Episode 173: Building Soil Health on Limited Rainfall with Jeremy Brown

Hi friends, this is John. Welcome back to the Regenerative Agriculture Podcast. You know the drill. We have all kinds of fun conversations here. Today we, I'm being joined by a guest and someone who I consider a friend, Jeremy Brown from Texas, dry land, difficult areas of Texas. At least that's the way he described them to me when I first met him. So Jeremy, thank you for being here. What prompted us having this conversation? I was in Texas just recently speaking to, speaking with a group of cotton growers. Jeremy was there and was on the panel as well. And I was really intrigued by your comments about not farming outside or not trying to farm beyond your context. And I'd love to, love to just kick things off and dive right into the weeds on that. Tell us a little bit about your operation, the context, the environment that you're farming in and how that has evolved over the years and some of the reasons why.

Yeah, well, first, uh, John, it's a privilege and an honor to, to be a part of your podcast. Um, I've enjoyed listening to this for many years. I can't tell how many times I've sat in a pickup listening to, uh, people that you've interviewed, from Gabe Brown to Dr. Uh, Dr. Uh, White at Rutgers. Uh, just, I mean, the list goes on and on, and, and it's been— helped me learn in my regenerative journey. As I've been on this journey for a while now. Yeah, so we farm in the Southern Plains. So the very, very far end of the plains, I guess, if you could, if you're looking at a map, we are predominantly a cotton farm. My personal operation is predominantly an organic cotton farm. It's been a journey, as I said, we I grew up farming with my dad, my granddad, but in the late '90s, early 2000s, granddad retired, my dad quit farming. And so I was away from, from the farm for about 10 years because, you know, I, the only way I could farm was with the help of my father and he was no longer doing it. And so the opportunity for me to farm, that door was closed. And so the reason why I like to tell that story so that people kind of have an idea of how I got to where I am. But about 10— I was away from it for about 10 years, and production agriculture drastically changed in those 10 years. You know, we, we now had Roundup Ready technology. We understood more about synthetic fertilizers and when to apply them. And, and so with the help of my father-in-law, he saw my love and passion for farming in 2008. He helped me kind of get started. And then I did that part-time for a year. And then the end of 2009, going into 2010, I went into farming full-time. And like I said, things had really changed. I mean, I grew up farming with my dad, but I mean, now, you know, we had a herbicide that we thought fixed all of our problems. Uh, we also had cotton that was bred to, you know, not deal with bollworms and other things. And so, um, it seemed like it was real easy, I thought. And, um, so that was 2010, but in 2013, I really started this journey that was for me, it was a, it was my faith. Uh, I'm a, I'm a Christian. I submit to, to God and his, his word. Uh, and when I was reading my Bible one day, it was just a simple, you know, daily Bible reading, nothing spectacular. I'd read this verse 100 times probably. But in the Gospels, you know, Jesus talks about, uh, the parable of the seed and the sower. And, and I know that he goes on and explains it and, and that there's spiritual, uh, you know, there's spiritual things to the parable. But, you know, he says something that just kind of caught me off guard, and it said, you know, and some seed fell on good soil and it reaped a harvest a hundredfold. And, and I just had this thought where I felt like, I feel like God was asking me the question, what does it mean to have good soil?. And I didn't have an answer. Um, all I knew is my degree's in agriculture. I got a degree from Texas Tech University, uh, in agriculture. And all I knew is what I learned in school. All I knew is what I saw my dad do. And then all I knew was what my, my, uh, chemical and fertilizer sales rep was telling me. And, and so that really began the journey of like, what, what, what does this all mean? And, uh, you know, I, you know how this is, as you learn more, you realize how little you know. And, and so as I fast forward, that was 2013 and here we are, you know, 2026. We've grown our operation. We farm, like I said, just under 4,000 acres of certified organic land, mostly, mostly cotton. We do grow organic wheat that we sell to people that make their own bread. And then we, grow organic grain sorghum. We have a cow-calf operation. We do a lot of regenerative practices. I said there's a whole story about how that kept evolving, but, but yeah, to get to our context, we're very dry.

Actually, before we go to context now, you raised something interesting. You didn't finish that thought. I'd like to know where you, where you've arrived after 13 years. What does it mean to have good soil?

Yeah, I've learned that it's different. Like, you know, I really focus on the 6 soil health principles, but at the same time, the number one principle is know your context. And when you're in a dry climate, you can be trying to do all the principles and then you go through a drought. And, and, you know, so I just, I started learning like just all the things that we were doing in production agriculture, from synthetic fertilizers to high uses of herbicides to, uh, you know, just even I think I listened to one of your podcasts years ago about how the Boll, the Bollgard technology in cotton is affecting the beneficial insects, the, the— the WASP, the, the, I think he was a professor from Georgia or something.

Yeah.

Joe, Joe, Joe Lewis.

It was an awesome conversation. Yeah, it was. And, you know, and I just kept, as I kept going down this journey, I kept thinking, man, this is not for me as a person of faith. This is not how God created this. I mean, and, and so I just kept, you know, I started reading a lot of books. I started listening to you and others. Uh, you know, read Gabe's book, Dirt to Soil. I read Allan Savory's book on holistic management, and that really opened my my eyes to this idea of brittle environments versus non-brittle environments. And, you know, started realizing, man, I'm in a brittle environment. Uh, man, there's a lot of different challenges that that presents. Um, and, and so, yeah, it, I don't know if I still have, I can say this is what good soil is. I have an idea of what I want it to look like, but it's continued to evolve and change and also realize that maybe I was putting some expectations on the soil that I was farming. That were not— I'm not saying attainable, but realistic at times, just because, like I said, we go through, we go through a lot of droughts.

And I was, I was about to ask you about that. You mentioned you can do all these practices, and then you have drought for a couple of years. And for people who are not familiar with your environment, what are the implications of that? What does that mean exactly?

Yeah, well, a lot. You know, when you're— so where I, in my personal operation, 70% of it is rain-fed only. And, uh, if you take the last, you know, the last really good cotton crop that I had, uh, was 2021, and then '22 was a bad drought, '23 was a bad drought, '24— and being like, we didn't harvest anything on these dryland acres. Now that the farms that we have irrigation, we were able to at least supplement enough to harvest a crop. But, you know, you're sitting there thinking, man, like, if it wasn't for crop insurance and some of these safety net programs that we have, and we're blessed that we have them in the United States, but you start realizing like, man, this is not sustainable. Like, this is not— if this is how this has always been, and I've always heard, you know, previous generations talk about one every 5 years or one every 3 years, you make a good crop. Well, you know, with the way the economics of farming is today, and if you're sitting there, you sit there and you think, well, if we're just doing this and we're only surviving off crop insurance, is this really what we're supposed to be doing out here? You know, and so it just really made me start, you know, questioning. I'm not saying I've come up with all the answers, but you start going back to, well, there was a reason why this was a short prairie grass, you know, for generations. And then we decided to start growing, you know, cotton. And then we found out, oh, there's some underground water, which we're depleting really fast. And so, yeah, it's, it's been a journey. And it's a challenge. Like I said, when you go through these drought years, and then, you know, for me, I use a lot of COVID cropping, I try to, you know, let's just look at the basic economics. So I use a lot of COVID crops. Well, there's been, there's been a couple years there where we interseeded our cover crops. I spent a lot of money on multi-species covers. And, uh, one of those years, none of it came up because we never got a rain. And, uh, and so those are things that can really, um, it challenges you, but you have to go back to just believing in what you're doing and believing in the, the, the principles, believing in. You know, the, that the land wants to be covered. And, and so adapt. I mean, I had that situation this year. We interseed a lot of our covers into our cotton. And so we do that in September. We had a rain, a lot of the COVID crops came up, but then it got really hot and dry, which it was like abnormally hot, like on Christmas it was 85 degrees.

Wow.

A lot of, a lot of those covers started dying. Well, I get a lot of my cover crop seed from Green Cover Seed and I call Keith and I'm like, man, A lot of my covers have died, but I still believe in the principle. Do you have anything that I could just, you know, from a cost effective? And so we were just like, man, let's get a bunch of rye. We replanted everything again in January and it worked out. We had a little snow/rain event and we got the covers up this time. So anyways, it's just, it's just constantly trying to adapt and realize there's no set formula and you gotta be flexible and you gotta stick with the principles and not just give up when it doesn't work. You know, and, but yeah, the context is, is really big.

I think the implication of what you're saying, and I think I maybe have heard you say this before, you haven't said in this conversation, but you can have several years of improvements to soil health and have a drought just wipe all of that right off the slate.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah. Yeah. It's a, it's pretty humbling when that happens because you think, oh, I did everything right and I've got everything out there and I bought the right seed or whatever. And then, you know, I just remember '21, 2021, we got, we had a really good cotton crop that year, but once we got into September, it quit raining. And I remember that year we almost went 12 months with no rain. It was, it was extremely bad drought. And I mean, there's nothing you can do. And you try to, you know, steward it well, you try to, you know, maintain it, the land, the best you can. But, you know, you're limited on what you can do.

So when you think about not farming beyond your context, I think is the phrase that you used earlier. What, what has that come to mean to you? And what What is it? How do you see either yourself historically or other people farming beyond their context? What are some examples of that?

Well, you know, when anybody in production agriculture that's maybe not on a regenerative journey and, or maybe, um, is pretty conventionally mindset, all they're, all they're told is, is it's all about yield. And so we're constantly trying to outyield. And when you're in a low rainfall environment, if you think about it, you know, say you're an irrigated farmer, especially where we are, any kind of irrigation, you're trying to overcome the dry climate that you farm in. And so even irrigation in my mindset is a way to try to outperform the environments that you really farm in. And so when you're, when you're, when you're sold and told it's all about yield and you're trying to go out there and you know, grow a crop and you, you know, say, say you set your budget at a yield that's, that's not really attainable. And so if you look at the— and I'm talking about rain-fed only cotton— but if you look at the, you know, if you just do 20, 30-year average dryland cotton yield in West Texas, it hadn't changed even with new technologies and Yeah, you'll have an odd year in there. But even with synthetic fertilizers, I mean, it's, you know, it's 250 to 300-pound cotton. And but yet we're always going out there trying to, you know, oh, well, I can, you know, spend more. And, you know, and I tell people a lot of times, like, what I've learned and just, just observation and just, you know, seeing all this, you know, if I get a good rain in August, I can make cotton. You know, if we get if we get that rain, that timely rain, I mean, that's the thing about cotton. Well, anything you grow, it's not so much about how much you get, it's about when you get it and how much you actually get into the soil. And so, yeah, it's— but I see people and— but the whole industry is wrapped around that. Like, you know, when, when John Deere comes out and says, okay, we're going to, we're going to revolutionize the cotton harvesting machine. And this is the only option you got and it's priced at $1 million. You know, that, that might work in areas that they can, you know, make a better yield or whatever. But in dryland West Texas, you can't afford to pay for the machine. And so you get into this rat race of trying to, you know, increase your yield and then the price of the commodity's low. And so it just seems like you're just chasing And like I said, you're just, you're not realizing that you farm in a desert. And I'm speaking to my context. And so I've shifted to, I'm a, of course I'm an organic farmer. I catch my own seed. I don't pay a technology fee. Yeah, I don't use any herbicides. I mean, we've gotten down to very low input farming. We do do seed treatments. We use BioCoat Gold. Awesome. Yeah, yeah. On our, on our cotton seed, you know, we do that. We, we use seed treatments on our cover crops that we get from Green Cover Seed. And but those are pretty minimal expenses. And to me, those are things that, you know, it's just going to benefit the soil health. But then, but anything outside that, you know, we're trying— for my personal operation, I'm trying to, you know, farm as cheap as I possibly can. Just because the context that I farm in.

Yeah, I found, I found your data point and history quite intriguing that over the last 30 years, cotton yields haven't really increased in spite of technology. That doesn't sound like a great endorsement of the technology, at least for your environment. No.

And in fact, honestly, I think, you know, from a— because I still have some land that's not organic. There's been many years my, my organic cotton, which is a variety of cotton that was developed in the '90s, that has no GMOs, it, it competes or outcompetes some of these new technologies that we have now. I don't have a herbicide that I can spray over the top. But so that is a challenge. I mean, I've got to deal with, you know, the weeds and stuff like that. But, but still, from a yield, yielding standpoint on a dryland cotton farm, I don't— the technology is not improved yield. I don't— from, from what my experience is now.

Yep. So yeah, so I want to also talk about the livestock side of your operation, but let's— since we're on the having a conversation around top or around cotton, what, what does your— what does organic cotton production in your operation look like?

Yeah, so go ahead.

What you mentioned that you're interseeding it with COVID crops. What does— I don't know if there is such a thing as a rotation that makes sense in your context, but yeah, what does the cultural management practices look like?

Yeah, yeah, rotations, first off, extremely challenging for us just because of market availability. You know, we're limited on the crops that we can grow. I mean, you know, our driest months are the winter months. So you're gonna, you know, if you're dryland only, you're really limited on what you can grow in the winter. Besides, I don't mind growing cover crops, you know, I'm talking about if I'm trying to grow a cash crop, there's really no option there. So then if you look, like I said, from a rain-fed only production system, you know, cotton, cotton's a very drought tolerant plant and it can, it can do well out here. But we're really, really limited to that and maybe grain sorghum. And from when you're an organic farmer, you know, you've always got to make sure there's a market for the product that you're growing. And there's, there's some, some, some markets that are developing for the grain sorghum with the organic dairies. But, you know, I'm pretty limited on, on cotton. And also something that people forget is as a farmer, the only risk management tool I have at times is my crop insurance. I mean, so when I'm going out there and I'm making that decision, as much as I would love to plant, let's say sesame or guar or something, and I have grown all those crops, there's not a safety net program that protects me in case we're in a drought. And so I have to sit there and look at, okay, from a risk management standpoint, like cotton right now has the best safety net from a crop insurance that I purchased to protect me if we, if we don't get that rain in August, which, you know, I said if you take 1 out of 5 years, that's your odds for, you're probably not going to make that crop. I mean, I hate to say that, but that's reality. And that's why I'm constantly thinking, man, I don't know if this is even what we're supposed to be doing. But anyways, so yeah, we, we grow mostly organic cotton. And go into context. You know, as I began that journey, uh, you know, you had these, you had these aha moments and, you know, forever out here in West Texas, they harvest their cotton and then they, they plant their wheat for cover. You know, that's, that's a, that's pretty typically done because of wind erosion, really nothing for soil health. It's more just, I don't want, you know, the, the dirt to be blowing is really what, you know, most people do. But I'd already been on this journey of, you know, multi-species covers and trying to, trying to,. But you know, when you're planting, when you're harvesting your cotton in December, November, December, it's pretty cold. And so then you get really limited on what you can plant. And so that, you know, but then I was sitting in a meeting one day and there's just a, it was just a meeting that our local weather forecast news station was talking about, you know, our average rainfall. And I kind of already knew that, you know, we're 15 to 18 inches on average. But then he put a chart, that showed the average rainfall by month. And it was just kind of like, oh my gosh, I, I, I kind of knew it in my head, but I've never really seen it. And on that chart, and this, I'm talking about, let's just say Lubbock. Um, he was using the data from the, the airport in Lubbock. Um, he took a 30-year, 30-year chart. And if you look at that, the wettest months in our context is May, June. And then September. And so September is your third wettest month on average. And when I saw that, I thought, well, this, this, this is why I got to get these cover crops interseeded in September. And in my context, you know, when we get to the end of August, first September, that cotton plant is pretty much, you know, it's already cut out pretty much. It's, yeah, it's filling some bowls, but its water demand is really decreasing. And so if we're going to get— if our average rainfall event, our wettest rainfall event is September, so what we started changing in at that time is interseeding. So we broadcast and interseed our cover crop mixes, and it's going to be a mixture of grasses, legumes, and brassicas. But we started interseeding those cover crops. And of course, I'm organic, so we'll follow that with just a light shallow tillage of,, you know, 1 to 1.5 inches just to put a little dirt to soil contact. And, you know, I can honestly say there's only been one year and that was in '21, or the fall of '21 when it got so dry. But ever since then, we always get a rain. And, and, it's been, it's been one of the best things that I changed because I get more species up. We are, we're not having a lag in having a living root, you know, because the cotton's still maturing, the COVID crop's going underneath it. And so normally, because I'm an organic, I don't use a herbicide to desiccate the plant. And so I'm waiting on a freeze. And so normally, you know, I would say most times, you know, like I said, you'll have an odd year in there. And like this year, it was kind of odd with the heat that we had. But normally we're driving on, you know, 6, 7-inch tall rye and radishes and all these things during harvest season. And then what's been great about that, and it's, it's, you know, I'm not going to say every year is the same, but a lot of times as soon as we're done harvesting, we bring in stocker cattle to graze. And that's an additional income, really. I tell people, if I can get enough stocker cattle to pay my cover crop bill, I got free fertilizer, I got free carbon. I mean, and so And then I get the biology and all the benefits of the livestock and the living root and the, and, you know, capturing carbon, all the things that cover crops do and livestock do. And so, yeah, and so we change that. And then, and then what we do is like right now they're all growing and then it kind of depends on the stage of the COVID crop. But, you know, we try to let it grow as long as we possibly can. You know, and so if it's irrigated land, we'll terminate the COVID as close as we can to planting our cotton. If it's dry land, we have to terminate it 30 to 40 days before we plant according to crop insurance rules. And so, yeah, we're just trying to maintain something living as much as possible and, you know, keep the ground covered, having a living root, bring as much diversity as we can. Because I don't have a big crop rotation plan. And we, you know, this year I grew 1,000 acres of organic grain sorghum. So we do do rotation when the situation presents itself. But yeah, that's pretty typical of what we do on my farm and operation.

So you've spent a lot of time developing this and putting this together. You've described the win-win from a soil health and overall ecosystem health perspective very well. When I think about the scenario that you're describing, it seems to me that from a land stewardship perspective, it would be very appealing. So what are the challenges that prevent more people from adopting it? And perhaps one of the sub-questions within that is, does this work economically without an organic premium?

Yeah, well, the first— to answer your first question, I think So many people, um, around me, one, they constantly think that cover crops use moisture. So, um, you, you, you, like when I said earlier that a lot of people plant wheat behind their cotton, a lot of times that's only on irrigated land. They, I mean, a lot of people don't do it on their dry land cuz they had this idea that, well, that cover crop's gonna use whatever moisture we get in the winter. And I go back to that chart, we don't get much moisture in the winter anyway. So, you know, I'm like, I really don't think that 0.2 we got is really making or breaking the operation from a moisture. And I personally believe, you know, the benefits outweigh the little bit of moisture that your cover crop might have used. But so there's that. Secondly, you know, most farmers in our area, you know, they're going to— they want to use a herbicide to desiccate their plant, their cotton plant, a harvest aid so that they can get in there, harvest it quicker, get it out quicker. And, you know, I just— most of them use Paraquat and some other chemicals that I don't have any desire to be around. And so I just, you know, but that's a, that's a mind shift. That's a mind, you know, it's, it's so programmed that you got to get in there. As you know, when our average freeze date is October 31st in our context, That's going to desiccate the plant. I don't know why you're in a hurry to. And so they can't get their, their multi-species in there. So they're really limited on what they're planting. And so they're not bringing any diversity. And so yeah, a lot of it's just, you know, as, as a lot of people say in this regenerative journey, the biggest challenges is up here is just trying to see things differently. A different system. Yeah. Uh, yeah, the organic premium. That does help. But I would do it no matter what. I mean, because I believe in it. You know, I said, you have to look at things differently. I don't pay a big seed cost bill on my cotton seed. I'm able to catch my own seed, which I personally believe there's benefits to that. You know, yeah, my labor is a little higher.. But John, I'd rather pay a person that wants to work than Bayer CropScience or BASF or John Deere. I really believe that, you know, we talk about these rural communities and there's no jobs. Well, yeah, because we're, all we're doing is running spray rigs and I'd rather hire. I don't, you know, I hear people all the time say that, you know, we want to cut our labor costs. Well, why do we want to cut somebody that wants to a job, I mean, and is willing to work. Now I know there's challenges to that, but I've always, I've always rather, I'd rather pay somebody that wants to work and, and be a good, pay them a good wage than, than like I said, my money going to some, you know, agri-tech company that doesn't care. So yeah, you know, there's different challenges, you know, being organic's not a, it's not the answer. I mean, it presents other challenges that, you know, that, you know, so many people. But, you know, that's another aha moment I had, John, is one day before I was kind of here, back in that 2013-14 time frame, I just woke up one day and I realized, man, that spray rig's the most important machine I got. And I had a, I had a problem with that, you know. I just, I was like, I don't think this is how this is supposed to be done. Like How did we get here? And almost like, how are we so immune to it? And I said, that's my personal conviction. I don't condemn it. Or, you know, I got neighbors all around me. That's how they farm. And I want the best for them. But I just, I just have a different view of all that.

So, well, I appreciate the— I don't know if originality of thought is quite the right phrase, but perhaps independence of thought, because it's that independence of thought that Most of the people who now have a decade or two or more of experience on this pathway have needed to exercise at multiple points to get to the point where they are. So I certainly value that. You mentioned when we think about independence of thought, you made a comment in passing earlier when we— it might have been when we were speaking about irrigated cotton, but maybe even dryland cotton. You expressed the question that you wonder whether that's even what we should be doing in this environment considering that this used to be a shortgrass prairie. Prairie. And so I'm really interested in your livestock operation and the, what you were doing there.

What's the pathway that you're on for regenerating shortgrass prairies? You know, and I'm sure many, many of your listeners have had the same experience, but years ago I had a, I had a farm that, you know, has a, has a pivot, a center pivot irrigation. So it has a circle. And I planted a cover crop on, you know, the corners that, that, that's not irrigated. And I just kind of, I quit, I quit doing anything to 'em. And you know, the succession, 3 years later, it's back in the grass without me doing a thing. Now we grazed it one year and, but you, if you've ever experienced land that, you know, maybe you, you know, you didn't do much to and, and within 3 years it goes back to grass. You sit there and you realize, I mean, that's what God created. I mean, there's a reason why it does that. It's, you know, like with very little effort. I mean, I'm talking like zero effort. Um, and, and like I said, reading Alan Savory's book on holistic management, really, and I'm not saying I'm, I'm an expert on all that. I'm learning, you know, um, it really just began to, uh, to convict me, I guess, about, you know, what was this place like before. And, and I, before we, we got on, I found a— there was an explorer that came out here, you know, in the early, you know, before there were settlements. Um, he was with the cavalry, and, and he said— I'm going to get his quote wrong— but he said something, the fact that there was no shrubs, there was no trees, and there was no water. And he said, even the Indians avoid this area. And he's talking about the area that I farm in. This is the Llano Estacado, whatever you wanna call it. And so you sit there and you think that's what it was. And we're trying to force it to be something that it wasn't. And so that began me on this question of like, is really what I'm doing at the end of the day is I'm trying to— what's the saying? I'm trying to force a square peg into a round hole, you know, is that really what we're trying to do? At the end of the day, we're trying to make this short prairie grass system out here be agricultural production land. And I know that that's radical. I know that there's landowners. I know that land values, there's all these things that, that, that affect that. And I get that. And I'm not saying that You know, I'm going to today, but what I started doing was I was offered a piece of land to rent that was in grass and it was a section of land. So 640 acres. And the typical farmer out here would take that and destroy every bit of the grass and put it into production, especially as an organic farmer. It goes right into organic because it hadn't been farmed in 30 years. And I, because of the journey that I've been on, I just really felt like that's what— that wasn't God's desire. For that land. And so I'm paying a cash lease, but I kept it in grass. And so what we did was, you know, I started buying cows, you know, my own, started building my own herd. They're not cheap right now, but I started building my own. And I'm— the breed that I'm using is Bonnemara. You know, I think you've talked about him and the cattle that he developed. Um, I, it just so happened I had a friend out here that had a herd of them and he was willing to sell me some heifers. And so we started, you know, we bought those 3 years ago and we started holistically grazing and I'm trying to practice the things that I've learned from Alejandro, from Alan Williams, from the list goes on of people that are using animals and livestock to restore the ecosystem and the soil health. And so, um, We're doing that and I so believe in it. But the problem is it's hard to go from here to here overnight. It takes time. You know, livestock is— you got infrastructure, you've got, you know, when there's no fencing out here, you've got, like I said, the price of those cows are extremely high right now. So I can only buy a few at a time and I'm trying to keep all my heifers and trying to build the herd. But I so believe in that, John, that I own a farm that was in, it was an organic dryland farm and I planted it back to grass. And because that's, I believe that is the future of where we're at in West Texas. Um, and I know that that's radical and I'm not saying that I'm going to turn back all my farmland, but that's the direction I'm going, whether it's cattle or even sheep. I mean, really probably sheep, uh, fit our context better than cattle do just because of,, you know, the context that we farm in.

So let's talk a bit more about the math behind why you believe that to be true and the logic pathways that you are following. We've obviously, we've already spoken about water depletion of aquifers and what that context used to be like, but obviously you, you must, you have this vision of what is possible. But in order for that to be possible, it also must be economical.

And obviously you see a pathway economically or you wouldn't be going down this pathway. Yeah, well, I do, because, okay, if I keep farming, I mean, right now I don't own that. Let's just take the cotton harvest machine. I don't own one of those new balers, but it's coming. And so if I'm going to go buy a million dollar or just say I found a used one for $700,000, you know how many cows I could buy for $700,000? You know, and I think that's what we forget. Like, we, we don't think about all the tractors and the equipment that it takes to grow that crop. And when I look at the price of machinery and I look at input costs and I look at fuel costs and I look at all that, and then I look at animals, and I, if I could get rid of all that, and then I just have the expense of the animals and the, you know, yes, on one side of the ledger, you have an asset that depreciates. On the other side, you have an asset that appreciates. Absolutely, John. And that's the thing, like, and that's why I look at all that. And I just, you know, we got farmers in debt, we got farm, you know, the government's having to send out payments to keep farmers surviving right now. And then when I look at, well, I'm really only surviving off crop insurance and government payments.

Are you really being profitable?

That's also a vulnerable position to be in. Yeah, it is. Because you're at the mercy of administration or, uh, who knows what. And so that's where, you know, like I said, I'm not saying I'm there today, but that's the goal because to me, you know, like you said, I could, the livestock work if it's managed right. Now, what I see so many times out here is they go out and they get way too many animals for our dry context and you can't do that. And then that's the thing. It takes, you know, you know, it takes management. And I think a lot of people don't understand if you want to follow the Allan Savory ideas or just some of these techniques for that, you know, understanding, you know, Alejandro for me would be the greatest example because he's doing it in the same context, if not worse. But most people don't want to do that. They just want to turn them out. And the next thing you know, we go through another drought. There's nothing left. I tried that livestock deal at work, you know, and, and like I said, I'm not saying I've I've— I'm where I want to be. But to me, it just makes more sense in the context that I'm farming, because I feel like if we keep going down this road of trying to grow crops in a dry climate, and like I said, the equipment expense, the economics don't make sense to me.

We're also on a pathway that we want to avoid. So many of us want to avoid the conversation, but in many of these regions, we're on a pathway where we are going to run out of water.

Oh yeah. No, and I think it's sooner than later, especially for this area. I mean, where I farm, we're on the very end of the, uh, the, uh, the aquifer. And it, you know, I've even seen in the short, you know, of course I've been farming for 15, 16 years. A lot of the land that I have that is irrigated is not what it was 2 or 3 years ago. I mean, it is drastically declining. And, but see, but then, but then that's where you, you know, a lot of people don't want to talk about, well, that affects land values, that affects, you know, and so these are, I feel like there's a lot of hard conversations and a lot of hard decisions that, that are coming at us that nobody really wants to talk about or even think about. We just want to keep going. And, and like I said, when I look at the last, you know, 4 years and I look at, if it wasn't for, program payments from our government, if it wasn't for crop insurance, which is highly subsidized by our government, we'd all be out of business out here. And so to me, that's not sustainable. And, and that's why I look at grass and I look at this system and I look at, well, that works, you know, like, you know, if it's managed right, if it's managed right and it's done right. And, you know, and then you can use a little bit of irrigation you have to grow forage if you need to. It doesn't take much water to grow forage. You know, I mean, you can grow— say, say you wanted to, you know, diversify and, and, you know, maybe have your, your animals on, you know, perennial grass in the summer and then use that irrigated land to grow, to have something to graze in the winter, you know, with very little. If it's done right, like I said, it, it, it, it's But you got landowners that want— they're used to certain kind of income. You've got, you know, like I said, you— and then, John, I was talking to the guy this morning about this. You know, the government, you probably know this, they just came out with these bridge payments, and we're thankful for them. I'm not denying this. The last 3 years have been rough. But when you look at those bridge payments, and cotton's got one of the highest payments, well, you're incentivizing guys to just keep planting more cotton, grow more cotton, you know, and that— and then we— and then we're like, well, we gotta— we gotta increase demand. Well, we just incentivize to grow more of it, you know. So I don't know, it just— it seems like we're just on this road of chasing our tail. And, and like I said, and I— and nobody wants to have these conversations. Nobody wants to, to come to the realization that maybe this You know, something's got to change.

I mean, but I want to go back and talk a bit more about the economics of livestock and of sheep, perhaps, um, if that's an appropriate fit. You spoke about, um, just the additional resilience. You spoke about appreciating assets versus depreciating assets. You spoke about the difference in overhead costs. But what does it— when you look at— and there's also part of the, part of the land value conversation is also a cash flow conversation.

What is the cash flow capability of a livestock herd in your context versus cotton production? Well, I think if a guy can sit down and say he, you know, like, for instance, like, if I— the way I look at it is, you know, how many head of cattle or sheep do I need to provide a living for my family? Where I'm not having to go into debt to buy machinery, I'm not having to buy all these inputs, and I can get to the point where, you know, we have enough head to generate enough income to provide for me and then if I have any employees. And that's the way I look at it. And so, you know, for me, you know, if it's cattle, you know, if I had at the prices today, I've often said, well, if I had, you know, 200 to 300 head of cattle. Uh, if it's sheep, you know, right now those things are, it's amazing the value that the sheep are bringing. Uh, like I said before, those, those are, um, to me, you get your money returned faster on the sheep, hands down. Um, because they, you know, they twins and triplets and, you know, you can have, you just get, you get the return on your investment a whole lot faster., but the infrastructure is a little harder. They, they need a little bit better fence. And so, I'm probably not giving you a good direct answer, but the way— that's the way I look at it because like, I mean, right now I'm like, John, for my operation as an organic cotton farmer that farms, like I said, around 4,000 acres, I've got 7 tractors. Okay. The maintenance on those tractors, the insurance on those tractors, and they're not all new. I mean, they're all pretty old. I'm talking like, high-hour tractors. And when I sit there and I think about, you know, if I sit there and like I've got one that's got, you know, 12,000 hours on it and I'm sitting there thinking, well, I've got to go upgrade that tractor. Well, you're, you're looking at $150,000 maybe at the low end, up to $300,000. I mean, that's the stuff. So I started thinking, man, you could buy a lot of animals and don't worry about all that. You know, all that debt in machinery. And like I said, I'm just talking about the cotton harvest machine. That's one of those decisions that I'm just like, man, it's coming. I mean, like I said, I still run the old machines and we're fixing them and hoping that they just keep rolling because they're paid for. But there's going to come a day when they keep telling us John Deere's not even going to carry the parts for these things. And it's like, this is— and so that's where I look at, man, you know, yeah, I might be profitable, but then you start looking at all the expense that you can just be done with. Um, I said, I don't know, I'm probably not giving you a good direct answer, but that's the way I look at it, John, is just not having all these, like you said, liabilities, have more assets. And, but, you know, it's, it, to break it down from a dollars per acre, um, you know, if you had sheep, I guess I could sit there and pencil it out. But, you know, if you had 100 acres and you could run so many head of sheep and then you could, you know, Um, that is a challenge because I think in our dry climate, you're going to have to run more acres per head just because of, you know, lack of rainfall. And, you know, versus a place that maybe, you know, like, I think, I think if you go by the NRCS rules and, uh, what they recommend for us is 1 head of cow per 20 acres. That's hard. That's, that's, that takes a lot of acres to run 300 head of cattle.

Um, so one of the aspects though that I perceive, this is my perception, is often underappreciated is the value of building equity and appreciating assets. Um, years ago I had Alvin Peachy, who's an Amish farmer from Pennsylvania, Amish cherry farmer from Pennsylvania, here on the podcast, and Well, Larry Tranel from Iowa State University was a dairy economist. He spent, I'm not exactly sure, 30-plus years analyzing the economic and the financial performance of hundreds, thousands of dairies all over the country. He was commissioned by Organic Valley to do a research of an, uh, or to evaluate a number of different organic and grass-fed operations. And he said that Alvin's 80-cow, 100% grass-fed dairy was the single most profitable dairy farm that he had ever evaluated in his entire career. And it was because of the magic of compounding value in assets and equity in livestock. You have to look at that and you have to pay attention to that particular aspect. But Alvin is my age. He's not 40 years old yet. And he's bought and paid for 3 farms at this point in a region where farm ground costs $40,000 an acre on dairy at the exact same time when dairies across the country are going out of business left and right. Yeah. And I mean, there's, there's a whole conversation that could be had around that, but it's Alvin told me he had kind of a similar realization around corn production that you've had around cotton. He looked at all of his equipment costs, all of his machinery, the horses that he was feeding to grow corn. He said, I can't afford to grow corn. And he sold all of his corn production equipment and he went to 100% forages because of his overhead costs.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I think, I think anybody can, like you said, if they'll just look at it from that perspective of, you know, like you said, I, I keep going back to the cotton harvest machine today, but I mean, I'm just— The cotton harvest machine struck a nerve for you, didn't it? It does, because I truly believe that John Deere created a product or a tool or whatever you want to call it. That a person where I farm cannot, cannot just pay for it from farming. I mean, there has to be some other, some other kind of income. You know, we've got a lot of oil and gas in the area and we got, you know, there's a, you know, they call it off-the-farm income. But, you know, I just— those, those things, you sit there and look at it like, man, this is, this is, I don't know. And even, even land values. I've had this conversation with a lot of farmers in our area. Land no longer pays for itself. 'Cause the value's so out, you know, the value of the land has gotten so to a point that if you're just taking, you know, forever, if you could, you know, whatever that 25% that you're paying to, if it was a, if it was a crop share, you know, it would kind of pay for the land over, you know, a period of time. But it, the prices of the land in our area are at a point where now, you know, just paying for the land from growing cotton is not, not there.

And so I think that's true in many parts of the country though, isn't it?

Across a broad range of different crops. Oh yeah, I think so. I mean, but I don't know, I don't know. I just feel like there's some hard decisions and hard things that we need to—

realities that we need to come to, um, and across the whole, yeah, you know, agriculture. Uh, yeah, those, those are very uncomfortable decisions because when you think about I don't know if I would describe it as foundational, but it is, it is a very important block of our national economy, has been the, the safe investment that hedge funds and investment funds have made, safe investments in farmland because farmland always appreciates. Well, we might be approaching a point in history where that's no longer true. And it's been true for the last, I'm not sure the exact time period, but 40 or 50 years, at least maybe longer. And that's quite an uncomfortable conversation because it affects the entire economy.

Oh, it absolutely does. I, I don't know. I sit on the— I had the opportunity to sit on a Farm Credit Board of Directors. And so we have these conversations a lot. And, you know, of course, I get a different perspective. I get a perspective from the banking industry and how they look at things. But You know, to me, it can't— how does it sustain itself? I mean, right, let's just take conventional cotton. Conventional cotton right now is trading in the 60s, 65 cents, 64 cents. John, that's what my granddad sold it for in the '70s. And the cost of production, last I checked, was like 80 cents plus for conventional cotton. Yes. And what I told you all ago, 30 years ago on dryland cotton, they were making the same yield we're making today, right? I mean, so the economics are not making sense. And, and I'm sitting there constantly thinking like, something doesn't— I mean, like I said, if you— but if it wasn't for the government, and like I said, we're blessed that we live in the United States of America, we're blessed that our government does value agriculture. But at the same time, have we created a system that, is inflated, you know, I, I mean, that's the word I'm trying to think of, or where it's not reality because of the support for sure.

Distorted.

Yeah. You know, and, and that's where I don't know. And that, you know, I said everybody's got to come to that own personal decision, but for me, those are the questions that I'm asking myself. And like I said, as I continue down this regenerative journey and I continue studying and reading and looking at our context, I'm like, man, I, where I farm. Um, to me, it was a short prairie grass for a reason. It's the same buffalo for, you know, however long. Um, yeah, you know, and if I can get to that point, uh, that's the direction I'm trying to get to.

You know, there's an interesting anecdote that I think ties back to your production of livestock and the conversation we've been having about economics. We've had Part of the reason why we have this federal policy distortion around agriculture is because we have a clearly defined and very explicit cheap food policy. That has been the policy ever since Franklin Roosevelt's Green— or not the Green New Deal, but the New Deal. If you remember his campaign slogan, I think for his second term was a chicken in every pot. Why a chicken in every pot? Because at that moment in history, chicken was the expensive meat because chicken required grain. Beef was inexpensive. It was a lot less expensive to produce beef than it was to produce chicken because they were just grazing and producing it on rangeland. And so there's this political economic phrase or slogan that you're 3 square meals away from a revolution. And so it is the interest, in the interests of a government in power, to maintain abundant food and cheap food. And that has been the incentive for the last 80 years. And that has created distortion that was appropriate for a period of time, but we're approaching a point where the degree of distortion is becoming so extreme that it's obvious it's going to fracture at some point.

Yeah, I totally agree. And, you know, a lot of it's not growing, going to food. I mean, I mean, yeah, I guess you could say, you know, feedlots, cattle production maybe. But I mean, a lot of this is going into not food. I mean, you know, I grow a fiber. I believe in a natural fiber. I grow, I do believe there's a spot for it, but you know, it's, it's. I don't know. Uh, I don't know. It's gonna be interesting to see where it goes. And I think, you know, I think people are starting to get aware of it. I do think, you know, a lot of people are starting to ask the right questions. Um, you know, a lot of people, you know, like yourself and Gabe Brown, and a lot of people are bringing some things to the forefront that, that need to be discussed. Um, but I, yeah, it's I don't know. It's interesting times, John, in agriculture. I see so many farmers that are hurting, and, and, you know, not just in my area, all across the, the, you know, the country.

Um, you know, I don't know. I have a question for you on that because I see the same thing, and we all, we have, we have sympathy for people who are in a difficult spot because I've experienced those.. And I'm sure many people have. Um, but when, when you are in a difficult spot like that, what, what is the, what is the appetite that you are observing for thinking about perhaps doing things differently?

Is it greater or less because of the difficult spot that people find themselves in? Yeah, for me, it's— I have a greater desire to to change and do things differently. And I think that's probably why my journey has been the way that it has, because, you know, I think I said this at our event in Lubbock, I saw my dad— my dad went broke in farming. I saw that. I was in college. I helped him set up his auction, you know. And so when I got back into it, I already had this idea, man, I got to figure out something different because I don't want to be there., you know, and that's where I, you know, even, even on the first couple years there, I was starting to try to read and study and do some things differently. But, um, you know, when you've experienced that or you've gone through difficult times, it hopefully, it, it gets you hungry to change, you know, to, to do the things a little different. But I say that and I see a lot of guys in my area. I can't speak for other areas, but in my area, they're just, They're not changing. They're just, well, the government's going to send us some more money. And it's this attitude of, you know, I don't know, they keep doing the same thing. You know, that's the definition of insanity. And so I'm like, I don't know. It's, it's, yeah. And I don't want to paint a picture, John, either that, you know, it's been tough for me too. I mean, when you're, when you start going against the grain and you're you start trying to do things different.

At times you take risks and I've taken a lot of— there's a lot of experimentation.

There's a lot of learning the hard way. It is the hard way. Absolutely. It is, you know, but, and that's one of the things I, you know, I tell people all the time, you know, Gabe's book, Dirt to Soil, the reason why it resonated with me was because he tells the story of those, what, 3 crop failures that he had. He owed the bank a lot of money and that really began his journey of like, I've got to I've come up with a different way of doing this. And a lot of times when you don't have the money, you don't have a choice. I can't do it. I don't have the money. And, uh, and I've experienced that too. I mean, 2019 was one of those years where, uh, I would say in my early journey of regenerative agriculture, I really bought into the no-till movement and I was really focusing on yield and, and all this stuff. And, and, uh, in 2019, uh, had a really bad year and kind of, that's really probably when I changed into low input. What is my context?

You know, farming and, and, you know, I think everybody kind of has those moments probably at times. Well, may we all live the best version of living in interesting times and not the worst version. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, wonderful. Well, Jeremy, I really enjoyed this conversation.

Thank you for being willing to join and to share your story and all the great things that you're working on. Well, thank you. I appreciate the opportunity, and hopefully it encourages somebody, and, you know, at least somebody maybe see things a little different. And, uh, like I said, we're all learning as we go here and trying to figure it out, and, you know, trust in God's guidance and his wisdom.

To help us to do it. Indeed. Well, thank you. And for all of our listeners, may you have a great growing season. May you have abundant rains. May they come at the right time.

May you capture all of them. And let's talk again soon. 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.