In this episode of Outside The System, I spoke with Gabe Brown, one of the world's foremost experts on soil health. I came across Gabe through Kiss The Ground, a documentary recommended by Calley Means when he came on the show (episode 14). Gabe held nothing back in this wide-ranging conversation about soil health and its relationship to farmer incentives, human health, and natural disasters. We also talked about what all of us can do to improve soil health and create a better food system for everyone. Gabe's bio speaks for itself so I've included it below.
Gabe Brown's bio
Gabe Brown came to Regenerative Agriculture through hardship. In 1991 his in-laws retired and he took over their 1,760-acre farm outside Bismarck, North Dakota. He used the same practices they had used since the 1950s: tillage, fertilizers, pesticides and fungicides as well as conventional grazing practices. All of these were considered the highest standards in modern agriculture. But about five years later came four years of freak storms with resulting crop failures and the death of many of his cattle. He almost lost the farm at that point but chose instead to try to regenerate his failing enterprise using Holistic Management practices.
The idea, in some ways, was to go back to farming the way it used to be done a generation earlier, restoring and working with the natural ecological balance of the land. Improving soil health by not tilling and allowing the biomass left from the previous harvest to lie on the ground was the first step. That was actually the result of almost giving up in despair, but the surprising result was that when Brown tested his soil a few years later, leaving it alone had allowed the soil’s fertility to improve.
Step by step, Gabe Brown included more Holistic Management/Regenerative Agriculture practices. Today he continues no-tilling, has added multi-species cover and companion crops, and has become an innovator in managed grazing techniques that allow most of his pastures a year of recovery time between feeding periods. By 2010 he had eliminated the use of synthetic fertilizers, and now he no longer needs to use fungicides and pesticides. Minimal amount of herbicides are used but he hopes to some day eliminate that as well. Each choice he made resulted in lower input costs, improved soil health, and eventually paid off in higher yields as well.
Today, 20 years later, Brown has a highly successful 5000 acre ranch with crop yields 20-25 percent higher than the average yields in his county. His soil organic matter increased from 1.9 in 1991 to 6.1% and that has increased its water-infiltration rates tremendously. He was seeing rates of 1/2 inch per hour in 1991. Today it is 8 inches per hour. He also has done in-depth testing of his soil’s carbon-retention rates. His soils have 96 tons of carbon per acre in the top 48 inches. 10 to 30 tons of stored carbon is what is typical on conventionally farmed soils in the same region.
(from https://www.csuchico.edu/regenerativeagriculture/demos/gabe-brown.shtml)
Timestamps
(0:16) The difficult journey Gabe went on to arrive at his current focus on soil health
(6:03) How monocropping became the norm in US agriculture
(8:42) What problems does the conventional agriculture approach create and why farmers and ranchers aren't solely to blame?
(10:26) Carbon retention rates of Gabe's soil vs conventional agriculture. What are the components of soil and how to influence those variables
(13:19) Nutrient density of crops and misaligned farmer incentives
(14:05) Gabe's research into measuring phytonutrients and why these nutrients are so important for human gut microbiome health. How the nutrient cycle works and why it is vital for your immune system. Creating a new incentive system for farmers to get paid for growing more nutrient-dense food
(18:01) The importance of your gut microbiome and the many health issues (mental disorders and allergies) that may be caused by an imbalanced microbiome
(20:42) How Covid-19 exposed how fragile and consolidated our food system is. Why we need to return to a food system centered on eating locally and seasonally. Why we should all grow our own food
(21:54) Gardening and growing your own food. Why freshly grown food tastes and feels better
(23:52) Why the foods you grow yourself might make you enjoy vegetables and fruits that you normally wouldn't like. Most consumers have never tasted freshly grown food
(25:12) The role of education and awareness in fixing the food system by changing what consumers demand from their farmers
(27:22) The lack of nutritional knowledge in the medical profession and why this has horrible downstream effects on people
(28:26) Food as medicine - how foods can treat and influence diseases. Neil's experience with his father's ALS as an example of lack of knowledge in the medical profession
(29:36) The perverse incentives in medicine and why doctors are incentivized to write prescriptions instead of focusing on preventation
(31:20) How a healthy soil that uses regenerative agriculture techniques is much more resilient against natural disasters than the conventional approach
(34:00) Why natural disasters like flooding can actually be CREATED by improper soil practices
(35:10) Why would a farmer or rancher pushback against these practices?
(38:05) The difference in feedback between family farmers vs corporate farmers
(39:54) How Gabe handles the criticism that if everyone used regenerative farming, how would we feed everyone? Treating your farm as an ecosystem to develop multiple revenue streams and improve profitability and resiliency
(42:22) Gardening and composting to start thinking of food as an ecosystem
(43:20) How the general consumer can support regenerative agriculture and why it's less expensive to feed your family healthy, regeneratively farmed food than buying nutritionally empty foods like cereal
(45:57) Direct to consumer models for buying meat directly from ranchers using regenerative agriculture practices
(46:46) The difference in nutritional density of beef produced from regenerative farming techniques vs conventional farming. More omega-3 in regeneratively farmed beef than in salmon!
Resources and Links
Episode 14: Exposing The Food Cartel Playbook And Why It Matters with Calley Means of True Medicine
Brown's Ranch
Soil Health Academy
Understanding Ag
Regenified
Kiss The Ground documentary
Johnson-Su Composting
What Your Food Ate: How To Heal Our Land and Reclaim Our Health by David Montgomery
