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The Future of Regenerative Agriculture with Gabe Brown
3 Plays3 seconds ago
Gabe Brown didn't set out to revolutionize agriculture. He set out to survive it.
After four consecutive years of crop disasters left him $1.5 million in debt, he had no choice but to question everything he'd been taught. What emerged from that reckoning became one of the most influential farms in the regenerative agriculture movement, and eventually two organizations working to spread those lessons globally: Understanding Ag, now consulting on over 37 million acres worldwide, and Regenified, a verification company built to cut through the greenwashing.
In this episode, we look forward. Where is regenerative agriculture headed? Who's driving it, and what's standing in the way?
In this episode, we dive into:
- How four years of disaster became the foundation of a regenerative farming philosophy
- What it actually means to farm in synchrony with nature, and why it works anywhere
- Why farmers care more about the land than they're given credit for
- How to become a price maker instead of a price taker
- The role of banks, insurers, and major brands in accelerating the regenerative transition
- Why Gabe thinks regenerative will be the norm within 25 years
- What the next generation of farmers looks like, and where they're coming from
More about Gabe Brown:
Gabe, along with his wife Shelly, and son Paul, own and operate Brown's Ranch, a diversified 5,000 acre farm and ranch near Bismarck, North Dakota. The ranch consists of several thousand acres of native perennial rangeland along with perennial pastureland and cropland. Their ranch focuses on farming and ranching in nature's image.
Over 2,000 people visit the Brown's Ranch annually to see this unique operation. They have had visitors from all fifty states and twenty-four foreign countries.
Gabe and Brown's Ranch have received many forms of recognition for their work, including a Growing Green award from the Natural Resource Defense Council, an Environmental Stewardship Award from the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, and a Zero-Till Producer of the Year Award, to name a few. Gabe has also been named one of the twenty-five most influential agricultural leaders in the United States.
Gabe recently authored the book, “Dirt to Soil, One Family’s Journey Into Regenerative Agriculture.”
Links to Gabe’s Work:
Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller. This episode was edited by Drew O'Doherty.
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Transcript
Why are farms disappearing?
00:00:02
Speaker
I tell people, you know, we're all in this together. And you know what? That's what makes it so fun. This regenerative space, I can pick up the phone and call any country in the world and talk to regenerative farmers, and they're willing to share.
00:00:17
Speaker
And what a joy that is to be able to share with people.
00:00:24
Speaker
In season two of Agrarian Futures, we're starting with a simple question. How did we get here? Farms are disappearing. Land is getting harder to access. Rural economies are hollowing out.
00:00:37
Speaker
But there are people building better ways forward. Join us as we investigate what's broken in our food system and what it looks like to build something better.
Gabe Brown's Journey into Regenerative Agriculture
00:00:50
Speaker
Gabe, thank you so much for joining us on Agrarian Futures. I've very much been looking forward to having you on the podcast. Most of our conversations tend to focus around history, how we've gotten to where we are right now in the world of agriculture. But with you, I'd really like to focus on the forward-looking part because you have a very unique perspective as someone who travels a lot and is very involved in some of the most cutting-edge organizations working to move regenerative agriculture in particular.
00:01:21
Speaker
forward. So before we get into that, can you give us just a really, really short introduction? i think most of our audience will know at least a little bit about you and where you're coming from. But if you could just give us a short introduction to set the stage for what puts you in position to be able to see some of the things that are coming down the pike in regenerative agriculture.
00:01:41
Speaker
Sure, Austin. Well, it's great to be with you and your listeners today. really appreciate the opportunity. So I'm located in Bismarck, North Dakota. I have been in the area all my life. I'm a lifelong farmer slash rancher.
00:01:58
Speaker
And those who know my story know that I was born and raised in the city. but took a real interest in agriculture, had the opportunity to take over my in-laws farm and which was very conventional.
00:02:15
Speaker
And being from the city, I had a real interest in everything agriculture. So no till made sense to me, you know, tillage did not make sense to me. So I wasn't afraid to try new things, went no-till.
00:02:31
Speaker
year later, found myself year one of what ended up to be four years of crop disasters, losing three years production to hailstorm and one year to drought.
00:02:44
Speaker
And I tell people that was very difficult to live through, to pay the bills and support a young family. But it was absolutely the best thing that could have happened to my wife and I because it sent me on a path of learning.
00:02:57
Speaker
I have a couple degrees in agriculture and never did they teach me the ecosystem processes and how a soil aggregate is formed and how the natural nutrient cycle works. So I had to learn all these things. And I really tell people that I was shown that during those four years of hail and drought. And so I became known rather quickly as the crazy rancher near Bismarck who would try anything, cover crops, multi-species, multi-species cash crops, integrating livestock onto cropland. Our son went and got a couple degrees in agriculture, came back to the ranch, and he's only carried it on even more so with direct marketing of all the products. So,
00:03:46
Speaker
Since retiring from active farming, since our son took over eight years ago, i founded a consulting company called Understanding Ag, which yeah little did I know has grown to where we're actively consulting on over 37 million acres across North America.
00:04:08
Speaker
England, Ireland, moving into Europe, some in South America, and it's growing way beyond our wildest ambitions. And then also, little over three years ago, we started a company called Regenified, which is a certification verification company. The reason we started that, quite simply, I was tired of the greenwashing.
00:04:29
Speaker
I was seeing way too many brands, farmers, ranchers touting that they're regenerative, and I'm going, not in my world
What is Regenerative Agriculture?
00:04:38
Speaker
you're not. And so that company has grown immensely, and chances are, if you mention the major brands in the world, Regenified is working with them to verify at least a part of their supply chains now.
00:04:54
Speaker
So briefly, that's where where I'm at, Austin, and what I'm focused on. That's fantastic. Let's get into the path forward as you see with regenerative agriculture. But before we do that, can you describe for me how you would define regenerative agriculture for yourself? So when you're talking about regenerative, what do you mean by that?
00:05:15
Speaker
So I define regenerative agriculture simply as farming and ranching in synchrony with nature to repair, rebuild, revitalize, and restore ecosystem function, beginning with all life in the soil and moving to all life above
Comparing Regenerative and Conventional Agriculture
00:05:35
Speaker
the soil. So it's just all-encompassing.
00:05:38
Speaker
One key part of that is that we want to move from having a degenerative effect on the land to a regenerative effect and start to move things in the right direction.
00:05:49
Speaker
And one of the things that seems to be key about the regenerative movement is that we're not necessarily saying we've reached our destination. Mostly just saying we're turning the ship in the right direction and someone can turn it slowly or they can turn it fast. Depending on their context, their goals, what they're able to do with their farm, they can start to pick up practices and add them and and move this in the right direction rather than say we have to be at this point in order to qualify for a standard.
00:06:21
Speaker
Right. You're absolutely right. You know, agriculture today, the current industrialized commoditized system is very prescriptive. You plant a certain seed and you apply certain inputs and you're more it's more or less a recipe card.
00:06:41
Speaker
And I've been a smart aleck. And I said, you know, a monkey could farm today because you can program it all. And and there's just not a lot of thought being put into it. Compare that to regenerative agriculture, which focuses on those four ecosystem processes. And, you know, I hear over and over again every day, oh, it won't work here.
00:07:03
Speaker
And I come right back. OK, so let me get this right. The sun doesn't shine on your farm. Well, of course it does. Rain doesn't fall. Well, of course it does.
00:07:13
Speaker
You know, you don't have biodiversity on your farm. Okay, yeah, you do. And you've got a nutrient cycle, which is biology in the soil. I'm not talking about synthetic inputs. I'm talking about the plants pumping carbon into the soil to feed biology. Those four ecosystem processes take place anywhere in the world where there's land-based agriculture.
00:07:41
Speaker
And so... That's simple. Now, how we get there, the crops we grow, cover crops we use, livestock, that can all be different, right?
00:07:53
Speaker
According to our context. But it all goes back to those four ecosystem processes. I tell people this isn't rocket science. It's really pretty simple. You know, if a city kid can from North Dakota can halfway figure it out, well, anybody else can.
00:08:10
Speaker
That's great. It seems that The regenerative movement has come around in a very valuable time. i'm probably oversimplifying this, but if beforehand we had, let's say, conventional agriculture and we had organic agriculture and organic sets high bars, it's a fairly large leap for someone to go from conventional to organic, like certified organic agriculture. It's a pretty large barrier to entry for folks to go through that three-year certification or three-year transition process.
00:08:39
Speaker
you're not getting any premium for your product and yet you're incurring additional expenses or you have higher cost of doing your production whereas regenerative allows folks to exist on a larger spectrum and start to move the needle in the right direction and get on on the right track without as much of a barrier to entry would you say that's that's about right Yeah, I would challenge a couple things. Understand you can be organic by default.
00:09:07
Speaker
You simply don't add any of those inputs. You can be organic by default. That may or may not be regenerative. Okay. Regenerative, on the other hand, is focused on those four ecosystem processes and enhancing
Barriers to Regenerative Farming
00:09:23
Speaker
them. And then along with that, of course, comes quality of life, increased profitability. And i would challenge that a truly regenerative farm can garner much higher premiums than most organic farms.
00:09:41
Speaker
You know, it's all about the relationship between the consumer and the farmer, the relationship you have there. and beautiful thing is, as you alluded to, this stage we're in,
00:09:56
Speaker
lends itself to regenerative agriculture really well. You know, when COVID came along, you know, I don't want to downplay that had a lot of unfortunate circumstances and many people lost their life, etc. But it did create a real awareness for the food that we're eating.
00:10:15
Speaker
And that propelled the interest in regenerative agriculture significantly. Yeah, I work with a lot of farmers who saw significant bumps during that time. And even though those peaks didn't last, they came down, they settled down at a much higher level of direct-to-consumer sales and a lot more knowledge and awareness of the value of buying directly from a farmer where you have a clear supply chain and knowing who is growing your food and the qualities thereof. For folks who are regeneratively farming, it was a significant boon.
00:10:47
Speaker
Yeah, and and that's a beautiful relationship. You know, we need to think of food as health. We need to know where our food comes from. We need to have that relationship with our farm.
00:11:00
Speaker
Moving towards where you see agriculture in general going, regenerative agriculture in particular, can you share a little bit of what allows you to have those insights or what allows you to have have these conversations you were sharing with me before we started the actual interview, how many days per year that you've been out on the road, you spent more time on the road than you spent at home, which is incredible and ah and a huge commitment and all of the conversations that you've been able to have. So you you have your your finger on the pulse when it comes to what is happening in agriculture in general.
00:11:36
Speaker
I'll answer your first question first. What allows me to have that? God bless me with a big mouth. and I'll talk to anybody, anywhere, anytime.
00:11:47
Speaker
I think what really helped me is kind of been there, done that. You know, I'm a rancher at heart. You know, I love to ranch. That's all I've ever wanted to really do.
00:11:59
Speaker
And living through those four years of disaster, regenerating the soils on our ranch, becoming profitable, digging ourselves out of that debt.
00:12:11
Speaker
That gave me certain credibility with farmers and ranchers. That allowed then me to have a platform because people start visiting the ranch. We got some notoriety for it. So that opened a lot of doors.
00:12:26
Speaker
And then with understanding ag, going out on a more global scale and traveling more or less worldwide, that put me in front of audiences that I never would have had the opportunity to be in front of. And You know, it's been eight years now, 275 plus days on the road every year. I'm kind of getting wore out. But in saying that, I've met a lot of people, very great people, farmers, ranchers, businessmen, public figures.
00:12:58
Speaker
And that really allows me, you know, this platform to talk about what is regenerative agriculture. And to me, what I tout so much is I think I'm pretty good at reading the audience. You know, who am I talking to? Is it an audience of farmers?
00:13:17
Speaker
Is it an audience of business people? Is it politicians and policymakers? Well, I'm going to spin it no matter what. I call regenerative agriculture. It's common ground for common good.
00:13:32
Speaker
You list major challenges that society is facing today, whether it's clean air, clean water and water quantity, whether it's lack of profitability in our rural communities, the rural communities drying up, so to speak. Is it human health crisis that's going on? And we do have a human health crisis going on.
00:13:57
Speaker
No matter where your interest lies, a part of the answer for all of those can be found in regenerative agriculture. So you put me in front of a boardroom of some of the largest companies in the world.
00:14:10
Speaker
I'm going to spin it to come back to what I know best, regenerative agriculture and how farmers and ranchers and those caretakers of the land are key to that business, you know that board that I'm talking to, to the policymakers that I'm talking to, you know to the farmers, ranchers themselves.
00:14:31
Speaker
So it's not that difficult. you know I know regenerative agriculture fairly well, and so I can spin it. And you know why is it good for any brand to source regeneratively grown and raised products?
00:14:46
Speaker
Well, that's simple. What means more to them than anything else? A consistent supply of high-quality product, right? That's what they need to stay in business. Regenerative agriculture can help supply that, right?
00:14:59
Speaker
What does it mean to the policymakers? Well, they're concerned about clean water. They're concerned about profitability for their constituents. They're concerned about human health.
00:15:11
Speaker
I can spin it and talk about that. And then the farmers and ranchers are really... the easiest to talk to, yet in some ways the hardest because they're very well-headed, you know.
00:15:24
Speaker
Regenerative agriculture, there was great work done by Dr. Jonathan Lundgren, the Dysus Foundation, that showed farmers and ranchers are using regenerative practices, 78% higher profitability.
00:15:38
Speaker
Think of that, 78%. Yet, then I get asked the question, well, why isn't everybody doing it? Well, why? It's because here in the state, it's the ridiculous farm program we have.
00:15:50
Speaker
very antagonistic to regenerative agriculture by and large. So let's dig into that a little bit. i'm I'm curious what you see as some of the biggest barriers to folks actually adopting regenerative agriculture at any kind of scale and where the state farm programs fit into that.
00:16:07
Speaker
So look at agriculture in the U.S. Now, I have not seen an exact statistic, but I'm willing to bet 85% of farmers out there need to borrow some operating capital every year to put in the crop, etc.
00:16:27
Speaker
I'm sure it's pretty close to that figure. Okay, they go into that lending institution. What does that lending institution look at? Risk, right? Right. Well, what's the first thing they're going to look at?
00:16:39
Speaker
Okay, are you taking part in revenue insurance? In other words, the current farm program. Where can you be guaranteed the most money? Now, many people think, oh, you can't be in the farm program and be regenerative.
Financial Benefits of Regenerative Practices
00:16:55
Speaker
That's not true at all. The majority of our clients do take part in the farm program. But what they find the longer they're going down the regenerative path,
00:17:04
Speaker
the less they need that and they're more profitable having the ability to adapt and change according to market conditions, et cetera. You look at what's happening today. what are What are the major crops? Obviously corn, soybeans, wheat, right?
00:17:19
Speaker
Yet you look at how the farm program's based. Revenue insurance is based on your past production history and then the past year's prices.
00:17:29
Speaker
Well, the only way for a farmer to make more money is increase yield. Well, the more yield everybody produces, the lower prices go, the less you're guaranteed.
00:17:40
Speaker
It's absolutely a ridiculous program. The people who thought that one up, all they cared about was an oversupply of cheap food-like substances. And food inputs.
00:17:52
Speaker
Yeah, and selling inputs. It's amazing now as Understanding Ag, you know, eight plus years in business and seeing some of the clients who have been with us for a number of years, the reduction in their input costs.
00:18:09
Speaker
I mean, it's it's just unbelievable. 50 to 75 percent reduction is not uncommon at all, which you know what that does for profitability, even if you're selling it for commodity prices, you know, which most of our clients don't. They quickly learn that they have something of value and they're able to garner a premium for it.
00:18:32
Speaker
The agronomists and the system that's built around ah selling inputs, that seems to be a significant barrier on a couple of different levels. One being that you are getting advice from folks who have a financial interest in selling you inputs. But then also those folks are connected to very, very large companies that have deep pockets that that have incentives and they have concentrated incentives, right? Whereas a farmer might have an incentive to get more regulation to support regenerative agriculture. But those companies have, they have enough staff, they have enough income to pay for lobbyists, to pay for a number of things to support the status quo, where there will continue to be subsidies for their inputs that they are providing to farmers.
00:19:20
Speaker
That's right. One of the first things we do when a prospective client approaches us is we tell them, okay, here's what we'd like you to do.
00:19:32
Speaker
Every farmer has different aversion to risk. Pick one field, and I'm using farmers in this case, pick one field We're going to take that field. We're going to do what I call proper soil testing instead of just testing it for P, and K. And what's the inorganic fraction that's in the soil? In other words, what was water soluble the day that that soil sample was taken? We're going to do biological testing.
00:20:00
Speaker
We're gonna do a TND test, total nutrient digestion, to show you we've tested millions and millions of acres. We have yet to find a single acre that doesn't have adequate nutrients for profitable crop production.
00:20:15
Speaker
We're not short of nutrients in our soil, we're short of biology. So what we do then is we tell that farmer, according to your risk, take one field. Now, some farmers will take a whole quarter and just split it in half.
00:20:29
Speaker
We have them farm half the way that they have been, the way that their agronomist says to. The other half, we're going to dictate and suggest what they do.
00:20:41
Speaker
And the amazing thing is, Austin, 90% plus percent of the clients we work with, they're over applying nutrients significantly. So for us to go in there and start reducing 10, 15, 20%, they're not going to see any difference in yield, but they'll sure see a difference in profitability. And then that reduction in inputs stimulates more biology. We're going to have them plant cover crops too, if appropriate, to cycle more of that solar energy, feed more biology. We jumpstart the system.
00:21:17
Speaker
Nine times out of 10, after one year, they're bought in. you know they They're saying, this just makes sense. We can make more money, we can cut our inputs, we can save labor and time and fuel and wear and tear and equipment.
00:21:31
Speaker
Why wouldn't we do this? You know, then you start the conversation. OK, now let's go. Let's add some more fields. Let's diversify the crop rotation.
00:21:42
Speaker
You know, what can you do to increase profitability? Where's the low hanging fruit, so to speak? That's how we approach it. And it's a system that if their mind is open, you know,
00:21:55
Speaker
Now, we require them, of course, to keep very accurate records on those two halves of that field. Now, I should say some producers, you know, they only want to try it on a little field over the hill where none of the neighbors can see.
00:22:08
Speaker
That's fine. Whatever fits their aversion to the risk. Me, I'll do it right along the highway so everybody can see. Give people something good to talk about at the local coffee shop. Yeah.
00:22:19
Speaker
Let them talk about me. I don't care. They do anyway. Yeah. The wonderful thing about that is even if folks are not yet accessing premium markets for their products, just by reducing their input costs, they're able to have significant differences in the bottom line at the end of the day.
00:22:38
Speaker
Yeah, I tell people this, okay, when I was on the farm, I grew corn, okay? Here I'm in North Dakota. We get about 10 to 12 inches of rainfall and another four to six inches from snow, 18 inches total, not a lot of moisture, okay?
00:22:55
Speaker
So my corn yield, much less than it is in Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, okay? But my land costs are much less. And then I don't use any synthetic fertility.
00:23:09
Speaker
We don't use herbicides, no insecticides, no GMO seed. Okay. I show people my average cost to produce a bushel of corn was running between $1.44 and $1.48 per bushel. Wow. You go into Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, their average cost in many cases is well over $5 a bushel.
00:23:37
Speaker
Who's going to be the last man standing? I'm going to make a profit. Corn drops to $3. Oh, gee, I'm only doubling my money. That's me. That's too bad. Okay.
00:23:47
Speaker
How often have we seen corn at $10 where they can double their money? So my point is, i could care less what you yield. Where's your profit? How much money are you making? And are you doing what's right by the land to ensure that you can continue to farm and future generations can continue to
Profitability and Environmental Impact
00:24:09
Speaker
farm?
00:24:09
Speaker
Related to that, what have you found from farmers about how much, let's call it environmentally or ecologically minded that they are? And I know there's so much difference between from person person. How much of that is a motivating factor? Because I think in much of the media, there is this driving narrative that farmers farmers don't care.
00:24:31
Speaker
Farmers are doing ecological destruction to the land. And what I've found in my work, where we're working with farmers to integrate trees into their pastures, is that once you make this simple and you show how this can be done, there's a whole bunch of people who come out of the woodwork and say, absolutely, this makes sense. I've wanted to do this for a long time. I just haven't been able to do it. I haven't i haven't known how or I haven't had the resources to do it and they're more than happy because it provides both additional profitability and they actually want to have a positive ecological impact they just haven't had this tool available to them
00:25:10
Speaker
You're absolutely right. I will vehemently argue with anyone who says that claims that farmers and ranchers are purposely trying to degrade the land.
00:25:22
Speaker
Look, there's no farmer out there who enjoys spraying chemicals. You know, nobody likes that. at least nobody I've ever met.
00:25:34
Speaker
Farmers believe themselves to be good stewards of the land. And for the most part, in their context, with the knowledge that they have, they are.
00:25:47
Speaker
okay Now, we can all do better. I tell people, you know I've been on thousands of farms, other ranches all over the world. I've never been on a single one, including my own, that's not degraded.
00:26:00
Speaker
We're all farming and ranching degraded resources. We can all do better. i can do better. in saying that, as you just stated. They sometimes need to be pointed in the right direction, need to be educated a little bit, need to be shown.
00:26:14
Speaker
Once you do that, they're very sharp. They'll pick it up. What motivates farmers and ranchers, though, more than anything else? It's right here. It's money. You know, it's their livelihood. They got a supportive family and pay the bills, and they need to make a living at it.
00:26:30
Speaker
Once we show them... the increased profitability that can be had by the implementation of regenerative practices, they're going to buy in.
Future of Regenerative Agriculture
00:26:40
Speaker
And money is is such an important driver because so many farms don't make money, right? They're living on the edge, oftentimes on the edge of bankruptcy because farming for so many people is so input intensive, so marginally profitable, if it's it profitable at all, that they need any opportunity that they can in order to turn that around and give themselves that higher degree of confidence that they're going to be profitable year in and year out.
00:27:09
Speaker
Yeah. You know, I'm working on my next book and it plays off of dirt to soil. And at the end of those four years of natural disasters, my wife and I were $1.578 million dollars in debt.
00:27:25
Speaker
Now, in the mid 90s for a young couple starting out, that was a pile of money. of money Okay. that's a lot of money. So this book is going to be about how did we crawl out of that debt?
00:27:36
Speaker
And, you know, we did it fairly quickly, really. But it was all about, OK, we're not going to do things. Why would I grow wheat that I can only make, you know, at best a couple dollars a bushel on?
00:27:52
Speaker
when I can grow other crops that are much more profitable, okay? And I'm gonna lay out that story in my next book and really talk about how farmers need to become price makers instead of price takers.
00:28:09
Speaker
And they need to realize, like like, look, Austin, today, this just drives me crazy how, you know, there's a lot of farmers crying out there because they were selling soybeans to China and that market collapsed because of tariffs, etc. And I'm thinking to myself, okay, how much sense does it make for your livelihood to depend where you have to harvest those beans. You've got to call them to a grain terminal. That grain terminal has to ship them to port. Then they've got to be shipped halfway around the world. Then they're relying on some company over there to purchase them.
00:28:47
Speaker
Why would I want that risk? That just makes no business sense to me. Why would I do that? Farmers need to take things into their own hands.
00:28:58
Speaker
and become price makers instead of price takers. And when you do that, the profitability increases significantly. Our son, who is 38 years old now, running a 6,000 acre ranch, has never borrowed money and has never accepted a single dollar from the government.
00:29:21
Speaker
That's amazing. He operates strictly on cash and he doesn't do it based on dad and mom's cash. You know, he does it because he's a business person.
00:29:32
Speaker
He knows things down to the penny and he's not going to do it if it doesn't make him a profit. Yeah. And he's able to think outside the box. Yeah. He may not have the newest equipment or anything, but to him, why would he do that?
00:29:45
Speaker
He says, why would I buy a brand new tractor when a 20 year old tractor will do the job and it's paid for, you know, and that allows him that profitability. Yeah. I love it. No, that's fantastic. So you've been able to make that transition happen for your family.
00:30:02
Speaker
So let's put our future goggles on and look and see how that might be possible or where we see that going for for other families, for other farms as well.
00:30:12
Speaker
If you were to look in your crystal ball right here and say, Let's put it 50 years out. Let's give us plenty or plenty of time. you can You can kind of pick your time horizons where you see big shifts happening in the decades ahead. But let's say 50 years, just to give ourselves plenty of time for things to work out. What do you see coming down the pike in the regenerative agriculture movement? Where do you think we're going to be in the decades ahead based on the directions that you're seeing?
00:30:43
Speaker
I love that question. And i do not know. I'm simply speculating. But from what I see so far, and I tell people this, okay, I've been in this space a long, long time, since the mid-90s, you know, even though it wasn't called regenerative agriculture back then. The organic had a regenerative moniker that they used. I tell people, you know, in the early 2000s, those of us that were involved, if it felt like we were pushing a, you know, a snowball up a mountain, you know, it was slow, slow going.
00:31:17
Speaker
Now, all of a sudden, since COVID hit, and I'm not saying COVID is the entire reason for the change, but it's it's just gone sharp, sharp increase. We are actually working with very large companies right now.
00:31:34
Speaker
that have made the commitment to change their entire supply chain, some as quickly as the year 2030. We've got one company in the UK we're working with where they have over a supply chain of over 2,500 farms.
00:31:53
Speaker
By 2030, their entire supply chain will be regenerated it or they won't be selling to that company. wow We're seeing a number of very large brands make those type of commitments. There's many things that are driving it.
00:32:09
Speaker
We're also seeing and understand because of the work Regenified and Understanding Ag are doing, we have a huge database of all these farms that are moving in this regenerative direction. We've been able to go show the banking industry, the financial industry, hey, look, regenerative farms will pay back their notes much quicker and at a much higher success rate.
00:32:35
Speaker
Because of that, we actually have financial institutions that will loan farmers money at a lower price point if they're using these regenerative practices.
00:32:47
Speaker
Wow, that's a difference maker. Now we're working on another one where it's with an insurance company that will offer significant discounts to farmers. Now this is in the works. It's not commercially available yet, but farmers will then be able to purchase insurance at a much steeper discount if they're using these regenerative practices. So that's only Austin going to accelerate things even further.
00:33:18
Speaker
You know, we're just seeing that play out over and over again. And then you take the fact it's beginning here in the U.S., but you take in Europe, there's a huge market for biodiversity credits, you know, Arbonne just being one of them.
00:33:36
Speaker
But as farmers adopt these practices, the increase in diversity on their farms is significant. There's a facet of society that's willing to pay them for that.
00:33:51
Speaker
And we're also working with, for instance, a number of municipalities, they were having to retrofit their water treatment facilities because of the amount of nitrates, et cetera, and supply chain. We went to them and said, we think you're approaching this wrong.
00:34:09
Speaker
Rather than spend the hundreds of millions of dollars to retrofit your water treatment plant, let's educate the farmers up in the watershed. You can pay for the education.
00:34:21
Speaker
cost share to put cover crops on, hold those nutrients on that farmer's land. Farmer gets the benefit adding much less nutrients. And then the downstream interest, they don't have to spend that kind of money.
00:34:35
Speaker
We're seeing things like this just accelerate the adoption of RegenAg. So I would say in Gabe's world, I really think in 25 years, regenerative will be the norm.
00:34:49
Speaker
would be the standard. It will be the norm. And we won't have to have regenerative certifications because everybody will be regenerative. That would be tremendous. Yeah.
00:34:59
Speaker
As part of that, do you see, are you working with anyone yet to to value land differently that's being managed regeneratively compared to land that has degenerated significantly? I think Will Harris, good friend of yours, talks about in his book, how he stood and looked at one field and looked at another one. And the banker said, we're going to price them the same way. We're going to value them the same way, even though one has, let's say it's 8% organic matter. The only one other one is 1% organic matter. And there's no comparison in the productivity between those pieces of land. And the banking industry had not yet caught up to the differences in productivity between those two pieces of
Opportunities for New Farmers
00:35:42
Speaker
land.
00:35:42
Speaker
Yeah. You know, I get contacted almost on a weekly basis by funds that want to do just that purchase property, regenerate and then sell that property as a premium.
00:35:57
Speaker
And they're looking for data. And I tell them who would want to sell it. Why would you want to sell it? You know, it's going to be more productive, more profitable. Why would you want to sell it? And so there are those out there though. The thing is though, you just haven't seen a lot of that land be placed up for sale that has been regenerated. Well, that makes sense.
00:36:19
Speaker
Even just a bank being able to value it higher so that the person who owns it can borrow more against it and buy more land. Those would be very, very valuable to see. So I actually did that back one of the last years that I borrowed money from a bank. I went in there and showed them my balance sheet.
00:36:40
Speaker
And I had my land valued significantly higher. And they said, well, that land your land isn't worth that much. And I said, let's look at this. What's fertilizer worth? And ah of course, I had done my homework. I had the average price of N, P, and K. And then I showed them the tests from my soil and the amount of organic nutrients that were in my soil, N, P, and K. I said, you know what? You're allowing a farmer to go prepay fertilizer.
00:37:14
Speaker
And he keeps that on his balance sheet, right? Yeah. I said, okay. This is my prepaid fertilizer. just that I didn't pay bit didn buy synthetic.
00:37:26
Speaker
I have organic nutrients, which will last even longer. He just laughed and he said, how do I argue with that? And I said, you can't. Now, it didn't matter because I owed so little, but I wanted to drive the point home.
00:37:39
Speaker
that's That's fantastic. I love that. Gabe, I know that you have a hard stop coming up. So last question here. There's a lot of folks that I work with every single day who want to see a lot more people on the land, a lot more people being able to find some kind of or on the land that is purposeful, that is profitable.
00:38:02
Speaker
As you look ahead, where do you see instances where there's opportunities, there's need for more people per acre? And where do you see the effects of technology, whether it's remote sensing and drones and whatnot, will lead to continued consolidation and fewer and fewer people on the land in other instances? Yeah.
00:38:23
Speaker
I couldn't agree more with you, Austin, that I believe we need more people on the land. One of the early books I read that really influenced me was Masanabu Fukuoka, One Straw Revolution. And in there, he's quoted as saying, the fertility of the land is directly proportional to the number of footsteps on that land. And I think of our own ranch. And, you know, for years, my wife and I operated it ourselves and then our son became involved. And now he actually has grown the number of employees and he's actually brought in a person to that person brought some cattle with and he's allowing him to run cattle on the land. He's looking at doing the same thing, maybe with the vegetable production, maybe with sheep. I think there's real opportunities. One of the things that's really near and dear to me is succession.
00:39:20
Speaker
And I believe no farm can be regenerative unless they've done a good job of setting up a succession plan, whether it be a family member or not.
00:39:31
Speaker
Well, oftentimes I'm speaking in the I states, the corn belt, you know, where they only want to grow corn and beans. Yet we've all been there and seen that there's all these odd shaped edges of fields and small fields. What an opportunity for a young person.
00:39:47
Speaker
And I try and encourage people. Why not let a young person run livestock on your land if you don't want to? You know, why not take that little odd shaped field that's a pain in the rear?
00:39:59
Speaker
Why not let a young person have a vegetable CSA on that little parcel of land? Do some good for your community and for the young people in the community. Why not?
00:40:09
Speaker
And, you know, us crusty old white farmers will shake our head and say, well, nobody helped me. Yeah, bull. I bet you look back. Somebody helped the majority of us.
00:40:21
Speaker
You know, the majority of us, we're not asking for handouts for them. Simply a hand up. Why not allow a young person to get a start? And I think there will be real opportunities. There's definitely going to be opportunities and with drones and some of the technology. I know of several people who have started businesses now seeding cover crops with drones.
00:40:45
Speaker
There's so much opportunity to be had. Yeah, especially with a fairly quick transition and more and more folks turning to regenerative agriculture, there will be a lot of opportunities there for people who are fresh, who are new, who are coming into this space with open eyes and see the opportunities that no one else is yet in Yeah.
00:41:05
Speaker
You know, for 25 plus years, we ran an internship program on our ranch and we'd get 75 to 100 applicants a year. The vast majority of them would be young people from cities.
00:41:19
Speaker
And you know what? In a lot of ways, they made the best interns because open mind, as you said, they wanted to learn. It was all new.
00:41:29
Speaker
Yeah, you had to teach them some of the basics, but Some of the poorest interns we had were those that were, you know, dad was very set in his way and they were set in theirs.
00:41:41
Speaker
And so I think the next. great leaders in the regenerative agricultural space will be people from an urban setting. People who come in with that fresh perspective like you had when you came onto the farm, came onto the your in-laws farm back in the day, not knowing a squat diddly about yeah all of the pain that you would experience, the hard knocks that you'd experience in the
Community Support in Regenerative Agriculture
00:42:05
Speaker
years ahead. But it turned out to be a tremendous career that led to really the advancement of regenerative agriculture and the support of thousands and thousands of farms.
00:42:16
Speaker
I tell people, you know, we're all in this together. And Gabe Brown really isn't very smart. I just have a lot of experience from a lot of people who have shared with me.
00:42:27
Speaker
And you know what? That's what makes it so fun. This regenerative space, I can pick up the phone and call any country in the world and talk to regenerative farmers, and they're willing to share.
00:42:39
Speaker
And what a joy that is to be able to share with people. It is. I agree. I fully enjoy that part of it. There's so much willingness to support one another in this space that I find very, very refreshing.
00:42:52
Speaker
Even Will Harris will share a little bit with Even a little bit. A little bit. If you catch him at the right time. Gabe, thank you so much. This has been a fantastic conversation. Really, really enjoyable. Thank you for all of the work that you have done and continue to do to push this movement forward.
00:43:10
Speaker
Well, thank you, Austin. It's been a pleasure. Thank you much.
00:43:16
Speaker
Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexander Miller, who also wrote our theme song. If you enjoyed this episode, please like, subscribe and leave us a comment on your podcast app of choice.
00:43:26
Speaker
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