A Regenerative Secret - Kiss The Ground

the agriculture industry has suffered a 1.8 billion dollar loss over the last four hours and extreme heat have made this a very busy fire suit out wherein is disastrous eighty percent of all antibiotics sold are used unnecessarily on livestock commercial livestock accounts for about half of the greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change we haven't been this dry in decades [Music] the CAFO a concentrated animal feeding operation set up to maximize efficiency and profit regardless of the cost this type of livestock production is one of the most resource intensive practices on the planet it's been made possible through massive taxpayer subsidies but the true cost is enormous drought desertification carbon emissions dead zones disease we know this the CAFO is degenerative meaning when we look at the big picture it is continuously degrading the ecosystems that it relies on at the end of the day to be truly economical and efficient farming needs healthy ecosystems after seeing just how degenerative CAFO ranching is I started researching if there is a truly regenerative way of ranching cattle I found dr. Alan Williams who is known for doing just that he's pioneered a relatively unknown approach to ranching that's hugely profitable efficient all while regenerating the ecosystem and environment it's called regenerative ranching I set off to Bibb County Alabama to meet him and see his regenerative ranch with my own eyes I consider Alan's be the grass-fed guru of our other generation right now I don't know if he'd appreciate that but that's what I've been thinking of them as [Music] so the cows are going through another move today and this is what high density grazing is all about multiple news today with regenerative grazing we mimic what the Bison once did by building appropriately sized paddocks each day that allow us to graze hundreds of cattle across each paddock once the cattle have eaten some of the grass trampled some and fertilized the area they are immediately moved to the next paddock and then the next this practice produces profound results that prevent over grazing and promote tremendous fertility and growth if we focus first and foremost on the sole in restoring that soil function and my ology then everything else comes much easier so the important thing that differentiates between dirt and soil is soil organic matter right yes and soil organic matter is actually 50% carbon which means if we're regenerating in rebuilding soil we're actually putting carbon into the ground now I've been told and we've read in books that it takes hundreds to thousands of years to build back soil how quickly are you doing here we were able to build a new soil organic matter at the right of the 1/2 to 1% annually let's put some perspective on this a point four percent increase of soil organic matter on the world's agricultural soils would completely negate all current co2 emissions Allen is increasing his soil organic matter by 0.5 percent or 1 percent every year if we add just one more percent Sol organic matter that means that every single acre can hold another 25 thousand gallons water ready so we just did our water infiltration test and found that it took only four seconds to infiltrate the first half inch of water that means we're keeping our water here right here when you contrast that with the average farm and ranch across North America the average water infiltration rate is less than a half inch an hour so two things are happening to that water that's sitting on top of the surface now one is that you're going to have a percentage of it as it's going to evaporate and then the second is you're going to have a higher percentage that's actually going to runoff it's going to carry with it topsoil to the effect of four tons plus per acre annually you've got a lot of nitrates and phosphates that are leaving your soil and going downstream they're going into our rivers into our bays and our gulls into our lakes and creating significant issues adjacent to allens farm is a soy field that exemplifies degenerative agriculture this is one of the major reasons why CAFO systems are so degenerative because this is where the feed comes from look at this soil it is literally turning to dust and we're losing probably four tons to ten tons of topsoil per acre per year on this type of agriculture we could convert this land this vast amount of land could be easily converted to start feeding cattle instead of shipping all this soy thousands of miles to those feed Lots why don't we just do it right here without using any important water feed fertilizer or pesticides Allen has increased his production fivefold in the last three years we keep passing these ranches that look way more depleted than Allen's ranch so Allen weed we're driving past tons of ranches on the way here and they have way less grass than you what we're looking at here we have easily three and a half times more forage growing per acre I can carry three and a half times more cows over the same 5,000 acres which means more net profit so many people have the misconception that to do good for the environment you can't make a lot of money allons model completely turns this upside down then of course it begs the question why aren't all farmers and ranchers doing that so I asked Allen and he was just like simply then it's just because people don't know we know what we can do and we know how profound this impact is not just on the farmers and ranchers themselves and their quality of life and their ability to make a good living but also on the rural economies surrounding these farms and ranches we can rebuild our ecosystem our degraded soils and our degraded water cycles that's what excites me and we're creating opportunity to bring young people back into agriculture young people that have a hunger and a thirst to be able to achieve these things so that's that's what I strive to do that's what we live for every day now [Music] so really you're a grass and soil farmer and the cows are secondary that's correct they're the tool we use yeah to build soul [Music]

Channel: Kiss The Ground

Views: 102,065

Rating: 4.9196506 out of 5

Keywords: climate, carbon, carbon dioxide, carbon sequestration, regenerative farming, regenerative agriculture, regenerative, agriculture, organic farming, organic food, gardening, carbon farming, soil sequestration, soil, soil science, land management, environmentalist, environmentalism, before the flood, Regenerative Ranching, Climate change, Global Warming

Id: n2W8dKdgGhc

Length: 8min 5sec (485 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 24 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/danjohnsonson]

Not as good as it sounds

https://youtu.be/rKjQfn-HR6g