1000 Faces of Regenerative Agriculture: Meet Bogdan Popov
by Caity Roberts
Editor’s note: Bogdan is completing Holistic Management training virtually with UVE.
Bogdan discussing results of scientific research regarding Biodiversity.
When I was initially planning my wedding I could not have known that half a world away and over “whatsapp” a horseshoe would be formed as a physical representation of my union with my partner, Ethan. As far as we are concerned, Bogdan Popov married us just as much as the judge at the county courthouse did. The judge married us by human law, but Bogdan forged our union in something more ancient and fundamental: a horseshoe comprised of the four elements, earth (the iron ore), air (the oxygen blower in his forge), fire (the forge itself) and water (the cooling and quenching).
In this traditional wedding ceremony Bogdan took four wholes and carefully influenced each of them to create an even greater new whole. The first key insight of Holistic Management is that nature operates as wholes within wholes. Bogdan Popov, himself, is a container for immense complexity. He is a traveling blacksmith, pacifist, permaculturist, university-trained ecologist , boundary walker, and most recently a holistic manager.
Bogdan is also the director of Ukraine’s first ecostation Hlyboky Balyky, 60 miles south from Kyiv near Rzishiv. which is a pilot and flagship of the Ukrainian Ecostation Network. Bogdan envisions an ecostation as a
“temple to ecology… a place to create a local ecological service for the local community that will work like a fire service or medical service but it will deal with ecological stuff and work as a scientific hub. It is a creative base where scientists can come and work and study biodiversity and spread this knowledge through communicating with the local community so that the local community will start to see biodiversity as a value. This is a combination of scientific study and ecological solutions, such as Permaculture and now Holistic Management.”
Bogdan initially found Holistic Management through the Kiss the Ground documentary and Permacultualist Darren Doherty, another important boundary walker between what many still see as two mutually exclusive disciplines through his work with Regrarians. At Darren’s urging, Bogdan first listened to Allan Savory's book while on an extended cycling trip. He immediately felt not only trust in Savory's writing but inspiration as well.
“It’s rare now for stuff to inspire me… I’m really kind of fed up with inspirational stuff…but his (book) inspired me and I felt a kind of energy” afterwards. He was taken with the framework not only for the information and inspiration it provided, but because from his perspective the fundamental concepts were really just stripped down ecological principles.
Bogdan is drawn to minimalism. Even in his blacksmithing set up he told me, “I kept getting rid of things from my system to just really get to the essence of blacksmithing to what is really the core.” I asked him about stripping Holistic Management to its core. He said that to him it comes back to the framework itself and how Savory extends the realms in which we can apply ecological principles.
“Allan Savory is obviously an ecologist…like Bill Mollison, but probably even more…and that’s interesting because he applied ecological terms and ecological observation to the human world of making decisions in what are called ‘invisible structures’ in permaculture, such as finances.”
Since getting involved with Holistic Management Bogdan’s understanding of the framework has changed significantly.
“Initially I thought Holistic Management this is the kind of most advanced grazing stuff, the most developed system of knowledge, everything has to do with the grazing…if you need an idea of how the grazing should be performed and how to use it as a tool for restoring biodiversity then we have to go for Holistic Management, but now this is quite a change… with understanding that this is a decision making system and it’s very pragmatic.”
Bogdan recently used his holistic context and the holistic decision making process to make a major decision.
“...last year, I was thinking only about grazing. This is the stuff of you know, you're moving animals, how you move your animals around. That's it. Now I understand [HM], this is much more. And I even started to use it. Like now, making the decision to quit the goats. So the opposite actually…Now, Holistic Management is kind of pushing me from grazing.”
Bogan decided to put a pause to his current goat program, so that he could put his time and energy into building for his long term future as well as that of the Ecostation Network. “It’s time to give up some stuff and focus…It is quite a relief I would say. I realized I did not have to be this animal farmer. I’ve already had this experience enough during these 3 years, enough to understand how difficult it is,” and to be able to build toward future projects in regenerative grazing, but from a stronger financial foundation. His vision for the ecostation is that he will use holistic financial planning to run it as both a business and an educational site. “The ecostation actually makes money mostly from tourism so I want to explore it as a business and try to organize it in a business way,” which will also educate students and local communities from a more realistic perspective. Most people working directly with landscapes also need to be engaged at some level with a profitable business to sustain their land stewardship efforts.
The ecostation has already become a refuge where the next generation in Ukraine can prepare for a better future despite the current extraordinary circumstances of the full-scale Russian invasion. “I've tried to make the ecostation a reality that makes sense…among a total mess of the rest of the world” Bogdan is living through unimaginable circumstances. His wife and children are living in Germany as refugees. He has not seen them in three years.
“I don’t know what will happen. Ukraine may collapse, we may lose this war…it’s a very dangerous moment, everyone is very tired here, of the war, so many people gone or families split, like mine. I don’t know when I will see my family, if I will see my family, if I will have a family. I am trying to do what I can, keep going with my work. It’s all I can do. It’s all I know, it’s all I am able to do. It’s my skills.”
I feel humbled and amazed everyday by Bogdan who is continuing to serve his local community and Ukraine through his work with the ecostation despite the unimaginable challenges and uncertainty he faces everyday. He is creating a place where scientists and young people can come and learn and dream about a better future for Ukraine.
Goats as an instrument to regulate grassy cover areas at the ecostation.
“I want to offer them (on the ground) information over pictures…I want to give them the different broadscale approaches that are used all over the world that they otherwise might not hear about. I want to give them opportunities…because I feel someone gave me opportunities… Bill (Mollison) and many other people were helping me when I was young…to offer me some information, knowledge, whatever. I feel obliged, I got that when I was young. I need to give it to other people who are young, and I also have my children who are student-aged, and maybe someone will help them.”
Not everyone believes Bogdan is a hero for continuing his work. Some believe every effort should directly contribute to war itself. “It feels out of time, out of sense to do this ecological stuff when you have war. That’s what we constantly hear.” But Bogdan keeps showing up for the young people at the ecostation, many of whom have expressed to him that they find their university studies “confined and uninspiring.”
“I think that the war gives us the opportunity to test things to make good decisions…I hope we will be able to do Holistic Management here…I believe we can start spreading Holistic Management within the Ukrainian Permaculture community. It’s a good substrate to inoculate with good culture. I notice many Holistic Management people come from Permaculture originally… Permaculture, Yeomans’ (Keyline) and Holistic Management, to me it’s all the same stuff. It’s the 1000 names of God. I feel it even in the energy…the energy of all this stuff, you know I am a blacksmith I am thinking in magic terms about this world…the spirit [of each] is very much the same, different sides of one whole.”
Again we come back to Holistic Management’s first key insight. Bogdan takes it even a step further exploring the energetic undercurrent of how these wholes within wholes inform one another. Bogdan is embracing the spirit of what regeneration can mean within modalities from all over the world–to forge these global concepts into a greater whole, something that honors the energetic undercurrent of the “1,000 faces of regenerative agriculture” and to forge them into something new, something fundamentally Ukrainian.
He doesn’t believe any one body of knowledge of regenerative agriculture can serve Ukraine, just as a horseshoe cannot be forged in fire alone. Bogdan will continue his work in learning and forging his work with ideas, practices, and philosophical frameworks the world over. This philosophy of the whole informing the parts as well as the parts informing the whole has also influenced Bogdan’s thinking on the war and how it is far from simply a Ukrainian problem.
If we truly believe the first key insight of Holistic Management–that we, humanity are wholes within wholes–then we are collectively responsible for one another's well being. This insight resonates deeply with Bogdan.
“I don’t divide very much. We are all responsible for all that happens with humanity. The entire world is responsible for what happens in Ukraine. Ukraine has to be supported because it’s just not right that some will have the right to declare that [other] people don’t exist…to say Ukrainians don’t exist, that they are just part of Russian country of Russian people…If we accept this possibility…then freedom is just for certain people , for chosen ones. But freedom should be universally available for all human beings. They can talk about freedom and the values…[but] it undermines the whole idea of things like United Nations sustainability goals.”
You can learn more about Bogdan’s work with the ecostation here or check out their Facebook page.
Caity Roberts is a Savory Accredited Professional
Join us for the Holistic Planned Grazing and Ecological Monitoring Course in Union, Oregon, in June!