Can A Garden Help Usher In Peace On Earth? With Jim Gale

Can food abundance bring about peace? Jim Gale, the man behind Food Forest Abundance, believes it can. Today he discusses his big, lofty vision, along with practical ways we can get growing! He explains how permaculture works and how we can begin growing food wherever in the world we live to create the abundance that could eliminate much sickness and division. He explains the benefits that gardening can bring for everyone from inmates to himself. He also tells the story of how he’s gone from flat broke to wealthy beyond measure, in more ways than one.

Visit Jim’s websites: FoodForestAbundance.com and OriginsReclaimed.org

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Episode Transcript

Within the below transcript the bolded text is Hilda Labrada Gore and the regular text is Jim Gale.

Deforestation, mass extinction, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, scarcity, hunger, tyranny, and trauma. Our guest dares to dream that food abundance, starting with a simple garden, can help address each of the issues i just mentioned. As if that were not enough, he suggests that abundance can even usher in world peace.

This is episode 533, and our guest is Jim Gale. Jim is an entrepreneur, a world traveler, a permaculture advocate, and the Founder of Food Forest Abundance. In this episode, Jim shares with us the wisdom that is both simple and profound. His vision that abundance means that everyone has enough and therefore, strife and conflict and division dissipate. He goes over specifically how we can each be a part of that vision, how to get moving in that direction. He defines terms like permaculture and abundance and how its harmonious approach to working with nature translates into a joyful, loving approach to our lives as well.

When Jim speaks about abundance, you can just hear the passion in his voice, and you might think he’s never known otherwise, but that’s not true. In this conversation, he reminds us that he was once flat broke, and now he has more than enough to share with those around him in terms of food and in other ways as well.

Before we get into the conversation, I want to ask you to be patient with us. We recorded this episode outdoors at Galt’s Landing on his property, so it gets a little windy at times. If you’d like, you can actually watch it on our YouTube channel. You can go to the Weston A. Price Foundation’s YouTube channel and watch the show. You can get the full picture, and we’ve got lots of other great content there as well, including reels from Sally and other wonderful resources with recipes and so forth.

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Welcome to Wise Traditions, Jim.

Thank you, Hilda. I’m so glad you’re here visiting us at Galt’s Landing.

The Vision For Global Abundance

It is so beautiful here. I want to ask you a little bit about your vision. When I first arrived here, Jim, you said, “Do you see that little patch of land?” It was, I promise you, not more than let’s say 6 feet by 6 feet. What did you tell me? You said, “The solution to all the world’s problems are right here.” Is that right?

Absolutely. The solution to all of the world’s problems, when we take the poisons out and we use our resources and our land wisely, we create peace on earth.

That seems like hyperbole.

It does, doesn’t it?

Explain to me a little bit about your philosophy about how abundance is greater than scarcity.

Wise Traditions | Jim Gale | Garden — Garden: There is so much abundance that the most selfish thing we could ever do is serve friends, family, and neighbors in our world. By doing so, it creates this cycle of abundance. The more we give, the more keeps coming.

Abundance is what supplants scarcity and abundance is easy. This piece of land we’re sitting on now. This area here, there was nothing here, but sand, Florida sugar sand. We started by adding mulch, this stuff here. Just add layers of mulch, we add a couple of inches, and then wherever we put fruit trees and food-producing plants in the ground, we put a little soil around that. We added things like sunshine mimosa and perennial peanut and ice cream bean, and these other beneficial, supportive plants that build life into the soil. It’s all about healing the soil, and then the soil heals us.

When I pulled up into this property with my Uber driver, I have to say he was just like, “There’s so much peace here.” He had just barely gotten through the gate. I’m like, “How did he know?” How did you help bring that, let’s say, vibration or frequency to this space?

There are layers to it. We started with intention. First of all, we started with the awareness that it was possible. Choice cannot come without an awareness of choice. Most people aren’t aware that we can be living in utopia. That utopia is not some silly fantasy. It’s actually an urgent necessity. That’s Alan Watts, by the way. I love that one.

It’s not a fantasy, it’s an urgent necessity.

Yes. Abundance is radically easy. Every one of these plants is a free energy system. Humans run on calories. That’s the energy form, that’s what we call it. Every single one of these plants produces exponential free energy. Here’s the kicker. This system is way less maintenance than a lawn.

I’m not surprised, because, as you may know, I went to Zimbabwe. I got to interview Allan Savory, and he was talking about something similar. In other words, some of the answers that we’re looking for are very simple and very accessible, and they’re good for the animals, the planet and humanity.

You nailed it. Bill Mollison is one of my heroes the one of the founders of Permaculture, along with David Holmgren. I was studying permaculture in a straight of anxiety and scarcity because I recognized in 2007 that we’re destroying the world. I might not ever have grandkids the way we were going. Now that has shifted, and I’m very happy to say that we could feel the shift and see the shift exponentially all around the world. As people suffer, they start asking new questions. Anyway, I was reading Bill Morrison, and he wrote, “Though the problems of our world are increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple.”

Permaculture: Simple Solutions For Complex Problems

Talk to us a little bit about this simple approach to abundance and helping people have access to the food that their bodies crave and eat.

The science that we love that Bill and David came up with is called permaculture, which means permanent culture. It started out as an agricultural design science. Literally, this can be done anywhere. If you have a closet, you could put a five-gallon bucket in your closet with soil. You could put some sweet potatoes or some potato starts in there, add a little bit of light and a little bit of airflow would be good and a little bit of water. That five-gallon bucket with the light and the airflow in the water will turn that dirt into food.

Why have we gotten so far removed from this? Why do we not know that we are able to produce food, that we can work with the land and make this happen? We rely on grocery stores so much. I don’t understand.

I’ve been focusing on that question obsessively for many years now. It started out as an obsession that was driven by the scarcity of the knowledge that we’re going to destroy everything, and I’m going to not have grandkids. I realized that a joyful approach, a loving approach is the way, but the question, why is this the way it is? None of this is by accident.

Choice cannot come without an awareness of choice.

I have contemplated multiple different perspectives. I’ve lived in Africa with the Maasai. I’ve lived in Chiang Mai. I’ve lived in Buddhist and Hindu countries. I’ve lived in Karachi, Pakistan and Dar es Salaam and all these places. I’ve studied culture. The one thing that we can all agree on is we want our kids to have good lives. We want this stuff to happen. What I think is going on, I like to look at this as a divine game of sorts, and the win of the game is the Garden of Eden everywhere. People say that’s not possible. Okay, well then come visit.

I can’t get over how this has transformed. How long have you had this property?

We bought the property in 2018. This area of the property was just sand a few years ago. We went from sand to this place where we could walk away now because the root systems are established, the design is done. Permaculture design is an awesome first step. Now we could walk away and come back in 30 years and this would be a habitat that would not only be a jungle here, but this jungle of food would now be hundreds and thousands of miles away.

Every food forest, by its very nature, is a nursery. You can count the seeds in an apple, but you cannot count the apples in a single seed. The birds, the wind, the rain, they’ll come in and they’ll take these seeds and they’ll go on the other side of the lake. Next thing you know, you’ve got more mulberries or raspberries over there.

Your intention right here isn’t just to have abundance for your family, obviously. It’s for the community and to replicate it in other parts of the world.

Our intention is peace on earth. Our intention is a demonstrable solution to all of the world’s biggest problems. I’ll name some of them. Deforestation, mass extinction, cancer, diabetes and heart disease, hunger, tyranny, scarcity, fear, trauma. This is the foundation of freedom on a global scale. In the highest offices in our land, when somebody stands on stage, let’s say the president says, “We’re going to end war, and here’s how we’re going to do it. We’re going to end colonialism. We are going to turn all of our army bases into food forest nurseries. We’re going to invite in the ethical, moral, and loving people in those communities, and we’re going to help them grow their own food systems,” because abundance destroys scarcity. Scarcity is the catalyst for fear and fear is the ultimate control mechanism.

Cultivating Community: Farm Freedom Academy & Food Security

What’s coming in my mind right now is that old song, “Let there be Peace on Earth and let it begin with me.” I like that you’re starting right where you are, but you’re inviting people, Jim, to come see and learn. Don’t you have like a Farm Freedom Academy that you’re establishing as well?

Yes. FoodForestAbundance.com is where our designers can be found, and they will design whatever system you have, whatever land you have. They’ll use permaculture ethics and principles to design it. The Freedom Farm Academy is like this. It’s a model where we are 100% off grid. We produce all of our own food, water, and energy that’s needed right here. This is the key because the food supply chain is already a failure. You can see by people’s health that it’s a failure. Is food security when we have enough food? No. Food security is when our neighbors also have enough food.

I love that. That’s where the peace comes from. In other words, if I’m not trying to get what you have and you have more than enough to share anyway, and you’re giving it to me, where’s the conflict?

We give it. We love it. Now, we also believe in voluntaryism. We don’t just believe in it. It’s the only ethical way. Anything done by threat of force and violence is slavery or coercion. It’s unethical. We are demonstrating voluntaryism here, and I’ll get a real quick example. This here’s a sweet potato mine. These little roots, you just roll this in a circle like that. You dig a little hole like this.

I’m done I just planted sweet potatoes. I’ll give you an example that came from Mike. He did that. I gave him a sweet potato starter. He came back about a year and a half later, he had 100 pounds of sweet potatoes, but not only that, 20 of his friends were also growing sweet potatoes off of that 1 vine.

Isn’t most of the world made of land that’s not arable, that you can’t grow things on it?

Land has been destroyed in multiple places, and it takes more energy and effort to heal the land. Even right now, in the deserts of Jordan and all over the world, they’re demonstrating that when you use the permaculture design principles, you can create a jungle of green in the midst of a desert.

Have you seen that?

It’s epic. You can go online and look up greening the deserts of Jordan and there’s many others. They’re taking a swath of land in the Sahara, the big desert in Africa, and they’re taking a strip right through the middle of it, and they’re greening it right now.

That’s a beautiful vision. I’m also thinking about people who read this who are like, “I live in an apartment in New York City. How could I ever begin to have the abundance that Jim is describing?”

It starts with an inspired vision. First of all, one of the most influential books of all time, Napoleon Hill’s book, Think and Grow Rich. It’s an awesome book. Yes. Napoleon was commissioned to study the most successful manifesters in history. After decades of studying these manifesters, Napoleon deduced whatever the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve.

Start with the question, “Can I conceive of and believe that I can be in whatever type of environment I want?” Now, do you want to live in an apartment in New York? If you do, and you also want to grow food, then turn a corner into a grow system or a closet. You don’t have to have much space at all. This much space, and you can grow something. If you want to get out of that situation, which might be a good idea with everything going on, then start creating a vision for yourself that compels you to action.

Start speaking the vision. Thought, word, deed. Start with the thought of it, then start speaking it and the words literally turn to matter. When you speak it, you’ll start engaging and inspiring people around you. They’ll say, “I want some of that too.” Years ago, I was dead broke. I invested $20 million into the solutions of all this stuff. I’m talking about my bank account. In my heart, I felt pretty good. I owned one asset, and it was my lot here at Galt’s Landing.

Now, we’re free and clear. We’ve got an incredible network of people. We’ve got all the food, water, and energy we need. I’m actually giving up all the equity and products I’ve had in other businesses, including Food Forest Abundance and others and I’m donating that, for selfish reasons, to the council. When I say selfish reasons, in a system of radical abundance, like God’s design, like this system that we live in, there is so much abundance that the most selfish thing I could ever do is serve my friends, my family, my neighbors in our world. By doing so, it creates this cycle of abundance. The more I give, the more keeps coming.

Land has been destroyed in multiple places, and it takes more energy and effort to heal the land.

The Healing Power Of Soil For Inmates

It’s so beautiful. That reminds me, when I was with Allan Savory in Zimbabwe, he said, “You know what? I owned like hectares and hectares of land, and I decided to give it to Zimbabwe.” I said, “Just let me live on this little bit.” He is like, “I don’t know if my kids were very happy about that,” but in the end, I think he was operating under the same principle, Jim, that like, give it shall be given to you, but he wasn’t even doing it to receive, really. He was doing it because he thought it would be best for him and actually for future generations.

That’s the thing. You could be doing it for all the best reasons that you can imagine, and as a result of that, good thing is coming to you as well.

Another thing that comes to my mind is Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.” If you are in that apartment we were just describing, and you’re like, “I’m never getting out of here. I’m working three jobs. It’s just the way it is,” that’s exactly the way it is and the way it will be. If you think, “You know what, maybe I could just do something in the closet, like Jim was saying. Maybe I could just start a little thing or check out the community garden.” I’ve been in New York City. There’s actually a lot of green space, right?

Yeah. The community gardens are amazing. Get out there. By the way, this is a healing, when you put your hands in the soil. We’re partnered with Andre Norman, he is the world leader of prison reform. When inmates grow some of their own food, their recidivism goes down by 60% to 70%. That’s huge. When inmates grow food, not only do you save a ton of taxpayer money and inmates eat poison-free food, which is a big deal because they’re mostly sick, but now, they also stop wanting to commit crimes.

Joel Salatin and I have talked about that too. He is like, “If only I could get former prisoners here, this would be the best rehab system ever,” because they’re seeing something beautiful emerge from their hands, whereas perhaps before, they only saw violence.

Joel was here not too long ago, and he’s partnered with us on getting this. We had a conversation with Andre Norman, who was in a prison, and there was about maybe 20 or 30 women behind him. We asked these women, these inmates, “How would you like to get out and work with animals?” They all started screamin and cheering. Many of us got tears in our eyes and started crying, including Joel. It was so beautiful.

Regenerative Education: The School Model

That’s so healing. Now I want to pivot for just a second and talk about your new book, because there’s a lot of talk nowadays about artificial intelligence and how it can help us progress and develop and all the things. Your book is about natural intelligence. Tell me a little bit about it.

Cory Endrulat, myself, Marjory Wildcraft, Joel Salatin, and a bunch of the council members have come together to write a book that lays out the strategy, the tactics, the plan to bring us from where we are now, to freedom, to abundance, and to peace. It’s called Natural Intelligence: The Technology of Peace. We just got number one new release on Amazon for Audible and for the soft cover. We’re very excited about it. By the way, we’re following Dr. Martin Luther King’s advice. He said, “Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war.”

You are getting those people together to organize. What’s the crux of the book about?

It’s about exactly that. First we create awareness. If we’re going to change the world, it starts with there’s a desire and need. We’re already going through the apocalypse, which means lifting the veil. This is the great awakening. This is the time of great transformation. Now we create awareness on the actual solutions, and then we layer out the different levels. We layer in the exact strategies and tactics, and we don’t have any NDAs, no non-competes, no patents. Everything we’re doing is open source. For instance, should I share about our school model really quick?

Yeah, do.

We’re building a school right here. This model is your model. It came to me through deep meditation here in the food forest. It’s so simple. It will probably blow some of your minds like it does every time I talk about it. I’m like, “Why isn’t this normal?” There are going to be 25 students. The parents of the students, at least at the beginning, they’ll be paying $1,200 per month. It’s a private school. Now in this area, private schools are between $1,500 and over $2,000 a month. It’s already a better value.

Here’s where it gets exponential. The students will be managing the nursery. They’ll be growing food and for whom? For themselves and for their families. Within six months, the families will have more than 50% of their food, organic, poison-free, healthy food created from their kids at their school. What’s that worth?

What a return on an investment and the kids’ education and your family’s getting fit.

Yes, and the kids are learning the most important thing in the world to learn, self-reliance and how to create a business. Within a year, there’ll be 100% of the food that their families need growing and created at the school. We integrate animals with Joel’s techniques. We’ve got cows and chickens and ducks, and turkeys. We have fish and bees. The students will be managing all of that and the greenhouse with Chris’s help here, and then within about a year and a half or two, and this might change by months either way, but there’ll be such a radical abundance of this nursery that the school will be regenerative financially and self-supporting.

This idea just came to you? You’re hoping you can bring together the students and then make this happen into a reality. As you said, every reality starts with a vision, with a thought, with an idea. When do you hope to launch it?

I hope to launch it in February 2026 because we already have a lot of the infrastructure. In fact, we’re meeting with our board, and I’ll get into some of the details. You can see the math on this, how logical it is. Three teachers. One thousand two hundred times 25 is $30,000 a month. Three teachers, the primary teacher will get $100,000 a year.

The second assistant will probably be in the $50,000 a year, and then there’ll be a nursery operator who will probably be around $50,000, $60,000, plus 10% of the nursery profits. Now, teachers are making way more than they do in public schools. The kids are outside half the day and inside half the day. It’s scalable. Any three people who want to be in this business of teaching can get together and do this model wherever they are and everybody wins.

That’s one of my favorite things about your vision, that it’s not just for you all here, but I saw that you have Airbnb situations where people can come, observe, learn, and take it back wherever they may be. Even this, you are not trying to hold onto it, Jim.

Let it go. That’s why these ideas are coming, like the prison idea. Andre Norman started a university called Second Chance University, and it’s already the largest university in the world. They just got the logo. There are 650,000 inmates enrolled in this university, and they have tablets in prisons. On these tablets, we give them the content, which is trauma healing and how to create abundance in our world. It’s profound.

Our vision is that in the first year or 15 months, we can get 20% of those inmates out of the prison, either because they’re naturally out or on early work release. That’s 20% of 650,000. It is at 130,000 in teams of 3. That equals 43,333 new regenerative organic farms in the United States alone. That supplants the current poisonous boot supply chain and now we have a new poison-free food supply chain. One of the biggest liabilities in our world is the prison system and turning that problem into a solution.

Do you have your share of naysayers? I imagine you do. People who are like, “Those prisoners are hardened criminals. They’re not going to want to do this.” How will it play out actually in real life?

I haven’t heard this lately because probably the group that we’re connected with is aware, but online, I used to get some naysayers. When people sit here, they’re done because here it is. Again, this is not a hypothetical solution to all of the world’s biggest problems. It’s a demonstratable solution. We are be the change, like Gandhi said. You’re living it. I’m not a cook. I don’t know how to cook yet. I’m going to learn and they’re still an infant. Relative to some of the permaculture experts in the world, I might know 1%, and yet here it is.

If he can do it, we can do it.

That’s exactly right, absolutely, because I don’t grow anything. Nature does all the work. Design is a good first step.

I guess I’m thinking a little bit too about human nature and just how possessive we can be of ideas. Even in this natural health and wellness space, people will be like, “This is my program and this is my broth cooking school.” I just feel like there’s so much competition instead of collaboration. Do you have any suggestions for overcoming those hurdles, which I know we’re putting up ourselves?

Yes. For people who are hypercompetitive, let’s create a new competitive model. Those who can serve the most win. This literally checks all the boxes. The other thing you said, people are apathetic. People don’t believe it’s possible. I invite you to come here. Visit a food forest wherever you are. There are food forests all over the world. A lot of times, there are private backyards and not a lot of people know about them. Bring your cameras, go visit the food forest wherever you are. Put it on film. Talk to the owner of it, the steward. When we create mass adoption of becoming stewards of the land, again, like we’re meant to be, boom.

Practice presence. Be here now because now is where all the wisdom, all the messages are. Everything else is an illusion, a hallucination.

I feel like I’ve heard of movements like this all around. You’ve got your thing, but then there are other people still collaborating under different names. What is it? The Urban Farmer, The Gangsta Farmer, he’s like, “Let’s turn lawns into forests of abundance that no one’s going to be yelling at you. Stop picking my apple. The apple is there for the neighbor.”

The Urban Farmer’s Curtis Stone. The Gangsta Farmer is Ron Finley. They’re two different guys.

I didn’t know.

Isn’t that great? My point is, this is so out there. By the way, I’ve been on like hundreds and hundreds of podcasts and shows and stuff. I’ve been told by many podcasters that this was the most censored message they’ve ever shared. I was on Inspired with John Nolan and he had David Icke and all these guys. He actually did a show on it. He said it’s the most censored message they’ve ever shared.

Why is it so threatening to the status quo?

It’s because this destroys the status quo. Victor Hugo said, “There’s one thing stronger than all of the armies of the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.” What does that mean? What is an idea? What happens in your mind when you get a good idea? The light bulb goes off.

Totally. You get lit up.

You get lit up, which is enlightmente, which is the exact opposite of governmente. Governmente means mind control. Enlightmente is a mind free of the slave controls that bind us.

The Power Of Presence For Optimal Health

Powerful words. I’m going to take you all on a little tour here of this property, but I do want to ask you the question I pose at the end. I know I’ve had you on the show before, and we talked a lot about how to get started with your own backyard and transforming your lawn into a garden. This is the question I ask. If the reader could do one thing to improve their health, Jim, what would you recommend they do?

One thing that is, to me, far more important than everything else put together is presence. Practice presence. Be here now because now is where all the wisdom, all the messages are. Everything else is an illusion, a hallucination. It’s anxiety, fear, stress, whatever. If you’re envisioning a joyful future, a future of abundance, great, but be here in the present and then take the next inspired step.

I love it. Thank you so much for your time. It’s been a pleasure.

Thank you.

I’m enjoying being here right now.

Look at those bananas. I’m just going to turn around.

Yeah, turn it around. Show those bananas.

Look at that. Right?

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Our guest was Jim Gale. You can visit his website FoodForestAbundance.com and OriginsReclaimed.org to learn more. Thank you so much for reading, my friend. Stay well and remember to keep your feet on the ground and your face to the sun.

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On behalf of the Weston A. Price Foundation, thanks for reading. We have many free resources to support you on your health journey. Visit WestonAPrice.org to find podcasts, articles, videos, and more. You can also find a local chapter near you for help in finding sources of great food. We invite you to support the foundation’s mission of education, research, and activism by becoming a member. Thanks again and take care.

Wise Traditions is a project of the Weston A. Price Foundation for wise traditions in food farming, and the healing arts. The content on this show is provided for informational purposes only, and is not intended to substitute for the advice provided by your doctor or other healthcare professional. It is not intended to be, nor does it constitute, healthcare or medical advice.

About Jim Gale

At age 19, Jim first learned about the power of writing his goals. From the practice of inspired visioning, he became a 4-time All American and National Champion wrestler. After college, he moved to Hawaii, backpacked through 37 countries, lived with the Maasai, explored cultures, and searched for his next inspired vision. He wrote his goals again at age 29, which included being retired in 3 years. Jim went on to create a mortgage company that reached $1.3B in sales in 3 years, leading him to early retirement and the achievement of another life goal. He bought a boat, lived on the ocean for a year, and then moved to Costa Rica to build eco-villages where he discovered permaculture. It changed his life and he realized he needed to bring it to every household in the world. The idea whose time has come became Food Forest Abundance. Jim speaks about sovereignty, entrepreneurship, mindset, and freedom.