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Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors, especially in names. Click any timestamp to jump to that moment in the audio.

0:01Who are the characters behind science? This is Science Behind the Glass, illuminating the human side. In this podcast, we unveil the human side of laboratories and science. Scientists share personal experiences, and we’ll discuss their meanings from different perspectives and fields of research. Welcome to Science Behind the Glass, the podcast that navigates. different fields of research and different fields. And today we have the pleasure for the first time to have our guest speaking in English too. Dr. Karen Muñoz was our guest previously and we have a…

0:45beautiful interview and she accepted the invitation to come back and then repeat this interview in English. So Karen, thank you very much for accepting this invitation. This is very exciting. Usually we use AI to translate the episode and close the gap between languages. Thank you, Linda, for having me. I’m very happy to be in this podcast. For me, it’s an honor and it’s a pleasure to have this conversation with you. Thank you. To give a short introduction, Karen works with tiny little allies, these unseen characters or animals that we don’t give too much credit and we don’t pay too much attention about them because we’ve barely seen them. But some of them can be ladybugs, mites, yes, mites, beetles, and spiders. And also something that we don’t know about, those unseen… heroines are that they protect our crops, that they can save, they break barriers connecting also science, biodiversity, and they also protect the transformer production systems.

1:58And Karen’s job and her project, what she’s working is with these tiny allies, and they have been also the inspiration for her career. She is an associate researcher at the University of Amsterdam, and also she’s a specialist in crop protection, as well as the director of Van der Steen Solutions, where she works designing strategies based on these tiny little allies, soil health and regenerative agriculture. She also has made her mission something very powerful, making biodiversity the ally of farmers, not their enemy, uniting science, strategy, and innovation alongside those in front of the line that are the farmers. So thank you for being here. And it would be awesome to hear what has been the inspiration for you. What has been, you are a Colombian and… Tell us about your beginnings. Tell us why did you dedicate your career to biodiversity and this transition with agriculture? Thank you, Linda. Well, first of all, I just wanted to say that I feel a lot of gratitude to be in this podcast. And I think the work you are doing is really important because…

3:28I see there is a huge gap between what the universities are doing and how this knowledge is transferred to society. This is becoming a very big gap and this kind of… This kind of communication that we are having in this moment and that you are organized with your podcast is of great importance for our society to make that information from the university to make it available to people.

4:02And I’m very grateful that you guys are doing this work. It’s beautiful. And well, how about me? My beginnings, the first thing that comes to mind and that I mentioned in the Spanish version, when I think about my journey, is the program of applied biology. I studied applied biology in Colombia at the military university. And I remember when I was, I knew I wanted to study biology, but I started looking into the programs and the program of the military university was great because it was a biology applied to agriculture.

4:46And those two topics, I was very interested about and about how they are connected. That was when I was around 18 years old or so that I was choosing what to study. And why I think that I was so interested in those two topics, it comes from a very big impression that I had when I started traveling in Colombia. When I was a kid, we used to go from Bogota, which is a concrete jungle.

5:20We used to go outside of Bogota to visit the mountains, to go for holidays. And I remember that we left Bogota and we left the popular neighborhoods where I come from that are totally, everything is cement. And then you leave the city, you start seeing these mountains, these beautiful nature, plants, huge plants with huge leaves. And I was a kid and I remember I was… Like, wow. I remember the feeling that something inside was like, wow, that was so impressive. Nature, that was so impressive.

5:57It was always combined with agriculture. Like, I remember to see these people in the mountains. I don’t know, for example, in the paramos that are super cold, in cold conditions or super hot conditions and people working in the land producing food. And that was a big impression for me. And always since that beginning when I was a kid, always my curiosity has been in that aspect on how agriculture and nature are connected. So that’s when I decided to… study biology well that’s amazing and actually that something that we mentioned in the Spanish version is that actually that biodiversity that we have in Colombia is very impressive thanks to the thermic floors that is because of our amazing mountains or our range and mountain change that are dividing our country. Every thousand meters change the conditions, the temperature, humidity and all these conditions change completely the biodiversity surrounding it and the plants and the animals that we found when you are in Bogota, 2,600 meters. We’re sea level. And you just go, for example, one hour away, the weather completely changed. So it’s like a more warm. So you went down thousand meters and everything, the vegetation changed.

7:28So thanks to that, we are one of the… the countries that have more biodiversity worldwide and that’s because we have these crazy animals and these species that are unique from our country and as you said yeah that’s true in Bogota sadly we have concrete jungles but also we have wetlands which are getting like at the conservation is working a little bit better and then also we have like two hours away if you go up or you climb up and you go into the high mountains, you have the pyramos, these amazing ecosystems that only exist in South America and from the ones where probably the 45 % of these ecosystems that are unique are in Colombia. So, and thanks to them, we have water in, for example, in Bogota because they provide the water, like a 90 % or 80 % of the water. And it’s great because actually you also mentioned that the farmers for you, the part of agriculture was an inspiration for you. Well, like many times we tend to blame the farmers because they don’t, some of them don’t want to change the practices around the food production. But for you have been the inspiration and also you are trying to work. in a friendly way, supporting them. Why is that the case? Why

9:00the farmers are so important for you? Yeah, well, before… Answering that, I just wanted to clarify that, of course, close to Bogota, there are a lot of beautiful areas. And actually, the area of Bogota is very diverse when you leave the neighborhoods. But when you are a kid, you don’t reach those places because, and especially when we were, at least when I was a kid, that there were the moments that the cartels and all the violence was very strong and people would be scared to go to the countryside. The access to those areas is not so easy for, at least for a normal person, you know, from working class.

9:45But of course, Bogota has beautiful mountains around and other ecosystems that are very important. Just wanted to mention that. And yeah, about the farmers, for me, I feel a lot of admiration and respect. And I think that thanks to the farmers, we have what is essential for humans and actually for animals in general, that is food. There are two things that we need, that animals and human animals need, and that’s food and water. And the farmers provide the food, especially for all these big cities. And I know I have had the chance and the opportunity to work together with them. And I understand, therefore, that they make all the difficulties that they go through.

10:43That’s why for me they are like superheroes. And also from that place of admiration is that I propose that there are changes that we can be more inclusive in terms of biodiversity in the different… crops or agroecosystems. Yeah, and then that becomes also your inspiration.

11:10You have been working with these tiny allies that I mentioned in the beginning, and they are called biological controllers, or they are these tiny little animals. Some of them, as I mentioned, they are ladybugs, mantis, that can control other pests that are affecting crops and actually have major concerns at an industrial level. So can you expand a little bit more about these little superheroes? Yes. Biological controllers are super diverse. There is all colors, all kinds.

11:58They are distributed in many groups. For example, insects, there are insects, there are fungi and, let’s say, microorganisms, fungi, bacteria, viruses even. And there are also… There are also, well, we can’t even go further than that because there are even mammals and birds that can also be biological controllers. But let’s say that the ones that have more practical applications, that there is a lot of evidence, is the insects and the mites. and the microorganisms. In the group of the insects, we have the most popular ones, which are the ladybugs, that everyone loves ladybugs, and they are maybe the most representative. But we also have, for example, wasps, that they are not so well known in, let’s say, for a regular citizen. But in the biological control world, they are also one of the most important groups.

13:09These are very small wasps that we can barely see. And they control, for example, whiteflies, which is one of the most damaging pests. And then we have, in the predatory mites, which is the group that I work with, it’s also… Absolutely diverse. It’s a beautiful, beautiful group from many perspectives, ecologically, taxonomically, also economically, because there are many predatory mites that are used for protecting crops in Europe and actually in almost everywhere in the world.

13:47And they are very efficient, too, in economic terms. And also they occupy different habitats in the crop and in the plant. They can live on the flowers, on the leaves, on the soil. So they are also functionally diverse. And then another world is the microorganisms that also can control pests. They can make the plant stronger. So, yeah, that’s very interesting. Yeah, I remember that. Well, I have. Two experiences, one experience with mites, because when you think of mites, it’s like, ugh, gross. Maybe more negative things than positive things. And then one of the experiences that I had was when I was in field work in Colombia.

14:36We were, it was for a subject of population ecology. And then in the field work, when we were close to the cattle station, and we… didn’t realize that actually cattle have ticks and mites and unfortunately there’s a lot of parasites and then we got infested for these red mites that are thromboculidae and they are parasitic mites that what they do is that they they love blood so they they suck your blood it’s very itchy because while they do that They release certain substances and then they just drop on the ground.

15:28But actually the allergic reaction can be just very nasty. And I was one of those ones. And we have all the team have the mites. And it was terrible. Yeah, that was horrendous. But then… I had the chance also to work in crops with Luz Estela. That is a dear person that we have in common. And she gave me the opportunity to work controlling some mites that are, I don’t remember the name in English, for the ones that affect the roses, the tetranichus. Tetranichus, yeah.

16:11Spider mites. Spider mites. So these spider mites actually, they just affect the crops, like, for example, roses. But then she introduced me to those predator mites that you mentioned before. Some of them are Phytoseudos persimilis. And these mites are amazing because they are very specific or target specific and they were only eating these spider mites. and then cleaning basically the crops without using pesticides.

16:46And then that blew my mind. I was like, wow, that’s amazing. But then they weren’t the only ones that blew my mind. So there were another, she was like trying to research and looking for different natural predators to control all this. When there’s a… unbalancing the crops because we have been using so many pesticides so there are monocultures that don’t let like a natural balance or ecosystem well of course that there are some animals that start increasing and for example spider mites are one of those ones so she worked also with another amazing mite that is called a balaustium lienderi and these beautiful mites that I love so much, and I’m pretty sure that you too, because you did three things with these mites. These ballastin were predating on all different prey, like the whitefly that you mentioned before. They were the only ones that were reaching whitefly that affects also tomatoes crops. And then if someone had been familiar with the tomato crops, they have looked at this.

18:01there are no spines but that is very difficult for some sorry trichomes try so the trichomes that are this they look like a spines but there are no spines so some of them for example for a phytocetus was impossible to reach the white flights that they were actually on the leaves in feeding on the on the savia or on the leaves so for me it was amazing that this tiny little animal was able to predate and control tests that we never thought about it and then yeah you tell us our experience with This amazing mind, because I think that it was the inspiration for your career. Yeah, well, it’s such a beautiful story. And I will try to make it short. But it comes from when I was doing my bachelor. I wanted to work with trips, trips control, because trips is one of the one of the things that we are more scared of in agriculture in general. and they are also very interesting insects. And I wanted to work in this topic also because in that moment, most people at the university, they were with spider mites, and I wanted something different.

19:26And I went to work for kind of an internship with Luz Estela Fuentes, that is our mentor, like you said. She was working on this for years, I think, when I arrived. And there was some research there where they have identified the main natural enemies of thrips in the Bogota Plateau. So I have seen already pictures of all that’s also beautiful because in Colombia and in each place, we have a huge diversity of natural enemies, which is another way to call the biological controllers.

20:14and is a is a way to call them that i really like because it explains in inhuman behavior words what is what they do they are the enemies of this space that affect our our crops so So anyways, I already knew, I have seen pictures of balaustium, but I was not very interested in it because I wanted to work with wasps. I thought they were super interesting, the way they parasitize the thrips. So in that sense, I started looking for these wasps I wanted to work with. It was from Colombia, from the Sagana de Bogota. And I started looking for them. And every time I was looking for them… I always found balustium. So the wasps were very difficult to find and they are very sensitive. But every time I was looking in the field for those wasps, there was always balustium there. And when I was both looking inside the crops and outside the crops, I always found balustium, as long as there were not too many… applications of chemical pesticides, they would be around and they would be feeding on thrips and whiteflies.

21:32So I thought it was like, in a way, love at first sight. I saw them. I also thought they were extremely beautiful. So I thought that’s what I want to work with them. And that’s what we started first looking at the cycle. how they reproduce, which are the stages. And something that is really beautiful from this mite is that part of the life cycle happens in the soil. And then is when the importance of soil starts to become so present for me. And why? Because they leave all the eggs in one go, which is something very special from mites, because mites usually leave a few eggs per day. But these ones, the females, they are all females. They are parthenogenetic, which means they can just reproduce by themselves and they lay all the eggs at the same time. That it can be 50 eggs, for example, or sometimes more. And the females leave the eggs and then they die. And they leave the eggs in the soil.

22:41And that happens because the eggs, in order to develop, they need to hydrate. And that kind of water of humidity is only possible in the soil. And there might be other reasons why they lay the eggs on the ground. So that connection of the ground and the mice coming from the ground, going to eat on the plants was also something that for me, it made me very… curious about this mite what’s going on so so like that we worked in in different topics but mainly in the life cycle and and how this the fact that they not only one one herbivore but they a different variety, they have a diverse diet, and how these different diets affect the predatory mite. And, well, all these studies that I did with Balaustium, I talked about it in congresses in Colombia, also in the U.S. when I went to a course about agricultural archaeology. And there I met a professor that became my PhD professor. He invited me.

23:58I showed him the research that we have done in Colombia about balaustium. And he was totally surprised. And he thought, wow, this is amazing. Like, I really would love to continue with this kind of research. And I got to go to… to Amsterdam where I did my PhD. And that’s why I always feel so grateful because I found this particular predatory mite. Of course, this was built on knowledge from before me. Luz Estela, Alex Escobar, there were a lot of people from that small world of biological control in Bogota that they have already set the basis. And I just got there in the moment that we could study and there was… There were projects that could be done together. Yeah, this institute of the university in Bogotá, La Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano, and the projects that made sense in that moment were also allowing us to do this kind of research. And so I could travel the world, I could talk about this mite, and people are always very interested in this story.

25:20And yeah, and after me, there was also a lot of research that happened on different aspects. So for sure, it’s a might that we should talk more about, that we should do more research about. It’s very important. I think it can be very important for controlling pests in Bogota. Yeah, that’s very amazing because actually I had the opportunity, as you mentioned, to work together with some students in research with Balustion on how effective they were trying to reach different prey in different plants. Between these ones was tomatoes. That was very challenging, for example, for phytocytus that they actually commercialized worldwide.

26:07And in Colombia, when Beachopolis, that is a company that works with natural enemies, I think that’s the best word that we can call them, they try to use phytocetus to control the spider mites in crops. Because one of the main issues that have roses is that they use a lot of pesticides, a lot, because they have a lot of issues between them. fungi and they have diseases from every type of diseases and also well spider mites are a big one but then if a farmer wants to export these or commercialize these roses in Europe it needs to be free of pesticides and one of the strategies that is really good is this phytocetus persimilis because actually what it does is that it feeds a feed on the spider mite and then it dies as long as soon as the the the little mite is not present anymore and that’s amazing i think that balaustin does the same so i had the chance to do um environmental impact assessment the only one that i did and it was with beachopolis this company that was trying to sell the phytocitos but of course we want we don’t have a risk assessment for introduced arthropods in Colombia so that

27:39was like a new thing that I did and I developed a strategy to assess if actually this mite was going to become a pest because that happens a lot that we try to fix introduce an animal from another part and then it becomes a problem And we didn’t want this to happen. So I developed this methodology based on other animals. But also the only one study that I found was from Australia. And the idea was measuring if I actually was able to escape the crops. So we did this, run this trial with the plants and, of course, the spider mite, and then we released the phytocytos, and it was completely covered in plastic. The idea was avoiding that this tiny little mite, predator mite, would escape. But no, it didn’t escape. Actually, it was under controlled conditions and everything. It just died in the moment that…

28:37They didn’t find another source of food because they are very specific for spider mites. So natural animals have a huge potential instead of using their pesticides because actually they don’t work well with pesticides. They actually die. And Positium is also very sensitive to any kind of chemicals. And yeah, I feel like a huge respect with Palastium because we were like… measuring these animals, assessing them with different predators and also you travel to different parts of the world but now you have your company in Amsterdam that is Van der Steen Solutions and also we want to know How is that merge of different cultures from Latin America, from Colombia, and of course now being in Amsterdam? How does that help you to develop your company? How will it encourage you to develop the company? Because many people don’t know how do you start and actually how difficult it is. Yeah, that’s a good point.

29:49Being an entrepreneur is… It’s a whole new world than working inside an institution like science or like government institutions or even industry. When you are an entrepreneur, there are different kinds of resources, different tools that we use to do our work. At the end, we always have to… Or at least for me, it’s important to add value to society. And this new experience of being independent, I feel very happy with my youngest, Karen, that decided to do it. But it wasn’t an easy step, like you said. And how to begin with that story? I have been working with… In the Netherlands, first I did my PhD.

30:51I came 15 years ago, a long time ago. And I did my PhD at the University of Amsterdam. It took me around six years or so. And immediately after I finished, I worked for the Dutch government. And my role was to… an evaluator of risk assessment for CTGV, which is the institute that evaluates the risk of pesticides and biopesticides and biocides in the Netherlands. So, and there I was in touch with the reality, because at the university, we see more the ideas, the future scenarios, the possible things that can happen, that we can do. But then you… I started working in the government and I started to see what is really happening, what is the reality, how we translate biology into regulation, into the laws, the environmental laws. And that was a very interesting thing to understand. I had another kind of view of the world, let’s say. And then… After a while, I felt I wanted to be more in touch with…

32:14with biological control and with the people that produce biological control because I thought that I could add value by explaining people how the government sees these permissions that they give, what they are looking for, what are the biggest fears, and I wanted to transfer that information from this group that is the government to the group of the producers because sometimes there were a lot of misunderstandings and I thought I… I could add value by explaining to people, look, this is how the government sees things and how we can write in a way that they understand that the risks are small compared to chemicals, for example. So that was a great way to get to know those three worlds, like the world of academic life, the world of being an… How do you call this? Someone that works for the government and someone that can be inside industry. And all those institutions, I learned a lot. I made a lot of good friends or at least good colleagues and some friends, a few friends and a lot of good colleagues. I met people that were… very intelligent, very compromised, and others that were not so much, of course. But my impression

33:44was that I would like to be a bridge between those groups and to explain how we can bring biodiversity back into our crops. and in a way use it or make an alliance with nature in a way that it benefits us and we don’t have to fight against it. And that’s why we founded together with my partner, Founders Day Solutions, to make that bridge. And for that we use education courses and talks and in general education that for now is… The audience is adults and people from, especially people from the government, advisors or farmers. But in the future that we are building today, it’s going to be, the audience is also going to be farmers and kids. So we are also working in designing courses for kids. Very impressive because actually being an entrepreneur is not easy. my personal experience but then it’s also amazing that you try to just close the gap with the farmers that in a way yeah as i was saying like we blame them because of the like yeah they don’t use really some of them they use like a really clean practices so like that they use a lot of pesticides of course they it depends on the regulation in each country here It’s good,

35:15but it’s not great. We lost a lot of biodiversity and deforestation, sadly, in Australia because, for example, transitioning just to monocultures, but not only monocultures, we also have cattle. So I think that is a good opportunity with these natural enemies that are being implemented. I don’t care much here about it. uh implementing the natural enemies in crops i think that that has to also be a transition with sustainability and and changing the way that how we produce food in the sense that for example it has to be more sustainable for example polycultures um something that i mentioned was that we have a special guest dr arid de leon and she works for um interdisciplinary university with a Mayan community and actually they work in the Milpa Maya and she as a researcher actually is like lending a hand to these communities because they already have the knowledge but then they are like what they are doing is working together with science and hand on hand to try to understand these polycultures and this knowledge that we have. that they have for centuries and what it means is that for example they don’t use one they don’t use a monoculture so they use multiple crops and for example squash or they use pumpkin

36:50or they use corn and although them all together play an important role because one is providing the nutrients the other one is providing the shade and it’s like a functional culture so that’s what i think that is one of the things that we have to move or the farmers need to move forward. It’s difficult to change and changes are difficult, but then we need to transition in that sense.

37:17My point of view. That’s true. I agree. Yeah. And also, how do you see the future? How do you see your perfect, like a… a way of sustainability and working with farmers. Because one of the things that perhaps I mentioned in our podcast is that they have big debts and they have to produce. And I don’t think that there is a long -term way of thinking, for example, in monocultures.

37:52But it’s like the immediate production that has to be done, but actually has a higher cost when there’s not a way of thinking in the future. So how do you see this transition? How do you think that is the way of transitioning and changing this way of thinking and working with them? Because, yeah, like I think that is difficult. And from a scientific position, it’s like easy for me to say like, oh, well, yeah, they should change.

38:23But it’s not easy. And they actually I don’t think that they not only government, but it’s like there’s not. interplay of roles or there’s no different roles of like a scientist also working hand -in -hand with them and also the government working with them giving them provide them support to do a transition more sustainable transition so how do you think that we can do that approach Yeah, I think, first of all, I totally agree with you that monocultures are not the way to go anymore. Like there is a lot of evidence showing that monocultures are really a disaster for…

39:03Also for productivity and for nature and for humans. It’s becoming more and more difficult to control pests because they are just in the monocultures. It’s the perfect place for herbivores to become pests. Because herbivores, usually if they are in nature, they don’t cause so much damage because they have natural enemies. But in the monocultures… all the natural enemies are erased from the picture, and that’s why the herbivores can become pests. So first, that would be the first step, that monocultures should become polycultures, and using also what you mentioned, the knowledge and wisdom from cultures that were pre -colonized cultures. then that gives us a lot of tools to understand things that already work. And what we have to pay attention to is that there are many systems, agricultural systems, in which we can actually produce food. And there are examples of organic farmers or permaculture farmers, regenerative agriculture. that shows that it is possible to grow food without chemical

40:33pesticides and even without chemical fertilizers also. And how to make that transition? That’s a very important question. And that’s the question that I think we should talk more about because, yeah, like you said, from the scientific point of view, we already know we have to improve biodiversity. I think if someone that is serious about agricultural sustainability and doesn’t realize or doesn’t accept by now with all the evidence that we have, that… that it’s possible to produce food without chemical pesticides. And anyone that is serious about this topic, we have that cleared. There is so much evidence, so many papers, study cases.

41:23So that’s not a question anymore. Biological control is a very good solution to move towards a more sustainable agriculture. And it’s going to happen. It’s not going to happen from one day to the other. In this transition period, what I see or the way I imagine it happened and some people, some farmers that decide to go into more environmentally friendly agriculture, they do it, is that the idea is to start with… Let’s say it replaced the chemical pesticides with biological alternatives at the beginning because there is going to be still contamination in the crop from the chemical pesticides, even if people stop spraying. So there is a period of transition in which we have to use other tools, other…

42:20Substances like microorganisms, they can be a good alternative in that transition period. Every time I look for systems that make sense in terms of polycultures, which plants can be together. Like you said, some plants are going to be in charge of them. The system that you mentioned is beautiful because it’s beans with corn and with squash or pumpkin, and they make so much sense together. Those kind of systems, we have to make them more common in agriculture. And this particular case is very beautiful because the squash, because the leaves are so big, they cover the soil. And covering soil is very important so that the microorganisms in the soil, this community can be healthy because they are very sensitive to the UV radiation. So the squash covers the soil, protects the soil, let’s say.

43:22And then we have the beans. And the beans, they are known to be very efficient. making microorganisms by making relationships with microorganisms. So they help to bring to the system these players that are super important and all the plants, all the tree plants benefit from it. And then we have the corn that helps to give a structure to the beans because the beans need something to grow on. So the system, for example, is a beautiful example that I’m happy that you brought it to this conversation. And also, for example, even the Amazon forest, we know by now that this forest is like a food forest, that the tribes that were living there, they have transformed.

44:21the forest in a way that humans can also use it but in a way that is not so destructive. So all this different looking at the past is important, like you mentioned, and also looking at the present of all these new initiatives of different ways of farming is super important. And for the conventional farmers, there has to be like a past. First, like start with products that are kind of similar to chemicals, but replace them with biology.

44:55and slowly move into diversifying the crops. And also, not only the crop, but also which kind of flowers or especially flowers, plants that have flowers for a long period of the year, that they help to support the natural enemies. So it’s a whole system, no? That whole system that we have the information. Now we have some examples and now we have to apply it. And how to… If a farmer decides, because of course that has to come from them, I think it’s a very bad idea to impose things to people, especially people that are already under a lot of pressure. So I think always the approach should be to listen to them with respect and always… Honestly, in my own experience with growers, they already have a lot of knowledge about the system. And even there is always someone in a farm or in a crop that is very aware and very conscious about nature around. They know which solutions could be more sustainable. They have the knowledge.

46:19And honestly, from our perspective, as people that work for the government or scientists, that want to start this conversation and to help in this process, we just need to listen carefully to what they have to say. I think that’s the order, that we listen and then we give input according to our knowledge. And I think it’s what you said, like there are not institutions that clearly… put together these groups, no?

46:54And that’s also something that we should promote more or make people aware that there is this gap and that there is more people willing to communicate science in a way that it can be used by the people that need it. Yeah, that’s amazing. I think that’s what we need to do, like create those bridges between, for example, farmers, because as you said, like a monocultures, I’m not going to work. They’re not working. The nutrients are completely depleted in the soil. That’s the other problem with the soil. You don’t have a soil that has nutrients or they’re not going to be able to grow anything. But I think that that system can be escalated in a way that scientists and government and all the role players work together. for a change. Thank you, Karen, for all this knowledge, for sharing with you your experiences, for doing this again. And also, what message would you send to our listeners?

48:07Well, for example, people that are listening to us that are scientists and that work in sustainability or in biodiversity, that I want to invite people to be more, that speak out loud about what you think is important, because I know as scientists we are very shy. I am also shy. And for me to do these things, they become easier with time.

48:33But the first time I look at myself in the camera and hear myself, it’s not super easy to accept yourself in that way. But the message that we carry is very important. And there is people that want this kind of information. And we are in a moment in the history of humans that is very unique because all of us can have. an audience like you you start with your community in internet and i’m an optimist about the technology and now how internet and and social media and i know that if it’s true that there is a lot of stupid things but we can also we can also raise the level of the conversations. And there can be more people from different voices, different perspectives, sharing knowledge. So everyone that loves their topic and they think this is important, this is something that can be used, please do it, do it. And approach people, make videos, Instagram. send the message there because there is always people willing to receive. That’s something that has surprised me a lot. When I started designing my education courses, I was scared that nobody would listen to it because maybe it’s not so interesting or people were not, yeah, didn’t have time to do it. But there is a lot of people that want and need this information.

49:55So that’s my message to scientists that listen to this and not only to scientists, of course. that are interested in, for example, in making their garden more sustainable or more biodiverse. That’s also something that you can do easily. If you see this video and you are interested, for example, I know where we can find information that we grow our own natural enemies at home.

50:27We can, for example, with a simple microscope, we can look at the soil food web that is living in our soil and we can have an idea of how to make this community, if it’s not growing as it should or it’s not working as it should. There are a lot of strategies that we, as a normal citizen, we can work on. Composting is also important.

50:54So someone that just, you work in something else and you say, yeah, I have nothing to do with agriculture or interest, but you can make compost at home, for example. You can just talk about this topic with people, with family, the importance of biodiversity in agriculture, how this makes our, not only our food less. contaminated but also all our surroundings and and i i want to share a dream that motivates me a lot but when i feel like my energy is a bit like going down because of all the problems in the world that we were talking before before recording but i always i have this dream so clear in my in my head that i imagine that everyone wherever you are would will have access to nature to clean food and to clean water and that i imagined if Here, for example, in Breda or, I mean, in Colombia, in my city, in Bogota or in Cali or in Australia, and you can just eat delicious, healthy food and you can go and swim in water that is not contaminated and just swimming in natural water is something that I love. And I have the dream that all this… that everyone would have access to that. It’s an utopia, but it gives me a lot of strength in the moments when I need strength.

52:19And that’s what we need. We need hope. Thank you very much for these words and for sending these messages. And of course, I’m going to put the links in the way that people that is curious and they want to learn more, they can consult these references. Thank you, Karen. Okay, thank you very much, Linda. Thank you. Science Behind the Glass is much more than a podcast. We are a bilingual science communication initiative that connects science with the public through immersive narratives and high -impact visual content. We offer video production for research, 360 -degree virtual tours, educational format videos, and consulting in educational content design. If you are looking to amplify the visibility of your research or connect with diverse audiences, visit our website to learn more about our service.

53:09for scientists and educators who communicate.