Diversity Matters

In the first episode of Nourish by MN350,  host Terry Hokenson covers a lot of ground with his guests Shona Snater of the Land Stewardship Project, Bob Dahm of Organic Bob Lawn Care, and Leslie McKenzie, founder of Transition Longfellow. Together they explore the idea that agriculture and gardening can play a role in solving the climate crisis. Shona describes her work in southern MN with farmers reaching out to learn all they can about regenerative farming practices, and why diversity in the soil matters. She explains six separate goals LSP has for creating farmland that is diverse and regenerative. Bob Dahm speaks to us about our yards. Bob works at convincing his customers to plant diverse, native plants in their yards as a more sustainable practice. He also manages to keep lawns, for those who have them, lush and green without harmful chemicals. Leslie McKenzie points out the benefits of having chickens in the city as a way to improve our soil, and share resources for consumers looking to buy in to the regenerative food economy.

Full episode transcript available here.

Transcript

Episode 1: Diversity Matters

Tue, 11/17/20 8:00AM • 49:57

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

farmers, soil, compost, regenerative, people, farm, lawn, systems, carbon, crops, minnesota, dandelions, livestock, microbes, chickens, grazing, lsp

SPEAKERS

Bob Dahm, Terry Hokenson, Sarah Riedl, Rory Coleman, Leslie McKenzie, Shona Snater, Marita Bujold

Sarah Riedl  00:00

This episode was recorded for the Wave Project on KFAI and originally aired on October 1 2019.

Bob Dahm  00:20

I like too, what you said about the diversity, you know that that really is key. And it's key and many systems that are part of our, our food system. And one of the biggest ways that I think we can experience healing of the soil and of our systems is by including people in in our diversity. The more we can heal those systems, the easier it will be to heal the systems in our soil and to you know, heal the planet.

Sarah Riedl  01:02

Welcome to Nourish

Rory Coleman  01:11

by MN350

Marita Bujold  01:13

The podcast that features visionary leaders are creating the regenerative, inclusive local food economy we need to meet the challenge of climate change.

Terry Hokenson  01:44

Good morning, friends. This is Terry Hokenson, hosting the Wave Project show today for our show on regenerative agriculture, gardening and the climate impacts. I'm so glad you tuned in this morning. We're going to talk about regenerative approaches to farming, gardening, just about anything you can do in the dirt. This morning, we're going to hear from Shona Snater of Lewiston, Minnesota, she's a Bridge to Soil Health organizer with the Land Stewardship Project. She's going to talk to us about regenerative farming. She's been a farmer herself. She is as I say, as is working with the Land Stewardship Project, which is a great source not to be missed if you want to know more and learn more about regenerative farming. And we're also going to hear from Bob Dahm. He is known locally as a pioneer in organic gardening arena. He's known as Organic Bob. He taught the Metro Blooms course on healthy soils last year, and Bob's gonna start us out with a story about his family, his farming family. So Bob, can you tell us what you got there?

Bob Dahm  03:08

Yeah, thanks, Terry. I grew up on a farm in Iowa, my mom was a soil conservation activist and spent a lot of time in city halls and church basements talking about rotating crops and taking care of the soil. Back then that was in the 50s through the 80s. And I lost a number of people in my family to cancers caused by agricultural chemicals. My dad and my grandfather and a lot of these old farmers I'd worked for over the summers and and last year my brother. And the way my dad farmed is very different than the way people farm today. He actually started out with horses. And then the way my brother farmed was vastly different than that. And I have a friend who's an organic farmer, and his methods are more like my grandfather's but with, you know, important differences. He uses tractors instead of horses. And regenerative agriculture is just as different from organic farming as you know, conventional agriculture is from farming with horses. So, in a nutshell, it's all about the soil and the soil biology.

Terry Hokenson 04:43

You might wonder why we're using this five syllable word. "Regenerative" refers to soil, it focuses on creating healthy soil. And so generating the soil and keeping it healthy - regenerating. There you go. Regenerative approaches to farming, ranching and gardening are exciting growing numbers of people all over Minnesota and beyond. Regenerative methods hold the potential to greatly increase local production of healthy foods, to reduce transport costs and fossil fuel use and to eliminate pesticides, herbicides and fossil fuel based fertilizers. Regenerative practices focus on generating healthy soil, which resists erosion and drought by greatly increasing absorption and retention of water, and eliminates the need for toxic chemicals saving farmers and our food from exposure. In addition, it removes from the air and sequesters in the ground enormous amounts of carbon, a benefit that we can't get from conventional agriculture. Finally, the resulting rich soil produces wholesome uncontaminated foods and other useful crops. 

Terry Hokenson  05:52

Now, Shona. Are you there?

Shona Snater  05:55

I am. Yeah. Can you hear me?

Terry Hokenson  05:56

Yeah. Great. Well, go ahead. And by the way, happy birthday.

Shona Snater  06:01

Oh, thank you! Yeah. So thanks for the introduction. I work at the Land Stewardship Project, which is a nonprofit, membership based organization that works in several program areas. We have the soil health program, Farm Beginnings program, our policy and organizing, and membership and community based food systems. So we work within rural community in agriculture. And we also focus on issues that affect rural communities like factory farms coming in, you know, we put a frac sand ban in Winona county help organize that. So that's some of the the breadth of the work that LSP does. I specifically work in the Soil Health program. And so I work primarily with small to mid sized crop and livestock farmers in southeast Minnesota. And so you're probably wondering what exactly that means in terms of what are the farmers doing, to rebuild their soils.

Shona Snater  07:19

So there are five soil health principles that are recognized nationally and internationally at this point in time. And I'm just going to run through that list, we also at LSP, we're starting to consider a six step, which is kind of the cutting edge of the work that's going on. And I'll describe a little bit about that as well. So the first step in rebuilding soils is minimizing the disturbance to the soil. So that means less tillage, if possible, switching to completely no till it's a little bit more difficult for organic farmers to do that, since that is their weed suppression tool. But what we want to do is try and disturb that soil as little as possible so that we can regrow our fungi and microbial populations. Every time we turn over the soil, what we're doing is disrupting that ecosystem, and readjusting that whole the whole system so that they actually will blow off CO2 from the soil into the atmosphere. So we want to leave the soil where it's at.

Shona Snater  08:30

The second one is to keep the ground covered. And that is all about residue management. When you see a cornfield that's been recently harvested, some people take off that corn stover the the stalk at the end, we want to leave as much of that residue that plant residue on the ground as possible. That is what feeds the microbes during the winter. And so having more of that and being able to manage for that is a really good thing.

Shona Snater  08:59

The third step is keeping a living root in the ground year round. So that's what our cover crops are doing. If you've ever traveled through the Midwest in the fall or early spring, and there's a light green color out there, it's a good chance it might be a cover crop. A lot of farmers start off with winter rye as their first cover crop. And that's really important to keeping those microbes activated into rebooting our soil biology.

Shona Snater  09:33

The fourth one is to have a diversity of species. So although we really like the winter rye that's being used, ideally, we have a mixture of cover crop species out there so that we can support a wide array of microbes.

Shona Snater  09:49

The fifth one is livestock integration. So we want to get grazing back out onto the landscape rather than having animals in confinement operations. And when we grazing is not only of cover crops and pastures, what we really need are grazing to start looking more intensive and rotational. What we're trying to do is mimic what the bison were doing before colonization on our prairies, they work in tight groups, they're constantly moving across the landscape, trampling down plant matter, distributing their manure, you know, that's what we need our livestock to be doing as well.

Shona Snater  10:32

And then the sixth one is managing for soil microbes. So this is the one that we at LSP have been considering. We brought in a internationally known soil microbiologist Elaine Ingham, to work with a small group of farmers. And what we've learned and has been seen from the farmers who are getting very intentional, intentional about biodiverse compost is that we can regrow these higher levels of soil microbes that are higher up in the ecological chain. So they are like our keystone predators of the soil environment. And it's really important for nutrient cycling, and to really get our soils off of - wean them from fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, we need them to be a healthy functioning ecosystem again. So those are the five soil health principles. I could keep going on for a while. But Terry, what would you like me to talk about?

Terry Hokenson  11:31

Well, I'm interested in hopefully, our listeners would be interested in knowing just where we're at in farm country with, you know, how many how many farmers out there are interested in converting over to this regenerative methods?

Shona Snater  11:50

Yeah, that's a great question. So when we started our soil health program, which would be about four years ago now, it started off as an initial pilot project just to see how much interest is out there. And then two and a half years ago, specifically, we started a network called the Soil Builders Network, where we are basically offering a free network for farmers to sign up to learn more from one another about these practices that are going on in our region. And within that time, we have now about 700, farmers signed up to that network. And that also includes ag professionals and other nonprofit people who are interested as well. But the interest is phenomenal. And there's multiple reasons for that. One, you know, the commodity prices, people are really trying to reduce their inputs so that they can keep more profit. There, you know, a lot of farmers are having a very hard time right now. Two is the extreme weather that we've been seeing, we are starting to recognize that we can't do things the same way that we used to when we're getting seven inch downpours, you know, every two weeks. And so I would say with that, and just the buzz, I mean, that is "soil health" right now is the buzzword in the agricultural community. And it provides a ray of hope that farmers can take back their independence and that they could rebuild their soils and that they could get to the point that they aren't relying upon agricultural inputs and agribusinesses to dictate their own business.

Terry Hokenson  13:33

You know, I recently became acquainted with some of the methods regarding composting on the farm. In fact, that's where I first met you was on September 12, out on the farm of the Pangratz, I think was their name out near Lewiston, and they had these very interesting devices that they had built called Johnson-Su bioreactors. And they, you know, it was just fascinating how those things work that it's when it's explained to you it's, it seems obvious, but I guess where I was going with that, is that I'm wondering, what, what farmers are doing? Oh, well, the one thing I wanted to mention was that they were there were 80 farmers there. I mean, there were 80 people attending that demonstration, which so impressed me. It just seemed like that that indicated a lot of interest.

Shona Snater  14:41

It's funny you say that. My supervisor, I told the Pangratz beforehand, I was like we could probably expect 50 to 100 people. And my supervisor turned to me said "What? How many people did you tell them?" Is like, what I've been seeing from farmers is like, yes, this is really intense cutting edge stuff, where we're actually looking at the microbes under a microscope and trying to figure out their place in the ecological system. But the thing is, is like, that is so empowering. It's so empowering to our farmers is really interesting stuff just to be able to see these microbes that are actually working in your soil. And it's, it's a really good indicator of really how much interest and how much learning there is to do around this topic.

Terry Hokenson  15:32

Well, I've looked at a few YouTube videos and seeing some of the some of the well known scientists who are working on on this whole regenerative thing. And it's hard to follow. Some of the the science is really technical. But the applications that I saw on the farm in Lewiston made a lot of sense. They were using sawdust to bed down their cattle, and then they, you know, shovel up the sawdust after it was fertilized by the cattle and, and put it in the compost.

Shona Snater  16:12

And I should say that Johnson-Su compost that you're talking about is a really interesting system. And we are trying to figure out especially for this area, what materials and recipes would work best. So the idea behind it is that it is a static aerobic thermophilic composting system. So you basically fill up a kind of bin-looking structure with air tubes in it, with certain materials and enough nitrogen enough carbon ratio that you can get the heat of that composting system up to like the 160 that you need for like at least five days, I think is what it is. And then it's got to come back down to ambient temperature. And then a lot of people will add worms to that as well to jump that biology even more. So why we like the static composting system is that it really allows for the fungal populations to build up. When you have a lot of the turned compost, which can be really good for certain applications, the issue is, is that when you have that compost turner going through, you really disrupt a lot of the fungal populations. So specifically that Johnson-Su setup is for building more fungal populations. And then you can take that compost and dilute it into water and spray it out onto your fields. That's usually how people have been using it for compost extract or doing a compost tea.

Terry Hokenson  17:51

How long would it take a farmer who's been farming conventionally to convert over to regenerative methods?

Shona Snater  18:02

Oh, I mean, it's up to the farmer. If they really wanted to turn things around, I mean, the the quickest way to do that would be to switch to no-till right away, and then start incorporating cover crops. I think it depends on the intention of the farmer if they're looking to introduce more livestock into their operation, or if they're just trying to maintain a row crop scenario. But I think what's really telling is how quickly we can build back our soil organic matter. So I know from one farmer that we have down in Spring Grove, Minnesota, he told me that once he introduced cover crops on to his no till row crop operation, he built 1% soil organic matter back into his soil within three years. Which is really, really cool. With grazing, I think we could do that even faster. I think actually, we could probably do 1% soil organic matter increase per year with intensive grazing, but that would be like your sole focus. And so I should say with that 1% soil organic matter increased. What does that mean? So what does that mean to all of us? Well, that means that we have sequestered 18 tons of carbon onto and this is just looking at per acre basis. So if we increase 1% soil organic matter on one acre, that's 18 tons of carbon that's been sequestered. And that also means that we have increased the water holding capacity by 25,000-28,000 gallons of water. So and that's really telling for these intensive rainfalls that we're getting, you know, down here in southeast Minnesota where I live, we get these really intense downpours in our freshwater streams and rivers are just run amok with sediment. And you know, agricultural chemicals are flowing down there as well. So it means that we can infiltrate rainwater quicker as well, we're seeing that farmers are able to increase their infiltration rates by one inch per hour. So that's one inch of rainwater per hour, up to 10 inches. So if we get a really heavy downpour for an hour, we have farmers who can actually infiltrate all that water without any without a lot of runoff.

Terry Hokenson  20:39

Fantastic. Can I ask you one last question for this segment? And I hope you'll stay with us and join us a little later on. What is what is the what do you what can you tell us about the overall effect on on carbon sequestration? Because a lot of us are climate activists. And we you know, generally people are starting to get pretty concerned about this crazy weather and what what is the impact on climate of the regenerative approach?

Shona Snater  21:12

It's twofold. So first off is the benefit that we're seeing for farmers. When they quit tilling, you have to do less passes in the fall and spring with your tractor, so that's a right there, that's a fossil fuel reduction. But then, of course, then you have the fact that they are sequestering carbon by increasing plant matter on the landscape. You know, and those plants are pulling CO2 from the atmosphere and putting it into the soil as a converted carbon product. And so then the microbes in the soil can feed on that they can grow their own populations, and that's where you have that carbon sequestration happening. And so we also know from Jerry Hatfield, down in Ames, Iowa from a climate hub, that they took a 300 acre farm, and they did a CO2 evaluation, they had some sensors out there. And they, they were able to record that every year, on one acre, we are losing approximately 1000 pounds of carbon from the soil being released into the atmosphere through conventional agricultural practices. And that a lot of that's tillage, but also, when we use excessive amounts of nitrogen, what we're doing is basically blowing up our soil in terms of bacteria population, they feed on that really accessible nitrogen. And so it causes a population explosion of bacteria. But then we don't have the larger microbes like nematodes and protozoa to be eating that bacteria. And so the bacteria just eventually die off. And that's where you get these blooms of co2 coming off of the soil.

Terry Hokenson  23:09

Shona. Thank you so much. We'll be right back.

Terry Hokenson  23:24

This is Terry Hokenson, hosting the wave project show today for our show on regenerative agriculture, gardening and the climate impacts. I'm gonna be asking Organic Bob, Bob Dahm to speak now on the application of these regenerative principles to gardening and lawn care and urban urban situations. And we'll also be hearing from Leslie McKenzie, who founded Transition Longfellow and facilitates Transition Twin Cities. And she's also a Washington County Master Gardener. She blogs on energy, gardening, and sustainability topics at thinkofitasanadventure.com. Bob, tell us what you've got on the gardening scene here.

Leslie McKenzie  24:23

All right, Terry. I I loved what Shona had to say and I've I've taken a week-long compost and microscope classes from Elaine Ingham, the world renowned soil scientist, and pioneer in soil food web science. My business partner and I did that for our our organic lawn care business, Organic Bob, and then I've also gone to Sustainable Farming. Association classes on on soil health, and then apply those principles to our clients' lawns. So, and it's hard, you don't see a whole lot of cattle grazing in lawns in Minneapolis and St. Paul. So it's hard to mimic everything exactly. But we we do our best. And so for example, the action of grazing livestock is somewhat duplicated by core aeration or manual aeration on a lawn, you know, to simulate the hoof traffic, and then mowing would also mimic grazing, you harvest that little bit of crop off when you when you mow, and that stimulates root growth, and then of course the clipping stay, and they're high in nitrogen. So they're somewhat similar to the the nitrogen deposition that happens when the animals droppings hit the soil, in agriculture. And then we also will introduce livestock with composted dairy manure that we apply to the soil. And then the most important livestock are the soil foodweb organisms, especially the fungi, but that's, you know, a few, basically, like Shona was saying, you grow your organic matter. You know, I can dump compost on and the carbon in that compost will add an insignificant amount of, of carbon to the soil. But what it does that's of the most value is it adds that soil biology and those organisms are the ones that will truly grow the organic content and, and sequester that carbon. And fungi is just, they're just little tubes of pure carbon. And they're growing throughout the soil and of the bacteria and all the other organisms, just little chunks of carbon growing in our soil. So I don't know, what do you think Leslie?

Leslie McKenzie  24:31

I think another thing that people are doing in the city to add that little bit of, of wildlife is chickens.

Bob Dahm  27:37

Yeah, yeah.

Leslie McKenzie  27:38

And chickens out scratching chickens, eating insects, chicken using the chicken manure. Another great way to be improving our soil.

Bob Dahm  27:51

And we, I was teaching classes this past year for Blue Thumb Guide, our Blue Thumb and Metro Blooms on pollinator classes, and bee lawns. And the bee lawns are great because you move from this monoculture of turf grasses, and you introduce a plant community you have Dutch white clover, which is a nitrogen fixer, a self heal, and creeping thyme and, and they all have different size blooms. And pollinators, too are an important livestock on the landscape. And the more we can do to help pollinators, the more carbon we will sequester. And many times in my classes on organic lawn care, I'll tell people that the the most organic lawn you can have is the one you remove, you convert that lawn into something else. You know, a bee lawn is a good step, but a stand of native plants will benefit pollinators far more than than a bee lawn. Although the bee lawn is important. And I you know, this is another one of those paradigm shifts that we have to make is not only getting away from, you know, monoculture in agriculture, you know, along with all the industrial ag inputs, is to stop doing those practices in our own yards and start doing regenerative. There's an area in the United States, roughly the size of Texas, that are lawns. And there's more acres of lawn than there are corn in this country. And we already have too much corn, but a corn is our at least producing something, the lawn is just nothing. It's an artifact that if, you know, maybe it doesn't need to go away, but it needs to really give up first place in the American yard,

Leslie McKenzie  30:05

I'd like to riff off of that. At a certain point when we were working on our yard and turning it into an edible landscape for a number of years. And it's one point I realized, if I spent so much time planning my garden, I should have planned my yard. So instead of thinking that the yard was the norm, I should have thought, "What is the purpose of this grass? And where do I need to have it?" Not that it takes over most of the space and I work everything else around it, no. If I'm going to have it, I should be intentional about it, and have a purpose for why we were going to have lawn there, and the rest of the space was going to be food or it was going to be native plants, or it was going to have other purposes like helping to infiltrate water into our city landscape. And this is super important for city landscapes. Our soil is really compacted. What plants are use - how would we know if our soil was compacted? I know there's some plants that tell us that this is compacted soil.

Bob Dahm  31:15

Yeah, if you aren't treating the area with chemicals, the weeds will indicate a variety of soil conditions, dandelions, you know, their their ecological job is to use that tap root and to break through compaction. And then they they pull trace minerals up from deep in the soil and deposit them on top. And you know, if you give those dandelions, you know, thousand 5000 years, they'll change the chemical makeup in the structure of that soil. But you know, I, I don't have that kind of time. So, what we do instead, you know, is we we help leapfrog that succession, that ecological succession. So the the plants and invasive plants like garlic mustard, buckthorn, they're the canaries in the coal mine, they're telling us that there is some serious problems in that soil. And those organisms, those invasives are just symptoms of these deeper problems. And the deeper problem is almost always a lack of organisms and lack of organic matter. And the things that are really diminish those two are synthetic fertilizers, and then pesticides. Whether it's, you know, a fungicide, to get rid of that nasty moss, it's grown in the lawn, which actually is a sign of little more health, you know, or the herbicide to get rid of creeping charlie or the dandelion, or, you know, you don't like those ants, so I'm going to put something on that. You know, it's like, we're addicted. We keep turning to these bottles, and we just need to kick it. You know, just start your soil off on an organic diet and help it make friends with microbes.

Terry Hokenson  33:14

You're talking about using the dandelions to analyze what's going on as an indicator of what's going on. Reminds me of a story I heard when I was visiting the farm near Lewiston. Clifford Johnson was doing the main presentation and he told us a story about, he told a story about how ragweed had taken over one of his fields, and the ragweed had gotten 13 feet tall. So it was quite astounding, really, he decided to see if he could get his cattle to eat it. And he mowed a path around the field. The cattle misunderstood and started running around in circles on the path. But finally they discovered that the ragweed was delicious and they ate it all up. So I don't remember what that ragweed was supposed to be indicating. But it was very interesting that he was able to feed his cattle on it.

Leslie McKenzie  34:18

Now one of the when you talk about a bee lawn. So although our theme is regenerative agriculture, really we need to be thinking about regenerative systems. So a bee lawn is a diverse lawn. It's not a monoculture. So it's moving us toward a diverse system, which we would find in nature. So in addition to diversifying our lawns and diversifying our yards with for example, you mentioned deep rooted native plants. We should also be thinking of trees and woody plants, shrubs, those are also carbon storing. A lot of us are are thinking of trees. Nowadays, as we're facing emerald ash borer, and we're seeing kind of a large number of our trees disappear. But anyway, anytime that we can be adding in trees into our yards, or helping to move more trees into our, our forests are natural areas. So rebuilding, those are all storing carbon. As long as those trees are growing, they're storing carbon. So if you have an empty spot in your yard, and this, the city of Minneapolis has their tree lottery, in the spring, you can get trees quite inexpensive, I believe $25, they have a limited number. But it's, it's a pretty good number. So you could watch for that through the, I believe, is through the park board.

Bob Dahm  35:50

And I like too, what you said about the diversity, you know, that, that really is key. And it's key and many systems that are part of our, our food system. And one of the biggest ways that I think we can experience healing of the soil and of our systems is by including people in our diversity. So you know, women farmers, that's a huge huge piece and Shona, you're a prime example of, of what good can happen, you know, there's just a tremendous talent pool of, you know, minorities and indigenous peoples worldwide and, and women and, you know, people that don't have a place at the table, so to speak. And the more we can heal those systems, the easier it will be to heal the systems in our soil and to, you know, heal the planet.

Terry Hokenson  36:57

Well, maybe this is a good time to transition to discussion about what we can encourage our listeners to do and to, you know, educate themselves further. We'll be right back.

Terry Hokenson  37:26

Okay, we're back now. This is Terry Hokenson with Leslie McKenzie and Bob Dahm and Shona Snater on phone from Lewiston. Now, we want to kind of pivot a little bit here to talk about what people in the city can do to encourage this, this conversion to regenerative practices, both out in the farmland and in the city. Just recently, I toured some farm plots in the city here, and realize that actually, there's a lot of people growing food in the city. It's not just it's not just ornamental things and flowers and whatnot, that not that I I love those things, and I plant them myself. I work with Minnesota 350. We have a food and agriculture group that's very active. And talking to Leslie here who is active with Transition Twin Cities. And Bob does a lot of work just through his own business, converting people to a different mindset. What have you guys got to got to offer as far as things people can get involved in? Shona, you've talked about the Land Stewardship Project? Are there other organizations you're aware of that people out outstate and even in the city can get involved in?

Shona Snater  39:03

Yeah. Besides LSP, there's the Sustainable Farming Association. There are other nonprofits, Practical Farmers of Iowa. You can look them up online. I, I would have to say, in terms of consumers contributing to the regenerative ag, I think the biggest thing would be seeing that a larger mid size market is developed for grass fed beef, so that we actually have some of our own Minnesota farmers contributing their beef up to the cities or to Rochester. They're so much market potentials that haven't been developed, that we could really make a change just by doing that.

Leslie McKenzie  39:51

As consumers, how do we find farmers who are growing this way so that we can support them by buying their products?

Shona Snater  40:02

Yeah, that's a good question. Farmers markets for sure. And I think at least for some of the co-ops that are around in our area, more pressure needs to be put on them to develop relationships with local farmers and start buying beef from them. The best thing that we can do is for people to be connected with farmers. So developing relationships, the best avenue I see for that is through farmers markets, more farmers are starting to do direct marketing.

Terry Hokenson  40:34

Wonder if cooperatives could help spread the word because I've talked to a number of farmers that have given up on farmers markets, they grow things and they bring them and things that don't get purchased at the time, or basically go into the compost, they tend to take orders and then grow the produce, they need to fill those orders.

Leslie McKenzie  40:58

I was going to share that Transition Longfellow used to do a yearly farm visit. Our farm was not in Minnesota, it was just over the border in Wisconsin in Alma, Wisconsin. And we would take people to tour a farm where they had switched to all grass fed beef. They also raised pigs and chickens and ducks. And they would demonstrate their farming techniques, that was a wonderful way to get first hand view of how their animals were raised without use of antibiotics without being confined, unless they wanted to be. It was it was a beautiful experience. Plus, it was a really fun day. So we could take people out as a group and talk to farmers about the economics, of which I understand are quite complicated when you're trying to sell direct to consumers. And I can't remember exactly how we found that farm because they didn't sell at farmer's markets. But I'm wondering if we found them - there's a directory, a Minnesota-grown directory - Shona, do you know, if the Minnesota Grown directory which is online, includes information that would tell us what kind of farming techniques these farmers are using?

Shona Snater  42:25

Oh, that's a good question. I'm not, I'm not sure about Minnesota. I know our Farm Beginnings program just started a farmer directory in Minnesota for LSP for farmer members. And you can go on there and see where these farms are at and what practices they're using. So that's another option as well.

Leslie McKenzie  42:45

You know, I want to mention, when we talk about supporting farmers who are really having a lot of trouble right now, there is a program called Grow a Farmer, Shona probably knows about that. They recently set up a fund to help farmers who are looking for some financing. Loans are often quite expensive. They received $95,000, which they're now distributing out as grants and loans to farmers who are working - maybe Shona knows a bit more about it. This is through a group called Slow Money Minnesota. The Slow Money Movement is a national movement, a patient, we could call it "patient money." You're going to loan it out, you're going to get it back. You may decide what the timeframe is, you're going to earn less interest. But the interest is not necessarily the most important point. Maybe what you really want to be supporting is the growth of, for example, regenerative agriculture, or transitioning more farmers to organic techniques. So it's a way that those of us who want to see this move forward can start to use our money to help farmers to do that. Right now farmers are bearing all of the burden for this. How do we help them?

Shona Snater  44:10

Yeah, actually, that's the first I've heard of the program. But that's really interesting.

Leslie McKenzie  44:15

Through renewal... 

Shona Snater  44:16

We also need more funds freed up for large farmers to learn how to implement techniques like cover crops, and no till. There's a pretty steep learning curve that takes probably three to five years to get over that hump. And so just helping through that transition period, will help farmers to you know, get on to some of these regenerative ag practices as well.

Terry Hokenson  44:40

Is anyone familiar with any legislation that's in the pipeline that would affect these causes? I know that the Sustainable Farming Association as well as Land Stewardship Project and perhaps many other organizations. I don't know, you could add to this list - sponsor tours that people can go on to see actual regenerative farming happening. I mean, it's, I've done a couple of those, and they're, it's very fascinating. It's fascinating and entertaining. It's a great thing to take kids on. I went to a farm out near Granite Falls, which show it was small, I think only 20 acres, but they had they had pigs and sheep and goats and chickens. And there's some really kind of entertaining details, where they had the in the chicken enclosure, they had some geese which were tasked with protecting the chickens. Their job was to fend off any aerial attacks, you know, from hawks or whatnot. They were guard geese. Who would have ever imagined that geese could be used to protect other animals and also the the pigs were out rooting around in the trees? And that look to me, like, between me and the trees, there was a strip of ground that had been plowed up with tractors but turned out it wasn't the tractors, it was the pigs.

Leslie McKenzie  46:22

One way to learn about regenerative practices, which is rebuilding systems, is the study of permaculture we used to have several different organizations teaching permaculture in the Twin Cities. Right now, I believe, Big River Permaculture may be the only one offering permaculture design courses. But permaculture is a system of design that goes about mimicking natural systems and rebuilding natural systems. And when you talk about touring, there's Harmony Park in Harmony, Minnesota way at the southern edge. Nice trip. There's, I believe a campground there. They have truly regenerative farm and then once the set up the system for this farm, it kind of maintains itself. It's in a forest environment. It includes animals, they have chickens and ducks, they literally planted squash, some of that squash just dies in place and the seeds go into the ground and then they recover. They come back the next year. So they're literally not planting every year for at least some of their crops. They just let them regenerate on their own. And they are doing intercropping within a forest system. And you can tour that if you stay staying in the campground. There is usually a permaculture convergence once a year in Harmony Park and you can learn different permaculture principles there.

Terry Hokenson  47:53

Friends, I encourage you to learn as much as possible about regenerative agriculture and gardening and how healthy soil is created in the regenerative model. Then, whatever brings you joy related to that, whether eating regeneratively produce food, gardening, sharing with your neighbors and friends or educating legislators, join our support and advocacy organization. Indulge in that joy. Your spirit as well as nature will guide you. Thank you, Leslie and Bob and Shona. I really appreciate your contributions today.

Leslie McKenzie  48:34

Thanks for having me.

Bob Dahm  48:35

Thanks Terry.

Sarah Riedl  48:49

Nourish by MN350 is a production of MN350's Food Systems team. We are changing the way people think about food production, distribution and consumption practices in the context of rapid climate change. This series is made possible by the hard work and passion of a group of dedicated volunteers. This episode was created by Terry Hokenson and recorded at KFAI for the Wave Project. Our executive producer for Nourish by MN350 is Sarah Riedl. Our sound editor for this episode is Ben Herrera. Our logo was designed by Fizz Design Collective, and our music is by Ecuador Manta. You can learn more at MN350action.org/podcasts.