Episode 102: The Learning Experience of Regenerative Ag with Dr. Allen Williams

Hi, friends. This is John, and this is the Regenerative Agriculture Podcast. Welcome back. This is where we have all the fun conversations about agronomic science and cultural management practices and everything that relates to improving our ecosystem health and plant health and soil health and ultimately public health. So thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. I'm really excited to have on this episode a guest I've been wanting to speak with for some time, Dr. Alan Williams. Alan Williams, thank you. Thank you for being here. Thanks for all the work that you're doing.

Well, thank you. It is an absolute pleasure to be on and an honor, so I deeply appreciate it.

You know, Alan, often I begin these conversations by asking people to tell us about their journey and their story and where they've come from. And I certainly want to hear that from you, but I actually, I want to start in a different place. You and I participate together in a WhatsApp group, and I realized during the course of the conversation that occurred there over the last few days that many people struggle to have a clear perspective of an ideal to strive for. I've used this phrase that many people don't actually know what really healthy plants look like anymore. They've never really gotten to see plants that were vibrantly healthy, that were just glowing and radiating. And that's true not just of plants, but that's also true of ecosystems. It's true of landscapes. It's true of. Of livestock and grazing management systems. And so, you know, if we want to really motivate people to change and to take action, you inspire action by portraying a very clear image of an ideal. This is what's possible. This is the opportunity. This is the potential that we can all strive for. And so I'd like for you to give us your perspective. And I know you spent a lot of time studying and thinking deeply about ecosystem restoration and the context of livestock management and ecosystem management. So what does an ideal look like? What really is the opportunity? What is possible? What should we be striving for?

You know, that's an outstanding question. And I guess my first response to that would be, none of us know what the ideal is because we've never seen it. We've never experienced it, our world today. And we've traveled to many other countries and worked in a lot of different areas, and I've yet to see perfect soil, you know, imperfect ecosystems. It's degraded everywhere. So we. One thing's for certain. Over the centuries and the millennia, we've done a great job of degrading what we have, and what we've been blessed with. And so. But what we do know, though, John, is we know what is better, right? And we've been able to monitor and measure that and track that. And so when I see something that is clearly better, then there's going to be a handful of key components there almost always, again, no matter where you are in the world. And those key components are going to be soil that is highly functional. When I'm saying that, I'm talking about soil that has, you know, high levels of aggregation deep into the profile, aggregation. So it's able to function. It's able to infiltrate water, infiltrate oxygen, to cycle nutrients, and it's able to absorb impact from animals and equipment, machines, all of that. So that's first and foremost is highly functional soil. Now, we know that in a lot of ways. You know, we know that by the appearance of the soil, we can do a shovel test and very quickly detect the level of function of a soil. We know that from the aroma of the soil. The aroma teaches us a lot about the biological profile, the bacterial, the fungal profile or ratio that exists in that soil. And the second thing I look for that is highly indicative is plant species diversity. Whenever I see low diversity, I know there are issues and I know there are limitations, period. You cannot escape it. There is no way that you have a low diversity system and that you aren't automatically limiting yourself so the level of diversity and not just in individual plant species, but also in plant functional group or class of plants. So I not only want to see, for instance, lots of grasses, you know, it's not really a highly diverse system if it's just a bunch of grasses, and that's good. But I also want to see other functional groups like legumes and forbs and even woody and brushy species somewhere in the mix, because all of those bring core components to biodiversity of the soil and above that, that nothing else can, then the next thing I look at is the level of insects and the diversity of insects that I'm seeing there, particularly pollinators. So I pay a lot of attention to that. You know, how noisy is it? You know, really thriving ecosystems are not going to be silent, they're going to be noisy because of the level of insects and birds and other species that are there. I call that the symphony of nature. Yeah, I want to hear nature's symphony playing for me, not silence. Then I look at birds. So birds are another key indicator species. If I'm hearing and seeing a lot of birds, then I know that's a very Good sign. So whenever I step foot on anybody's farm, anybody's ranch, anywhere in the world, those are the first few things that I automatically am looking for. And. And again, lack of those. I already know what we're facing, right. We're facing a situation that needs a lot of help. But if they've already begun to build those, then I start to converse with them about what have been your practices that have been in place to this point to build that diversity to the degree that you have it today. And then we talk about how to not only continue those practices, but. But how to take it to the next level in the next.

Thanks, Alan. So you spoken a bit about soils and plants and about some of the characteristics that you look for in ecosystems. You haven't yet talked about animals. And I also want to take the conversation there. But before we go there, I actually want to go back to the soil piece for a bit, which is that you made the comment, we have never seen any ideal soil because all soils are degraded. And by the very fact of you having that perspective means that you have an image in your mind of what an undegraded ecosystem could look like. I want to just take this down a little bit further down this pathway. What does the image of an ideal soil look like in your mind? You describe soil aggregation deep into the profile. How significant aggregation, how deep? What does that really look like?

Yeah, so first and foremost, abundance. Okay. And abundance is really inherently evident when you see it. You know, it's one of those things that you say you know it when you see it. But I look for abundance, and in, again, noisy abundance. But if we relate it directly back to the soil itself, what we often encounter are soils that are plated, compacted, you know, they have distinct hard pans, they have multiple plated layers, compacted plated layers, very shallow aggregate. And I mean, often we see either no aggregate at all, no depth of aggregate, period, or we see a very shallow aggregate, you know, only two, maybe three inches in depth.

And.

And oftentimes that's comprised of micro aggregates and not macro aggregates. So microaggregates are like little tiny beads or BBs in the soil. Very tiny. A macro aggregate is going to be more the size of a cheese curd. I call it the cottage cheese of the soil to help people sort of picture it. Or the chocolate. A crumbly chocolate cake look. Right. So that's really what we want to see. But, you know, way too often when we stick the shovel in the ground for the first time, On a farm, we don't see that at all. And so I immediately know that the biology is way off in that soil. And that soil is going to be highly bacterial in nature. It's going to be bacterially dominated with very low fungal and protozoal presence. And then when we actually collect the soil samples and run those through the laboratory test to look at actual biological analysis, sure enough, it confirms that we have very, very low fungal and protozoal presence. Soils that are pretty much dominated by bacteria are low functioning soils. They will be compacted, they will be plated. We have significant issues with nutrient cycling, or lack thereof, and water cycling. Both will be subpar. And what we have to understand is that one of the jobs of soil bacteria is to actually consume nutrients as they leach down through the root zone, pushed down by rainfall infiltration. And that's purposeful, that's intentional. That's to hold the nutrients in the root zone within reach of the plants and mycorrhizal fungi. But bacteria are not a time release capsule. So once they consume those nutrients, those nutrients are locked inside the membrane of the bacteria and they can only be released through primarily two ways. One is protozoa and bacterial feeding nematodes, consuming the bacteria to degrade the membrane and then release the nutrients. The other is rhizophyte, which Dr. James White describes so well. You know, where the bacteria are drawn into the root itself. Powerful enzymes are released by the root to degrade the bacterial membrane, and then the nutrients are released inside the root and then the bacteria are spewed back into the soil. So those are the two principal ways. But neither one of those occurs when we have a significant lack of mycorrhizal fungi. So a lack of mycorrhizal fungi significantly impairs both protozoa in the soil and the con. The consumption of bacteria by the protozoa, and it significantly impairs rhizophyte.

Yeah, I think I really like the way you framed and described this, Alan, because there is this perspective. I think it's important to highlight this. This is a bit of a nerd topic here, but it's important to highlight there's this conversation around bacterial fungal balance that many of our degraded soils are bacterially dominant. But I think what gets lost in that conversation sometimes is the realization that when you have a fungal dominant soil or when you increase the fungal population, that doesn't mean you decrease the bacterial population. In fact, in many cases, as I understand it, it means the opposite. You increase bacterial populations and fungal populations to Much higher plateaus.

So you are absolutely correct, and we have the data to substantiate what you just said. Let me give you an example. So if we use the PLFA test, phospholipid fatty acid test, as a biological marker test, what that's measuring total living microbial biomass and nanograms per gram of soil. So what we often encounter, just to give people sort of a measuring stick here, what we often encounter our first time out to a farm or ranch that we're consulting on, and we actually take this PLFA measurement is PLFA somewhere in the 800 to maybe 2,000 nanograms per gram range. Okay. So that's pretty common in a lot of soils before they start implementing regenerative principles and practices. However, what we have found is that once you start implementing really good regenerative practices, over time, you build both that bacterial and fungal and protozoal presence to staggering degrees. And we don't yet know how high we can go. We don't know where the threshold is. We keep measuring this, and we haven't hit a threshold that we have found that microbial growth cannot go beyond. So we have recorded over 16,500 nanograms per gram of microbial biomass. So if you think about going from an average of about 1000 to 1500 to over 16,500, that's exponential growth in microbial population in the soil.

Help me out with the math here in my head for just a second. Nanograms per gram translates to what, a part per million or a part per 10,000?

That would be. I think I'm correct in saying a part per million. But, you know, it's a staggering amount of microbes in the soil. In other words, we can. We can build literally trillions and trillions of microbes per acre.

Yeah.

And that's where we should be and what we see as a result of that. I'll give you a perfect example. So we took a subset of farms and ranches that we've been working on and tracking them through the first four years of their progress. And the average aggregate depth that we measured in year one on these farms, their very first year was only about 2 inches. And that was it. Okay. By year two, with implementation of regenerative practices, they had increased it to just a shade over 4 inches of aggregate depth. By year three, they had increased it to 6.7 inches in depth. And at that point, again, because of our experience, just the decades we've been doing this, I knew that they had built the microbial biomass to the point. So those first three years, it was sort of linear, right? You go to 2 to 4 to 6, that's linear. But I knew they were poised to explode into exponential growth and exponential results. And that's exactly what I told them in year three. And we even put that in writing on their, on their consulting reports that if you continue with what you're doing here, you should now experience exponential results. And by year four, that is exactly what happened. The average aggregate depth had increased from a mean of 6.7 inches to almost 15 inches in depth. Wow, that's staggering progress. And that resulted in a whole array of other beneficial things that were occurring. So obviously water infiltration rates improved dramatically. So we saw that happen. Nutrient cycling improved dramatically. The plants were far healthier, far more vibrant. You talked about that earlier. And we saw a lot more biodiversity resulting from the latent seed bank. So a lot more plants were now growing there to dramatically increase the biodiversity. The animals were performing a lot better. So the animals were performing a lot better relative to gains, milk production, that type of thing. But also reproduction and health was significantly better. And so each of these farms noted that, that the health and reproductive performance of their livestock was radically improved.

You know, when you were speaking about the progression, the rate of progression of soil aggregation, what the sequence, the timeline that you shared reminded me of is the golden ratio, the phi series, where it's 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, where there is this, the further down you go, the more rapid the progression becomes, or at least it appears as it's non linear. And so when you think about that, you said 2 inches plus 2 inches to 4 and then going to 6 and then going to 15. It's a very similar progression where you have this. The reality is I'm persuaded that most, if not all plants and organisms and populations grow along this pattern. The only difference is the time sequence. For some of them, it's a time sequence of a few days or a few weeks or months. Like there's differences in the time series of how long it takes to get from one stage to the next. But that that growth pattern seems to be almost a universal pattern for biological organisms.

I would agree with that. I think you're exactly right. And, and you know, I, I often go back to in, in trying to get a picture of what it should look like. I have spent a lot of time in Genesis and then in many other places in, in scripture and, and I have discovered, you know, that we are given pictures of what abundance looks like, what thriving soil is like, and should be like. And so every time that we encounter in scripture, truly healthy soil that always results in abundance above the soil. So again, if we're lacking abundance, we have issues in the soil. Yeah. Plain and simple.

Yeah. Using. Thinking about your, your scriptural reference, so far, the largest cluster of grapes that I've encountered weighed, I think about £15. That's still quite a stretch from requiring two men to carry it. It's significant. Not many people ever get to see £15. But that's, that's still quite a stretch from. Yeah, from two people carrying it around. So this pattern of soil aggregation, this pathway to developing macro aggregation to a deep level in the soil profile. The question that I'd like to ask is what are, what are the primary drivers, what are the major drivers of that ecosystem development? And I, we all know that this is very multifaceted and that it's context dependent, that there are, there are many different pieces that play a contributing role here, but some are greater than others. They're all important in the, in the grand scheme of things, but some are more fundamental. And so my question for you is what are, what are the fundamental drivers of this aggregation development that are absolute prerequisites without which this will not happen?

So let's, let's first talk very briefly about how that happens and then we'll talk about what are the fundamentals to cause that to happen. So aggregation cannot happen where you don't have roots in the soil, number one. So if your roots don't go deep, you're not going to have deeply aggregated soil, you know, into the deep, into the profile. Just not going to happen. Almost everyone of the critical microbes that we deal with in the soil live in association with the plant roots. And it is these microbes, and especially the mycorrhizal fungi that produce these biotic glues that glue the tiny soil particles together to form the bigger aggregates. So we've got to have that, that microbial activity and the mycorrhizal activity in the soil to have the degree of biological glues needed to create the aggregates. And again, all of that lives in association with the roots. So we've got to drive root growth deeper, to drive microbes deeper, to drive aggregation deeper. So that, that's the principal way that this happens. Now how do we do that? Okay, well, we don't do it by lots of tillage. We don't do it by using lots of synthetics.

You still need to say that today.

I hear you, I hear you. You know, and we don't do it by using lots of synthetics and chemicals. You know, all of those are antagonistic to building mycorrhizal populations. With the tillage, it's obvious. The tillage. You know, if you think about mycorrhizal fungi like a giant roll of galls. If I were to take a giant roll of galls and roll it across my field and take any piece of tillage equipment and run it across that field, what's it going to do to the galls? Well, it's going to chop it all up, bundle it all up, destroy it, you know. And so that's what we're doing with the mycorrhizal network underneath the soil surface, that, that we're just chopping it into little itty bitty pieces and jumbling it all up. So it's now non functional fungicides. You know who we're using fungicides. They're not target organism.

That's like an obvious.

Yeah, I mean they're not target organism specific. So yeah, may they be effective against the disease causing fun fungus, but they're also going to kill the mycorrhizal fungi. On the saprophytic fungi. Many, many herbicides, you know, greatly diminish and harm mycorrhizal populations as well. So we've got to first and foremost look at how can we significantly reduce and minimize tillage passes and use of synthetic fertility and chemical pesticides. So that that's our first start to repairing and rebuilding the mycorrhizal fungi population. Secondly, we've got to increase plant species diversity. We know that there's more than 200 different species of mycorrhizal fungi and each species has different classes of plants that it associates with. So the more diversity in plant classes then the more mycorrhizal species we're tapping into and colonizing in the soil, which is exactly what we want to happen. So plant species diversity matters a lot. The next thing that matters, particularly if we have livestock, is the way that we graze those livestock. If we're continuously grazing and we're over grazing routinely, things like that, or we're coming back too soon, too often, all the time. We're lowering plant species diversity, which again is not good for building mycorrhizal colonization. And we're through the overgrazing, particularly in the warm months. Our soil temperatures are heating up radically, 130, 140, 150 degrees in our pastures. The soil surface temp and we're killing mycorrhiza fungi and soil bacteria and protozoa due to. We're literally baking them in the soil. So. So we have to be cognizant of the way that we graze, that we're grazing in a manner that is promoting plant species diversity, not narrowing plant species diversity, and that we're always keeping our soil protected and covered from sunlight so that we're not heating the soil up and losing the soil moisture to evaporation. So those are some of the key things that we can do. So the right animal impact, reducing damaging inputs and practices, and promoting and increasing plant species diversity are the keys to. To being able to build a strong, vibrant mycorrhizal population.

That was an awesome answer. Thank you, Alan. It's such. It's such an obvious piece when what you said that really crystallized it for me is the realization that there are 200 different mycorrhizal species. And, you know, we've known about mycorrhizae now for several decades, and as time goes by, I continue to learn new things about them that just amaze me. Several years ago, this video started circulating around where there's this. This video micrograph of. Of mycorrhizal fungi channeling bacteria into plant roots. And it's. There's this pipeline, and there is this. It's a high rate of speed. Like, these little bacteria are not just crawling along through this pipeline. It is moving. It's moving fast. And I just. I watched that for a bit, and I just marveled. And I'm always asking the question, why? Like, how does this work? How is this possible? And a year or two ago, maybe in the last year or so, I learned that to my amazement, each mycorrhizal fungi is a single cell. So you have this fungal hyphae network that is in many cases dozens of feet or can even grow to be hundreds or thousands of feet across in diameter and who knows how deep into the soil profile. And that is all one single cell. And the fact that it's a single cell, that's. This is the explanation for why bacteria can flow through that hyphae as rapidly as they can, is because they don't need to transfer from cell A to cell B to cell C. It's just flow. It's laminar flow. It's remarkable to watch.

You know, mycorrhizal fungi are the original World Wide Web or Internet, right? And of course, Al Gore didn't invent this one. So, as the old joke goes. So, you know, it is hugely amazing how rapidly they transfer bacteria Transfer nutrients, transfer signals from plant to plant to plant. When you do radioisotope studies and you track this, it's within seconds, you know, that you're, you're transporting and moving things. So, so really I tell a lot of people that we work with to think about mycorrhizal fungi, again, as that world wide web, but that, you know, interstate system beneath the soil surface. And it's designed for rapid transport. Yeah, and I also call mycorrhizal fungi the. I call them jack of all trades and master of all trades in the soil as an organism.

Yeah, yeah, that's good. You know, your, your comments about speed of transport. There's a. Actually, this might have been personal communication. I'm not sure this is. Is published yet. But the largest known single, the largest physical size single organism that is known is a fungi in the Pacific Northwest where they have identified it is the exact same fungal hyphae network with the exact same DNA at a distance of, if I recall correctly, it's like 300 miles in diameter. This thing is really large. And so they used radioactive isotopes and put them into the fungal hyphae on one edge of the network, and they showed up 300 miles away. How quickly would you guess? 0.3 seconds?

3. 0.3 seconds?

It's like at that point, 03 seconds, we're not even, we're no longer even talking about transfer of a physical substance from one side to the other anymore. At that point, this is a quantum leap. It's.

Yeah.

Quantum entanglement, networking, whatever you want to call it, it's rapid, rapid transfer. And that's, that's just remarkable.

It absolutely is. And, and so this makes mycorrhizal fungi so critically important. You know, mycorrhizal fungi actually perform. There's more than 100 different functions in the soil that they perform. And so again, they're just, they're this amazing, you know, microbial species that is critically important to our systems. Often one of the ways I tell farmers and ranchers to think about mycorrhizal fungi so that they can sort of picture it in their mind and gain a better understanding is think about it like an IV tube. So if we have an indwelling catheter hooked to an IV tube, then IV tube is hooked to a bag that is feeding nutrients into our body. Right. On a 247 continuous drip basis. So we're always being fed with whatever's in that IV bag. Well, mycorrhizal fungi are just like that IV tube, except Instead of having one tube, I've got many, many, many of these stuck into my arm. Okay, so you have mycorrhizal fungi attaching all over the plant roots. So lots and lots of IV tubes. And so that's what the mycorrhizal fungi is.

Similar to the piece that I love about your analogy, and just thinking about that, taking it one step further, you have all these thousands of IV tubes, but they're not just bringing nutrients. And to use a better or a similar medical analogy, they're bringing the equivalent of stem cells. Like there is. There is this constant regeneration and youthful longevity energy that is being added as well. Yeah. Which, which brings me to a point. You know, when we work with lots of orchards and vegetable crops and a lot of different high value crops, and in these crops, these crops are managed very, very closely, we pay very close attention to plant expression and physiological behavior. And one of the things that I can continue to remind people of is that when you change the way a plant gets nutrition and it starts getting nutrition from biology rather than from solution ions in the soil, from fertilizers, the best way that I've found to express it is that plants begin behaving differently. All of a sudden you'll see different types of growth patterns and trees will need to be pruned differently and crops will need to manage differently because they have this much higher, more vibrant level of health. And they just, they begin behaving differently. And it's. We could talk about specific crops and define what we expect to see, but if we're speaking broadly, there's all kinds of nuance. And so my question for you, you described this, this rapid progression of soil aggregation, and what does that progression look like? What is the tipping point, the threshold where things start to really take off? What does that look like for plants? What does it look like for livestock? And how do they begin behaving differently? This goes back to the question of many people don't really know anymore what a healthy plant or soil looks like.

Right. So when we have much stronger mycorrhizal colonization, then there's a whole host of things that begin to occur here. So, you know, again, one of the principal factors is that mycorrhizal fungi produce and release a lot of these biological or biotic glues that glue together the soil particles to create the aggregates. And as we build those aggregates in the soil and can now infiltrate water and oxygen better. Protozoa are sub aquatic organisms. And so if we think about building our protozoa population in the soil to consume bacteria to release nutrients for plant uptake. Then we have to first build the mycorrhizal population and the aggregate, because the protozoa swim on those films of water in the soil to trap bacteria to consume them. So, so think of protozoa, not like a wolf, but like a dolphin in the ocean, you know, swimming to track down and consume schools of fish. So the protozoa are more like a dolphin, they're a predator, but more like a dolphin than a wolf, more like an aquatic creature than a land creature. So aggregation has to come first before we can build the protozoa population. As all of this occurs, that combination of things, the mycorrhizal fungi colonizing, building aggregate, infiltrating more water, more oxygen, building the protozoa population, consuming more bacteria, releasing more nutrients for plant uptake, plus the mycorrhizal fungi performing many other functions, including transfer of nutrients. So if you have a high level of nutrients in one portion of a field and a lower level in another, the mycorrhizal fungi, again, in a matter of just mere seconds, can transmit or transfer those nutrients from one area of a field to another. Where you lack mycorrhizal fungi, that does not occur. Secondly, they send signals to the plants across that entire field. So if a pest insect moves into a certain area of the field, starts eating on plants, then the plant sends a signal to the mycorrhizal fungi, and it then sends a signal throughout every plant in that field to say, you now need to produce compounds that this pest insect does not like and are going to ward this insect off, and it's going to leave us. And that's exactly what occurs. But again, in the lack of mycorrhizal colonization, that does not occur. And then it does the same thing in warning plants throughout the field about fungal pathogens in the soil and producing compounds that produce immune responses against those fungal pathogens. So again, when you're having pest problems, you're having fungal disease problems, you're having plant nutrient deficiencies immediately. That tells me you have a lack of, of good mycorrhizal colonization and function, because otherwise that would not be occurring. So. So that's sort of the progression here. Now, how do we see this manifested in the plants and animals? Well, if these plants now have access to more water and more nutrients, and especially a broader array of nutrients, you know, we're taught and you know this, and I'm sure you encounter this all the time with farmers, it's ingrained upon Farmers for the last several decades. Npk, mpk, mpk. As if there's only three nutrients that exist in the world. Right? And, and what a wrong, wrong way to think. That would be like us eating only lettuce every day and that's the only food we consume. We would soon be nutrient deficient. So these plants begin to react and respond in a way that is really pretty remarkable. First, what we note is, you know, the change in the morphology and physiology of the plant. One of the things that we have noted is the exact same plant species, all of a sudden their morphology will be very different. You will see wider, bigger leaves.

Okay.

And yes, and this happens over and over. And you will see a different coloration to these leaves and it'll have a totally different texture. So when you feel the leaf surface, it'll have a much more velvety texture rather than a very rough, coarse texture to it. And it's the same plant species. You didn't change species.

In the same vein, we've also noticed, you mentioned wider, larger leaves, but we've noticed changes in leaf width to length ratio where they become wider relative to their length. You see, you see much sharper definition of the leaf edges. Where there's less amorphous there, they're much sharper and cleaner. And in many cases you can also see plant structure change. Kind of the classical example that is really easy. Lots of people can relate to. I asked them. One of the widespread weed species, quote unquote weed species that is found in tilled soil is lamb's quarter. And I start asking people in a room what their lamb's quarter plants look like. And on some farms, they'll grow 7ft tall and 12 inches in diameter. And another farm two miles down the road, they'll be a 24 inch round ball. But it's the exact same plant species. And those are some of the examples that we've observed. And there's. Yeah, there's many, many more.

You know, we see that all the time now. And a lot of farmers don't believe that. If you just tell them that they have to see it to believe it. But when we're able to show it to them, particularly in their own fields, then they just, wow, I never ever knew that this could happen. Another thing, and you mentioned, you know, the sharpness of the edges of the leaf and all of that. But another thing that we have noted to John is the venous structure throughout the leaves. Okay. It's far more prominent and functional. So it's clear from the venous structure in the leaves that they are receiving more nutrients. And, you know, it's sort of like, you know, do you have a river with very few tributaries, you know, or do I have a river with lots and lots of tributaries feeding that river? That's what we begin to see in these plants. We see lots and lots of tributaries now developing in the veins of these plants that are now continuing to feed these plants better and better. The other thing we note about the plants is that they are far more resilient. So anytime you have stressors or challenges, whether it be heat, cold, dry, too wet, whatever the conditions are, the plants are far less bothered by that. They're still vibrant and productive in those more challenging conditions. And my goodness, don't we want that? You know, on our farms there are.

So many expressions and explanations and different nuance, I guess. Yeah, these plants begin behaving differently. But, you know, when we think about plants as an antenna, there's one point that's related to moisture regulation here that we've observed that I'd love to get your perspective on is when we think about plants from a biophysics perspective, they're fundamentally in an electrical antenna that's plugged into a magnetic grid that we call the soil. And as an antenna, one of the things that we observe is that as plant health improves, their antenna function improves. And that's, that's an expression of this, this vein structure that you're describing and also of the, the leaf edge definition. And what many may not be aware of is that the quality of that antenna functionality has an effect, has a bearing on dew formation. So a really healthy plant where there is lots of energy flowing through this antenna, the dew drops form on the very tips of the leaf serrations and they stand straight up. Dew doesn't form on the bottom of a leaf. It forms at the top of a leaf or the tops of these tips. And only when it's struck by sunlight and it loses some of its structural energy, it then begins to collapse and flip to the bottom side of the leaf. But we've observed that when you. When we have these really healthy plants that have their antenna function thriving and functioning really well, we get much stronger dew formation. And these plants are actually capable of collecting very large amounts of water.

I am so glad you brought that up because that is one of the things that we have noted over and over and that many grazers and many farmers dismiss. They dismiss. The value and power of dew do can be an incredibly valuable form of moisture on a day in, day out basis. And you can actually not receive rain for a long period of time. But if you've got really good dew production, you can still have vibrant, thriving plants. And so in plants that don't have this structure that you and I have been talking about, you first get far less dew formation. But then secondly, what happens is that particularly in fields that are. That are pretty principally monoculture or pastures that are overgrazed, things like that, then as soon as the sun starts heating up, the dew is quickly evaporated and it's not captured by the plant in the soil. We want that dew to be captured, to be utilized by the plant and the soil. So absolutely, we cannot dismiss the value of dew and how this radically alters. And, you know, if again, here I have to go back to scripture. You know, it didn't rain until the flood. So for in. In the flood occurred in. In the year 1651, when you really track, trace through the 10 generations from Adam to Noah and trace that timetable. And so for that period of time, man did not experience rain. Everything was watered, you know, from dew and that type of thing. So man thrived, you know, with just the presence of dew and the watering from the fountains of the deep, so to speak. You know, we. We think only rainfall is valuable now, or applied irrigation is valuable. Not so.

Yeah, not so. I'd love to go down that scriptural bunny trail a bit further, but I have a feeling if you and I really got started on that, that might end up being the majority of the conversation. And there's a few other pieces I want to capture yet here. One of the pieces I want to speak about is the. When we have soil that has macro aggregation at a significant depth, to just also ask you the question, what. What if? Where is the threshold? What defines significant depth? But then the question that I really want to get to is, is such a soil compactable? Is it compactable by livestock? Is it compactable by heavy equipment? Like, how resilient is such a soil compared to what we are familiar with?

Well, that is. That is a fantastic question. And what we find that soil that is highly aggregated. No, it's not compactable. Yeah, it. It's compressible like a sponge, right? So I can take a nice thick sponge and I can squeeze it down, but then what happens? The moment I release my hand from that sponge, it returns right back to its original shape and function, and the soil does too. So as we build aggregate in the soil, then our animals no longer are pugging that soil, they're depressing it. And as they move on it, it returns to its original shape. The same thing with equipment, the wheel tracks, the tires or whatever, the tracks compress the soil, you know, but as it moves on, the soil comes back up. So we don't see the rutting in the fields. Yeah, you'll see the depressions for a short period of time and then they'll disappear. And that is exactly what we have experienced with highly aggregated soil. The function is just so much better. So that means that when it's wet, if I'm grazing, I can still get livestock in there and graze without pugging it all up. Or if I'm cropping, that means I have much broader windows for planting and harvest because my fields can be wetter and I can still get in them and plant without rutting up and mudding up my fields. Or I can harvest without rutting and mudding up my fields. And that is precisely what we have seen with many of our clients and on our own farms. And what's funny about this, and I'm sure you've seen it as well in your experience, is that we'll have, you know, some of our clients, farms, they'll, let's say they go out in the fall to harvest and it's wet, but they have no problem. Their ground is holding their combine up and their neighbor sees them doing this. Oh, well, my goodness, he's harvesting. I'm going to go get in my field. And then, boom, sinks his combine. You know, in. The neighbor is confused. He's like, wait a minute, I don't understand. How are you able to get into your field and harvest and I'm not? So the neighbor has no concept of aggregation in the soil and, and the power that that brings to restoration.

Yeah, it's a, it's a common experience for farmers to describe their soil changing completely and the ability to move machinery, equipment around. Just. We now have this entire domain of science where researchers are looking at the workable days, how many workable days it's possible to be out and working in the field. And of course, they're looking at it from a tillage perspective and they're really asking the wrong questions.

Absolutely, they are. You know, this, this greatly expands those planting windows, harvest windows, any field work window that you want to talk about. And it also greatly expands the time period that we can plant any crop. You know, we have so confined ourselves to thinking, well, if I plant corn, I must plant it within this window and this window, or it's going to be a failed crop or beans or Wheat or whatever it may be. And I see way too many farmers trapped in that mindset. And even our federal crop insurance program is designed to accommodate that as well. But when we're able to build this aggregation and this function in the soil, those windows are no longer applicable. The things that we think are proven and true and time honored are not. We created those situations.

I'd like to just expand on that point because I see that you can. What I've observed is you can change the quote unquote requirements in both directions. First of all, if you plant later, seeds will germinate and come out of the ground and take off like they've got an injection of jet fuel. And on the other end, you can also plant much earlier. And here's the key piece that I was having a conversation just a few days ago. The idea came up in conversation, like, what happened if we planted seeds in the fall? Like, it's. I know Steve Groff is experimenting right now with planting hemp seeds in the fall. It's like, wait a minute. We see volunteer corn coming up in fields, but not everywhere. I see volunteer tomatoes in my garden all the time. What other plants could we. What other seeds can be planted in the fall and will then germinate the following spring when the time is right? And you would have thought that I had uttered a heresy. And, well, the immediate reaction was, well, we plant corn and soybeans in the spring all the time, and they rot in the ground if they're planted too early. So what makes you think they wouldn't just rot in the ground? And seed rotting in the soil, in my opinion, is an expression of two things. A, it's an expression of crappy seed quality, and B, it's an expression of where that soil is. So we absolutely see some seeds that are planted in the fall at Germany in the following spring. So let's just go all the way to the far edges of that heretical idea and say, well, what happened if we planted thousands of acres of corn and beans in the fall?

I absolutely love this conversation. And. And you know, we have created our own constraints and what we believe to be true. Well, we're right, but we're wrong. If we continue with our current practices, we're right. Okay? But if we radically alter our practices and radically alter the health and vigor and vitality of our soil and that aggregate depth and profile in our soil, then we're wrong. And that is precisely what we have seen. So to your point, yes, we have seen that when we have much more highly aggregated soils. Number one, they're far more functional. Number two, there is far more insulative capacity and all of that and protection for the seed. And the seed responds when the conditions are correct, without the seed rotting and degrading in the soil. This is also why we see when we graze regeneratively and we plant no seed. Right, we intentionally plant no seed. But yet we see enormous response from the latent seed bank year over year over year. And in many cases, this is from seed that people hasn't seen germinating and growing for either decades or centuries. And we've noted that. So this seed can stay in the ground for a very long period of time until conditions are conducive.

This is perfect. Alan, you took the conversation exactly where I wanted to go next. You mentioned a key phrase, grazing regeneratively and how you see populations, plant populations, recover. And my question was going to be, there are many farmers who, I'm thinking specifically of grazers, both dairy and beef grazers, who have an authentic desire to do the right thing and they've implemented holistic management. They're doing the best they know to the best of their ability. And they look back and they look at the conversation that you and I are having and some of the scenarios that you've described, and they say, well, I've been doing this for years, I've been doing it for a decade, and I just haven't gotten there yet. What's missing? So that's my question to you. What is missing? What are people? Where are they missing? The targets? What are they not understanding or not implementing? Well, and I'm sure there's at least a dozen or more answers to that question.

But yeah, and you know, first and foremost, it truly is a lack of understanding and education in regenerative principles and practices. The. They've heard it. They may have read it, have gone to a conference, heard either you or me or anybody else speak about it, but they don't really understand how to implement those principles and practices within the context of their individual farm. So that's one of the key things that I see occurring, is that lack of awareness and education. Just because you're a farmer, you don't automatically know how to regeneratively farm. You must learn this secondly is that we see incredible amounts of peer pressure and we've hit on this a little bit in our conversation today. But you know, everybody that sells you something or everybody that you know, your even family members, friends, neighbors, our universities, our extension service, on and on and on, you know, can exert influence and peer pressure, and farmers often succumb to that. We, we like to call ourselves fierce independence, but we're not. We're not. We are worse about succumbing to peer pressure than the kids on a school playground. And, you know, and yet we don't want to admit that, you know, but we don't want our neighbors thinking we're doing something radically different and potentially stupid. We don't want our family thinking that. And, and then, like I said, if you've been surrounded by fertilizer salespeople and seed sales people and chemical salespeople and on and on, they like to become your buddy, right. And so then you are influenced by them and they'll tell you, no, no, no, no. Why are you thinking about this regenerative stuff? I know so and so that tried that stuff and completely failed. How to train wreck. So no, don't try it. So the peer pressure is the second thing. So lack of awareness and education is one of the key factors that prevents us from doing this. Peer pressure is the second. The third is debt load. And among the farming community today, it's the greatest it's ever been. Yeah. How many farmers do you and I know that they have to have annual operating loans? They can't, out of the cash flow of last year's crop, even afford to fund the purchase of next year seed, fertilizer, whatever else they may need, fuel, you know, and all of that. So they have to have an annual operating loan just to get by. Well, that's really. You're teetering on the verge of an insolvency when you have to have annual operating loans.

And with that, of course, comes requirements for insurance and an addiction to the system. Like you're hooked up at that point. The hook is set.

The hook is set. And unfortunately, the system is designed so your lenders will discourage you because they are not educated in regenerative principles and practices. So they'll discourage you and they'll tell you, I'm not going to renew. If you're thinking about doing it that way. I'm not familiar with that. So I'm not going to renew your operating loan. You know, I'm going to call, call your loan in here if you go that route. So their lender puts pressure on them, their insurer for their federal crop insurance does the same thing and tells them, no, no, no, if you think about doing that, we're not going to be able to insure you. So the lenders, the insurers are all tied into this and all are facilitating the wrong type of behavior from these farmers and also keeping them ensnared in this debt that the farmer can't get out of. The beautiful thing about being out of debt is that you're free to make far, far better decisions and to make your own decisions without the influence of the lenders, the insurer, whoever else may be, may be putting pressure on you.

Yeah, Alan, I'm going to come back though, and I'm going to ask the question again. I think your answers, the answers that you've given, the lack of education, awareness, debt loads. And so those are all, those are all correct answers. But there is a group of farmers that I'm thinking, I've been to the Lancaster County, Pennsylvania Grazing Conference, probably a decade or more ago, decade and a half at this point. I've been to the Northeast Ohio Dairy Grazing Conference and the Northern Indiana Dairy Grazing Conference, where these. There was a group of farmers here who they have had Ian Mitchell in US and they have had people from all over the world to come and really guide them and coach them. And they have made a very authentic effort to make a significant change. And they haven't yet realized the results that you are describing. And that's really that group of people that I'm asking this question for, like, what is missing? Why haven't they been successful yet?

Yep. And nine times out of 10, the answer to that is they have turned what they are doing into a prescriptive approach rather than an adaptive and regenerative approach. Prescriptions, recipes, formulas always ultimately fail in nature and in biology. They may work initially because whatever you change something to introduce that. Right. So it was a disruption. So you got some initial results that were positive because you introduced a disruption. But when you make that one disruption, what you do from that point forward, you turn it into a prescription. That's when you are, after a period of time, going to hit a threshold, a wall and quit making progress and then start trending backwards again. And that's what we see happening over and over again with a lot of people. The key here is being able to remain adaptive in your mindset. And this is where the three rules of adaptive stewardship really come into play. So we have the six principles, but then we have the three rules. And I'll very briefly go through those for our audience here. But the first rule is the rule of compounding. And this is just a rule of recognition. You got to recognize that everything that we do, every decision we make, everything we apply or don't apply creates a whole series of compounding, cascading effects. Nothing in nature, in biology, is ever static or, quote, sustainable. You know, you and I, every day we live, we're a day older, and we can't stop that. We can't sustain being 40 years of age or whatever, right? Neither can you out on your farm. You can't sustain anything. You're either moving forward or backwards. So the rule of compounding is there always are compounding, cascading effects, period, end of story. You can't deny it and you can't escape it. And number two, they're never neutral. They're either positive or negative. You're either moving forward or you're moving backward. You're never staying static. So. So again, it's a rule of recognition, just understanding that. And once you understand that, then you begin to think differently about every decision that you make and how that decision is either moving you pop forward in positive compounding effects or moving you backwards in negative compounding effects. The second rule is a rule of diversity. And that rule is very simple. The greater the diversity that we have in every type of organism, the better. Microorganisms in the soil, insects, pollinators, birds, plants, even the crop rotations that we do, the COVID crop species we plant, the livestock species we have on our farm, Diversity matters. So the greater the diversity we have in every form and fashion we can have it, the better everything is going to function. And then the third rule, I call this one where the rubber Meets the Road. If you want to make continuous, ongoing progress without hitting that wall, without hitting that threshold, the third rule is how you accomplish this. And it is called the rule of disruption. And what that means is that we can introduce planned, purposeful disruptions year over year to continue to make progress. So let me use this analogy to help people understand this better. So if a person is an athlete, they know that to progress as an athlete and to perform at a higher and higher level, they cannot do the same exercise routine at the same duration and intensity day after day. If they do that, they know they're going to hit a wall and their athletic performance is going to threshold and then start going backwards. So they know that the only way to continue in their athletic performance is to alter their exercise routine routinely. In other words, they have to introduce planned, purposeful disruptions to trigger growth in their body. The same way on our farms, planned, purposeful disruptions. So the rule of disruption is where we make that ongoing progress. And this is what most people lack. They hear somebody say something or see something somebody did or they did something. Oh, I got a positive response. So I'm now going to do it that way from now on. Right. And so they turn it immediately prescriptive. They lack disruption and they lack growth from that point forward.

That's a perfect analogy. I love that. And I think you've, you've nailed the answer to the question that I was looking for. So thank you. I don't know how we're going to constrain this conversation because we could, we could keep going for a long time here, but the, there's one topic that we haven't really touched on yet, and that is the performance of livestock. Livestock in this ecosystem Are.