Episode 140: Generations of Regeneration with Benina Burroughs

Hi, friends. Welcome to the Regenerative Agriculture podcast where we have all kinds of fun conversations. Today we're going to have a fun conversation with an almond grower from Central California and walnut grower and community leader and inspiration and lots of things to lots of people. Bonina Montez. Bonina, thanks for being here.

Thank you so much for having me on.

So I'm actually with Bonina in person in Arizona at the Green Cover Seed Regenerative Agriculture Nexus event. Had a lot of fun the last couple of days. Benina, you've been doing a lot of inspirational work and you've been a pioneer in regenerative almond production and thinking about COVID crops in these very challenging environment of the Central Valley. Tell us a little bit about your background and story and what got you to go into and start looking at. Start going down the direction that you are with COVID crops, some of the things that you're working on.

So our family's been farming in California for 100 plus years. We started as dairy farmers, delivering milk, you know, in glass bottles. And eventually there was a family split on that. We went and moved to the Central Valley. We're in Merced county in the rolling hills between San Francisco and Yosemite and Sacramento and Fresno. And giving a little too much background, but just for context so that you understand where we're coming from, continue to be dairy farmers. And in the late 80s, as technology for irrigation improved, we planted the first almonds. And I always wanted to come back to the farm. I didn't necessarily know in what context, but I really enjoyed where we grew up. Um, and so when I came back home, we still had beef cattle at the time. Um, so I helped with that. And then eventually there was another split between my dad and my uncle. And having grown up on a diversified farm of beef, almonds and dairy, it was very, I don't know, scary to me to only have almonds. And so we were looking at some kind of diversification tool. So we went into organic almonds. We started that first block in 2006, and then we just continued to add other blocks into the organic way of farming. We just fell in love with it. And it made me start questioning why we were doing what we were doing. Was it for the benefit of the orchard or was it, you know, that we needed to pay somebody and it was going to help them out more than the farm? Right. So I thought that was enough. In 2015, the whole farm was certified organic, and we had a lot of volunteer vegetation. We always planted cover crops for the first like three years of an orchard being developed and then we would just let the volunteer come and we. So we always had a lot of coverage in the organic system, but my brother and sister each had an organic dairy and they always saw all of the vegetation growing and were like, what else could you do with that? Like, it seems like such a waste to just, you know, burn fuel and mow it and mow it and mow it. And my parents went to a lot of conferences and they started talking about regenerative ag. And I was like, this just seems like one more thing to do. We're already organic. That's enough. And Tommy Fenster and Dr. Jonathan Lundgren from ecdiosis started doing research comparing conventional and regenerative systems of almonds in the Central Valley. And when that initial research came out showing that there was six times the water holding capacity in these orchards and the pressure of Sigma, the Sustainable Groundwater Management act, coming in, I was like, please give me all the information on how we can take our system in a real intentional regenerative system.

Now, six times the water holding capacity in Central California is kind of a big deal.

Yeah, yeah. So I knew we were going to have water restrictions. We know we have that limitation. And I don't want to have to follow 20, 30, 40% of our land. I want to be able to farm all of it in, in a good way. And so that was, I think in 2000 maybe, I mean, I mean, 2020. And so in 2021, we got 750 bed of sheep to start incorporating those guys. And now today we're mowing in our mature orchards just one time before harvest.

And all the rest is being grazed with sheep, even during the growing season.

We're, I mean, we're, we're coming off, we're coming off 90 days before harvest, but with the sheep grazing and trampling or. And we've switched our harvesting system to a catch frame system. So it'll catch and then windrow the almonds. We're able to just mow with the ten foot auger mower. And then it went, you know, after we harvest, it windrows in onto the ground.

Well, you. My goodness, Benina. There's so much here that I want to unwrap and get into. I want to talk about your markets for organic almonds and I want to dig deeper into the water holding capacity. But actually, why don't we start there? When you described the research that John Lundgren had been doing, was your farm a part of that research? Actually, let me ask A different question. When I think about the serious water discharge challenges and water quality challenges and water availability challenges that exist in California in particular, but also in other parts of the world, I don't think a lot of water system engineers and the people who are making water management decisions really understand the implications of what would happen if all of the soil, of all the farm ground that water is being supplied for simply had better water holding capacity and better water infiltration capacity. So when you think about that from that perspective, what is the, what is the big picture vision of the possibilities? What could Central Valley agriculture look like if we manage this way?

That is like a big dream for me. What are the possibilities if we actually left the ground covered? I mean, you imagine yourself as a raindrop. Where do you want to land, right? Do you want to land on cement? You want to land on bare ground? Would you rather land into some kind of vegetation that you can follow down into the ground?

I mean, I love the adrenaline rush and a fast ride. Put me on concrete and take me to the ocean.

Think about, think about your life purpose as that raindrop, right? And you just, you just lost your whole life purpose. But yeah, I think that there's so much possibility and that is why we're so passionate about leaving the ground soil. I mean, you look at Mother Earth, how quickly is she trying to cover yourself when you uncover her? And it doesn't matter what seed bank is there, but she will find a way to start covering herself again. And so I think that as that's a natural system, we need to try and emulate that and use the, the design that's already there in a way that we can continue to produce food, use less resources and have nutrient dense nutrition. Right? So we're using less water, we're not getting high yields, but our nutrient density is going up. This year we had them tested, our almonds tested. They had two times the antioxidants, two times the B vitamins. And I mean, this is relatively short, short time. I mean, we've really been intentional with regenerative for about five years. We are organic for, you know, quite a bit more than that. And that's why I say I don't think that organic is enough. Is it how we want to farm? Yes, but I think if we can just start with keeping the soil covered as the first step in, in this regenerative journey, and we're all going to be on this journey for a long time. It's not like one day you're a conventional farmer and the next day You're a regenerative farmer. Right. It's all a journey for us. There are just some easy steps we can take to make it better.

Continuing on with this, the water infiltration theme, what has you mentioned that you're using less water now? What has changed for you as you've been on this journey over the last decade, decade plus? What are your crops water needs now? Or actually, that's not the question entirely, but how are you managing water differently now? And how is your, how has your soil changed to allow you to manage water more efficiently now versus a decade ago?

Well, we're, we're not having the soil be as hot because we're leaving armor on it. So that's one of the first things. And then we're able to penetrate better. Also because our organic matter continues to increase. I think we were under two. And that is the biggest regret I have, is not having documented the entire journey to say we went from this number to this number. I mean, if we go back to some of the diocese numbers, you know, we could chart it all out. But we had, we're also certified regenerative. And so in that process, we've, we've had to do some testing. So we have some soil organic matters up to 6%. And I know that there are, you know, valley soils that are less than 1%. Right, right. So. So that's a, that's a good thing for us. I also, I also think that our whole system is kind of set up on this. I don't think Band Aid is the right word, but that's what comes to mind. It's like we're, we're set up to always be feeding and be on a. On a reliant system. And I think we need to question why, why we have these systems. Is ET the right measurement even? Because when the crops that we're getting to plant are bred, it's with basically maximum inputs, it's with unlimited water, it's with unlimited nitrogen. Right. It's like you have all of these resources to grow this crop, but we know that all of that's going to be limited. So I think we need to question that the tools that are being, that are set up for us to farm are basically based on having all these prescriptions.

I know that in conversations I've had with Jerry Hadfield and with many others, there's a growing recognition and understanding that evapotranspiration rates and particularly the transpiration component of ET is more variable than we might have considered before, that the relative health of A plant impacts its water release for cooling and for transpiration by as much as 40 to 50%. Like you can greatly reduce the amount of water that a crop requires based on its degree of health. So it's not just a number that is a reflection of temperature and humidity thresholds. Yeah.

So this last year we had more water available, but I wanted to see how the trees responded by not irrigating to what ET said. And we used about 26 inches on average, which our neighbors use 48 inches. And so I, I didn't see a bunch of stress in the trees. I still saw growth in the trees. And so I'm looking forward to the possibilities of being able to use less resources by farming this way. I do think a big part of that though is not having the soils heat up. You know, it was a 90 degree day. We went and took soil temperatures on top of the armor, over 130 degrees. And then under there it was just over 90 degrees. So I think that's also contributing to not needing as much water.

You're not losing water and you're not losing moisture directly from the soil. Right, right. What does it feel like to walk into a grove of trees that is where the understory is covered with vegetation compared to walking into a grove where it's just hard, bare soil.

You can feel the energy, you can feel the life. When you walk out and like the sheep are grazing, we're looking for spiderwebs.

Now.

We'Re looking for insects. You, you walk out there, you can hear the birds chirping. It's alive. You know, you walk into the other one and it feels almost like more deathlike.

Well, it's completely quiet in many cases.

We had a tour this fall. Some university professors were doing a three day tour across California and they came to our place and we were in the middle of harvest and we're going around and they, they actually said that our farm was the first farm that they saw a bird on. I was shocked at that on all the tours that they had been on that they hadn't had any birds.

Yeah. So the rationale for having a bare orchard floor in almond production systems is to facilitate harvest. And you mentioned that you are working with catch frame harvesters and trying to go in a different direction. Tell us a little bit about, about what you've been working on.

A few years ago we had. There's a tineas, it's from Spain. I like to say tanaeus, but there's. It's the wrong pronunciation that requires a single Operator, but it's limited on the size of the tree and eventually that machine will be autonomous. Then there's a toll harvester, which is what we ended up using. It's two machines that go on either side of the tree. They each have a shaker head that way. One can shake on the way down and then the other operator can shake on the way back. It gives the machine a rest, but also it gives the operator a rest. And it has enough gas, water, fuel to last a whole day. So it's really pretty efficient. And so it, it, you shake the tree, the nuts fall onto it, and then you can even go into a cart. Or for the almonds that need to be dried using the sun's energy, we just, it just goes onto a windrow on the ground. That has been a game changer for us because historically on the organic side, we were always, I'm going to use the term fighting with ground cover, using a flamer under the tree row, even using a sweeper to get rid of the vegetation, to put it into the middle to be able to then mow it multiple times. Then when you're actually harvesting, you shake. It's going onto the ground. It takes longer to sweep. Then we have to use a conditioner to get all of the trash out, then come back in and pick up and then have to float on all of that material back out. So this has been just a complete change for us because we're able to keep the ground covered, which is so important, and not have to start over every year. As I was on this journey, you know, and you hear about the principles of soil health and leaving that ground cover and having a living root. I just was like, this doesn't make any sense to every year go to a bare ground. The other thing that I do want to talk about for why there's a bare ground is because of the fear of frost. And there are studies coming out that, you know, it's, it's just a half a degree or degree different. But most of the crop is not right near the ground cover, right? I mean, it's six, ten feet higher up. And so I think we need to also not be concerned about getting 100% right of, of the, of the crop, whether it's on the bloom side or the harvest side, because how much is that costing us? Right? It's costing us on the soil health side by keeping it bare. And then it's costing us money to make sure that we're getting every single nut. And I think that we need to think about what that's actually costing us.

So I want to better understand the frost susceptibility is the concern that the COVID crop is keeping the soil cooler longer in the spring and it doesn't warm up as much. That increases frost susceptibility because the local environment is colder. Interesting. Okay. So when you think about the work that you're doing with the harvesting platforms and this is the approach that you're taking, incorporating cover crops and doing these things is a very, in some ways a very different system from the system that is being used presently and has a lot of, has advantages and disadvantages. But it seems to me like the water use efficiency that is a substantial piece when you think about still being able to grow all of those crops instead of fallowing 20 or 30% or more of your acres. And so the question that comes to mind is what might limit adoption? Why might growers be resistant to following in your footsteps?

I think fear is such a big motivator and risk. Right. I mean farmers in general are gambling and risking every day, every season. Right.

A lot.

And last year at our field day, one of the farmers commented, why don't you just wait to spray until you see that you actually need to. And I think that we're on this like calendar mentality. Like it's bloom, we have to spray X or it's whole split. So we have to spray this because we may have a flare up of insects. I mean this year talking to our huller, our, our numbers for regenerative organic on on rejects were comparable to conventional. And a lot of those guys sprayed one, two, three times for now.

Navel orange worm for those listening. Yeah.

And so I question, why don't we work on preventative measures? Why are we so reactive and focused on killing instead of focusing on the benefits? I mean it's mind boggling that for every one bad insect there's like well, somebody said 2000 the other day, but I've heard 1700 good ones.

Yeah.

Why are we not focusing on how to create habitat or the 1700 instead of focusing on killing the one?

Yeah. It's a different mindset of supporting life rather than seeking to weaponize and search and destroy specific pathogens and recognizing that in the fullness of ecosystem function that those 1700 and that functioning ecosystem can overwhelm the potential pests, which is what you're experiencing with navel orangeworm. So you've been doing no applications for navel orange worm.

Last year we did zero. The previous year we did spray two varieties and two blocks at the end of the season.

Wow.

I'm not anticipating spraying this year.

Wow. You described you started growing organic almonds in 2006 and 2015. All of them are now organically certified. And you've gone in that direction as a way of decommoditizing yourself. How. What are the market outlets for those almonds? Where are they going?

We're an ingredient for some brands that, you know, sell in the bulk bin or use them in granola bars or use them to make almond milk or almond butter. We're also. We also have our own brand, Burroughs Family Farms, which are on the west coast, and Whole Foods, and a lot of great independent grocery stores. We're also on Amazon, so we're available nationwide. Now. For people that want to be able to get it direct to their house with. Without a big shipping cost, we're selling those. Just a three pound bag of all natural. We also have a roasted, salted. It's actually incredible to me how amazing almonds are. I mean, they can be turned into a flour, it can be turned into a butter. You can turn them into almond milk, and you can just eat them by the handful. We have three ingredient, Three products that are single ingredient. One of them is an almond milk concentrate that you can just add, you know, your water or whatever to and turn it into a milk for people that have dairy sensitivities. And then we have a creamy almond butter and a crunchy almond butter. And those still just have one ingredient, and they're so different, but wow. Also delicious.

Wow. You know, in the. In the current political climate, with the Kennedy campaign and all the focus and scrutiny that food processing is getting right now, there's a lot of conversations around having food products that have a short list of ingredients, but there's a very small list, a very short list of products that are single ingredient. That's quite an accomplishment.

Yeah, we're really proud that we can produce this.

A bit ago, you mentioned the field days that you've had on your farm, and I know I've wanted to attend for years. I see lots of colleagues and people who I admire have been there, have been to your farm. What are the field days like? What attracted you to start doing those and sharing what you're doing?

I got to go back to Dr. Lundgren again because the research was so powerful, and he said we need to have a free event and have farmers come, see what the possibilities are. And the first year, you know, I was like, I don't know, what are we gonna get? 20, maybe 50 people who knows? Like, you think people will be interested? All right, we'll do it. Sounds good. And we had over 300 people come the first year that wanted to, you know, see what this was. So we said, all right, well, let's do this again. And it's just continued to evolve and grow. We have farmer panels, we have consultant panels, and then we're actually going out to the field to see some of the practical ways that you can just start doing this on your own. And so we're really excited that you will be joining us this year as well and helping spread this message to farmers that, you know, maybe are nervous and don't know how to start with the.

On that note, yeah, I'm looking forward to being out there. It's just in a couple weeks from now. But with the experiences that you've had and knowing and understanding your local context very well, what advice do you have for growers who want to get started? Where's the easy entry? Where do you. Because what you're talking about as an ecosystem change, a change of thinking. Where is the entry point?

I think it's just leaving some cover. I mean, I would say still go ahead and keep doing your herbicide under the tree. Like, don't go crazy. Everybody says start small. We didn't do that. I. I should start. Should have started small. But yeah, I mean, just leave it covered and just start with that and don't feel fearful that you have to terminate that cover crop in February before bloom. Let it keep going into March and into April, and you'll be creating that habitat. Last year, one of our neighbors was going to use off the ground harvesting, and that fell through. He was able to remove and, well, at least get rid of enough of his biomass that was there to still harvest off of the ground. Well, the benefit was that he was able to keep his ground cover and increase his soil health and still be able to harvest that way. So to me, that's the biggest thing right now is how do we keep the ground covered longer? Keep your strips clean. Go ahead and start with that the next year, maybe plant a little bit more diversity, but just start slow. But it's really keeping the ground covered. That's the biggest thing for us. And especially because we're getting few and. And more intense weather patterns as they come. So when that rain comes, we need that to go into the ground and not run off that. That's the biggest thing for. For our area, you know, and then protecting that as much as you can into the, into the hotter season. Because we know that microbes are not going to be able to survive, especially as they get over 100, 110 and upwards. And we know that the ground can get that hot.

Yep. Yeah. And what I'm excited about, I mean, I know we've just started working together and there's more that we want to do with your almonds. I'm quite excited about the possibilities. I know from experiences in other crops that we can greatly increase freeze resistance and frost resistance even of an open blossom with nutrition management. And so if we can bring in some of the nutrition management pieces to mitigate some of these other potential downsides and make sure that we have good pollination and to reduce the nut drop later in the season, those are all going to be pieces that contribute significantly to yield. And I'm confident that we can get yield numbers to be performing the same as with your higher water applications.

I'm excited for that.

I am excited for that as well. I'm looking forward to that. It'll be one of the pieces that I'll be talking about when I'm out there about some of the things we've learned with other plot other crops and how we can implement that here. Yeah. So where do you, how do you see your management system evolving? What do you hope to incorporate in the future? What do you hope to see happen in the future that may not have happened yet fully?

Last year we planted cover crops on every acre. We also have this flock of sheep. So when by doing that, we limited how much they could be out in the orchard during the wintertime. So this year we didn't plant as much. We did end up though, receding quite a bit because we let it get up so high before we terminated it. I want to continue to see more and more diversity. Actually, it was at your talk at Pisces and the first thing you started with was like, close your eyes and imagine what do you want your farm to look like. And I remember that and I'm like, oh, I just, I want to see it be lush and fruitful and like have there be flowers and just, you know, you start envisioning like this Garden of Eden of all this amazing diversity. And I want to, I want to see more. You know, we basically still have orchards of just almonds with COVID crops. And then we're in, introducing the sheep with their extra biology and being poop and saliva. But I want to see more. I want to see. Can we incorporate the topography of the ground with different trees? Maybe. I don't know. I just want to continue to see more and more diversity. But I am. I want to make sure that we're not just growing a generic crop. I want to make sure that it is the most nutrient dense that we can. That we can do more and more. That's going to be vital.

Ban. I am so with you on that. One of the topics that I haven't spoken about a lot up to this point, but I. It's something that I do in life personally, and I think I need to begin talking about it more. And that is, how do we take responsibility for our own health and our families and our loved ones from a food quality perspective? I now have a container of Brazil nuts on the counter that we snack. Brazil nuts because we know they have high levels of selenium. We buy macadamia nuts from a specific farm in Hawaii because I want macadamia nuts grown on the volcanic soils of Hawaii that have high manganese and high trace mineral content. And so when you say you have almonds that have twice the antioxidant content. I take supplements. My family takes supplements, But I would prefer not to. I prefer to get it in the food. That's why we're getting Brazil nuts and macadamia nuts and in our own garden berries and the orchard that I'm growing at home for the family. All of our soils are biofortified with selenium and molybdenum and zinc and manganese and boron. Like we are addressing everything, our bases are covered. The fruit that I'm growing for ourselves and the vegetables that we're growing are loaded with nutrients. Because I want our immune systems to be robust and to have every possible opportunity. And we know there are these four nutrients, the big four, that are almost universally deficient across our entire population. They're magnesium, selenium, iodine, and boron. We don't have enough of those. And we're not going to get them from our soils, Particularly in the case of iodine, no matter how microbially active they are. We have to amend our soils to get these things back into our system or to amend our plants. And so when you talk about having almonds that have twice the antioxidant content, to me, that is significant. Like we have. If people care about improving their health and putting themselves and their family in a position where they have higher chances of having a functional, robust immune response, this is something that we all need to prioritize. All of our foods nationally should be biofortified to have these robust immune functions. This is the way we should be Thinking about producing exceptionally healthy food. Anyway, I'm going off on a rant on a soapbox here, but amen to that though. Yeah. This is inspiring.

Which is why we grow our own meat birds that we feed organic feed to that we move through the pasture, which is why some of that land we harvest ourselves, which is why we also have grass fed beef. And then now we have pork that we're feeding an almond byproduct and sweet potato. But we're not feeding it grain. Feeding them grain. So yeah, I'm right there with you and I think we need to continue to be more and more intentional about it. We've recently started buying Brazil nuts too for that selenium.

Yep.

I was contemplating. We have walnuts, which are great for omegas, and then we have the almonds. And then Brazil nuts are not the best flavorful thing. So I was like, could we corporate Brazil nuts, walnuts and almonds and create a new almond butter that is very palatable but also a form of medicine. A spoonful of it will get you what you need.

So we know that selenium and. Well, let's leave selenium alone for just a moment. So one of the highest antioxidant compounds in plants, as I understand it, or one that's a significant contributor, is superoxide dismutase. And the enzyme cofactors for sod are zinc, manganese and copper. And foundationally, all of these phytonutrients that have the strong antioxidant effect require trace mineral metals and nutrients as enzyme cofactors in order to be formed. And so you have twice the antioxidant content. But I don't imagine that's the ceiling. I imagine you could go 5x higher. And when you start consciously addressing some of these ultra trace minerals now, you might get to a point where actually you can get adequate selenium status just from eating your almonds. You don't need the Brazil nuts.

And so I have a question. We're going to have to buy some form of selenium to amend our soils.

Yep.

There's no chance of any kind of COVID crop being able to.

It depends on your soil geology.

Okay.

Your. I would have to. We would have to measure what your foundational soil geological profile is. And is there selenium there that biology can extract and release and make available to plants? In some parts of the country that's going to be the case. In other parts of the country that is not going to be the case. It doesn't matter how good biology you Have. They're never going to supply selenium because it's not there in the foundational geology.

Okay.

Yeah. And the same is true of iodine. The same is true of molybdenum. It's true of all of these other elements. You know, the list of elements that there's this official designation by aafco, the American association for Plant Food or something like that. And for a long time, there was this list of nutrients that was considered essential, and that list has continued to grow over time. And then there was this separate category of elements that were considered beneficial. They're not essential, but they were beneficial. But this was looking at plant growth and performance purely from the perspective of what does it take to produce yield, not from a perspective of functional enzyme systems and functional immunity. And what is fascinating to me is that the list of elements that is considered to be beneficial and that we now know to be required for a functioning enzyme system, functioning immune system, that list keeps growing all the time, and it's no longer growing by one or two or three. It's now growing by five or ten at a time. And so that list now includes this broad array. I think it's something like 32 or 35 elements or something like that. It includes silver and tin and gold and lanthanum and rubidium. And just on and on the list goes of all of these elements that are required in tiny concentrations, parts per million or part per billion concentrations. But a few grams per acre of nickel, for example, completely change a plant's metabolism or crop's metabolism, and how it manages nitrogen, it requires tiny, tiny amounts. But the plant immune function and plant physiology completely changes and becomes so much healthier when they have or are supplemented with all of those nutrients or when they have enough. So there's foundational pieces to nutrient density. I think we have so much left to learn and to incorporate because most of us, we're not measuring those things. We are assuming that when we improve soil biology, it will deliver some of those things. And in some cases, in many cases, it's correct for some elements, maybe for many of them. The reality is we don't really know because we're not measuring. All right, I've really been on a.

Soapbox roll here, but it's good. This is why I like to come to this nexus, because I get inspired, and it's at the perfect time. Beginning of the new year with a lot of potential for the rest of the year.

Yeah, there's a lot of amazing people here, a lot of amazing conversations. What important topics have we missed talking about?

Well, the field Day is January 21st and 22nd. It's a two day in Da Nair, California. You can register through our website burrowsfamilyfarm.com and the second day on the 22nd, you can buy one ticket and bring a friend with you. Spots are limited though because this is going to be a great, great workshop. So make sure you sign up soon. But the biggest thing for me is like we just really need to keep the ground covered.

Yep. Keep the soil covered and manage water wisely.

And I think we need to continue to question Just because this is how we've been doing it doesn't mean that's the way we have to keep doing it. Why are we doing the things we're doing?

Yeah. Wonderful. Bonina, thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and your experience and may we have continued and growing success.

Thank you for having me.

The team at AEA and I are dedicated to bringing this show to you because we believe that knowledge and information is the foundation of successful regenerative systems. At aea, we believe that growing better quality food and making more money from your crops is possible. And since 2006, we've worked with leading professional growers to help them do just that. At aea, we don't guess, we test, we analyze and we provide recommendations based on scientific data, knowledge and experience. We've developed products that are uniquely positioned to help growers make more money with regenerative agriculture. If you are a professional grower who believes in testing instead of guessing, someone who believes in a better, more regenerative way to grow, visit advancingecoag.com and contact us to see if AEA is right for you.