How Education Fuels the Regenerative Movement with Matt Powers

0:00 All right. Hey everybody, welcome to the Green Cover podcast where we have really interesting conversations with some of the top farmers and experts in the regenerative ag world. Join us as we learn together how we can better steward and shepherd God's creation for future generations. You know, we have lots of interesting guests and interesting conversations on this podcast and today's guest is no exception. So Matt Powers is an author, he's a farmer, he's an educator, he's a family guy. He's a musician. Matt's done tons of different things, which makes him really interesting. But it also gives him, I think, some really unique perspectives into this world of regenerative agriculture, regenerative soil. And I think if you don't know Matt already, by the end of this episode, you will know Matt and you will also be impressed. And as an author, I should have had this one a little handier. He's got a number of different books out. I can highly recommend regenerative soil. But he's also got books on regenerative microscopy and other things like that. So one of the things I like best about you, Matt, I'm going to give you a chance to kind of set the stage here. I love the fact of how you are a continual student. You have taught yourself all these things and you're what, an English major and had a background in music. So tell us a little bit about how you got to where you're at because it is not the path of tradition that got you here.

1:33 Thank you, Keith. Yeah, it definitely was. This is the like the last place I expected to be. I had I thought I had all figured out. I was trying to write science fiction novels. I was an English major and I was a bass player. And so I just had four strings to worry about and I had a two-story apartment. I was a professional musician. I had a two-story apartment in Brooklyn and it was amazing, you know, just playing bass sometimes working at nightclubs with my friends who wouldn't let me even hang the coats. I would go and play bass while they worked. It was weird, but it was cool. So I was spoiled and life kind of just kicked me in the pants. My new wife with our new baby got cancer. And it was like a hard stop to this rosy tinted view of the world that I had. It was really hard because I thought I had it all figured out. I thought everything was, you know, I just was on this path, you know.

2:49 And it was really hard because she got cancer, lost her thyroid. They removed it without asking her permission. They did it while she was under and they're doing a biopsy and then they took it all out. And so 3 months after they did the radiation, she got cancer again and a month later cancer again. And it was different. It was melanoma. It almost reached her lymph nodes. And if you know reaches lymph nodes, it gets almost impossible to stop.

3:17 So she was really devastated, super depressed. The baby during the radiation times had to go with her sister in Brooklyn. She was in my mom's attic during this time because she was radioactive. Her trash had to be collected and kept for 6 months because if it went to the dump, they would find it on the way in. It would set off all these radiation alarms. Meanwhile, people took public transit back from their radiation therapy and everything they touch is radioactive for 6 months and it attacks your thyroid. Levothyroxine is the most popular drug in America. I wonder why they changed this protocol. You used to be like isolated to a wing of a hospital and no one could go in there without protection when you're radioactive. Now they send you home and they literally litter the world with damaging radiation in the process, especially in urban centers, especially with people on like Medicaid, Medicare. And I realized all this I saw all this in real time and as anyone would with a brain, right.

4:24 And I asked the doctors. How many years ago Matt?

4:27 Uh, oh my gosh. This was almost 18 years ago.

4:34 Yeah. So it was a long time ago. And my wife lost her thyroid. They did the radiation and we I thought it caused the other and I asked the doctors if it caused the other cancers and they couldn't look me in the eye. They like made some like they're like well that's kind of like you know a stretch and and they would get out of the room immediately and so my level of trust evaporated my skepticism rose my cynicism rose and I became extremely depressed paranoid anxious and feeling because you know new fathers you have this like you you you go everything goes to like 11 right new father overdoes everything right and so I was just worried I felt so helpless. My I don't know how to raise a baby, you know, life-threatening. I'm going to be left with a baby. So I had all these.

5:32 Like thoughts and they ate at me. And so I wanted to figure this out. And I did go to good schools. And though I was an English major, I did some real school, too. I'm kidding. No, no. I studied my Shakespeare was my colloquium. I studied Shakespeare, you know, for like the final stage and I was Irish studies minor. I loved interpreting hard-to-read texts. So once I got into medical and science and food and all these things, I realized the only thing I could really control was making the right decision medically, but also food, you know, food was like the thing I could control. So I started gardening and then I was gardening on 140-degree soils because my wife asked me to quit the music industry and so I left New York first and then to make money I had I was on the blues circuit making $70 a night doing playing it's awful. I went from getting paid $350 an hour to being paid the whole night $70 playing at Indian casinos where they don't even look at you. You're playing bass for 4 hours and they're like and you're like dying inside because you thought you were an artist.

6:52 And so I and I wasn't making enough money. We didn't have healthcare. So I became a teacher and that was the last thing I ever wanted to do. But this really nice man at church and my wife ganged up on me and explained that Matt with your level of education you could be a sub like easily like really easily. And I was like why? And then I was like I don't like teachers. I hated public school. I feel like they're bullies. And then I went in there with my guitar and I was like fine. I'll go in there and I'll play them music and I'll give them a day off. I'll be the best sub ever. And so for three years I did I did a transitionary period. So for three years I subbed and I was subbing in the sixth most violent county in America in Fresno and Madera. These are agricultural centers. So the farmers kids and I saw how they weren't being educated at all.

7:44 I was a third-born boy. All my older I just kind of went where my older brothers went. And I got to do things that they did because they were actually deserving of them. So I went to special schools and I got like really great one-on-one education. My brothers were Junior Olympians. I like missed Junior Olympics by this much and I should have done it, but I had I ended up having knee surgery. And that ended my skiing careers and that's when I started doing music. And the reason I was able to do music at that level was because I learned high performance. I started lifting weights when I was 12 doing visualization and meditation for skiing. When seven in seventh grade my roommates two of them like went on to be Olympians. So I was immersed in this very very competitive high performance culture and I sucked. I okay I was good. I was a great skier. I was like amazing but I wasn't a I wasn't a Donna Weinre. I wasn't a Tomba. Like literally, I was at an event and Bodie Miller, the gold medalist, walks up to me and goes, 'Little Powers.' And I'm like, 'Hey, no one's called me that in a long time. Keep it down.' And he's like, 'Little Powers, Ted.' And I'm like, 'Okay.' He's like one of the nicest guys ever. He remembered me from my childhood because my brothers were so darn good. And so I I was good, you know, and I racing I was like, you know, top 40, top 45 in Vermont. That's not that's not good enough. So So I I grew up watching these incredible athletes and I just had to do everything to keep up. And so that's what I've kind of applied this I'm never going to be a natural at anything I do, but I will outwork you.

9:40 Yeah. And so then you leverage that teaching, you know, that subject because you're a great teacher now and you have online courses and you write books and I taught school for 10 years as well before coming back to the farm. So you know, I get that and that's that's a you know, it is a gift, I think. And I think you are a gifted teacher and you've applied all that now to this whole regenerative mindset, which is really great.

10:06 And it's and it really is empowerment because the thing is when I talk to farmers, so much of it is that idea of like, can I do this? And that you probably you probably think the things that you're teaching are simple and very clean and clear and it's like guys it's just cover crops let's go you know and it's like and you can do them in combinations you can make it so that accuse the right the right nutritions the right microbes it's it's the way it works but there's this confidence thing and so so much of what I was doing with those kids in Madera and Fresno was teaching them empowerment teaching them habits that would changed their lives. And one of those things I was starting to teach them was entrepreneurship. And so I was like, well, I should do and demonstrate a Kickstarter. And this is once I was an

10:53 English teacher. And they had no books at this school. So I had to create all the curriculum from scratch. We only had computers. This is also why I'm good at online education. And so I did a book as an example for my students and it made $26,000 in 30 days.

11:11 That's a great example. Yeah. What book was that? That was Permaculture Student One.

11:19 Okay. And so I took the PDC which is really a lens for understanding nature. That's what permaculture is. It's not any political thing. Though a lot of people like to put things on things. So it's none of that. But I saw how these kids were missing out. These kids didn't have the same kind of education that I had. I wasn't necessarily great at math. I wasn't necessarily even at first great at writing or I wasn't good at music at first, but it was that perseverance and I just was like, well, what are your goals? What do you want to do? Let's write about it. Welcome to English class. Right? And so, I always couch things around people's goals and I do that with my online courses. I do that with all the things that I do.

12:02 And what happened was I basically was chasing this health route in the most challenging environment, 140° soils above Fresno. People thought I was crazy and then I had big success because of permaculture and I wrote it down and turned it in curriculum because that's all I did at school. I had to create curriculum because there was none. So it was something I was doing anyway. And I asked Jeff Lawton, he gave me permission and he had to translate into Arabic when I was done. And he uses it in the Middle East. So I know it's wild. And then what happened was I went super deep into permaculture.

12:40 So deep I started doing showing how Joel Salatin, Jean Maton Fouier, all these people, Gabe Brown all these kinds of people are doing permaculture they're recognizing the patterns of nature and partnering with them in such a way that it cares for the future. In other words, there's an adjective for that. It's called regenerative.

13:00 And I wrote I started writing a book called Permaculture Soil Science and Solutions. And it was too much of a mouthful. And I realized it should be regenerative soil.

13:10 And that's when everything changed, which is what turned into this. Yeah.

13:16 And that's how I arrived at this space. It was following the trail of crumbs on how to figure out the truth that healthy soils create healthy plants which create healthy animals and people and that simple equation because we know the opposite's true. Sick equals sick equals sick. I was like, how do I map this out? How do I prove this?

13:42 And it's been incredible. Well, you've definitely come at this a natural way because there's no straight lines in nature. You know, they wind around and they curve and you've definitely taken the circuitous path to get to where you're at. But we're glad that you're here because you bring a great deal of passion of insight, knowledge, to the courses you teach, to the books that you read. And we've done a number of things in collaboration, and we'll talk about the regenerative nexus maybe a little later here in the podcast, but tell us a little bit because I've participated in this too. You've got a series of some online events, the R soils conference and some of those. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about that and why you've kind of taken that approach and that route and how you see that benefiting folks.

14:35 Yeah. So what I have figured out in so my master's degree is in educational psychology and developmental psychology and so I observe how people learn and one of the best ways that people learn is socially and we'll never arrive at full answers in science unless we include community. And so I always gather voices especially voices that differ and are complimentary but also differ because especially if they both are doing good work because there's a reason you're both doing good work and you disagree well there's something there for us to learn. And so I have hosted Our Future for over five years and that's a conference that predates Our Soil and it originally was focused around regenerative entrepreneurship. So regenerative entrepreneurship regenerative value added products supporting those regenerative farmers that's also regenerative entrepreneurship but permaculture design mapping landscaping ranching it could be anything really and so I was really trying to gather leaders as well as people starting out so people could see themselves aspirationally and then see themselves pragmatically starting.

16:07 That modeling in a group setting, in a community setting where I have a social group that I always attach to things. So I have a private, it's like a Facebook but without any of the junk. Folks, well, in when we go to events like Regenerative Nexus, we all hang out in the hall. We all go out to the patio, we have a meal together. And that this app is called Circle. It's a way that people can connect digitally for live online events and simulate that.

16:46 And so I want the community from the voices and teachers because some people are going to find me annoying. Some people are going to find me completely engaging and they're going to love it. But it's different strokes for different folks when it comes to learning and different people are going to say the same message in a different way and it'll cause and unlock for different people. And so I totally get that. I'm not for everyone. And so I gather all these voices to show the commonality how we're all striving for.

17:16 And this to me when you build community, when you build a scene of people, you actually lower antagonism between them. It's like soil organic matter being a buffer, right? These kinds of events, you see them as your peer. It develops this, it erases animosity. It opens doors. It makes it so these people who are the leaders, who are the experts begin to be more open and communicating. And it also makes them realize like they are mentors, which is a critical role shift for a lot of folks.

17:54 So I see myself as a facilitator always. And so I am facilitating things for my speakers and trying to I do live panels and I match people up that I think would be interesting, might like each other but also might disagree and we might get some deeper knowledge. But I always think about facilitation of growth empowerment because that's where it's really at. And in that state of learning and growth is we really we're in a state of humility and that's the ultimate state of receivership. And I really believe that when we're in the right spirit in these gatherings amazing things happen.

18:44 And we see it certainly in person like Regenerative Nexus, we see it at EcoAg, but online it's harder. And that's why I have the private group. I do group sessions where we break up the actual viewers into small three to four person groups. I do this a lot in my courses. Actually, my microscopy course, they connect their camera from their microscope directly to Zoom. So they show in real time in HD what they're seeing in the microscope. So they can ask questions in real time. They can actually share and be the teacher in small groups and tour their sample and take turns doing that, develop their eye, authentic learning, breaking down that fourth wall.

19:31 So I'm always trying to focus on that and our soil is just the same thing. It's a facilitation of the focus on regenerative soil and our soil is a pun. I'm an English teacher, right? My dad's also from Iowa, so you got to remember the humor. So it's so our it's ours. It's our, we have to take responsibility. If it is ours, it is our responsibility.

19:59 And that stewardship aspect is critical. And when we see each other along those common lines like wow, you're doing natural farming and it's all anaerobic ferments and man your products so good, your test results are amazing. Like I'm doing all this aerobic stuff and it's going really well because my soil is like this and your soil is like that. That realization that people are mostly talking by a regional, like this is the best formula ever, and they're just talking by it's best for you and your crop and your soil type. You know, but that humility aspect allows us all to learn and grow.

20:43 And when we gather people it naturally happens. And when we do transparency, when we're sharing and showing, that's the spirit of the ARIL database. And that's going to be a place where we have people from the soil database present their findings annually as well. So it's going to transform and grow. But this October 1st or 5th, we're going to have our soil 2025. We're going to have over 30 speakers focused on regenerative soil. And these are people who are testing, consulting, farmers, ranchers, researchers, gardeners, permaculturists, indoor growers, and all of those people are part of this.

21:30 With cover crops. It's not a common practice to do cover crops in indoor growing because they feel like they can control everything. So why not? Let's control everything. But the reality is it's like the cannabis industry has once again pioneered and proven it. It's unbelievable, you know, not just cycling and keeping the same soil. So you have the regenerative aspects because it's regenerative means it returns the next year.

22:01 Regenerative, you know, it comes from the Bible. It means resurrection. And there's no technology that can be a substitute for a green growing plant working in conjunction with all of those microbes in the soil. I mean, that's the way God created the ecosystem to work. And so there's no technology that can replace that. Whether you're indoors under grow lights or you're outdoors on small scale or you're across thousands of acres, it's the same principles. You know, that growing plant putting carbon into the soil, feeding and encouraging recruiting all these microbial communities to essentially do their bidding. You know, plants are really genius in order to be able to do that.

22:49 When they have everything they need. And that's why it's so incredibly important that we prepare the soil, that we test, and what's so incredible now is that cover crops are sophisticated. I mean, what you guys do, the way that you're like, oh, well, what are you depleted in? Like, what are your goals? It's like those two metrics, where are we at and what's wrong now? Where do you want to go? And what must be true for that to be there and to do it so naturally. Yeah, it's really, I don't know anyone else who's doing it. What you guys are doing is critical.

23:31 Yeah, well thank you and yeah, we're excited to be a part of this space and I want to go back to something you said earlier because I think it's so important and that's when you talked about the importance of having a humble attitude and just, you know, whether you're the teacher or the student, you know, whether you're a part of an entrepreneurship startup or of an organization that humility is so critical and I think one of the keys to being humble is really truly understanding that principle of soil health called context. Because you know, you mentioned earlier, you know, we can have two people doing it two different ways. Neither one of them are wrong because the way that I do it in my context is going to be different than the way you do it in your context. And I think understanding that context, whether it's the environmental and the agronomic context of your soils and climate or just the background that we took to get to where we're going to be, that's a huge part of being able to remain humble. Because that person just doesn't have the same experiences that I do. And I really appreciate you saying that and something that I have to remind myself of because man, it is not easy. You know, pride was the original sin and it remains alive and well today in most of us.

25:00 I have to remind myself that I have to always avoid speaking in terms of who's right because it always creates a you versus them situation and that's not actually what we want in life in relationships, you know.

25:22 And that's one of the things I try to share with folks all the time. That's one of the things that I like best about this whole regenerative agriculture movement is because it's one of the few places where everybody can come to the table and it doesn't matter if you're West Coast, East Coast, Midwest, Republican, Democrat, farmer, urban person, young, old, everybody can come to this table and come away with a win. You know, there doesn't have to be losers in it because the farmers can win, the consumers can win, the economy can win, the environment can win. But that's such a foreign concept because we live in such a divided society and you know media and advertisers they play on that and they want to keep people divided to get their emotions up because that helps sell stuff. But you know in this movement I don't know that we have to be divided. We can all come away with a win. And I really like that about this movement. And I hear that message come through loud and clear on a lot of your content as well.

26:39 People are starving for common sense, for straight talk, and for things that they can do and they're pragmatic and they're verifiable and replicable. And that is a beautiful thing.

26:54 Yeah. So around that topic, you know, I know that you have some material out there and think a lot and talk a lot about the regenerative economy and regenerative living and you know, I've done a couple of talks where, you know, I kind of weave the different pieces of that in. So tell us a little bit more about that concept because I find it really fascinating to think in terms of, you know, how do we create a regenerative economy? How do how do we become a part of a regenerative economy? And what does a regenerative lifestyle look like in your opinion?

27:29 So the concept of regenerative, there's a lot of people who try to like stake it down to different things. For me, I try to keep it general so that we can all hold it more easily and use it and apply it more easily. So regenerative is that it is self-healing that and it continuously improves and gets better and it really is about spreading the potential and and foundations for life greater and greater because it's not they're always reproducing but they're also creating a larger foundation for life to live. And so life itself expands as they're as they expand like to live we're going to you know create human manure you know that will if it's handled regeneratively will improve everything around us. Night soil traditionally that's humanure. Night soil in an eido period Japan was sold because certain people had better night soil than others. And it literally they could use the good night soil for fertilizer if it was composted properly. And the same is true today. If we just handled our waste and we didn't put things down the toilet that we shouldn't put down the toilet. For real though, like that's a huge like a huge part of this equation is that people are dumping medicine and drugs and other things down the down the drain. And the filters aren't designed for that. Filters were built in the 50s before these drugs were even invented.

29:06 So, so and they haven't changed the the filters since the 50s because the contracts are every 10 to 12 years and no one can stay in business and compete with them on those, you know, 3M, you know, contracts. So, the filtration system is not designed for that. We really need to rethink the entire water system. We could I mean we've grandfathered in so many problems. Think about this. The logging roads were designed to can downward so that during the wet season it was easier to get the logs down. It turned into gullies. It's now the way that water evacuates all the Sierra Nevada foothills for over 50 to 100 years depending on where you are. This means that they've all been denuted of their top soil. I mean, the opportunities to just put like earthworks that capture water and replanting and building soil to regenerate the aquifers, regenerate the landscape and then all those foothills where I lived with my family that are burning perennially and I know they got rain, you know, recently. It doesn't matter. If you go to those landscapes the the trees that were once there 20 years are already gone. Scrub oak is in the place of all those pine now. And and so the old growth you know is largely burned. We we're in a devastation like pattern with a lot of things because of how mismanaged they are. But we literally can connect things just like nature does connect things. Put in sisterns in cities. You know, they've done it in some cities and they have plenty of water now. And so we have we have a lot of common sense. Regenerate being regenerative is only way that our ancestors survived. You have to obey the laws of nature or suffer the consequences. Our health, the the degeneration of our our infrastructure of our nation, all of that is because it was it's a not been regeneratively kept up. B, it wasn't regenerative to begin with. So like parts of our country were designed regeneratively, but they've, you know, you know, if we have designed dams and water in so many unique ways to create things for agriculture, to create things for beauty, to create things for power. And we've largely lost all that technology. And so, and it's not truly lost. We can redo it all. But but regenerative thinking is seeing how we're wasting, how we're missing huge opportunities, and how we're basically poisoning ourselves and and just losing just losing so much fertility, causing dead zones, killing our rivers and streams, using chemicals to do, you know, short-term solutions that are literally destroying the reproduction abilities of our children and ourselves. I mean, just look at the fertility rates. I mean, we can leave all the hormonal disruption out of it and just look at the fertility rates. The hormonal

32:13 Disruption is fueling mass chaos, but you know, it's all part of the story. So we really have to look at it in the face and realize everything that we're doing that's degenerative has to be stopped if we are to get back to real health. And so regenerative living is in some ways it's very simple. In Europe, when I was growing up, they had the same glass bottles like that that they put the wine in and the soda and they redo it and so it's all chipped and old and stuff, but they resold it to you and you return the bottle and they just wash it. It's like that's regenerative thinking. It's glass.

33:01 Yeah, when I was a kid, you know, we'd get a nickel, you know, on those pop bottles that were returnable. And so, you know, hey, you get a nickel, you keep track of that and you take it back where it belongs because you could get a nickel. Right. And so it also, you know, they were designed for that. Like everything and everyone knew it was just common sense. Why would you smash it all up, mix it with other things, and then have to do other processes?

33:29 So to me, regenerative is a return to the way our great great-grandfathers and great-grandfathers did things. It's a return to the way that so many of these farm mothers with like 10 kids thought in so many ways. You know, it's there's a pragmatism because they had no choice but to be pragmatic. And they had to obey. You know, my dad told me when he was growing up, they had it set up so that the lower fields, you know, they didn't put up earthworks on the river because the river would deliver silt and fish every single year. And so they would never fertilize or bother with those fields because nature did it for them. And then he said it rained every week or two. So the farmers, no one ever had to water when he was growing up. That never was a concept.

34:23 And so it's like if we have more moderate weather and that literally starts with California and the Sierra Nevada and it sounds crazy, but there's actually a conveyor belt of moisture is the term. You can look up the paper. The moisture that California is not actually capturing and then re-releasing as evapotranspiration in a thriving forest like it once had is literally causing more violent storms in the Midwest. If they had moderate weather because of their vegetation and the water infiltration, it would bring in more moisture and it would be more moderate and more consistent. And so we'd have more consistent rains. We'd have less of these desertification indicators and so permaculture regenerative thinking opens up these like very clear pathways for interpreting the world in such a way that we can improve it. And that's why I teach permaculture. That's why I started in permaculture because I needed that thinking in order to write regenerative soil.

35:33 Yeah. And I didn't, I wasn't right. I mean, I tried to write it in such a way that John Kemp would think it was like good for farmers, but John Kemp was my main friend who was a farmer. So it wasn't like I was a big large-scale farmer, but it was incredible to see how the common sense asking how did this happen in nature originally? How can we mimic this? Just doing that reached farmers.

35:59 Yeah, I really like that. And I like, you know, what you said earlier about, you know, kind of a definition of regenerative. It's putting more in or putting more back than what you're taking out. Yeah. And I like that definition. And I've given this illustration to my employees and some of the different talks that I've done. But, you know, just real quickly, you know, kind of four principles for regenerative living around that definition of putting more in than what you're taking out. I say that if you're really going to have a successful life and, you know, be a contributor, you've got to be regenerative in your finances, you need to save more than you spend. Because Matt, think about how many people are so far in debt. How are they going to be any help to anybody down the road? You know, how you going to help out your family? How you going to help out your friends? How you going to help out somebody at church when they have a need if you're already in debt? So regenerative financing, you need to be saving more than you spend. You need to be a regenerative worker, which means you are giving more than what you're taking. So if you've got a $15 an hour job, you know, do $18 worth of work. You're getting $50,000 worth of salary, you know, bring $60,000 worth of value to your employer. And so just again that whole mindset.

42:08 You've come up with some breakthroughs in my opinion of how you've done that, and I think it's a great story of how a bass player turned microscope expert. But talk just a little bit specifically, particularly about some of the innovations that you found in your lighting techniques, of how that's changed the way you look particularly at plant roots. I know I've heard you talk about this and I want you to share it with other folks because I think it's really interesting and shows how when you don't get stuck into just thinking the conventional way, new things will come about.

42:48 Yeah, so I wrote Regenerative Soil first and I had developed this combination of chemistry and biology and communicating how they overlap and they're all part of soil cycles. And so I was well-versed in the mycology side of it. And then when I took Elaine Ingram's course on advanced microscopy, I was like, 'What?' And I just realized she had no mycology experience. And I was really lucky that William Padilla Brown, Alan Rockefeller, Mandy Quark—all these incredible mycology really, they're citizen scientists, but they're pioneering things. Mandy has a degree. She's a degreed scientist, but she's also doing it independently of university. So she is a citizen scientist independently. But I was very lucky to have this insider track with these people that are cutting edge that taught me all this stuff that helped Regenerous be so incredible, allowed me to do DNA testing. And I started doing research on microscopes at the same time as I was realizing like she has no mycology here. What about arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, like a major part of my book? And I'm reading through and I found this microscope and it actually was on her page by LW Scientific that you could get a discount from through her students. And so I found there's this paper there, actually written by her, even though she doesn't use this technology. She wrote it when she was a grad student in 1982. So this understanding that epifluorescent lighting makes mycorrhizal fungi glow is over 40 years, almost 50 years old. So it is not anything new, but the technology changed. This new microscope that I was looking at had an LED light instead of a mercury lamp. So the mercury lamps they break after 2,000 hours, they explode, and then you need hazmat suits to clean everything up. It is not safe. You're not bringing that out into the field like Ryan does. You're not taking chances. And it's also dangerous. And so they do it in a lab setting.

45:15 Those folks weren't working with farmers. Those folks didn't have access to that technology, so no one was checking their mycorrhizal fungi. And I had this epiphany. I was like, 'Wait a second. This allows you to see the mycorrhizal fungi, yet no one checks. They're just buying it every year.' And then I'm remembering my book and I'm like, 'It's just regenerative. It's regenerative. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been here for millions of years.' Like, I realized all in a moment like I was about to ruin some mycorrhizal inoculant person's dream of tricking people every year into this. And I was like, 'Well, I'm sorry, dude, but we got to be able to make things regenerative.'

46:03 And so I realized it was this moment I had the ball. I caught the ball and I was like, 'I have the ball. The field is empty. That's the goal.' And I just ran. And I'm like talking to Dr. James White, the rice expert. He's actually a Rutgers University mycologist. He's been teaching mycology for over 40 years. So I'm like, 'What is this? What is that? What am I doing?' And he was like just blown away by my pictures because this microscope that I happen to get takes National Geographic—this is what I'm talking about—takes National Geographic level images. It's a 4K camera. And because I had already written Regenerous Soil, I'd already taken Elaine's course and been like, 'Wait a second, that's not right,' and because I'd written and re-read so much research, I was told by Dr. James, he's like, 'You're gonna be a professional within months.' And I was like, 'Are you serious?' He was like, 'Well, yeah. You're discovering things. I've never seen that. I've never seen that.' And I was like, 'Okay, okay.' And then I realized like I had something. And I started writing the book Regenerative Soil Microscopy. I did a Kickstarter for it, and what's crazy is the Kickstarter itself was this own event. In the middle of it I realized we needed a database for everyone's pictures that are going to be awesome because I'm

47:36 Going to teach you how to do that, right? And because I was swimming in pictures and videos and I was like, how do I organize this? And then I realized everyone needed to organize it. I came up with the idea. The idea exploded because everyone was like, who had already been doing this for years, soil food trained immediately saw that what I was teaching they didn't know from the pictures they immediately saw that this Ella Ingram doesn't do this. Oh my gosh. And they and I can, I'm showing like everything you know and then the database hit. They have no way of communicating as a community. So none of these microscopy folk were ever comparing their test results.

48:14 And one of the reasons I started down this rabbit hole was one of my students came to me and asked me to fix the laning of microscopy thing and that's why I took the course because they said I have a professional lab and another professional lab here. I guess it's been long enough in Germany. A farmer gave us the same sample and we gave completely different answers and then he exposed us and embarrassed us. What do we do? And I basically went away for a few months and came back with my answer. And he was like, 'Really? Really?' And he stayed with me through the whole process of writing the book and was one of the final reviewers. And he had several epiphanies along the way as well.

48:57 And so I created that month during the Kickstarter the RSL database and manual lighting. And so now this is an invention LW scientific has created called the soil light to do my idea. So my idea was to have light from above, just like eporlloresence is from above. The white lights from below. So you only get silhouettes. That's not useful. So I have a variable light now. And at how low you do it changes the angle. So this we can right now what we're viewing behind me is actually a nodule from a clover nodule from riseobium. So nitrogen fixation right we're talking about cover crops. I thought it would be appropriate.

49:49 But I was able in this short period of time with feeling the needs because I'm always gauging my audience because I'm from a classroom environment. I was the head of the English department. I was when I was an English teacher, I taught other teachers how to get rid of homework and get the highest test scores in their in the county without homework because authentic learning, we don't go out to the woods together, chop wood, I teach you that and then you go home and do a worksheet. No, you're going to remember it forever. So I just had keep having breakthroughs because I was listening to the audience. I was trying to facilitate their success, their greatness, and that role I'm that's my secret to success because what I'm doing is not just empowering them.

50:41 I'm making sure that they're actually learning the things I'm teaching them. It's an assessment. Their success is proof that what I'm teaching is right. And so it's this full circle thing for me. And that made $86,000 that Kickstarter, the biggest Kickstarter I've ever done. And then since then I put I created the course for that. The book was written and released. I had like 40 pages of it written. It turned into almost 300 pages long. It has case studies, microbial profiles. It has comparative studies. It has DNA readouts that are comparative too between different compost, different soils. And then it also has how to operate a microscope. And then how to test and do the testing protocols.

51:32 So it's and what happened was in my research I figured out that all labs have their own protocols and there's universal principles they use to create their protocols that align to their goals. And I was like, 'Oh, okay. That's why you have to be trained by the lab you go to and they want people who were like, I get it. I get it.' And so I just basically looked at all the tests that are possible out there, hybridized a few of them, and then made some that you combine. You do both. So you need both to triangulate your understanding. And then I created a few because what I realized I had I had a bunch of breakthroughs. One of those breakthroughs was just from sheer jealousy. You remember that, you guys know that Journey into the Microcosmos YouTube channel microscopy. It's so much fun. His pictures are with a DIC microscope like twice to three times as expensive as my microscope and I wouldn't have had a discount on it, you know. And so I that's beyond me.

52:38 But the dyes he was using, I was so jealous. And there all the literature around it was written before cameras. So it was out of range because it would blind you if you put on the eyepieces. I don't use eyepieces because I don't want to wear glasses. I don't want to ruin my sight. Did you know that using eyepieces ruins your sight?

53:02 Yeah. That's why all the people who do micro microscopes for a long period of time end up wearing glasses. That's why that like lab coat glasses thing. It's because they destroy their eyes. So I put it on a 4K screen and just look at it comfortably because I have no desire to have a headache. I have no desire. I have to do this long for long periods of time. So I pioneered essentially a new way of doing this for a lot of people. People were like, 'Wait, it's I find it better to do it here.' And it's like, 'Yeah, and then you never share it with other people in the community. You never get verification that you're right. You just believe you're right. You know, like it causes all these problems. And so I'm like, I'm gonna share everything. I'm going to share it with all these scientists that I trust as my mentors and get feedback and learn from them. And then I'm going to bring that to the community with vetted. And I also do things like I get lab certified samples because it's the only way to really be fair to your students is be like no no no no this is a labcertified sample from Carolina labs this is you know streptoyases this is basillus subtilus you know and so I do a lot of that and it's just been wild because no one did any of those things before simple things like taking the same fungi and putting it through 40x magnification, 100x magnification, 400x, and 1,000x all on the same page. Never seen that before cuz then you would have a frame of reference. So you'd know how big something should be.

54:39 So I just spent like all this time applying the regenerative pragmatic lens in a way that I could show publicly and have it be replicable, verifiable, and beneficial and actionable. That's the other thing. So much of it is naval gazing. They're like, 'Well, I learned this and I learned that.' And I'm like, 'Well, how can that help you make a decision with your cover crop? What are you gonna do differently now on your cover crop now? You know, and it's like, oh, we want a big phosphorus uptake. Well, let's get our muscular microisal fungi in there. You want to erase your phosphate, you know, fertilizer regimen. Maybe you still need it during fruiting and you do it as a soluble foliage spray, then maybe that's what you do. And then you don't need it any other time and it never touches the soil.

55:37 You know, it's really that powerful. It can do 50 to 80% out of the gate. And same thing with like yeast, lactic acid bacteria, and purple non-sulfur bacteria like in that product, Terraorganics EM1. These things can erase 50 to 100% of the cost when it comes to nitrogen phosphate fertilizers. And you can verify that the microisal fungi is there with this microscope because they glow highlighter yellow and it's very easy to see and they have little train tracks with little hay and little round spores and you can just see it. So it we've arrived at the final ability to do this stuff and it's that's just one of the things I've been able to learn is the microisal fungi thing. So it's been it's just been blessings after blessings.

56:35 Well, that's yeah. And again, I love how you know, creative you have been in your thinking to come to those things. So, Matt, kind of as we kind of, you know, wrap this up and bring it to a close here, tell people if they're interested in taking the class, ordering a book, becoming part of the soils workshops or community, how do they do that? Where do they go to get connected to these things?

57:02 So if you type into your URL just regenerativescience.com, it'll take you to all the books, all the courses, and that's and it's a lead site. So it'll take you to my course page. It'll like transform. So if it says Kajjabi, that's my course. My course platform. So these are the books. These things work together. You literally can use these books and have incredible things happen. People have used just the book and doubled their yields. So it's all I'm doing is putting a frame a picture frame around nature that creates enough clarity that you can begin your relationship and feedback loop with nature. So regenerative soilscience.com you want to join us in regenerative soil microscopy. September 15th we have the new course. So the new season begins September 15th. We would love to have you with us. regenerativesmicroscopy.com. It's again another lead link. Just type that in and it'll transform into the course. And there's reviews. We have everyone from gardeners, everyone from farmers to researchers to university professors to compost companies. Bio fertilizer companies. There's a lot of people. It's an incredible community. Many people say the group work we do where we share our cameras is the best part. And we meet weekly and people learn in person.

58:30 We have training videos too, but we literally gather for 3 to four hours at a time on the weekends and we do the work. So I hope that you join us. It's an incredible course and folks love it. So check it out.

58:44 Yeah. So lots of opportunities there and I just want to maybe close by putting in a bit of a plug for our own event and I want to get your take on it, Matt, because you've been to one of our regenerative nexus summits and it's a couple of events that Green Cover puts on where we really focus on the regenerative community, bringing high-level farmers and practitioners and experts together to learn from each other. And you know it's kind of an invite only type thing but we're happy to invite anybody who expresses interest you can reach out to us for that. I wanted to just get your take and your opinion on that because I know that you've been there so just what do you feel like kind of made that a unique experience?

59:28 Well, I've been able to go as both a participant and as a speaker. And so it's just been incredible to see the I mean, these folks are bringing their whole families with them. They're bringing their whole families and their business partner. They are it's incredible the community itself, how everyone brings just such a warmth and spirit to it and everyone's there to learn and grow.

59:56 And then the quality of people, the high level of operation and I mean just the high level of management some of these guys are doing is so impressive. I think last year of the farmer that literally redesigned the way they do their entire vineyard by putting the electric fencing right below where the grapes are. So they allow free movement of grazing sheep below all their vines.

1:00:32 So there's no restriction on them. There's just a hot wire right below the grapes. And it is and his story was incredible. That is regenerative thinking that is pragmatism that smarts and that I think is going to be one of the keys that really gets us through this crisis and the reason it will spread because people want to be smart people want to that satisfaction of doing something so right that it's regenerative. And I you know it was incredible to see so many varied talks great panels and I think my favorite parts were the discussions you know in the hall and at the tables at the meals hanging out with you hanging out with Ray Archeletta Todd Harrington you know I was talking to them both the past two days like they are that's the other thing is I've become really close friends with folks at your events and that that doesn't happen at all events some events I show up I speak you know I do my thing and then I leave and this is an event that I plan on going to every year. Hopefully I can bring my wife again this next year. That would be amazing.

1:01:46 Absolutely. And so folks, you don't have to you don't have to come to my event. You don't have to do Matt's courses, but you need to be doing something. You need to find a community. You need to find a network of people that you can plug into to not only learn from, but also contribute to because that's being regenerative. You know, putting more in than what you're taking out. And so we would just encourage you whether it's our event, Matt's event or some other event, just get plugged in somewhere and contribute to it and you will learn so much more when you do that because you know, as Matt and I both know, the best way to learn is to teach something and to contribute to something and you'll get so much more out of it. So Matt, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule. I know I was on your podcast a couple months ago and so just a pleasure and an honor to have you on the Green Cover podcast. Folks, we appreciate you giving of your time to listen to this and we just thank you for all that you're doing to help regenerate God's creation for future generations. Thank you.

1:02:50 My brother and I started Green Cover in 2009 because we understand what it's like to be a farmer starting out on the journey to improve soil health. We saw the power of plant and biological diversity on our own farm here in Nebraska. But we found that it was difficult to get the right cover crop seed mix. We also learned that there was a big learning curve in successfully implementing cover crops. That's why we built Green Cover so that farmers like you can access the highest quality cover crop seed put into the right diverse mixes along with the technical advice and the educational resources to help you successfully implement cover crops on your own operation. So contact us today and we'll help you with the right cover crop mix for your farm or ranch so you can regenerate your portion of God's creation for future generations.