How The Food We Eat Is Making Us Sick & Unhealthy | Robby Sansom & Taylor Collins

There's never been a point in human history where we have been further separated from the source of our food.

The health of our land and our food system will be a reflection of our own health.

The reality is in America and around the world globally increasingly, we have a destructive agricultural system that destroys the environment, destroys biodiversity, destroys the soil, is a big cause of climate change, and produces food that is bad for us and is harmful to the animals. So let's start with talking about our current food system and why it's so screwed up, why our food system basically has been designed to create larger and larger ranches and farms, mostly supporting corn and soy farming and eliminating most of the small family farms in America, making it really hard for farmers to actually succeed unless they're really big. So, Robbie, can you speak to the big issues in our food system?

The first thing that comes to mind for me is just the scale of agriculture, I think just for some quick back of the napkin math. I mean, the earth is about 30 billion acres of land and about 11 billion acres of that has agriculture on it. And to make that more tangible, the US is about 2 billion acres. So just look at your map. That's the US, 2 billion acres. And almost half of that has some form of agriculture practiced on it. So when we talk about the scale, we talk about these practices and and tilling land and spraying chemicals and all of the things that we're gonna be discussing, just keep that in mind. The experience you have when you fly over the US in a plane and you see a checkerboard beneath you is representative of just how much of this is going on. And I want for consumers to appreciate that. So that really has stood out to me to understand that some of these negative externalities and these things we're gonna discuss exist, but it also makes me hopeful because to know how much impact potential that we have with subtle changes to do positive things, you know, that same scale applies when you start to apply it towards solutions. I'd say the second thing that I learned and it stood out to me is this illusion of choice. It's even partly how we're conditioned to think in many cases, but everything gets benchmarked against the status quo, you know, our existing agriculture system. And well, if we do that, you know, it doesn't accomplish this thing like our current system does. The reality is the status quo is not an option either. Change is inevitable. It is a must. I mean, even from 2012 to 2016, more than half of the agriculture counties in the United States were declared designated disaster areas. That is the status at present, actually historically, of our food production systems. You look at all of the data, you know, 30% of our most fertile lands are desertified across the globe or desertifying. And so I just think we need to just make sure to start the conversation that we recognize that change is necessary, change is inevitable, whether we invite that change or whether it forces itself upon us. And we're heading towards a point where we won't be able to make food healthy, abundant, or cost effective, let alone make food at all if we don't accept that reality and adopt some change. You know, I do think, and again, you know, going back to your question, so what have I learned and how does some of this apply beyond that scale and that need for change? I see Regenerative as a solution and there's a lot of reasons I know we'll get into, but ultimately, you know, it invests in and build resiliency into our food system in opposition to the status quo, which simply extracts from the system. It creates positive and it celebrates externalities instead of deferring and ignoring negative existential externalities. It mirrors and emulates the architecture of nature and biology instead of combating it with chemical and industrial warfare. It's a system that promotes life instead of one that aggressively seeks to eliminate it. And I like to say it ultimately replaces a vicious system with a virtuous one. And I know that you have some questions coming up too. There's a few other things I'd like to touch on on this point. I think you mentioned the farm bill. I know it's near and dear to both of us. Only a few single digit percentage points of that bill effectively are dedicated to conserving and securing our food production systems. So if we acknowledge that beautiful Wendell Berry quote that you have in the front of your book that we all talk about, we have a food system that ignores our health and health system that ignores our food. The health of our land in our food system will be a reflection of our own health. And that's just a natural law that we can't refute. And yet when it comes to these regulations and systems that we put forth to promote synergy towards our food production, that resiliency, that conservation, that securing of our food production system is an afterthought. I think the other more that comes to mind in learning as we've gone through all of this is just understanding how the consumer is taken advantage of and manipulated. An average consumer sees cheap shelf prices, and is told that that's all that matters. Everything else is hidden. And so you just see red meat and cellophane. And the only thing that's worth discussing and acknowledging is the price at the shelf. And the truth is to obtain the outcome where we are today, there has been had to be a significant compromise in value along the way. And even still, while we're losing that value, the truth is the food itself that has a cheap shelf price is among the most expensive. It probably certainly is the most expensive.

Can you explain that? I think that's a really important point because we think when we buy food in the grocery store, the price we're paying is the true cost of food. But the fact is that actually for every dollar we spend on food, there's another $2 in cost to society in terms of healthcare costs, loss of biodiversity, social justice issues, environmental damage. I mean, just the list goes on and on. And I think that's an underestimate. The Rockefeller Foundation put out a report called the True Cost of Food and where they basically said, we have over a trillion dollar food system, but it costs us $3 trillion in damage. And they left out a lot of things that also should be included that actually weren't even included in that calculus. So it's actually probably maybe even three, four, five, six times the cost to society, to humans, to the planet that we pay at the checkout counter.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. No, I'm glad you asked because I love diving in on this one and I think it sort of helps round out the initial question as well. So I think you pointed to some of the deferred costs and I'll get into those, but let's just talk about on an absolute basis, the direct cost. If you look at, Ruffles potato chips. They're twice as expensive per ounce.

I try not to look at them. No, I try not to look at them.

Yeah, Taylor and I did a whole podcast on our own podcast called Where Hope Grows and I think Ruffles were $1.19 an ounce and our regenerative beef was 55 cents an ounce. So it was more than twice as expensive. We never, and we're told this meat is expensive, right? But we don't bat an offie.

Probably price per nutrient, it actually was far cheaper for the meal.

Oh, yeah, we did a joke, right? Yeah, absolutely. One's making you sick, one's making you healthy. We even went and bought a meal.

At.

A fast food restaurant. We did it at a gas station and it was less expensive to make a meal for our families at home. And Taylor jokingly bought a bottle of Pepto-Bismol with his convenience store meal because you knew that.

You definitely need that. You need some pepcid or something.

I don't even want to glorify calling that food. I'm starting to call those things, those hyper processed offerings food like substances because that's effectively what they are. But again, we don't bat an eye at the price people pay for a $7 coffee or expensive bottle of wine or $9 bottle of water and bourbons and vinegars.

$7 coffee, yeah. It's crazy, right?

We just, But again, at the cash register, candies, these things are way more expensive and yet we're told, we appreciate those as cheap, but we think of meat as expensive. So again, on an absolute basis, I'd say that this food is actually less expensive than people realize and it's valuable, but we're conditioned to think differently. I think the other thing too that we're told because it's cheap is that we can waste it. Something like 40% of all food is wasted, it's 60 million tons, $200 billion. I mean, it's just the things that we do because we've been conditioned to believe certain things are remarkable when you come at it with a different perspective. It really changes how you may act. But then, of course, there's what you talked about, too, some of the other things you don't see in the shelf price beyond the absolute basis. And the reality is for cheap food, consumers pay three times. They pay for it in the form of taxes that go to these subsidy systems. They pay for it at the register, and of course, they pay for those deferred costs. And you mentioned the deferred costs. I mean, the US has to pay the government of Brazil over $150 million a year because we've been flooding international markets with crops sold at below the cost of production. I have some pretty crazy stats on the big four meat companies. I'll save those for later. But ultimately, even in, I was looking at the healthcare costs. You referenced those. I think you state 3.7 trillion $500 as the cost to treat chronic disease in the US. You do the math on that, that's $557 per household per week. So if you want to begin to appreciate the hidden cost of the true cost of feud, add $557 per week to your grocery bill and you can start to understand the expectation that we're putting on ourselves. And then there's the social issues, there's farmers, farmer suicide, there's all of these compromises that we're making to the system stability and to the security. We've seen the US government begin to feign acknowledging this by putting billions of dollars of incentives into opening up more processing plants and doing some of these things. But at the end of the day, in this world travel and in learning about regenerative, I've come to this realization that our food system and our food culture have been captured and it's killing us. And meanwhile, regenerative is thriving all over the world. 40% of farms on the planet are still subsistence farms. We're told one thing that promotes the current system is the only option, but the truth in reality that I hope we'll discover on this podcast today tells an entirely different story.

Yeah, that's incredible, Robbie. Thanks for that summary. And I just sort of reiterate and then I wanna jump to Taylor because I think I wanna sort of dig into actually the reality of what it is to actually run and live on a regenerative ranch and farm. 'Cause we talk about in the abstract a lot, but this is, it's really kind of got me into the weeds and the dirt and the soil literally when I was there. But, you know, just in terms of getting back to the cost thing, just let's just take the cost of corn, which is just such a foundational product in our food system. It's the foundational substance through which most processed food is made. Most of the sugar we eat is from corn. And the cost is just astounding. So we have the damage to the soil that comes from the nitrogen fertilizers, the pesticides, the herbicides, the damage to humans that comes to that, the loss of biodiversity. We have the nitrogen runoff from the soil into the rivers and lakes and streams that goes into the ocean that kills, you know, hundreds of thousands of metric tons of fish every year and seafood that's for human consumption that creates dead zones all over the world that affect 400 million people. What is the cost of that? I don't even know you could kind of quantify that. It's literally trillions of dollars. We then, we then make that food into processed food, which then we subsidize for the government. Basically 75% of food stamps or SNAP is processed food, 10% is soda, and most of that is coming from corn and other industrial products like soy. And then we pay for Medicare and Medicaid on the back end. So we're paying three or four times for that corn as taxpayers. And we think we're in this financial crisis now. We're talking about the debt ceiling, the government's going to shut down. a lot of this has to do with our food system and the chronic consequences that come from the food system. So Taylor, I sort of want to flip now to talk about what you've done, which is pretty remarkable. You basically created a company called Epic, which was a meat bar company from grass-fed meat. I used a lot of the products. I didn't even know you, but I thought they were great. And it was bison bars and venison bars and grass-fed beef bars. It was salmon jerky and all kinds of stuff. It was really great. And you sold that and you could kind of you know, bought a house in the south of France and, you know, had a great time and checked out the rest of your life. But you decided to take that and turn it into a 900 acre regenerative ranch in Texas. And I visited the ranch and met both of you there. And you took me around and gave a tour, a whole bunch of people. And one of the things that we also did was a bison harvest, which was sounds kind of gruesome. I don't want you to talk about that a little bit, but it was one of the most emotional, compelling moving experiences of my life. And I'll share a little bit about why. But I think, you know, I'd love to sort of take us on the journey from the food system that we just heard about, which is this incredibly destructive food system that's killing the earth, it's hurting the animals, it's hurting humans, it's making us sick. And talk about a regenerative system that you created and what is that? And what does it look like? And what do you do every day? And, and what happened to the land that was basically conventional ranch land that you took and reimagined into this beautiful, productive, alive place.

Yeah, it was so wonderful having you out at the ranch, coming to visit us. So thanks for making that journey. And we got to have you two days in a row, which was pretty awesome. I was so stoked to see you day two, you came back for more. and so, you know, what we're trying to do out here at Rome Ranch, we're on 900 acres, like you said, in Fredericksburg, Texas, which is in the hill country. We're in a little bit of a river valley. But, you know, what is unique about Rome Ranch, it's the fact is that you can, that this is just a microcosm for all land and how it's been managed globally. And so when you look at the history, you have, you know, this part of Texas, it was one of the last parts of the United States to be settled because we had some amazing indigenous tribes, specifically the Comanche Indians, literally rolling back westward expansion. This land was teeming with some of the finest horseback warriors and cavalry warriors ever to roam the land.

You don't want to mess with the Comanche, right? No way.

And so this part of Texas was some of the last part to be settled by Europeans, and believe it or not, they gave out land grants. And so people came flooded this area primarily from Germany to escape oppression and lack of freedom and lack of opportunity. And they risked life and limb to come to farm and to celebrate in agriculture and co-create with Mother Nature's wisdom and her gifts. And so, you know, what happened a little over 100 years ago, we started seeing an industrialization of that agricultural system. And this land, it had been Everything that you had mentioned, you know, previously corn, it had been a monoculture of peanuts, of wheat, of Milo, of soy. One cash crop after another was the only reason it was transitioning to another cash crop was because the ecosystem was collapsing. The natural resources had been extracted to the brink at which it could no longer produce that one food or plagues of insects came into the systems which could not be combated. When we bought the ranch six years ago, we called it perfectly destroyed. I mean, it doesn't get worse than this, where over 450 acres of it looked like the moon. And the old man who sold it to us was literally spraying it with herbicides until the ink on the contract dried up. It was his last day on the ranch. He was tilling and spraying. And so it really didn't get much worse as far as having all the mother natures, functioning cycle shattered. The nutrient cycle was depleted, the energy cycle wasn't working, the water cycle was in dysfunction, etc., etc. And my wife and I saw this as the perfect opportunity to find the most neglected, abused, extracted industrial piece of land we could find and then restore it and share that journey into regenerative agriculture with a greater community. And really what we learned in this process is thankfully Mother Nature's capacity for forgiveness and for healing is far greater than our own species capacity for destruction and ignorance. And so the beautiful thing is what we've observed in six years has exceeded any of our wildest dreams as far as how quickly Mother Nature can restore and rebuild and heal. And really what we're doing is we're looking into Mother Nature for guidance and for wisdom and the architecture that's been put in place for billions of years. We're recognizing that as a species, we're some of the last people to be invited to the party. We're just showing up to the dance, whereas bison have been present for two and a half million years.

I never thought there were bison in Texas because you think of them in the Great Plains out west, but actually, they were all over the place, right?

Bison, keystone species. I mean, they're our national mammal now for good reason. They roamed all the way from northern Canada into central Mexico. So all in between in North America and our most fertile food systems where now we extract through industrial agricultural practices, that fertility was gifted to us by millennia of bison co-creating with landscapes. And so we're taking a step back and we're allowing the wisdom of the bison to show us what to do. And so we raise bison, we raise turkeys, we do pigs, we have ducks, chickens, we have honeybees. But then more than anything, what we really want to celebrate is the animals that are allowing us to be here, which is, like you mentioned, the bald eagles, the coyotes, the bobcats, the great horned owls, the mountain lions, things that Robbie and I grew up in central Texas and we had never seen a bald eagle in our lives.

We're 40 years old. And so to have a We saw one.

We saw one when I was there.

We saw it.

Yeah, we just never knew that was a possibility. It had been kind of lost in written history. But, you know, the beautiful thing is that once that ecosystem starts and you begin creating that virtuous cycle where it's functioning at a higher level, more life wants to participate, more life volunteers. Like you mentioned, we have wild turkeys now electing to be on our ranch, breeding our hens, and those are our heritage hens. And so that's just, that's the option. Those wild turkeys could be anywhere they want, but there's something about the resources, about the environment, about the food, the habitat, just the amount of energy that.

Emanates from this land that draws more life into the system. yeah, it's so important. So, so, you know, one of the things that was sort of amazing to me is that, you know, you, you weren't kind of ripping up the land like most Ranchers do. You weren't actually kind of growing one crop to feed a bunch of cows. You, you had, you know, 30 or 40 different seeds, many of which are kind of native to the area, many of which restore nitrogen in the soil instead of having to pour nitrogen fertilizer. The plant, the plants actually provide the nitrogen back in the, the soil isn't disturbed. You have this incredible machine that was like a no-till seed machine that just made a tiny little kind of groove in the soil, then placed the seed and patted it down. It was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. And we really, like, literally went out on the field. We're eating peas from the field, probably stealing it from the bison. And it was like, it was amazing. And then, you know, you're talking about how that you were in a drought right then. We were there in March. it was a drought and all your neighbors literally had to sell their cattle, but you still had all the bison on your land because the soil was able to hold all the water that did fall. And there wasn't a lot that falls in that area, but it held all the water and that there were creeks, you said, there were navigational creeks that had been dried up for decades and decades that the settlers used to navigate their way out west. And now the creeks were coming back to life and the water was seeping through the soil and into the creeks. And like you said, the bald eagle seeds were coming back and they were plants that were germinating seeds that had been dormant in the soil for who knows how many years, 100 maybe plus years. And when the bison pooped on them, they somehow had this unique relationship with these species of bison that something special in the bison poop actually caused these seeds to germinate. So it's like this incredible ecosystem that was being restored and it was just incredible to see. And what was really interesting to me was, was just these were basically still wild animals. Like, you barely did anything to them. They just kind of, like, roamed around. They call it Rome Ranch. I guess they just roamed around and, and you kind of moved them from Pastor to Pastor to Pastor in order to feed on the grass and not over graze and then move to the next spot and then not over graze in the next spot. And by doing that, you created this really incredibly healthy species. You didn't have a lot of vet bills. There wasn't antibiotics. You weren't pumping for hormones. You weren't. doing much except giving them water and planting a few seeds to help grow these native species. And they were super healthy and vibrant and they were living in their social groups. And it was just like, it was quite interesting to see how, I wouldn't know if I can say happy they were, but they were living in a way that was really very much similar to how they lived on the land 152 and 300 years ago. and, and you had this incredible way of, of actually culling the herd in order to produce meat that you could then sell. And, and I'd sort of love you to share a little bit about that process, because for me, you know, we're so divorced from our food. We're so disconnected. We go to the grocery store, we see a slab of meat or a piece of chicken or whatever, and you don't really connect it to the animal. You don't understand how it was produced. You don't. know any of that. And, and, and even vegetables are fruit, right? Basically. But especially animals. And, and yet it was this incredibly moving thing that happened that it's called this bison Harvest. So I'd love you to sort of share a little bit about that experience, why you do it, you know, what, what, what it's like and, and why it's actually probably the most Humane way to actually raise and, and and grow and harvest meat. Yeah.

You.

Wow.

You paid attention during all those tours. You get a plus. I feel like you're ready to give those tours. I mean, wait, wait.

This is like, this is already, like, two or three months later. I was like, I tell you, it was one of the most moving things. You know, they always say that your memory is, is connected to emotional experiences, and you have a deep emotional experience. It's stored memory. And I was one of the most compelling moving things that I'd ever seen being on that ranch because I've written a lot about regenerative agriculture. I visited some organic farms and I've done that, but I've really never seen a bison ranch before.

Yep. So, yeah, the bison harvest, this is a beautiful community experience that we curate and we do it during the cooler seasons, the cooler months of the year for obvious reasons so that we can take our time, be outside, really celebrate the life of this animal together with with people who come from all over the world. I mean, we've had people travel to Texas from Australia, from Argentina, you know, obviously all over the United States to attend in this. And what happens is, you know, community of strangers come together and we collect at the ranch early in the morning, and we talk about in our, in our view, in our perspective, how to truly honor an animal. And the way that we think about honoring an animal we'll just say there's three steps involved. And the first step is allowing that animal, which in this circumstance would be the North American bison, we allow it the opportunity to express its full innate biological potential. And so that gift that the bison gives through millions of years of co-evolution with our grasslands is that it is allowed to create a net positive return on the ecosystem. So by that bison being there, and we're managing that bison as that bison has co-created with landscapes for millennia, we are drawing down carbon, we're increasing biodiversity, we're infiltrating water more effectively, we're creating habitat. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. So that's really step one. If you want to honor an animal, you have to allow it to exist as it was biologically engineered to exist and eat the food that it was engineered to consume to eat. And then the second premise is how that animal dies is as equally important to how that animal lives. And so for a snapshot in the industrial agriculture system, what it looks like with large animals like bison, cows, sheep, goats is they're typically loaded on a trailer, a livestock trailer. Sometimes it's a double decker trailer, so the animals on top are on the animals underneath them. And the circumstance of bison, animals are shipped across the entire country. and so one of the places that one of our local places that we bring bison to occasionally, last time we were there dropping off a load, there was an 18 wheeler that had just driven 20 hours from Wyoming to deliver 100 bison for slaughter. And like you said, these bison, they have retained all their wild genetics. They're not domesticated. So for that species to be loaded on a trailer, to be taken off the land that it recognizes as its home, stripped from its community, stripped from its food source, put on a trailer, transported on a highway at high speeds for 20 hours. That is high stress. That changes the spiritual energy of that animal. It changes the taste of the animal and the texture of the animal. And then that animal is unloaded from a trailer and it's put in a very sterile artificial environment, which would be a slaughter plant. And, it's like a mechanized industrialized end of life where that animal is scared, it's stressed and it's just a terrible way to transition into the next form. And so what we do at the ranch, which is very different, is we do a field harvest. And so to contrast what I just painted and this circumstance, that group of community, so including you when you came out, we drove out into the herd of the bison and we were very low stress. It was a very peaceful moment. Everyone's matching the energy. putting in the right energy to take out the right energy. And a shooter targets a specific predetermined animal. That animal falls in the field. And then we allow this really sacred space, this opportunity for people to be very present. We prohibit cell phones during this moment. You better not film this because we want your eyes on it. Because in many circumstances, this is the first time people have ever intimately interacted with death. And this is something that our species has done for 250,000 years, modern humans, we have done this in community and we've had an intimate connection with the animal that through its gift is sustaining our life, sustaining our bodies. And so we allow about 10 minutes after the harvest for each animal in the herd to come up and really process the loss of one of its herd mates. And it looks like some circumstances, every animal will actually nudge it. The last animal to leave its side is going to be either its calf if it's a cow, or it could be, you know, if we harvest the bull, it could be its mom. It's three, you know, three years of growth. Its mom is still by its side at its death. But we think that's a beautiful end of life transition where you are out in your community, you're with your family, you are eating your favorite food, you are on the land that you love and that you know is home. And then in a split second, it's lights out. You feel no suffering. And so there really is an expansion of energy at that moment where the herd sees something and they feel something and they process it and to observe it as a human is really special and sacred, and it's something to learn from.

It was remarkable. I mean, I, you know, I don't, I don't exactly understand what was going on in the herd. I imagine this might happen in the wild, too, where all the other bison gathered around and, like, almost paid their last respects. And it was this really sacred moment, almost like waiting for the bison spirit to kind of leave. And then I, I don't know. I don't know how to sort of think about it, but it was, it was one of the most moving things, and everybody was just silent and people were crying. And then, and then afterwards, you know, the bison was, was, was actually butchered. And, you know, to watch it, you know, actually be butchered, and then to actually eat the raw bison heart, to see the liver, to see the heart, to see the lungs, to see the intestines. I mean, the intestines were huge because they have to process all this grass. And it was really interesting was that you know, when we harvested it, the entire inside, the fat was all like bright orange. Can you explain why that's bright orange? Because most cow fat is white. Like, if you go buy a steak, you know, in the grocery store, it's typically white fat. Why is it so orange?

Yeah, it's two things. It's, it's a reflection of the animal's diet. And so it's the fact that that animal is allowed to select between a very biodiverse mix of green growing plants and where it's fixing the nutrients that add to the higher level of omega-3s and fat. And that's in contrast to an industrial feedlot grain-fed cow or bison where on the inside of that carcass, that fat would have no color, that fat would be white. And so it's very different. And then the second component too is the age of the animal where bison, because they've never been bred for production, they're still wild animals, it takes three years to have a grass-fed animal ready for harvest. And because of that, that animal is living a lot longer of a life. It's allowing those minerals and those vitamins to be fixed through the circulation of blood, through the muscles. They're very active animals. It's just over time, it's an accumulation of nutrient density. Whereas in a beef cow operation, it could be 14 to 16 months, as little as 14 to 16 months of an animal's life before they are harvested in that industrial setting.

So can you talk about the difference between the quality of the nutrition and the meat you get from, for example, a regeneratively raised bison versus a feedlot cow. Yep.

Robbie, do you want to talk about. Have you been reading up on some of the Stefan von Fleet information?

And, yeah, his Stefan. I know you've had him on the podcast, Mark.

Yeah, yeah.

He issued a report on this, something maybe less than a month ago, and they took a herd of, of bison. and it was something remarkable. I think it was only the last four months of life. They were all raised on pasture their entire life, and then in only the last four months took some and continued to finish them on pasture as Taylor has described. And then the others put them into a, they called them feeding pens. They would be the best case example of a feedlot. They were lower density, still free choice with grass and other feed supplements. So not piled shoulder to shoulder, not exclusively corn and soy and leftover Doritos and the other crap that goes into feed lots.

Skittles. That was a great story, right? Of like this truck that spilled in and like had an accident and had a giant truckload, a tractor trailer 18 wheeler of expired Skittles that was on its way to a feed lot to be fed to the cows. Yeah, yeah.

They're not doing a very good job of removing the wrappers on those either, but that's beside the point. So in this case, that unfortunate reality of the confinement feed system that most of the industry relies upon isn't even the example of confinement we're talking about here. We're talking about a luxurious confinement system relative to that and only for the last four months. And yet still, and you've talked a lot about phytonutrients and phytochemicals, these important magical compounds in food. I think there was something like 3.2 times more phytochemicals found in the pasture raised animals meat than in the ones that spent the last four months in confinement. And so, you know, we talk about nutrient density. It is, it is unbelievable to think about just how profound that that can be when you look at they were measuring something like 1500 different compounds and some 600 something of them were exponentially more significant in the pasture finished system. So spend your whole life there. It's really exciting for me, but it's also cutting edge. I mean, it's just hasn't been really researched to this extent yet and it's just we're scratching the surface and I think we'll continue to find more and more examples of the benefits of nutritionally and from a health perspective of these systems.

So, that's amazing, Robbie. And, Taylor, what have you learned most by being a regenerative rancher? and actually doing the work as opposed to talking about it like I do.

Yeah, to me, it really boils down to a couple of fundamental nuggets and these are really gifts. The architecture, it's in place, it's Mother Nature's wisdom that she shares. And the biggest one for me is just the focus, the emphasis on the importance of biodiversity in a system. which really is one of the key differentiators between a conventional industrial system and a regenerative system, where in industrial agriculture we're typically growing a single species of plant or even a single animal, like you could have a pig farmer only raises pigs. Well, nowhere in nature will you find a monoculture. It doesn't exist because through biodiversity, nature is programming a system of resilience and a system of synergies and ways to have mutualistic relationships where the entire system is elevated. And so through that example and through that wisdom of biodiversity, I mean, as much as we can do to celebrate every living organism on this plant and setting a place at the table for every single migratory bird or every single native mammal, we want them here because they all serve a role.

So important. Can you talk also about the sort of the, you know, the concern that I think is legitimate concern that you know, animal agriculture is, is actually a destructive force for climate and the concern that meat actually may be harmful to you. What, what is your kind of current thinking about these things? Because I think, you know, there's a lot of conversation about how it's important that we eat less meat, that we be vegan in order to protect our health and the health of the planet. And, and so I know you were vegetarian, and I was, too, and, and I think both of us now think of quite differently. So can you kind of talk about, you know, that journey for yourself and also what you know as a rancher about the real value of integrating animals into an agricultural system and into our own diet?

Sure. I think you already alluded to it earlier on the podcast, but there's never been a point in human history where we have been further separated from the source of our food, from the source of of life. And I think that is with intention and that's with design. The big food companies don't want you to have intimate relationships with farms and ranches. And there's something like less than 1% of U.S. citizens have actually visited a farm or a ranch in which they buy food from. And so just the scale of that separation. And when you don't have that connection with a farm, with a ranch, with a rancher, well, you're really just outsourcing your purchasing patterns and your habits and you don't have a realistic portrayal of what's happening out on land. And so in our journey, it was going to monocultures of plants. It was visiting suppliers of people who were raising beef cows regeneratively. And it was seeing that fence line that you so articulately described. And it was seeing it for yourself. And so the people who advocate for less animals, more plants, or more processed plant-based foods in our diets, I have to say, when was the last time you've been out to a soy farm or a corn farm or a wheat farm or a rice farm? And the truth is, those people, for the most part, have never actually seen the food system that they're advocating for. But it truly is an ecological desert for all practical purposes. When you fight Mother Nature's desire for biodiversity, your tools are mechanical tools, chemical tools, and as much destruction as you can create to control that monoculture. And so for us, in our own wisdom journey, it's just seeing it for yourself is believing. Now, we're never going to advocate for an animal-based or meat-based diet or a system where animals are confined. We think that's inhumane. We think that should be illegal. That's not good for the animal. That's not good for the consumer. That's not good for the environment. But what we're advocating for is very different. So I also think a lot of the research and a lot of the discussion out there is focusing on these feedlot systems, but it's neglecting to adjust this regenerative system where it's not only animals, but it's plants and animals in synchrony and in harmony as Mother Nature's that system for billions of years.

Yeah, it's so true. You know, I think I often refer to myself as an ecological doctor because I take care of the human ecosystem. And as a result, people get healthy and you don't actually have to treat disease. In the same way, you just create a healthy ecosystem and the bison thrive, wildlife thrives, the soil thrives, water systems thrive, you're resistant to drought and floods, you create, you know, incredible value we call ecosystem services that give back to the planet as opposed to steal from the planet. I mean, basically there's two trillion dollars every year that we steal from the planet and ecosystem services. And that means we steal the soil, we steal the water resources, we kill the biodiversity. There's a cost to all that. And it's actually not insignificant and we pay it. And we're paying it in many ways through climate change. For example, one third of all the carbon in the atmosphere now is from the loss of soil carbon through the mechanistic way we grow food and the industrialization of agriculture. People don't think about that. you know, the fact that we're seeing droughts and floods and extreme weather patterns. Part of that is due to the fact that our soils and our lands can't manage water anymore. Just like, it was so striking to me to see this desert on one side of the fence and your lush, verdant, you know, Ranch on the other side of the fence, to see drought on one side of the land and like a creek come back to life on the other in the middle of a drought. So it was like, it was really brought home for me. It's not just this abstract idea, but to see it happen and boom, it happened fast. We're not talking about 100 years, which it took to destroy the land. We're talking about a couple of years in which you multiplied the organic matter in the soil by six fold, which is just, you know, crazy when you think about it. And so I think we're in this moment where we have to come to grips with, you know, the reality that we can't do things the way we're doing them anymore, and we can't provide a food system that, that grows the food the way we do, that produces the, the, the sort of amount of industrial food that's killing us and making us sick and the planet sick. And one of the things that kind of loved about being there was just seeing how this actually could be done in real life. And so, Robbie, I'd love for you to talk about your learnings as you've gone around the planet, literally the planet, finding and sourcing animal food from regenerative farms. And, and, and before you do that, I wanted to just kind of either of you to talk a quick summary of what's the difference between a regenerative or organic or grass-fed or conventional because a lot of terms are thrown around. I think people just need to clarify that. And then I want you to sort of talk about the scale of this issue because, you know, this sounds great. It's cute. You have a hobby ranch, whatever, 900 acres, but we got to feed the world, right? So it's not scalable. It's a pipe dream. It's a little bit of a nice fantasy for a bunch of hippies who want to, you know, grow grass-fed meat. What, what actually can this be scaled to and how can this be really a global solution? So talk about first, what is regenerative agriculture and then what you've learned as, as, as the the potential for scale in this area. And what have you done actually with Force of Nature to sort of create a marketplace for these places around the world that are doing the right thing?

Happy to get into that. You know, I think I talked a lot about the learnings from traveling, traveling around and just highlighting again the scale and concerning realities that this food production system are, are manifesting on at a global scale. And, you know, when I think about what regenerative is, and particularly how it varies from the standard system as well as from the organic everything we've been, everything I highlighted earlier on and discussed, those global crises from pollinators to dead zones to things that you didn't even mention, like glyphosate showing up in urine and breast milk and, you know, reproductive rates down and cancer rates up and life expectancy declining and nobody wants to talk about it. You know, all of these things that we point to as challenges, I believe are significantly, if not entirely, the result of that conventional industrial agriculture system. I think organic is a critical milestone in the journey to improving our food system, but it is not a destination. I do not want to disparage it because it's been so necessary and beginning to peel back the layers of the onions and getting to the core of the problem. And what it does really well is it prohibits certain practices like the spraying of various chemicals directly onto the food and directly onto the land, almost half, something 40% of which run off like you had discussed and go into waterways and oceans. And it prohibits other certain practices.

But just can you just define regenerative agriculture? What is it? It's like five principles, 10 things. What is the current thinking about? What in terms of regenerative system?

Yeah, so getting past organic and into regenerative in its simplest form, it's farming in nature's image. and it replaces the system we've been discussing, which is based off of chemical inputs and industrial domination of land as well as animals, and it replaces it with one that seeks to see land and life and everything in between thrive. It's working with that wisdom encoded into billions of years of evolution instead of trying to fight against it.

But my understanding is there's principles like no tillage, leaving roots in the ground, not using chemicals, integrating animals. Like, there's these principles. I don't know if I probably missed a few, but those are really important. And instead of, why are they so important? And maybe, maybe Taylor, you're the guy who's doing every day. So you could, you know, if you.

Have a quick summary and then we can kind of get into the, what you're seeing around the world, Robbie. Yeah. The, so what you're alluding to is the six principles of soil health, which is just this beautiful framework. And again, this based on the idea that all farmland, all ranch land was hewn from an ecosystem. And so at one point in time before humans changed the landscape, that land operated at a very high level because of basic ecological principles and roles that were interconnected and playing out at a very functional level. And so what you're talking about, I'm going to just roll through them really quick, but one is minimizing soil disturbance. Number two is having a green growing plant year round. Number three is- Cover crops, like never.

Leaving the soil bare.

Bingo, buddy. It's not leaving the soil bare, but it's also utilizing the power of photosynthesis to put carbon in the soil and to feed the biology of the soil system. Number four, we will say, is positive animal impact, which in our mind that's the most important one. It's like in all ecosystems, animals are a part of that ecosystem. When you remove animals, especially from savannas and grasslands, those ecosystems will collapse eventually. And number six would be context. And so that basically says that, yes, and that is waking up in the morning and looking at your own beautiful face in the mirror and realizing that you're a human and that we're all different and that we all have different goals and we all have different resources, we have different finances, we have different ecological regions we're managing different rainfall, different soil types. What's right for me might not be what's right for you. And so really embracing that principle. yeah.

If you're in a lush place, like in, you know, in, like, you know, California or something like that, it's different than if you're in, like, in the, in the sort of deserty Texas.

Right.

So it's exactly. I always say, like, hey, if you love, I love bananas. I just ate a banana with some beef, and if I want to grow bananas here in Central Texas, well, that's.

Probably a terrible idea because they're gonna get annihilated by the first freeze we have.

Yeah. Yeah.

Those, those principles are really critical, Morgan. That was, thanks. Thanks for pushing and asking on that. In Taylor and I did a podcast on our own channel. We spent an hour and a half and all we did was go through those principles.

Yeah, that's great. That's great. So, Robbie, now take us through what you're seeing globally in Force of Nature's role because Force of Nature isn't a ranch. It's basically a aggregator, marketer and distributor of regenerative products from around the world. And as a doctor, I'm like I said before, I want my patients to try to eat regenerative meat. I write about it. And in my head as I'm writing this, I'm like, good luck finding it, you know, in my head. And I'm like, and maybe one day this will be true. It's like Steve Jobs takes the CD player out of the computer. I'm like, what the hell are you doing? You know, we need a CD player. I might put my music in my watch my videos and like, you know, you just don't even see the future. But like, there is a future out there that looks quite different. And I think, you know, force of nature to me is one of the most important companies out there actually helping people to find and use these products and support these often small and growing ranches and farms around the world.

Yeah, ultimately what we're trying to do is create awareness and access for consumers in its simplest form. And then I'll expand on that obviously, but consumers are so powerful. Nobody's gonna make a product a consumer won't buy. And I think the reality on our food system, all the stuff that we've been talking about and we'll continue to talk about, is that it's either not available to the consumer, they're just not aware, or it's not presented in a way that they can actually process and make tangible. And then beyond that, even a call to action where, okay, now that I know this, I'm inspired. I've come to a Rome Ranch and I've had this epiphany and this incredible emotional experience that's imprinted on your brain, as you've noted. But then now what the heck do.

I do about it?

I think you even limited on that challenge. And that's where Force of Nature is and why we started the company, trying to make sure that consumers are aware of these issues and that they understand it's not my job to tell a consumer what to think and feel, but at least to give them for the first time in history access to the truth behind the products that they're complicit and supporting and the system that they are absolutely play a critical role in. And then separately, once they do something with that, to make it a little easier on them to support and vote for a system that aligns more closely with their values. And I think what we're finding time and again is that consumers want a system that has a little fewer compromise in the form of health and wellness, in the form of welfare of animals, in the form of ecosystem and ecological impact and social issues in rural areas. And then of course, with the power of the consumer, we can obviously work on the other front line with land stewards and ranchers and farmers all around the country and even across the globe eventually. to justify improving their practices. Again, they are in a sharecropper type system, even in the states. We are pushing and squeezing farmers off of the land and forcing them into a hopeless situation. The path out of that for them also is in regenerative, but the system makes that leap unnecessarily large and difficult. And so if we can come to the table and pay a premium and connect them to this regenerative supply network, connect them to those consumers who value what they're doing and are willing to pay for it, and we can begin to create a flywheel where there's more consumers with more access, sending more signals into these markets and economies, putting regenerative more on the radar for other good actors who deserve to be beneficiaries of this, as well as to the large incumbents who have been taking advantage and profiting off of the destruction of so many key constituencies and stakeholders. and then again, similarly, continue to scale and grow the network of food producers and give them more sovereignty, all while addressing all of the challenges that you've noted and been addressing or have been acknowledging. So, at its simplest form, that's really where force of nature comes into the equation. We're just trying to be a factor in stimulating all of those outcomes.

So talk about some of the places you've visited and some of the things you've seen and where you're most excited about. around the world in America, other countries, like what are you seeing out there? Yeah, you know, I think the, there's.

A lot of buying medicine from like.

I don't know, it was New Zealand or something. Yeah. I mean, so they have, they have that you can't like raise medicine for commercial purposes here, but you can do it in New Zealand.

Like, what are you, what are you seeing out there? Yeah. And you even mentioned it too, and I'll get into about, you know, feeding a growing population. But when you, when you look at how the US produces food, it's a It's pretty unique. We've done the most to go the furthest and deepest down the rabbit hole of absolutely trying to industrialize in pursuit of yield and profit at the expense of everything else. That's what Taylor and Force of Nature would say, commodification. That's what we've pegged our entire system around. And we think of that as the pursuit of cheapness at the expense of all else. and you don't see that necessarily in Europe. I think whenever you visited, we talked about going to Europe and buying bread. Well, it's because they're using grains that haven't been morphed into a shell of their formal and biological intention in reality. The same thing can be said with breeds of poultry and you go around the world and you see subsistence farming at scale and people feeding themselves and their communities and you see most of the food or much of the food available for sale in the United States is illegal in the European Union. And even some of the things that we sell are illegal in Mexico. So, I think as you travel around, you start to see that the myths, the lies that we are fed by this complex, this big food, big ag, big pharma, big chemical, I mean, they're all in bed, even big energy. It takes a lot of petroleum to run tractors across a billion acres five times a year. so, you know, there's, there's so much incentive going into convincing consumers, convincing our citizens that this is the way it must be to feed a growing population around the world, as if it's our responsibility to feed everybody else on the planet. And so I think, you know, again, traveling the world, visiting ranches, I think acknowledging that reality gives me, again, more hope for the potential that these changes in this regenerative system is not only scalable, which it is, but it's proven and it's obtainable, which is exciting. And then I think the other, you know, and then I think just it gives me a sense of place. It gives me a sense of on that trajectory and curve of progress where we sit. And, you know, again, as I was stating, that appreciation of what organic meant to giving us a step forward from the conventional system, the most conventional system, but even, you know, I shared with you our experience of visiting a regenerative bison ranch and acknowledging that it shares a fence line. And, you know, like a 45-minute drive down a highway on your right side is a regenerative bison ranch. And on your left side is the world's largest organic farm. And that organic farm looks like the surface of the moon. It is tilled earth. It has emitted carbon for that tillage. It has no life on it. The regenerative farm on the other side has all of those principles of soil health we just discussed. in place. Its water cycle, its energy cycle, its nutrient cycle are all thriving. It has species for and has habitat for endangered species. There was deer and antelope and bison and mammals and amphibians and birds all flourishing there. And so I think, again, not to disparage organic, but look at how popular organic has gotten under the pretense that it is better and that consumers will pay a premium for it. That is so encouraging and so important to know that that the next step in that journey, the next milestone and improving our system is going from organic, which is now purchased in something like 80% of households, at least one time a year of late and moving the bar up to regenerative.

I think most people probably listening are like, okay, yeah, I get it. This makes sense. We want to restore ecosystems. We want to farm and ranch in ecological ways that restore biodiversity, soil health, water tables, don't kill tons of animals through all the chemicals we use and humans. on and on and on, right? Everybody's bought in. And so if people want to really do that and switch over even from organic to regenerative, can we get there? What are the obstacles in the way and can this really be a global solution or is it just still going to be always a niche market?

Well, again, it goes back to that illusion of choice. I think we can get there. I think our hand is forced. I think we have to make change. I think if you just look at the, is it possible? You gave the example of Rome Ranch, the stocking density on that ranch is, I think two or three, I think it might be three or four times the stocking density of the rest of that county. So if you look at the land.

Use, that means you can put more animals on a smaller piece of land, restore the land and produce more food.

Or put differently, you can feed more people on the same amount of land. But yes, okay.

Okay. Yeah. Thank you.

And offer them more nutritional density in that food. You know, regenerative farms like Taylor's income stack, so they have numerous revenue streams. So it's not just that you can put more bison or cows on it. It's that when you add in beef and poultry and other things, and so it becomes somewhat exponential, certainly factorial. I think when you look at the other hurdles, though, the, the Farm Bill, you know, your passion and, and mine, you know, there's this massive incentive to perpetuate the status quo. You just look at Tyson, Smithfield, because of that Farm Bill, there's like, when it, when it changed most significantly back in 1996, Something it saved Tyson something like $300 million per year over the course of a decade because they were able to feed their poultry a feed that they were able to purchase at a cost that was less than the cost of production. And when you expand that across the top producers of chicken and the top producers of pork over the course of that decade, it saved those companies $20 billion. So there is so much going into the perpetuation of that $100 billion per year farm bill. that makes it difficult to transition. But again, in spite of that, there is still optimism and there is still progress being made. So I think seeing changes in that food and farm bill are a hurdle that I'm confident we can overcome. And again, I would go back to the consumer and I would say, you know, I think we have to just, we have to recognize that we're being lied to aggressively and actively. We're being manipulated with intent. We are being told things like vegetarian fed pork and poultry are a claim that we should put on the front of a package and it's an attribute that we should celebrate. And really it is a red flag. It says that this animal came from an artificial and entirely synthetic and curated system where we controlled every element and can guarantee based on its feed supply that it did not receive anything other than the grains that we gave it. and that is not the system that we all imagine when we think about where our food is and should be coming from. And so, again, I think that's just a small example of how we need to take a step back and begin to think more independently, think more critically, be more aware, and again, understand this food system and the implications of the food system. I know it's hard and we're doing our very best to connect you to that reality and make it easier. Mark, like you had a very real tangible on-farm experience. We're trying to give microcosms of that experience to as many people as we can so they can begin to develop that level of appreciation.

So that's beautiful, Robbie. And Haley, I'd love for you to share what your hope is now. What are you hopeful for? What is your vision of the future that you see coming fruition?

Yeah. What gives me hope and what reminds me that this is we're capable of changing radically changing this food system is again just looking back. I mean, so much of my inspiration and so much of the deepest, most profound learnings that I've ever observed come from nature. And the fact is that what we've been able to accomplish out here in six years, that's nothing compared to some of the people that have been doing regenerative agriculture for 20-25 years. So we're talking about some of our mentors like Will Harris over at White Oak Pastures or Joel Salatin at Polyface Farms. I mean, those two, we talk about in nature it takes 500 years to build one inch of topsoil. And when you hear a stat like that and you put it right next to, well, we can lose three or four inches of topsoil in one single rain event, if our land is not covered. So it doesn't take a mathematician to figure out how sustainable that system is. But the beautiful part that always encourages me is that Joel Salatin, Will Harris, these guys have built five to 10 inches of topsoil in less than 25 years. So this is literally 500 years.

It's amazing. Not 500 years, but like, no, I.

Mean, this is like a blip on the radar. This is defying the human capacity for what we thought was the potential ability for land to heal itself. And that's just one small example. And so it's, again, this capacity for heal in a natural ecosystem that's functioning at a high level is so great. It is right in front of us. It is right there. And it just takes so little as a civilization and as a culture to return to that.

If you love that last video, you're gonna love the next one. Check it out here or you see.

A study on the news from a leading university.

I am telling you most likely that.

Study was funded by unimpressive people sitting in an office in Washington, D.C.

These PR offices.