PLANTING THE SEED
From a small town in Western Australia to the glory of the World stage, Formidable Vegetable is sowing the garden of our minds with the seeds of change to Turnip the Beets for people, plants and the Planet.
Originated in 2012 by ukulele-strumming ecological edutainer Charlie Mgee, the band has organically grown their dedicated following over the years on a mission to inspire local action for global issues and now find themselves firmly planted in the fertile soils of the growing regenerative movements worldwide.
LOCAL TO GLOBAL
Charlie grew up in an off-grid mud brick shack among trees, chickens and a veggie garden, later graduating to a waste vegetable oil-powered fire truck he converted to a tiny house. In 2019, he gave a TEDx talk about his passion for communicating complex information in entertaining ways, which is something that ancient cultures have done for thousands of years.
Inspiring minds young and old with songs about simple solutions for living a good life, Formidable Vegetable is most at home on the live stage, whether it be to heaving crowds at Woodford Festival or Glastonbury (where they’ve performed several times) or at school shows rocking out for the kids.
REGENERATIVE MUSIC
Having toured to more than twenty countries over the past decade, Formidable Vegetable have delivered their simple message of community resilience and ecological restoration to crowds of thousands at some of the World’s biggest festivals and even received praise from the United Nations, who declared their song ‘You Are What You Eat’ as the official soundtrack to the International Year of Soils in 2015. For four and a half years, the band avoided flying altogether (and in 2019 according to the BBC, became the first band in the world to turn down an offer to perform at Glastonbury Festival due to the ecological impact of international air travel) but have been finding new ways of using their unique brand of musical activism to compost the problems of the world and grow community-scale solutions in their place.
DANCING THE TALK
Whether it’s getting to gigs powered by waste veggie oil, sleeping on couches, camping in fields or handing out heirloom vegetable seeds at their shows, Formidable Vegetable walk the walk of sustainability and regenerative living wherever possible on the road and at home, inspiring others to do the same.
Through their tireless ongoing commitment to the living World and to their music, Formidable Vegetable have cemented themselves as favourites at Australian and international festivals, having regularly played at some of the biggest arts & music events in the world such as Woodford & MONA FOMA (Australia), Shambhala (Canada), Symbiosis (USA) and Glastonbury (UK) alongside such acts as Dolly Parton, Radiohead and The Rolling Stones.
Photo: Lachlan Douglas
PERMANENT CULTURES
Up until relatively recently, people managed to live pretty sustainably on the planet for hundreds of thousands of years. So what happened? At some point, it seems some if us humans started to think of ourselves as separate from or above ‘Nature’, which has been causing all kinds of problems ever since.
Many of the ideas behind Formidable Vegetable’s songs were inspired both by Charlie’s early upbringing in remote Indigenous communities in Northern Australia and subsequent off-grid life in the bush as well as the ethics and principles of Permaculture.
Their debut album Permaculture: A Rhymer’s Manual was based on the book: Permaculture: Principles & Pathways Beyond Sustainability by David Holmgren.
Permaculture is primarily a way of designing living systems that build connections between our food, friends, front yards, farms and forests for the greatest good. It’s been proven as a good way to find simple, regenerative, community solutions to the sometimes complex problems of the World.
Even though the word ‘Permaculture’ was coined in the 1970’s by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, it is not a new idea, but rather draws on knowledge systems of different traditional cultures all over the World that managed to live in balanced relationship with their environment for thousands of years and seeks to acknowledge and include these cultures wherever possible.
The aim is to help us all get us back to being in balance with the Living World through the ethics of Earth Care, People Care and Fair Share . In other words, taking care of the land, water and living soil, looking after ourselves and other people and being aware of our limited “resources” on this planet. This means using only what we really need, whilst leaving the rest for those around us – not just people, but all other living and non-living beings as well – in order to keep a healthy ecosystem functioning.
From the ethics of permaculture come a set of principles which can be helpful guidelines to follow, not only in the garden, but in many other situations as well!
A common misconception is that permaculture is just about gardening, however it is really a much broader, “whole-systems” framework for sustainable – or rather, regenerative design that can be applied to just about any context.
At this critical point in time, where our climate, biosphere and financial systems around the world are reaching straining point, these ways of thinking guide us to positive ideas and actions that we can use towards maintaining our planet’s life support systems and ensuring the survival (and thrive-al!) of not just our own species, but many others as well.
More information on the permaculture ethics and principles can be found at: permacultureprinciples.com or to get involved in your community, do a search for active permaculture groups near you. You’re bound to find some exciting results!
Along with illustrator, Brenna Quinlan, Formidable Vegetable has also created the permaculture education collective Grow Do It creating teaching tools to inspire young minds toward regenerative, whole-systems thinking.