One Size Fits None: A Farm Girl’s Search for the Promise of Regenerative Agriculture

Dr. Kristine Nichols, a soil biologist, helped Gabe transition from conventional to regenerative farming. She convinced Gabe to stop using synthetic fertilizer, which has negative impacts on soil health. In addition, Dr. Nichols encouraged Gabe to grow more diverse crops on his land, to rotate those crops, and to use cover crops. Within a few years of using these different techniques, Gabe saw the difference: His diverse fields and pastures came alive with soil microbes, birds, insects, earthworms, and more.

Cover crops, including millet, flax, peas, and buckwheat, are controversial in the farming world. Most conventional farmers see them as a waste because they are difficult to sell, despite their benefits to the soil and restoring the ecosystem and serving as food for livestock. To encourage cover crop use, regenerative farmers and some chefs are calling on chefs and consumers to “cook with the whole farm instead of just with prized or familiar items, such as steak, winter tomatoes, or enriched flour” (198). By doing so, advocates of cooking with the whole farm hope this will encourage more farmers to grow cover crops, which will not only produce a profit for the farmers but also help transition the US food production system to a regenerative one.

Anderson asks Gabe why he is not USDA certified organic. His answer goes back to the soil. Gabe is firmly in the no-till camp, meaning he does not use plows to prepare the soil for planting. Organic farmers control weeds through tillage. He also uses herbicides once every few years for extreme weed issues, although he is trying to figure out a natural alternative. Anderson notes that even a single application every few years breaks the certified organic rules. Finally, like many farmers, Gabe is extremely independent and feels “uncomfortable with submitting to the authority of a certification organization” (203).

Gabe employs mob grazing, a regenerative agricultural strategy. With this strategy, ranchers move livestock between small pastures multiple times a day. In these small pastures, livestock either eat or trample all the plants, and they do not usually return to the pasture for at least a year. Anderson describes mob grazing as “rotational grazing on steroids” (205). The reason Gabe uses this strategy is because it ensures he has excellent rather than great soil health. Adding livestock to farms also ensures that the farm becomes a self-sustaining ecosystem.

Having multiple enterprises on the same land, which is known as stacking, enables farms to have greater financial resiliency. If one enterprise, such as wheat crops, fails, the farmer can still make a profit from the other enterprises. Unfortunately, most farms, and especially those that follow conventional farming practices, only have one or two enterprises. To Anderson, this “is the equivalent of placing all of one’s eggs in a single basket” (206). Gabe also believes that having multiple enterprises is a more efficient way to feed people. An acre of land on a regenerative farm that utilizes stacking with minimal input costs produces not only more food, but healthier food compared to a conventional farm. Being productive on fewer acres with less costs also makes farming enjoyable again, something conventional farming has not been for years. In contrast to conventional farmers, Gabe does not have to worry about input costs or large loan balances. His main concern is simply the soil. To him, taking care of the soil means the rest of his farm is taken care of too.

Mob grazing, diverse rotations, and cover crops are all working for Gabe. His soil has never been healthier. Compared to his neighbors, his soil is more resilient during drought periods. It soaks up rain rather than letting it run-off as degraded soil does. His crop diversity also means that he does not live in fear of being unable to feed his livestock. Even if one of the crops is destroyed, Gabe feeds the livestock another crop; something which conventional farmers cannot do given their reliance on just one crop.

Gabe, like other conventional farmers, used to raise and sell breeding bulls, known as balancers, or bulls that combine positive traits from different breeds into one animal. Calf births typically occurred between February and March to ensure maturation by the selling season. Anderson describes February and March as “cold, snowy, generally miserable months in North Dakota” (215). Blizzards and sickness take the lives of many. This lifestyle is also hard on farmers who need to take care of the heifers and calves on top of their already overflowing farm work plates. Gabe now realizes that this conventional birthing strategy does not make sense. Instead, his calf births take place in late spring, similar to when wild animals, like deer and buffalo, also give birth. He emphasizes that his death loss is tiny compared to calf birthing in winter.

He also takes a generally hands-off approach with his cattle. For example, he does not intervene in birthing, arguing that “nature has a way of making things work out” (217). Like Phil, Gabe also does not use vaccines or insecticides. Gabe too has also seen an increase in the dung beetle population. Importantly, only a few of his cattle die each year from an illness that vaccines or insecticides might have prevented. Keeping the offspring of the survivors results in his herd growing stronger and producing higher-quality meat for consumers with no pesticides or antibiotics.

Under conventional grazing, moving cattle is a huge job, often taking all day. In contrast, Gabe’s “mob grazing” strategy is easier. In his system, he uses polywire, or portable electric fencing, that he moves daily to create small pastures that the cattle mob graze. The polywire takes under 30 minutes to set-up daily. The size of the herd, the lay of the land, and the condition of the grass all determine the pasture sizes. Once he sets up the polywire each morning, the cattle do the rest. Each of the fences around the pastures has a gate release timer. When the right time arrives, the timer opens the fence, and the cattle move to a new pasture. Gabe emphasizes that his system requires “no work at all” (223).

Gabe’s mob graze system also serves as an alternative to summer haying. Summer haying takes up huge amounts of time. For example, Anderson’s brother and father wake up at 4:00 am during summer mornings to make hay bales out of grass and sweet clover. It takes 10-12 hours each day for two months to produce enough hay for cattle. The process also uses a lot of diesel fuel. Gabe jokes that most ranchers would see his grasslands as wasted resources, and “they would be chomping at the bit to hay it” (225). Anderson calls this urge to hay everything the “hay mentality” (226). Gabe has reduced his hay usage to 73 days a year, an impressive feat considering most ranchers are closer to 180 days a year.

To restore the native prairie, Gabe emphasizes patience. Humans have altered the environment more in the last 100 years than natural forces like ice, floods, earthquakes, wind, rain, or heat have done in the last 1,000 years. Changes in nature take thousands of years to unfold. Thus, it will take time to reverse humans’ destruction of the grasslands. While the grasslands are growing more diverse, so too does the animal population. Gabe now has grouse, foxes, song birds, coyotes, pheasants, partridges, deer, antelope, and hawks, many of which are no longer found on conventional farmland.

The rich wildlife might bother many conventional farmers, but to Gabe it reinforces how farms are supposed to be part of the ecosystem. He rejects the conventional idea that “farms are somehow separate from the environment and therefore off-limits to animals” (232). Gabe also believes that farming should be in harmony with nature, not simply taking everything from it. In line with this thinking, Gabe, in contrast to other farmers and ranchers, does not kill coyotes, even when they kill his chickens. His reasoning: killing off coyotes will create an imbalance in the ecosystem, substantially increasing gopher and rabbit populations. Ecosystems contain predators to maintain balance in prey populations. By removing the predators, the ecosystem becomes unbalanced and could collapse.

Anderson first visited a farmers’ market in her early twenties. Despite growing up on a farm and in a rural community, there was nowhere for her family to sell or buy locally produced food. None of the food in her local grocery store or the menu items at local restaurants were local. Conventional farmers often “taste none of the fruits of their labor until a big company returns them in the form of processed food” (241).

Gabe argues that the specialization of food markets is partly farmers’ fault. As farmers specialized, so too did these food markets. These specialized markets created the “corn and soybeans ideology” (242), where farmers claim they cannot grow anything other than corn and soybeans because of market demands. Gabe rejects the idea that farmers are trapped by market demands. Instead, he argues that farmers can be a source of change by finding or creating markets. Anderson believes that the switch from conventional to regenerative farming will drive markets to become more locally and regionally focused.

Interacting with consumers will be a tough transition for many conventional farmers. Anderson says, “retailing isn’t part of the modern rancher identity—it doesn’t jive with ‘get big or get out’ because it takes time and resources away from production and expansion” (245). Even Gabe admits that he never thought marketing his produce would be part of his life. Yet, he understands the importance of educating people about healthier food, and interacting with customers is one way to do this.

Gabe believes that most farmers and ranchers are wearing “conventional agriculture blinders” (252). They fail to understand regenerative agriculture because they simply choose not to. During his speaking tours, Gabe tries to appeal to their desire for higher profits, which regenerative agriculture produces. By removing inputs, regenerative farmers remove most of their expenses, saving thousands of dollars. He also encourages regenerative farmers to “take their profit first” (254). By this, he tells these farmers to only spend the amount that is left over from the profit percentage they would like to make. This mentality too keeps costs low.

Regenerative farming also offers farmers more control over the price of their commodities since they can set their own prices. Being able to set his own prices has enabled Gabe to not have to rely on government farm assistance to supplement his income. Gabe believes that part of what prevents conventional farmers from making the transition to regenerative agriculture is fear of failure. For him, the first step is to overcome this fear. While it might seem scary to give control back to nature, Gabe argues that the benefits far outweigh the costs. He also believes that farmers and ranchers need to stop suggesting that regenerative farming will not work in their environment. In fact, he soundly rejects this idea. Produces simply need to tailor their strategies to ones that fit their environment. His most important advice is for farmers and ranchers to continue learning and have an open mind.