this, increasing awareness of and desire for, you know, something was not that. Could you speak a little bit about like, your sense of when that began to become something that like, especially in cannabis communities, in this area, there began be an interest in learning about and pursuing what I call more than sustainable environmental practices.
Dan Mar 7:54
Yeah, there, that thread was always there. You know, the thread was there with indigenous cultures. And it was it was kept all the way through, you know, a lot of the back to the landers, the thread was there, the green rush kind of changed it. And you know, every generation has a different perspective on how to do the same thing, but just in a different way. And the green rush brought in big time economics, and I’m not an economic major, but I know how supply and demand works. And all of a sudden, it’s like, whoa, so then, how, how do I work my economic margins? Well, if you’re growing cannabis, way up in the hills, the only way to do that is to become more ecological. Right? How do you make more money is spend less, you know, utilize the resources that are available to you. And that just so happens to be how nature does it. So a lot of it was, was tied to economics. I need to like expand my margins here. The thread was always there. But then I think there was also a general shift in the paradigm consciously beyond cannabis, I think impact general climate disruptions, abnormalities, change wherever you want to call it, that things were shifting, things were changing. And innovations were coming along to, which is great, but not everyone can afford the latest and greatest innovations. And a lot of those innovations don’t belong in the hills. Like, they require a lot of energy, or they’re, you know, they just don’t work. So how can we do things differently, but still see, achieve the same goals? And that’s when it really took off. And I think the culture and the industry is such that, you know, you go up in the hills to like, be away to do something and initially it was so you didn’t get in trouble for it, right? You could hide in the trees kind of thing. But then you’re like, how do you become resilient? It’s like, well, you lean on each other. You know, it’s like, oh, my chainsaw broke here. borrow mine, you know, hey, pull me out of that ditch, okay, I’ll be over there in a minute. And then it’s like, Yo, how come your plants looks so much better than mine, mine are so stressed, right? It’s like, Oh, well I doing this, like, what? What is that? And then it just rolls from there.
Dominic Corva 10:15
Let’s pause I’m gonna have the cough. Good point. Sorry, I should have brought a glass of water. I’ve been coughing a lot. Since I had the flu. I managed to hold off… And feel free to jump in on questions, by the way.
I guess for our listeners that might be from out of the area. Could you talk about what what the hills mean? In terms of the cannabis cultivation, as opposed to the not hills?
Dan Mar 10:54
Well, you can look at it from an agricultural perspective, as soon as you leave ag land, you’re in the hills. And this county is pretty limited on where the ag land is. I mean, we have amazing prime ag land, it’s amazing. And there’s, there’s farms they’re doing, you know, amazing things from a regenerative perspective. So for me, it’s, if you’re looking in agricultural crop, as soon as you leave your traditional ag locations, then you’re in the hills. When you leave pavement, you know, there’s these little benchmarks. When you’re no longer connected to the grid, whether there’ll be power, you know, water, some sort of infrastructure, here in the hills.
Caleb Chen 11:41
So tell us a little bit about the regen conference that you’re involved with.
Dan Mar 11:49
So I think it was 2016, something like that, like it’s blurred at this point. I was teaching always a little earlier. And that actually, it was in 2013, I was teaching workshops at one of the local shops, they would host workshops once a month. And I taught one there. And then I took over coordinating these workshops. And then I started meeting really cool people who had lots of to share to our community. And so they started teaching. But just lots of people that just came in just one to learn more. And, you know, there are a pub opened up two blocks away. So we would just carry the conversations on down there. And I got to make some really good friends. And they were connected to other places in the industry. And you know, the Emerald Cup being one of them. And so, you know, Jesse Dodd was like, Hey, this is what I’m doing. You know, let’s make this something bigger. And Mike sounds amazing. So, you know, he formed the regenerative cannabis farm award, and I got on board. And we’re just trying to really promote these practices, which are really old practices. This is not new technology. But how do we, how do we promote these to the industry at large? Number one? And number two? How do we get the farms that are already implementing these practices? How do we get them some play? You know, how do we let the consumers out there know, like, there’s different ways to cultivate cannabis. And depending on why, you know, cannabis is a part of your life, you might want to align your principles based on how it’s been, has been cultivated, and how it’s being farmed. And that was the biggest venue to be able to do it in, you know, I don’t know how many 1000s of people went through those gates on the weekend. And it went from, you know, just a small Award and a couple of, you know, speaking opportunities to a whole day of speaking opportunities to setting up, you know, demonstration areas, and it really grew from there. And then it made its way up into Oregon, the Cultivation Classic up in Portland, which was really cool to see it expand. And then that was just happening all at once. You know, the media was picking up on this. Instagram was a thing. And so that was really spreading, you know, everything at the same time as well. And so, like I said earlier, a lot of folks were getting into this because wow, this makes economic sense for me, or while this makes ethical sense from like an environmental or ecological place.
Kaiden Chapman 14:29
Did your work with Sun and Earth or start before the award, the regen award was started or after?
Dan Mar 14:35
No, I had met Andrew Black at one of the events. I don’t recall which one. But my work with them was most recent. I was subcontracted for the grant that they were working on. And that was really cool to see that. You know, Department of Fish and Wildlife is like, hey, we have this money. And we want to put it back into the system and help with restoring the habitats. We’ve been entrusted to protect, you know, like, how can we promote this and that was really cool to go out to farms and speak with the farmers and ask them what they need, what you know, what types of, you know, resources, whether it be financial resources or information or other professionals to come in and help them with things. And then to like, hopefully solicit the money to implement those types of regenerative practices.
Dominic Corva 15:32
Can you talk a little more detail about like, what the grant money would be used for what are the different ways in which they could spend that money?
Dan Mar 15:42
Yeah, I was more boots on the ground and preparing, you know, recommendations for the implementation of projects. A lot of it was focused around water conservation. So getting people storage that didn’t have storage, helping them develop more sustainable systems, maybe alternative systems, maybe instead of, you know, just getting them tanks, let’s get them tanks, but also get them hooked up to rainwater, and get them off of the surface water diversion kind of thing. Habitat was another one, like how do we promote healthy habitats, in conjunction with the construct in environments of, you know, the agricultural practices, for example, growing out hedgerows, you know, beneficial, bringing in beneficial insects, whether they’re like pest predators. So now you’re integrating your pest management protocols with your AG, so you’re applying less pesticides, whether they be chemical or biological, you know, educating as another piece of this, like, maybe hosting workshops, you know, community based workshops, or on farm workshops, stuff like that. And then big stuff, which takes a lot more money and a lot more time. But it’s like helping folks fix their roads and replace their culverts, which is a, it’s a tough one. But it’s really important. But you know, when you look at the cost of replacing a culvert, or even getting to that point, the engineering and the permitting, and just everything that goes into it, it’s really daunting for folks.
Dominic Corva 17:17
It’s incredibly expensive. Yeah. I know that there’s been some Project Trellis grants that have gone out to help people do that as well. I do feel like here in Humboldt, there have been more opportunities for people to get access to resources, for any number of reasons, which we could go into at a later date. But make sure I’m including my students here and asking questions. But have you guys gotten to discussing the curriculum, basically, like what do you teach in your classes? And what would you like to teach?
Dan Mar 18:05
You can ask these guys?
Dominic Corva 18:06
Yeah.
Throw it back at ya.
Dan Mar 18:10
We’ve done something!
Caleb Chen 18:14
Kaid and I are taking Cannabis and Environmental Sustainability with Dan Mar right now with classes on Monday and Wednesday. In fact, we just got done with our Wednesday class. And what we were doing today was we were applying a rubric that we had made together as a class on three different farms that Dan provided pictures and anecdotes and information on. So it was very much like a hands on kind of approach without being out in the field, but really as close as we can get from in a classroom without touching the plant.
Dominic Corva 18:53
Yeah, that is a limit, right?
Dan Mar 18:57
I would say, that’s okay. From where I’m coming from. So, my work on farms and out in the hills. I don’t consult on cultivating cannabis. I consult on stewarding land. And I believe if you are stewarding your land, then the cultivating the cannabis is easier. And I just talked about, you know, hedgerows beneficial hedgerows, it’s like, if you build the habitat for these predators that already exist for the pests that are coming after your crop, then you are dealing with it less. You know, we talked about pests and pest management where like, what is a pest? Well, it’s something that you don’t want around because it’s harming you know, your crop, which is your industry in your market. So I go okay, so it’s just something out of balance. It’s always been there. It’s just out of balance. How do we bring that balance back again? How do we create the habitat so that the lacewings, come back, the parasitic wasps come back and take care of the caterpillars take care of the aphids. So when we have that imbalance, and it’s like, okay, well, why are why do they want that cannabis plants? Like, because it’s the only green thing in the landscape right now. And we need more diversity. And it’s juicy, and it’s full of, you know, fluids, of course, they’re all over it. So that’s the like, that’s where we started, right? What are the foundations? What’s going on? And then like, once we understand that, then we can start understanding how can we measure how can we even assess if something is sustainable? Because if we don’t understand the foundations, then we can’t make those judgment calls at all.
Dominic Corva 20:43
What do you think of the term sustainability?
Dan Mar 20:46
We talked about that? Yeah, I was like our first week conversation, what are we talking about with that word?
Kaiden Chapman 20:52
Sustainability, I think is, is making sure that you have the essential things you need to survive. For me, sustainability would be having resources such as water, food, and shelter, and making sure that you can divy those up fairly between yourself and your community.
Caleb Chen 21:11
And that community includes the environment. So sustainability is all about balance.
Dan Mar 21:18
Yeah, so that’s where we came to really, okay, it’s a foundation, it’s a baseline. Once that’s dialed in, then we can up level, then we can go to what’s you know, term now regenerative like, you know, you can you can implement systems that require time money resources, in a sustainable way. But you could also look at them a little bit differently and divide that energy and resource over many systems, just by integrating them.
Kaiden Chapman 21:54
I have a question. What does stewarding the land mean to you?
Dan Mar 22:01
Well, as a permaculture designer, I look to the environment to tell me what that means. And it’s getting harder and harder because it’s harder and harder to find mature, untouched environments, where we can really learn from that. So we can infer a lot, you know, we can we have great amazing landscapes and ecosystems here, but let’s not forget, they’ve been altered a lot over time, through management or through lack of management. So we can then so if I can have those analog environments to look at, I can talk to people who have been around for a long time, especially a lot of our local and indigenous folks, they can give you a lot of insight on that. So it’s really specific to where you are. And that’s how I approach it. I don’t come in like, I already have my my rubric set, you know, on how to evaluate the system. I spent a lot of time just objectively observing it. And then it’s almost like the land tells me, you know, what it needs, and I use all my senses, it’s like, go into a forest and close your eyes. What do you hear? More importantly, what don’t you hear? It’s like, if you don’t hear birds, then there’s an imbalance. So you start thinking about, okay, from a sustainability place? What, what do birds need? They need food, they need water, they need shelter, habitat. Do they have that around here? And, and at what level? Do they have that? And then you can just start being like, Oh, the plant communities are out of balance. It’s not that there are no birds, they’re just not here because it’s not suitable for them. So that’s what land stewardship means to me is like, I just, I observe, I talk to people, and then I can start stewarding the land or setting up the plan or the protocols for for someone to do that. That’s awesome.
Dominic Corva 24:06
How would you like to see this curriculum develop over time, this environmental stewardship concentration as it were.
Dan Mar 24:13
I would like for us to do what we did today in class do in the field. I presented three different farms to them today. And they went through their rubrics in terms of evaluating the level of sustainability. And it took a lot of energy, you know, on both of our parts on on my part and presenting it to them but also on theirs on like, focusing and assessing through pictures or through through data tables that I provided them with, but like I said, when the class began, I’m like, remember this is an exercise. This does not replace actually going out and immersing yourself in the environment. And none of the stuff we did today had anything to do with the plant. But at the same time had everything to do with the plant.
Kaiden Chapman 25:04
Hundred percent.
Dan Mar 25:06
So I would like for more opportunities for the students to apply themselves and not just apply their knowledge, but to apply themselves into exposure experiencing the environment, experiencing a watershed, experiencing a hilltop, experiencing a forest. One that’s been managed; one that hasn’t been managed.
Kaiden Chapman 25:31
I can say we want that too. We want that too, we want to get out in the fields too.
Dominic Corva 25:36
Yeah. Some more field trips, for sure. Yeah.
Dan Mar 25:39
But this has to be a tiered approach as well. It’s kind of like everyone comes in from a different place. So we have to make sure that everyone’s got the same baseline Foundation, understanding of those systems, the basics of soils, the basics of botany, the basics of how ecosystems, work, you know, climate, geography, topography. And then once we have those basics, then Okay, let’s go out, learn more in the environment, and then come back, synthesize it again, and then go back out again, reassess, evaluate. So I see it as I see it as this tiered approach. And you can’t do this in 16 weeks. It’s, we meet for an hour and 20 minutes, twice a week is not possible.
Dominic Corva 26:27
Yeah. So more classes. Yeah. Say a little bit about that, in terms of what you just described was like an intro class. That’s basically field science for cannabis majors. Yeah.
I’d like to do that too. Let’s work together to do that. A bit of a process, but I think we can do it.
Dan Mar 26:53
I mean, I think the fact that this program exists at this university is a testament to the environment, the culture, and the industry, that is here. And I feel like if we don’t do that, we’re doing a disservice not only to the students, but a disservice to this local community, and a disservice to the environment that we should be stewarding.
Dominic Corva 27:18
So for some of that, we’re going to need some rules change as well. There are guardrails that we have. What are the specific guardrails, you think that they you see right now that need to come down? Because, you know, I want to work with everyone on what we can do right now, as well as have a plan for what we will be able to do if certain things happen, that are completely outside of our control. So for instance, you know, if we went through the right channels, we could access, you know, farm bill hemp basically, right. To do that, we would need to make sure that we got approval from the county for Cal Poly Humboldt to be identified as a research institution that could then apply to the state for the state form. And then sort of like, well, where is that? Are we growing it here? Are we just simply like, Oh, we’re going to access you know, somebody’s farm. That is, you know, Farm Bill hemp, a CBD or CBG are basically under 0.3% THC at this point. So a lot to kind of figure out around that. But that’s possible. Now, actually, I mean, it’s something we can work on. The other part obviously is like being able to go to farms where currently state legal cannabis has been grown. And that one that one’s a lot outside our control. It may change with rescheduling, which seems to be on the horizon even this year. But even then, I’m not entirely sure right, these things take take a while. So, you know, in the meantime, are there other ways for students to be able to get out into the field to go to a hilltop, for example, that isn’t, you know, a licensed farm necessarily, but to be able to get out in nature to go to, you know, a regenerative farm period, right.
Let’s work together to develop that but like, Do you have any comments on what is you want to see us working together on like, you know, starting now basically, all right.
Dan Mar 30:02
I got a lot. I will say first off, though, is I think we need to approach this with small cumulative changes a couple of weeks ago, I’m like, yo, meet me in the parking lot. We’re gonna go walk into the forest, because we have it right here behind us. Yeah, I know, no one’s cultivating cannabis and a redwood forest, you know, read outside here. But it’s about where is this stuff taking place? You know, where is cannabis in this county, most of it being cultivated. And it’s in the forest. So we can go and study forest ecosystems, and have that baseline fundamental understanding of what it means to then adapt that land to then cultivate a particular crop. So that’s very easy. Taking field trips into various watersheds, is very easy to do, and not be on the farm. The other thing is, cannabis is not being grown year round. So there’s lots of opportunities to go to farms when the plants not in the ground. But everything else that is the systems that support the cultivation of that plant is there. It’s all there. So that’s all very possible. And you know, as you outlined that, as you were going through that, in my mind, it was paralleling the reason why I moved out of compliance. Yeah, it’s the same thing. Compliance, especially environmental compliance, it all came from a good place. But man, it got mired, and off the tracks. So many times, it’s like, we’re all here, because we all want clean water, and fish in the river. But we can’t get the work done to keep the sediment out of the creek, for whatever reason, no one can afford it. Or there’s just the permits take too long, and we’re back into another wet season. So you can’t do the work, you got to wait till the next dry season. And that’s where I think we need to look at, like I was outlining with the class is the small cumulative changes. If everybody was doing these small things, we would have massive change in the watersheds, we don’t need to do these massive projects that are millions of dollars and took 10 years and planning. It’s like, if we did small things on, you know, 10 or 20 40 acre parcels, the effect would be huge, it’d be huge.
Dominic Corva 32:35
Well, I’m hoping that that can be a topic of conversation at the symposium coming up on April 5, I will make sure of it. Excellent. As my keynote, you are charged with this mission. Really looking forward to that? Do you have any thoughts about that symposium and questions about like, who might be there? Or ideal audiences across, you know, agency stakeholders, NGO people, and other some people that are that you’ve worked with? As well as cultivators that are going to be there? Maybe? I guess, do you have any comments right now, or thoughts about the symposium coming up?
Dan Mar 33:15
I’m excited about it. I’m really excited that it’s a Cal Poly symposium, I feel like in a lot of circles, there needs to be some amount of legitimacy for certain folks to attend, whether it be on a panel or just in the audience. And I think that this does that for them, you know, there’s been lots of, you know, events, cannabis events that have focused on, you know, environmental compliance or land stewardship or whatever. But the events were to, not in many people’s circles. And so they just didn’t participate, even though they were a part of the big circle, which is land use, and cannabis happens to be one of those types. So I think I’m really excited about that. I think it’s going to have folks come in that haven’t in the past. Because of that.
Dominic Corva 34:11
I’m actually hearing that though. There’s a lot of interest in the cultivation community, in particular, in coming out and having these discussions. I’m hoping that we also get good audience participation from, you know, the planning department from the various local agencies that we don’t have a panel that’s local agencies. It’s actually state agencies pretty much but have a chance to talk about how to create the opportunity to do small cumulative change, right. As you put it, what can we do with what we have right now? What are the resources that are currently out there? What kinds of channels can we dig in between? You know, the people that could use those resources and really get us on that path. And they’ve, you know, the agencies who they have, they have grant money these days, you know, thanks to the, especially the federal funding that’s been coming in, around climate change. And I think it’s just a rich moment and opportunity for, you know, an industry that I think is has really come full circle from the green rush back to the legacy of the back ladders in many ways, which is that they’re here, because this is their community, not because they’re gonna get rich, and stewarding the environment as a really important part of making sure that, you know, the land is there for their children and grandchildren and their neighbors and, and other people with, you know, those kinds of values going forward in the future. So I think it’s a good moment, I think that it’s like, what happens after a forest fire, right? Like, what grows. And I think that’s kind of the moment we’re in its opportunity to really participate in the regeneration of the landscape in a way that is like with the environment, not trying to master it, or turn it towards strictly, you know, agribusiness or industrial uses. So I’m pretty excited about it.
Dan Mar 36:33
Yeah, me too. And the greater paradigm is shifting too because you look at just the state’s perspective on fire, yeah. And bringing fire back to the land, like, that has gone from a conversation to actually, you know, stuff is getting lit on fire, now in a controlled way. And it’s really cool.
Dominic Corva 36:53
And a lot of that’s happening, like in relationship to traditional economic, ecological knowledge, right, like, indigenous communities are being listened to, and I think consulted more. And I’m hoping also, of course, that we do a better job of that around here. That’s going to be up at the Native Forum, which is a lovely space on campus that Native American Studies Department has graciously, you know, granted our use of it. And we want to honor that I think that environmental stewardship is part of part of that legacy, right, that predates when we started to get more aware about the industrial impacts, you know, so looking forward to that, too.
Kaiden Chapman 37:44
Yeah. I think with that being said, did you want to give a little preview on your keynote?
Dan Mar 37:51
Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it for quite a while. And it’s, it’s kind of like our class, it’s like, there’s so much to cover, and so little time to do it. So I just keep coming back to small change for great effect. How can we all everyone in the room implement small changes that will have great effect, because we already know big changes, great, big effect. We’re having to clean up a lot of that stuff right now. But how can we implement the small changes, whether it’s a small change to a policy, or it’s a small change to a way someone cultivates or it’s a small change to the way someone just sees their land? And how somebody governs the land, I think, if we can just look at it like that, like it, this doesn’t have to take a decade of planning, this doesn’t have to take millions of dollars in grants, you know, if we could just all sit down and talk about how we can implement these small changes, which can happen right now. We’re gonna see big changes. Great effect. I think that’s what I’m focused on. And I’m, you know, I’m looking forward to the panels. And folks asking those kinds of questions to the panels, you know, in their realm of expertise being like, what small change do you see in your, you know, realm can be made, so that there’s a great effect, you know, ripple effect through the whole entire industry and in our environment.
Dominic Corva 39:26
Awesome. Thank you, Dan.
Caleb Chen 39:28
Thank you so much.
Dominic Corva 39:29
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, just like not just for being on this podcast for joining us on this journey with this major thing. We are so grateful for you. Really appreciate it. Looking forward to the years to come.
Dan Mar 39:40
Yeah, I’m happy to be here. I’m happy to be with the students again. It’s just yeah, it gives me goosebumps. Yeah.
Dominic Corva 39:48
Yeah, me too. This is what makes it worth it. Yeah. Awesome. Well, I think with that, let’s conclude.
Outro 40:07
Thank you for growing with Subsistence Crop, a podcast by the Cannabis Studies Lab at Cal Poly Humboldt.
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