US rancher Gabe Brown leans back in a chair in quiet corner of the Wilmot shearing shed in northern NSW and smiles as he fields successive questions from a handful of rural journalists.

He’s half a world away from his ranch in North Dakota, but he is completely at home as he talks about his favourite subject—the role of livestock in building healthy soils, and what that means for healthy animals, healthy landscapes, healthy food, healthy people, and healthy farm balance sheets.

He has just delivered a keynote speech to an enthralled audience of more than 400 people, some of whom have travelled across States to this secluded corner of the Northern Tablelands just to hear him speak.

As more people queue up to ask him questions, we tell him we’ve taken enough of his time.

But he insists he’s happy to keep answering questions, and that’s exactly what he does, all day. Throughout the rest of the event he can be seen chatting away contentedly, smiling and greeting people warmly, as, one after another, more people wait patiently for their turn to talk with him next.

A pioneer of the soil health movement, Brown has been named one of the 25 most influential agricultural leaders in the U.S., delivered a TED Talk in New York, published books, appeared in documentaries, and co-founded both the not-for-profit Soil Health Academy and the global certification company Understanding Ag.

His own 5,000-acre ranch in North Dakota receives more than 2,000 visitors a year, and he travels to hundreds of farms worldwide annually.

Yesterday, Australian producers traveled across state lines to hear him share the story of his 30-year journey in regenerative agriculture.

Here are some of the many messages he shared in an hour long opening address:

“Your farm is a direct reflection of you”

“Our goal as land stewards should be to grow healthy soil,” Gabe explained.

“You put me anywhere on this earth that has soil, and I’m going to heal that ecosystem,” he said, acknowledging that while it might sound like an arrogant statement, it was rooted in experience. “It’s all about stewardship. That is what it is.”

“We’re desertifying the world at an alarming rate”

“The deserts we see that in the world today are all man made,” he said, showing a revealing image of a huge gorge in the Chihauhan Desert of Central Mexico.

Eagle-eyed crowd members could make out the thin shining thread of barbed wire strung across the top of the open gorge.

“That tells you that that gorge wasn’t there long ago,” Gabe said. “And in talking with the locals, that fence was built 60 years ago. So that erosion occurred in the last 60 years.”

He pointed out that you can also see carbon moving down deep into the profile of the soil on the exposed gorge wall.

“That tells you this was once a very diverse, prolific grassland. It tells you that mankind’s actions have desertified it.”

“It’s the damn cattle, right? Well, no, it’s the management of them”

It wasn’t the cattle but rather the management of them that had caused the desertification, he said.

“What I’m showing you here is simply proven science that if you remove greater than 50 percent of the above ground biomass, you’re stopping the root growth in that plant.

“That plant then has to start sloughing off roots in order to regrow. Okay, so anything over 50 percent removal, you’re causing desertification.

“And as I travel around the world we see this over and over and over again.”

Change the way you see things

“Back in 1997 my life was changed when I went to a conference and I heard a rancher from Alberta, Canada, make this statement: He said:

If you want to make small changes, change the way you do things, but if you want to make major changes, change the way you see things

“And driving home from that conference that evening, I distinctly remember thinking, ‘Gabe, it’s up to you. Your ranch can be what you want it to be, if you manage or steward accordingly.”

“So that’s how then I can be so arrogant and say, ‘no matter where in the world you put me, if there’s soil, I’m going to heal that ecosystem’.”

No excuses

“I’m literally on hundreds of farms all over the world every year, and I hear the same excuses – ‘You don’t understand. We can’t do that here. We can’t do that here’.

“Look what they’re doing in Mexico. They’re hanging poly reels on cactus.

“Now, I understand you’re not going to be able to do that everywhere, but I tell you what, I’ve been over a lot of Australia, and it’d be pretty easy to string a poly line, you know, and that then is how we start healing the landscape.”

Solar energy generates true wealth

He provided examples of ranchers in the Chihauhan desert who have completely turned around desertified landscapes with minimal rainfall, in one case as little as 12.7 millimeters in two years, followed by one fall of 76mm of rain which sparked profilific pasture growth.

“How can you get such growth on such little amount of moisture? The answer lies in soil health and in aggregation.

“There’s absolutely no reason for any farm to not be profitable, because the way to generate true wealth is by capturing solar energy.

“Solar energy is free. We have to harness the power of photosynthesis.”

So my question to you is, how much sunlight are you capturing on your farm, how much are you letting go by and hit the soil surface?”

Debt free in 12 years

Gabe recalled four difficult years that he and his wife Shelly endured in the mid-1990s when they lost four crops in a row to hail and drought.

“At the end of that fourth year, we were $1.5 million in debt, which back in 1998 was a lot of money for a young couple.

“By harvesting solar energy and focusing on that resource, I was debt free in 12 years.

“We can do that anywhere, if we put our minds to it. It’s all about understanding how ecosystems function.

“It’s through observation that we begin to understand how ecosystems function and how we can increase our profitability.”

No inputs since 2007

Gabe said he has “not used one pound of any input since 2007”.

“Everything we do, all the crops we grow, all the forages we grow, is all done through solar energy and biology in the soil.”

How soil aggregate is built

“As farmers and land managers, our profitability is directly related to how soil functions and how a soil aggregate is built.

“People tell me, ‘but Gabe, you don’t understand, my soils aren’t like that’.

“And I say, “Oh, let me guess, they’re made up of either sand, silt or clay.

“They all are, right? Nobody can argue that, held together by biotic glues.

“So anywhere in the world, it’s the same.

“Our job as managers is to keep building those aggregates and cycle that solar energy.

“Soil aggregates only last about four weeks, before biology consumes them and the glue holding them together breaks apart.”

To form an aggregate, he explained, you need living roots which help bind the particles together.

Gabe said he likes to travel with a shovel and to dig up plants and look what’s happening in the roots of those plants and whether they well aggregated.

The forming of new soil aggregates will help water to infiltrate the soil.

“Then, as we build aggregation deeper into the soil profile, we’re going to be able to access more nutrients deeper. We’re going to be able to cycle more water. We’re going to hold onto more water. We’re going to have more biology, and it just exponentially increases along with our wealth.”

Provide a home for microbiology

Removing more than half of the above ground biomass means roots are being pruned shallower and shallower.

“You’re losing your aggregation. You’re going to infiltrate less water, you’re going to have less biology, and you’re certainly going to cycle less carbon.

“We need to realise that microorganisms live in and on thin films of water in the pore spaces between those soil aggregates.

“How much home is there for biology?”

Sniff the soil

Gabe says he also likes to take the time to sniff the soil.

“You do it enough, you can tell if that soil is bacterial dominant or fungal dominant.

“You don’t want a bacterial dominant soil because, in other words, all you do is you have a lot of prey, but you don’t have the predators in the soil.

“You need to have the protozoa, nematodes and fungi that eat that bacteria, thus driving the nutrient cycle.”

Build aggregation all the way to bedrock

For every 1 percent increase in soil organic matter – in other words carbon – you can hold an additional 75,000 litres of water per foot (12 inches/300 millimeters), he said.

“Now you start building that aggregation to depth. Go down four feet, six feet, eight feet. That’s why, when I was out on the farms the past several days, I would ask each farm manager, how deep to bedrock?

“You should build aggregation all the way to bedrock. There’s no reason you can’t.

“You build aggregation that deep. How much water can you infiltrate? How much can you store? How much biology will you have?”

Only one legal way to steal water

Gabe then shared one of his favourite quotes from his friend Burke Teichert from Understanding Ag: “There’s only one legal way to steal water make sure the rain or snow that falls on your land soaks in and never leaves.”

The years 2020, 2021, 2022, were the three driest years in recorded history at his home in Bismarck, North Dakota, he said. “We received less than 120 millimeters each year for three years total precipitation.

“My son seeded the arable land back to annual crops each year, and he harvested a crop every year.

“Now I’m not going to say it was bumper yields, but it was profitable.

“None of the neighbors harvested a crop. You see, it’s stewardship or management that makes the difference.”

Profitability also has mental health benefits

“So why do we want to go down the path of regenerative agriculture? Why do we want to go down this journey?

“For me, it was simple.

“I was losing my rear conventionally. I needed to make money.”

He explained that the team at Understanding Ag is consulting on well over 2100 farms covering more than 36 million acres.

“We keep track of all types of inputs, profitability, etc. What we have found is that regenerative farms and ranches have a 76 percent greater profitability.

“What does that do for mental health? What does that do for family relations?

“My wife says I was pretty cranky back when I was 1.5 million in debt. I’m a lot easier guy to get along with now.”

What is “regenerative agriculture”

This is the definition that Gabe says he likes: “Farming and ranching in synchrony with nature to repair, rebuild, revitalise and restore ecosystem function, beginning with all life within the soil and moving to all life above the soil.”

Key issue: Not giving plants enough recovery time

Gabe said that one of the most difficult things to get across to producers was that most were not providing adequate time for plants to recover.

“I’m often on farms where they say, ‘well, we’ll come back every 25 or 30 days, or even 40 days. That isn’t near long enough.

“Those plants are not fully recovered and you’re pruning the roots.

“All you have to do is stick a spade in the ground and see how well aggregated your soil is and to what depth.

“The land never lies. I can walk out on a paddock and tell you the past history simply by observing and sticking a shovel in the ground.

“And I’m going to tell you whether it was over grazed, whether it was under stocked, what the management was like.

Recovery time depends on the amount of ‘effective’ moisture

“Now, the amount of recovery time it takes is dependent on the amount of the effective moisture – not what falls, but how much is infiltrated into the soil, and then how much can you hold there.

“And it’s determined by growing season. Too many people think, ‘Oh, I have long rest periods, but it’s not during the growing season. That plants not recovering, right?

“It has to be during the growing season.

“I’d say the minimum days should be 60, but really should be 100. And when you get into more brittle environments, such as the one I’m in, we graze our paddocks one day every 12 to 14 months.

“Now I have clients in more brittle environments that graze one day every two to three years.

“But fact of the matter is, they’re making more profit on that one day every two to three years than most stockman make in that same period of time, much more because they’re more much more resilient, and because they have adequate recovery time.”

Scientific proof of more nutritious food

Another element of the regenerative agriculture systems was the production of more nutrient dense foods.

“We’re involved in some really groundbreaking research that is proving that healthy soil equates to healthy plants, healthy animals, and the possibility then of healthy people.”

He described a project working with a food nutritionist at Utah State University using a mass spectrometer that can identify over 2500 different phytonutrient compounds.

“We help them identify farms that are going down the regenerative journey and have been going down that path for a while.

“We identify those farms, then we go to a neighbouring farm, same soil type that farms, quote, unquote, conventionally.

“We grow the same fruit, vegetable, protein, grain, whatever the case may be, on both farms.

“Then the team of scientists is testing the biology, how much microbiology is in the soil, what species are in there, what’s the fungal component etc, etc.

“They test the plants. They then do a count of wildlife species diversity, bird species diversity, insect species diversity, plant species diversity.

“Then when we harvest, whatever it is we’re producing, we run that through a mass spectrometer.

“Doesn’t matter whether it’s beef, milk, honey, grain doesn’t matter. It. What they are finding is there’s not a little difference. There’s a major difference. Not only in the array of phytonutrients, but also the amount of them, in some cases, 2500 times higher.”

Food as preventative medicine

“So what does that mean for us as farmers? We prove that out, and the consumers are going to want to pay for it, and they are paying for it.

“You know, my son markets all of our products directly to consumers. We’re receiving approximately 25 percent higher than organic prices.

“What would it mean to each of us in this room if people started consuming food as preventative medicine. What would that mean?

“We would have a much healthier society, we would be much healthier ecologically, and it brings profitability back into farming and ranching.”

Tomorrow – “Consumers are starting to put their money where they mouth is” – but what are the barriers to market take up of regenerative agriculture branded products in Australia?