Good day and welcome to Tractor Time, a podcast brought to you by Acres U.S.A. Today’s podcast features two guests. Both live together in Seattle, and are writers, advocates and change agents and, it should be noted, both are quite brilliant as well – Biologist Anne Biklé and Geologist David Montgomery.

We have interviewed both separately, and will run their interviews back-to-back.

Our second interview you will hear on this episode, Anne Biklé, is a biologist with an interest in environmentalism and, most recently, soil life. She’s an active speaker and author of The Hidden Half of Nature: The Microbial Roots of Life and Health, which is available in our bookstore at acresusa.com. 

We are going in depth on new science into life in the soil, and discuss the significance of all the new information to farmers and growers.

But to set the stage, we will get to our first guest, David Montgomery, Anne’s co-author on The Hidden Half of Nature, and a writer, geologist, professor, and researcher who will set the stage for Anne’s deep-dive into the soil. It’s also worth noting that David is a recognized genius – or at least, someone who has been recognized as the closest thing to it. David Montgomery is a Professor of Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle, and a member of the Quaternary Research Center.

In 2008, In 2008 Montgomery received a MacArthur Fellowship, generally known as the “genius grant,” for his work as a researcher and writer.

His early work began in topics of topography and geology. He was all over the television after the tragic landslide in 2014 in his homestate of Washington, and since then, has published books connecting the ideas of healthy soil and healthy civilizations.

In 2016, Montgomery published "The Hidden Half of Nature: The Microbial Roots of Life and Health", a collaboration with Anne Biklé. The book addresses the relationship between microbial life, plants, and people.

His most recent work, Growing A Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life, released in May 2017.

Both are available from Acres U.S.A. store.

We welcome David Montgomery and Anne Bilké to the Tractor Time podcast.

Also, find all of the Tractor Time podcasts here, or for free in the iTunes store.