How a Nebraska Farmer Built a Regenerative Movement in Japan

0:00 Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the Green Cover Podcast where we have really interesting conversations with some of the top regenerative producers and experts all over the world. And join us as we learn how to regenerate God's creation for future generations together. You know, a lot of times people ask me here at Green Cover, they say, 'Hey Keith, how far do you ship seed? Do you ship seed internationally or is it just in the US?' And the answer to that is it's mostly in the US, but we have done some international work. And my guest today is probably our customer that's the furthest away. Mr. Raymond EP is from Japan, which is a long ways away to ship seed, but we've done it. We shipped a container of seed to help him get started in his business. And the cool thing about Ry, he's from Nebraska originally. And so just a fascinating guy, a fascinating story, and I think you're really going to enjoy this conversation. So Raymond, welcome to the Green Cover Podcast.

1:05 Well, thank you very much, Keith. It's just a real honor to join together with you and all the other guests that you've had on this podcast over this last little while. So I it's really special for me to be here. Thank you.

1:19 Well, great. We appreciate that. So I gave just a little bit of a teaser there. How did you end up from Henderson, Nebraska to the wild regions of Japan doing regenerative? And so just to be fair, this is probably the top regenerative egg producer in the whole country of Japan. So he's helping lead the movement there, which again is just so cool. So give us a little bit of your background. Tell us how you got there.

1:46 Sure. Well, I grew up in a small Mennonite community in Henderson, just down I-80 from you, you know, about an hour and a half from where you live. And gosh, I never thought I would do anything else but farm in Henderson when I was growing up. I attended the University of Nebraska and I began to feel in my studies that gosh there's something that's not quite right about the way in which we think about economics and also I began to become aware of atrazine ending up in the groundwater and nitrates in the water. I felt something in my gut saying that we need to start making a turn in the way in which we practice agriculture. This is more than 45 years ago and you know having discussions in the family at the time, you know, had a fairly successful farming operation to think about making a turn to organic or some kind of well, the word regenerative wasn't used at that time. Had some conflicts in the family, didn't know exactly what to do. You know, so I began to think like there's problems with the agriculture, some things I'm learning, but then I had this experience in 1979 of going with a group of church people to Wichita Falls Texas to clean up after a big tornado that devastated like six square miles of the city. It was the first time I'd ever seen anybody in poverty or have lost everything.

3:31 And it had a huge impact and it wanted me to devote my life to being a service. And also at that same time I read Wes Jackson's book 'New Roots for Agriculture' thinking about how we can mimic nature and the way in which we farm and also big issue at that time was the first ever peacetime draft registration. So coming from a historic peace church I was wondering how am I going to respond to this draft issue. So I brought these three issues together of wanting to be servant, of wanting to be a peacemaker and still have a deep concern for agriculture. I wanted that to form my vocation. And since I couldn't do it in my home farm, my parents said absolutely no way. You can't do that here. So I left my farm, my community, my country and went to Canada to study. I got a biblical studies degree. That's actually my undergraduate degree is in biblical studies. So I spent 12 years living in Canada, kind of in exile, kind of felt that way, kind of away from the farm. I felt if somehow if God wants me to be involved in agriculture.

4:56 And farming again, he'll find a way. Yeah. And he did. Yeah. Well, in Canada, you know, like I it was important, you know, to learn and make these connections, you know, intellectually, but I also had opportunities then to also be very practical. I was involved in a project called stewards of the land in which during the late 80s early 90s there was a farm crisis in Canada and I think farmers in Manitoba and Saskatchewan lost you know a million acres to the banks that were foreclosed on and there was farm suicides, domestic violence and kids were subject to violence and you know as I got farmers to start telling their stories they had no place to go.

5:48 And so I provided an opportunity for farmers a safe space for farmers to start sharing their stories about what's going on. And we find want to find out that you know this this kind of frustration and anger. It's not because these people farmers are bad people. It's part of this kind of system of I called it systemic violence that is just really pressing in and wanting to crush people. And so I was was wanting to encourage people to take this you know anger this anger and turn it into doing something good.

6:31 So we started working at connecting city people and farmers with community supported agriculture projects. We started a 200 member community supported agriculture pilot project in Manitoba in it took four months to organize and there was just this massive support from both city people and farmers to want to participate in this in this project. At that same time in around 1990 I joined with a group of five six families in my church to start a bakery called Tall Grass Prairie Bread Company.

7:12 And we were buying grain directly from farmers and turning it into bread. And you know our mission was you know to support local farmers you know to also support you know stewardship agriculture and to provide good healthy food for people and living wages for our workers and it turned into just this wonderful wonderful project. 25 years after it started I went back to Winnipeg and this bakery is turned the way in which it's spoken of in the city it's Winnipeg's beloved bakery like it's has 62 employees now they're last at last last time I heard they were baking like using like 12 and a half tons of wheat a month that they were milling by themselves and it's just you know a great story and and and this was 30 years ago when you did all this. 35 years ago. Yeah. Before it was all the rage. So you definitely were a man ahead of your time. So I love it. That's great.

8:23 And during that time is when I met my wife. She came from from Japan for a visitor exchange program and we ended up working together in the bakery and she also helped me with the organizing work with farmers. So I got interested in her and came to Japan and provided you know I some workshops you know for the Menite churches here in Japan about what the work I was doing in Canada and they started reflecting on their own experience and said gosh those same problems are here too maybe we need to start a project in Japan so that's kind of in a in a nutshell how I ended up here coming to Japan.

9:14 Well, that that's a great story. And and just again to kind of help set a little bit of the context for folks, tell us just a little bit about the climate that you're farming in, the crops that you can grow there, just just so people have a bit of an understanding of of what you're growing there and, you know, what your climate allows. Yeah. Our climate here we have snow snow melts end of end of March we have about a meter of snow maybe about 3 ft of snow cover in the winter time. We have about 35 to 40 inches of annual rainfall which includes snow. So the because we're within an hour of the ocean, you know, we don't have huge huge temperature swings. The last fall freeze would

10:18 be in November. So we have a pretty open window growing season and high temperatures of maybe in the 90s as the high. So no hail, that sounds pretty good.

10:39 It sounds pretty good. It's all, you know, it's all rainfed farming here. We don't have any. There's no irrigation. So what can we grow here? Like just all kinds of vegetable crops are grown in this region. Our neighbor has an orchard. We're growing apples, grapes, wheat, soybeans, short season corn. We don't have, you know, like 100 to 110 day corn is about the longest season corn that you can grow here. Yeah, it's kind of a, you know, we're at the same latitude as about 42 degrees. It's maybe a little bit farther north than where you're located, but it's basically the same latitude.

11:34 Well, it sounds pretty nice. We were recording this the middle of December. It's 60° today here in Nebraska, but 36 hours ago it was 4°. So it's I'm sure you miss Nebraska weather.

11:50 Yeah. And so when you went to Japan, did you how long did it take you to get to the farm that you're at now and kind of get that set up? Did you start that right away or were there some other kind of in between steps?

12:05 No in between steps. It was there was like six or seven families in the Mennonite churches in the city of Sapporo who really wanted to start a rural community and start addressing some of these problems in agriculture in Japan. So I thought I can come here and maybe in five, 10 years, you know, help get a project going, get it started. I'm kind of good at starting things. So I thought I'd kind of help out here for a little while. And then well to make a long story short we had four boys born in our family and they started getting involved in the schools here and I became attached to this land was just the farm's name is called Meadow Village and I developed a relationship with this place and I just couldn't see myself leaving.

13:09 Love that. Love that story of how, you know, how God used those experiences in Canada to really help you get a movement started in Japan. And it's interesting that, you know, the problems that the US farm economy was facing in the 80s was also happening in Canada and happening in Japan. So you know, sometimes we feel sometimes we get so isolated and thinking that, you know, woe is me, the problems are all just here and all around, but really the problems are kind of universal, but so are the solutions as you're finding out.

13:47 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're finding, you know, there is I mean my, you know, my background, as I said, was in biblical studies. And after being here for about 10 years, I felt, you know, like, you know, there's just all of these things that are continuing to press in on us. And I decided that I'm going to go back to school. I need to find language in which to communicate in a better way with farmers and with policy makers. And so I went back to seminary in 2005 and there was some families that were moving that had come to Japan from the states you know that wanted to, his guy's wife was American but they wanted their kids to learn Japanese you know they spent a year on the farm which allowed me to go to seminary and I wrote a book, a thesis called the politics of food in which I looked at the food system as a form of structural violence, politically as a totalitarian system and biblically as an issue of the principalities and powers at work in this world that are at one time good. They're fallen, but they can be redeemed.

15:32 It was a—I use that thesis all the time in my work.

15:38 Yeah, no kidding. I'm thinking that you should be publishing that as a book. That could be a big hit right now.

15:47 So moved to Japan, started the farm there and then how—I assume you started out as regenerative, organic, you brought all those principles with you. So you did that from the very beginning.

16:04 Nope.

16:07 How did the most—how did it progress?

16:10 Yeah, yeah. The most important thing in—I was the first foreigner probably in Hokkaido, I don't—that, you know, came and started a farm. So the most important thing first off was to develop a relationship with the neighbors. And I had the fortunate experience that two of our neighbors—one of them was an Anglican, second generation Anglican—and what he did is he organized all of the farmers in the neighborhood to be my teacher.

16:54 So really, if you need—yeah, so if you need to learn something about growing rice, here's the farmer you need to go talk to to learn about rice growing. Any questions? I have a—I had a potato grower sensei, a teacher, who just passed away a couple of days ago. Yeah, I could go to them anytime and they would help me. So another farmer, which is just two houses down at that time, he came to me while I was fixing up the house here the first year. And he was an agriculture trainee in California in the 1950s, so he knew some English. And we had a long conversation about Japanese culture and stuff and how I'd fit in here. It was, you know, the first year, you first month that I was here. And then he told me at the end, he said, 'If you want to become just like all of the other farmers in this area, you may as well go back to the United States. I want you to do something interesting,' which is exactly the opposite of traditional Japanese thinking—you need to fit in and be like everybody else, you know, don't stick out. So he, you know, he was just a wonderful soul. So I just really am grateful to him for his words of advice and I followed it.

18:26 So yeah, that's really cool. 'I want you to do something interesting.' So what did you do interesting that was, you know, different from the traditional way of farming and how, you know, just talk a little bit about how that interesting difference kind of morphed into, you know, the influence that you've had over, you know, not just the region but the country.

18:49 Yeah, like first of all I wanted to learn—how everybody—I need to learn about the soils. I need to learn about the weather. I need to know about the agronomic practices of Japan for growing these different crops. So the first year I basically did everything the way everybody else did, farmed around the area. And I learned, you know, the basic, you know, methods of farming for here, and slowly over time I did experimenting to start shifting the farm towards organic farming methods. If I could succeed on a small scale, then I scaled up. You know, I didn't take any big risks. I also needed to make the farm keep the farm's appearance like everyone else's, you know, like I can't have a weed patch, you know, or else, you know, that just doesn't fit into the neighborhood standards, you know. So I was very careful about those kind of things. So moving slowly, moving from to organic, I basically shifted the whole farm over to organic production. I made fermented fertilizer called bokashi fertilizer. Steve Diver talks about that—Steve Diver from Kentucky. He's familiar with that at one of the workshops at Acres USA conference. I was fermenting like 50, 60 tons of this bokashi fertilizer during the winter time, you know, out of chicken manure and rice bran and different ingredients, local ingredients. I got some uh, for bacteria from the forest, you know, to inoculate the piles so that the bacteria from the forest would also—when I spread it onto the fields, it would be returning, you know, increasing the biological diversity of the soils, you know, so was doing some of these kind of regenerative practices. Yep.

20:47 Yeah, and so this would have been what—like in the 90s at this point?

20:52 Late 90s, early 2000s. So still 25 plus years ago that you were doing this, because it sounds like this could be a regenerative farmer right now today that's just looking at all these things I'm doing, but you know you were doing them, you know, 25 years ago, and you learned from people that had been doing it 25, 50 years before that.

21:15 You know, we display so much hubris when we think that we're the first ones to come up with this kind of stuff. A lot of it is we're trying to rediscover what our ancestors would have known and applying it with the benefit of some of the technology that we have today to make it even better.

21:36 That's correct. Yeah, some of the bottlenecks that I began to run into with this kind of method of farming was that I was purchasing compost off the farm and the pH of the compost was 8.4 to 8.8, and so my soils were slowly moving into the range of 7 to 7.5, you know, like just, you know, that was a limitation.

22:07 And also, you know, with the mad cow disease, I didn't have access to bone meal. Yeah, I was wondering like if I can't use compost, I can't use bone meal, well, and how am I going to provide fertility for my soils? And I started thinking maybe cover crop, you know, would like growing a clover or something like that. I wasn't thinking about diverse mixes of cover crops at that point, but can I grow my carbon in the field rather than thinking about applying it? And as I was getting older, you know, I thought, you know, this maybe be a little bit more efficient as well, you know, labor-wise.

22:58 Yeah. So then in 2018, I think my friend Jay Girtson came to a conference at Green Cover then which you hosted, Gabe Brown. And he had just written his book, you know, from Dirt to Soil. And so I had sent Jay some of my writings about seeds and in return he sent back Dirt to Soil. So I read that book and I thought, you know, gosh, you know what I had read about from West Jackson, you know, nearly 35 years or 25 years before, or more, that you know like one of the questions that West had is can nature, can the prairie provide its own defenses against insects and disease? Can it sponsor its own fertility, you know, through diversity? And I thought, you know, Gabe is writing about diverse cover crops. Of course, this is the key that I've been looking for.

24:10 And so in 2019, I purchased a Great Plains No Till Drill here in Japan. They're being sold. And also that's when I got my I ordered from the local cooperative cover crop seeds, mixed cover crop seeds. One of the huge, you know, it worked really, really well. But one of the real bottlenecks for the adoption of cover crop seeds I saw was these seeds from the local cooperative, you know, have seed coatings on it. Probably I'm not sure what they are, but probably there's neonics and fungicides on the seeds. There's not much variety. They have plant variety protection, so the farmers can't multiply the seeds if they wanted to. And lastly, they're just prohibitively expensive.

25:09 They all come in 1 kilogram plastic bags. Can you imagine, Keith, you know, delivering cover crops, that's a lot of bags. A lot of bags. Yeah. So I, there, this is the bottleneck, you know, I was, and a barrier to adoption of cover crops. So you know that was I think it was following year, 2019, 2020, somewhere around there that I ordered my first small batch of seed from Green Cover.

25:50 And you know, I tell people this all the time that we take so much for granted. And it's funny, we had a missionary friend speak at our church yesterday. He's from Honduras and he says, 'Oh, here in America, you have a switch for everything. If it's too hot, you flip a switch. If it's too cold, you flip a switch.'

26:13 Switch. If it's dark, you flip a switch. And really what he's talking about is we have so many conveniences and it's literally at the flip of a switch. You want a diverse cover crop mix, we'll flip a switch and we can get that right out to you.

26:27 We just take so much for granted that people in other countries don't have access to the seeds or to the knowledge or to the equipment. And it's very difficult for us to ship seed. We'd love to ship seed to all these countries, but it's very difficult with import export rules and laws and everything.

26:51 So when you started at a small scale, then it eventually got to a bigger scale. Maybe talk just a little bit about that progression and what we ended up with and what's your end goal with that whole thing with your cover crop seed business. And then I do still want to get into some of the work you've been doing with policy and with promotion and education as well.

27:18 Yeah. With the seeds, for myself with importing the small amount of seed that we did the first year, whenever I work with government people I really want to develop a close personal relationship with the person that I'm working with and I'm extremely grateful for the amount of time and the effort that they make in order to work together with me to make this import of seeds possible. And I want to learn as much as I possibly can. I'm always extremely grateful for the work that they do.

28:05 When we first imported the small amount of seeds, I had to wait at the port with the guy as we were waiting for the seeds to be taken out of the container. So I had an opportunity to talk to him about mixed cover crops and how that's different than from growing single species cover crops and he became extremely interested. He was really excited about helping me with this project. So I've developed this really good relationship with him.

28:36 When we moved into getting a larger quantity of seeds, we ran into all kinds of different problems. But he was right there with us and helping us each step of the way so we can get the customs clearance and all the testing done. Very helpful. Very fine gentleman.

29:02 Yeah, and that just underscores the importance of building relationships and not burning bridges and not getting frustrated because somebody's just trying to do their job. Even if you think well, that's a dumb rule. Well, it's still a rule. They got to follow it. So don't blame that guy.

29:22 I like how you forge those relationships and are working within that system because we did eventually ship that whole container. And so we shipped a whole container of seed and then obviously you didn't plant all of that on your own ground. What all did you do with that then?

29:41 Okay. In 2022, I was on your Green Cover newsletter list and I saw that there was a premiere of this movie to which we belong in which Keith Burns was going to be in Lincoln with the producer for a premiere, the Nebraska premiere of this movie. I took a look at that short version of the movie and I felt immediately that movie we have to show that in Japan. And so I emailed Pamela right away and asked if I could get the distribution rights to this movie. A friend of mine, he subtitled the movie with another one of his friends and we started showing that movie in the fall of 2022.

30:52 There was no word for regenerative agriculture in the Japanese language prior to 2022. So there was one word that was environmentally renewing agriculture.

31:07 That was developed by the translator of Gabe Brown's book which also came out in 2022 in the Japanese, Dirt to Soil the book, and our movie came out in the fall. We decided to translate regenerative agriculture as earth renewing agriculture. So rather than just that which surrounds us, it's the earth itself that is renewing the world. The power. I like that.

31:44 So that has become the dominant way in which regenerative agriculture is being talked about in Japan now.

31:54 Yeah, that's really cool. And for those who aren't familiar with it, to which we belong was a soil health documentary made by a wonderful team of folks. And they came out before COVID, and I think they recorded all this. Our farm is featured on there along with probably six, seven, eight other farms as well, some in Africa. Really interesting part with a guy growing kelp off the east coast. Just really, really well done. The cinematography on it was just outstanding. So if you haven't watched it, I'd certainly encourage you to. I think you can rent it really cheap on Amazon Prime or it might even be on Netflix. Search for that. Try to find that because it's not only a really good representation of what regenerative agriculture can do, but it really leaves you with a sense of hope and not a sense of the sky is falling. They do a great job talking about the problems but spending more time on the solutions, which I really appreciated.

33:04 That's what struck me. You showed that hundreds of times in Japan, right?

33:10 Yeah, when I first saw that, I thought, gosh, if we could show that at maybe 20 or 30 places, that would be a real success. But once we started showing that movie, it just spread by word of mouth. We've shown it in close to 500 different locations all across Japan with more than 11,000 people who have seen this movie.

33:35 And that was the first step. We have to introduce a word. We also have to introduce a sense of hope, as you said, Keith. And the other thing that really struck me about the movie was that the people in the movie weren't waiting around for a government subsidy to fall from the sky. They said, here's the problem. This is what we have to do to start addressing the problems on our own and working together with our families and our neighbors to start making a difference. And that kind of spirit is what I really wanted to instill into the farmers and consumers here in Japan. We have to start acting before the government does. We can't wait around.

34:25 No, because if you wait for the government to do it, you're probably not going to like what they come up with for a solution anyway.

34:33 Yeah. So that was the first step. Obviously the message was well received.

34:38 Very well received, yes. So that was the first step, and then the next step after all these showings, farmers were wondering, okay, there was a lot of talk in the movie about mindset change. We need to think differently in order to change our practices. So how do we go about practicing regenerative agriculture? So it was the following year that a friend of mine from Osaka, we started an educational program with five farmers. Let's start experimenting on our own farms with mixed cover crops with this new mindset. How does it start affecting the way in which we practice agriculture? How do we make decisions on the farm to address weed pressures, fertility, insects, diseases in a more holistic kind of way? And these farmers didn't have no-till drills and they didn't have roller crimpers, so let's get creative. What do we have rather than.

41:01 Seed companies are also owned by chemical companies. Well, it's you know we can achieve a goal either through variety improvement or we can if we breed out disease resistance or insect resistance or we have a chemical that we can sell to the farmer to meet that. So you know the kind of questions that plant breeders ask changes depending upon the needs or the profits of the company that owns the seeds.

41:37 So it changes. It's very important for farmers and citizens to be involved in questions regarding plant variety development. So if we want regenerative plants that respond to a regenerative soil ecosystem, many of the plant varieties that we have now are incapable of developing a mycorrhizal fungal association. So we need plant breeding that will function well in a regenerative soil. So those are the kind of discussions.

42:21 And you know when we sent you that cover crop seed, we worked really hard and were very careful to send all non-GMO and all open pollinated and all nonprotected varieties so that you could take them and maybe not necessarily do a whole crop breeding program, but just by planting them over and over again, you're going to epigenetically shift those seeds to fit your environment. Have you started doing that? Are you growing those things out and harvesting the seed? And are you seeing any changes to have those fit your environment and your context better?

43:06 The first year, this past year was our first year of selling the container of seeds. We planted amongst our farm members, we planted 900 acres of cover crops, mixed cover crops. So I was hoping to develop a seed production network similar to Green Cover, where 60 to 70% of the seeds the farmers are producing for you.

43:47 I shared that story with the farmers and at this point the farmers have no experience of growing some of these cover crops for seed production. So they're a little hesitant to want to participate in something like that at this point in this first year. But as they see these cover crops they're just amazed. You know, the oats, the Jerry oats, like the stems of them are like the size of my little finger. You know, the oat varieties here in Japan are just really scrawny. The root system on these Jerry oats is just amazing in comparison to the varieties that are that we have access to here. So, you know, yeah, they're really impressed with the cover crop seeds and it's amazing what they've been able to do. Seen some good results.

44:46 So, do you see that maybe you'll have to do some small plot demonstrations of how we can grow this out for seed production and you know, kind of do some of that experimenting yourself or do you have a few guys that will try some of this on small scales? For crops like oats and rye, it's not a problem to be able to gain access to that. So the grain crops, that's not a problem but you know like I'm wondering, for daikon radish seed for example, can we grow that? The farmers here grow rape seed for harvesting which is much smaller seed than daikon so it shouldn't be a problem but you know just the kind of psychological barrier of this is something new, you know.

45:49 So assuming then that you do get some acres of some of these things grown and you'll likely find some other locally adapted things that you can utilize hopefully. Are you planning to set up like a seed cleaning operation and because I know you can blend seeds and stuff now, but you'll have to store it and you have to process it, you have to test it and all of that. Or is that all part of kind of the future plans there?

46:22 Well, right now we're in the midst of building a 2500 square foot

46:28 storage facility. We have a small scale clipper cleaner and I just purchased a color sorter, a Satake.

46:44 You're ahead of us. We haven't got one of those yet. Well, maybe I can give you a good deal on one. That'd be great.

46:54 Yeah, so we're hopefully I've been in China earlier this year and was looking at getting a large carding machine. I have some experience in construction and using this carding machine to card wool and make sheep wool insulation and have our storage facility insulated with sheep wool insulation. So get that a lot cheaper than glass wool. And it's also more ecologically sound. We can grow the wool right on our fields.

47:35 Yeah, it's amazing like all kinds of the gifts of God's creation, you know, not only is food but fiber insulation, you know, like it's we're surrounded by God's grace, you know.

47:51 Yeah. I love that. And you're continuing down the path of education, not just for the people in your group, but for yourself because you're continually translating things. I think you know, we had Nicole Masters here at our farm this summer for a two-day. You would have loved that. She was here for two days doing a we called it Nexus in the Field event. But you translated her book and you're signed up in her course now, too. Is that correct?

48:20 Yes. As of September of this year, I signed on to the create course and I'm in the process of learning to be a regen ag coach so I can in more in-depth help the farmers learn how to do soil health assessments of their soils and you know take the steps you know to help shift away from the high chemical usage.

48:56 And I want to train these farmers then to start I'm not going to be able to do this forever, you know, so I would like to, you know, train some next generation that they can also be involved in the coaching so that this idea can spread. Yeah. The young farmers that I have working with me, they said when I asked them about their goals, well, of course they want to shift their own farms, but they want they also are telling me they want regenerative agriculture to be the new normal in Japan. So, they have huge goals. So, I just feel like I want to help in the process of preparing them to carry out this great work.

49:40 You mentioned about Nicole. Well, two years ago I visited Nicole and this is her book For the Love of Soil in Japanese. It just was released 3 weeks ago. Took two years to get translated, but now her book For the Love of Soil is available in Japanese. I've been had a hand in helping to translate that.

50:06 For sure. And you know, you use the term coach, which I really like, and I know Nicole, in fact, our new soil health resource guide, the 12th edition will be coming out in January. It's going to the printers this week. There's an article in there from Nicole, and it's entitled, 'Agriculture does not need more experts, we need more coaches.' And it just kind of talks about that philosophy of being a coach versus an expert and how that just translates to longer term benefits and you know people learning more for the long term. And so if you know you're interested in that type of thing, folks, you can you can get on our website and get a copy of that resource guide after the first of the year is when those are usually available. But a great article in there from a really smart lady that has been all over the world and has seen all sorts of things and really has probably as good a perspective as anybody on how regenerative ag looks all around the world. And you know, and that's just the cool thing is that we're not just seeing a movement here. You're seeing it in Japan. You know, she's seeing it, you know, all over. So, what a what a

51:22 Wonderful thing that we can all work together and having technology like this where we can share each other's stories with folks and encourage people. I think that's just really neat.

51:39 Like I just find that working with farmers, it's about less than half of the problem of shifting to regenerative agriculture that's technical. It's like how do we deal with our neighbors, the family dynamics in wanting to shift and make a difference. Often times farmers are saying like I'm concerned if we start growing mixed cover crops, our fields are going to look different than all of our neighbors and we're going to be looked upon as either being lazy or just different and we just can't deal with the social pressures of that. Being group, helping support one another in that work.

52:37 I just read an article on LinkedIn and its premise was that when you're going to make a shift like this from conventional agriculture to regenerative agriculture, 50% of the shift is your mindset, 40% of the shift is in setting up the right system, and then 10% of it is actually implementing the practices. But for most of us, we try to start with that 10% first. And if you don't have the mindset, if you don't have the systems built, that's where you just are continually frustrated. You're continually banging your head against the wall and things don't work because you're trying to do the practices in a system that wasn't designed for it with a mindset that's not prepared for it.

53:26 Yeah. I thought that was really good. I'm going to contact that author and see if we can get that into next year's soil health resource guide because it was just really well written, very intelligent and well thought out.

53:40 So Ry, as we kind of bring this to a close on this episode, I'm curious, you know, in Japan when a farmer comes to you and says, 'I saw the movie. I read the book. See what you're doing. I'm really interested in doing this. How do I get started? Where do I start?' Because that's a pretty common question here in the US. Curious as to what advice you would give a Japanese farmer as they want to get into and I love the term earth healing agriculture.

54:19 We really encourage them to develop a social network. Also we point them in the direction of whatever resources that they have on regenerative agriculture to learn things on their own, but the importance of being part of a social network. So we really invite them to join my regenerative journey so that they can learn this peer-to-peer farmer learning. I find to be the most important way in which farmers can learn about shifting their practices. I personally like to work at creating a safe environment where people can learn together and also teach about how soils function. So knowing how soils function, having a safe working environment and a place where there can be peer-to-peer learning, I think that is the way in which people can feel part of something that's bigger than themselves.

55:32 And I just want to clarify one point there. You said you encourage them to join my regenerative journey. That's not your personal experience. That's a program that you have. Correct. Why don't you talk a little bit about what that looks like.

55:47 Yeah. My regenerative journey was a project that was started with my friend Seo Yoshiharan. He together we are working at teaching how soils function, also how to do soil health assessments, encouraging farmers to learn about ways to improve their health.

56:21 Of their soil through applying the principles of regenerative agriculture and just giving them the opportunity to work together in their neighborhood with other farmers to do this kind of experimenting together. That's been a project that's been focused mostly in Hokkaido and there's other farmers from other regions of Japan that are also now gaining interest in this and I think in the coming year we're going to be shifting some of our workshops into the mainland of Japan.

57:03 Farming is very very different in the north island of Hokkaido than it is on the main island. It's much more American style agriculture here in Hokkaido. Larger scale, 100 to 200 acres. Which is large scale for Japan, not necessarily for Texas or Nebraska or something.

57:30 One of the things I didn't mention about in this broadcast is about the connections with the government researchers that are now getting interested in regenerative agriculture and just kind of the same kind of experience that Gabe Brown and his group started doing research on their own and then all a sudden later on Ray Archeletta and others said oh my goodness what are you guys doing here? Government researchers are now getting interested in what we're doing and I think many of the farmers are ahead of what the government researchers are. They're trying to catch up and they're wondering how can they participate in what we're doing.

58:12 The time scale is really compressed. Like it was four or five years ago where we didn't have a word for regenerative agriculture and now the researchers are getting interested in relatively quickly. So they're wondering what kind of testing is needed in order to help shift our soils to regenerative. Yesterday on Saturday the Kobayashi sensei from Hokkaido University would like to propose that we have a project called the 100 farms initiative based upon John Lundren's 1000 farms initiative. He just whacked off a zero at the end. That's still a big project.

58:59 Like we're influencing the universities and government researchers. We're leveraging them and we're pushing them in a particular direction. So it's really fun to know that these farmers are at the cutting edge and they're really excited about the work that they're doing to improve their own soils, but also on helping to push Japanese agriculture in a new direction.

59:27 That's great and it's really encouraging to know that this movement, whether you call it regenerative agriculture or earth healing agriculture, is not localized to one region or another because it's the principles of creation that work everywhere. The practices are going to be different. And that's the beauty, is that the creativity of whether it's an American farmer, Japanese farmer or wherever, the creativity is there to figure out how to do the best practices to put these universal principles into place. So Raymond, thank you for the work that you're doing to promote this in Japan and I see that spreading not just from your farm across the country, but I predict that you'll have an international influence and you'll be able to really have an effect in the larger region for these practices. So thank you for all the great work that you're doing. Thank you for being a friend to Green Cover and for anything we can do to help continue your journey, just let us know. We would love to be part of it.

1:00:38 It's a real honor and real privilege to share in the work of helping farmers to care for God's creation for future generations. Amen. Thank you very much. A great one to end on. So thank you everybody for watching this episode of the Green Cover Podcast. Thank you very much, Keith.