Regenerative Agriculture - Things to Consider
A new movement is sprouting
The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
People are linked to the past in many ways. The mixing and evolution of past cultures yielded modern cultures. Lessons of the past accumulated into our current collective knowledge. Mistakes of the past cultivated the wisdom of today. The hundreds of pairings of humans of the past define the genetics of the modern population. The quality of air we breathe and water we drink is a product of the past stewardship of our natural environment. And if we are lucky enough to have strong ties to our family history, the stories we tell, the songs we sing, and the traditions we enjoy provide a profound connection to our ancestors whose creativity, ingenuity, and perseverance built the world that is so full of amazing things today.
A crucial way everyone is linked to the past is through the food we eat. Recipes are handed down from loved ones. Flavor preferences are ingrained in us by the food prepared by our parents and their parents before them. Perhaps more important than those links to the past is the link we have through soil. We cannot grow healthy food without healthy soil, and the soil that is available for us to grow is a product of the past. The plants that grow today are rooted in soil nourished by the decay of what has come before them. In the book Kiss the Ground: How the Food You Eat Can Reverse Climate Change, Heal Your Body & Ultimately Save the World, author Josh Tickell refers to the carbon “bank” in the soil that the United States has enjoyed since humankind began populating North America. Thanks to the buffalo that roamed the vast lands for hundreds of years, that bank was full when Europeans arrived on the shores of North America. Sadly, the carbon that enriched our soil has largely been squandered by bad farming practices, which have also played a significant role in disconnecting us from our past.
Climate Experts Need to Rethink Things
Listening to a climate expert in a recent panel discussion, we were surprised by a response to a question about simple things that each of us can do to contribute to the battle against climate change. The climate expert explained that we know what is causing climate change: greenhouse gas emissions. So, to stop climate change, the climate expert went on, “we have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero.” Take a deep breath and let that sink in. But don’t exhale. If you do, you will release carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. To get carbon dioxide emissions to zero, as you know, we would have to eliminate all living organisms that depend on respiration to get oxygen from the outside world into the cells in their bodies. Of course, we here at Meet Me in the Middle like solutions that have a hope of success, but we should add the caveat that we like for those solutions to not kill off all animal life on the planet. That might be a successful approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but it is a pretty hopeless solution for humanity.
Now, we know what she really meant — she meant we should all be driving electric cars and getting our electricity from “renewable” energy sources. And those are fine goals! If they made sense — and on the surface they do. The problem is that the technology cannot meet the need. It is not a complete waste of breath to speak of the potential of these solutions, but we have learned enough through the trillions of dollars we have spent on renewable energy to know that the technology is not ready. That money would be better spent elsewhere, where today we make the case that it could positively help the world in a much more sustainable and impactful way.
Admitting We Have a Problem is the First Step
In an episode of The Doctor’s Farmacy podcast, Mark Hyman, M.D. hosts Calley Means, coauthor of Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health, which he wrote with his sister, Casey Means, M.D. In the podcast, Means discusses some of the glaring problems our society faces, most prominent of which include people continuing to get sicker, more obese, more depressed, and more infertile. He explains that more than 25% of young adults are pre-diabetic, more than 20% of teens have fatty liver disease, around 50% of teens are now overweight or obese, and nearly 80% of adults are overweight or obese. He points out that, despite American health being the biggest issue in our nation today, it is simply not part of the political discourse (we would point out that chronic disease is one of the big areas that Bobby Kennedy focuses on in his discussion of how to heal America). Means boils these problems down to one simple statement: we are getting sicker because of food.
Means goes on to express his shock that the medical system is not sounding the alarm about the connection between food and health. Medical experts are not standing up and saying, “Let’s not give kids sugar!” Means then makes an important point: the medical experts are actually in bed with the food companies. The pharmaceutical industry is the largest funder of 1) the government, 2) think tanks, 3) academic research, 4) news funding (~50%), 5) medical groups, 6) civil rights groups (including the NAACP), 7) Harvard University, 8) the Food and Drug Administration, and 9) the National Institute of Health. The biggest spenders in Washington D.C. become the core institutions that set our culture and our guidelines, and the biggest spenders are the pharmaceutical, healthcare, and food industries. Means points out that in these industries, politicians tend to betray their ideologies: Democrats uncharacteristically fight for tax cuts while Republicans uncharacteristically fight for socialism and corporate cronyism. [Have we mentioned that we do not think you should trust institutions? When we learn to trust in institutions, we learn to listen to medical leaders — even though those medical leaders are taking money to say something is OK, despite evidence to the contrary]
On a final note, we are supposed to “trust the science,” right? Means explains that the food industry funds 12X more research (dollar-wise) than the NIH. That funding produces studies that are 8 to 50 times more likely to show a positive result in favor of the funding group. If you are studying dairy and you are funded by the dairy council, you are much more likely to find that you should be drinking more dairy. It is crucial to understand conflicts of interest when deciding whether to trust the science.
Your Nutritional Guidelines
Did you know that the there is a committee of nutrition experts who are tasked with establishing the USDA nutrition guidelines? You would assume so, right? You would probably also assume that these nutrition experts are motivated to help get the U.S. population healthier, right? Did you know that there is currently a committee working to prepare new guidelines to be released in 2025? Did you know that around 25% of the currently announced committee members have been paid directly by the manufacturers of Ozempic or other weight loss drugs? Why are weight loss drug manufacturers getting involved with defining U.S. nutrition guidelines? Could it possibly be that they want to influence the guidelines for their own benefit?
It is, in fact, an historic practice for industry to get involved in dictating what nutritional information is conveyed to the public. In the late 1970s, nutrition policy shifted to try to address chronic disease. The 1980 dietary guidelines reflect the prevailing wisdom of the day: “avoid too much fat; avoid too much sugar; avoid too much sodium.” The result? An industry of food products crafted with low fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol and the advent of partial hydrogenation of vegetable oil and other technologies to reduce saturated fat. The source of that prevailing wisdom? Way back in the 1960s, the sugar industry promoted research that minimized the significance of the risks of sugar and put the spotlight on the dangers of fat. As a society, we have been working to overcome our misunderstanding of this for decades as we battle astronomical numbers of cases involving type 2 diabetes, cancers, Alzheimer’s disease, and heart disease.
We recently discussed the hazards of placing trust in institutions (like the USDA). This is a glaring example of why we should not put our trust in the government. The sugar industry spent money six decades ago to put their thumb on the scale of “science,” the government then took the results of the “science” and stood up harmful policy, chronic disease now runs rampant through our veins, and our nation’s life expectancy recently saw a (pre-pandemic) decline and stagnation that began around 2014. We previously discussed how the start of that decline also coincided with the 2010 passing of the Affordable Care Act, which mangled the healthcare system. The sugar industry, the USDA, the healthcare industry, the legislators who passed the Affordable Care Act — all parts of the institutions that harm Americans.
Getting to the Source of the Problem
“I began to see that, despite the way our ecological predicaments are often portrayed, we aren’t dealing with discrete problems to be tackled one at a time. Rather, our environmental messes are symptoms of disrupted biological cycles.”
– Judith D. Schwartz, from Cows Save the Planet: And Other Improbable Ways of Restoring Soil to Heal the Earth
Rising healthcare costs coinciding with shorter lifespans, pharmaceutical companies ruling the world, rampant chronic disease, food and water shortages, desertification of our once fertile lands, polluted rivers and lakes, dangerous levels of greenhouse gases, melting polar ice caps, climate change —— these are all symptoms of an ecological disease that we can cure with one miraculous remedy. It is the same miracle that our home girl, Mother Nature, used in creating the amazing natural world that we hope to preserve: healthy soil.
Other potential solutions certainly may play a role and should not be opposed based on political ideology. For instance, solar panels offer great promise even though the toxic materials used in their manufacture are primarily sourced from China (a country with very lax environmental controls that result in a more polluted planet) and there is no meaningful plan for the future of these toxic materials once solar cells are decommissioned. The point is this: while there are tons of scare tactics taking place among the mainstream media, there is no discussion of a solution with a hope of success. Solar cells do not provide a near term hope of success. Nor do wind farms. Nuclear energy might, but there is misrepresentation of its dangers, creating a public opinion obstacle that politicians seem disinterested in overcoming.
So, here we are. We are the unhealthiest people in history — solution: feed ourselves better food. We have allowed pharmaceutical companies to have control of our health — solution: take control back by being smarter and eating better. Everyone is sick — solution: let’s understand how our food is making us sicker. We have food shortages — solution: stop government subsidies for monocrop farming and grow more food. We have water shortages — solution: better soil management (the government knows this) for our soil to retain more water and better nourish our plants (each 1% increase in soil organic matter helps soil hold over 20,000 gallons more water per acre, meaning less water needed to grow crops and less runoff).
Due to increased fertilizer use and soil erosion, agricultural pollution is historically the top contributor to water quality impact in rivers and lakes, the second largest source of impairment to wetlands, and a major contributor to estuary and ground water contamination — so we must break away from artificial fertilizers to recover our natural water quality and restore our aquatic ecosystems. Some claim flooding is growing increasingly problematic (despite evidence to the contrary from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). But soil with better water retention greatly mitigates, if not eliminates, the erosion and degradation impacts as well as the harm to life and property. Better water retention helps with another threat: drought. The desertification of huge swaths of land are making new areas uninhabitable, but there are many examples of how better farming practices can reverse this trend.
Greenhouse gases have risen to the point that climate alarmists are predicting the end of the world, but healthy soil “sequesters” the carbon by trapping it in the soil and making it part of a healthier biome — so we must escape the trap that our country and our world started falling into back in the mid-1900’s, when artificial fertilizer became prominent. Melting glaciers and climate change can be halted or even reversed by making adequate progress toward sequestering carbon and allowing natural processes to reclaim the carbon from the atmosphere.
Problems with Monocropping
Monocropping is a farming practice in which only one crop is planted over large areas, year after year. This practice results in a habitat in which a wide range of other plants and animals is not really supported, even though those organisms might be beneficial to the crop. It offers the farmer the benefit of minimizing equipment needs and other overhead (mostly just pesticides, fertilizers, and seeds) while also offering high yield and consistent quality. However, monocropping provides optimal conditions for pests to thrive without the natural predators or deterrents that would be present in a diverse ecosystem. It also depletes soil nutrients, thus the need to treat crop lands with chemicals.
Monocrop farms require pesticides, which are effective at taking out the pests, but also end up killing helpful bacteria, pollinators, and other crop-friendly critters. With pesticides, however, comes pesticide resistance, which creates the demand for more potent chemicals (don’t worry, they are just spraying this poison on our foods). The pesticides work well, but at the detriment of the soil, which loses its own biodiversity and exhausts its nutrients as a result. As the health of the soil declines, more chemicals are needed. Take away the chemical fertilizers and these farms lose their capacity to generate high yields.
Monocrop fields account for about 80% of agricultural land, or about 440 million acres. Most monocrop operations are concerned with growing corn, soy, and wheat. Federal subsidies help finance much of the monocrop practices on these 440 million acres. These subsidies historically make up 10-30% of a farm’s net income.
Resistance to Drought and Floods
The National Wildlife Federation published a 2015 report on soil, cover crops, and their utility in managing extreme weather risks. Cover cropping is the practice of planting an unharvested crop when the cash crop is not growing to prevent wind and water erosion, reduce nutrient loss from the soil, and maintain soil health and quality. By the late 1950s, conventional agriculture had abandoned cover cropping in favor of synthetic fertilizers, which were an inexpensive means for enhancing soil fertility. Generations later, today’s farmers grew up with fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides, and thus have little experience with cover crops. In addition to the ecological benefits (prevents soil erosion, conserves soil moisture, protects water quality), cover crops also reduce fertilizer costs, reduce the need for herbicides and pesticides, improve yields, and safeguard the health of the farmer and the consumer.
During heavy rainfall scenarios, degraded and compacted soil promotes runoff, but healthy soil soaks up and retains loads of water. By gobbling up that water, the healthy soil keeps that water from flooding communities. That healthy soil also makes the farm more resistant to flood and drought conditions, making the farm more financially robust and keeps them contributing to a healthier economy. Healthier soil helps avoid crop loss, thus consumers pay less for the product and taxpayers pay less for the subsidized crop insurance.
Hypocrite Alert!
Everyone has heard of Bill Gates, so we do not need to go into his background. We will just start with this 2023 quote: “I’m the person who is doing the most on climate in terms of the innovation and how we can square multiple goals.” Did you know that Bill Gates is also the largest private farmland owner in the U.S. with about 275,000 acres? When asked if his farmland ownership had anything to do with his sustainability and green tech initiatives, Gates explained that “My investment group chose do do this, it is not connected with climate.” But surely Bill is doing something responsible with all that land, right? How about… NO! He is growing potatoes for McDonald’s fries! For real! His land is enrolled in a “sustainable” program called Leading Harvest, but that is not a program that promotes regenerative farming practices or offers any other means of pulling carbon from the atmosphere and putting it back into the soil.
If he were to get off his high horse about being “the person who is doing the most on climate,” he could make a huge difference with the land he already owns. He could sequester up to 4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide — per year! His land could hold 6.5 billion gallons of water. He could save topsoil and reverse its loss on the order of 1.4 million tons per year. He could maintain producibility while eliminating over 32 million pounds of chemical fertilizer per year. He could actually be the person he claims to be. He could be an impactful leader. But he is growing McDonald’s fries, contributing to people getting fatter, contributing to people getting sicker, contributing to the health crisis, and squandering an opportunity to be the good man he so desperately wants us to believe he is. It does not matter how much money someone donates to this cause or that cause, a hypocrite is a hypocrite. And Bill Gates is a hypocrite!
Crunching the Numbers
It is estimated that humans produce about 35 billion tons of CO2 per year, but half of that is soaked up by Mother Nature as it moves from the atmosphere to carbon sinks like the ocean, plants, and soils. To get the carbon dioxide back to levels of about 35 years ago, we need to gobble up about 500 billion tons of CO2. We would need to sequester about 900 billion tons to return to the carbon dioxide levels from the days before humans began burning fossil fuels. How does that math work out?
There are more than 878,000 acres of farmland in the U.S., but that number has been shrinking steadily for decades. If that entire acreage converted to regenerative practices, we are looking at about 14.5 million metric tons of CO2 sequestered per year. That is pretty good, but we need help. After all, Americans are currently producing well of 300 million tons per year with their cars alone.
Now, if all of the 4.62 billion acres of farmland on Earth transitioned to regenerative agriculture, that would remove about 76 billion tons of CO2 per year. That is more than twice as much as humans currently produce annually, and the amount we currently produce should be declining with the rollout of new technologies. If all of the farmers on Earth were on board, we would eat away at the current load of CO2 in the atmosphere at a minimum rate of about 55 billion tons per year. We could return to the pre-fossil fuel atmosphere in 15 years (after converting to regenerative)! That is without everyone having to drive an electric vehicle and convert to solar or wind energy. Even if it takes 10 years to spin up regenerative practices globally, that is a complete elimination of the greenhouse gas “crisis” in 25 years. Does it still seem like the crisis we are warned of by the climate alarmists?
Plus, regenerative practices can help us reclaim some of the desertified land to increase the efficacy of the carbon sequestration engine. If we reclaim ~2% each year, we knock another year off of the time to reach pre-fossil fuel conditions.
Told ya that Mother Nature has a magic remedy for us! So, should we be listening to the liberals and conservatives argue about climate change policy? Or should we elect a candidate for president who actually has regenerative agriculture explicitly on his agenda, like Bobby Kennedy Jr?
Bringing It On Home
The juxtaposition of being both the most technologically advanced civilization ever and being the unhealthiest people ever is reminder that knowledge is not the same thing as wisdom. And when farmers made the fateful decision to transition to “modern” farming practices some 60 or so years ago, they began abandoning the wisdom of their ancestors. In their defense, the chemical industry fueled that transition to a greater degree than the farmer’s personal choice.
Perhaps there was a time when we could have made the case that it makes sense to spray fields of crops with chemicals that help plants grow. But we know better now. We know that feeding cows corn in a pen instead of allowing them to graze keeps the animals from making their natural contributions to the ecosystem. We know that allowing chickens to roam free on farmland makes them healthier, which makes their eggs and meat healthier for consumption. We know that regenerative and holistic farming leads to a natural decrease in invasive pests and weeds, thus requiring less pesticides and herbicides to grow cleaner food with more nutrients. And we know that subsidies promote bad farming practices that hurt the animals, the environment, the consumer, and the climate.
But we don’t know better, do we? Not everyone knows that regenerative or holistic farming practices are going to be better for the world and give us food that is better for us. In fact, we here at Meet Me in the Middle did not really know much about it before listening to the introductory speech of Nicole Shanahan, Bobby Kennedy Jr’s vice presidential running mate. You probably know where we are going with this, but if you want to see any improvement on climate change or greenhouse gases or anything else that makes you worry about the end of the world, voting for a Democrat or a Republican will never, ever get you there.
Do not ever let anyone preach to you about climate change or global warming ever again, unless maybe they are a regenerative or holistic farmer. We here at Meet Me in the Middle always say that we believe in solutions that have some hope of success. If climate change is threatening our existence as we have been terrorized into believing, then why are the powers that be not pushing regenerative or holistic farming practices? Getting to net zero carbon emissions is not going to save us — in fact, it is a recipe for global warming to only get worse! If humans stopped producing greenhouse gases completely today, it would still take over a century to reduce CO2 by 500 billion tons. And warming would continue that entire time. We would never get to pre-fossil fuel conditions. The liberal/Democrat solution of eliminating greenhouse gas production has zero hope of success! We have to sequester the carbon from the atmosphere. And we can! In less than two decades, a global adoption of regenerative agriculture can return our atmosphere to pre-industrial greenhouse gas levels, without ANY other mitigations.
So, why is this not the number one solution that the politicians are pushing? Because they don’t give a damn! They will not push this solution because there is no money in it for them. The number one precursor to agricultural transformation is leadership transformation. We need leadership that is going to ensure agricultural transformation takes root.
Bobby Kennedy aims to “shift regulatory priorities to favor small farmers and regenerative practices.” He plans to “lobby Congress to change the system of agriculture subsidies so that they no longer favor the biggest corporate producers.” That is what it is going to take. THAT is the leadership we need.