Nature's Archive Podcast

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[00:00:00] Michael Hawk: Gabe, thank you so much for joining me on Nature’s Archive today.

[00:00:03] Gabe Brown: Thank you. It’s great to be with you.

[00:00:05] Michael Hawk: I am looking forward to this for a lot of different reasons, and one, we were just talking a little bit here before pressing the record button, and today we’re gonna be talking about a specific type of agricultural practice that you’ve been a proponent of.

[00:00:22] And I think a lot of environmental advocates get so used to hearing the term agriculture in a negative context. Like it might be big ag or factory farming or intensive grazing or things that are very extreme on one side of a spectrum. And of course, we all need to eat and the work of farmers is never ending and unforgiving.

[00:00:43] So in looking at your work, it seems like you’ve charted a path for farmers and gardeners to work with nature rather than against it. That’s much more balanced, I think, than what a lot of environmental advocates might conjure up when they think of this. So it really sounds like a win-win for everyone.

[00:00:57] Gabe Brown: That’s right, Michael. We like to use the phrase regenerative agriculture. And in our mind it that’s simply what regenerative agriculture is. It’s working in harmony and synchrony with nature, and I think agriculture as a whole has tended to move away from that. Instead, it’s become one where mankind is trying to impose his or her will on nature.

[00:01:26] And I think we have to get back to those natural principles of how ecosystems function. And if we do that, it’s much more profitable for the farmer and rancher, much better for the environment and the ecosystem. And we produce food that’s higher in nutrient density. So it’s a win-win, win situation.

[00:01:49] Michael Hawk: And I want to hear about how you first. Engaged with these concepts, but maybe even backing up another couple of steps, have you always had this sort of ecosystem awareness in your life as a kid even.

[00:02:03] Gabe Brown: No, I wish. But my story is I grew up in the city of Bismarck, North Dakota, grew up in town, was not involved directly in agriculture, but I tell people I have the good fortune that when I was a freshman in high school, I took a vocational agriculture course and I was immediately enthralled with all agriculture.

[00:02:28] I just knew that was my calling and passion and it’s what I wanted to do. I started working on farms and ranches during high school. I went to college to be a vocational ag educator because not being from a farmer ranch. I didn’t think that there was a way for me to get into production agriculture, but then as luck would have it, I married my high school sweetheart and she grew up on a farm and her parents asked if we’d be interested in coming back and taking over the farm.

[00:03:06] And I guess the rest is history, so to speak,

[00:03:10] Michael Hawk: let’s dig into that history a little bit. So you took over this farm, and what was the state of it when you first took it over, and what challenges did you face?

[00:03:20] Gabe Brown: right? So I learned how to farm from my in-laws, and they were very, quote unquote, conventional, heavy tillage monoculture, small grain production, lot of spring wheat, oats, barley. They had a small cow herd that was what we call set stocked. In other words, the animals were put in a pasture basically for the entire summer, and then in the winter they stayed in the corral.

[00:03:44] And that’s how I learned to farm and ranch. One thing about me is I consider myself a lifelong learner. I love to read and I can never learn enough. So I had studied and read about no-till farming, and we’re in a semi brittle environment. Here we get approximately 17 or 18 inches of total precipitation a year, of which approximately two thirds of that comes from rain, and the other third is from the 75 plus inches of snow we get every winter.

[00:04:18] So I thought that going no-till would be a way to conserve moisture and to save me time because there’s a lot of time and expense to going out and tilling the fields. And so if I went no-till, I could save money. So in 1991, we had the good fortune of being able to buy a part of the farm from my wife’s parents.

[00:04:44] And after so doing, I had studied enough about no-till that 1994, we transitioned the entire ranch to no-till. I sold all my tillage equipment and I quit tilling. And the first year we had a very productive crop. Profitable crop. And I thought this was easy. Okay, I now I got it made. I learned how to no-till.

[00:05:08] And it worked good. What happened after that was really a set of circumstances that chartered my course for the rest of my life. What happened in 1995, the day before we were gonna start combining our 1200 acres of spring wheat, we lost a hundred percent of the crop in a hailstorm. So we went from what could have been a profitable crop to one that lost us considerable money.

[00:05:36] 1996 came along and we lost a hundred percent of our crop to hail again. So you know, I wasn’t able to pay the bank back the money I had borrowed to buy all the fertilizer and chemicals and everything that was needed to produce that crop. 1997 came along and we dried out. It was a major drought in the area and nobody combined harvested an acre that year.

[00:06:00] 1998 came along and we lost 80% of our crop hail. So four years in our own, basically no production. Left my wife and I 1.5 million in debt, and we both took off farm jobs and we had a young family at the time, and how am I gonna dig my way out of this debt? The bank wasn’t gonna loan me any money anymore to purchase the inputs.

[00:06:26] But what happened during those four years is I started to observe things. Think of what happens when a hailstorm comes. It pounds down the crop onto the soil surface. That’s protecting the soil. Also, what happens is it’s armor on the soil surface, so it’s protecting that soil from wind erosion, water erosion.

[00:06:51] After those first two years of hail, I started to notice earthworms. When my father-in-law and I had tilled the fields, there was no earthworms in the soil because there was no home from the tillage destroyed at all. I noticed life returning to our ranch. I noticed more birds and deer and other wildlife showing up, and it really dawned on me that this is really how nature functions.

[00:07:18] Now, I’m not gonna kid you, it is very difficult to go through, but I learned a lot of lessons along the way. For instance, after the hailstorm, I started planting what we call now today, cover crops. I was really just trying to seed something to get feed for my livestock because the hailstorm had pounded all the forage into the ground.

[00:07:40] I was diversifying my crop rotation, and diversity is a key component of any healthy ecosystem. Also, because I couldn’t afford to buy the twine or purchase the fuel to bail the hay, I grazed my livestock during the winter on those cover crops through the snow. I was learning how to integrate animals back onto the crop land.

[00:08:05] So I tell people those four years of natural disasters, although they were extremely difficult to go through, were absolutely the best thing that could have happened to my wife and I because it taught me what’s become known today as the six principles of soil health. And those six principles then drive the four ecosystem processes.

[00:08:29] And it doesn’t matter whether we’re talking my large crop land acres here in North Dakota or in a garden environment. It’s the principles that drive the processes to give you a healthy soil ecosystem. And that’s what cycles the nutrients and produces nutrient dense plants, whether it be grains, fruits, or vegetables.

[00:08:51] Michael Hawk: So I have a couple of, questions or maybe some context to set. One thing, having grown up in Nebraska, I understand what a hailstorm is like in the Midwest, and a lot of my audiences in California, they may not understand this, but you’re talking probably golf ball, baseball size, hail to, to destroy your crops like that.

[00:09:09] Gabe Brown: Yeah, I literally replaced all the shingles on all of our farm buildings, three outta four years, and that’s not a fun job to do.

[00:09:19] Michael Hawk: I can imagine. And I’ve also been really interested in, and we probably don’t have a lot of time to go too deep into it, but the history of tilling. So first of all, like, why did tilling become such an established practice in the first place? What was the rationale and how deep are you digging up the soil when when you till.

[00:09:38] Gabe Brown: Tilling goes back literally thousands of years. You can go back into the Middle East and see. Diagrams of people tilling and tilling is a way to disturb the soil, to allow seed to be planted. So that’s what they did. Now, you think of, in terms of the United States, this soil we had was very healthy and rich because it had been under a very diverse perennial plant community for thousands of years.

[00:10:12] That took massive amounts of carbon outta the atmosphere and moved it into the soil ecosystem. And it’s that carbon in the soil that acts like a sponge. It feeds biology, but then also it holds on to moisture. Think of what’s happened, and we’ve all seen pictures of the Bonanza Farms in the Great Plains, in the late 18 hundreds, early 19 hundreds, where you had.

[00:10:37] All of these horses pulling these single bottom plows, and they were turning over that soil and it was a very rich soil, high in carbon, high in humus, very productive because of the amount of carbon in it and because of the biology in the soil. And that’s how our forefathers were able to produce an abundance of profitable crops for so many years.

[00:11:00] But what happened because of tillage? The dust bowl occurred, we eroded we took that what was once mat of vegetation of growing forages plants, and we turned that under. Well Then it was bare soil exposed to the wind and the elements. Pretty soon we had the dust bowl, and I would contend, look what happened in the state of Illinois just two weeks ago.

[00:11:24] We had seven deaths and over a hundred cars in a, in an accident because of a dust storm. And I was interviewed by a number of. News media after that event. And I told them that the sad part is it was totally preventable because if those farmers would’ve been practicing no-till, if they would’ve been growing cover crops, holding that soil in place, those lives would’ve been spared and all that devastation would’ve been spared.

[00:11:54] We’re actually seeing a second dust bowl occurring right now, and, I’ve been in California many, many times and we see the same thing there. The Central Valley of California is very eroded and degradated because of the current farming practices. So that’s what tillage is causing. Tillage is also the reason, quite frankly, not the total reason, but a large part of the reason that we have so much carbon in the atmosphere, not in the soil where it belongs.

[00:12:26] Michael Hawk: That’s a good overview, I think. And if someone is going no-till, This probably just is a lead in to the to the six principles of soil health actually, because everything interrelates it’s a circular discussion in a way but my understanding is that your machinery, your mechanisms change and you’re essentially drilling your seeds into the ground.

[00:12:46] Is that roughly accurate?

[00:12:48] Gabe Brown: That’s right. See what tillage does. Tillage more or less turns the soil upside down, so to speak. Whether it be a plow or what’s called a chisel plow. A cultivator, or for those gardeners, they use rototiller or ahoe to till turn the soil upside down. What no-till does, it simply has a single disc.

[00:13:10] Just think of it as a very thin blade that slices through the residue. In other words, that plant material, that’s. Nine decay on the soil surface, it slices through there, and then a seed, the seed drops down into that little slice. And then there is another we call it affirming wheel that pushes that little bit of disturbed soil back over the seed to give it the seed soil contact.

[00:13:38] It needs to germinate. You literally have to look very closely to see that the soil was disturbed at all.

[00:13:45] Michael Hawk: Got it. That. It’s a good visual. And so why don’t we just jump in to the six tenets and I guess what we’ve been talking about in a way is the first one soil armor. So what, is there anything else you’d like to add? there probably is more context here actually.

[00:14:00] Gabe Brown: Yeah and there’s what’s become known today as six principles of soil health, and the first one is context. Nature always acts in context with the environment. Here I am. I live in North Dakota and I tell people there’s a reason bananas don’t grow in North Dakota. Okay? We have winter in North Dakota, we only have about 110 frost-free days a year.

[00:14:23] A banana is not gonna survive here, ? There’s a reason that the deer fawn in June, in North Dakota, they don’t wanna drop their fawns in the middle of a blizzard in January in North Dakota, right? In agriculture and in gardening, ecosystems always function within the context of their environment, whether it be the temperatures, whether it be the moisture, the humidity, we have to work within the context of our environment.

[00:14:54] The second principle is least amount of mechanical, chemical disturbance possible. Yes, in nature, there’s burrowing animals and earthworms and rodents that move the soil a little bit, but it’s not this copious amount of tillage that we just talked about. We’re not seeing acre after acre of bare soil.

[00:15:15] Nature does not go out and rototill the soil like many gardeners do. And also in nature. We don’t see the copious amounts of these synthetics, whether it be fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides. Nature doesn’t work that way. The third principle is armor on the soil surface. Where in nature do you see bare soil?

[00:15:39] Usually it’s only where a mankind’s action have caused that to occur. Walk into a forested area. There’s always a carpet of leaves and , decaying plant material. Walk into a prairie. There’s always. Plant material on the surface and growing plants, nature always tries to keep that soil covered because it does not want it prone to windy erosion, water erosion, and it doesn’t want the moisture to evaporate away.

[00:16:10] The fourth principle is that of diversity. Where in nature do you find monocultures? Again, only where mankind’s actions have caused that to occur. Nature is very diverse. I’m a history buff and reading Lewis and Clark’s old journals, they recorded over 300 different plant species on their journey.

[00:16:34] Yet look at what we’re doing in agriculture today. We see monoculture field, and then we wonder why we have issues with disease or pests. It’s because of our action. We don’t have the diversity that’s needed to house all the predator, insects, et cetera. The fifth principle is that of a living root in the soil as long as possible.

[00:16:57] Throughout the year, nature always tries to have a living plant because it wants to cycle that solar energy out of the atmosphere, take that carbon, and then through photosynthesis it creates all these carbon compounds where a plant uses part of them for growth, and then it moves part of it down and passes it out through the roots, exudes it out into the soil to feed biology.

[00:17:22] That’s how our soils got so much carbon in them. And the final principle is animal and insect integration. Natural ecosystems simply do not function properly without animals and insects, and this is one of the real issues we’re seeing today. When we remove animals and insects from the environment, bad things happen. Plain and simple.

[00:17:48] The beautiful thing about these six principles is, I’ve traveled extensively all over the world, and you can put me on any land mass in the world, with the exception of the Arctic and Antarctic, and even there, this occurs to some extent, unless it’s under a polar ice cap for the entire year.

[00:18:09] These six principles will always be in effect in a healthy ecosystem.

[00:18:15] Michael Hawk: The thing that popped into mind when you were talking about the monoculture aspect is if you were to stick, say like 30 people in a small room and one of them catches cold, most of the 30 are gonna catch that cold. And, we call those schools. By the way, anyone who’s had a kid, his probably experienced this.

[00:18:35] And and then yeah, with the, with monocultures. The introduction of a pest that is probably not native and can just run rampant, is presumably a huge fear of farmers in, in that environment.

[00:18:50] Gabe Brown: I would just use my own ranch here in North Dakota as an example. We have a 6,000 acre ranch, and I have not used an insecticide on this ranch in well over 20 years. I don’t see a need to because I have the diversity which provides the home and habitat for all the predator insects. Dr. Jonathan Lundgren, world famous entomologist told me once, for every insect species, that’s a pest.

[00:19:19] There’s 1700 that are beneficial or indifferent. So why do we as mankind spend all of our time trying to kill that pest? Why don’t we just provide the home and habitat for all those beneficial that would take care of that pest? See, I don’t worry about a pest. Do I have pest insects on my ranch? Sure. But I need some to feed those beneficial, those predator insects to keep the populations of the pests in check.

[00:19:54] We’re just approaching it the wrong way as humans. In 1997, I heard a rancher speak who said something that really changed my life. He said, if you wanna make small changes, change the way you do things. But if you wanna make major changes, change the way you see things. And when I started looking at my environment differently, looking at my ecosystem as a whole from an ecological context, this all becomes relatively simple.

[00:20:25] I don’t have to worry about pest insects anymore. The predators will take care of him.

[00:20:30] Michael Hawk: So let’s continue down this thread for a moment, and then I wanna circle back to maybe some of the other principles as well in a little bit more depth. How do you provide a home for all of these beneficial insects and animals that may be missing in an existing environment?

[00:20:47] Gabe Brown: Very good question. Allan Savory told me once he was here touring my ranch and. Made the comment to him about a weed, and he said, Gabe, once you start thinking of a plant as either good or bad, you’ve lost the bout because that plant is serving a purpose, whether you think it is or not. And he said, we have to allow nature to function in order for the betterment of the whole.

[00:21:19] And look at farming today, or look at let’s bring this down to a garden. I tell people, although I’m a more known as a farmer or rancher, I absolutely love to garden. And we have a couple of gardens on our farm here that have not been till now in close to 30 years. And when visitors come to our ranch, I like to take ’em to the garden first because I can show them everything in that small space and in that garden.

[00:21:49] A lot of people plant their garden and they have these perfect rows of monocultures. Each part of the garden is segmented. No. You come to Gabe’s and there’ll be a row of corn, and then a row of peas on one side and a row of beans on another, and then there’s flowers, and there’s squash crawling all up the corn.

[00:22:07] And it’s a chaotic mess, but it’s very healthy. And what strikes people is the diversity of it all. And there’s insects flying everywhere. Pollinators, predators. Yeah. There’s a few pest insects, but the predators are keeping ’em in check. You have to have that diversity to make things function properly.

[00:22:31] Michael Hawk: I know that part of choosing the plants that you want to grow to create this diversity also relates to nutrient cycling and soil health. Can you connect those dots for me?

[00:22:44] Gabe Brown: The six principles of soil health drive, the four ecosystem processes, and those four ecosystem processes are number one, the energy cycle plants take in that sunlight, as I mentioned earlier, that starts the energy cycle. You know about 97% of what a plant needs to grow. It gets from the atmosphere. So many gardeners and farmers are worried about, oh, we gotta fertilize.

[00:23:14] We gotta apply what’s needed for that plant. That’s foolish thought. 97% of it is at the energy cycle out of the atmosphere. What that does then, Plants exude part of those compounds into the soil to feed biology in its biology, these biotic glues along with glo for mycorrhizal fungi, that’s the sticky substance that starts holding sand sil and clay particles together.

[00:23:42] One of the key principles that a gardener or a farmer need to know is how to build a soil aggregate. And I tell people, look at soil aggregates as marbles in a jar. If you have a jar full of marbles and you pour water on that, the water fills those poor spaces between the marbles. In soil, think of your aggregates, is the same as a marble.

[00:24:08] But you need to understand that aggregate’s gonna only last approximately four weeks, and then biology’s gonna consume the glues that hold it together. So if you don’t have living plants, That are exuding those carbon compounds feeding biology. You’re not gonna build new soil aggregates. No new soil aggregates.

[00:24:28] What happens? Your soil collapses. So often you hear a gardener say I have to rototill the soil in order so it’ll infiltrate water. Now, rototill in the soil is making it worse. You’re collapsing the soil even more. The reason you have a hard soil is you haven’t built enough soil aggregates.

[00:24:48] You didn’t have enough diversity of plant species growing to cycle that carbon to build aggregates. Those aggregates then help the water cycle. It helps for infiltration. Then you need to understand that biology in the soil lives in and on thin films of water in those pore spaces between soil aggregates, and it’s the biology running its lifecycle that provides the nutrients to the plant.

[00:25:16] On this ranch here in North Dakota, I have not applied a single pound of any nutrient since 2007. Yet I produce very profitable cash crops, produce very abundant garden with vegetables and fruit. How can I do that? Well, It’s because I have the diversity and I have the life in the soil. Think of it this way, in a teaspoon full of healthy soil, there’s more microorganisms than there are people on this planet.

[00:25:48] Yet how many of us have as gardeners or farmers think of that? How many of us think about feeding that soil biology, yet it’s that soil biology then that brings the nutrients to the plant, allowing that plant to produce the phytonutrients, which is what feeds our gut microbiome, and we’re involved in some really good research now being done by a team of scientists.

[00:26:14] That’s looking at the difference between vegetables, fruits, pastured, proteins grown in and on healthy soil compared to that grown in a tilled unhealthy soil. And the scientists can measure well over 2000 different phytonutrient compounds, and the differences are just mind blowing. I contend that, and getting off track here a little bit, but I contend that the majority of people really do not understand what nutrient dense food tastes like.

[00:26:50] We no longer produce food. We produce food like substances. It’s truly not the nutrient dense food that’s full of all these different phytonutrients. So that all gets back to the four ecosystem processes, the energy cycle. The water cycle, the nutrient cycle, and the fourth one is community dynamics or diversity.

[00:27:14] Those are the four processes that are driven by those six principles.

[00:27:20] Michael Hawk: I love that you mentioned the spoonful of soil and the number of organisms in it. I literally just had a social media post using that exact fact here. It just, I think two days ago or something. And for listeners who are interested in The biology and soil and all these organisms. I’m just gonna shout out an earlier episode we had Dr.

[00:27:41] Elaine Ingham on who’s a soil biologist, I think would be

[00:27:46] Gabe Brown: She’s a microbiologist. Yep.

[00:27:48] Michael Hawk: So yeah, that was a, it was a good episode. Lots of deep dives into the various aspects. I’m really curious about the nutrient density aspect, and I’ve seen some of the studies that show the decline in nutritional availability in various products that we buy today.

[00:28:05] So what is going on in the soil that’s allowing for your crops to be more nutrient dense?

[00:28:12] Gabe Brown: So it can be traced back to one word, biodiversity. Realize that plants have the ability to send out different root exudates that attract different biology to bring them the nutrients they need. But you have to have a diverse array of plants in an ecosystem in order to have that happen. you might have two plants, and I’ll just use this as an example.

[00:28:45] Say you have a corn plant growing, and then you have a pea plant growing in your garden next to it. The corn plant might go, okay, I’m gonna send out root exudates to attract biology to bring me calcium. The P plant may say that corn plant is sending out signals to have biology bring it calcium.

[00:29:10] I’m gonna send out signals to have biology bring me magnesium, for instance. Through mycorrhizal fungi, they can feed each other. But you need the diverse array of plant species to cycle all these different nutrient compounds. But then also you have to have the healthy soil. The aggregation, the structure, you have to have the armor on the surface so that soil is healthy, to have that diverse array of microbiology.

[00:29:44] And then you have to have not only bacteria, but you gotta have protozoa and nematodes fungi and all these species to work in harmony. There’s a team of scientists led by Dr. Stephan Van Vliet, who is at Utah State University that’s working on quantifying this and on doing the studies. And what they’re finding is the more diverse, the biology in that soil ecosystem, the wider the array of phytonutrients in these plants, in these vegetables, in these pastd proteins, in the case of meat, milk, eggs, et cetera.

[00:30:25] In a very simplistic term, a way that’s what it’s about. It’s about how do I, as a gardener, as a farmer, provide the home and habitat for the microbiology so that it can cycle the nutrients needed so I can grow the most nutrient dense vegetable possible. And it’s not rocket science. It goes back to the six principles driving the four ecosystem process.

[00:30:53] Michael Hawk: Now with respect to. Animal and insect integration. And we talked a bit about the importance of insects and I wanna maybe focus more on the livestock side of the equation and perhaps to introduce this concept.

[00:31:09] I’m going to recount a story here locally that some of my listeners have heard me talk about before. But we have this ridge it’s a short ridge, about a thousand feet up that has nutrient, poor soils. And it had supported for a long time a very high diversity of plants counterintuitive for nutrient poor soils.

[00:31:30] But the reason for that is that the plants had evolved with these soils for so long, and ecologists had noticed that the plant diversity was declining and then in the form of an important rare butterfly was disappearing because its plant was. Going away. And it had been traced to nitrogen deposition from the cars that drive by.

[00:31:51] So the nitrogen was making these nutrient poor soils more fertile, allowing for new competitors to move in. So that’s short-cutting. A few things. Now, one of these biologists noticed that there was this area where the plants were doing great, and it turned out that this was an area that was being grazed by cattle.

[00:32:11] And what he had determined was that the cattle grazing, which was being done with an appropriate density in frequency, you know, that they were being moved around a lot. It, and the timing of it allowed for some of these invasive plants to be reduced basically chewed down by the cattle and the native plants flourished.

[00:32:35] So that’s my story and. Despite this and despite having clean visuals where there’s a fence and grazing on one side, not grazing on the other side, and you see the diversity of flowers on the grazed side and invasive grasses taking over on the non grazed side, despite these clear visuals and the data, there’s still a lot of people that can’t believe that grazing has a place.

[00:33:03] So that’s partly what I’d like to push back against because there’s always nuance and context as you spoke about. So I’m curious, first of all, what do you do on your property and what do you advocate for? And then I want to get into the discussion is how do you convince skeptics, perhaps after that,

[00:33:22] Gabe Brown: That’s a great story, Michael. Thanks for sharing, and it’s exactly the right story. The key there is. We get back to the word context, and in our teaching we use the phrase historical ecological context. Let’s take California for example. What’s California’s historical ecological context? Anyone who studies history in California, there were herds of elk in California, there was herds of bighorn, there was herds of deer, being moved by predators. There was always these grazing animals, and that’s not to mention all the other smaller animals like rabbits and, grasshoppers even as insects, et cetera. What happens when an animal grazes a plant? There’s a relationship there that when if you’ve watched a ruminant graze, they actually wrap their tongue around that plant and then they rip it off and they pull that plant and tear it.

[00:34:24] That signals the plant to start sloughing off root exudates, to attract biology, to bring it nutrients. Hey, I was injured. I need to regrow. So it’s taking more carbon out of the atmosphere, pumping that carbon into the soil to feed all these microorganisms so the plant can regrow. Also, what’s happening when those animals graze, they’re walking, they’re trampling that material down, that plant material onto the soil surface.

[00:34:55] What does that do? For one thing, it protects that soil from windy erosion, water erosion, but it also brings that plant material down in contact with the soil surface where the saprophytic fungi and all these. Microorganisms can start consuming it. The earthworms can start pulling it down into their burrows.

[00:35:15] That’s what happens. What else happens? Obviously the animals urinate and they defecate. That’s a cycling of nutrients. We remove them from the landscape. That plant material remains upright. It goes to seed. Then it’s not trampled onto the soil surface. It oxidizes that carbon is released into the atmosphere, putting more carbon up into the atmosphere where it shouldn’t be.

[00:35:41] We’re not getting the urination, the defecation, the system collapses. If you look back in history, what we think of as the desert southwest Arizona, New Mexico, west Texas, et cetera. That was a lush grassland, hundreds of years ago. It was a very lush grassland. But it deserted because of a, some improper grazing where animals are left too long.

[00:36:12] Every time an animal bites a plant, that plant sloughs those root roots off. Like I said you do that often enough, you’re gonna kill that plant. So it’s not the cow, it’s the how, it’s the improper grazing that caused the desertification. That, and you look, there’s several places where they have set up national parks and monuments, et cetera, where they’ve removed the animals from the landscape and the ecosystem has actually deserted.

[00:36:45] It’s gotten worse because there’s not the animal impact that’s necessary. Animals are an extremely important part of the environment. On our ranch here in North Dakota during the growing season, we move our animals every day. So they’re on a particular, we call it a paddock, a small area for one day. Then they’re moved to the next area where they grazed.

[00:37:13] We rest that for 12 to 15 months before those animals are brought back. What happens? Tremendous amount of growth. Tremendous amount of, carbon being cycled back into the soil. Tremendous amount of diversity. Tremendous insect population, both game and non-game species of wildlife flourish there.

[00:37:34] It’s a win-win win situation. Yet when we do come back and graze that particular paddock, we’re gonna graze it with a higher stock density where we’re trampling that all that biomass that was produced for the previous 12 to 15 months getting trampled onto the surface. A lot of urination, defecation. And you have this healthy functioning ecosystem just like occurred when the bison were grazing it hundreds of years ago.

[00:38:04] Michael Hawk: This is, it’s really interesting to think about the process. That you’re describing. And I think it maybe plays into some oversimplification tendencies that we as people have, because tying back to something you said earlier, I think one of the arguments sometimes is that having livestock on the land will compact the soil and make it less healthy as a result.

[00:38:30] But you described just a little bit ago that really the soil health is driven by the biology in the soil itself. It’s not, it’s the compaction isn’t the problem. And this maybe is where if you graze with too much intensity for too long of a duration, there’s a, a negative impact there. But is this roughly in the right ballpark of what you practice?

[00:38:49] Gabe Brown: That’s exactly right. Compaction is a function of time. Let me give you this as an example. If you have a mule and your house is on top of a hill and you have to take that mule every day down that hill to bring water back to the house, if you make that trip once a day down that same path, you’re gonna have a trail by the end of a year, cuz it’s 365 days up and down that trail.

[00:39:14] Meanwhile, if I take 365 mules down that trail, down that hillside, once at one time, only once per year, you’re not gonna have any trail there, right? Because it was only a one time event. You don’t have that reoccurring trampoline on the same part of the soil surface. Compaction is absolutely no issue. The only compaction is the compaction up between people’s ears that they don’t think that through.

[00:39:46] Michael Hawk: it is. It’s like you see and. A hoof print, for example, or a footprint or something. And that’s the direct explanation. But as you’ve described, it’s more complex than that. There’s more happening in the soil.

[00:39:56] Gabe Brown: . The other thing we have to take into consideration is are you building soil aggregates? Remember, think of it like marbles in a jar that acts like a sponge on our ranch. Now, scientists have documented that where I once only had three inches of aggregated soil.

[00:40:16] Now in places I have over four feet deep of well aggregated soil. Do you know what kind of a sponge that acts like? It doesn’t matter if it’s livestock or a tractor driving on it, it’s not gonna have a negative impact unless I do it repeatedly day after day.

[00:40:33] Michael Hawk: The other thing I liked, you kicked off this answer talking about ecological context, and that’s a big thing that’s changed. I’m gonna use the local example here in California that not only has the animal community changed and the ability for animals to freely roam , but the plant community has changed dramatically as well.

[00:40:53] And the new dominant plant in a lot of our hills here in the San Francisco Bay area are is Italian ryegrass, which has a very different growth profile than what the native grasses would’ve had. And that context then means that, Yeah, something needs to change to account for that as well. It’s, interesting to think about anyway.

[00:41:13] Gabe Brown: Yeah, and also like species, like Italian ryegrass are high nitrogen users and soil is one part nitrogen to 11 parts of carbon. If we have a high nitrogen use plant and then we keep adding more nitrogen, we’re throwing that balance off in our soil ecosystem. And if we grow more legumes, whether it be alfalfa or peas or clover, you’re also gonna throw off that carbon nitrogen balance and you’ll actually collapse that soil structure, thus allowing less water to infiltrate.

[00:41:51] Look at, I watched the news knowing California like I do, I watched the news and saw all the flooding going on this spring, and all I could think about was, man, it’s a shame they don’t have well aggregated soil that could infiltrate that water, move it throughout the profile. They would’ve much less issues.

[00:42:11] And we see that over and over. Here I am in North Dakota, the eastern part of North Dakota, the Red River separates North Dakota for Minnesota. They have flooding issues every spring and they’re trying to figure out ways to divert the Red River around the cities, and I’m going, no. All you gotta do is know how to build soil aggregates and don’t destroy ’em, because the heavy amount of tillage, compacts, the soil destroys, collapses.

[00:42:38] The pore spaces between the aggregates. Thus rainfall can’t infiltrate. You have flooding issues. Meanwhile, our government spends mega amounts of money on infrastructure. I got a novel idea. Why don’t they just grow plants and build soil aggregates, you know?

[00:42:56] Michael Hawk: It’s funny that you bring this up because I think depending on how the timing goes, the episode that will air either immediately before or immediately after yours, is about wetlands and how the Corps of engineers who’s responsible for so many of the reservoirs that have been built over the years, they have now at least, In some respect acknowledged that the best way to reduce flooding is by maintaining and restoring wetlands, which have these, soils that that you’re talking about, these spongy deep soils.

[00:43:28] So I’m really interested when, as you went through this journey of learning about the ecological systems of regenerative agriculture and started to become a proponent leading up to your book, what kind of skepticism or, maybe even cynicism did you see? And how have you been able to help convince people to move beyond that and actually give it a try?

[00:43:51] Gabe Brown: Oh, great question. Thank you for asking it. And for the last 25 plus years, I feel like my life has kind of been under a microscope because so many people see what and hear about what we’ve done here, and they are, many are oftentimes skeptical of it. So I don’t spend a lot of time answering those skeptics except with an invitation.

[00:44:19] Come to my ranch, you can’t sit a thousand miles from my ranch and be skeptical if you haven’t seen it. But come to my ranch and we will step onto the neighbor’s property and we’ll stick a spade in the ground and then we’ll walk just a few feet away and stick a spade in my ground. And then you tell me that there’s not something to what I’m saying.

[00:44:45] And I can honestly say this, I have never ever, to my knowledge, had a single person come and take a look at my ranch, take a look at my neighbors and leave not believing there’s something to it. And I’ll get 2000 to 2,500 people through this ranch every summer. And you just, seeing is believing.

[00:45:07] And no, I don’t have all the scientific data. A team of scientists didn’t come here and test my soils before I went down this path. But we’ve had many teams of scientists since then come and they’ve tested the neighbors soil and they’ve tested mine. And they will all tell you that it’s true. That guy can grow soil.

[00:45:32] So

[00:45:34] Michael Hawk: It starts with growing soil, it sounds like.

[00:45:37] Gabe Brown: that’s right. It’s all about an aggregate. You just need to know how to build an aggregate.

[00:45:42] Michael Hawk: In watching some of your presentations and hearing you speak in a few different forums, it sounds like that not only do you have some of this observational experience where you can show that, your soil is healthier, it infiltrates water better, and all these things that we’ve talked about, but you’re able to do it profitably as well.

[00:46:00] And my impression is that with your practice, you’re able to take the edges off of these boom bus cycles, maybe that other farmers encounter. So how influential has that aspect of your practice been to those who maybe are on the fence about adopting regenerative practice?

[00:46:18] Gabe Brown: Since my book came out I have, my wife and I have retired from ranching. Our son now owns and operates the ranch. And along with my partners, we’ve formed a regenerative consulting company called Understanding Ag. And understanding AG started in 2017 and our whole desire was to educate my partners and I wanted to educate others because we understand that education is the missing link.

[00:46:51] Farmers and ranchers cannot implement what they do not know and gardeners. They need to understand the principles and the processes. And so now we’re actively consulting on over 33 million acres across North America, England, Ireland, moving into Africa. Now, I would’ve never envisioned that there would be the interest that there is.

[00:47:16] We are working for many of the major brands and corporations around the world helping to move their supply chains down the re regenerative path. Last year we launched another company called Regenified, and Regenified is a certification. Company where it will help supply chains verify that the products that they’re purchasing and selling are truly helping move the environment into a better place down this regenerative path.

[00:47:54] And you’re just starting to see now we were approved by Whole Foods and there is certified Regenified products starting to show up on store shelves now. And that’s exciting because we were seeing a lot of greenwashing taking place. There was a lot of companies that were saying, oh, we’re helping to regenerate a million acres or 30 million acres, my partners and I who have been in this are adult lives are saying, no, that’s not really helping the ecosystem. So we decided it’s time to take a stand and call them out, so to speak and say, Okay, here’s the protocol. Are you truly purchasing products from farmers ranchers that are implementing the principles to drive the processes?

[00:48:46] And we document that. We document it through one of the most comprehensive, stringent testing protocols that is out there. And we are really feel blessed and fortunate that it is catching on and it is given consumers the confidence knowing that if they purchase these products, they’re really spending their do purchasing dollar in a way that is making meaningful change to our ecosystems.

[00:49:19] Michael Hawk: So if if someone were to go to a Whole Foods, would they actually see a label now that, certified re regenerative or something like that?

[00:49:26] Gabe Brown: It’s dependent on which Whole Foods and where, but it’s coming out. We’re ramping up quickly. Like I said, we’ve only been in business one year, but it is amazing. We have a number of major companies that are moving their supply chain down this path, and there is some certified Regenified products on shelves now.

[00:49:49] Michael Hawk: Great. And that’s something that I’ll promise to listeners to I have a newsletter I send out periodically. I’ll make sure to stay up to date with how that progresses so that we can make more informed purchase choices. And maybe it also begs the question of how do you compare a Regenified certification to an organic certification?

[00:50:11] Gabe Brown: I tell people that we are in no way competing. Our goal is to inform. We want to inform the consumer and let them decide. But I’m not going to say anything negative about any of the other certifications. I’m just gonna say that the Reed certification is by far the most comprehensive certification available.

[00:50:41] Michael Hawk: So continuing in thinking about these different certifications that people could have, why are you not certified organic then?

[00:50:49] Gabe Brown: Yes, good question. And it would be very easy for my ranch to be organic certified, but I tell people I wanna take it way beyond that. I wanna prove to the consumers that Brown’s Ranch is doing what’s best, not only for producing nutrient dense food, but that is free of these synthetic inputs, chemicals.

[00:51:19] But I want to do it in a way that is truly advancing the health of the ecosystem. I am certified re-identified because I want to give consumers the confidence that when they buy a product from Browns Ranch, It’s not only healthy for them, it’s not only nutrient dense, but we’re also helping to take massive amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere and put it back into the soils.

[00:51:48] We’re also producing clean water also. Any rain that falls on our ranches infiltrating into the soil, not running off an eroding topsoil. See, it’s not so much about one or the other. It’s about how can I give that consumer the most confidence I can, that they’re using their purchasing dollar to make meaningful change.

[00:52:16] Michael Hawk: As you point out, consumers can make these choices and move the market over time. I’m curious to talk a little bit more about, broader adoption of regenerative practices and, so one is we can start looking for these labels, obviously.

[00:52:32] How do prices tend to compare for Regenified certified food compared to say, an organic food or traditionally grown?

[00:52:42] Gabe Brown: Yes. And that’s a fair question and I tell people, Gabe Brown is a capitalist, okay? I went from being 1.5 million in debt to being debt free. And I’ve, I have this ranch and I’m not looking for more money. I’m doing okay. So how did I do that? I didn’t do it by giving away my products.

[00:53:05] ? But it is supply and demand. Now, the beautiful thing about it is as I work in harmony and synchrony with nature, I become more of a lease cost producer. So I could sell my products in the conventional market, and I would make more money than my neighbors do because it costs me less to produce them.

[00:53:29] However, because of the nutrient density of our products, because of what we’re doing for the environment, consumers are willing to pay more for my products. Now, I’m not gonna turn that money down, and so right now it’s supply and demand. But make no mistake about it, our goal is that as more and more producers at Farmers ranchers, gardeners adopt these practices, the prices will come down.

[00:54:00] And we really believe that. In the near future, consumers will be able to buy fruits, vegetables, grains, proteins that are higher in nutrient density at a lower price point than they’re paying today.

[00:54:16] Michael Hawk: Yeah, and we didn’t even get into some of the other aspects of how you achieve this. For example, the flexibility that’s inherent to your practice, where if nature throws you a curve ball with respect to weather, you may choose to plant a different crop that year, whatever the case might be. So I’m thinking about a lot of people I know have expressed a desire to, to at some point, maybe own an acreage, retire on it, create a little homestead of their own with a regenerative practice.

[00:54:46] And there may, I don’t know, there may be some farmers that listen to this podcast. I don’t know. If you are a farmer out there, please let me know. I’d be curious to learn of that. But how can people start down this road? What would you recommend they do first? Where do they go look, what do they do?

[00:55:01] Gabe Brown: Oh, another good question, and the first thing they need to do is educate themselves. You mentioned Dr. Elaine Ingham. She has a wealth of information out there. Our nonprofit, soil Health Academy is an educational arm that we have, and we have a lot of information on that website about soils and ecosystems and how they function on our Understanding Ag website, we have free resources.

[00:55:30] We put out a newsletter every week. We have webinars that are free. We list case studies, all free information for people to come and look at. We also have a reading list on there that lists some really good books that talk about soil ecosystems and how soils function. You have to become a lifelong learner and you really need to make a concerted effort to understand, I grew up, my father rode a till the garden every spring, and I thought that was the right thing to do.

[00:56:09] Until I learned that it’s actually the worst thing we can do to produce nutrient dense food because we’re destroying the home for the biology, the very biology that bring those nutrients to the plants. So you have to educate yourself. That’s where it starts.

[00:56:24] Michael Hawk: And I’ll make sure to link to many of the resources, all the resources that you mentioned in the show notes to hopefully make it a little bit easier for people. And of course, you have a book that was released I think in 2018. Dirt The Soil. Is that correct?

[00:56:39] Gabe Brown: That is correct. Still number one selling book in on Amazon in soil science after going, five and a half years. It rather amazed me that it’s been so popular.

[00:56:51] Michael Hawk: I was amazed. I was looking at it on Amazon the other day, and the reviews that you have, It’s, it was in the thousands. I don’t remember exactly how many, but there were none lower than three stars. And to see that was pretty phenomenal.

[00:57:05] Gabe Brown: I I’m blessed. It’s now been published in 11 different languages. And, I was just asked to tell my story. I had no intention of writing a book, but I did. And I’ve been really humbled by how well received it is. And my business partners and I at understanding aga we hope to have our new book out this coming fall, and I’d put in a plug also.

[00:57:30] There’s gonna be a movie that’s debut at Tribeca here in June called Common Ground. And that movie is all about regeneration and the importance for society. To focus on regeneration. We have a saying at understanding ag uh, common ground for common good. We really believe that as a society, humans can agree on 85% plus of the issues that are out there.

[00:58:05] Why then do we spend all our time arguing about the 15%? Let’s come together as a society. We all want to take carbon out of the atmosphere, put it back in the soil cycle. We all want clean water. We all want an adequate supply of water. We all want nutrient dense foods. Why can’t we come together and find common ground for common good?

[00:58:28] Michael Hawk: The wheels are spinning in my head based on what you just said because when I look at some of the climate arguments, starting with that common ground standpoint of, Hey, we want to have more nutrient dense foods and stronger soils, so it’s easier to grow food. Let’s start there. Let’s have a project to help make that happen, and everybody wins it.

[00:58:47] It seems so common sense, as you said.

[00:58:49] Gabe Brown: I got asked to testify last year in front of Congress, the Agriculture Committee, they were having a hearing on agriculture’s role in climate change, and I was the only farmer asked to testify. I can’t understand how they could have a hearing on agriculture in the agriculture committee and only invite one farmer.

[00:59:11] But I sat there listening and one side of the aisle said, it’s all climate change. Climate change. We need to fight climate change. The other side of the aisle was saying, no, we need to, to increase farm ranch profitability. We gotta revitalize rural communities. We need more money in agriculture.

[00:59:30] And Gabe’s sitting in the middle going, you fools. You all want the same thing. Why can’t you come together? I spend the majority of part of my life now in front of this laptop talking to boards of directors, heads of sustainability, CEOs of large companies, organizations. And the thing I do is I try and find where’s their pain point?

[00:59:54] Where’s their interest point? Are they interested in climate change? That’s what I’m gonna talk to ’em about. Are they interested in farm profitability? I’m gonna talk to ’em about that. But in the end, it all comes back to regenerative agriculture. For you see agriculture, yes, it was part of the problem, but regenerative agriculture can be a major part of the solution for many of these issues facing society.

[01:00:19] So why can’t we come together, find common ground for common good?

[01:00:24] Michael Hawk: Yeah, you I’m looking at some of the wrap up questions that I was intending to ask, and you’ve bundled several of them together here. So that’s great. Now, you mentioned you have an upcoming book and what’s the focus of that book going to be?

[01:00:37] Gabe Brown: That book will be focused like the movie common ground. It’ll be the focus of it. It’ll be how we have to come together as a society and realize that there needs to be major wholesale change in all of agriculture for the betterment of all.

[01:00:58] Michael Hawk: Do you have any other projects upcoming that you’d like to highlight?

[01:01:02] Gabe Brown: There’s a number of them. Probably one of the. Them. That’s key to me is one I just mentioned briefly, the work that Dr. Van, Dr. Provenza and Dr. Kronberg are doing with the phytonutrient density in foods as it relates to soils. I think that’s just groundbreaking because we’re gonna bring in members of the medical community.

[01:01:27] We really need to get back to where food is used as preventative medicine. Our health is directly related to the health of our gut microbiome, which is directly related to the nutrient density of these phytonutrient compounds of the food we eat, which is directly related to the health of the soil.

[01:01:47] And so why can’t we focus on the whole, the whole change, soil health, plant health, animal health, human health.

[01:01:55] Michael Hawk: Gabe, thank you so much for all the time that you’ve spent with. With us here today. It’s really been enlightening and I look forward to learning more. You mentioned a lot of resources and as I said, I’ll include those in the show notes, but just to make sure I’m not missing anything, what would be the best places for people to stay on top of the work that you’re doing?

[01:02:16] Gabe Brown: Sure. Well, Thank you Michael. It’s been a real pleasure being with you today. So I would ask them to check out our understanding ag.com website or soil health academy.org. And then the third one is Regenified.

[01:02:34] Michael Hawk: Sounds good. And do you have any social media presence?

[01:02:38] Gabe Brown: Yes, we do. You can just go ahead and Check out understanding ag and I gotta be honest with you I received 200 to 400 emails and phone calls a day. So I do not take part in social media cause there’s no way I could keep up. So

[01:02:54] Michael Hawk: Okay. All right. Thank you again. I really appreciate you taking the time today to do it. I imagine things are getting getting busy right now. It’s mid-May. Are you in the frost free time yet? Up in Bismarck.

[01:03:07] Gabe Brown: We’re, we do have the garden planted and we are out seeding so just beginning the growing season here in North Dakota.

[01:03:14] Michael Hawk: All right. Well, Thank you again. I appreciate you and the work that you’re doing and have a great rest of your day.

[01:03:20] Gabe Brown: Thank you, Michael.