Realfoodology - Revolutionizing Farming: A Regenerative Agriculture Story | Gabe Brown

Episode Date: August 9, 2023

158: Have you ever wondered how the health of the soil affects the planet's overall well-being? What about the vital role of animals in maintaining our ecosystems? This enlightening conversation with Gabe Brown, a trailblazer in regenerative agriculture, dives into those questions and more. Brown shares his enlightening journey from conventional farming to regenerative agriculture, shedding light on the scalable nature and enduring history of this practice. We discuss the six pivotal principles that can drive the four ecosystem processes, which are globally applicable. Find out where you can watch the new documentary Common Ground by clicking here. Check Out Gabe Brown: Book: Dirt to Soil, One Family’s Journey Into Regenerative Agriculture Find out where you can watch the new documentary Common Ground by clicking here Understanding Ag Soil Health Academy Sponsored By: Cured Nutrition www.curednutrition.com/realfoodology REALFOODOLOGY gets you 20% off Organifi www.organifi.com/realfoodology Code REALFOODOLOGY gets you 20% Off ARMRA Colostrum tryarmra.com/realfoodology enter REALFOODOLOGY to get 15% off your first order. Check Out Courtney: Courtney's Instagram: @realfoodology www.realfoodology.com My Immune Supplement by 2x4 Air Dr Air Purifier AquaTru Water Filter EWG Tap Water Database

On today's episode of the Real Foodology Podcast. I have the good fortune, I travel extensively. I'm on literally hundreds of farms, ranches all over the world every year. And I tell people, I have never ever stood on a single farm or ranch, including my own, that's not degraded. The 33 million acres we're consulting on, approximately a third of them are farmers who do not have livestock. And we tell them we can significantly advance and improve your soil health, but it will never ever be as healthy

as it would be if we can integrate livestock. Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of the Real Foodology Podcast. I'm your host, Courtney Swan, and today's guest is Gabe Brown. You probably recognize him from the film Kiss the Ground, and if you do not know what I'm talking about, definitely go check out Kiss the Ground on Netflix. It is an amazing film all about how we are ruining not only our health, but also our environment by the conventional agriculture practices that we are implementing on our land at the moment. Tilling, monocrop culture, which means we are not diversifying the land

with a bunch of different plants and crops. When you see rows and rows of corn, wheat, or soy, that is a monocrop agriculture system. And we talk all about this in the episode, by the way, but we are killing our land with conventional agriculture right now. Also the spraying of pesticides and herbicides, it's killing the ecosystem of the land and killing our soil. And as a result, our soil health is not as strong as it once was. It's not as nutrient dense because we are killing off this ecosystem.

And so as a result, our plants don't have as much nutrients in them. So we talk all about this. We talk about why we need animals on the land, grazing on the land. And we actually don't have enough animals grazing on the land right now, even though we're hearing in mainstream, the narrative is that the animals are destroying our land and they're destroying our earth. But actually it could not be more false. In fact, we need more animals on the land in order to regenerate our land so we talk about how regenerative agriculture works why it's so important why should we care about it as far as the connection with our health with human health but also with the health of the animals and the health of our planet and this was just so such a fascinating conversation there were

so many points that he made that I had aha moments of, you know, I had never thought about it from that perspective before. And it was just such a great honor to bring Gabe Brown on. He's doing such amazing work right now in agriculture and educating people on, you know, really how we have it backwards right now. We're destroying our land and instead of working with nature, we're working against nature right now. And we really need to, as a whole, as a society, get back to regenerative agriculture where we are supporting nature. And nature doesn't get things wrong. And as humans, we are naive enough and egotistical

enough to think that we can outsmart nature and do better. And we're learning time and time again that that's just not possible. So we need to learn how to work with nature. And part of that requires us to go back to a regenerative agriculture model. I'm so passionate about this conversation. I feel like I could go on and on for days about this, but I would love to get into the conversation with Gabe Brown. And as always, if you guys are loving the podcast, if you could take a moment to rate and review, it would mean so much to me. And also if you love this episode, if you could take a moment to post about it on Instagram and tag me, I see all of your tags and shares and it means the world to me. So thank you so much

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I first learned of you and your work when I watched Kiss the Ground probably about, I guess it was like three years ago now. And I am so excited. I've been wanting to bring you on the podcast forever. I think the work that you're doing is just so impactful and so many people need to hear it because right now the way that we're doing conventional agriculture and farming is destroying our land, it's destroying our health, it's terrible for the animals. So, well, first of all, for people that maybe are not aware of your work, can you kind of, can you go into how you got started and your story about losing your crops for three years in a row. I think that's such an impactful story. Well, thank you, Courtney. It's a pleasure to be with you today. So a little bit about myself. My wife and I are both from near Bismarck, North Dakota, and I've spent the past roughly 35 years in production agriculture. We have a 6,000 acre ranch right near the city of

Bismarck. It was a ranch that she grew up on. It belonged to her parents and then we took it over from them. Our son now is operating the ranch. We've transitioned it about five years ago to him. And now I spend the majority of my time trying to educate anyone and everyone who will listen as to why we need to change the production model to regenerative. So our story is I grew up in town and I learned to farm from my father-in-law. He practiced what's known as conventional what we call conventional practices tillage use of synthetic fertilizers and occasionally pesticides fungicides but monoculture crop production heavy tillage well I learned how to do that and when I started farming in the late 80s.

That's what I did. But one thing about me, I've always been very inquisitive and had I want to learn. And I studied about no till. And so in 1994, I sold all the tillage equipment and went 100 percent no till. So think of that for the listeners who are not familiar with farming terminology, more or less not rototilling your garden. We didn't just quit tilling. What happened then, I had a very good crop that year, and I thought, boy, this is easy.

1995 came along, and the day before I was going to combine 1,200 acres of spring wheat, we lost 100% of the crop to hailstorm. So that was pretty devastating economically, setting us back, no income. 1996 came along, we lost 100% of our crop again. 1997 came along and it was a major drought and nobody harvested any acres. 1998 came along and we lost 80% of our crop to hail that year. So four years in a row of no crop income leaves one about $1.5 million in debt and wondering how you're going to dig yourself out from that hole. And back in the late 90s, $1.5 million was a lot of money as it still is today. But what I noticed

over that time was the change to the ecosystem. I noticed all of a sudden we had earthworms in the soil. See, the soil was coming alive because the hailstorm laid down that crop material on the soil, protecting it from wind erosion, water erosion, and it held the moisture in the soil. We're in a semi-brittle environment. We get about approximately 17 inches of total precipitation each year, about 12 inches from rain and the rest from snow in the winter. So we needed to save that moisture. And I noticed that the soil was becoming alive biologically.

This brought in more wildlife, more birds and other wildlife. I started to diversify my crop rotation, and I noticed a real change in the ecosystem. And I didn't know it at the time, but I was really through those hailstorms, although I tell people that was a really difficult time to live through, it was absolutely the best thing that could have happened to us because it taught me the importance of working in harmony and in synchrony with nature instead of against it. Fast forward to today, as I said, I spend the majority of time working with my partners and our consultants at Understanding Ag in education. How do we help other farmers, ranchers, and businesses move down this regenerative path?

I'm very passionate about this as well because we know right now what's happening with our conventional agriculture is, like I said, it's destroying our land, it's destroying our health. Do you think that this is something that is scalable for everyone? And that's a very good question, one I get asked often. And I answer it this way. So almost six years ago, my partners and I started Understanding Egg, and we're wondering, okay, what's the interest? There was people calling calling us emailing us personally inquiring about what we were doing because my partners also practice these regenerative principles on their own farms and ranches and we grew from zero acres basically except our own uh six years ago where today we're actively consulting on over 33 million acres across North America.

That's a significant number of acres. And we've grown the business. We have over 20 consultants working for us. We're also in Canada, Mexico, the UK, Ireland. And we literally have inquiries from all over the world. So is it scalable? Very much so. We have clients who are smallest clients, so to speak, in terms of acreage is about a quarter of an acre. Our largest client is well over 2 million acres. So it's very easily scalable scalable because all you're working with is natural ecosystems. And nature works with the

same template anywhere in the world, which is the beautiful thing about regenerative agriculture. We can go anywhere in the world and implement these practices in order to advance the ecosystem processes. Well, and that's what I think is so interesting about, you know, the narrative that it goes against regenerative agriculture, people that fight back, they always say, well, it's not scalable, or this wouldn't work for all the people on the planet. And I'm thinking, knowing that regenerative agriculture is working with nature, and this is how nature has worked for thousands of years before man intervened. And so my thinking is, why the hell would it not be?

Yeah, you're exactly right, Courtney. And the beautiful thing is, there's six principles that are constant everywhere in the world that drive the four ecosystem processes. And very briefly, those are number one is context. Do you have to farm and ranch in your context? You know, here I am in North Dakota. I tell people there's a reason bananas don't grow in North Dakota. It's out of constant, out of context.

It's a tropical plant, okay? The second principle is least amount of mechanical chemical disturbance possible. You know, nature does not till the soil. Yes, it moves soil with earthworms and other burrowing rodents, but not like we do in agriculture where we plow the soil and turn it over. In nature, plants emit chemicals all the time, but not this copious amounts of these synthetic chemicals we're putting on in agriculture today. The third principle is armor on the soil protection. Where in nature do you see bare soil? Well, fact of the matter is it's usually only where mankind's actions have caused that to occur.

Walk into a forest, walk into a prairie, you'll always notice that there became plant material on the soil surface protecting that soil. The fourth principle is that of diversity. In nature, you did not find monocultures. Nature does not like a monoculture. It's tremendously diverse. You know, I tell people in Lewis and Clark's journals, they documented over 300 different plant species on their trip up the Missouri River. Now, what do you see? You see fields of monoculture corn, monoculture soybeans, monoculture wheat. That's just not conducive to a healthy functioning ecosystem. The fifth principle is that of living root in the soil at all times. You know, those of us from further

north in the hemisphere know in the spring of the year, you'll actually see plants poking through the snow, crocuses, and that nature always tries to collect solar energy through photosynthesis, through a living plant, in order to take carbon and other elements out of the atmosphere and move it into the soil. And then the final principle is that of animal and insect integration. Nature does not, ecosystems do not function properly without animals and insects. Yet you can drive for hundreds of miles without seeing animals. And insects in agriculture today, most farmers just want to kill them. And the sad truth of the matter is, for every insect species that's a pest, there's 1,700 that are beneficial or indifferent, meaning they won't help you or hurt you. Well,

in agriculture, we spend all our time trying to kill that pest. Why don't we provide the home and habitat for all the beneficial? And so those principles are the same anywhere in the world. And they drive the four ecosystem processes. And those ecosystem processes are the energy cycle, sunlight being converted through photosynthesis by plants, the water cycle, the mineral cycle, and biodiversity. So we can literally go anywhere in the world. We will not use the same crop species, the same cover crop species, the same type of livestock. That will be different, but those principles are the same.

The processes are the same. I tell people this isn't rocket science. It's not that difficult to do. The greatest hindrance in adopting this principle is the compaction between our ears. We simply do not understand. You know, farmers and ranchers cannot implement what they do not understand. We need to educate farmers and ranchers and then guide them down this path. What was really profound for me that I learned in Kiss the Ground was the importance of soil health. I had never made that connection before, but when you guys talked about it and laid it out, and I've listened to a lot of podcasts where you talk about this, and I want my listeners to really understand a couple of things. So first of all, why is soil

health so important to us and our health? And then what are we doing in modern agriculture practices that are completely destroying that soil health? Dr. Great question. So maybe we should take a step back and ask ourselves, what is important in our health? Well, what's important in our health is feeding our gut microbiome, because we, you know, we're nothing but walking bacteria. And, you know, we need to feed our own gut microbiome, because that's our defense mechanism, it processes our food, digests our food, and provides us with the nutrients we need. So what does our gut microbiome need for health? Well, it needs these phytonutrients or phytochemical compounds that are found in plants and animals.

Okay, we need those then to feed our gut microbiome. How are those phytochemical compounds, how do they end up in a plant or in an animal? Well, the fact of the matter is, it's the biology and the wide diversity and array of biology in the soil that provide those compounds to the plants. And so what we're finding, and this is work being done by Dr. Stephan Van Vliet, Dr. Fred Provenzel, and Dr. Scott Kronberg, we're looking at healthier soils. In other words, soils on farms and ranches that are implementing these regenerative practices. And then looking at soils on neighboring quote-unquote conventional farms and ranches, then what we do is we grow the same grain or fruit or vegetable or animal protein on each of those, both those

farms and ranches. And then we're comparing them. And what we're finding is the healthier the microbiome in the soil, the larger their array and diversity of these phytochemical compounds in the plants than in the animals thus available in our foods. So I like to equate it to the average homeowner who has a garden. What do they do? Well, the majority of them go out and rototill their garden in the spring. What are they really doing? They are destroying the home and habitat for that soil biology. So they're actually lowering the nutrient density of the vegetables

that they're growing in that garden. That's one of the worst things we can do is till the soil. Then you add the application of these synthetic fertilizers and chemicals and fungicides, and that only compounds the problem. So we have to get back to a much more natural way of production. Yeah. And I heard you say something on a podcast recently that I have found in my own life, and it was just profound to hear you say that because I guess I've not really completely formed my thoughts around this, but you said that the majority of people, at least here in

the United States, don't even actually know what real nutrient-dense food tastes like. And I can tell you firsthand, I live in California and I feel so grateful that I have access to so many farmers markets. And I very rarely go to the grocery store anymore because the grocery store produce does not taste the same to me as when I get it from the farmers market. Exactly. It doesn't. And why is that? Because it's directly equated to soil health and production agriculture that is using conventional practices. We can't, we got to be careful. According to camp blame farmers and ranchers because farmers and ranchers make their livelihood producing. Okay. So they're going to produce according to the markets. Well, what has society told them for years? We want an abundant supply of low priced food, correct? So it's just produced more and more. But that has come at the expense of the ecosystem, the expense

of soil health. And, you know, I was in Minnesota given a presentation yesterday and I was explaining to the group that we cannot farm and ranch like my father did and he could not farm my grandfather, excuse me, my father-in-law did and he could not farm and ranch like his father did because they had the advantage of the building of that soil health over eons of time. Well, now we've been on this slow plane of degradation and people like to talk about climate change. I'm on a personal crusade now where we got to call it what it is.

We got to quit calling it climate change. We have to call it degradation because we've degraded our resources so much that we're no longer able to produce that nutrient dense food. So that's why we have to go down the path of regeneration. There's all this buzz about we got to be sustainable. And I say, why in the world would we want to sustain a degraded resource?

That makes no sense because that degraded resource is not able to produce us nutrient-dense food. So we've got to regenerate our soils using the six principles to drive the four processes. And then we can start producing nutrient-dense food. Yeah, that's a great point. So how, I love talking about this connection because, again, I think people get this so wrong. We hear that animals are causing climate change and, you know, like all these false narratives. Right. And we know that it's actually the spraying of the land, the tilling of the land. Can we talk a little bit about like how is that changing? I've heard that it's changing actual weather patterns and then it's making it so the crops are not able to withstand the crazy weather.

Right. Well, look, you said you're from California. Okay, take a look. I'm very familiar, travel to California every year. Take a look at what we saw in California. It seems California is always either suffering from a drought, wildfires, or this year, extensive flooding. Okay? So I would ask you you why do we get drought well we get drought because we've disrupted what's called the small water cycle and the small water cycle

occurs when you have a landscape that's covered with a diverse plant community and that diverse plant community actually covers the soil so you don't have the water evaporating and it keeps that moisture in the soil. And those plants are actually respiring and that causes more rainfall. history. What is now, many consider the desert Southwest, New Mexico, Arizona, parts of California into West Texas and down into the country of Mexico. That was not a desert five to 800,000 years ago. That was a lush grassland with waist-high grasses. But what happened, mankind overgrazed the area, caused the vegetation to leave, disrupting the water cycle, and it became a desert. Same with the Sahara Desert in Africa. That wasn't a desert a thousand years ago. Mankind's action caused it to become a desert okay so you look at okay why did

the flooding occur in california this year well due to the excessive tillage they've destroyed soil aggregation the soil is no longer able to infiltrate water okay on the farm i was on yesterday in minnesota we did an infiltration test where you pound a ring into the soil and you pour water and see how quickly it infiltrates into the soil. They could infiltrate over 20 inches of water an hour. Think of if that would happen in California, would have you seen any flooding that spring? No, of course not. And then you look at the wildfires in California. Why are they occurring? They've removed the animals from the landscape.

There's nothing there to keep that understory down, keep that fuel load down. And now you have that fuel load building up. So the minute you have a spark, it ignites the whole thing. These are all caused by mankind. We only have to look in the mirror. One of the things that I really struggle with the most is falling asleep at night. And this is why I love Cured Nutrition because I have found that their product Zen in combination with CBN has really helped me to fall asleep quicker. In Zen, it is a combination of magnesium, reishi, CBD, and then has things like passionflower, ashwagandha. All of these just help to calm the mind and calm the body and get you ready for bed.

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go to curednutrition.com slash realfoodology and use code realfoodology and you're going to save 20%. That is cured, C-U-R-E-D, nutrition.com slash realfoodology. I think you guys talk about this in the new film Common Ground, actually, that there's this huge connection, you know, between big ag, big food, and how they're essentially, you know, they're doing the same thing that they're doing in our food industry, where they're paying for these studies to come out in the research. And also these, for example, Monsanto, you know, that created glyphosate. They have so much money in these pesticides and herbicides that we're using on the land that they are creating this certain narrative that we need to be using more of it instead

of, they're basically blocking what is actually really happening and not allowing the truth to come out about what really is happening with our land. I write about it in my book, Soil. Look at the Environmental Protection Agency. How many chemicals have they denied approval for? And I quote it in the book, since the beginning of that agency, there's only been like six that they've denied approval for because they do not do any testing themselves. And most people do not realize that they rely on the testing of the chemical company, the manufacturer. They rely on their studies. Well, you know, as well as I, if you do, you know, figures never lie, liars go figure, you know, and all you need to do is run studies enough and you'll get somebody who hasn't been the right thing, unfortunately.

And the other thing is, you know, I'm not going to bash big ag, I'm going to bash the model in the fact that what i mean by that is it is so driven by quantity that the larger you become the lower your margins need to be in order to cover your overhead so then it all becomes more like a machine and just we rubber stamp it. We can do it at mass scale, mass production, do it very cheaply. But what do we get in return? Well, we get the fact that the US, you know, despite a large per capita income, relatively speaking, compared to the rest of the world, we have health crisis going on. We're spending more per capita on healthcare than almost any other country in the world. And I equate a lot, sure, part of that's due to our sedentary lifestyle and many other things,

but a big part of that is due to the lack of nutrient density in the food we're producing. When we're lacking nutrients in our diet, we're going to be craving more food. And also, a lot of these highly processed, highly palatable food-like products that we're creating, we're creating them to be highly addictive. So we have this perfect storm of these super addicting foods, and then also our bodies on a nutrient level are so deficient because our food is not so full of nutrients like it should be. And it's the perfect storm. That's exactly right. I often tell people we don't eat food today. We eat food like substance. You know, my grandkids came to spend a couple days and their parents

brought some food with them. And I was looking at a box of crackers and there was 35 different ingredients in that cracker and I'm going no I'm not going to feed my grandkids this that just isn't food anymore you know we have to get back to as you said earlier purchasing at the local farmer's market knowing your farmer knowing your ranch ranch, and really, we need to get back to a society that uses food as preventative medicine. I mean, you're speaking my language right now. This is literally why I created Real Foodology, which is not only my podcast, but my overall business. And my entire mission is just to educate people on how to get back to eating real food. My whole message is I just want to get us to get back to eating real food, and part of that requires for people to understand that real food tastes amazing, and that's what we were saying earlier,

and that's why I loved hearing you say that on that podcast because I really resonated with that because there's so many people that are like, eating is boring and I'm like oh my god have you ever tasted fresh peaches like straight from the land oh my god yeah uh in in the documentary Common Ground uh one of the farm families we highlight are Roy Thompson in South Dakota and Roy was stricken with Crohn's disease and he started studying you know they were trying to put him on all his medication that that and he got studying. And he went down the path of, no, I've got to eat healthier. And so he started sourcing grass. Here he was a farmer, yet he had to seek out other farmers, ranchers who were further down the regenerative path in order to produce food. And now he has his whole family.

There's a wonderful scene in the documentary of their young son standing in the garden and just shoveling in handfuls of spinach right from the garden. And I'm going, way to go. Now there's a child who's going to be healthy, you know, because he's eating healthy food. The no-till garden, you know, it's a fantastic segment in the documentary. Oh, that's amazing. I can't wait to see it. Another thing that I would really love to dispel with you, you know, there's this whole narrative that animals

are what are causing the climate change, right? And so there's this whole push right now. We have all these, like, I was literally in the grocery store yesterday and I was blown away because they were selling in the freezer section, these plant-based, they were calling plant-based chicken nuggets and they were literally called simulate. And I, I storied about on my Instagram and I was like, I feel like we're in a simulation right now. And it literally said on the box from lab to table. And I was so disturbed by that and reminded of there's this narrative right now that we have to go plant-based

in order to help the environment, which I think is crazy because you think about the input that the carbon impact that is going on when we're trying to produce these fake meat-like products in the lab, but we're being told that this is better for the environment than the animals. So can we talk about how the animals are not causing climate change? Yeah, okay. So let me start out this way. In a pre-European settlement on the North American continent, there was more grazing herbivores than there are cattle on the North American continent today. So if grazing animals were the issue and causing climate change, why didn't we have this so-called climate change back then?

It's not the cow, it's the how, okay? What have we done since then? Well, we've removed the animals from the landscape and put them into CAFOs, confined animal feeding operation. What occurred naturally is a grazing animal, yes, they belt and they release methane. But what nobody talks about is there's free living organisms, bacteria called methanotrophs. Those methanotrophs are out in the pastures on the soil. As the animal grazed in belch, the methanotrophs consume that methane. Besides, methane breaks down very quickly

in the atmosphere. It's really not the issue. Most people say it is. Now let's talk about what else grazing animals do. So when a plant is grazed by an animal, that if you ever watch an animal graze like a cow, they actually rope the grass with their tongue and they tug it and pull it. That's a signal then to the plant, I've been injured, I have to slough off more carbon compounds from the roots to attract biology. And it's the biology running its life cycle near the roots of the plant that provide the nutrients for the plant.

So when a great animal grazes a plant, that plant sloughs more carbon, that's taking carbon out of the atmosphere, moving it back into the soil cycle. And carbon is a cycle. I have the good fortune, I travel extensively. I'm on literally hundreds of farms, ranches all over the world every year. And I tell people, I have never, ever stood on a single farm or ranch, including my own,

that's not degraded. We're all farming degraded resource. But the good news is we can regenerate them. And the way we regenerate landscapes more quickly is by implementing those principles on our landscape, along with grazing animals. At Understanding Ag, the 33 million acres we're consulting on, approximately a third of them are farmers who do not have livestock. And we tell them we can significantly advance and improve your soil health, but it will never, ever be as healthy as it would be if we can integrate livestock. So in the documentary Common Ground, Dr. Mark Hyman, who I know many of your listeners will be familiar with, makes the statement, you can decide to eat meat or not, that's your decision. But do not be so naive to think that we can heal the ills that we're

seeing today without grazing animals. We need more animals out on the landscape, not fewer. That's a big fallacy that's actually to the detriment. So that's one part of your question, okay? That dispels the animal. But now we need to dispel the part about those substitute meats, so to speak, being just as healthy. Okay, most of those substitutes meats are made out of a protein of some kind, whether it be peas or soybeans. That's fine. I'm not arguing that. But you only have one plant there. Okay. A grazing animal in a healthy situation will have access to many, many different plants. You know, on our ranch, we've documented over 140 different plant species. So think of that. Here a number of years ago, I was talked into having a discussion

with a vegetarian. Okay. And I did it. And I said, that's fine. I'll agree to do it. But at the end of the debate, discussion, we each got to ask each other a question. And so this is the question I asked that person. I said, how many plant species did you eat, consume today? And they said, well, somewhere around 15. And I said, oh, that's great. I had a hamburger for lunch. And that steer, that grass-finished steer, on the last day of its life, had access to over 140 different species of plants. I'm more of a vegetarian than you are. That's what I told the person. Think about it. Who's going to get the most of these phytochemical compounds? You know, them consuming 15 plants, me consuming an animal that had access to 140.

Now that's each person's decision. I don't, you know, I'm not trying to say don't be a vegetarian if that's what you desire, but we have to take that into account. Then when we move on one step further into the lab-based meat substitutes, that's going down an area that why? Why would we do that? That is in no way healthier for the environment. Okay. And it's certainly not near as healthy for our gut microbiome. I just don't know how anybody could, you know, make those claims and look at themselves in the mirror. That makes no sense to me. I know. And it's horrifying because there's such a massive push for it right now. And what I keep trying to tell people is, you know, we think that we can mimic what nature has already created. We have no idea. Think of it this way. Okay. In a

teaspoon full of healthy soil, there's more microorganisms than there are people on this planet. Now, how are you going to mimic that? Just think of that more microorganisms than there are people on this planet. Now, how are you going to mimic that? Just think of that. More microorganisms in a teaspoonful than there are people on this planet. Try and mimic that. It's not going to happen. The beautiful thing about nature is nature is always self-organizing, self-regulating, self-healing. The problem is mankind, we as a

human species think we know better. We don't. It's actually, it's so funny. I was literally, that's exactly what I was just going to say is that we are so naive to think that we have it all figured out, but as time goes on and we learn more, we learn how much we really don't know. You know, I have a saying and I used it yesterday. I said, the more I know, and you know, I've been going down this path 30 plus years now, the more I know, the more I know, I don't know, you know, and I really have come to realize my role is simply a facilitator. Okay. I'm simply there to to how do I work within my own ecosystem to enhance nature's function you know and I've learned that the best way to do that is to keep my hands off for the

most part yeah it's true just let nature do her thing and create an environment which in which we work with her and let her do her thing. I mean, that's, yeah, that's really cool. What you just said about the cow eating like up to 150 different plants was so profound. I've actually never really thought about it from that perspective. And I think that's such a game changer for people to hear. And also, you know what I was thinking when you said that, sorry, I know you want to say something and I'll let you in one second. When we look at how much pesticides and herbicides we're using now on plants, and I think about this a lot from a vegetarian perspective, and if people are, especially if they're not eating organic, they're getting exposed to so many pesticides and herbicides

on a daily basis. And then alternatively, when you look at, I've heard that this is true, but I would love for you to confirm it, that when cows are exposed to pesticides like glyphosate, their bodies are actually able to process it out so that when we eat the meat, we're not being exposed to that. Do you know if that's true? No, that's not true. Oh, it's not true. I do not believe that is true. What is true, though, Courtney, is soil biology, the microbiology, and I'll call it soil biology, but there's microbiology on the leaves of plants, etc. The microbiology is able to mitigate. See,

all chemicals are carbon-based. We're carbon-based. The chairs we're sitting on are carbon-based. Biology consumes carbon as a food source. So the chemicals, pesticides, fungicides, et cetera, biology will consume those over time. Now, I don't in any way want anyone to get the notion that that's a carte blanche for just, no, let's spray them. No, that's not what I'm saying. Over time, biology will remediate that. But it's not the cow itself, it's the biology that's not what I'm saying. Over time, biology will remediate that. But it's not the cow itself. It's the biology that's doing it. Okay.

Yeah. Microbiology, I should say. Yeah. And also, when you were talking about the diversity of plants that these cows are being exposed to, it reminded me of the importance of diversity in plants for soil health. And we know right now with the monocropping where we're just planting rows and rows of corn or rows and rows of wheat. Can you explain to people why this diversity is so important for the land? Absolutely. There's some great work that was done by Dr. Jack Schultz, University of

Missouri, Plow Plants Communicate. Dr. Tillman, University of Minnesota did work on this, where they've shown that if you have a diversity of plants growing, see plants have the ability, plants communicate with each other via mycorrhizal fungi. And they have the ability that if one plant species is sending out root exudates to attract biology to bring it a certain nutrient, let's say copper, for instance, well, the plant next to it can say, hey, I don't need to send out root exudates to attract biology to bring me copper because

my neighbor is. So I'll send out root exudates to bring me magnesium. And so there's this wonderful network, the symbiosis that's taken place where they benefit each other. And one of the earlier ways I learned about this in 2006 here, Burleigh County, North Dakota, the Burleigh County Soil Conservation District, had a diverse, we were studying diversity. And so we planted cover crops as monocultures. There was radishes and turnips and sunflowers, for instance, millet. And then at the end, we mixed them all together.

Well, it was a drought year that year, less than an inch of rainfall during the early part of the growing season. All of the monocultures had dried up. The diverse mix was over two feet high and thriving. And we're going, how did that take place? But see, with different plant types, you have different root types, rooting depths, and they were feeding each other. They were bringing water from deeper in the soil profile

for the betterment of all. And this is what we found. That's why if you tour my son's ranch today, you'll see this diversity, this wide array of diversity growing. The last three years were the three driest years ever recorded on our ranch near Bismarck. And yet we still produce crops each year. We still graze the same number of livestock each year. William Raisch Did the drought affect us? Nothing, not nearly as adversely as it affected my neighbors who didn't harvest the crop and had to sell their livestock. It goes back to what I said earlier, nature abhors the monoculture.

It thrives on diversity. And you look at what's happening worldwide, the loss of biodiversity, whether we're talking plant species, insect species, animal species, we have to reverse that trend. And how does our government, as far as like paying subsidies, like pay, how do they, how are they helping, what is the word I'm looking for? Basically, like how are they harming us right now and not helping as far as, like, the monocropping goes? Because I know there's a lot of subsidies happening.

Yeah. Oh, boy. Are we going to go down this? Well, let's let, because it's a real topic. One of the things I'm most proud of is my partners and I, we do not accept government subsidies of any kind. We refuse to take them. My son's 35 years old and he's never accepted a government subsidy. Not that it's bad, but we want to show people you can make a profit without them. If you look at the federal farm program today, farmers have the ability and realize you got to think really deep

about this, what's happening in agriculture. And we said, I gave the illustration of California with the droughts and the fires, and now the flood, we're seeing these catastrophic weather events. So the federal government has a program where farmers can buy what's called revenue insurance. It's crop insurance based. Okay. Well, farming and ranching today is a very capital intensive business. And 90% of farmers and ranchers have to borrow large amounts of capital every year in order to continue to operate. So they go to the lending institution.

Lending institution tells them, okay, we'll give you, we'll loan you the money, but you have to take part in the federal farm program revenue insurance. That dictates what they produce. Then thus we have an over surplus of all of these items. And I would contend today that most farmers and ranchers do not produce food. They produce corn that goes for ethanol. They produce feed grains that goes to feed livestock that should not consume grain. We should not be feeding beef and dairy animals grain. That's harmful to their digestive system.

And it certainly leads to a product that is not nearly as healthy as a forage-based product. And so it's spurring the increase of degradation we're seeing. And now you say, well, let's change that. Let's get people in Washington that'll change that. Really good luck with that because what do you've got? You've got the Fertilizer Institute. You've got the chemical companies.

You've got the implement dealers. You've got the grain growing associations themselves that get paid according to the number of bushels produced. You've created this behemoth that relies solely on the status quo. There's a saying that goes, it's very difficult to get a person to change their mind when their paycheck depends on the status quo. And that's what's been developed over time.

And so now to reverse out of that trend, what's it going to take? It's going to take every one of your listeners to make a difference with their consumer bindout. They spend money, go to the farmer's market, reward those people who are doing the right thing. And then, Courtney, we can go down the whole rabbit hole of, well, it costs more. Okay? It costs more.

What's your health worth? You know, I look at a box of cereal at what that costs. And you could buy, you know, pastured egg and pastured pork bacon, just as cheap, right? You want sugar laden? Or do you want something that'll really benefit your health? You know, we have to change our mindset. We need to get back to the point where food truly is preventative medicine. I'm so glad you made that point. That's a point that I made quite often with people is that, yeah, you either buy the cereal and you're going to get about the same amount of servings in there as you are with the eggs

and the bacon, and what's going to fuel you and keep you full for longer. And I would argue when I started eating a more whole real food-based diet, I actually started saving money because I wasn't buying all these processed foods that I was constantly needing to eat more of. I'm actually fuller and more satisfied when I eat more higher quality proteins and fats and, you know, higher, more nutrient dense foods. Initially, yeah, the sticker shock, it seems like a little bit higher, but ultimately I end up spending way less and I'm not spending less money at the doctor's office. Exactly. And you're satiated, you know, you, you, your body feels good. You know, I travel extensively last year, I spent 282 days on the road and people say, how can you do that? Where do you source your food? Well,

fact of the matter is they had a looking gay brown suitcase because I carry my food with me because we grow and raise. I just cannot stomach eating out hardly anymore. They're just, it's just not good food, unfortunately. So I take my own food with me. I love that you do that because I actually do the same thing. So funny. My boyfriend and I just flew to Colorado a couple of days ago and I pack meals with me every time I fly. And he kind of laughs at me.

But then every time when we actually have the food to eat, he always looks at me and he's like, yes, I'm so grateful we're eating this and not like crappy airport food. Because I can't do it. Same. Like I have to travel with good, healthy food. I just I can't bring myself to eat the crap anymore because you feel bad. It doesn't even taste that good to me either. Yeah. One of my pet peeves, you know, I, I don't do it so much anymore, but I used to speak at a lot of conferences and workshops and, you know, all right, I'm going to

this conference. It's an organic conference, et cetera. And then you go there and what do they serve you a bag of potato chips? And you're like, what? Why would you do that? It's so crazy. I know. I mean, don't even get me started. It's also like you look at like the dietetics program and then you host these conventions every year and it's sponsored by General Mills and Coca-Cola. I mean, it's just, we could record an entire podcast about all the corruption that's happening with the food industry right now. In saying that, though, Courtney, we're seeing I spend a lot of time now in front of this laptop on Zoom meetings with boards of directors, heads of sustainability, CEOs of these companies who are beginning to hear the rumblings that, hey, we need to change. The consumer is beginning to demand regeneratively grown and raised products. And so they're inquiring, how do we do this?

Now, on that front, I'll tell you an exciting development here over the past year. My partners and I at Understanding Ag, we were tired of the greenwashing, people saying they're regenerative, these companies making these regenerative claims, and they're just not. And as leaders, you know, some of the leaders in the movement, we decided, no, we've got to put an end to this. So we funded a startup company called Regenified. And Regenified is a verification company that actually verifies farms and ranches as to are they implementing the six principles and the three rules of adaptive stewardship, which have to do with grazing, to drive the four ecosystem processes. And the beautiful thing is it doesn't matter whether you're organic or conventional or regenerative, you're only compared to yourself.

The farm or ranch, orchard, vineyard, whatever the case may be, is only compared to itself. I'm pleased to announce that Whole Foods now has adopted the Regenified and is steering their producers to become certified Regenified. So you're actually starting to see Regenified products on the store shelf. So for consumers out there, you'll be able to go source those products knowing full good and well that, yes, this is not only going to make a difference to your own health, but it's going to make a difference to the ecosystem, the planet, and your children's ability to lead healthy lives. That makes me so happy. That's so awesome. I just love the work that you're doing so much. It's so incredibly important right now.

So I want to end this on a note of, you know, we've spoken a little bit about how the consumers themselves can help with this movement. Let's say someone either knows a farmer or they're listening and they are a farmer. How can they start getting more involved? And, you know, if they're farming conventionally right now, how can they start switching over to Regen? Great question. Thank you for asking it. And so what I would encourage them to do, it all starts with education. Farmers, ranchers cannot implement what they do not know. You have to educate yourself. So we have a 501c3 nonprofit called Soil Health Academy, where we have a lot of great called Soil Health Academy,

where we have a lot of great learning material for farmers and ranchers. We put on workshops, we call them academies all over the world to teach them these principles, rules, and processes. We also, thanks to a very generous donation from General Mills, we have online courses available free to educators.

If you're an educator out there and you want to learn more about these regenerative practices, General Mills has paved the way. All you have to do is go on the Soil Health Academy website or the Understanding Ag website, and you'll be able to sign up for those courses free and it's materials you can use in your classroom. So that's what I encourage people to do is become educated. Yeah, that's so amazing. So before we go, is there anything else that we didn't cover that you think is really important for people to hear? Well, the one thing that I strongly encourage, do not think that as an individual, you cannot make a difference. Every one of us can make a difference.

And to all the parents out there, I really think you start by what you feed yourselves and your children, but also get involved with your local school system. Demand that your local schools source regeneratively grown and raised products. Oh, that's such a good point. God, I wish that I could change what we feed our schools and nursing homes and hospitals. It's devastating. So I want to ask you a personal question that I ask all my guests at the end.

What are your health non-negotiables? So these are things that you do daily for your own health. It sounds like one of them is that you travel with your own food and it sounds like you eat really nutrient-dense food. What else are your health non-negotiables? Yeah. And I'll be very honest about this and tell people that Gabe Brown is one. I lead by example from the fact of what I consume. That's non-negotiable for me. I just draw the line. I don't know how many years it's been since

I've walked into a fast food restaurant, but a long time. Those are all non-negotiable for me. On the other hand, I do a very poor job of exercising, et cetera, because I'm just, you know, when you're on, I was on 242 flights last year. I guess my exercise is walking around the airport to get to the next terminal. Unfortunately. That's okay. You know, we all have our things. Well, I just want to say thank you so much for coming on. This was such an amazing, insightful conversation. I really appreciate your time. And I would love for people to know where they can find you, find your work, and also where they can watch Common Ground when it's available to the public. Yeah. Well, thank you, Courtney. It's been a real pleasure to be with you today. So you can look at more of what we're doing at

understandingag.com, soilhealthacademy.org, or just Google the word Regenified. And yes, it's a made up word. As far as Common Ground, Common Ground is going to be debuting in approximately 150 theaters in late summer, early fall. It'll be out on Netflix sometime November timeframe. And I want to give a special shout out to Josh and Rebecca Tickell, the producers of Common Ground, and also Eric and Holly Dillon, who funded the movie themselves. Eric and Holly were instrumental, and I want it known that they kept the educational rights to the movie and are offering the movie, the documentary, free to any school system so that we can show this to our young people and start educating our young people as to the importance of regenerative agriculture.

That's incredible and that's a great point for anyone listening who's a teacher. Show this film to your class. Exactly. That's how we need to start teaching and educating at a much younger age. Yeah, it's really important. Well, Gabe, thank you so much. This was an incredible conversation. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of the Real Foodology Podcast. If you liked the episode, please leave a review in your podcast app to let me know. This is a Resonant Media production produced by Drake Peterson and edited by Mike Fry. The theme song is called Heaven by the amazing singer Georgie. Georgie is spelled with a J. For more amazing podcasts produced by my team, go to resonantmediagroup.com. I love you guys so much. See you next week. The content of this show is for educational and informational purposes only.

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