Regenerative Agriculture: Gabe Brown on Restoring Soil Health | TED Talk

[00:00:08]let me take you on a journey a journey of regenerating dirt into soil my career began in 1983 when I moved on to my in-laws farming operation I was influenc by college by land grant universities by the current Farm program by years of tradition and by the large agrochemical industrial mindset in 1993 immediately after uh my wife and I purchased the ranch I started down a path of noil I bought my first noil drill sold all illage equipment I was committed 199 four came along we had switched to 100% no tail we had a pretty good crop and I thought boy this is easy well 1995 came along the day before I was going to start combining 12200 Acres of spring wheat we lost our entire crop in a hail storm that was pretty devastating for a young family starting out we weren't able to pay the bank back the operating loan 1996 came along I started to diversify the rotation a little bit lo and behold we lost 100% of our crop to hail again things were starting to get pretty strapped financially my wife and I took off arm jobs we had a young family to feed obviously we had a mortgage to pay I had to figure out well how am I going to do this without borrowing money from the bank they weren't willing to loan me any more operating money 1997 came along and it was a devastating drought throughout Central North Dakota nobody harvested a single acre by then things were looking pretty lean you can tell by that middle picture what happened in 1998 we lost 80% of our crop to hail those four years left us $1.5 million in debt unable to borrow any money to buy expensive inputs I was really starting to question my choice of careers my wife was starting to question her choice of husbands but I started to Noti some positives realized that 1998 hail storm occurred early enough in the year where I was able to plant the cover crop then not having the money to be able to put that cover crop up for forage we simply grazed our Livestock on that covero we were integrating them back onto the landscape what I began to see was life returning to our Ranch we suddenly had earthworms in the field we suddenly had pollinators we suddenly had greater bird populations the soil the ecosystem was healing itself and it was then that I really began to realize that what I had been doing when I farmed conventionally was I was degrading the resource you see the dust coming up behind that piece of tillage equipment the thickness of one sheet of paper is the equivalent of one ton of top soil per acre wherever I travel now I realize that we're all farming and ranching degraded resources I have the Good Fortune today I'm on hundreds of farms ranches all over the world I can tell you I have never ever stood on a single one including my own that's not degraded 30 to 75% of the carbon that was once in our soils is now in the atmosphere what does that lead to that leads to climate change climate change is really about degradation it's about lower water quality it's about flooding because we're no longer able to infiltrate water into our soil profile it's about the loss of income we're losing our rural communities we're sucking the life out of them we're sucking the profitability out of them and it leads to the degradation in human health what we call food today has but a fraction of the nutrients in it that it once did I know this for a fact in March of 2022 I was diagnosed with Amit trophic lateral scoris I was given two to four years to live you see one of the things we need to realize ALS the known cause of it is exposure to toxic chemicals the same toxic chemicals that I was exposed to when I farmed conventionally now has become my death sentence years later but realize there is hope the hope lies in regenerative agriculture many people ask well what is the definition of regenerative agriculture in my mind regenerative agriculture is 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 and the way we do this is simply by following six time tested ecological principles briefly those six are number one context you have to Farm and Ranch in context with your environment the second principle least amount of mechanical chemical dist disturbance possible realize that one of the reasons we have so much carbon in the atmosphere and not in our soils is because we've tilled those soils to death we've applied way too much costic chemicals herbicides fertilizers fungicides third principle armor on the soil you should never see bare soil walk into a forest walk into native Prairie do you see bare soil no bare soil is prone to wind erosion water erosion evaporation the soil temperatures rise when we have bare soil the fourth principle is that of diversity where do you see a monoculture only where mankind has put one or where M Mankind's actions have caused it to appear nature abor a monoculture it thrives on diversity the fifth principle is that of a Living Root in the soil as long as possible throughout the year take a look at the agricultural production model being used today a farmer plants a crop they harvest that crop the soil sits idle without a living plant for the greater part of a year nothing pulling carbon out of the atmosphere nothing feeding soil biology we need to change that and the final principle is that of animal and insect integration ecosystems do not function properly without animals and insects if we follow these six principles we then can drive the four ecosystem processes and these ecosystem processes are constant all over the world it is sunlight the energy cycle A diversity of plants photosynthesizing those plants then put root exit dates carbon compounds out into the soil to feed biology along with micro risal fungi they build soil Aggregates that improves the mineral cycle and the water cycle it all starts here beneath our feet we have to realize there are more microorganisms in a teaspoonful of healthy soil than there are people on this planet think about that yet how many of us when we go to our garden when we go out into our Fields understand that they don't understand that what drives life above ground is that life below ground it's up to us as land managers whether you own a garden a small landh holder a large landh holder your management or as I prefer to call it your stewardship makes all the difference so what did I do on our Ranch to drive life for one thing we no longer plant monocultures you see by the photo in the upper left that's a divers first polyculture cash crop we're growing several species together we're then able to separate those we get the benefit that diversity adds collecting more solar energy putting more carbon into the soil in the lower left that's one of a picture that was taken in one of our native prairies we have documented over 144 different plant species in those native prairies that's the diversity that natural ecos systems have and then we've integrated a lot of animals animals simply add another dimension to the building of soil Health that's what our soil looks like today we now have deep rich top soils and we do this with a variety of animals plants life is returning to the operation we now have over 10 times as much Wildlife on our Ranch as compared to when we operated conventionally we now have insect species returning renowned entomologist and Agro ecologist Dr Jonathan lungren taught us that for every insect species that's a pest there's 1,700 species that are beneficial or indifferent why in agriculture do we spend all our time and energy killing that pest why not provide the home habitat for those beneficials besides that we've seen bird species return a bird survey done last year on our Ranch showed 105 different nesting species of birds during the time throughout the whole year we have over 150 species of birds that use the ranch what has this done to the soil in 1993 when we bought the ranch we could only infiltrate a half of an inch of rainfall per hour scientists today have measured we can now infiltrate over 32 in of rainfall per hour bismar North Dakota has never received 30 in in a year let alone 30 in in an hour what have it done to the carbon levels organic matter when we started we had 1.7% organic matter in our soils today we're bumping close to 8% over four times as much carbon this equates to an astounding 396 tons of CO2 equivalent per acre look at those two soils what you show there see look at the difference in them one epitomizes death I tell people I used to wake up every morning trying to decide what I was going to kill that day was it going to be a weed was it going to be a pest was it going to be a fungus I was going to kill something now today I wake up every morning how do I get more more life on our Ranch one of the things we have to realize is what built those deep top soils we now have top soil well aggregated soil deeper than 4 feet where I started with 3 in what built them was the integration of animals animals are awfully vilified oh we need to get rid of the animals let me ask you this question in the world over where are the richest top soils the richest top soils are found where large herds of grazing ruminants moved across those Landscapes look at Central Plains of the US look at on the seren yeti what do they have in common grazing animals you see you may not want to eat that animal that's your choice but you can't deny the facts The Animals help develop those deep top soils take a look at what else we see which of those eggs do you want to eat the egg on the right was from our Ranch the egg on the left is from the current factory model groundbreaking studies done by Dr Stefan van vet Dr Fred provenza and Dr Scott cronberg are showing that Foods grown in and on healthy soils up to 64% higher in vitamins 200 139% higher in essential fatty acids 67% lower in oxidative stress markers in his book what your food ate Dr David Montgomery writes about a study he did taking our grassfish beef and comparing it to wild salmon what he found is our grass-finished beef is higher in Omega-3s higher in fatty acids than is wild salmon if you truly care about your health and about saving the environment putting carbon back in the soil perhaps you should choose the grassfish beef the beautiful thing about this is we can do it all over we can address climate change we can use less fertilizer less pesticides less fungicides we can Revitalize our rural communities we can have a positive impact on nutrient density we're doing this world over anybody can do it because the - tested ecological principles and processes are the same so it's going to take each and every one of us it's going to take us as consumers to know where our food is grown and raised we need to Source regeneratively grown and raised food we need to support school programs to put those Foods in our schools we need to support nonprofit prophets who are educating people as to these regenerative practices you can also grow a regenerative Garden for you see if we all do this we truly can realize the hope that is in healthy soil thank you [Applause]