Regenerative Agriculture: Bringing Life Back to Farming and Rural Communities

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0:11 Regenerative AG is a concept where we rebuild our soil we degrade it for several years now to the point that we're at the bottom. As I by going through this attorney I started in to realize that something very harmful was happening for us our country guitar rule of beauties our real communities were becoming decimated and people were moving out they did their jobs my food there was no hope. People laugh at me because I'm different I laugh at them because they're all the same. You look at agriculture today it's all about big business let's all plant corn and

0:53 Soybeans and wheat and let's all put animals in confinement. Well, I encourage young people, don't look at it that way. Look at what is the market really asking for and what are the consumers willing to pay for.

1:10 I think before we switch tracks, we were kind of managing scarcity and so we were killing everything but one thing, in a sense killing all the other farmers but one. It's kind of a last been steady mentality because you always need a new leader.

1:28 There's a lot of great things that happen in conventional agriculture, but there's room now with regenerative that for families to actually...

1:40 Sit around and work through problems enact.

1:51 So I started noticing what's going on to our.

1:57 And finally I realized that a wealth of them didn't. We're starting to escape the rural America because leaving that world and the money was going to people that made the jewels, people that made the equipment, people that made the chemical fertilizers, people that facilitated the industrial agricultural model and I was seeing farmers, very frustrated farmers.

2:26 Going broke because they had no hope because the cost of these tools, the cost of fertilizing, cost of the chemicals. It's getting outrageous when you talk about and think about preventive AG. It's also about revitalizing our local communities.

2:43 If you drop frost real America you see a lot of countrysides dried up, people move to town. Farmers have been discouraging their kids to stay on the farm. No profitability because we can get all this great technology. Yeah, kind of what scares me a little bit about some of the modern robotics is that we'll forget it.

3:09 And honored and part of our makeup and our to work to tend the garden that to be a part of it. You know there's still a lot of the traditional ways, the thought processes, but there's a lot of room for innovation and new thoughts and bringing some of the younger people back on the farm. And regenerative AG offers an opportunity I think for those young farmers to kind of get in on a small scale. And that small scale it adds a level of intimacy to what you're doing and a lot more care. And so I see some of that happening. I'm a firm believer that we need more families out on the landscape, not less. These farms.

3:52 Ranches have gotten way too big. If we can farm in diverse ways, we can bring more feedback to enterprises. So we shrunk our acreage and we have our whole family there, but we talk about trade frequently. Even if there is a young couple at an enterprise, we've got mine. But what this really generative agriculture is moving now, well it's coming back. You mimic nature. If these farms nature's image, the beautiful thing starts to change.

4:27 Rural America young people moving back trying to find, and I start seeing that a sense of hope is coming back because.

4:35 Farmers that mimic nature don't use less fertilizer or less chemicals. It has two sides. And then I started seeing wow, the world communities are starting to become more vibrant and there'll be more run-do patterns the way nature intended. And there's a lot of the wealth goes back to the farmer and to the producer. Take our own operation—we were well over 6,500 acres, now we're down to 5,000. Our goal is within another five years we'll be down to the thirteen hundred and eighty-nine acres that we own, which is still plenty backing up for a large-scale farming operation. This is a way that we

5:57 First and then you produce it so early on when we moved back to the farm. Jonathan was in Darwin, really out on the plant at that point in time. There wasn't really a need for extra people to be out there to be involved, and then as we switch to regenerative agriculture we brought livestock in. We started doing things that the whole thing we can be involved in. Our goal all along was to restore life in the soil. What we didn't expect was it restored my human life back to the farm.

6:30 Now I have a lot of hope because this is movement now where young people, the same.

6:36 Wonderful. I wonder if there is one I can make money and that's encouraging. We need more families on the land to revitalize these local economies. By doing so, then we need to get our food system back to where it's buying local. Let's keep the money in our local communities. Let's keep the children in the schools and let's produce truly nutrient-dense, healthy food so that the United States does not have these health issues. It's time we start thinking of food as healthy. I think that it helps bring some smaller communities together in the idea that they're kind of.

7:14 Rallying around the resource together. We're all a part of it in some way. We're connected to it whereas before most students were very removed from it. And so we've seen the regeneration in our soils along with just family life, better life. There's education on both sides now. You know, we always thought education on the farm kind of came from the top down. You know, grandpa taught dad and dad taught son. And I see people coming back to the farm with these different ideas and they're kind of now teaching each other, right? And it's important.

8:02 You grow up and you're taught to go somewhere better, so we're always have this desire to be somewhere else where we currently are. There's a blessing and being content with where we are and making where we are better. And so I think there's no such thing as somewhere else that's better until when you put roots down somewhere, truly find a satisfying life.

8:32 Regenerative agriculture is more than just about the soil. It's about what we can do for America and the community around them.