Farming Sustainably: How Regenerative Practices Are Changing the Future of Agriculture

In this episode of Wildly Curious (formerly For the Love of Nature), co-host Laura Fawks Lapole is joined by special guests Caitlin and John Michael Bird to discuss the importance of sustainable agriculture. From composting and soil regeneration to rotational grazing and the use of heritage livestock, Caitlin and John Michael share their experiences working on farms that prioritize sustainability and environmental health. Learn how sustainable farming practices can help protect the planet, improve food quality, and even save you time in the long run.

Perfect for anyone interested in sustainable living, regenerative agriculture, or simply wanting to know where their food comes from.

Transcript

All right, I think it's going now. Hello, and welcome to For the Love of Nature, a podcast where we tell you everything you need to know about nature and probably more than you wanted to know. I'm Laura, and there's no Katie today.
But instead, we have two special guests with us, Caitlin and John Michael Bird, who are gonna help me to talk about how sustainable agriculture is critical for the health of both humans and the environment. Katie and I both know Caitlin and John Michael from when we worked at the Little Rock Zoo, and of course, kept in touch. So, hi guys.
Um, so, I always started off with like a quick little recap of who you guys are, which is definitely the most awkward part of every interview, because you just gotta listen to about yourself. Yep. Although to be fair, it's just kind of whatever you guys told me to say.
Um, so, so Caitlin, well, and plus, we're gonna go into more details of a lot of these things later, like work history and yada, yada, yada. Um, but basically, um, we've got Caitlin, who graduated from the Exotic Animal Training and Management Program in 2012, and has been working with animals ever since. Um, she first worked on a sustainable farm in 2015, which is where she learned about the importance of where our food comes from.
Since then, having some sort of garden to produce something has been very important to her. Now she works on a teaching farm in Northwest Arkansas, doing her best to grow as much food as she can for the participants that come to learn about the farm. And John Michael, who's been working on farms that focus on sustainable crop production, rotational grazing, uh, and regenerative ag edu-
education, um, for about seven years at various organizations, which we'll dive into in a little bit. Um, currently living at Circle Yoga Chala, where he focuses on deepening his knowledge of compost production and soil regeneration in the garden, caring for rescue horses, and raising chickens for egg production. So you guys are busy people, um, considering you live on, like, a yoga farm.
Um, but I guess it's not that surprising. I feel like all farm work and all work in general like that is, like, a lot to take on. Yeah, it is.
Oh, and I guess also for listeners, since you don't know Caitlin and John Michael, they're married. Um, so it's not just two random people that just happen to know each other. Um, they're together.
Um, hopefully that wasn't a spoiler for anyone who knows you. Like, that you have just decided not to tell.
So, uh, I have some, some guiding questions for us to go through. But, um, if, you know, you guys want to talk about something else that you think those listeners are going to be interested in, that's cool, too. So first off, um, farming is a pretty broad term, but typically, or at least the internet tells me that it consists of both growing crops and raising livestock.
So how did you both get involved in this? Like, Caitlin, you, your background says that, you know, you started in animal management and have been working on a farm since 2015, and John Michael, you said, you've been doing this for years and years. Whoever wants to go first, how did you get started with sustainable farming or farming in general?
Um, for me, I was just kind of looking for something different. Like, I had been working in zoos and aquariums for a few years and I was just ready to try a different aspect of animal care. And I got a job on a farm in Massachusetts, which is where John Michael and I met at Heifer International.
And so that really kind of like blew my mind when it came to food. Like, there was so much I didn't know. So that's where I got the farming bug.
So Livestock would have been like your first intro to it.
Right. Yeah, I worked on the Livestock team for the first six months. And then the second six months, I worked in the garden and the kitchen.
So that's a lot more about how to garden and stuff like that.
Cool. Cool. What about you, John Michael?
Yeah, my main focus was Livestock as well. I started at the I started farming at the Massachusetts farm. My grandparents had a farm, but it was kind of waning by the time I rolled around.
They had sort of a homestead. And so when I was in my 20s, I decided to leave college and go work on a farm. And the rest is history.
But I moved up there and started working with Livestock. And that was one of the coolest parts about this small farm in Massachusetts is that you had a hand in just about everything. Even if you were a Livestock volunteer, you were working in the garden at times or helping with maple sugaring or helping.
I forgot. Yeah, you guys did that too.
Mm-hmm.
So Livestock was the main focus and the first passion for sure.
Okay. Well, that makes sense. I mean, I'm sure some people, it's the plants first.
Livestock is probably a little more charismatic.
So since you both started off at Heifer, is Heifer considered sustainable farming? Or would you call it sustainable farming? Is it just traditional farming?
What would you consider Heifer? And I guess, can you guys tell us a little more about Heifer?
Yeah. Heifer is a nonprofit that uses seeds, animals and education to lift people out of poverty all over the world. And they would lean more towards a small, local, sustainable operation, especially considering that a lot of impoverished farms are lacking the resources or the mechanization or even the sizable property that it takes to grow a monocrop organization like we would have in America most of the time.
So they do try to do a small operation and lean towards using animals and crops.
That makes sense.
And I remember being totally blown away touring the headquarters in Little Rock. That was really eye-opening, because I really didn't know much about an organization like that, where they were going around the world trying to create positive change, but through farming. So we've been throwing this word sustainable farming around.
I totally forgot at the beginning of the episode, I did look up what the definition of this was. So for listeners, if you're wondering, the definition of sustainable ag is farming in sustainable ways, meaning society's present food and textile needs without compromising the ability for future or current generations to meet their needs. So with that in mind, what does sustainable farming look like as far as crops?
It's supposed to be kind of working to meet our needs, but also not hurt the environment, but practically. What does that look like?
I would say, one, I really like that we said farming involves crops and livestock, because that's kind of where we're coming from, is using the natural system for your advantage. So the natural system requires diversity, so crops and livestock in conjunction, but in terms of... I feel like the sustainable or regenerative would be the fact that you're trying to give back to the soil the whole time, and you're focusing on soil nutrients and basically taking all of your organic materials and just giving back to the soil, because non-sustainable or traditional is going to be a lot more about getting as much out of it as you can, as fast as you possibly can, and it's like a linear system.
So it's like an input. You take nitrogen and put it in to the soil, and it's usually from the air, the nitrogen that they use.
Really? I didn't know that. In the fertilizer, it's the nitrogen from the air?
Yeah, like chemical fertilizer is typically... Like the process comes from taking nitrogen from the air, rather than like a sustainable or regenerative is going to be like using cover crops or compost or manure.
Like soybeans and stuff. Is soybean put... Because it's the...
anything with the... Is it the... It starts with the R, right?
Rise zones, rise weights?
Nitrogen fixing.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, no, I had no idea that fertilizers... Like, it was air. I figured it was like chemical, chemical.
Like, I don't know, but not like taking it from the atmosphere.
That's, yeah, I mean, that's sort of... I guess how they got it started was, what, after World War II, they had all these chemical companies that needed to survive because they had like boosted the... And so once they didn't have really a bomb-making purpose anymore, they kind of needed something, and the Dust Bowl had just happened.
So it's like... The soil was basically depleted. Like, we had taken all the soil and destroyed it over the time, you know, through desertification and all kinds of things.
So it's like, this guy, I guess it was called the Green Revolution. He took those companies and combined it. Do you remember?
You read the book. What was the book called?
I thought it was like they had all these leftover, like maybe not nuclear weapons, but some weapons that needed to be like taken apart, and they had all these chemicals.
And using elements and things.
Yeah, I thought, right? They put the chemicals into the soil instead of blowing up people. So at the time, it's like, wow, what a great idea, but not the best way to go about it.
Well, also, I guess thinking like that's such a quick fix. You know what I mean? Well, we've completely sucked the soil dry, like sucked it dry.
And that everyone was like, with no thought about like what would happen.
Right.
Like these, the people that were farming at this time, obviously, like colonialists who had moved westward.
Uh huh.
You would think that like with a back, any background in farming, you would have to realize that like eventually. Stuff will run out.
Right.
So like, were they all just newbies? Like, were all they all like, like, I'm just gonna try farming because that's all there is to do. And they knew nothing.
Or you think they did know things, but they were like, F it, this will worry about this later.
I don't know. That's a good, it was probably both, you know.
I think there's a certain factor that we forget about like gardening, which in general with annual, like just producing annuals, like crops that are just gonna be harvested and die like just once a year. It's like, it's inherently taking nonstop. Like if you look at the, you know, what was the fertile crescent Mesopotamia?
What is it now?
Desert.
Yeah, desert.
So it's like, I think garden production, crop production causes desertification. Just no matter what. And so like.
So you have to work so hard to put back into the soil because it's not gonna happen naturally with all these annual crops.
So that's where like the sophistication of regeneration comes in is like you have to just take everything and treat it like this big mouth that you've created and you just feed it all the organic materials that you have.
So essentially like compost, like you're almost like composting everything, like we're spreading compost.
Yeah.
You can compost externally. You can compost on top of the garden, which would be like lasagna gardening or sheet composting. So that's like what we do is like we just take all of our plants, like anything we pull, any weeds we pull, and we just leave it in the walkways, and that and it all composts and dies on top of the garden.
And it, I mean, that creates humus. Like you would find, like if you go dig out leaf litter in the forest, it's like completely the blackest soil you've ever seen.
Yeah.
So that's kind of what we do, and we use all the manure we can, because I feel like that's so key to adding back to the soil.
So if in traditional farming, you're growing, you're growing, you're growing, you're growing, you're growing, you're growing, but they are putting fertilizer on. So is fertilizer like a less efficient, like how is what you guys are doing, like feeding the soil, how is that more sustainable than just adding in like plain old fertilizer or plain old cow manure?
I think it's like the composting system is, it becomes like a closed loop system instead of like, like I said, linear. Like, yeah, it's just like an input, especially with chemical fertilizer. It's kind of like making sure they make sure their garden has enough nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus, but like they're not really taking into account like all the other things that go into soil that like compost would take into account, like microbes and minerals and worms.
All the living things that live in soil.
Oh yeah. And that opens up a whole other like can of worms about like tilling or no tilling or minimal tilling and things like that because tilling also is another thing that leads to the desertification and the dust bowl.
Kills all the worms.
That, and I'm sure like rips up all the roots of anything that was in there.
Yeah.
Which is why they do it.
So nothing will hold on for erosion.
Exactly.
Right.
Yeah.
And I guess chemical fertilizers can have a lot of like extra stuff that would just like kill everything.
So then it runs off and runs off into the ocean, and that's why we have like algal blooms and stuff where nothing can live but algae.
Okay, so that's crop sustainability. What about livestock? Like, you know, I feel like, you know, organic farming and like things like that is a very hot topic right now.
And, you know, like, but but what does sustainable farming look like? At least in your experience, as far as livestock.
Oh, my gosh, we love to talk about this. This is the best part. Passionate.
I feel like the key to the crop to the crop thing, as well as the animal thing, is diversification and rotation. And so like diversifying the species and rotate rotating the species. And that's going to mimic the ecosystem and add all kinds of various nutrients to the soil and to the pasture.
Right. So rotating means like, say you have goats or cows or sheep, I guess those are the main three. So we've always used electric fencing to move them all over the property so that you don't have to mow the grass as much and they're fertilizing as they're eating.
And it's the electric fence, you can do that for cattle too?
Yeah. They have specific...
Like the portable one? Yeah.
They have specific cow electric fencing. And you can even, if you have the right garden and the right fencing, you could put them out on your garden at certain times of the year, so that they eat the weeds, they're fertilizing while they're there. So it's just a really awesome process.
And it's so fun to move them around because they get so excited every time they get a new pasture.
I've never met anyone who loves it more than Caitlin, to move an electric fence in one county.
Well, I guess it's the thought of enrichment. It's so enriching for them.
It's so enriching for everyone, me included.
I think a lot of traditional farming, you've got your cows in the pasture forever, sometimes to the point where they're just in sludge because there's no grass left.
Right. Yeah. And they even tell you when you're not moving them fast enough because they escape.
They're like, there's not enough grass here anymore. You need to move me. I'm going.
I'm out.
Yeah.
And with the electric fencing, you can even mimic the predator pressure to move and to make the grass go like, oh, we got to eat and we got to move. And that's another part of just mimicking the natural systems, which is almost it's like I always try to explain to people. It's like I'm just trying to be able to be as lazy as possible because if I mimic nature, then I have to do less work.
So that's so good to know because I feel like a lot of people are like, this is going to be way more time consuming. I have to go out and move fences.
It is.
There's no way it's going to be less work. If you ever want to be like a good farmer, it's not going to be easy. It's so much work, but it's so gratifying.
Just eating something that you grew yourself or like I said, watching cows on new grass, it's just like, oh my gosh, it's just so meaningful.
So rotation for livestock, that is physical rotation, not like you're doing cows one year and then chickens the next and then goats the next and then, like not that kind of rotation.
No, and even it would be, it's best to have like multiple different species of animals too because that's another thing you can rotate. Like you put the cows in first and they eat a certain part of the grass and then you can put the sheep in next and they eat a different part of the grass and then the goats and then you follow it with chickens and chickens come behind and eat all their parasites. So that by the time, it's so cool.
By the time the ruminants come back, all their parasites are gone, so they're not going to get as sick. So it's just like, if you do it right, it's so awesome.
And it focuses more on the quality of life and the quality of the meat and then growing it, like growing meat as fast and as quick as possible.
Slow. It's very slow. There's no quick fixes.
You have to have a lot of patience.
I feel like that applies to the crop things too, because it is more time in the garden and you're not focusing on minimizing time in the garden. You're focusing more on being in there and almost deepening your time with it. And hopefully your product ends up being better, has more minerals in it, and the meat will have more vitamins and riboflavin, and it will be redder because they moved and had blood flow.
The only problem with feedlot cows is that they often become the standard for what we think of when we see a steak. It's like the huge marbled fat comes from the corn finishing at the end of their lives. That's not good.
But now we think of it as good.
Yeah, it's not ideal, because what it took to get that was the last three months of their lives.
Doing nothing.
Yeah, eating corn that is not even a species-appropriate diet, and if they eat corn for any longer than the amount of time they give it to them, they would die of acidosis and obesity. That's horrible.
It's horrible.
Just got to make them nice and chubby at the end.
Yeah, luckily it's not for very long, at least. That's what we can talk about.
Yeah, I mean, and that is a benefit of the fact that, like, so much land that wouldn't otherwise be able to be used for crop rotation is used for standard beef. Like, every cow that we've ever eaten lived on a ranch for most of its life compared to, like, chickens or pigs or something, because they're omnivores, so you can just stuff them in a place and feed them grain their whole lives. But cows would die, so they have to do it for, like, most of their...
they have to give them a ranch for most of their lives. So that is...
Well, and just thinking about, like, the amount of, you know, for me, it's mind-blowing how much crops we are completely just designated as, like, feed crops for animals.
Yeah.
Like, more so than people.
For sure. Yeah. It's crazy.
And, I mean, I'm obviously, I guess, of the school of thought of, like, the power of the ruminant to save the world and to save your health and all these things, like, a cow or a goat or a sheep. Like, I just, because, like, the, all of the fields that they use for grain production, like, the amount of habitat destruction that they have to do to grow that corn, it's like, they've seen, there's studies where they put cows where corn was, and the biodiversity started to rush back.
It's so crazy and awful.
But at least it can come back.
Yeah.
And for me, that's like, you start to get down into the debate about, like, are cows bad for the environment?
That's so true, because, yeah, a lot of people are, like, a lot of scientists would say that, yes, they are. I guess it's just like all things where it's like, you know, meat, you know, somewhere in the middle. Like, you can't have too many cows, and you should have some cows for the ecosystem's sake.
It's just diversity. Like, monocrop farms of corn are... Yeah.
Anyway, diversity.
Well, and too, like you were saying with the marbling of the steak and everything, at least too, like a lot of people, like bison is really, I feel like, a lot more people are like going towards bison because it is less fatty, so less cholesterol, so people are thinking about their own health.
Yeah.
But that's because they spend more time moving.
Right. Yeah. It's all about the diet of the animal.
If they were eating grass-fed cows, it would be totally different. That's fine. It's not bad for you.
And like, I've even seen, you know, arguments about the beef production is like, there's never been as many cows as there were bison in the country before they were wiped out. So it's like, worried about the amount of cows in the United States like now and all the methane that they're causing. It's like, I think it's like 3% of the greenhouse gases versus like, I mean, I think electricity.
Call right, mostly human. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so the methane we shouldn't worry about, I feel like it's more, it's like the amount of area that we grow their feed.
Because yeah, because at least like with the bison, like a free range, like you're just eating what you find. That's not as impactful. Well, in some ways, bison for sure are more like made to be here, whereas cattle are more like, yeah, not completely like made for United States prairies.
But that's so crazy that there are not as many cattle now as there were bison then. That is insane, too, to think like how many bison there were.
Yeah.
The Native American name for bison was, I mean, I think either Tatanka. I think it means literally many black dots.
Black dots.
Because there would be so many. If you look over Lamar Valley, it's just like dots way off in the distance, and it's just so, so many. And it's scattered.
And that's just in Yellowstone.
And that shows, too, though, like if you left, like that is, that was the carrying capacity. It was totally fine with there being that many. So like it can handle it.
The environment can handle it if it's balanced.
If it's balanced.
And all the there's a lot of arguments out there that that is the reason why like the Midwest is so fertile. Like there's all these arguments about glacial lakes and like certain things, like mineral deposits. But it's like also a ruminant ability to prune and poop on grass and make it like so much better.
And then having predator pressure to move them along and not kill them. So diversity.
Essentially, sustainable farming is just mimicking the natural ecosystem as close as you can, because you'll never get it completely, but like as close as you can. So does that also mean like growing in season?
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah, and the seasons, I mean, the seasons will definitely, you know, keep you more, they'll limit you. Like, you know, you won't be able to really...
Unless you have like a big green house.
Yeah.
Which, yeah.
I want to be more like a, I had said in a previous episode that I joined a farm share this year. And...
Oh, cool.
I'm overrun with produce. Like, it's really, I love it, but it's really too much. I need more people to be eating this.
And I got the smallest share. But it's, I want to be more, like, I want to resist, like, buying strawberries in December because of the, like, plastic packaging and things like that. But it is really hard.
Yeah, it's so hard. Yeah, especially, like, living where we live and having bananas and strawberries year round. It's like, oh, they're so good.
But they're much better if you buy them in season, that's for sure.
And it brings me back to soil depletion because it's, it's like, yeah, the amount of strawberries from California at this point that it would take to equal, like, a strawberry from the 50s. It's like, or like an orange, it's like eight oranges to get the same amount of nutrients that you got.
Oh my gosh!
Wait, eight now?
To one then?
Eight now, to one then, because of, like, the soil depletion.
Yeah, there's nothing left for them to suck up.
There's wars being about to be, you know, fought over minerals at this point. And so that's why it's so important for the composting and, like, being able to just close the system on your farm.
Yeah, take care of it on your own.
Yeah.
And not count on those fertilizers, because who knows what about fertilizer production could happen.
Right. And then, you know, when they're trucking all of that food, like, across the country.
Then you got those other impacts.
Yeah.
Yep.
Gassing it with ethylene, like, ripening hormones.
Yeah. It's just like a fake food.
Um, yeah, for sure like strawberries. Like, really, if you do get them in December, it's not worth it, because they really don't taste like anything other than, like, cold mush, like cold something. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Uh huh.
Yeah. So that's a sound to a lot.
I mean, hey, I feel like that's how this podcast is. It's like going through an existential crisis and then trying to end it on a positive note and not end in tears.
What can we do?
A positive note is like the farm that we lived on in Massachusetts is like the best food I've ever, like ever had. The vegetables were the biggest and the tastiest. And they tasted like the things that my grandmother grew when I was a little kid.
So it's possible. We can still do it.
She knew about minerals, she knew about soil regeneration.
Our boss.
Our boss. Shout out to Liz Joe. She grew, she did the lasagna method.
So it was layering.
It was layering. Layering, layering, layering. Always.
It's never over. You're never done.
And yeah, very sophisticated rotation.
Yeah.
Of the crop species.
So it sounds like it's like maybe more like physically time consuming. But that it's like troubleshooting the problems that could arise in other ways. Like John Michael was saying, if you're getting rid of being lazy and not having to deal with those certain problems of like, okay, if you let the chickens come through and eat the parasites, then you don't have to worry about giving anti-parasitic drugs or like other things.
So like maybe time consuming labor, but like not a headache later.
Right. Yeah. And you're going to be healthier in the long run.
You'll be healthier. Your animals will be healthier. So you're saving on like medical costs.
That's true. Yeah, it's just put in the work now to have a better life in the long run.
One of the people who we read from, Joel Salatin, is always kind of talking about how it seems like the monocropping and the mechanization is all like really efficient and cheap and we're feeding everybody, but it's like the costs are externalized. The farming method doesn't pay the cost of what it truly costs. Like we pay it with our health issues and the government subsidizes it.
One of my best friends, who's a large monocrop crop producer from college, she says nobody makes any money farming. We all live on our subsidies, and then we have to spend all of our money on tax write-offs and stuff, so that we can at least make enough money that we can get more subsidies. Gosh.
And that goes back to Nixon. He changed the grain system to make it to where farmers wanted to grow as much crops as they possibly could from every inch of their property, and it was all grain subsidies. So now they have to find ways to pack corn and soy into everything.
Interesting.
And the reason we grow so much soy is because the corn was depleting everything. The nitrogens from the chemical fertilizer wasn't working anymore. And so they had to use soy, which is a legume, which is nitrogen fixing.
Yes.
And now the corn-soy rotation is the largest biome in the world.
Yeah, from where I lived, like growing up in corn country, I mean, not anywhere like the Midwest, but Pennsylvania has plenty of corn, mostly for the cattle, because it's all dairy farms. But yeah, you constantly see like corn, then soybeans, then corn, then soybeans.
Yeah. So they rotate a little bit, but not enough.
Oh, I'm sure.
And so that rotation is like keeping us like a float. It's like, oh, we added a little bit of nitrogen back. Now pump as much chemical fertilizer as we can so that we can get that corn yield again.
And then we got to find something to do with all this corn and soy. So hence corn syrup and soy being like every box of food.
Yeah, in all our food.
So like growing the corn, because so they're getting paid for the grain. It's not even really that the grain is super needed. It's just that that's where the money is.
They used to just store it. They would store it in bins, and the farmers would get paid basically like regardless. And but now it's like they depend, their subsidies depend on having as much as they possibly as many bushels as they possibly can get.
So it's like it's like basically subsidizing inefficiency and the like something like one square foot of a diversified garden like a small farm would grow is like 50 percent more efficient than one of those monocrop farms. It's like then a square foot or like a, I don't know, an acre of corn or something.
Boy, and people are like people complain about where their tax money goes for other things much less like, oh, right, we're also paying for the corn syrup that's solely killing, you know what I mean?
Right, that we don't want.
And I don't want to bash how anybody makes a living. I think farmers are the best they can.
Right. And you were saying your friend doesn't have it has by no means, it's not like a money making, like they are feeding people and like, you know.
Yeah.
Yeah. And I'm sure it's very much traditional, like, you know, your family's always done it.
Yeah.
But, you know, thinking about now, like there's another drought in Ethiopia and they're starving again, that it's not like monocultures are just, I mean, yes, they happen in developed countries, but that's clearly not the answer for everywhere.
And that's what heifer was a major proponent of, was that all sustainable farming is like, is the way to lift people out of poverty and teaching them how to do it themselves so they can like sustain themselves. And that like big vegetable production and, you know, hence also vegetarianism is kind of a luxury of the Western world.
Very true.
So they can't really do that. So if they have a closed loop system with animals and crops rotating through, then they're going to be able to sustain and continue for many generations.
Yeah. Well, and speaking of heifer and sustainable livestock, so rotation of livestock, sustainable, is there anything to do with like which livestock you should choose? As far as like, I know when we were at the zoo and with heritage, they did a lot with like heifer, they did a lot with heritage breeds.
Right.
For someone who has no idea what we're talking about, can you elaborate a little?
Yeah. Well, so a heritage breed is basically just like a really old breed of animal, and there's also plants that are heritage breeds too. So because they're older, it means they're better adapted to a certain place.
They are typically better mothers that don't need a lot of help when they're giving birth and raising their babies. They can also live on a wider variety of foods. So like say you have a heritage cow from Arkansas, or a pig.
I'll use a heritage pig because we have, what are the black pigs called?
Guinea hogs.
Guinea hogs. American guinea hogs were started in the South. So I guess they're probably not that old compared to some heritage breeds.
But they, since the specific breed of pig was made down here in the South, they do really, really good down here. You can basically just put them out into the forest and leave them alone. It's the closest thing to a wild animal as possible.
So yeah, definitely heritage breeds. If you find a heritage breed from your area, that animal is going to do a lot better than a different kind. You wouldn't want a cow with really not very thick hair if you live in a really cold place.
You would look for an animal. It just makes sense. Does that answer your question?
Yeah, that it makes sense, but also sustainable as in you don't need to do a lot of extra stuff for them or that they don't require specialty things.
Yeah, in that way, you're using nature with you. It is definitely going to be less work and less expensive if you get an animal that's meant to live in your area or a plant that's meant to live in your area.
And I feel like by contrast, you'd have the industry varieties of animals that would be like a Holstein cow. And it's been bred for and selected for over time to have 10 more gallons of milk per year or something like that. And so it's been selected for that, but it's lost a lot of other adaptive traits along the way.
So it's going to need more antibiotics. It's going to need more help giving birth. Same with the leghorn chicken.
It lays, I don't know, some 100 more eggs a year or something like that.
They're not as hardy. They're definitely not as hardy. And you can go down the line of the industry breeds that have, they're not, they just take a lot more maintenance and a lot more medicine, especially antibiotics are used a lot.
And almost so much so that the USDA is angry at one of the farmers. All of his neighbors are mad at him, and the USDA threatens to punish him for not using antibiotics all the time, flushing Joel Salatin.
Oh, he doesn't use, oh, yeah.
Yeah, if Joel Salatin doesn't use antibiotics all the time on his animals, his neighbors think he's an eco-terrorist because he won't...
Let's say you don't give your cattle antibiotics. The detriment isn't going to be for who consumes it, right? It's going to be the fact that your livestock might die more easily, but that it's not like a health...
like not a human health hazard to not use them.
Yeah, like according to some... I guess there's probably not a lot of data out there about antibiotics affecting your health, but I know a lot of people...
Yes.
There's a lot of people out there that avoid antibiotic meat, like meat that has to be... And, you know, maybe just like anecdotally, I think there was like cases where people were getting antibiotic-resistant UTIs because of the chicken that they were getting.
Oh, my gosh. I'm not surprised. Like, there has to be remnants within.
Like, there just has to be. But, yeah, I was just thinking, like, you know, could the USDA be mad and say, well, it's, you know, because like you're not giving these animals antibiotics, therefore, their meat is like, you know, bad for humans to eat.
I'm not sure if that's what their policy would be. It would probably be... Their policy would probably be so that, yeah, he's gonna get his neighbor's animals sick and wipe out all of their animals.
Gotcha.
And then it's like their animals could get wiped out because they're vulnerable to that, because they're not.
They're poorly taken care of.
He's been breeding his cows and rotationally grazing his cows for generations so that they will be hearty and adapted to the area he lives in and capable of moving around and being healthy and being able to find the right grasses that they want. It's interesting. I mean, we're obviously disciples of the ranting, angry farmer from Virginia.
But as far as the sustainable livestock production, or the heritage breeds, they're definitely going to be the more hardy animals. And probably a better way to go, probably really hard to find, because they are rare now, and they're definitely dying out.
Yeah, I just feel like heritage breeds is something that most people probably never even heard of. You think of a cow, you just think of a black and white cow, not that there's specific cows for specific things.
Right, yeah.
Okay, moving on. I originally had the question, why is sustainable farming important as far as environmental impacts and things like that? But we've already talked a lot about that.
Is there anything that we missed?
I think one of the major things, we talked about solar depletion and pollution, but I think the two major things about the negative environmental impacts of traditional farming is water waste and biodiversity collapse.
Oh yeah, water waste. Oh my gosh. Katie and I have talked about that before as far as the Colorado River being totally sucked dry from irrigation.
California is the prime example. It's like the almonds and the avocados and all the citrus and everything. And it's in a desert.
They don't have the water. In Arkansas, we could get 56 inches of rain on average, and they are still draining the aquifers every year, taking more water than they need for growing rice. So it's astounding how much water it takes.
And just why? Why would you grow crops in a completely hostile environment? It just seems like such a waste.
Why would you grow something that the entire environment is against it? What a gamble.
Yeah.
And that's been one of the biggest benefits of the soil regeneration process, is cloistering water. It holds on to it. It holds water, and you can use less water eventually.
The better your soil gets, the more humus and black it gets, the more it holds water. That is a major thing that we focus on here at the farm that we're working at right now.
Again, everyone knows not to waste water, but not thinking about... I don't know, man, it's just really far reaching when you really think about it.
We pee and poop and five gallons of clean water every day.
It's astounding.
Which would be so crazy to people in the rest of the world, too. At least in other parts of the world. Okay, well, with all of this talk, how can farmers change?
At this point, let's say your friend who is a traditional monocrop person was like, man, I can't take it anymore. What do I have to do?
I think there is a lot of... aside from major systematic change and consumer support, I think there is a lot of organizations out there that are trying to support the shift from monocrop production to livestock, diversified... mixing livestock with crops.
So I've seen... There is a documentary called Sacred Cow where they talk about this very thing, where it's people that are transitioning their business, and it is a big risk at first, but there's a lot of resources out there, for one. I think it's...
I used to work for this organization, I'm forgetting the name. But yeah, they help people build greenhouses, they give them grants, they give... Especially if there's a woman that owns the farm, they're giving grants out to women who are trying to start small farms, and they're actually...
In my experience, that's been a lot of the sustainable farming world, is women getting involved, because they want to improve the lives of livestock and improve the quality of the farming world. And so there's a lot of organizations that are out there trying to help. And it definitely, while it would be like...
It definitely would impact them economically. I think one thing that I've noticed and heard throughout COVID is like the meatpacking industry getting slowed down and impacted.
Or like the potatoes. I remember they were having to throw away so many potatoes because the restaurants weren't open and so they couldn't have an order. Like the waste of food was unbelievable at the beginning.
Dumping milk.
Oh yes, yes, yes. Because I'm from dairy country, right? And they were just pouring it down the drain.
Oh my god.
It would make me sick to do it. I'd be like, local cat shelter?
Like, just something?
So, yeah, I mean, it's, I think it's like the small, local, like straight to consumer process is so much less fragile. And I mean, it is, I think it's more reliable than government subsidies. And at the end of the day, you know, they can rely on themselves and their own business.
And I think what we're seeing is like those small organizations are going to end up winning out over time.
Well, especially with, you know, like we know with like things changing, like environmentally, like with climate and things like that, there's going to have to be like more hardy. They're going to have to be able to withstand crazy temperature fluctuations and storms.
Right. Yeah. And that's the other thing with diversified farms is like, if one of your crops dies, you have a bunch of others to call back on.
It's like the monocrop farm with all your corn died, you're screwed. Yeah.
Yeah. Some new blight, some new, some like a new pest. Yeah.
Yeah.
I know the co-op that I belong to, they're like a, it's like a hundred farms all belong to the co-op, so it's less pressure on one. So they've joined together to sell their stuff together. So that you can get, so that the consumer can get a variety of produce, while the farms can like rely on one another so that it isn't, so like maybe that process wouldn't be such a terrible change because you're still, you're still like, and they're selling to businesses and things like that, not just normal people, but that could be like a way, I guess, if you know, if you were looking for help to like switch your farm to like a team, like a team of farms.
Yes.
Yeah. I feel like that's the core of so much of what it comes down to, and it ends up, you know, being even like philosophical change is just like local community.
Yeah.
Caring about your neighbors, your neighbors caring about you.
And I mean, it seems like it is so hard to be a small farmer and to diversify everything, and do added value products and have, you know, like, just have your hands in literally every little thing, because that's how the people that make it are like doing everything.
Right. And really, like, how realistic is that? Yeah.
It's exhausting.
It's exhausting. But when I see people make it, it's that they have, like, a network and that they're all helping each other out. And I think that network is out there because and, you know, there is something one of the people we read, he talks about how he's like living life swimming upstream because like all of his farmer friends thought he was crazy.
But now that he's been doing this for so many years, they're all like coming to him for workshops and coming to him to learn and shift from traditional farming to like diversified regenerative options.
Yeah, and really that's just like I keep thinking about like crops, and that's not even touching on like the ethical issues of livestock production and like how people get burnt out doing that, and they want to change, like they're tired of chicken farming like the way it's always been done.
Yeah.
They don't even own their chickens, like they don't even own them. Or their equipment.
Yeah.
So we've already mentioned how this can be negative at first on farmers, and even socially, because you were saying that that guy is like a pariah amongst his neighbors, but that you do believe that it's worth it because of all the reasons that we've said. So for those of our listeners who the vast majority of them are not going to be monocrop or like, you know, giant livestock farmers. I mean, if any of our listeners out there are one of those things, I'd love to know.
I'd be so curious. But the average person probably has like, I have friends that have chickens in a small garden or like, you know, something small. How can the average backyard farmer make sustainable changes?
I guess maybe my answer is more for people who aren't average farmers yet, if they're just average people.
Yeah, that's true.
Grow a garden, like just anything, like two things, like just put a couple tomato plants or a couple like pepper plant, anything like that is going to make a big difference. Starting a compost will make a really big difference. It's going to make a difference.
You won't be throwing as much food away. You can put your compost back on, even if you don't have a garden, just put it on your flower beds, put it on your lawn, anything like that. And getting chickens is like a really good, to me, they're the easiest livestock and they're really fun.
I feel like a lot of cities allow chickens nowadays. Chickens are pretty easy sell here.
Yeah, they're so easy to care for if once you have the right set up and then you can give them many of your food scraps, so that's going to save you money for feeding them and you won't be throwing away food. And they'll give you eggs, so they're just awesome all around. They'll eat the bugs.
So that's my advice. John Michael, what about you?
This woman loves chickens.
This woman loves chickens.
She just hatched some out, actually.
21 days.
Had on myself.
Didn't squish one.
She used an incubator.
But yeah, I mean, mine is just like keep all organic materials, like organic as in like once living, like anything.
Yeah, don't throw your don't throw your leaves away. Save your leaves.
Ask your neighbors for their leaves. They won't care.
Go steal bags of leaves off your neighbor.
Steal bags of leaves.
She has done that.
We just have leaf bandits.
But no one's going to care. They're going to be like, cool, they got rid of my leaves.
I feel like, yeah, a ditching plastic weed cover, like any anything you're trying to do to spend less time in your garden, like it's just, it's not going to just take the time. Yeah, just like take the time to just add like old plants or leaf matter or anything to like cover.
Or cardboard. You can use cardboard to cover the leaves and then it's not plastic and then you're not throwing away your cardboard.
Yeah, and it'll...
True, very true.
And worms love cardboard.
So that is like for the gardening, especially if you can't raise like ruminants because I think that's like the key to everything.
This man loves ruminants.
This lady loves chickens and that guy loves ruminants. Ruminants, listeners being animals with a four chambered stomach. Like cows.
Cows and goats, sheep.
so also I think reading Wendell Berry is a key thing that makes me fall in love with farming. When we moved to Massachusetts, I was basically ready to move home. I was like, I don't know what I'm doing living on this farm.
I'm not a farmer. And then our garden lady showed us, it was from Mad Farmers Liberation Front by Wendell Berry. And he has this big poem about what it's like to be a farmer.
I texted my cousin, I was like, this place is so cool. I'm never leaving. I love it.
And I will never leave since. So, yeah.
So really, me and my apartment, grow some herbs. Can't have a garden, but I can do something.
Yes, herbs are so easy to grow, and they're so expensive in the store.
Oh my gosh, it's ridiculous.
Just go to the laundry room, grow some basil. It's so easy.
I feel like basil lives no matter where you put it. Talk about a party plant. Basil is like, I got this.
Yeah, and herbs are so good for you. They're packed with nutrients, and you just need a little bit.
So then if you have the room, start a garden, upgrade to chickens, then upgrade to cattle if you've got even more room.
Yeah, and compost.
Oh right, compost for sure. And speaking, a lot of listeners, so I work for a city, and that city has special programs and things like that, where they will give you a compost barrel. They will make it happen.
So check it out. Check your local city or local township, whatever. See if they have any programs that could get you started.
Right, yeah. And it can be just as simple as putting a couple of pallets together, making a three-sided thing that you throw your food scraps in and turn it every now and then. Or not, even if you don't want to turn it.
Just throw your food scraps there.
Even if it doesn't become compost, it's at least not going to a landfill. I think landfills are filled... I think we fill three football stadiums with the amount of food waste per day or so.
It's some astounding amount of food waste.
Yeah, I know. That's what I do miss about working at the zoo or working on the farms that I've worked at, is that my lunch scraps or my dinner scraps have nowhere to go. Turtles can only eat so much.
I need a pig.
You need what? A pig.
Yeah, so I've been taking... If I have substantial, still good produce, I'll take it to my aunt who has a pig. Although he's really picky about what he eats.
What?
I've never had a picky pig.
A picky, pot-bellied pig.
Old Wilbur.
We've got some picky chickens that want to eat all of our scraps.
I think they're getting lucky.
Do chickens eat ticks or is that just guinea fowl?
They will, yeah, I would think. I think they eat most bugs.
We had some chickens out on my grandparents' farms yard, and the ticks those years were way reduced.
Decreased.
That's another really good thing, man, for Lyme disease and all that.
Yeah.
My gosh.
Yeah, we watched a YouTube video a year or so ago that was called Why Chickens Can Save the World. I was a big fan.
So I'm holding out for the room minutes to save the world, and Caitlin's holding out for the chickens.
Well, I think it's just because chickens Chicken versus cow.
Yeah.
We'll take you down.
Oh my gosh. A battle of the chickens and the cows would be terrifying. All right.
Well, not that we've covered everything about sustainable farming, but hopefully our listeners have a better idea of that sustainable agriculture is critical for the health of both humans and the whole planet. We have to make changes to farming for all of us to make it here. I really feel like that, and I'm not even a farmer, but I realize the fact that something's got to change, man.
Yeah. The way they always said was vote with your fork.
Vote with your fork. Yeah. I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but a really great book to read is The Omnivore's Dilemma.
It's an older book, but it's still so applicable by Michael Pollan. And it makes you... It's not depressing.
It's like, we can do this. We just have to do it. Plenty of it are depressing, but it'll inspire you.
Yeah. Yeah, totally. Thanks, guys, for joining us today, or joining me.
Why do I say up? I'm so used to saying us. Well, me and Diggles, me and Diggles here.
Yeah.
Thanks for having us. We're honored to be a part of it.
It's just so fun to get to talk to our different, basically, we've been interviewing a lot of friends, but like talking to them from like a professional, you know, I mean, not that we don't know, not that I don't know what you guys do, but like, right, you know, really diving in.
Yeah, that does sound fun.
Plus, it isn't different enough, like, from what I do, like, although we both, you know, we're all dealing with conservation, essentially.
Right.
Very, very different jobs.
Different sorts of conservation, both very important.
Next time we can talk about humanure composting.
Humanure.
Yes. We're like human, like human body composting.
Sustainability. All right. Till next time, everybody.
Tune in next week.