What happens when chemical warfare doesn’t end at the battlefield—but follows us home?

In this episode of The Great Disfarmament – The Great Disarmament, we travel from the trenches of World War I to the poisoned fields of mid-century agriculture. We explore how the same compounds used for mustard gas and explosives were rebranded as fertilizers and pesticides—and how the Green Revolution masked a deeper ecological unraveling.

We meet Sir Albert Howard, a botanist who saw soil not as a battleground but as a living system, and we revisit the literary trauma of All Quiet on the Western Front, where war clings to lungs and lingers in the land.

If disfarmament began with conquest, this is the moment it became chemical.

Listen in as we unearth the roots of modern agriculture—and how healing may begin by remembering what we’ve tried to forget.

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🎵 Music is by Javier “Peke” Rodriguez: The Red Kite

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Javier on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3QuyqfXEKzrpUl6b12I3KW?si=iFFXM2gYR2CuuGjmsfNViQ

What happens when the hunger for yield becomes an imperial mission?

In this episode, we travel to the 18th and 19th centuries to explore two seemingly unrelated substances—gunpowder and guano. One shaped the battlefield. The other reshaped the farm. But both emerged from a growing belief that nature could be extracted, measured, and conquered.

We trace the rise of nitrogen obsession, colonial fertilizer wars, and the passing of the Guano Islands Act—all moments that reveal how food systems were drafted into the logic of empire. Poet William Blake reminds us that even rivers and soil were being claimed, chartered, and commodified. His words—drawn from The Chimney Sweeper and London—anchor this episode in the moral undercurrent of ecological-industrial harm.

This isn’t just a history of weapons or fertilizer. It’s a warning about what we begin to forget when we turn living systems into engines—and when we trade birdshit for blood.

📘 Download the Peace Resource Guide: aviskalfsbeek.com/peaceguide

📢 Share this episode using #TheGreatDisarmament

📚 Get Mono Mutante: aviskalfsbeek.com/mono-mutante

💛 Follow my Kickstarter: aviskalfsbeek.com/kickstarter

🎵 Music is by Javier “Peke” Rodriguez: The Red Kite

Javier on Bandcamp: javierpekerodriguez.bandcamp.com

Javier on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3QuyqfXEKzrpUl6b12I3KW?si=iFFXM2gYR2CuuGjmsfNViQ

What if we remembered the wisdom buried in the soil?

In this second episode of The Great Disfarmament – The Great Disarmament, we go back—before fertilizers, before bullets, before the conquest of land and people. We trace the quiet origins of farming and war, when both were bound by ritual, proximity, and care. We explore ancient practices of composting, communal stewardship, and restraint—methods rooted in renewal, not extraction.

We meet a voice from the Sumerian world—Shuruppak—whose 4,000-year-old instructions remind us that farming was once a moral act. And we revisit The Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the earliest ecological warnings in literature. Together, these ancient texts ask: What if agriculture had never become a tool of conquest?

This is a story of what we knew before we knew what we’d lose. A mirror held up to the beginnings of disarmament—not in politics, but in the ground itself.

📘 Download the Peace Resource Guide: aviskalfsbeek.com/peaceguide

📢 Share this episode using #TheGreatDisarmament

📚 Get Mono Mutante: aviskalfsbeek.com/mono-mutante

💛 Follow my Kickstarter: aviskalfsbeek.com/kickstarter

🎵 Music is by Javier “Peke” Rodriguez: The Red Kite

Javier on Bandcamp: javierpekerodriguez.bandcamp.com

Javier on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3QuyqfXEKzrpUl6b12I3KW?si=iFFXM2gYR2CuuGjmsfNViQ