Regeneration of Our Lands: A Producer’s Perspective – Gabe Brown
Gabe Brown is one of the pioneers of the regenerative agriculture movement which focuses on ethical farming practices to restore the health of the land and its people. Gabe, along with his wife, Shelly, and son, Paul, own and operate a diversified 5,000-acre farm and ranch near Bismarck, ND. Their operation focuses on farming and ranching in nature’s image.
In this fascinating talk, Gabe eloquently describes the downward spiral created by industrial farming practices based on monocultures and heavy tillage.
Tillage destroys life below the ground and soil health begins to decline. Gabe’s numbers show a 56% loss of topsoil and 62% loss of soil organic matter over a 50-year period.
Loss of life in soil destroys pore spaces and soil structure.
This decreases water infiltration and soil water holding capacity.
If water cannot penetrate then we drain it off with methods such as tile drainage.
As water is drained off poor soils, runoff and erosion increase.
Runoff takes nutrients into waterways which has devasting consequences such as the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico
With nutrients decreasing, we have to put them back on via the use of synthetic fertilizers.
Fossil fuel usage and costs increase.
Weeds thrive on disturbance along with heavy nitrogen loading and so they increase.
In response to weeds, herbicide use increases, many of which are chelates. Chelates bind metals (iron, magnesium, copper etc) making them unavailable to plants.
This decreases disease resistance leading to increased fungicide use.
Increased fungicide use further decreases soil biology.
Pests become an issue and pesticide is applied.
This decreases beneficial and predatory insects and pollinators.
This further decreases biology and biodiversity leading to an ecosystem on the brink of collapse.
Ultimately, this mechanical model that is based on killing leads to the decline of crop yields and incomes. This puts pressure on rural communities that experience declining mental and physical health. For society at large, this means consuming nutrient-poor foods leading to rising healthcare costs, sickness and disease.
The solution to this, as Gabe shows, is farming in nature’s way. Quite simply this means zero till, no bare soil, diversity of plant life, root exudates left in the ground at harvest, and the holistic management of livestock which uses grazing and animal impact as beneficial tools for regeneration.
In practice, the Browns holistically integrate their grazing and no-till cropping systems, which include a wide variety of cash crops, multi-species cover crops along with all natural grass finished beef and lamb. They also raise pastured laying hens, broilers and swine. This diversity and integration has regenerated the natural resources on the ranch without the use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and fungicides.