AoR 166: Gabe Brown on Regenerative Grazing

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>> Welcome to the Art of Range, a podcast focused on rangelands and the people who manage them. I'm your host, Tip Hudson, range and livestock specialist with Washington State University Extension. The goal of this podcast is education and conservation through conversation. Find us online at artofrange.com.

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Podcast survey data from a couple of years ago indicates that listeners to the Art of Range tend to be bigger ranches, public land managers, scientists; and many in that crowd are skeptics of so-called regenerative grazing methods. And, of course, there's plenty in that group that are ranchers and range professionals who are all in on some flavor of holistic management, whatever that might mean. The all-in people are typically adamant, as am I, that they have seen results from thinking differently about grazing and from usually shortening the duration of the grazing period in a given area and increasing the length of the regrowth period. As an extension range and livestock specialist and a born optimist and a peacemaker and a diplomat, I see my job in part as bridging these worlds of people and identifying where the real world data takes us, including observations and anecdotes. And I have been trying for some years to reconcile what I often feel is people talking past each other instead of to each other about these principles. And I think the middle ground is bigger than we realize. We'll probably get into that in some more scientific detail in the coming year on the podcast.

My guest in this episode, as you know from choosing to listen to it, is Gabe Brown. Gabe has been at the forefront of this public conversation for a few decades. He's been featured in several documentaries about regenerative agriculture, about integrating livestock and cropping systems, and about problems with national policy on farming and human nutrition. But he is -- at least I think he would say he is, first and foremost, a farmer or a rancher, depending on what region of the country we're in. I visited his place in person in Bismarck, North Dakota; and he had limited time for a conversation. And this was made worse by the fact that I neglected to notice that I would cross a time zone in the short two-hour drive that I had to get to his ranch from the ranch I spent the night at just a little further west. So we didn't spend much time on pleasantries and recording instructions, and we just started talking with the machine running. The main thing I wanted to add to this introduction before we start the interview audio is that Gabe gave me directions to drive and walk through some of his pastures. I went through several fields of warm season perennial grass that was mixed with various cool season grasses and hairy vetch and prairie coneflower and many other desirable species of grasses and forbs. These pastures were in various stages of regrowth from grazing events, and a few were not yet grazed. I was there on August 27, and North Dakota had had pretty good summer rains. The pastures were beautiful. I've been studying rangeland and grazing ecology for 30 years now, and I feel fairly confident in passing judgment on what I'm looking at on the ground. The pastures that the cattle had just moved out of were not overgrazed. There was plenty of residual and clearly a healthy mix of grazing consumption and trampling. In the grazed pastures, the plants that were not eaten were mostly laid down; but there was so much laid down that there was no soil disturbance. And the recovery will be fast. There were pollinators everywhere and enough butterfly biomass per acre to impress the Xerxes Society and attract a lot of song birds. So my impression is that Gabe's rhetoric may be a little bit edgy, but his pasture condition speaks volumes. You can't fake that. So here's my conversation with Gabe.

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Before we start, what are you -- what are you basically interested in? What are your --

>> Yeah. I've -- I've been a rangeland ecologist for Washington State University, kind of the equivalent of Kevin Sedivec's role with NDSU. For a long time, I was involved with a group in the Northwest called Roots of Resilience, which for a while was an official savory hub.

>> Yeah.

>> And then they decided that the franchise fee was a little bit too high, so they're running [inaudible]. Yeah. And have kind of been in the middle. I was recently on the board for the Society for Range Management; you know, have been, I think, like a lot of people in my role as an extension person, you know, right in between sort of the conventional range science folks and the -- you know, what maybe are now called the regenerative ag folks where you've got guys like -- saying it doesn't really do anything. There's no documented benefits of rotational grazing. But then you've got all the people on the ground that are managing land that have said, but -- but it worked right here. Like, you should have seen this place 20 years ago. And what they always mean was that it -- it had lower productivity, had lower species diversity, lower soil health by every measure, and it made a difference. And so I recognize that it's difficult to capture those things, but that is the reality of it.

>> So I'm fortunate here in that we have -- we've had a lot of scientists come and do extensive studies on what we're doing. As a matter of fact, we have -- in the one of the paddocks right north of here, we have one of those --

>> The carbon flux towers?

>> Yeah. Flux tower.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. Thank you. So we have one of those. And we have, like, we did -- I don't know if you know Dr. John Norman. He's one of the --

>> No.

>> He's one of the premier soil scientists in the world. He came and did a three-year project here. We took over 300 -- they took over 300 soil cores down four feet deep here and then compared it to the neighbor, all the neighbors' property because, of course, I didn't have any data originally when I started. But, you know.

>> Right. No baseline.

>> Yeah. But the neighbors --

>> The neighbor.

>> -- conventional, and so we used it; as just unbelievable. In this town here, Dr. Norman found soil aggregation now deeper than four feet.

>> Wow.

>> And our organic matter levels -- and we do have the original tests taken conventionally here that showed 1.7 to 1.9%. Now we're 5.3 up to 11.1. And are you familiar with the work Peter Byck's been doing, Roots So Deep and all that?

>> Yes. I interviewed Peter for the podcast a little while ago.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. Watched the whole series.

>> Yeah, yeah.

>> It was well done.

>> So Allen, Dr. Allen Williams, my business partner with UA, is heavily involved in those. And, I mean, the data were collecting, it's unbelievable.

>> Yeah.

>> So here on our ranch now, we've documented 174 different plant species now in our paddocks. And Audubon was just here, and they documented 105 different bird species, you know, which is just unreal, you know. And so people say it doesn't make a difference. Come and look at the forage.

>> I think the birds was one of the more --

>> Yeah.

>> -- in my mind, shocking results from that Roots so Deep.

>> Yeah. They really didn't do enough of -- you know, they didn't go in-depth enough because there should be a lot more bird species than even that --

>> Yeah

>> -- compared to what they found.

>> Well, and they were looking at on a pretty small -- like, I think it's sometimes quarter section ranches and side by side where there's hardly any room to have a ton of habitat.

>> Yeah, yeah.

>> But, still, there were very localized --

>> It's amazing.

>> -- fine spatial scale differences.

>> The Audubon, the guy from Audubon that was here, he said, You have piping plover nesting on your property. That's impossible. They only nest on sandbars in the river, and -- which the river, you know, is just right over here, but it's still 10 miles.

>> Yeah.

>> And I said, Well, don't tell them that, you know. We got -- we got a -- so this is in our property. It's a big slew, and there's piping plover in that nesting in there.

>> Yeah.

>> So, yeah. It's --

>> Wow.

>> So for people to say there's no difference, I'll show them economically. The main difference to us as farmers is return. Profit.

>> Yeah.

>> You know. Yes; resiliency is definitely better, you know. We're storing a lot more carbon. That's measurable, quantifiable. I think it's proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. The work we're doing, you know, and Peter Byck's doing with the amp grazing, the work Dr. Jonathan Lundgren is doing with the 1000 Farm Initiative, we're proving that out. You know, we're proving. Dr Lundgren proved, has a paper out, Regenerative Farms 76% Higher Profitability. So these people can say. But the problem with people who are criticizing this is, I really wonder if they've done study -- studies long term on farms that are really using adaptive grazing practices, you know.

>> Right. And that becomes a challenge. Like, that's the problem with a lot of science is they do it on a little plot. It needs to be scaled.

>> Right. So these guys like Richard Teague have been trying to expand the scale of the study to better understand that.

>> And that's what you have to because --

>> Yeah.

>> -- you're working with an ecosystem.

>> Yeah.

>> So, anyway, okay. You'd -- fire away and ask me what you want.

>> No. We're off to a good start. I was actually thinking about starting high and moving in low.

>> Whatever you want.

>> But starting low worked pretty good. I am interested, you know, that -- in the notes that I sent you ahead of time, people have said that the term sustainable almost has no meaning anymore.

>> It doesn't.

>> And guys like Nathan Sayer have -- have said -- he was a pretty good philosopher. He said, It was probably always circular reasoning, you know, because whatever sustain -- whatever persists must have been sustainable. And so I actually like the term regenerative a lot better.

>> Yep.

>> So, one, I'm curious, you know, what do you mean by the term regen -- because it's in danger of also becoming a buzzword, and it loses meaning.

>> We can talk about that. Yes. So here's the definition we've settled on, you know, at Understanding Ag is regenerative agriculture's farming and ranching in synchrony with nature to repair, rebuild, revitalize, and restore ecosystem function, beginning with all life in the soil, moving to all life above the soil. It's all encompassing, you know. That's what we like to use. And what we've done to offset that, five years ago Allen and I, Doug Peterson, you may know -- he was soil health specialist with NRCS. He was their rangeland specialist for years. And then Salar Shemirani started a company called Regenified. Regenified is a certification verification company that -- it focuses on the four ecosystem processes because everything comes back to them and has six principles of soil health, three rules of adaptive stewardship, how they drive the four ecosystem processes. It has over 100 different observations and data points. Whole Foods has accepted that protocol and is demanding that all the food in their supermarket has either, you know, the organic certification or Regenified certification.

>> Yeah.

>> We're working with a lot of other companies and brands now that are going down that route. The reason we're doing that is simply how do consumers have the confidence that it truly is regenerative, and that's why we started it. I am not a fan of certifications, verifications. At least I wasn't.

>> Yeah.

>> But I got tired of the greenwashing.

>> Right.

>> Getting back to the word sustainability --

>> Well, and if I could interrupt you.

>> Yeah.

>> I think a lot of people feel that the organic certification was almost a kind of greenwashing. And so a lot of ranchers have gotten away from that originally certified organic, thinking it would provide them with a market advantage. And they gave it up because they felt like it was all about what you're not doing rather than what you are doing. And I feel like that begins to get at the definition of regenerative. You're trying to add something that's not just do no harm but what can we do that's good, that's better than net neutral.

>> You're absolutely right. And the difference with the Regenified standard is you -- it's a five-tiered system. Everybody who applies, if you make a commitment, you're tier one. But starting at tier two is when you can become certified Regenified, and you have only three years to move to the next tier. And what that is, it's -- you know, you have to be adopting the principles, rules to drive those ecosystem processes. And Doug Peterson developed those standards protocol for it. And we wanted something that shows constant improvement. You have to keep improving. This ranch here, we could be organic. We haven't used synthetics since '07 was last time we used fertilizer and that. Was probably 2015 since the herbicides and everything. The thing about it is, though, why would I? Paul's getting higher than organic prices for our products because of demand, because of the quality because we're doing nutrient density testing on them, etc. And so why would I want to be certified organic? It just really doesn't --

>> Right. People want to know if the land has been managed well.

>> Right. Now, getting back to the word sustainable, you know, I have the good fortune -- I travel all over the world. And I tell people I've never, ever stood on a single piece of ground that's not degraded. So why would I want to sustain a degraded resource? Doesn't make sense to me. I want to be regenerative to get it back so future generations may have the opportunity to be sustainable, which I think is really critical. So, yeah. You know, that's my thought process in answering your question.

>> Yeah, yeah. I haven't heard everything that you said about the topic. Haven't heard all of the YouTube content but have been more in the world of some of the scientific arguments around it. So I thought we might attempt to chase down some ideas that, you know, maybe are new and not just a rehashing of what you've said before. You know, I think one of the things that I read recently in trying to get at, you know, where's the crux of the matter here was saying that harvest changes everything and that, if you want to export a lot of stuff from an agricultural field, you have to have some kind of inputs; and that, if all you're relying on is natural inputs, then in a somewhat closed system there's not enough of that to go out. So, like, I would say that a grazing system is, you know, mimicking a natural system. But what about when you try to transfer that to, say, cropland where you're trying to use cover crops and grazing to fertilize the way we did up until 75 years ago?

>> Yep, yep.

>> Yeah. How would you respond to that?

>> Yeah. And I think this ranch is living proof that cropping system can regenerate soils and ecosystem function without inputs other than seed, okay, because, now, we grow our own seed here; but we do buy a little cover crop seed that we're not able to produce here because of length of season. But it all comes down to -- the current mantra in production ag is yield, yield, yield.

>> Yeah.

>> Well, we have to understand that every environment kind of has a maximum amount of growing season in our case, sunlight during that growing season. Moisture may be a limiting factor. What we're seeing in production ag is they're trying to outproduce their environment. Okay. So what we do here is we're not adding inputs, but we're capturing solar energy as long as possible throughout the year. You'll see the cash crop there is ready to be -- they're maybe going to start on it today -- harvesting that. That's a five-way mix of different grains. Goes for the hog and poultry rations.

>> Across the road here?

>> Yep. The one right down here. No, no. The run just over this tree row.

>> Okay.

>> As you're coming up the road here, you saw the swaths.

>> Yeah.

>> Yep. Okay. As soon as that gets harvested, Paul will be in there seeding the cover crop. Now, we're only a couple weeks from our first frost. That doesn't mean that we can't collect solar energy into November or December, whenever the snow flies, right? So we're going to have a living root in that. What we've proven is, okay. The straw won't get bailed off there. That'll get spread back in line. So we're only taking the grain. But, by planting cover crops, those cover crops will grow this fall. They'll grow next spring before a cash crop, you know, perhaps, depending on what Paul decides to go to next year there. And then there'll be another cash crop. Okay. Our soils are improving. We've taken those less than 2% organic matter. That field there is knocking 8%, you know.

>> Yeah.

>> So we're able to regenerate without added input. Now, you talk about, oh, but -- and I know what some people are going to say. You're going to run out of nutrients. That's bull. We've tested it. Understanding Ag, we're consulting on over 36 million acres across North America, England, and Ireland. We have never sampled a single field or paddock that is short of nutrients. There's plenty of nutrients. The issue is they're -- in the organic state, they need to be converted to inorganic for plants to use them. What -- how does that occur? Via biology, plants, living roots biology. Okay. That's the holdup. How did Understanding Ag go from zero acres, you know, seven-plus years ago to over 36 million acres? We're extremely good at making our clients money. We do that with that natural nutrient cycle. You can do a test called TND, total nutrient digestion. You show them the nutrients that they real -- really have in the soil. And they're going, Wow. No agronomist ever told us that. Yeah. It's there. And then you realize -- what happens? I mentioned earlier how we have aggregation down four feet or deeper. What does that do? That puts plant roots, plant bio -- microbiology, mycorrhizal fungi down. Am I going to run out of nutrients? Yeah. When that aggregation stops at China, right? I'm not going to run out of nutrients in a billion years. It's all a mindset.

>> Yeah.

>> But then what are we doing in production ag? We're applying copious amounts of nitrogen, which burns through carbon.

>> Right?

>> And soil is 11 parts carbon, 1 part nitrogen. You're burning through it so.

>> And is only produced by burning a ton of carbon.

>> Yeah.

>> I recently read the book Alchemy of Air, about the Haber-Bosch process to take atmospheric nitrogen and make it into nitrate. And I had no idea.

>> Oh, yeah.

>> He said in the book that something like a quarter or a third of the world's energy is being used to produce nitrogen.

>> It's foolish, foolish.

>> Yeah.

>> Meanwhile, how much nitrogen do we have in the atmosphere? We got about 32,000 tons above every surface acre of Earth.

>> Yeah.

>> I often make the statement when I'm speaking to farmers, why would I want to write a check for something that's right there?

>> Right.

>> And we've proven that on this place. And, I mean, you know, very diverse paddocks, ecosystems, perennials, that's the best system. You're constantly -- you know, then you've got to manage it correctly, you know, with animals.

>> That deep carbon is interesting. That's reminding me of a study done out of Boise in shrub lands. And they documented that, in response to fire, deep carbon like more than a meter down was depleted pretty quickly. And the assumption would have been that all that interaction would have been near the surface.

>> Yeah.

>> But it was the law. It was specifically with conversion of perennial grasses and shrubs to annual grasses and annual forbs, where you've got shallow, fibrous root systems that pretty quickly after that conversion happened, this deep soil carbon disappeared.

>> That's interesting. I'd like to see that paper.

>> Yeah. I'll send it to you.

>> Send it to me. But that's why, you know, obviously here in northern plains, there's not -- there was some shrubs, although, you know, century [inaudible] ago, the bison kept those in check. But not many trees.

>> Grassland.

>> But we had -- you know, I showed you the picture of the big blue. I mean, that'll go down 8, 10 feet or more. And so I think that's a proxy for that.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. Interesting.

>> There's been also some criticism about multi-species combinations and the idea that what you just need is biomass. And so, if you plant something that creates a bunch of biomass, that will do as much to feed the soil as having a six-species cover crop.

>> Okay. And my answer to that, I'm familiar with the research probably you're talking about and everything, my buddy. Yeah. But the thing is they're not taking into account in that research root biomass. And these multi-species, the different root types and how much -- you know, approximately -- I read a paper once. Approximately two-thirds of organic matter increase in soil come from roots, dying, decaying roots and what that does. What -- in the research I read, the way that I saw it -- and I've asked Dr. Teague and others about it. You know, that particular research come out of Washington -- is that they're just taking tons of above ground, converting that to, you know, carbon and how much should increase organic matter. But they totally not looking at the root biomass. And, when you have these diverse poly cultures, the other thing is, you're going to accelerate mycorrhizal fungi, depending on the species, okay. And then that also, you know, will help to increase organic matter content.

>> Yeah.

>> So a carbon.

>> Yeah.

>> So there -- I look at those studies as kind of they're skewed because they're not looking at the whole. You know, you've got to look at the whole. You've got to look at above and below ground.

>> Yeah.

>> And how you do that, I don't know. You have to dig up everything. How do you -- how do you measure root biomass?

>> Yeah. My initial reaction to stuff like that is to be somewhat dismissive because, as a rangeland ecologist --

>> Yeah.

>> -- I'm quite interested in diversity of all kinds.

>> Yeah.

>> One of my favorite quotes is from Sam Fuhlendorf in Kansas. He likes to say that six patches makes you six times less likely to be entirely wrong. You know, if you've got big blue stem and Sandberg bluegrass and, you know, you name it, the 50 grass species that you might have out there, depending on what the year throws at you, one of them or half of them are going to do well, even when the other stuff doesn't.

>> You know, you just hit nail on the head there for one of the big differences. When people say, Oh, I am -- grazing doesn't work, in that or whatever you call it. I don't get hung up on terminology. But when you have diversity like we have, we just went through three of the driest year -- the three driest years ever recorded here at Bismarck. Paul never -- he harvested a cash crop every year. Neighbors harvested one out of three. He never had to sell any animals down. Still cat produced enough forage for all these animals, whereas the neighbors, they dispersed their herds, everything. Why? Because of the resiliency of what you said. That -- that diversity, something still grew.

>> Yeah.

>> Dry conditions, chicory, etc. just flourished.

>> Right. Light rain, early rain.

>> Yeah, yeah.

>> Dry, hot, cold.

>> Doesn't matter.

>> Something's going to handle it.

>> Something's going to come. And, in our world here, there isn't a single species out there that our livestock won't eat, you know. They'll eat anything. We've -- spurge, Canada thistle, doesn't matter. Wormwood, doesn't matter. They'll eat it, you know. Now, some years, no; they'll pick around at it. But they need to eat it, they'll eat it.

>> Yeah, yeah.

>> Yeah.

>> I'm more often than not working with people that I consider to be progressive grazers. And so I'm -- I do spend some time with people who need to change their practices. But, as a result, I'm often maybe overly, overly optimistic about grazing done well because most of what I see is grazing done well. But I'm curious. How would you describe -- you know, one, how would you define overgrazing? And, two, how would you describe the ecological results of overgrazing?

>> Yeah. And what we often see is overgrazing and understocking, where the animals are being too selective. They're not run at high enough stock densities. So that allows them the ability to choose which plant species they're going to eat. And they're going to continually graze that plant down, weaken the root system, you know --

>> Yeah.

>> -- and not moving them frequently enough. Increasing stock density, it's very easy to get animals, especially talking cattle, to consume a wider array of species. You just increase stock density, and they're going to go, man; I better bite this before the neighbor does, you know. So then it gives you more uniform graze, more uniform trample.

>> Yeah.

>> And then you get that armor on the soil surface, and you don't have the problems. Overgrazing, to me, is when they're being too selective. And overgrazing, understocking we see over and over again. The other thing we consistently see is most farms and ranches run too many animals for their available forage base. You know, they're just running way too many animals. And then that means they have to put up feed, more processed forage, you know. And they're not giving the recovery time.

>> Right.

>> What's -- you know, here on this ranch, we're running approximately 12 to 14 months of recovery, but part of that has to be during the growing season --

>> Right.

>> -- you know, because of our -- we get literally here -- 80% of our forage growth occurs in June, first week in July, right there. There's about a six-week window, 80% of our forage. We know right then and there whether we'll have enough forage for -- to last a year or not, you know. And so, when we're working with producers, that's one of the first things we do. How many animals do they have? What's their base? What's their production? And we strongly recommend you -- if you're a cow calf producer, you keep your cow herd number at what level you can run in your worst drought year. And then you use yearlings, etc., as the variable stockers to -- you know, for the better years. Then you never have to liquidate the cowherd.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. I think this has been one of the perhaps unfair criticisms of the, you know, more hardcore regenerative grazing crowd, which probably includes you. People have the perception that the message is that, if you graze more aggressively, there's almost no top to the production curve. And so, like, the example that I've given, you know, regarding understocking and overgrazing is, like, if you've got 10,000 acres of North Dakota rangeland and you put 10 cows on it, you're likely to overgraze the patches that the cows want to hang out in.

>> Yeah.

>> They're going to trash the stream if they're in that spot all the time, and there's going to be gobs and gobs of forage that never gets touched. And then, if you, you know, look for the way opposite end of the spectrum, if you -- if you've got one acre of good soil, irrigated PIE species mix, you can't support 1,000 head of cattle on that year round. And somewhere in the middle of those admitted -- admitted extremes is something that's reasonable. And I -- yeah. I think you're --

>> That's good to know.

>> -- and getting at it there. And I think it's one of the ways that these two crowds, if I can call them that, are just sort of talking past each other because I don't think -- I think the -- I think the weaknesses are mischaracterized, or the alleged weaknesses of high density grazing are mischaracterized.

>> And -- and, you know, the other thing is people think high density grazing, you know, they often heard people like Neil Dennis and that, well, you raise them at 500,000 or a million pounds per acre all the time. No. You don't do that. You have to pulse that. And you have to -- you know, you have to be adaptive, according to conditions.

>> Yeah.

>> You know, like right now our cowherd's probably at about 150,000 pounds per acre, you know. But there's times we'll ramp that up if we want to have a greater impact on an area. You have to vary it. Also, you have to realize that about a top end. I firmly believe we don't know where the top end is for the amount of carbon we can cycle, the amount of diversity because we're not near the diversity there was hundreds of years ago. We know that, you know.

>> Then, on your place, it's still going up?

>> Oh, yeah. It still is.

>> Interesting.

>> So I -- you know, I'm a big history buff. And Meriwether Lewis, you know, and they made their trek right up by here. They documented over 300 species of plants.

>> Yeah.

>> Well, we're not close to that. So I know we're not there yet for some of those things. I know we can attract a lot more birds and wildlife, things like that. We're not there yet. But we're going to be somewhat limited by moisture, growing days, sunlight, etc. because our window is such. Now, we're extending that. What I'm found is here, since I've been going down this path, we're productive much longer. You know, I can have -- if we don't get snow, I'll have green plants photosynthesizing at Christmas time.

>> Yeah, yeah.

>> You know, which is just, most people think that's impossible. No. But they're cycling solar energy. So I don't think we need -- can be purists and say there is or isn't. We don't know.

>> Right.

>> You know, we don't know. All I know is things just keep getting better over time. You know, those three dry years, '20 through '22, yeah. We saw a dip in production, the amount of total biomass. You're going to end -- you know, those three years, we had less than six inches total precip each year.

>> I live in the Inland Northwest in -- kind of in the Columbia Basin.

>> Yep. Been there.

>> And we get 8 to 12 inches annual precip, someplace as low as five. And it's -- almost all of that is wintertime precipitation.

>> Yep.

>> And many of -- much of that ground has a lot of grass but not a lot of stock water. And I think the most common barrier that I find in the ranches that I've worked with in trying to implement more aggressive grazing management is there's not enough forage density to justify the expense for infrastructure, which is maybe changing now some with virtual fence systems. But the biggest limiting factor is water. If you've got a 5,000-acre fenced pasture that's got one water source in the middle of it, and you -- they're just sensitive enough that you -- you can't have all of the paddocks in that 5,000 acre piece accessing that one water source, if you were advising somebody on, like, where's the -- how do you --

>> Who do you work with this often. Yeah. Fernando Falomir is our consultant who lives in the Chihuahuan Desert. And how -- as we're talking here, I'll see if I've got any photos on my phone. But Fernando down there, he just went through two years, less than two inches total of precip in two years on his ranch. He's normally in 6- to 8-inch moisture environment per year. You see he's had -- he's had an average year. They just hit the 6 inches. Okay. Well, the forage is over his head.

>> Yeah.

>> It's just absolutely phenomenal.

>> And people don't believe it. And I'm prone to just to think there's something else going on there, or it's being mischaracterized. Yeah. I've seen some of those photographs from Alejandro Carrillo.

>> Yeah, yeah.

>> And I interviewed Jim Garish. And Jim said, Now it's real.

>> I've been on Alejandro's place number of times. Fernando is in a tougher environment than Alejandro.

>> Wow. Yeah. That's crazy.

>> And it's absolutely amazing the amount of forage that he can produce down there.

>> The current grant that's funding the podcast is from the Western Center for Risk Management, and what I proposed in the grant was interviewing what I call Sages of Rangelands, people that have spent the better part of a lifetime learning, you know, from the land, on the land by doing because I think that has a lot of value. And I'm trying to get to some of them who, unlike you, are never going to get heard in a TED talk or on a, you know, a keynote stage. But, since we're here, I wanted to ask you some of those questions. And, you know, some of the questions are stuff that have been fed to me by others to ask of people who have quite a bit of earned wisdom. But one of them is, you know, what -- what are some trends that you think are encouraging, and what can we do to further those trends?

>> Yeah. The biggest trend that I see coming and I'm really focused on it is the understanding that's coming about, work by Dr. Stephan Van Vliet, Dr. Fred Provenza, Dr. Scott Kronberg showing that the health of our ecosystem, particularly soil microbiology, directly influences the phytonutrient content of what's being produced. Whether it be a grain of fruit, a vegetable, a protein doesn't matter. So the work that they're doing, they're taking and comparing regenerative farms versus quote, unquote conventional side by side, just up against each other, doing very intense research as to soil microbiology, plant species diversity, insects, wildlife diversity. Then they're growing the same grain, fruit, vegetable, or pastured protein on both, same soil types, you know, side-by-side farms. And then they're running that through a mass spectrometer where they can identify over 2,500 different phytonutrient compounds. Well, it's the phytonutrient compounds that really drive our gut microbiome so dictate, to a great extent, our health. So what they're finding is there's a much greater array and a much greater amount of these phytonutrient compounds, if you have a diverse ecosystem.

>> Yeah.

>> And when you think of what drove health, you know, I can only imagine what this prairie was like 3-, 400 years ago.

>> Yeah.

>> The diversity that was here. And then you think of the bison, elk, beer -- bear, everything else, the predators moving them across it. Those animals had a wide array of phytonutrients available to them. We don't have that. And then you tie that in with the human health crisis we're having today, et cetera. I contend that very few people have truly tasted nutrient dense food, you know. And the research that they're putting forward, there's a lot -- and you look at what happened, particularly since COVID in that. People are taking a greater, greater interest in what they're consuming, where their food comes from. I look at that as opportunity, opportunity, opportunity for us land managers --

>> Yeah.

>> -- because we can, if we're doing the right things, have a healthy ecosystem. I look forward to the day that food is sold. We're able to sell our product based on that type of nutrient density, not just protein, etc., you know.

>> Yeah.

>> And it's been proven out also, even in tests as simple as omega 6 to 3. Here on our ranch, Paul does nutrient testing. Our omega 6 to 3 ratio on the grass finished beef, 1.19 to 1. Okay. That's higher in Omega 3 than is wild salmon. Okay. We can sell our beef as heart healthy, you know, because it is that.

>> Wow.

>> That brings a premium.

>> Yeah.

>> This is what's going to separate farmers, ranchers, commodity versus value add. And -- and I really believe farmers, ranchers, they need to become much better marketers. And they need to understand how soils function, how that equates to what they're producing, you know. And they're going to say, well, they're not paying it for -- they're not paying us a premium for that. You need to become better marketer, plain and simple, you know. People will.

>> Yeah. I think that money's out there.

>> It is.

>> I do think that trend is happening. I want to believe that, that there's more phytonutrients in plants that are managed that way. And it was actually Fred Provenza's book, Nourishment --

>> Yep.

>> -- which got me about 75% convinced. Yeah.

>> Yep. Look at the work that Dr. Van Vliet's doing. He's at Utah State.

>> I'll look that up.

>> And it's some fantastic stuff. Yeah. And that's being expanded. You know, we were part of that project here this last year. So, yep.

>> And what trends do you see that are discouraging?

>> Discouraging, the greenwashing is always discouraging. I can't call that a trend because that's always taking place. The -- one of the things I'm very concerned about is, in food technology industry, they have the ability to put additives. And I don't want to -- people thinking that you can add these phytonutrient compounds to food. But I worry about technology doing that.

>> Right. Like putting a vitamin D in milk or something.

>> Yeah. When I gave my TED Talk in New York City, it was all about food and trends and what we're seeing and the number of fake meats and everything and the number -- the amount of food that's growing in, you know, hydroponic, etc., you're not going to get those phytonutrient compounds unless it's grown in soil. And I tasted that stuff. It's just awful. There's no nutrients to it. But it scares me because it's a shiny object that there's a lot of money -- people who have money out there want to invest in those things.

>> Yeah.

>> And they're going to invest in those things, and they're really not going to benefit human health, you know.

>> Yeah.

>> That concerns me a bit.

>> Yeah. What are some maybe ecological concerns of yesterday that you feel like we've made progress on? And what are ecological concerns that maybe we still need to make significant progress on?

>> Yeah. The one is I think we know just how detrimental tillage is.

>> Yeah.

>> You know, and -- and that's a no brainer. I started no tilling in 1994. I think I was the first 100% no tiller in our county. Our county is a million acres, of which about 750,000 now is cropland. And now, you know, full 80 to 85% is no till. So that's been adopted well.

>> Yeah.

>> The trend that concerns me, though, is I don't think there's a complete enough understanding on how herbicides, fungicides, pesticides affect the soil microbiome and just how long that carry over is. That concerns me. You know, we're -- we're pretty blessed here, Central North Dakota, Western North Dakota, that those -- the use of those things on rangeland is pretty rare, you know. You know, there's some herbicide use but not to a great extent. So I feel good about that. But understand, as more and more land becomes cropland, the drift is everywhere. It's real, you know.

>> Yeah.

>> So that concerns me some.

>> Yeah. We were on Benny Paulson's place yesterday, and he was saying they've got some dirt tanks we call them in our part of the world, stock ponds, essentially, that catch runoff that are adjacent to wheat fields. And he can't let his cows drink it --

>> Yeah.

>> -- because they get sick, and he's had one or two die on him.

>> So my question would be why is there water running off, just because; and that's running off the neighbors.

>> Right.

>> And we see it here, you know, with the cropland around our place, you know, the amount of water and sediment, then the chemicals that come with it.

>> Yeah.

>> It's a concern.

>> Yeah. The older I get, the more I want to see that put back into prairie.

>> It's just -- that's another thing that concerns me is the disassociation between government programs here in the United States and what's really needed to drive Regen Ag forward. They're almost totally antagonistic, you know. Now, there's a little bit of hope right now in a few of them. But we've got to get away from this mantra, oh, farmers feed the world. Come on. You know, 46% of the corn goes for ethanol.

>> Right.

>> You know, another 35-plus percent goes to feed animals that shouldn't be fed grain.

>> Right.

>> You know, we need to understand, you know.

>> Yeah.

>> And we've got to change that production model. I mean, you look down South, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, what's happened to the Ogallala and then what's happened to the nutrient overload. And it's just ridiculous, you know. We've got to change this production model.

>> Yeah. That does seem like a trend that I wanted to ask you about. It seems that there is significantly increasing interest in using cover crops and using grazing rather than tillage to terminate cover crops. Do you think that's actually happening?

>> Grazing to terminate a cover is difficult, depending on the environment.

>> Yeah.

>> It's difficult. But you can use crop rollers, etc. Now, here I owned a crop roller; but we don't have a long enough season. By the time my cover crop got far enough along where rolling had terminated, I didn't have enough time to get a cash crop to maturity. So now I -- for cover crops, we seed species that'll be terminated by frost. And then winter is my advantage. That's my crop roller.

>> Yeah.

>> So I don't -- I'm not -- you know, and in our consulting company, we're not using animals to terminate. We're certainly grazing cover crops with livestock. We're big proponents of that because that'll -- that'll help ratchet up soil health on cropland considerably but not to terminate.

>> Got it.

>> You know? I tell people that -- we have a lot of clients. Approximately 30% of our clients are strict crop farmers, no livestock. And I tell them we can significantly advance the soil health on your cropland, make you -- help you become much more profitable, advance ecosystem function. But make no mistake about it. That crop -- your cropland, it'll never be to the point it can from a soil health standpoint if you're not going to add livestock. You need the livestock component grazing covers. We see a -- we see a marked increase in soil health when we do that, one, it's not only because of the diversity it covers, but it's all the dung and the urine and the hair and the microbiology in that, you know, in Regen Ag and in the world of soil microbiology in that 1 plus 1 doesn't equal 2. It equals 4 or 5, you know. You're able to ratchet things up significantly so -- but that's each person's decision for them to make, you know, where they want to go.

>> Yeah. I think you said in your conversation with Peter Vick recently that the Green Revolution did an excellent job at increasing the quantity of food in the world, and we have succeeded in feeding people. There's enough food. People being hungry is a problem with distribution, not production, but that what's needed is a revolution in food -- in food quality.

>> Exactly.

>> You describe a bit of that. How -- what more do we do from what's happening now to get there, do you think?

>> And I really -- great question. I think technology is increasing rapidly. I really believe in the future you'll be able to walk into a grocery store with your iPhone, scan the product, and it'll read some of these phytonutrient compounds, chemical residue, etc. I think that's coming, not soon enough for me but it's coming. I think that's important. The other -- the work that Dr. Van Vliet is doing is just tremendous, you know. We need more research like that. The challenge becomes who's going to fund that research? Who's going to fund it? Medical community certainly doesn't want it because they're in the business of treatment, not prevention, unfortunately. And I hate to say that, but it's true, you know? And let's be honest. Big business, when I'm talking the fertilizer, chemical, pesticide, they don't want it, you know.

>> Right.

>> So who's going to fund it?

>> I don't think it's a dirty secret anymore.

>> No, it's not. Look at Common Ground. We called that out pretty well in that movie, you know.

>> Yeah.

>> But, yeah.

>> I got on a rabbit trail. I don't think we finished the question about what do you do with large dry rangelands with not a lot of stock water?

>> Oh. I'm sorry.

>> How would you approach that?

>> Yeah. And we work with that all the time. You know, we're doing -- our largest client has 2.1 million acres. So we're used to arid, semi arid environments. With that, you need water development, okay, in order to really ratchet that up. There's many ways to do that. You know, you can pump out of those reservoirs a long way with shallow pipeline. You know, even our ranch here in North Dakota, okay, we're froze the majority of the year. Everything's shallow pipelines because, once winter comes, we got snow. Animals live on snow. They do just fine. You know, it's a mindset, right? But you need to distribute that water somehow. And what -- with our clients, where's the low hanging fruit? Okay. Which of those reservoirs are maybe sitting high enough in elevation? We can gravity flow some water down. Which can we pump out of? Can we pump to storage container that's higher and then gravity flow? You start there. And you start, okay. How big are these, you know, paddocks? Are they? 10,000-acre paddocks? Okay. How do we get them to five, then to three, and then, you know. And you start. Realize you're going to reach a point, okay.

>> Diminishing returns.

>> Where we are. And, quite frankly, in a lot of our -- the ranches we work with, very large landscapes, we're using herding and cowboys --

>> Right.

>> -- you know, to -- and placing these animals.

>> Right. Use the money that would have been spent on fence --

>> Exactly.

>> -- and use it for something more productive.

>> Exactly. Like water. Yep. And water is just critical.

>> And management effort.

>> But too many people think, Oh, it can't be done. Oh, no. It can be done, and we're doing it, you know. It's a mindset.

>> It seems like there's a return to concepts like a grazing association, where people could comingle to run animals in a larger single group.

>> Yeah.

>> I think that is a trend that's happening.

>> Yeah. And it certainly works. We're doing some work with Department of Defense and Department of Defense lands doing that.

>> Yeah. I think I've seen some of that.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. In the world of grazing management, what do you feel like has gone undone that you would like to see completed in your lifetime?

>> There's a question I've never been asked before.

>> Oh, good.

>> Yeah. I've never been asked that question.

>> I earned my keep today.

>> I really think the importance of not only recovery but rest in the paddocks because there's a difference between plant recovery and plant rest where plants are actually building more roots, putting more carbon in the soil, driving that aggregation deeper in the soil profile. And the difference that makes for resiliency and also the difference it makes for stimulating that latent seed bank because, as we build aggregation deeper and deeper into the soil profile, we're getting air, air down there, water, more water down there; and that's allowing the deep latent seed bank to germinate. And I just haven't seen much research done on that.

>> Yeah. That's interesting. I feel like that is one of the -- whatever that mechanism is, that's one of the things that happens when you have longer periods of rest. One example is our pasture in Arkansas, river bottom pasture, you know, continuously grazed. You put 50 to 100 cows out there for six months. And, when that changed, you really quickly saw a significant diversification of the pasture species, including some stuff that nobody's seen in 50 years.

>> Yeah. Exactly.

>> And that happens everywhere.

>> The greatest change I've ever seen in a diversity on paddocks is at Shane New's place in northeastern Kansas. Shane was long time moving down the regenerative path. But back in about 2018, '19, he decided to become intentional about it and really give longer recovery times. You know, they're in a 35- to 40-inch moisture environment. He was given 90 to 100 days. Well, he started giving a year in some path. I've never seen explosion of diversity like I have in those paddocks. And I think what happens that aggregation is driven deeper --

>> Yeah.

>> -- and then we're stimulating the latent seed bank. Yeah.

>> That's an idea that I haven't heard before, so --

>> Yeah. I just.

>> Worth the time.

>> We're seeing it. I'm doing a lot of work right now in England and Ireland with our company. And, you know, over there, you have continuous grazing almost year round because they're -- they're just --

>> Right.

>> You know, the environment is massive forage production.

>> Yeah.

>> We've got some clients over there. One I think of them, in particular, Kevin O'Hanlon, a dairy farmer who went to longer recovery periods for his -- for his dairy cows. I mean, he started with literally about seven to 10 species. You know, he's up to 41 in a matter of less than two years seeing in his paddocks.

>> Yeah.

>> Longer recovery periods. It's just amazing.

>> Yeah.

>> He's so excited about it and much more profitability with the -- with the cows so.

>> Yeah.

Our interview ended here somewhat abruptly because Gabe stayed as long as he possibly could. There were no closing questions or comments. So I will publicly thank Gabe here for taking time to visit with me and let me run around his place unaccompanied. And, if you're ever near Bismarck, it's worth checking in ahead of time to arrange for a tour. His son Paul is mostly running the home place now, and their website is brownsranch.us, which we will put in the show notes. Thank you for listening to the Art of Range podcast. Links to websites or documents mentioned in each episode are available at artofrange.com. And be sure to subscribe to the show through Apple podcasts, Podbean, Spotify, Stitcher, or your favorite podcasting app so that each new episode will automatically show up in your podcast feed. Just search for Art of Range. If you are not a social media addict, don't start now. If you are, please like or otherwise follow the Art of Range on Facebook, LinkedIn, and X, formerly Twitter. We value listener feedback. If you have questions or comments for us to address in a future episode or just want to let me know you're listening, send an email to show @artofrange.com. For more direct communication from me, sign up for a regular email from the podcast on the home page at artofrange.com. This podcast is produced by Connors Communications in the College of Agricultural, Human and Natural Resource Sciences at Washington State University. The project is supported by the University of Arizona and funded by sponsors. If you're interested in being a sponsor, send an email to show @artofrange.com.

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