Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food
Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast features the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.
Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food
389 Jonathan Lundgren - You need more cows, not fewer, to save the planet
A new conversation with Jonathan Lundgren, one of the world’s most interesting and most cited scientists when it comes to regenerative agriculture. For the last four years, Jonathan and his team have been in full swing with their 1000 Farms Initiative, where they document research and follow regenerative farms, actually closer to 1600 farms now.
An episode where we talk about data, data, and more data. We unpack a four-year effort that spans commodities, ecoregions, and management styles, revealing how regeneration scales in the real world. The results are striking: equal or better yields, stronger profits, higher biodiversity, improved water infiltration, and a path to substantial soil carbon storage.
But it isn’t just about that. It’s about farmers’ health and happiness. It’s about pushing our imagination of what farmland could look like. It’s about the outliers in these studies that show us what is possible: more people on the land, more farmers connected to every acre being managed. It’s about producing food for your family and community.
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In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.
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It's always amazing to have Jonathan Beck on the show, one of the most famous and most interesting scientists when we come to region AG, and the most cited if that's what you care about. They've been in full swing for the last four years with their 1000 Farms Initiative, where I've documented, researched, and followed 1,000 region farms. Actually, closer to 1,600. Yes, this is an episode where we talk about data. But don't worry, the data for region is extremely compelling. The same or more food production, more hiring carrying capacity when it comes to animal livestock farms, biodiversity through the roof, making the same or more money. Yes, this is about animals. We need more animals and cows, not less, on the land. And no, you don't need more land for that. And yes, you can offset and store a lot of carbon. But it isn't really about that. It's about farmers' health and happiness, about pushing our imagination of what a farm could actually look like, about the outliers in these studies that show what is possible about more people on the land and more farmers and feet touching all the acres that someone is managing. It's about producing food for your family and your community, about rural communities and bringing back life that has been sucked out of there. Enjoy this wide-ranging, but as always with John, two short conversation. Welcome to another conversation. Today we have Jonathan back on the show, Donaton Landchen. He's a farmer, first of all, top ag scientist and monitoring over a thousand farms across the US. And we had him on in May 2020 and April 2022. So it's more than time for a check-in conversation. And as always, it's a pleasure to have you back. Welcome John.
SPEAKER_02:Good to see you again. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:A lot has happened since then. I think we we talked last time really at the beginning of the 1000 Farms Initiative. I don't, I think the number 1000 was like a I don't know, I throw a dart on the. Let's see if we get there. I think you were 20, 20 or so at the beginning. And now you are a lot of papers about to be published. We'll talk about that as well. And and so much more. You've crisscrossed the country endless times. Yeah. How are you? What we are checking in September 2025. What's what's keeping you busy? What's what's on your mind before we get into all the work stuff?
SPEAKER_02:Oh gosh, what's on my mind? Yeah, well, how much time you got? That's the answer. We've got an hour and nine minutes, I heard. Yeah. We uh 9000 Farms has been really successful, exceeding any expectation that we could have had for it. And now we're and it's still it's still an an a living being in its own right, and will continue to grow or expand it, but we are also asking the questions of what's next. And and yeah, there's only so many corn fields you have to measure, right? At some point you just know what you're going to expect there.
SPEAKER_00:But there are other things. You can feed it to a model, and then your model can can predict things. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Well, we've already got that. We just need now we need the weird systems, right? And the ones that the science doesn't always explore because they're messy. So, and more extremes and testing our perceptions of what regenerative agriculture is. And then also the data is important. But what are the drivers of change? What are those things that we really, those levers to really move the needle? And I think science is a part of that, but it's not all for sure.
SPEAKER_00:And so what's happening on the farm? You're definitely a farmer first. We got a bit later on. We got a bit later on here because you quote unquote had to do farm things, which of course are priority top number one over recording. And I remember last time you were very happy with animals on the on back on the farm or on the farm. And this is part of an animal series. We're looking deeper into the role of animals. We'll get into that as well. But what's been happening on the farm as you are farmer first and scientists, let's say second or in parallel, let's say, but definitely farmer. Farmer had his own.
SPEAKER_02:Be thankful you can't smell me right now. Let's we'll start with that. And yeah, the livestock has become the a really important identity of the farm. It's become an integrated system. It's about food production for the local community. It's about diversifying ourselves and stacking enterprises there. And the goal of Blue Dasher has always been to that it should be a farm that one person of medium build can run by themselves. And we're getting there, getting our fencing into the right spots and the and increasing efficiencies in some ways without losing track of the vision of what are the goals of this whole thing. So livestock, we've Christina has brought in cut flowers into the situation, and that probably last time we talked, I was probably like, boy, I mean, we can't get any more diversity out here. And we always many of us to poo the oh yeah, flowers, those are pretty, and stuff like that, but we're farmers and we gotta be farming out there. And it's the color and the diversity that having that additional incredible revenue stream as well brought to the farm blew it out of the park. It's just like this is yeah, this is the real deal at this point.
SPEAKER_00:So I can only imagine what it has done for let's say the first love for you in agriculture for insects. That's been probably interesting to see.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, we've got butterflies everywhere, bees are just going crazy for these flowers. That's that's a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_00:How has it been the mosquito issue? Because I think I read an interview a long time ago, so definitely correct me if I'm wrong, that let's say the neighbors, like the neighboring lands around you, definitely had or have a strong mosquito issue, and then yours are an island of not so much. How has it been? Speaking from someone that always suffers from a lot of interest from these little buggers.
SPEAKER_02:You're a good person to go on a hike with because all the mosquitoes go to you, huh?
SPEAKER_01:Yes. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So, yeah, historically, we have not had mosquitoes on this farm. In part because I think it's a healthy ecosystem. We have swallows that nest very close by, and every evening they're just wiping out as many mosquitoes. And as the breeding season starts to diminish for those swallows, our dragonfly populations start to take off, and the dragonflies pick up where those barn swallows and cliff swallows kind of left off. This year, the swallows didn't come. And I don't know if that means that it was the overwintering grounds that got hammered or someplace in between. But we had mosquitoes for the first time this year, and it was, yeah, I need those birds back.
SPEAKER_00:Very interesting. Yeah, you can do all you can and want on your piece of land, even if it's significant size. But yeah, migrating birds, you need them, they need a place somewhere else to be able to migrate properly, otherwise, yeah, they're not going to come to you. So hopefully it's a one-off.
SPEAKER_02:I hope so too. And it what it illustrates a point that's becoming increasingly clear is that I mean, we're Thousand Farms has taught us a lot. And one of the things that it's taught us is that we need to be focusing on our communities and growing food for that community and our own families, but also we don't live in a we don't live in a silo, and under so one of the criticisms that I get from people that are attuned to this and have put some thought into it is they're like, so John, but if you're doing this, you're you are extracting nutrients from the soil, and at some point those nutrients are depleting over time, and you don't have a you're not restoring that. And I'm like, boy, the natural world works in mysterious ways. And and the connections that we have with other places on earth, I don't think that our models for nutrient cycling are always reflecting the complexities there. We were one of my staff, and we're heading down to Puerto Rico to study subsistence farmers down in Puerto Rico next in a couple of months. But she went down and she was watching the sands of Egypt blow into Puerto Rico, and I'm like, huh. But there's some phosphorus nutrient there, isn't there? Yeah. I don't know how much, but suddenly when you start thinking of that, and then over geological time, it's I think we can, yeah, I think this is a yeah, there's more going on than we can predict.
SPEAKER_00:And so on on the 1000 farms, just to repeat for people that haven't listened to the last one, or it's been two and a half years, like probably, what was the reasoning behind and what did it turn into in terms of size and machine and just colossal stuff? Because following 1000 farms over a length of time can't be easy. But what was the reasoning behind going on that tour?
SPEAKER_02:Well, and you I'm curious whether you you've been doing this podcast, what, 2020, something longer than that, probably. Nine nine years almost. Nine years. How has it changed? So when I got into the space, I mean there was all of these anecdotes, right? Regenerative ag seems like it works, right?
SPEAKER_00:On this farm. On this farm, it sounds like it works.
SPEAKER_02:It felt like there was this void, right? That there was this disconnect. There was real suspicion almost.
SPEAKER_00:Sounds too good to be true. How can you farm and not destroy? Farm by not destroying, and how can you build something over time while harvesting, just as you said, while extracting something and eating something, and if you're not going to the toilet on the same farm, like how does that work and make money? Like a lot of suspicion around. I think you you put some of those to bed with your paper on profitability elements and regen practices. But it was interesting at that time they only if you Googled or searched in the specific search engines for profitability and regen, that was the only paper. There was nothing else. Yeah. And so, but this is a long time ago. But it still felt like a lot of people show me the data, show me the science. Scientists are completely not on board with many scientists, and many are changing now, but definitely it's very different nine years later. But it also feels we're still our bubble has grown. Definitely. It's not that it's this common knowledge.
SPEAKER_02:So was it a leap of faith for you to get this podcast off of the ground? Because no, Stephen, you were hanging your hand on regenerative at a very early age, right? Before this was cool.
SPEAKER_00:I don't think it was a conscious decision. So definitely universe pushing pushing me or nudging me in a direction, meeting the original founders of SLM, sustainable land management in Australia. So really holistic management, like raising hardcore finance from Danish pension funds for region without calling it region, not mentioning the carbon in their in their decks, etc. Just saying this is a hedge against other cattle investments because we'll do better in drought. And they shown that showed that. Why is nobody talking about this from an entrepreneurial like you like agroforestry, meeting the propagate guys at the beginning? Like it makes so much sense, but it probably needs some creativity to finance it. And I was just really interested in people doing this and thinking about it beyond their farm gate or beyond, and I saw a number of very smart people very worried about climate, biodiversity, etc., and health, coming to the conclusion that ag had to change, and ag can change because they're these crazy pioneers that somehow did things that doesn't make any sense. So I thought, okay, there's something there because if people way smarter than me are like Ross Conser and other Tony Lovell, and definitely the late Tony Lovell are saying this is the biggest opportunity, okay, this is 15 years ago, then let me follow them and let's see where this is going and let me record those conversations that we're anyway having.
SPEAKER_02:I think that was an important part of it, right? To be just to capture that.
SPEAKER_00:Do you ever listen to those early podcasts just to see? I do too when I'm prepping for things like this. So I listen back to not the first one we did, but and uh it's very it's not easy listening to your own voice. Like it's I edited the first 40 episodes myself, and it's painful because you're like, why are you going down now? Yeah, how could you not so but I should probably just to get better, just to understand questioning. Yeah, there's a story, yeah. Yeah, we're gonna feed it to a large language model in one way or the other to see trends, etc. So that the model can listen to it, not me. But there's something there should because I know like Tim Ferris and others, like just to really get better at the story piece as well and the questioning. But it's yeah, it's nine years worth of podcasting and 15 years of following the space. So it's quite a not as long as some pioneers, but it's definitely longer than the Google trend. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's early days, that's for sure. Well, so we were hearing the same thing. We were hearing those anecdotal success stories, and we wanted to. And there's a lot of people that were excited about it, but in this day and age of who do you trust, right? We're inundated with information and everybody's waving their hands about the latest, greatest thing, and you don't have any credibility or no, unless there's a relationship that's there, you don't know what's real and what's not real. And and it became clear that there was something I could go out to these early regen Gabe and uh Gabe Brown and Gail Fuller and I, we were friends before it was regen, right?
SPEAKER_00:Before Gabe was cool.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and I could go on their farms and I just something was different. And uh I think there's something here, I probably was even at the USDA during those days, and it was like there's something here, nobody believes it or is willing to adjust global food policies or invest billions of dollars that needs to happen at this point, right? Unless there's something real, and science could do that, but not science the way it's been done. And so we had to really rethink, okay, if we wanted to use science, science is the way it's been conducted, is how we got into this industrialized mess that we're in right now. If we really wanted to use science to get us out to foster an evolution of a new food system, what would an experiment look like?
SPEAKER_00:And just for background, like science until now or until this points in ag, why is it so difficult to capture the complexity of regen farms? Is it because it's mostly on farm on the university, or like what's holding science back to catch up with this real movement? Because it's real and we're going to talk about results, but like what's holding it back?
SPEAKER_02:The scientists went down a road. They started to do science for other scientists, and they forgot that they weren't experts at farming, that the farmers were the experts at farming. And science has a role to play there in terms of scaling and transferring and understanding things a little bit, but not at systems development. That's something that farmers have developed the best management practices. And so when you re-yeah, so you had said back in the day, that was the only study that did looked at economics of regenerative. I just ran a Google Scholar search within the last few months. And I looked at the Lacan and Lundgren paper just because it's gotten hundreds and hundreds of citations. I'm like, boy, there's an active literature base here in regenerative agriculture. That's wonderful. Okay, this is great. Let's take a look because we're starting to write up some of our papers. 10,000 hits in Google Scholar when you search string regenerative agriculture. Whoa! All right, let's look at the first 100 papers and let's put a couple of sieves on here.
SPEAKER_00:I have a feeling where this is going, but continue. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Is it replicated? Is it is it do they actually define what regenerative agriculture is? And is it done on real operating farms or on an experiment farm somewhere? When you employ those three sieves, you go from 10,000 articles that have been published or whatever to seven.
SPEAKER_00:Wow.
SPEAKER_02:And that's baseline size. There's so much interest in getting our names on this next paper so that we can get into the right citation chain, right? That sucks. And you know how many of those are ours? Like almost, yeah, a good chunk of them. And we're poised to like quadruple over the next 18 months the number of primary studies on regenerative defined regenerative systems under best management practices.
SPEAKER_00:So we're excited about there's a strategy there as well, right? You mentioned it somewhere, I think on John Camp's podcast, you flood the system with as many papers, not to drip feed the system with a paper every now and then, because you have a lot of data, you have a lot of research, you have a lot of papers in the works. Yeah. Why is that? What do you want to just go from seven to 70 and not just seven, eight, ten, fifteen, etc.?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and maybe it's dumb to talk about this on a podcast, but once the powers that be know about this, they're going to start to take action. And I work on it.
SPEAKER_00:Oh no, we already see that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah, it's already happening. They're not uh yeah, they're not prepared for this. And so we've got a chance to really control the dialogue if we release our papers correctly, and the science comes out as a sucker punch, and the peer review process takes so damn long, but it's it is I think it's going to be really important in getting the right people engaged on this.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, of course, it's not just about the paper, but it's how and the science and data behind it's how it gets presented, where it gets how it uh floats, let's say, and if it's a part of a much bigger strategy, yeah, the chances of it it picking up is are just much much higher. And so without revealing too much, like what has you give a great talk actually at Ohio, I think State University. Anyway, there's a webinar which I will share. What have you seen in this study, in all these studies? What are there are too many stories to tell for sure, but some things that come to mind when somebody asks you, okay, you've done a thousand farms. What do we know now that we didn't know before?
SPEAKER_02:Well, a little more background is just what would an experiment look like, right?
SPEAKER_00:Oh yeah, let's go back to that. Sorry. Let's improve my questioning strategy here.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I think it's important to help under understand what it is that thousand farms is. And so we said, well, it had to be big, right? We had to simultaneously, because there's a sense of urgency, right? We have to get this data out. Like yesterday. It's got to simultaneously address many ecosystems, like so ecoregions, so across many places. It has to simultaneously address the food system, not just it works in corn. That's not good enough, right? It has to always work. And it has no matter what where you live or what you're growing. It has to look at so many of the response variables that regenerative agriculture is supposed to be doing. What is regen supposed to do? Well, it's supposed to address climate change and correct water cycles and help biodiversity and make farmers resilient and healthy, so on and so forth. It had to use harmonized methods and I would argue redundant methods because there's problems with every way that you measure these different things. So it that's really hard. And to do it a thousand wasn't enough. It still isn't enough. So we've I we took a we're a group of maybe 30 to 40 mavericks that work out of a pole shed in the middle of nowhere, South Dakota, and we decided to tackle this one. And uh we're not the prettiest, and we're not the richest, and we're probably not the smartest, but we've attracted a group here that cares about doing something. And and I am a firm believer that regular people are capable of extraordinary things, and that's really what Thousand Farms became. We we measured now over the last four years one thousand six hundred farms, creating the largest database of regenerative food systems in existence, and it's changed our perception of what regenerative agriculture is, as well as both empirically and personally. The staff at Ecdicis, they've vis each one of them has probably visited more than 500 farms. They have an into not just doing a certification questionnaire and taking a look to see if the cover crop was planted, but like getting their hands dirty right in the soil of each of these things. What an incredible resource the staff has become in terms of being able to help inform what's happening and tell the story of our food.
SPEAKER_00:And so on a personal level, how is your understanding and definition, etc., of region food and ag or regenerative agriculture changed.
SPEAKER_02:When I started this, how did we define it? Right? It was buckets of practices, wasn't it? It was digit cover crop, no till, that kind of thing. I think that was the predecessor. Integration of animals and yeah, yeah, in an animal agriculture, he'd been yeah, savory was ahead of the game on that for a long time. Now I know that, and then certifications of come on, and they're taking advantage of those, that that very rudimentary understanding of what a regenerative system is. And at this point, I could tell you there's going to be a lot of farms that are stamped regenerative that are not attaining what's possible. They're not focusing on the outcomes, they're focusing on checking boxes. And so I think that now for me, a regenerative farm isn't one that cover crops and no-tills and stuff. Yeah, they are. But more fundamentally, they're growing food for their families and their communities. They're not growing a commodity that they're moving to Seattle and then shipping it across the ocean, right? Their human feet are touching every acre of their farm. They're connecting with that land. They're growing smaller and better, not bigger and simpler.
SPEAKER_00:And that doesn't mean that they have scale. Yeah, is that a scale thing as well?
SPEAKER_02:Like how and the number of farmers that we have. We need a lot more farmers out there growing food for their communities. But most of all, this isn't a discussion about economics. This isn't a discussion about carbon. This isn't a discussion about water, this isn't a discussion about nutrition. Fundamentally, what this is a discussion about is life, biodiversity, and fostering that in all of its beautiful forms. And maybe I understood that early on, but now I totally get it. And all of those other things that I listed are outcomes of growing life on a farm. Yeah, it does. Yeah. A farm that has livestock, for example, just feels different. That's what one of my farmer friends just told me. Or told me at the beginning when I bought Blue Dasher. Totally right.
SPEAKER_00:And coming on to that animal piece, have you first of all, what does the research show on animals you mentioned somewhere? I think it was a LinkedIn. Cows are crucial for saving bees. Of course, you got some, I'm imagining some pushback. But how like the animal, the role of animals in the food system of the future, have you not changed your mind, but what have been insights over the last years of visiting so many farms where a chunk of them obviously has animals integrated, plus your own one? Like, what have been insights there in terms of the role of animals in the food system of the future?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, we're not going to save our place on this planet without animals. And I don't care whether you want to eat them or not, but we need them. These ecosystems evolved with animals and what they do.
SPEAKER_00:Where to start? Carbon data. Like I think the worst. What does the data say? Let's just get it out of the way.
SPEAKER_02:Regenerative ag regenerative management of cattle in North America. If we were to turn, okay, so number one, what is what does regenerative management look like? It is context dependent. And so we have to look at rainfall and light and these factors in order to interpret what regenerative management means, not from the standpoint of from the standpoint of those outcomes. So what is delivering maximum outcomes? What styles of management? And so we happen to have 500 ranches that we've looked at, something like that, probably more. And we've been able to dial that in. Remarkably, one of the biggest drivers is the 100th meridian, which, if you're not familiar with North America, there's a division, ecological division of the continent, right about South Dakota, actually, straight up and down. And that's the division between the tall grass prairie and the short and mid-grass mixed grass prairie. And you need to manage your cattle differently depending on whether you fall on one line or the other, in order to attain what's possible in that system. The only way that we are going to okay, so step one is that the regenerative folks are increasing the carrying capacity of their ranches on national averages about twofold in air area.
SPEAKER_00:Anybody in the back that's still, oh, can you feed and high? You need more land and all of those are interesting. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So you actually need more cows, not less. But they have to be managed correctly. When you have more cows, we find that the more regenerative practices, because you what you're doing is you're keeping them tight, you're moving them frequently, and then you're allowing that pasture to rest. All right. And when that happens, the plants are adapted for that really well. And so what happens is that the plants resurge. And as the plants resurge, that right there becomes a really pivotal piece in the ecosystem function. All right. So, number one, you have to have more animals in order to maximize that resurgence. They have to hit it hard, and then you gotta let it rest. And then the first thing that happens is biodiversity returns to that because the amount of the biomass and the abundance and the diversity of every single organismal group that we've studied seems to scale directly with plants, and how much biomass and diversity of plants are available in the habitat. That biodiversity does things. So, how does carbon get out of the atmosphere and put back into the soil? The plants do that, right? And so the photosynthesis. We find that if we were to turn our rangelands in North America over to fully regenerative practices, it would offset, it would store four plus years worth of annual emissions in the soil.
SPEAKER_00:Four years. In a transition period of how long? That's a great question.
SPEAKER_02:We're not sure on that yet. We've got that data. I haven't analyzed it yet, so I'm not going to stick my neck out there. It is going to defy current models. Let's put it that way. Because and it's actually. It's another.
SPEAKER_00:Do you expect a lot of pushback on that specific? Like the role of animals, the role of ruminants specifically have been very, let's say, triggery for the sector, sustainability sector, the agriculture sector, and they're not doing full life cycle assessments when they're considering that.
SPEAKER_02:And if we were to increase the number of animals in a cave, yeah, they're absolutely right. But we're not talking about that. We're talking about animals.
SPEAKER_00:I travel in.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I know. And this data will help to refute that. And it's really frustrating because if you read about it in the New York Times and the I think the Washington Post about the fact that we're not going to feed the United States or the world without KFOs. And I'm like, oh, that's just such a sock in the gut. Because it demonstrates the lack of connection that that media source has with the truth. And yeah, if you're looking at the data, they're absolutely right. But you know what? The data's wrong. As it's published right now, it's antiquated and it's been it was done wrong.
SPEAKER_00:And you've been part of Roots So Deep as well, the documentary series and the research piece got a lot of push, are getting a lot of pushback as well. We've hosted the premiere, let's say outside the US, with Peter in Rotterdam now a year and a half ago, I think. We had a lot of people that we somehow convinced to be there, and that for years we've been saying it's not the cow, it's the how. Really look at new data, etc. And until they saw the documentary and they saw the difference, and they saw you and others, it just didn't really land, which is just fascinating how strong that narrative of the world would be better without ruminants, basically, has been like it's gonna require a bit of undoing there or unlearning before we get on board. Of course, many farmers ranchers have been, and we don't have to show it there, but it's the rest of the world that has to catch up. A lot of funders as well, a lot of investors. All right, that's one of the reasons we do this series, are very wary of getting involved with anything that touches animals just because of yeah, the touchy touchiness of the topic.
SPEAKER_02:We're hoping this helps. What's interesting, I was talking with a scientific colleague of mine about animals, and animals were just a part of human culture for a long time, and eating those animals was a big part of it too. And then we went down this compartmental this cultural compartmentalization of ourselves and our connection with animals, and suddenly animals shifted in our mindsets into now. I mean, we have this probably physiological and biological need to be surrounded by animals, and we do that with dogs and cats now. And that relationship is much, much different than one that we have with livestock. And I have a feeling that change and that shift in relationship is one of the reasons why people are so adamant that eating animals is cruel and un and unethical.
SPEAKER_00:When in reality feeding empty your dog and cat is fine, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Exactly. Right. You can be dang sure. What would happen if you fell down for a while in a room full of cats?
SPEAKER_00:So it's stripped to the bone very quickly, yeah. But have you seen that changing? Like that the dogmatism like around that, or is it maybe the circles I'm traveling in, let's say, that still have a strong reaction? Is it in farming communities as well? We need a lot more animals on the land, back into landscapes, a lot more life, which is not easy because we've removed many of them and put them into confinement. Yeah, and so like how is that being across 1,600 farms?
SPEAKER_02:Well, it's there's never the most peaceful parts of my day are when I'm out sitting with our alpacas or our sheep on the farm, right? And so that I I and people are so engaged when they come to visit the farm, they want to see the animals, right? They think zoos are still popular. So I think that there's still a chance. I think we need to start raising animals. Everybody needs to have a chicken, uh, for example. That'd be a great start. Even in cities, you could do that, right? But yeah, uh connecting with our food just becomes an essential part of the solution, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00:And do you see that because you mentioned before, these are the farms or many of these farms that most let's say not advanced because it's not a race, but the ones that are leading seem to be growing food for themselves and their community, which suggests the decommodification. Yeah, also size. You talked somewhere about how there is a certain size that many farmers can manage actively that feet touch the ground on on that, which probably is not 100,000 hectares, although you might have a heart big enough to manage that, but there's a heart connection to the land, I think you mentioned that you're talking with John about. And so that means more people. What do you see for have you like from that 1,600 farms? Were there some big commodity farms as well that you were on? And how do you see a path for them?
SPEAKER_02:So, what I've seen is a schism within the regenerative agriculture community. So we have a scoring system that we apply to each farm that we visit. It takes about two minutes. There's eight yes or no questions, and in that two minutes, we can come pretty dang close to making some or pretty strong predictions as far as how much organic matter you're gonna have in the soil, how many spiders you're gonna find in the in your system, how fast the water goes in, how happy you are, and whether you you've got cancer in your family. It's crazily very simple, transferable, transparent, and it works. We spent millions of dollars to show that it works. It's really the only data-backed scoring system that's out there, and it's free. There's zero to eight. You're if you're higher than this number, you're regenerative, and if you're lower, you're conventional. And that's so what we have is we almost have instead of a binary situation, we actually probably have a tripartite situation. There's the conventional industrial, and we all know that system, that's where we're at, okay? And then there's in the middle here, there's what I'm calling and it's about yeah, industrial regenerative. It's those folks that are kind of like, I am a conventional farmer, this is my identity, and I use these products. I'm going to, but this regenerative thing is appealing to me. I'm going to use regenerative products to keep my system productive, right? And then finally, you have regenerative. And so when you say you've been on some large-scale regenerative farms, I say, yes. I absolutely have. And they're checking a lot of boxes, but humans haven't touched every acre of their farm. And they're not growing food very often. And they're yeah, so they're not getting at the crux of what a regenerative farm is supposed to be doing.
SPEAKER_00:And does it reflect in, let's say, the amount of life that buzzes around under. They're never going to achieve what's possible. Is that a problem? Is that a problem? Is it so much more interesting than their neighbors, probably in many of these counties? So it's a step in the right direction, but it doesn't get us where we have to go.
SPEAKER_02:And what where we have to go, we've been talking about this internally as well as at our field day. It was like, what are the barriers to change, right? And we always hear all of these barriers that are thrown up there. Well, agronomically, you can't grow food that way, right? Yeah. No, BS, we've got the data. There's there are farmers that are doing that. That's fine, but you never make money. I gotta make money. No, our data suggests pretty clearly that regenerative farms make just as much, if not more, money than their conventional counterparts. Fine, but you can't feed the world, right? No, no. Our data suggests that regenerative agriculture produces just as much, if not more, food than the conventional, or at least national averages for sure. So what is it? And a conversation with Matt Sanderson as a friend at Kansas State, he said, what it is, identity. And how difficult it is to change our identity and the culture around us. And how what is your definition in your own self of what a good farm is and what that looks like? That's a hard hurdle to overcome. You had to do that by creating this podcast. You understand, right? Your identity had to change into something else. I had to go through this. Okay? I was a scientist within conventional the matrix of science, and suddenly I'm I bought the farm, literally. I know what that's like, and that's what we're expecting our farming community to undergo right now. And not just them, but many of us in our culture have to change. It can't just be the farmers, right? We have to change more.
SPEAKER_00:And we uh and so we see that actually in Root So Deep quite interestingly, of course, on a small scale. Like I think five farm pairs are forced to look at each other in a different way, looking at the data, looking at the financials as well, and then having the potential of somebody, uh consultant in this case, I think Ellen Williams, to visit. And I think four out of five, no, I gave it away, but take that offer. Like the interest is there, but there's a lot of cultural barriers to even ask. I know your cows look better and different, and your house looks in a good shape, and your grass looks amazing, but what are you doing? There were couples that I think lived next to each other for 20 plus years and never asked that question, even though they asked, talked about everything else. So, how do you see do we need shocks or not to to at least ask over the fence line and see and ask at a neighborhood barbecue for help and for look, we we like what is needed for farmers and mass, like a bigger scale, to to reach out to these pioneers that you've visited and say, okay, uh hold my hand and walk me through this transition.
SPEAKER_02:Well, it's a lot easier when you have a community and a support network, isn't it? And I think that there is that inherent in thousand farms. We're working with some of the leaders in every community in terms of regenerative production. So, and in some cases, we need the cool kid, right?
SPEAKER_00:Everybody They're called the weirdos, they're called the stupid. I think SLM was known as stupid land management in Australia at the beginning because the even organic ones, like the farms look messy, nobody wants it. There's a lot of pressure against change, to say the least. So, how do we make it a positive one and unlock that?
SPEAKER_02:We need the cool kid, right? We need the cool kid that'll do this, and then all of that cool kids, acolytes, need to step in, and then you start to see changes, right? And some of the community- so we've visited 80 plus geographic clusters of farms across North America, and and some of those have the cool kid, right? And they're organizing their community and they're being that that lightning rod, right? And some of them don't. And so there's going to need to be different strategies depending on where a community is at. And so, yeah, when there's the cool kid there, we can help to support their efforts, right? We can give them sampling supplies and we can talk with them, just reinforce their efforts. When it isn't there, how do you build that? How do you make somebody cool?
SPEAKER_00:I didn't imagine we would go into if we would go here after 46 minutes, but it's a very it's important because if it's just the quote-unquote weirdos or the very closed ones that don't share, or ones that don't organize farm tours. And yes, you need the pioneers, and but you also need the first followers, or like that, then it becomes a thing in a community. If there are three or four, it becomes it's a very different discussion. And also for the pioneers, because if you're surrounded or if you have a few other farms in driving distance that are on a journey like that, your life is completely different because you're not just constantly having to explain yourself or getting weird looks.
SPEAKER_02:Gabe Brown, well, uh Gabe's a friend, I'll talk about him. He wasn't alone. He had mentors, Gene Goven and Steve Fettig, some of these other guys that were starting this in North Dakota. And then he had the Burley County Conservation District with Jay Fjorer and Daryl Oswald, and these guys were there was a tremendous amount of support and ideas. They would travel together and all of these things. That's how Burley County became the mecca of regenerative agriculture in North Dakota, right? It was yeah, so all of our heroes are it takes advantage. It sure does. Yeah. So we need to build those. And this isn't a this is a sociological issue. I'm just more and more convinced this is totally a sociological issue at this point. We've got so much data on environment, yeah, we're gonna keep getting that, and I think that's still important, don't get me wrong. We need economics, we need all that, we need nutrition, and really being able to button this up. But to exact change, this is a sociological issue. And I don't know about Europe, but in the US, where's our rural sociology hubs? The land grants gutted those programs first.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, there's very little imagination almost what a countryside could be. I think we friend of the show, Matteo Mazzola, one of the most interesting farmers, I think, in Europe, likes to say, which is not very flattering, but the countryside has not only farming-wise has turned into a monoculture, but actually people-wise as well, because most people left. And the ones that are left either couldn't or deliberately chose to, which is a certain archetype of people. And so we need, of course, people back as well, but also really understand how flourishing rural in anything in Italy, in the Netherlands, in Germany, in the US, are struggling with the same things. There are no schools, housing is difficult, there's no services, the bank is closed, good luck getting cash somewhere, supermarket, forget about it, and etc. etc. etc. etc. And and of course, that's just a downward spiral, and it attracts a certain amount of people, or people stay, and others have left a long time ago. And why on earth would they come back? Unless there's a thriving farm that grows good food, interesting people.
SPEAKER_02:And family. That's super important too. And right now in the US at least, we've come. Yeah, I mean, it's farming is uh yeah, people poo-poo the homesteading movement and stuff like this, and I'm like, boy, they grow them food? That's a farm. Probably more than the large cash grain producers where you never eat anything, right? Off of that piece of ground. But yet, yeah, there's that self-identity again, right? That's becoming a problem. We've now it's run, farms in the US are often run by middle-aged white guys. And I could tell you on a personal level, it was when I yeah, when I started to listen better, and Christina's she's she'll hit you in the face with a two by four if you don't listen to her, but that was so important in making this farm what it is, and for us to realize that a farm isn't about increasing efficiencies necessarily, right? It's not about maximization, and now I even wonder does food even fit well within a capitalistic model? And should it? Should we ever? One of our farmers in Vermont recently said, should we ever have made something as sacred as food a commodity?
SPEAKER_00:Very good question.
SPEAKER_02:I don't know that we should have. And that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be able to make money off of food.
SPEAKER_00:I think, yeah, same with land, probably. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:But man, there's a lot of other currencies that are really important that we're devaluing right now in lieu of that metric, that identity, and that's the metric of success of I am capitalistically look at all the money I accrued, right?
SPEAKER_00:And so where is this going? You said you're looking beyond because there are only so many grain fields you want to sample, and you've done probably most relevant ones. What is next, or what will be next if you have any idea in terms of what is exciting, apart from the smaller side on a subsistence side in Puerto Rico, which of course is different. Are you going beyond the US? Beyond Puerto Rico is part of it, but what is laying ahead for you? What is exciting in your research life?
SPEAKER_02:Number one is it seems that essential for change is community development. And so some of those things that we discussed earlier, we're going to be investing in a little bit more. And community-led science, especially, is one of those things. So the farmers themselves will be able to collect data on their own operations, input it into our system, and it'll contextualize it, provide support, and things like that that's just nested within the design of the whole thing. It's called Project Avalanche, we're calling it.
SPEAKER_00:The infrastructure Because you must be getting so many questions from other people. Look, I would love, like, who should I contact? In my like, you have such a rich network, mycelium network throughout the country. There's probably not a farmer that cannot ring you and say, I need some money. You cannot find them when say 50 miles, I don't know how far it is, 50 kilometers. There will be somebody there. Yeah. And in those, especially around there might be some blind spots, but especially around those clusters, it's impossible not to find your helper community if you want to.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And we're not taking advantage of that enough. And so, or rather promoting that enough. And so that's what we're doing.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, advantage sounds a bit wrong, but yeah, I understand your point.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. We're not milking that data. Yeah, no, that's what we want to do. Yeah, you got we're yeah, we're not helping enough to draw those people together. That that's a really well and it's a different, it's a different, it's a different skill set than what we prioritized early on with Thousand Farms. And so we're gonna be doubling down on that moving forward.
SPEAKER_00:Community manager almost like how to connect.
SPEAKER_02:And how do you do that? Well, maintain because we don't want to be we don't really want to be an aggregator, right? And take all of these farms because then you our relationship with the farmers totally changes, doesn't it? Suddenly you become a gatekeeper, and that's not our identity at DISUS. We are agnostic as far as yes, we are on your side. If you are a farmer, we are on your side. And yeah, the data doesn't really support what you're doing, but know that we care about you and we care about your farm and we care about your family. So, yeah, the infrastructure that we're developing as part of Avalanche is going to foster the globalization, which is the word doing, which sounds ridiculous. What, four years ago? It sounded pretty ridiculous that we were going to take this ragtag group of scientists and community members and turn them into scientists, then conduct probably, I dare say, one of the most important scientific experiments of human life. So, yeah, we're at the next expansion. We need to double down on our perception of regenerative. What are the extremes? And how do we need to adjust what based on the outcomes that we're measuring? What is the best management practices? What is a regenerative set of management practices? And that may or may not conform to what we currently think. And so starting to look at the really hot Mediterranean climates or the Puerto Rico, for example, has a much different climate. We'll maybe even be in Ireland next year. We're starting to look at the Chihuahuan Desert. So we're starting to look at what's possible and refine what these things are. And then probably the most proximate thing is I gotta get these papers written. And so I'm uh yeah, it's a heavy weight. That one is we're sitting on a huge massive data set that could change the world.
SPEAKER_00:While you want to go out and research and visit others, the extreme ones. Yeah, no, I can imagine the tension.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's a hard balancing hit.
SPEAKER_00:And so when you say the extremes, is that gonna challenge what we think, like carrying capacity and what we can actually grow, produce, biomass, like coming back to that lack of imagination. I think often we suffer from we can't we even we have barely scratched the surface of what's possible in in most places in terms of land. We are so used to degraded. And some of these farms are showing us a direction of how much life actually, but I have the feeling that we're only that's also only part of the way in terms of how much life a piece of land can support when it's flourishing.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah, no, it's already doing that, and some of it is some of it is just taking a deep breath and listening to what the land used to tell us, right? We're now we're like we're doing a project on the coastal range of California, which is a Mediterranean-style climate, and so they get a monsoon of rain and then it's dry for a long time. And trying to figure out okay, number one, what were the grazers here? Is cattle the right thing to have here? Because there's hind gut room or fermenters like horses and camelids that really like that scrubby crap that cows might not do as well on. So really questioning it, right? And then listen, when did those grazers ever come out there? Well, the Central Valley of California flooded once every seven years. We've got geological records of that. Where those animals used to hang out in the Central Valley. So as that flood water comes up, they start retreating to the. Should we be grazing on an annual cycle? What's optimal? So we're studying that, those kinds of questions. And yeah, at the end of the day, because right now, if they were to employ even what we're doing in terms of regenerative management as defined by arid regions in North America, because they're an arid region, if you were to just cookie cut that and stamp it over on the coastal range, they're seeing carbon levels go down in their branches. And so, yeah, it does get more complicated. But I do think that by having a continental scale project like this, there's enough evidence that we can make some pretty strong assertions about what's possible. Also, the thing to think about is these are not static. Climate chaos is a very real thing. And what Thousand Farms has done is it's allowed us to test the robustness and resilience of our food system under a lot of different climatic scenarios. And so we can proactively say, as the climates are changing, what is our risk associated with agriculture under different practices?
SPEAKER_00:And like on a local, I don't even say policy level, but like county level, a lot of these rural communities. I always been a response from politicians and people that sometimes desperately try to keep these counties alive and these places. Do they start to see a different kind of agriculture's fundamental piece of the puzzle there to maybe reopen school or to keep to bring people? Let's at least have people. And so the what because I'm still waiting for almost like the competition of regions saying, I'll come here as a new farmer because we have the infrastructure to we have the soil measurements, we have the education schools, etc. etc. How has it been in the US in terms of local? I know the national political side is a mess, but on a local level, how's been the let's say reception of this kind of this kind of research?
SPEAKER_02:It's crazy how well the science has been, like the our teams have been received by the farmers. It's yeah, it's like nothing I've ever done before. People are excited about that. And in part, it's the style that we run, right? We're relationship intense. So we kick, yeah. We talk and we listen to the farmers. We don't come in and dictate what they should be doing. We're actually recording what they're doing and what they're developing in terms of best management. One of the things geography really matters, and and I think I hinted at that in the Central Valley coastal range discussion, that geography there influenced grazing patterns. Another thing is an Appalachia. So we talk about the Dakotas, right? And I've mentioned, oh yes, this is a hotbed of regenerative ag and stuff, and where there was some, I think, some formatization, some yeah. Anyways, you get the idea. The Dave but I was talking with one of the forerunners in this area, and he's yeah, the three of us together have 120 collective years of grazing management using regenerative practices. Isn't that incredible? I'm like, boy, that's that's that's through the roof. No, I was out in Vermont and I was talking with this lady, and she had six hours, like 12-hour rotations in her cattle, and we sank our soil probes to the hilt in black soil. I'm like, how long have you been doing this? And she's like, like, managing like this? I'm like, yeah, this pasture. He's like, well, it's been in the family for 250 years, and we've been doing it the same the whole time. I'm like, huh. That's a test of the regenerative system right there, isn't it? And the reason that has been the way that it is is because geographically, what a pain in the butt it is to drive through Vermont. There's mountains everywhere. You can look as the crow flies, and you're like, this is going to be a 15-minute drive. No, you're driving for an hour to try to get there. And that compartmentalization of different communities has led to local community development. And it stretches from Vermont and Maine all the way down into the Carolinas and probably into Georgia. We're getting there next year. And so where we've seen regenerative really take off and persist has been in those geographically isolated places.
SPEAKER_00:Or you're forced to cooperate, if you like it or not.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, for sure. And the Esequia system in New Mexico is the same way. These water systems in near Taos is where we piloted Avalanche this year. They have where the Rio Grande comes out of the mountains, there's these little water districts essentially. And because of the legal design of these acequias, the communities have come together and they're forced to legally if they want to use the water. They gotta all at least once a year get together and clean that place up. And that forces the community to work together a little bit. Super interesting how important that is.
SPEAKER_00:Very interesting. I think there must be probably 1,600 other uh anecdotes and interesting data, but I want to be conscious of your time because I know you have uh other places to go and finish up a few papers here and there, just so just to put some pressure. Just a few. I want to thank you so much for coming on here. It took a while. I don't think we should wait so long next time. There will be a lot to discuss as the avalanche literally comes down in terms of papers and publications and what it means beyond this massive project. Is it gonna be beyond four years?
SPEAKER_02:Are you following some like longer, or is it we're in yeah, for almonds, we're in year five. For some of the cash grain systems in Canada, we're in year five. So the hope was might measure them in one, two, three, five, and ten. And who knows where life is going to be like at year ten, but yeah, but that's been super interesting. They just wrapped up the fifth year in almonds for a while and I've gotten to watch kids grow up and uh and their orchards change and listen to the fears and the successes and all of those things of these people as they've gone through that. And I think that's probably one of the most valuable outputs of the thousand farms is yeah, the data's great. The relationships that we've been able to forge with these farmers.
SPEAKER_00:You went into like farmer health and happiness as we're going to rabbit hole, which I want to be conscious of. Like what just an anecdote there? What have you seen there?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, well, we're killing our farmers, or at least our croppers, through greed, corporate greed. All of the pesticides are really having an impact. And I think that's a huge driver. Super interesting. You'll see especially corporate-run farms, but also even family-run farms that are trying to make a go of it on an industrial scale. And so they've got that potato field, right? And then they've got this other little one, right, that their wife runs, maybe. And that one's run organically. And so we sample this other big one. That's the one that's a real potato production. Guess where the family is eating their potatoes from.
SPEAKER_00:Of course.
SPEAKER_02:And we've seen that time and again. And it does draw into question the integrity. And should you be selling that if you don't want to eat it yourself?
SPEAKER_00:And I always wonder what the big ag company people, not any conspiracy stuff, but what they are they eating themselves. Yeah. What are what is in their fridges? What do they feed their what do they give their children? Sorry, feed is not the right word. What do they give their children? I would love to know. Do a proper research. Yeah, I would love to know. Do we find glyphosate residue in their hair or not?
SPEAKER_01:What's the hair?
SPEAKER_00:What are they feeding their children? Would be very interesting. Maybe we can do a proper analytic at some point because there's something there. Because I can't believe publicly saying that this is safe is one thing, giving it to your children with all the research and knowledge you have and reports. I just went a video on one of the big tech channels on YouTube on Monsanto 45 minutes documentary, not going light, let's say, with a big disclaimer up front, because and you saw the bots already going. And yeah, it shows some very interesting things we knew already, but it's nice if it goes to a bigger audience. Like, what do you feed your children if you work there? Yeah. How but yeah, we'll find out at some point. For now, I want to thank you so much for your time coming on here. Good luck with finishing a lot of these, and absolutely we'll keep in touch and have you back when there's more, which there will be.
SPEAKER_02:Good, good. I'm so glad. Thank you. Yeah, appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you for making it all the way to the end. I'm still reflecting on this conversation with John. It's always a pleasure, but I don't know if you agree. Also, let me know in the comments. It felt almost like we just got started after an hour, and of course, life had to go. John had a lot of other things to do on the farm and with I don't know how many papers to publish. So I really feel like I want to spend two, three hours and walking the land with John. Anyway, let me know if that's something you'll be interested in. I'm really stuck by how this feels like a monumentum moment in region. The people that have been looking at this for the longest in terms of science are preparing an avalanche of papers. I'm really curious if that effect will work, if it will overload the system somehow and somehow shoosh the bots that for sure are going to push back on whatever claims that are going to be out there. But it's very impressive. 1,600 farms in one continent, on one continent, Canada, US, I think a bit of Mexico. And the amount of data coming out there, the amount of farmer stories and health stories, but also the amount of, we didn't really get into that, but the amount of deep suffering that is currently happening in agriculture, the amount of people, farmers that have cancer, or some kind of form of cancer, or the amount of families that have that is just incredible. He talked about it in other conversations, the Ohio webinar, which I'll put in a link in the show notes below, but also the conversation with John Kempf. And so we didn't really get into the deep side of things, which maybe is good, maybe it's not. And yeah, how science is only gonna get us so far. I remember Zach Bush saying that on a panel with us in at Groundsville a couple of years ago. Like it's gonna get us so far, and then we need to take it. We need to use it, we need to really prioritize soil health, farmers' health, and animal health, obviously, um, and start building things. So this is a hopeful message, but it's also a slow one. We had another conversation on science with Douglas Scheel from Wachen University not so long ago, like how difficult it is for new science paradigmas to land. And but the farmers are doing it, they're showing it, and need all of our support. If you have some of those like cool kids, as Jonathan mentioned it, in your community, or somebody that could become a cool kid and could attract others and make it easier for neighbors to transition, find a way to support. Find a way to really, from of course, buying the produce and all of that, but also use your other capitals you have, your social capital, your leverage, your megaphones, your social media, all of that, and your smartness if you work in the space to really make the cool kids shine and make sure they're not alone. So that will be all for me. Thank you so much for listening and see you at the next one. Thank you for listening all the way to the end. For show notes and links discussed, check out our website, investinginregenerativeagriculture.com slash posts. If you like this episode, why not share it with a friend? And get in touch with us on social media, our website, or via the Spotify app. And tell us what you liked most. And give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or your podcast player. That really, really helps us. Thanks again and see you next time.
