Dirt to Soil: One Family’s Journey into Regenerative Agriculture
This month we’re looking at the humble Farmer, making this weeks book Dirt to Soil: One Family’s Journey into Regenerative Agriculture by Gabe Brown. So let’s do this.
Gabe Brown married into the farm. Sort of. Like his wife wanted to get away from the farm, but he wanted to be a farmer and she was a farmers daughter...one of three, which is relevant in that while Brown and her would work her parents land, when it was time for them to retire, rather than letting Brown buy them out of their farm, they split the farm into three and gave each daughter a chance to buy equal parts. Which...I don’t get. I get wanting to be fair to your kids, but the fair comes in the inheritance, not the business. Brown and his wife had already been working the land only to have 2/3 of it yoinked out from under them with no notice.
Anyways, water under the bridge.
Brown started out with the traditional farming, till the soil, let the land lay fallow in between plantings, limit the livestock OR go for bred lines only and keep them registered. And then, he had four bad years. Back to back to back bad years of hail storms decimating his crops, floods washing away the top soil, blizzards where the baby cows died en masse.
It was enough to make him rethink how he was doing things. Not being a farmer. He still knew he wanted to be a farmer. But he was forced to acknowledge that traditional farming was not working. And he made soil health his mission. So that he came up with five metrics of soil health:
1. limited disturbance. Limit the mechanical, chemical, and physical disturbance. Note: This does not mean don’t have livestock. In fact the exact opposite. Livestock is extremely beneficial for soil health, not only for the manure livestock provides but because the weight of the animals helps to naturally and minimally turn the soil. The animal weight helps to mix the manure in with the soil. Tillage, however, is highly detrimental. Healthy soil is packed with nutrients that form an interconnected web of fungi and bacteria...healthy fungi and bacteria. Tilling it literally shreds those networks.
2. Soil should be covered. Not with a tarp, which would prevent water from getting to the soil. But with natural protectants like cover crops. Soil WANTS to grow things. Give it something to grow. He has his own choice of cover crop, which works beautifully in North Dakota, where his ranch is located. Probably would not work as well in Nevada. Which is not to say cover crops won’t grow here. They absolutely will. But it will be a different mix from what Brown grows.
3. Diversity...diversity is our strength. In crops. Don’t JUST grow clover. Mix that clover with OTHER crops so that your soil has a variety to pull from for it’s own nutritional needs. The earth IS alive. All parts of it. Feed the earth and she’ll feed you back.
4. Living roots: maintaining living roots in the soil helps maintain structural integrity of the soil.
5. Animals...again, let nature help you with any soil turning that might be needed.
Now, I get why this is anathema to modern farmers. It’s not even the not using herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides which are so prevalent on large farms. It’s the no tilling. Look, the plow was invented in Mesopotamia. Like 3000 years BCE. Tilling the soil is ALMOST as old as farming. I would argue that prior to the industrial revolution, humanity was not capable of tilling deeply enough to cause the problems that modern agriculture experiences.
So anyways, like Salatin from last weeks book, Brown is all too happy to share his knowledge with everyone and highlights how, in a very short time, he turns his ranch around. And he walks you through the how, with cover crops being a very important part of that, but not the be all and end all. He talks about his transition away from traditional beef industry into hardier smaller cows that are more useful for regenerative agriculture. Talks about his transition into chickens, which he didn’t think he would ever work with due to past experience with large poultry places, but now he sees how vital they are to a healthy farm.
He talks about how he handled the inheritance question with his own kids, especially since his son was gung ho about following Brown’s footsteps, while his daughter wanted to be far away from the farm.
I really loved how, after the deep dive into the five principals of soil health, he breaks down the science of why it works. He talks about carbon cycling, what resource concern you are trying to fix, how to determine how much seed you need to generate the cover crop you want to grow, how all of this helps with water availability. He talks about how a healthy ecosystem on a farm is practically pest and weed proof as healthy predator bugs come in and kill the pests, removing the need for pesticides. The cover crops you grow will choke out weeds, removing the need for herbicides. The healthy balance in the soil ensures the growth of good fungus, so you don’t nee fungicide.
He talks about nutrient-cycling and making use of the natural nitrogen that just...floats through the air. If you read Project Hail Mary, you learned there’s a lot of nitrogen just naturally available out there. He teaches you how to harness that for soil health. He talks about crop rotation and how to actively plan this for the best results.
There’s a whole chapter where he discusses contact he’s had with other farmers who reached out to him, used his ideas, and experienced spectacular results on their own farms. I think the one that stood out the most was a firefighter turned farmer in North Carolina who started with 30 acres and within five years had experienced such phenomenal results that he was able to expand his operation to 1000 acres. That is not a typo or a misspeak. From 30 to 1000 acres in five years.
This book was an easy read, filled with good information, and it makes me eager to grow my own healthy and flavorful vegetables in my own little dirt patch right here in Nevada.
