🌻 Gabe Brown’s Most Profitable Crop & Understanding Regenerative Agriculture

all right Gav I just wanted to say thanks a lot for hosting us about teaching us about what you got going on your ranch your operation and just want to see if you could share a little bit about kind of the some of the biggest steps things that have stood out to you as you've gone down this journey of soil health and regenerative baby if you can share a couple thanks pleasure having you here today I really enjoyed visiting with you and showing you around the ramp so some of the take homes I think you know I often look back and boy if I would have only known then what I know now and the number one take-home is grow something this simply have a living plant in the soil as long as possible throughout the year sure the other take home would be diversity okay and I think that's one of the things that's really lacking on our farms and ranches today and from a number of different reasons one obviously is there's not much diversity in crop rotation anymore you know most farmers out there are growing to species some are three or four but we need many more than that that gives not only diversity for soil life but diversity for income too and we're putting all our eggs in one basket and that that's not a good thing sure so those are two of the biggest takeaways if I could go back in time and do things over I would have gone down the diversity path more and I would have made sure to always always have living plants sure can you give somebody just starting out a piece of advice for the soil health adventurer yeah so the first advice I would give is reach down your pants and find out if you have a pair and by that I mean you have to you have to have the fortitude to stick with something too many people are not willing to do what it takes they find it way too easy to jump on and off the bandwagon so to speak so what we tell our clients is okay I'm gonna dedicate this field or this paddock if they're grazing for five years now what size that'll be will be totally dependent on what will allow you to sleep at night some people say oh I can do this five acres but I want to do it over the hill where none of the neighbors will see that's fine and then I I had one client - the first year he planted 8,000 acres of cover crops okay because he was just all in he could that didn't bother him to do it but do what works in your situation put it in context but no matter what stick to it five years and so many people think that oh there's going to be this loss of production and I'm going to lose money all the clients we worked with we have not had a single one that we have not increased profitability the first year the regenerative path because of the options it allows you because of the knowledge and understanding and that's really what regenerative AG is about it's about understanding once we get people to understand this is how soils function this is how the nutrient cycle works this is how the water cycle works this all becomes relatively easy so just stick with it stick to a plan that that you're going to take this parcel and stick with it five years nine times out of ten what happens by year three they're all in and the whole farm is going down the regenerative tap there we have yet to have anybody go all five years and then go back to the way they were farming that just doesn't happen can you tell us a little bit about the power of networking I know you started this journey back in then that late 90s and it's been incredible but trough those of us that are just getting into it with the power how do you how do you what do you see it as yeah you know david bratt and i were just together a few weeks ago and we were talking about you know David's been hotel since 72 cover crops in 79 I started no-tilling in 94 cover crops immediately then and we talked about those early years how we had nobody you know I read about David Brant in an occasional magazine or newspaper but back then when I started there wasn't even the inner for crying out loud I was going to the library what can you read there and that the way it is now I mean everything's real time and to have people to bounce ideas off of David and I talked about what we would have done and I I was fortunate enough that shortly thereafter I met J fear and and got on the Soil Conservation District Board of Supervisors that was my network starting out Denver several of us learned together and I give credit for that and I tell people now I really don't spend a lot of time visiting with my neighbors because you can only talk about the weather so much they're gonna be bored of me talking soil health and I sure don't want to talk chemicals and fertilizer with it so I and my network is much broader now I can call people in all 50 states and we can talk soil sure that's by friends and my alliances now and the thing of it is that one of the real positives I see about regenerative agriculture is everyone is willing to share there's nobody involved and I'm aware of in regenerative agriculture who won't open up their farm or ranch or show you pictures on their iPhone and you know we're all in this together and we realize that it's for the benefit of all and we all can learn and take lessons and I tell people Gabe brown really isn't very smart I'm just very good at stealing ideas from everybody else as as you know I've been picking your brains all day I appreciate that I guess I too wanted to thank you for our day on the ranch and it was it was really neat we're all looking forward to it it was I think a big success if you don't mind can you just take a minute and explain what we're standing yeah yeah okay yeah absolutely so this is you're in an hour you're out our most profitable cash crop we've been growing this combination since 1994 this is cereal rye winter triticale and hairy vetch all fall by annuals planted in the fall and since 2008 through 2018 our average net profit per acre on this crop is 951 dollars per acre P I have a saying people laugh at me because I'm different I laugh at them because they're all the same okay not many people will grow this crop hence one of the reasons I can make the money on it I do but to us this is one of our what we call slam-dunk no-brainers we're going to plant some of this every year because it gives us a lot of options we can plant it in the fall we can graze it a little bit in the fall if we want normally i don't graze it much in the fall we graze it more in the spring we like to calves out on it it makes wonderful calving ground if we're in the situation we need forage certainly you can get a lot of forage off this or we can roll it down and plant the cash crops into it in this particular case this field is going to be a cash crop as you can see it looks pretty decent this field has had no fertility of any kind whether it be synthetics or compost compost tea manners besides what fell out of the animal since 2007 it has not had a herbicide on it in seven years and as you can see it looks fairly clean I think it's going to be a real productive profitable cash crop yeah I just want to say thanks for the day I feel really blessed to get to know you personally anytime anytime I really do now you're all welcome back and you're welcome to call and email me anytime and I will answer your calls and emails you do I try hard to yeah oh my pleasure

Channel: Lance Klessig Regenerative Agriculture Advocate

Views: 110,198

Keywords: Regenerative agriculture, Soil health, Feed to world, Population, Carbon, Infiltration, 9 billion people, Winona county SWCD, Soil conservation district, Healthy food, Soil health principles, Water, Runoff, Profitability, Flooding, Hope, Bismarck, North Dakota, gabe brown, paul brown, 6 soil health principles

Id: PAVH01bnD0U

Length: 8min 25sec (505 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 11 2019