Regenerative agriculture with Jason Rowntree, Michigan State University

Today we are joined by Jason Rowntree from Michigan State University where he is working on systems increase the resilience and to reduce the environmental harm of our food systems. Finding the driver across rural America that encourage farmers and ranchers to adopt management practices that improve soils, and protect local environments and the climate are a key priority of his work. Jason has built and runs the centre for regenerative agriculture at Michigan State University where he is increasingly seeing benefits for farmers that adopt regenerative principles to improve soil health which include:

• no till
• cover crops
• improved biodiversity
• incorporation of grazing animals in cropping systems

Building the resilience to the farms and ranches of Michigan and further across the United State is a key focus of his work.

Transcript

Ash Sweeting 0:07

Welcome to the AshCloud. I'm Ash Sweeting. Today we are joined by Jason Roundtree from Michigan State University, who is working on systems to increase the resilience and reduce the environmental harm of our food systems. Finding the drivers across rural America that encourage management practice to improve soils and protect local environments and climate are a key priority of his work. Jason has built and runs the Centre for Regenerative Agriculture at Michigan State, where he is increasingly seeing the benefits for farmers that adopt regenerative practices to improve soil health through no-till, cover crops, biodiversity, and the incorporation of grazing animals into cropping systems. Adding resilience to the farms and ranches of Michigan and further across the country is a key focus of his work. Jason, thank you very much for joining me today.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Great, great to be on and looking forward to it, man.

Ash Sweeting 1:04

So you're working on sustainable agriculture very much in the livestock sector. So can you just start with your journey in terms of how you got to where you're at and the work you've been doing over your career?

SPEAKER_01 1:19

Yeah, so I my dad's a cosmetic dentist. Um, but you know, my sister and I, when we were young, we would go to our local fair, and we both fell in love with that. And so we started showing livestock at a fairly young age. And so I kind of came through the show ring in Texas, uh, grew up north of Houston, went to AM. And so we, you know, we showed uh sheep and cattle and hogs all growing up, and I really uh became uh just I loved livestock evaluation. I I loved the the art and the science of it. And so I um through college I participated in livestock judging and and then coached livestock judging teams and um worked through that, and that this was in the 90s, and so I um came to Michigan State in the 90s and I coached a judging team and did a PhD here, and so that was kind of how I entered and then um the closest job to Texas was at Louisiana State, and this had probably been in 03. Um, and so uh my wife and I and our young son, we packed it and headed to Baton Rouge. And you know, I did nutrition work on my PhD, mineral trace new, you know, trace mineral nutrition. And so I got down to Louisiana and instead of having an Angus and Hereford cows like we had in Michigan, we had Brangus and Brayford cows. And and so I but I started doing you know regular supplemental nutrition, right? Like soy hole pellets, and uh, you know, we we got a lot of really low quality hay in the south there, and so you know, looking at protein supplementation and pretty simple stuff, and and so you know, things were rolling along. I wasn't doing anything real cool. And then uh hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit in 05. And um, we were you know not far from New Orleans, obviously, and um I was actually south of New Orleans within a week of the storm, and um, you know, uh in the state of Louisiana law, it says that extension employees are considered first responders for a food disaster. And well, if there's ever a food disaster, it was those two hurricanes. Um and so uh we had cows running all over the place, south of New Orleans, uh crazy stuff. And you know, I I just started thinking about it, looking at all the devastation. I just started kind of you know looking at man, you know, what happens here, right? We don't have a lot of real food around. We got a lot of good commodity ag, but not a lot of local or regional food. And um, and we got a lot of fossil fuel in our systems. And so I just started thinking about that, and and it kind of struck me, and I kind of put it in the back of my head. And then about uh, you know, four years later, um, I had the opportunity to come back to Michigan State. Um, my mentor, Dr. David Hawkins, had retired and there was a position open. And so I was able to come up here, and I've been here for 16 plus years, and and part of the deal was that uh we have a center, Lake City Research Center, which is about five, six hundred grazable acres up in North Michigan. And Dr. Harlan Ritchie was uh that's where he brought some of the very first continental cattle in the 70s into the United States, uh, into that farm. We we brought Fleckvey cattle out of Austria and other countries. And so it's got a lot of history, and Harlan Ritchie's a god in the beef cattle industry. And and so I came to the farm and basically had this blank canvas of trying to think about what this looks like. And and we didn't call it sustainability, we didn't call it regenerative. That at that time, Kit Farrow, which is this really renegade rancher in Colorado, right, he was using the term, you know, like uh low-input ranching, I think. And and so that's kind of what I was thinking about. And so I started there and have been doing the work ever since.

Ash Sweeting 5:08

Wow, that's a great story. And um and the the fact that Hurricane Katrina and and those other hurricanes, they they uh impacted you, and you actually, you know, I can relate back to my time working in the developing world where you you see the impacts of some of these uh climate-related incidents and disasters on people, their livelihoods, their homes, and stuff like that. And um, it certainly has a very, very deep and lasting impression and and can be very motivational.

SPEAKER_01 5:39

Absolutely. I saw things I never care to see again. Uh crazy, you know, we found cows. I've told the story probably a hundred times, but you know, uh we we found cows that had brands on ranches that started the storm on the east side of the Mississippi, and we found them on the west side of the Mississippi. So if you think about how big and bold the Mississippi River is as it enters into the Gulf of Mexico, um, those cows are tough. And they, you know, they they made it all the way across the river. And and uh, you know, I saw we were at a spot that had 25 to 27 feet of storm surge. And um, I mean, think about that. Like it's crazy. And uh, we you know, I saw tricycles in the tops of trees and you know, just crazy stuff, and it does impact. You know, I grew up with storms, um, and and I'm you know, I grew up around you know the Houston area and and get it, but it it does, it does. And I and I've worked a lot and not a lot, but I've worked in three different countries in Africa and you know, kind of seen the the impact of that as well, and it just kind of just humbles you. And you know, we talk about all this stuff with with climate and metrics and what to measure, and it really gets you back into thinking about resilience and food security, you know, and just kind of simplifying the equation a bit.

Ash Sweeting 7:00

So back on to the resilience and food security, and you know, there's yeah, the one of the the great things about our farming systems, our food systems is you know their diversity. You know, you've got everything from you know down in the southeast that's subtropical, up to you know the temperate um conditions, you know, where you are up in in Michigan, and then obviously when you start looking at Europe, when you start looking at Australia, when you start looking at South America and Africa and India, you've just got such a huge plethora of different systems, which which is great. And it makes it so colourful and brings characters into the industry and all that sort of stuff, but it also means there's certainly not one size fits all solutions that would work across all those different geographies and cultures. So, how do you think about approaching sustainability and and the resilience and food security given all that diversity as both an opportunity but also a challenge, I guess?

SPEAKER_01 8:01

That's great. You know, I think each farm has its own singular DNA. I mean, each farm is is unique and different. Uh, my friend Russ Conser says each farm has its own fingerprint. And so I think step one is that we we we realize that, right? We can't broad stroke things like we want to do. Um, number one. Number two, I think no matter where you are and where you live, um, and and I I go back to a lot of things I've I've learned from Alan Savory uh over over the last 20 years, and the fact that ecosystem processes will always need to be functioning no matter where you are or what you're doing. We always need our energy cycle, we need to be capturing solar energy, we need to be photosynthesis, photosynthesizing, uh putting our solar dollars in the ground. We need a functioning water cycle, uh, we have to have a functioning mineral cycle, and we need community dynamics, we need biology, we need large and small biodiversity. And no matter what we do, we have to have those four things to live. How those ecosystem processes are affected within the respect of that singular DNA of a farm is going to be different. Uh, space and time confounding is huge. And so it's a function then of understanding what potential ecosystem processes may or may not be impaired. And how does management free up that log jam to improve overall productivity and resilience? And so that that's kind of how the way that I think about it, you know, and and in the Midwest, we may not have as great of a water cycle issue, we have water quality issues, um, but we may not harvest solar energy as well as we can in the lower Great Plains, for example, right? And and so all those things kind of factor in uh um into to making better decisions that that lead to improved productivity and stability, I think, in these systems.

Ash Sweeting 10:00

So I'm I'm sitting here in the Northern California on the west coast of North America, and the forests that basically run up and down the west coast, the redwood forests, the coias, my understanding is that over 50% of the nutrients that have grown those forests originally came from the ocean. And then salmon is probably one of the primary vectors, but other vectors have harvested nutrients, nitrogen, other nutrients from the ocean, carried them up the streams, then bears, eagles, coyotes, etc. etc., insects, um, small ro small mammals, reptiles, have then taken those nutrients out of the river systems and spread them across the lands, and that's led to these amazing redwood forests, the biggest trees, or biggest organism, I guess, on the planet. And that's all because animals are these nutrient transport systems. And if you start looking at the bison in the Great Plains, or if you look at the the herds in across Africa, the wilder beast and antelope, etc., elephants, giraffe, along with the lions and the and the predators that make them move around, you've got the fact that these similar concepts where animals manage the part part of managing the that the natural vegetation, but they also transport nutrients. And my kind of concept of regenerative agriculture is how do we how do we actively manage, because obviously rangelands or wilderness is passively managed, we don't manage it, that's nature's forces, but in our food production systems, how do we kind of understand those concepts and then tweak them to manage it so we've got those nutrients, we've got the healthy soils, we don't have too much or too little vegetation cover. So, how do you see all that and and I guess where do you see the opportunities to actually help those land managers to actively manage the land in in a similar way?

SPEAKER_01 12:03

Yeah, and that it's a great a great um analogy um that you're using, Ashley. I mean, it's it's uh you know, you know, and and even even if you think with the fish, there's also massive insect flora that are also driving those systems as well. I I'm a river bum, I'm a trout bum, right? So I I sit there and study study river ecology and just I love it, right? And and um and and so I I still think that we should apply these ideas and concepts of trophic cascades into into our farming systems, into how we produce food as well. And realizing that humans are amongst these systems, we're not above it either, right? Regardless, like the you know, there's always a a human that has evolved cohabitating with with the the beautiful you know system you described with with the salmon. And and um and and so to me then it's it's really about capturing that biodiversity and and understanding um that that resilience piece, right? And and thinking that um I know this, right? I'm this is anecdotal, it's I don't have my p-value. But you know, if I'm putting out a cover crop or if I'm reseeding something and I put out 10 species in a field mixed together versus one or two, odds are that one of those 10 species will want to germinate in an area that it that I planted it into. But if I only take one or two, there's a much less odds that something will germinate because perhaps those conditions aren't right, you know, and so the greater the the biodiversity in that system, then the more resilience it has, the more opportunities for productive growth and stability that we do have. And and and I think that that it's similar, right? So it's it's thinking in terms of nature, but applying it to how we produce food. And in that that sheer chase for greater productivity and yield and efficiencies without tying that that that number to a natural resource has kind of led us down this very high productivity angle that has led to more monocultures in these systems, but it's really not anchored to anything in terms of resilience or regeneration, right? We don't look at a bushel of corn per acre per unit water conserved. We don't look at a bushel of corn per acre per amount of carbon absorbed, we just look at that bushel per acre, and that's how we pay. And therefore, there's been no real incentive to think even deeper or further into how we price this out in our in our North American agriculture system.

Ash Sweeting 14:46

I couldn't agree with you more on that that whole concept of of you know how we're measuring things and whether the bushel of corn, just seen as a bushel of corn, and not all the, I guess, in so many ways, the you could call it ecosystem services that would come along with that or resource utilization services that come along with that. In many ways I see this as being driven by what's easiest to measure. It's very easy to measure a bushel of corn or a ton of corn or a gallon of milk, it's much harder to measure all those other things. So, where do you see opportunities to to evolve that way of thinking?

SPEAKER_01 15:33

Yeah, I I do see a lot. I mean, you know, first of all, I think anybody in this space is well-intentioned. So if I come across critical, it's not a personal thing, it's just a function of where we are. And I I do believe that regardless of an opinion on climate, or the regardless of the opinion of a greenhouse gas, we still need to understand the metrics of resilience and the metrics of energy efficiency tied to a natural resource because they're finite. And therefore, um, there are ways that we can do that. Now, we we we have to meet multiple goals when we assess these things. Number one, we've got to inform a farmer or a manager of how their decisions are impacting uh an ecosystem, uh, an ecological, you know, ecological function, right? Water, energy, the things we talked about, biodiversity, minerals. So we might need some leading indicators that that explain to a farmer how their decisions in a short-term window influence their corn crop or influence their pasture recovery, right? And these are leading indicators, they're often more qualitative. Uh, they're they're very specific uh to that space. They often can be confounded more in time and space based on prior decisions. Um, we can step it up a notch and say, you know what, we're gonna measure the heck out of this smaller spot, and we're gonna put water sensors and we're gonna take a lot of robust carbon measurements for below ground, and we're gonna put flux towers, and we're gonna use remote sensing. And these are the things I do a lot in my daily walk, um, and get really good metrics at that one farm. But then the scalability of those metrics, how does that look across a watershed? And so then, you know, and so we have better, better information at a farm level and and can can do, you know, that so that's kind of that second approach. And that third approach is gonna be what does it look like for Tyson that might have 18 million acres in their supply chain? Well, at that point, we need to scale this up to more process-based modeling that can you know be perhaps very accurate across a large scope. Uh, we can run that in iterations over time and and and reduce uncertainty by by iterating a model not just in year one, but year one to 30. And what does that mean look like over time based on the inputs we have for that said model, and and can come up with a different answer to inform a different population, right? And and somewhere in between, we've got more mechanistic modeling, right, that is there that can be very useful, but often is more difficult to scale and requires greater calibration and greater input, right? So there's all these tools in the toolbox. Normally, what I say is we want to be ground up, top down, and meet farmers, ranchers, and supply chains in the middle, and use every tool we can in that toolbox to create the best assessment of metrics and move forward and kind of in that lens. And perhaps we can get to a point where we never dig another soil core as long as we live, or never use another soil sensor as long as we live. Uh, but it may not happen in my lifetime.

Ash Sweeting 18:44

It's very interesting what you're saying because you know there is such diversity out there as we've discussed, but also you know, the the resolution that you're monitoring everything on on your research farm is is awesome. But you know, as you said, it's not scale scalable. You can't manage that level of or do that much measurement um on the millions and millions of acres that are used to grow our food. And I guess one thing that I've been thinking about is is we tend to like averages because they simplify the measurements. You know, that that cornfield had X number of bushels per acre, or etc. etc. That you know, those cattle weighed X when they were weaned. But you lose the fact that there's lots of variation. Some of those, some parts of that cornfield may have been yielding four, five, six, seven times higher than some other parts of that cornfield. And is a way of changing the way we think about this, saying let's look at that variation and see that as the opportunity and by identifying the most productive areas and what we're doing there, rather than just trying to simplify things by just averaging across across those production systems.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

Yeah, I call it ecological epidemiology. And and it's you know, kind of like how we he we maneuvered nutritional epidemiology into uh uh a BMI, and we judge people's health based on a BMI, which is nothing more than their height and weight, and and we know nothing about their background or their health or their percent fat or whatever, right? And it's we do the same things in ag. And and um and and to me, the the uh beauty of the complexity and the opportunity, like you said, I agree, is in that uh opportunity of variation, right? Where you know, if you my my colleague Bruno Basso is global leader in modeling, he and I, uh, along with a gentleman by the name of Ian Olsen who was formerly McDonald's, we co-direct our center for regenerative agriculture here at Michigan State. And Bruno is a is a leader in using digital twins. He's he's developed digital twins based on yield stability mapping in crop systems, and he can show a farmer that by looking at yield stability and creating a digital twin, that normally 30% of the nitrogen fertilizer they're putting out on a given field is being wasted because the soil and the yield stability and the soil mapping in those areas are very low. It needs to be in a buffer, it needs to be in a perennial, it needs to be trees, but yet we treat that acre, that that nitrogen is either going into the water or up in the air, the same as we do another acre that might grow 300 bushel corn. And and that nuance is the future. That understanding of precision is the future, and and looking at these opportunities. I I don't know if a farmer can be paid for avoidance in the future or you know, other opportunities, at least there's Saving money by not pissing away that 30% of nitrogen on the field, right? But um, but the point then is that you know we see the same um variation in cattle. And I can look at at the very top five to ten percent of my cow herd. I can look at their their methane uh numbers on on a on a grazing season, I can look at their weaning weights, um, I can adjust it to a body condition score, and I can see that level of variation in a cow herd as well. And and so the the beauty in that is there is tremendous opportunity to refine our approaches, to nuance what we do in terms of whether it be a precision fertilizer or genetic selection or the management of a cow herd from ranch to ranch, and all meet these solutions while not having to reach into our pocket to purchase another technology, right? Or all these other things that are out there. I'm all for technology, don't get me wrong, but there's so much low-hanging fruit and that variation from acre to acre, there's from cow to cow, from manager to manager, there's a world of work we can do right there to last another few decades.

Ash Sweeting 23:14

So digging into that a bit more, be that the the nitrogen in the for the corn or or the methane for the cattle, you've you know, there's there's gonna be a mix of some sort of monitoring, some sort of technology that comes as a yeah, as an im as a guidance to models. Because as we've said before, we're not gonna be able to measure every single you know square foot of past or cornfield and soil or every single cow, because it's just it's just too expensive and it's it's just not possible. So I guess how do you see that nexus between what we need to actually measure to inform those decisions, and I guess also a bit about what that technology or what those solutions need to look like from a a farmer slash rancher perspective? Because if it's if it's gonna take an extra half a dozen staff and and an extra you know couple of hours each day or extra few hundred thousand dollars to do, it's not gonna it needs to be simple, it needs to be easy, it needs to be cost effective. So, where do you see that nexus between what we need um to help guide those decisions and and you know capitalizing on those opportunities durability?

SPEAKER_01 24:30

Yeah, uh, you know, silver bullet question, right?

Ash Sweeting 24:34

Um well there are no silver bullets, so that's that's I'm not I'm I'm I'm not gonna be able to do that. No, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 24:40

It's hard. It is hard. You're right, bro. But it is hard, is what you're you're leading into that. It's it's not an easy thing to do. Um our like um Occam's razor, Occam's razor would suggest that the most simple approach is the best. Um and and therefore I think that now right now we're we're um you know, we're a part of a of a national project that I I co-lead that's you know, we're working, it's 19 million through Foundation for Future of Ag Research, Noble Research, and others, uh Green Acres, uh Jones Family, Butcher Box. Uh it's like I got my patches on my shirt for my sponsors here, like NASCAR. But uh the um the fact is we are doing tremendous in-depth measuring that can't scale. And and but but I believe what we can learn, um, whether it might be we have a eddy covariate flex tower out that's giving me carbon carbon absorption every you know 30 minutes, and I can devise a net ecosystem exchange, or understanding a farmer and rancher's cow herd uh through simple phenotypic type of response variables. It might be weight, it might be frame, it might be body condition. Um, understanding how we can improve remote sensing to predict forage digestibility. Uh we work some with a model called metabolizable digestible protein model from space to try to try to get to some of these better, better indicators at scale, right? And so I think it's finding the metrics that matter, Ash. I think it's the opportunity is is having having the answers at a at a high-end level that cost quite a bit to really populate the system, but then refining it down to what truly matters, right? And if we can do that, I I think that's the best way forward. I think it's gonna definitely involve a remotely sensed ranch at some point. Um, but you know, it may be that we can identify certain key indicators at a ranch level that gives us a better estimate of forged digestibility and you know, gross energy lost from the rumen as methane, or we can understand more about an animal's uh genetic makeup that also can give us an opportunity uh to see reductions or to see improvements, right? And then kind of bringing those more simplified metrics that are input-driven from a farmer that might be more remotely sensed and and and and um I'm I'm not real hardcore on the AI thing yet and the machine learning thing yet, to be honest, because I just think that it from what I've learned, it just takes so many data points to populate these things to get them better. I just make we'll get there probably sometime. It's not gonna be really in the near future, but the point being is that finding these more simplified metrics that scale up into the answers we need that gives us greater nuance, so it's not this carte blanche formula across North America to predict something, um, is the next iteration of this. And so, you know, we see the opportunities for methane from the the least uh efficient to the most efficient, as well as the the acres we've talked about. I hope I'm not talking in circles, but but that's kind of kind of where I see it.

Ash Sweeting 28:06

Yeah, your your program, the research you're doing, you know, you're basically trying to find out what the metrics that matter, and the only way to do that is to measure pretty much everything you can think of. So do you want to just take a step back and go through all the different things you are monitoring on the farms and ranches, just to give everyone a feeling of what yeah, how broad and what that pool of things is.

SPEAKER_01 28:32

Yeah, sure. Yeah, so and and this isn't Occam's razor, this is the whole toolbox. Um yeah, we've got a a project, uh, the key collaborators are Noble Research Institute, Colorado State, Texas AM, University of Wyoming. Uh we've got others. I I please forgive me, I didn't say your names. Uh and and basically have about 50 PIs and 70 staff in general, uh over, I believe, like 10 modules we've got, right? Um so uh we work with Colorado State uh and their soil soil uh carbon labs, Dr. Francesca Catruffo. And so we've identified 60 ranches in the in north in the U.S., uh Texas and Oklahoma, Colorado, Wyoming, and Michigan. Um and we asked three intensive research sites: Noble Research, we have um Michigan State University, Lake City, my farm, and then we've got University of Wyoming, um, their McGuire ranch up at about a shoot, they're maybe 7,000, 8,000 feet or more, or maybe 10,000, I can't remember. High altitude, right? Uh so you can see we've created a kind of a gradient of moisture, a gradient of of growing conditions. And so we have um we have a water module where we've got water sensors uh in the ground. And so what we did first of all, then is we identified like a 10 to 15 acre site at our intensive areas. I've got uh replication of three an n equals three replication where I've got these five these 10 to 15 acre blocks where I have all this instrumentation, and then I put up what I call adaptive grazing and prescriptive grazing as treatments. We have the same thing in Oklahoma in a native warm season and in an improved warm season. Um and then we've got the same thing in Wyoming. So we've got adaptive and prescriptive replicated blocks with tremendous uh instrumentation, then we we take that 10 to 15 acre block approach, and then we did the same thing on 30 ranches, 10 in each of those sites, and then the last 30 ranches, we did very little. We took soil carbon, we do applied ecological monitoring, uh, we don't put in water sensors, flux towers, um, you know, all these, you know, the whole kit and caboodle at it, because that's our site to see what kind of modeling you know opportunities we have, right? We don't want to know as much to see how our modeling does. We're using um different models, including the MEMS model Dr. Katrufo's working on. And and so basically then um we've spent a lot of money on creating data scaffolding because you've got this disparate information coming from our our uh towers, our water sensors, our remote sensing, and others, our applied ecological monitoring. Uh, we use the ecological outcome verification model that I helped create with the Sabre Institute. And how do you capture all that that data? Okay, so we've got a data scaffolding, we bring it into, and then Jeff Goodwin at Texas AM leads our producer education where we've got we're getting, hey, what's your stock density here? What's your stocking rate here? What's your weaning weight here? So we get that applied information, and that information is the hardest to get. It is the hardest to get the producer information. And then we have socioeconomic modules that are looking into well-being and looking into money. And um, and so that was kind of a a quick one, and and I probably missed some things, but but we've got you know, we're in our our fourth to fifth year, and we're actually going to try to extend this out further over time. And it's just beautiful, man, when you can look at when you can look at 10 towers from ranch sites that are giving you real-time carbon uptake over years and seeing net absorption versus net emissions, right? Like the data becomes powerful. And then how does that how does that carbon uptake uh compare to carbon sequestration? Well, we're we're in a five-year window in in Oklahoma and Michigan. We're gonna try in Wyoming in five. I don't know if we'll see anything, but I I hope that paints the picture of the scale and the power of what we're doing. I'm I'm not aware of anything this ambitious, really, and it's a fun thing to do, but it's really hard as hell to manage.

Ash Sweeting 33:11

No, that that's fascinating. And firstly, um, has off to you for for digging in so deep in terms of you know collecting all this data and putting together um this amazing um collaborative effort across so many different institutions and and geographies. That's awesome to hear. Um one thing, one thing, and it comes a bit that comes to mind, comes back a bit to some of the things that um I discussed with Alan Savory. And you know, we we all have our own sensing systems, our eyes, our ears, our noses, which, you know, for I guess the best part of the last you know million or two million years that humans have been on the planet has been our primary source of data. So how do we and Alan's a big you know, Alan's not a huge fan of of technology, he's a big fan of of reading things through visually, you know, how you how you kind of read the land, I guess, rather than having lots of digital stuff. How do you see that and uh how do you see the balance between you know using our senses as data collective devices compared to you know digital technologies?

SPEAKER_01 34:24

So it you know, I um Alan, like if I could use use a quote from him now, um you know, Alan, Alan always has said is that you know humans only see what they believe, they don't believe what they see. And he's he's talking about you know our biases and and and that we only see what we already believe, right? And um there's not a better judge of ecological function than Alan Sabre. There's not a better ecologist on the land than Alan Savory, and I I will support that to my grave and um visiting his his ranch and and working with with them for a continuous period of time, right? And um I think that um there are I think that there are intuitive relationships that we have with land. Like you watch Alan, he's always walking barefoot. He's never he this guy's walking barefoot through the bush, right? And I always laugh. Can I just go on a side note? You know, you you got all these you've got all these like you know hugely wisdom-driven, you know, self self-proclaimed prima donnas on Facebook saying Alan Saber's full of it. And and I mean these dudes are sitting in ivory towers all over the world typing this shit. And then you've got Alan that's been walking barefoot in the bush since he was five years old. And who are you gonna believe? Okay, and and I I've I've worked hard in my career to visit, you know, holistically uh manage ranches. I I've been to Alan's site in in Zimbabwe, and there's nothing like you know, going and and and seeing that because you will change your paradigms when you see the successes of managing holistically. And the point then is that we need to continually be flexible in our management. We need to have a grazing management plan, we need to understand how ecosystem processes flow, but we need to be flexible and we need to make changes when appropriate. And the only way to do that is to have that nurture, to have that that bond with the land. That's how you make those decisions. Um, you can't make them from an office in New York with remote sensing, right? You you you have to have a tie to it. And and and again, I think what happens then is that we we can use technologies to scale up measurement, but it's awfully hard, I think, unless we have the right tools to make decisions at the land level. And and so it is a combination. Um and and so but but I I do believe that understanding how these things function at a very granular level is hugely important. Um, and so but in my work with Alan, Alan's never really shied away from technology. He just wants to be very careful in how you use it. And if you read his book and if you listen to him, he'll typically call technology like the most overused tool, I think, maybe, or the most, you know, everybody thinks this the silver bullet again, Ashes, is technology. Um, I would argue it's management and and understanding that piece, but not you know, but using technology when appropriate, and I and I and I love that that opportunity were those segment.

Ash Sweeting 38:01

I think that's a very important nexus, and I think, you know, you know, walking through, walking through the bush, you know, being an Australian, I spent more more time than most walking bare feet around, and you know, the bottom of your feet are a censor system. You know, you walk through on a lush piece of grass, or you know, the soil moisture, and there's a whole or it's really you know, there that is a censor system in its own way. And also going back to to Alan to a certain exp extent, and you know, he had a a military background at it um an early part of his career, and you know, military commanders pretty much universally universally say that even the best battle plan never survives the first contact. So once things start getting dynamic, then you need to be thinking not what you pre-planned, but what is happening very much in the moment. And I think there's there's something that can be taken from that in terms of of that nexus between you know that dynamic next um management pri approach that you've been talking about. So where where do you see the opportunities there?

SPEAKER_01 39:12

Well, I think that the great uh the great Mike Tyson says everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the nose, right? And I think that's kind of similar to what you're saying. And um yeah, and and I mean I I think that if if we if we take what we're learning through climate science and we're seeing these these uh increased peaks and and valleys of unpredictability, right? Like intense moisture, longer dry periods, um more ups and downs with temperatures, etc. All of that leads to being more adaptive in planning and leads to being more uh adaptive and in moving forward, right? And so um I'm gonna share some science from my my again my colleague Bruno Basso, where he's got a uh he's he's done done a lot of modeling work, right? And if you like what are what are back to the metrics, what metrics truly matter to sustain us, right? What what is going to sustain us moving forward? If we if we chase a carbon molecule and and and esteem carbon is the one metric that sustains life, um you farm potentially a different way um than you might if you're thinking more about productive stability in a system. Okay. So I'm gonna take two systems and separate them out. So number one, um and this is again, this is Bruno, that he's he's the guy behind this, not me. But if you want to build carbon below ground, um 80%, 70 to 80 percent of carbon inputs in a crop system, they come from b above ground and not below ground, right? Um, and and often those carbon inputs are coming from crop residue. So if I had 300 bushel corn and I have, I don't know, five tons of residual biomass being put back into that field in a no-till system, then that's gonna yield a very good carbon outcome uh based on modeling. But let's say hypothetically that I have a much more diverse crop rotation, so I'm adding different crops in that system, I actually lose carbon inputs to a certain degree because I'm not growing 300 bushel corn year after year after year. I'm I'm adding different things in there. Um and and but so so that diversity, maybe covers and all these things, adds to more stability in the system. It's more drought tolerant, it's more flood tolerant, but it may not just show greater carbon uptake in the soil than that system that's constantly pumping all this biomass back into the field. And then finally, what if you take animals and put them back in that system? Oh no, well, you've got methane going up. Oh, if the methane's going up, it's got a positive carbon footprint and it's gonna effing ruin the world. Okay. And and and so, however, if you look at farmer income and you look at again the stability of that system to feed people, that's the best answer. So the point then is that understanding what the the challenges are and how we address them make those decisions very um, you know, very straight, not straightforward, but they they they they point you in the directions you need to go. Do we want a food system that has more productive resilience, it's more adaptive, uh, that has the managers understanding what's going on, or do we just want to chase a carbon molecule so we can sell it to Google? Okay. And and so based on that, I think there's a lot of of variation in in what we're seeing in terms of management. And so, in my in my purview, you know, that that more resilient system that has more diversity, that has more opportunity, I think that should be our future, right? Um, and and so part of that is it it'll be more resilient, it will respond to these changes quicker, but it takes management, it takes education. And I think education, um, like you you listened to to my friend, like uh, you know, Gabe, Gabe Brown will say that over and over again that education is the big the biggest bottleneck we have right now. And so, you know, thankfully we've got a new young generation coming along, and I think it'll be really cool and killer, you know, to see that.

Ash Sweeting 44:00

The the term that comes to mind with everything you've just said is embracing the complexity, because it it is, you know, you're thinking about that corn um residue going into the soil, and you've got a single input going in for whatever that soil microbiome is trying to you know live amongst. Um, because they're living off a monoculture then as well, and suddenly you put you know a dozen or two dozen species, and then that's going to impact that soil microbiome, it's going to impact the insects, etc., um, and invertebrates that are living there, which is going to impact the birds and other species that are coming around. So uh it's all about that complexity rather than than you know embracing or pursuing the simplicity.

SPEAKER_01 44:44

You're right, and we don't measure that, uh, nor are farmers paid for it. And and so it it is, it's it is it's it's the the Serengeti rules, man. If you read the book, right? It's it's the the trophic cascades that that sustain us. And you know, you look at the biodiversity metrics and the huge uh diminishment of insects and birds and other populations, um, along with the loss of land, we're worried about our poor cows devastating Earth, but asphalt's a hell of a lot bigger foe than a cow to our long-term resilience and and and sustainability, right? And um and so it's absolutely about those things. And you know what? Maybe those models begin to yield different outcomes when we have better data to populate them, but we don't. I mean, you think about it, like in the opposite, right? The grassland systems, 60 to 80 percent of the carbon in that grassland system is coming from below ground, not above ground. You know, it's exodus, it's microbiology, it's roots, it's it's uh microinvertebrates, whatever you just you know, we talked about, right? And um, you know, when you when you you think about all those complexities that that are there, um it's awesome. You know, in two years, by grazing with density in our system, measuring with our cowards, for example, it could change. Um, this is just very early preliminary stuff, but I can show you through my adaptive approach, and I'm not calling it holistic plan grazing because it's really not, it's a science project, but our ethos is is behind that, you know, using that approach of thinking holistically. Um but but I can show you through increasing my stock density and allowing for longer recovery periods as compared to a quote unquote prescriptive approach where I let animals graze a pasture down to three inches and then I yank them out, I wait 30 days, I throw them in, let them take it down to three inches, I yank them out and do that three to five times based on a given grazing season. So if I compare that system to this adaptive system, I'm gonna call it, we're we've picked up um four tons of carbon uptake difference in two years with our towers. Replicated. Four tons. The positive, uh, we've got two to the positive and two to the negative. And that's carbon uptake. It isn't sequestration, right? There is, we're not accounting for an above-ground net primary productivity. So there could be grass residual that has some carbon, there could be some litter on top. We've got weight gain in an animal, but you see about the but the key is energy, actually. It's it's absorbing energy. And I can show you that we've got a four-ton difference in a few years just based on that, right? And you know, you throw cattle in, they're gonna graze the hell out of certain plants, and they're gonna overgraze the hell out of them, and you're gonna get imbalances with biodiversity, where that that high stock density approach and longer recovery periods, we have a much more uniform defoliation that gives a longer recovery period time for certain plants to have more opportunities to germinate, whether it be a tree foil or a clover that can't take overgrazing as well, for example, right? And it's a beautiful creation that that you can watch in that context. And I do think that, you know, I hope that we can see these opportunities moving forward uh with that. I think if we could find the right metrics of biodiversity, um, you know, everybody's trying to figure it out. Um and and uh but but but that's what sustains us, and that's what will sustain us in the future too.

Ash Sweeting 48:25

On the adaptive versus prescriptive uh side of things, it makes me think a bit about riding a horse. And if you move to the rhythm of the horse, uh over different ground, rocky ground, hilly ground, flat ground, and you adapt to the horse's rhythm as it moves, you'll have a nice ride. If you expect the horse to adapt to your rhythm, you'll just end up with a sore bumper.

SPEAKER_01 48:52

Yeah. Sounds like merge. You know.

Ash Sweeting 48:57

I don't think we'll get much dissent on that one.

SPEAKER_01 49:02

No, but you're right, right? You know, it's like you you need to be, you're right, man. I I grew up riding horses and I prefer a gator now, but but uh, you know, it it is, it's it's very similar, right? And it's it's learning to adapt and going with something, it's working with nature and not against it. It's it's working with your companion and not against it, right? And and and I think that um I think that that is that's a huge and really appropriate analogy. And um, so in that context, you know, let's think about how we ensure farmers through federal policies, right? Let's think about creating these opportunities and frameworks that improve and incentivize working with nature versus creating structures that are so linear that they often force farmers to make poor decisions because of federal guidelines. I think I think it's changing. I worked a lot with uh Senator Stabenow uh before she retired and of course was the you know the majority leader for the uh uh you know ag nutrition and forestry committee. Um great person to work with. And she really tried, I think, to get more of that of that common sense into foreign policy with her colleagues. And I think we need more of it. And and uh what that looks like, I'm not sure. Um, but but hopefully we can can make improvements.

Ash Sweeting 50:33

Jason, thank you so very much for everything so far. And before we go, is there anything you'd like to add that we haven't already discussed?

SPEAKER_01 50:42

Um you know, I think that we're in an age right now where um that this this theme that that you and I've chatted about is you know addressing complexity, right? Um we we can't look at it at a human. We look at things so so so binary. And um we you know they're they're red or blue, or you know, they're they're black and white, they're they're they're clean cut, and and so you know, if somebody agrees with one thing that RFK says and is make America healthy again, if you agree with one thing, well, you're now an anti you know zealot, you're a cult person, and you're you're all these things. And and and likewise any of the political candidates, there are things you can agree, there's things you disagree, but we just tend to put people in in two buckets, right? And and those are are creating this awful opposition with each other. And and I I think that we've unless we can begin to kind of nuance our thinking and and nuance our our evolution as a society, we're in for some rough times, man. And and we're already kind of kind of facing that, right? And and um and and so it's I I read a lot of books about ego and shedding ego and shedding bias and trying to be present. And um it's it's hard because we all have an ego, right? We all all think we might know, and and but but so I guess my passing thoughts are to give grace, to give mercy, to try to move forward in a way that um, you know, is it you know, understanding of the complexity we have as human beings and our belief systems and thoughts, and and not just take a single thing we disagree with and throw somebody out with the bathwater.

Ash Sweeting 52:39

Jason, thank you so very, very much for joining me today.

SPEAKER_01 52:44

Cool, man. Let's do some methane work.

Ash Sweeting 52:47

Sounds like a sounds like a plan. Thanks, mate.

SPEAKER_01 52:50

All right, thank you.

Ash Sweeting 52:52

Thank you for listening to the Ashcloud. Please subscribe to Ashcloud if you've enjoyed this podcast, where I will continue to discuss food sustainability with guests who bring a deep understanding of the environmental, political, and cultural challenges facing our society and creative ideas on how to address them.