Health and Wellness Through Regenerative Farming First-generation farming sisters grow loyal customers, social media following By Ron Nichols After four undergraduate years of study, six additional graduate years of study and on the eve of defending her mechanical engineering Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Illinois, Ashley Armstrong decided to do the unthinkable: pursue a different career. Today, 30-year-old Ashley says she still has a vivid memory of the day she told her graduate research advisors that after she finished her Ph.D., she was not going to be a professor or go into ..read more

In the two previous articles we have discussed what Derek has done on his farm to implement regenerative grazing and how he made that transition. In this article, we would like to take things a step further and describe some of the changes in livestock that he’s seen on his transformative regenerative journey. Healthy soil, healthy plants, healthy livestockLivestock fed highly diverse, high-forage diets grown in well-stewarded soils with a robust population of biology and vast mycorrhizal networks will be nearly problem free. I’m sure we can all agree that managing sickly livestock is the l ..read more

Adaptive grazing is a system of grazing that allows the grazer to continually adapt and flex to the real-life conditions that we face on an ongoing basis. It is not a prescriptive or formulaic approach. In applying adaptive grazing rules and practices across a wide variety of livestock enterprises and environments, we have found it to be, by far, the best grazing system for making continuous progress, increasing SOM, biomass production and biodiversity, and optimizing net profitability. In prior articles, we have explored the Three Rules of Adaptive Stewardship’s Rule of Compounding, Rule o ..read more

Our path to regenerative dairy management was not a straight line, though that would have made our lives much easier. We are grateful for what this experience has taught us along the way. I am a firm believer that the regenerative path is a journey, and that there is no “regenerative destination.” We will never arrive at a perfect resource, and that is okay, but the changes we have made in a few short years are nothing short of astounding. Here are the top four changes in our operation that have changed our business and our future. 1. Financials I wish I could say that our journey was p ..read more

I can still recall all of the hours spent in my grandparents’ garden like it was yesterday. It was a sacred place to them, but it was just a place to burn off energy and get dirty for me. It never really seemed like work because they made gardening rewarding, educational, and challenging. Both of my grandparents are still involved and instrumental in the garden planning every year, even though they are in their mid 80s. Now I believe it's my turn to make gardening rewarding, educational, and challenging for them. My years of rabbit-hole diving and hands-on experimenting in the garden ha ..read more

At Understanding Ag, we have looked at tens of thousands of soil test results that combine the Haney, PLFA, and TND (Total Nutrient Digestion) tests. The Haney Test is similar to a traditional soil test that also supplies us with a 30,000-foot view of soil health by testing for soil microbial respiration, organic carbon fraction (WEOC), microbially active carbon (MAC), and the carbon to nitrogen ratio (C:N). The PLFA test is a pure soil biology test that looks at parameters such as total living microbial biomass, total bacteria, total fungi, mycorrhizal fungi, saprophytic fungi, and proto ..read more

At Understanding Ag, we have looked at tens of thousands of soil test results that combine the Haney, PLFA, and TND (Total Nutrient Digestion) tests. The Haney Test is similar to a traditional soil test that also supplies us with a 30,000-foot view of soil health by testing for soil microbial respiration, organic carbon fraction (WEOC), microbially active carbon (MAC), and the carbon to nitrogen ratio (C:N). The PLFA test is a pure soil biology test that looks at parameters such as total living microbial biomass, total bacteria, total fungi, mycorrhizal fungi, saprophytic fungi, and proto ..read more

Without Education, the Promise of Climate-Smart Farm Practices Will Wilt on the Vine By Allen Williams, Ph.D. The digital screen displayed 162 F. I pointed my infrared thermometer and squeezed the trigger again. No change. The readout showed 162 F, which just happens to be the safe food preparation temperature for ground beef and sausage. But I wasn’t pointing the thermometer at my dinner. I was pointing it at a conventionally tilled, recently harvested wheat field near Gordon, Nebraska. Regrettably, I would discover that field wasn’t an anomaly. During a weeks-long trip in August, I vis ..read more

Part of my role as a partner in Understanding Ag is to keeping up to date on the trends in agriculture, staying abreast of what is “new” in agriculture—and what the industry and investors are focused on. I spend a lot of my time talking to the boards of directors of food and agriculture companies, attending events where they congregate to share the “latest and greatest.” Recently, I attended such a gathering where I was asked to sit on a panel discussion titled, “The future of food.” I found the comments from the other panelists and attendees very interesting. Here were their most prominent ..read more

One of the true joys of getting to work with so many farmers and ranchers as they move down the regenerative path is watching as they learn how to work in synchrony with nature. It’s especially gratifying when they send along letters that describe their regenerative experiences, like the one I recently received from Daniel Flanagan: Hi, my name is Daniel. When I was a kid, we had small swimming pool in the backyard one summer. It sat there unused, filled with water. We had created a void in nature. Nature of course filled that void.... with mosquitoes and algae.  Then one day my ..read more