"A regenerative no-till pioneer."--NBC News
**"We need to reintegrate livestock and crops on our farms and
ranches, and Gabe Brown shows us how to do it well."--Temple Grandin,
author of Animals in Translation
"Dirt to Soil is the [regenerative farming] movements's holy
text."--The Observer
Gabe Brown didn't set out to change the world when he first started
working alongside his father-in-law on the family farm in North Dakota.
But as a series of weather-related crop disasters put Brown and his
wife, Shelly, in desperate financial straits, they started making bold
changes to their farm. Brown--in an effort to simply survive--began
experimenting with new practices he'd learned about from reading and
talking with innovative researchers and ranchers. As he and his family
struggled to keep the farm viable, they found themselves on an amazing
journey into a new type of farming: regenerative agriculture.
Brown dropped the use of most of the herbicides, insecticides, and
synthetic fertilizers that are a standard part of conventional
agriculture. He switched to no-till planting, started planting diverse
cover crops mixes, and changed his grazing practices. In so doing Brown
transformed a degraded farm ecosystem into one full of life--starting
with the soil and working his way up, one plant and one animal at a
time.
In Dirt to Soil Gabe Brown tells the story of that amazing journey and
offers a wealth of innovative solutions to restoring the soil by laying
out and explaining his "five principles of soil health," which are:
- Limited Disturbance
- Armor
- Diversity
- Living Roots
- Integrated Animals
The Brown's Ranch model, developed over twenty years of experimentation
and refinement, focuses on regenerating resources by continuously
enhancing the living biology in the soil. Using regenerative
agricultural principles, Brown's Ranch has grown several inches of new
topsoil in only twenty years! The 5,000-acre ranch profitably produces a
wide variety of cash crops and cover crops as well as grass-finished
beef and lamb, pastured laying hens, broilers, and pastured pork, all
marketed directly to consumers.
The key is how we think, Brown says. In the industrial agricultural
model, all thoughts are focused on killing things. But that mindset was
also killing diversity, soil, and profit, Brown realized. Now he
channels his creative thinking toward how he can get more life on the
land--more plants, animals, and beneficial insects. "The greatest
roadblock to solving a problem," Brown says, "is the human mind."
See Gabe Brown--author and farmer--in the Netflix documentary
Kiss the Ground
