HOW TO REGENERATE THE SOIL USING COVER CROPS, ROTATION AND
LIVESTOCK INTEGRATION
Interview with Mr. Gabe Brown and Dr. Mercola
(This is a very important, though quite straightforward article about the future of farming. Anyone interested in farming needs to read it and follow the advice given here. If the methods suggested in this article are combined with nutritional balancing science, the results would be even more dramatic – Dr. Wilson)
The Interview (12/16/14):
High-quality soil is crucial to grow nutrient-dense plants. Tragically,
most of our soil is being significantly damaged, thanks to modern farming
methods. Gabe Brown is a true pioneer in teaching about regenerative land
management, which helps restore soil health.
Gabe was originally trained as a traditional farmer of the conventional
mindset, using heavy tilling, genetically engineered (GE) crops, and chemical
principles in his challenging growing farm environment of North Dakota.
I
actually had the opportunity to personally met Gabe last week when I was
keynote speaker at the ACRES USA conference in Columbus. He is every bit as
knowledgeable and inspiring as his interview suggests. I had a chance to listen
to his full day seminar and learned loads of great info..
At this point, his operation is not certified organic, but he's
implemented a number of land regenerative practices. He doesn't till his land
anymore, does not use herbicides on crops that are growing. He's stopped using glyphosate
altogether and has integrated cocktail cover crops and livestock rotational
grazing.
In 1991, he and his wife purchased the family farm from her parents, and
they began farming conventionally using heavy tillage, low crop diversity, and
season-long livestock grazing.
"Not being from a farm or ranch,
I always tended to question why we do certain things," he says. "I had listened and attended a class that Alan Savory put on,
talking about rotational grazing.
I started doing some rotational
grazing. I [also] had a friend in the northern part of North Dakota who was a
no-tiller... In 1993, I went 100 percent no-till. Immediately, we started
seeing some benefits... We were conserving moisture."
The
Importance of No-Till for Soil Regeneration
This is a rather crucial point. Tilling is probably one of the most
destructive aspects of modern-day industrial agriculture, as it disrupts and
destroys soil biology.
"Tillage is the act of taking
either a plow, a chisel plow, a field cultivator, or any type of steel or
implement and destroying the soil's structure and turning the soil over.
By reducing the tillage, we leave
those soil aggregates, those pore spaces intact, which improve water
infiltration and also provide home for soil biology," Gabe explains.
Tilling is especially harmful for the mycorrhizal
fungi—important soil fungi that attach to the roots of plants.
Their thread-like filaments connect the plants together in an underground web
that can stretch over long distances, forming a virtual "plant
Internet," though which plant communication takes place.
When Gabe quit tilling in 1993, he was the lone no-tiller in Burleigh
County, North Dakota, where about 60 percent of the land is farmland. Today,
about 70 percent of the farmland in this county is no-till. The fact that
no-till has really caught on in the Northern Plains is very encouraging.
Other important factors for soil health are crop diversification and
cover cropping. Gabe learned the importance of this through a series of crop
failures. Four years in a row, the farm lost most or all its crops to hail or
drought. To keep his livestock fed, he grew various crop cover plants, and
began noticing that his soil was slowly improving.
"We had four devastating years
of crop failure in a row. I tell people that's the best thing that ever could
have happened to me, because it taught me that I had to learn how to take care
of the resource," he says.
When he first started, soil tests on his land revealed organic matter
levels of 1.7 to 1.9 percent. According to National Rivers and Streams
Assessment (NRSA) scientists, organic matter levels in the area used to range
around seven to eight percent some 200 years ago. So about 75 percent of the
organic matter in the soil has been lost in just the last two centuries.
"One of the buzz words today is
'sustainable.' Everybody wants to be sustainable. My question is why in the
world would we want to sustain a degraded resource? My operation today is still
degraded. We need to be regenerative. We need to work on regenerating our
soils, not just sustaining a degraded resource," Gabe says.
How
No-Till Promotes Soil Health
Last summer, the organic matter on GabeÕs cropland ranged from 5.3 to
6.1 percent. So in just over 20 years of no-tilling and using regenerative land
management principles, heÕs been able to triple the amount of organic matter in
the soil. Earthworms are another marker for soil health, and they too can be
brought back when you abstain from tilling.
"There were no earthworms when
we started. This past spring, my son did earthworm counts in our cropland. In a
12"x12"x2" slice of soil, we were averaging over 60. That's
considerable when you start with zero. And that's just the earthworms. It
doesn't count the myriad of other billions of soil organisms that are also in
there," he notes.
"Earthworms, their castings and
their secretions, are very nutrient-dense. When you grow a crop in a soil
that's full of earthworms, those plants are going to follow the roots and are
going to follow those channels that those earthworms make, and the nutrients
will be supplied to the plant.
The other thing it does that we don't
often talk about is improve water infiltration. When we took over this
operation, we could only infiltrate a half of an inch of rainfall per hour. In
other words, if we had a rainfall event of an inch, over half of it was going
to run off.
When you're in a limited-moisture
environment, you want all that rainfall to be captured and go into the soil.
Well, in the last test we did, we can now infiltrate over eight inches of
rainfall per hour, which is huge."
Vermicompost—the compost produced by earthworms—is really
one of the best compost you could get. Some sell it for about $1,000 for a
cubic yard or about 1,000 pounds.
The nice thing is that, once you have the kind of density of earthworms,
Gabe describes, you're literally producing tens of tons of vermicompost per
acre in your soil, and you don't even have to pay for it or move it. It's all
done for free by the earthworms.
"As we move into these very
diverse cropping systems and integrate cover crops into them, we actually plant
cover crops to benefit soil life and to feed those earthworms. The cover crops
become the compost that the earthworm cycle into usable plant nutrients," Gabe explains.
Improving
Soil with Multispecies Cover Crop Cocktails
The cocktail of cover crops Gabe has incorporated into his land
management system are a really important part of the equation. During those
four years of hail and drought he grew mostly monoculture or two-species cover
crops, such as triticale and hairy vetch, or sudan grass and cowpeas. Then, in
2006, after listening to Brazilian cover crop expert Dr. Ademir Calegari, he
began using a multispecies combination.
"I was really upset with myself
that I hadn't thought of it earlier. Because what I'm trying to do in my
operation is mimic native range with the diversity of plant life and the
diversity of wildlife, insects, etc. Well, that's what we're really doing with
the cover crop cocktail, these multispecies mixes. Today, I plant up to 70
different species in a mix. What we're trying to do is mimic the diversity in
nature.
Think of it this way. If you plant a monoculture
crop, that soil life is only being fed one root exudate. But if I plant a
multispecies with 20 different species in it, that soil life is being fed the
root exudates from 20 different plants. In other words, I'm accelerating
biological time. We're able to regenerate soils much, much faster than
scientists used to think were possible."
Five
Tenets of Soil Regeneration
Using the following five tenets of soil regeneration, you may be able to
add an inch of topsoil in a five-year period:
1.
No-tillage. This prevents soil erosion and also
allows soil microbes to thrive
2.
Plant diversity and rotation
3.
Multispecies cover-cropping. While home gardeners can add crop
cover like mulch or wood chips, large scale operations can achieve the same
results by planting cover crops. Gabe grows cover crops on every acre of crop
land each year. The cover crops may be grown before a cash crop, along with a
cash crop, or after. But it's the cover crops that provide the carbon that
becomes that all-important "armor" on the soil surface. Cover crops
also act as insulation, so the soil doesn't get as hot or cold as it would if
bare. This allows microbes to thrive longer. Also, the soil biology heats up
the soil, which can extend your overall growing season in colder areas
4.
Maintaining living roots in the soil
year-round. ItÕs important to have living plant roots in the soil as long as
possible throughout the year. To accomplish this, use cover crops when not
growing a cash crop.
5.
Livestock
integration and diversification.
Farm
Program in Need of Serious Revisions to Integrate Soil Regeneration Practices
Unfortunately, one major hurdle that needs to be overcome before US
farmers can more readily switch over to these regenerative principles is the
government farm program, which subsidizes the growing of certain crops. At
present, the farm program is strictly geared to monoculture production.
"I've come to the realization that
we need to educate the consumers and the consumers need to drive the change
through their purchasing dollars," Gabe says.
"Let me tell you of this movement... My son and I started [a grass-fed
beef] business in March, and we have zero advertising dollars. We've just been
going to local farmers' markets. We already have over 650 repeat customers. We
can't keep up with the demand right now. That goes to show you that if that's
happening in a rural state such as North Dakota, what's happening in more urban
areas?"
...I tell the farmers and ranchers I
talk to that carbon drives profitability of an operation. We have to start thinking of our farms and ranches as ecosystems and
these ecosystems are driven by carbon. The more biomass you produce and the
more diversity, the more carbon.
Obviously, trees are a little bit
scarce here in the Northern Plains. But for the average gardener, there's
usually some type of tree removal service that has wood chips
available in most communities that you can get and add to that garden. If
you're adding carbon, you're going to increase the fungal component and you're
going to increase the mycorrhizal fungi [that] secrete glomalin, which starts
the formation of soil particles."
...There's a great book by Dr. David
Montgomery called Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations.
Dr. Montgomery talks about how all the civilizations such as the Incas and the
Romans, their rise and fall occurred because of the degradation of their soil
resource. I had the opportunity to visit one on one with Dr. Montgomery this
past year. I asked him, 'How long do we have as a nation before this occurs to
us?' And without blinking an eye, he said, 'Less than 50 years.' He said, 'We
cannot continue on this path of degrading our resources like we have.'...
[N]o-till is a piece; cover-cropping is a piece; diversity is a piece; and
livestock integration is a piece. We have to bring all of these things together."
Feeding
the World's Population Requires Emphasis on Soil Regeneration and Regenerative
Land Management
Even if you're not a farmer, you can still have an impact by
implementing the regenerative aspects of no-till, plant diversity, and using
ground cover such as wood chips into your own home garden. Along with that,
plant some pollinator species to provide a habitat for pollinators. Monarch
butterflies, for example, need milkweed
to feed and reproduce. When purchasing bee-friendly
plants, make sure they have not been pretreated with pesticides that
are toxic to bees, as this could actually do the bee population more harm than
good... Most importantly, as a consumer, use your dollars to drive change, and
educate others as to the importance of nutrient-dense food.
"We're spending more money on
healthcare than any other country, but look what it's gotten us," Gabe notes. "The United States of America is now the 42nd healthiest country
in the world. We're first in cancer, autoimmune diseases, attention-deficit
disorder (ADD), attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Parkinson's,
Alzheimer's, and obesity. Why is that? We're degrading our resource so much
that we no longer have the nutrient density in our foods in order for people to
get healthy diets... We need to start thinking of food as health. Food is
preventative medicine. The nutrient density of our foods has decreased anywhere
from 15 to 65 percent for the last 40 years. That's uncalled for. It can't
continue..."
Indeed, the answer to "how will we feed nine billion people by 2050?"
is: by regenerating our soils so that it can support more ample and more
nutritious crop growth. In order to do that, we must change our farming model,
because chemical-based monoculture is leading us straight toward the drop-off
at the end of a cliff...
"Look at our operation. We grow a diverse number of cash crops. We grow cover crops. We have beef, cattle, sheep, hogs, and chickens. I haven't even talked about how we allow beekeepers to come onto our land. There's a myriad of other potential income streams and enterprises that we can stack," Gabe says. "Feeding the world is absolutely no problem if we change the production model. For the small producers, it's simply a matter of stacking enterprises. Once you do that, you'll find that not only will you have more income streams to make your operation more viable, but you'll actually regenerate the soils much, much quicker."
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