As an agency of the United States Department of Agriculture, the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) is tasked with working alongside farmers and ranchers, local and state governments, and other federal agencies to provide financial and technical assistance that promotes helping the environment and agricultural operations.
This series of short videos focuses on the science behind soil health. Under the direction of the NRCS, Robin Kloot, film-maker and Associate Professor at the Arnold School of Public Health, University of South Carolina, interviewed some of the nation’s leading researchers and experts to create this 3 season series. Each episode is about 3 minutes long.
Arizona State University professor and talented filmmaker Peter Byck has been a pioneer in effectively documenting the potential of soil sequestration and the management approaches and practices that are currently being successfully employed to accomplish it and to generate the many environmental and economic co-benefits.
QUICK OVERVIEW: This is an excellent 12-minute documentary that examines the approach of three outstanding cattle ranchers who are healing their land, very rapidly sequestering carbon and increasing their profit margins all at the same time. Highly recommended as an overview of the use of cattle in restoring biodiversity and other benefits and in sequestering CO2.
QUICK OVERVIEW: “100,000 Beating Hearts” is the story of how Will Harms, owner of White Oak Enterprises, converted from traditional commodity agriculture to regenerative agriculture. It chronicles the positive impacts this has had on his land and the environment as well as how it has reinvigorated his community. Provides an excellent overview of the various win/win benefits and opportunities that flow from carbon sequestering regenerative agriculture.
QUICK OVERVIEW: This excellent 91/2 minute video chronicles the many positive transformations and results that took place on the Ranney Ranch in New Mexico when they switched from traditional continuous grazing to planned rotational grazing management. These results are even more remarkable considering that they implemented this new management approach in the middle of a period of severe drought.
QUICK OVERVIEW: An excellent 13 minute tutorial by Doug Peterson, Regional Soil Health Specialist in Missouri the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. He chronicles his experiences transforming his own cattle operation from conventional management to a rotational grazing system, doubling the carrying capacity of his pasture lands while dramatically reducing input costs. His presentation also includes clear and easily understood explanations of some of the biological dynamics and basic principles driving his remarkable results.
North Dakota rancher/farmer Gabe Brown is a world-renowned pioneer in developing and applying the regenerative agricultural practices that not only profitably heal the land but also sequester large amounts of CO2. (He is one of the three producers featured in the documentary “Soil Carbon Cowboys” recommended above.) His successes have been extensively documented by scientists and researchers. Mr. Brown was honored for his pioneering work in regenerative agriculture with the prestigious Heinz Foundation Environment Award for 2021.
QUICK OVERVIEW: This is a 7-minute tour of Gabe Brown’s Ranch and explains how he runs a very profitable operation with no inputs of chemical fertilizer, fungicides or pesticides (the production, transportation, and application of which generate CO2 and other greenhouse gases).
QUICK OVERVIEW: “Regeneration of Our Land: A Producer’s Perspective” is a 16-minute TED Talk that provides an excellent overview of his experiences and the potential of his approaches for restoring healthy, naturally balanced agricultural lands and high-quality wildlife habitat.
QUICK OVERVIEW: “Regenerating Our Resources” is a somewhat longer presentation (44 minutes) at a conference in Australia that gives a more detailed explanation of how Gabe Brown has built an increasingly profitable agricultural operation by focusing on healing the ecosystems on his property and sequestering carbon.
QUICK OVERVIEW: This 2½ hour presentation traces Gabe Brown’s 25 year history of restoring the health of his soil and working with nature rather than against it to transform his farm into a highly profitable, integrated operation that uses virtually no external inputs like fertilizer or pesticides. While this is a comprehensive explanation of the essential elements of soil health and how to achieve it, he explains these concepts in such a clear and engaging way that people with no technical or agriculture background can easily understand them. He highlights some of the scientific research that has been done on his farm, including a comparison of his operation with three neighboring farms that shows that simply going no-till or even organic does not come close to matching the productivity he is achieving on his farm using regenerative agricultural practices. Particularly striking in terms of building drought resistance and controlling flooding and surface runoff is the video segment done by scientists showing that some of his soils can infiltrate 2 inches of water in just 25 seconds.
QUICK OVERVIEW: In this wide-ranging 60-minute interview, Mr. Brown reflects on his experiences over 20 years in converting from conventional to regenerative agricultural practices and how he has seen this sustainable approach spread over that period of time. He also discusses what he foresees for the future in this rapidly developing revolution in agriculture.
Dr. Elaine Ingham is a world-renowned microbiologist who for over four decades has been a leader in developing a better understanding of the dynamics of the soil community and the importance of healthy soils for growing healthy plants. She is the founder of the “Soil Food Web School” whose mission is to “empower individuals and organizations to regenerate the soils in their communities.”
QUICK OVERVIEW: In this 30-minute video, Dr. Ingham presents a basic introduction to soil science and soil biology to beginners. She discusses what the soil food web is and how a healthy soil food web benefits plants. Her presentation also includes some basic suggestions for how individuals can improve the health of their own soil food web.
Seth Itzkahn has been in the forefront of promoting the many advantages of sequestering atmospheric carbon in soils and natural systems, through speaking, teaching, connecting the scientists and farmers and ranchers who are actually doing that and promoting demonstration projects.
QUICK OVERVIEW: An excellent 8-minute TED Talk in which Mr. Itzkahn explains that because grasslands and grazing herds evolved together, grazing cattle in ways that mimic the grazing previously done by wild herds is not only essential to restoring degraded land but can be the key to dealing with global climate change. Features some very impressive comparisons of land before and after being restored by managed grazing.
Dr. David Johnson is a microbiologist at New Mexico State University who has done revolutionary and groundbreaking work on establishing optimal soil fungal/bacterial ratios and introducing a vastly diverse soil organism community to improve soil health and land productivity and to maximize the sequestration of atmospheric carbon. He accomplishes this through a breakthrough composting process that jump starts establishing this vastly diverse micro-biom that greatly increases productivity, water retention and use, lower input costs and generates a wide range of other co-benefits. Using his basic management approach he has sequestered up to 15 tons of CO2/ac/yr and his advanced approach is on track to sequester up to 25 tons of CO2/ac/yr. His work truly is potentially world-changing.
QUICK OVERVIEW: In this 90-second video, Dr. Johnson explains why he and others taking his approach are seeing so much more carbon sequestered in the soils they work with compared to what most other scientists are recording. He also explains how restoring healthy and productive soil microbial communities is a paradigm shift in how we will have to sustainably produce food in the future and why this is the only real option to sequester vast amounts of atmospheric CO2 quickly and cost-effectively.
QUICK OVERVIEW: This is a 17-minute excerpt from a talk in which Dr. Johnson explains the impacts of optimizing the fungal/bacterial ratio and use of his breakthrough compost techniques to improve soil productivity, carbon sequestration and to generate a wide range of co-benefits. He shows some of the results of his research, explains the many benefits and looks at the economics of soil sequestration using his approach compared to other approaches being considered to deal with CO2.
QUICK OVERVIEW: In this 21-minute video, Dr. Johnson explains in more detail his “Biologically Enhanced Agricultural Management” (BEAM) system and “Advanced BEAM” system to restore healthy microbial soil communities to increase productivity, improve water use efficiency, sequester vast amounts of CO2 and generate other co-benefits. He summarizes the results of numerous experiments using these approaches.
QUICK OVERVIEW: This is a somewhat more technical 15-minute overview of his research findings that incorporates his latest successes (through the 2017 growing season) on the extraordinary and increasing yields he is getting with his BEAM approach, the increased availability of micro nutrients that improve the nutritional density of food and other groundbreaking developments.
QUICK OVERVIEW: This 24-minute video is an overview (as of early 2018) of Dr. Johnson’s research in vastly improving agricultural productivity and sequestering large amounts of atmospheric carbon in the process. He reviews the important role microbial communities play in all life on earth and focuses specifically on their role in improving soil health and productivity. Extrapolating from his research results, he estimates that as little as about 20% of the world’s arable land properly managed could sequester all anthropogenic CO2 while greatly increasing crop productivity, producer profitability and generating a range of important environmental benefits at the same time.
QUICK OVERVIEW: This one-hour presentation and Q and A by Dr. Johnson and his wife, Hui-Chun Su (his co-developer of the famous Johnson-Su bioreactor) in which they give a brief overview and update on their research and that of others around the world using the Biologically Enhanced Agricultural Management (BEAM) system they developed. This is followed by a discussion with participants about these developments and suggestions for applying BEAM more effectively.
Dr. Christine Jones is an Australian groundcover and soils ecologist who has done pioneering work in developing and documenting the use of regenerative agricultural techniques to generate multiple benefits as well sequestering vast amounts of atmospheric carbon in soils. She has also been extraordinarily dedicated in promoting this approach around the world having given numerous presentations, workshops and seminars in Europe, North America, Africa, New Zealand and Australia. She has also published extensively in this area.
QUICK OVERVIEW: Dr. Jones is featured in this 6-minute video explaining how regenerative agricultural practices can sequester carbon while providing a wide range of benefits, including producing more nutritious food at lower costs and without the need for artificial fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. She explains how producers must begin to see themselves as “light farmers” who are primarily harvesting sunlight.
QUICK OVERVIEW: In this excellent 37 minute presentation, Dr. Jones provides a clear and simple explanation of the interconnections between conventional agricultural practices and declining soil health, decreasing farm profits, decreasing food nutrient density and quality, the increasing rate of human health problems and reduced ability of soils to store atmospheric carbon among other negative consequences. She shows how improving soil health by nurturing the biological soil community is fundamental to begin dealing with all of these problems.
QUICK OVERVIEW: In this 43 minute presentation, Dr. Jones focuses on the role of microorganisms such as fungi and bacteria in regulating plant and animal biology and health and stresses the importance of biodiversity in promoting healthy microbial populations and thereby achieving maximum soil, plant and animal health. She gives several examples where simply increasing the diversity of plants in an agricultural operation improved soil health and generated these many significant benefits, including greater animal health and productivity and increased topsoil formation and carbon sequestration. She also gives an especially good simple and clear explanation of the emerging understanding of the mechanism of “quorum sensing,” which is the significance of having minimum populations of microorganisms in order to communicate with each other and thereby trigger this wide range of beneficial activities.
A highly successful Missouri farmer, author, consultant and lecturer, Greg Judy, as much as anyone else in the regenerative agricultural movement, has pioneered a highly profitable approach to farming that is environmentally responsible, widely applicable, extremely productive and also sequesters huge amounts of carbon.
QUICK OVERVIEW: is a 75-minute, down to earth and easily understandable overview and explanation of the techniques he has developed to farm very profitably and in an environmentally responsible way without the use of pesticides, herbicides. artificial fertilizer or virtually any fossil fuels while sequestering immense amounts of carbon.
Dr. Kristine Nichols is one of the world’s leading scientists on the mechanisms by which carbon is sequestered in soils. Formerly a scientist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service, she was part of the research team that discovered glomalin, a substance in soils that helps bind carbon and improve soil structure. For that work, she and her team were nominated for the World Food Prize. Currently, she is Chief Scientist at the highly respected Rodale Institute.
QUICK OVERVIEW: In this 5-minute interview, Dr. Kristine Nichols talks about soil, carbon sequestration and regenerative grazing in which she explains that most of the world’s soils are “starving for carbon” and that many of the problems affecting agricultural production are either exacerbated by lack of carbon or could be solved by replenishing soil carbon stocks through a variety of techniques, including regenerative grazing.
Dr. Pat Richardson is a research ecologist at the University of Texas at Austin who specializes in the role of insects in promoting soil health. She has long been active in researching and promoting positive grazing and soil management practices.
QUICK OVERVIEW: This fascinating 16-minute video features microphotography of some of the myriad of organisms that make up healthy soil communities combined with easily understandable commentary on the role they play in sequestering carbon, fixing nitrogen, and improving soil structure, function and fertility. These organisms are so abundant in healthy soil that their combined biomass greatly outweighs that of the animals living on the surface.
Joel Salatin is a world-famous pioneer in profitably integrating various kinds of regenerative poultry and livestock husbandry in a synergistic way that also sequesters CO2 on his 550 acre Polyface Farm located in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. A popular author and lecturer with a worldwide following, Mr. Salatin is one of the most thoughtful and eloquent “philosophers” of the regenerative agriculture movement, exploring the social, cultural, ethical and economic opportunities made possible by converting to this much more earth-friendly but still highly profitable approach.
QUICK OVERVIEW: A 17-minute TED Talk focusing on how plants capture sunlight and CO2 and how properly grazing them can sequester atmospheric carbon, helping deal with the climate issue, while at the same time provide healthy meat and dairy products for human use and improving the environment.
QUICK OVERVIEW: This is an informal 40-minute vlog entry recording of a presentation Mr. Salatin made to a group touring his farm. He explains some of the specific techniques he has developed to improve the productivity and profitability of his farm and some of the potential he sees for regenerative operations like his to revitalize rural America and the world.
Allan Savory is a biologist and the developer and foremost world proponent of Holistic Management and its powerful planned grazing approach to livestock grazing and land restoration. He is currently applying this approach on over 15 million hectares on five continents with amazing results and it is increasingly being employed by other practitioners around the world as well. In the process of restoring the land, vast amounts of atmospheric carbon are being sequestered long term in grasslands and a wide range of environmental and economic co-benefits are being generated.
QUICK OVERVIEW: In this 22-minute TED Talk, Mr. Savory explains how mismanagement of range and croplands around the world is leading to desertification and directly contributing to climate change. He shows a number of comparison slides of desertified land before applying the holistic decision process that guides his livestock grazing management techniques and the amazing improvements after just a few years of treatment. He makes a persuasive case that properly managed livestock grazing is the only hope to stop desertification.
“Running Out of Time”
Quick Overview: This 47 minute video explains the efforts of Project Hope and the African Center for Holistic management, both founded by Allan Savory, that were internationally recognized by being awarded the 2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge award for the success of their efforts to use holistic planned grazing and the holistic decision framework to restore the land, improve ecosystem functioning and generate a wide range of other co-benefits, all while sequestering vast amounts of atmospheric carbon at the same time. A substantial portion of this video is a case study of how this approach is helping rural villagers become more prosperous and food self-sufficient.
Dr. Richard Teague is a professor of sustainable rangeland management at Texas A and M University and is an internationally recognized expert in managing grazing systems to generate the widest range of economic and other benefits including carbon sequestration. A range ecologist and research scientist who has held teaching positions in Zimbabwe, South Africa and now in Texas, Dr. Teague was one of the four expert witnesses along with Win/Win CO2 Solutions Group’s Steve Rich who testified at the congressional hearing linked to above. He has also been a persistent and very effective critic of the limitations of the concepts, methodology and research designs of many academics who claim to be evaluating the many positive environmental and economic benefits that regenerative agricultural practices are clearly demonstrating on millions of acres around the world.
QUICK OVERVIEW: In this 40 minute presentation, Dr. Teague summarizes his research and explains why so many academics are not properly applying the scientific method in their research on rangeland restoration. As a consequence, he points out, they are generating research results that are often inaccurate, misleading and totally at odds with what the best practitioners are actually achieving every year on the ground. As a result, he estimates that most academic researchers are 50 years behind what is being demonstrated by best grazing techniques and 20 years behind what farmers are routinely demonstrating in the U.S. and around the world.
John Wick is a pioneer in the effort to better understand how healthy rangelands can sequester atmospheric carbon and how, through compost application and good management practices, that rate of sequestration can be greatly increased. Using his own ranch in Marin County, California, Mr. Wick has initiated one of the earliest long-term, scientifically verified carbon sequestration studies.
QUICK OVERVIEW: In this 7-minute video, John Wick and several experts show how they are experimenting with techniques to sequester substantial amounts of atmospheric carbon in pasture lands on the ranch, using compost, cattle and timed grazing. They discuss the potential of sequestering enough CO2 in the world’s rangelands to reduce CO2 levels to 350 parts per million.
Dr. Allen Williams is both a sixth-generation farmer and a scientist with degrees in Animal Science and Genetics and Reproductive Physiology. He has authored more than 400 scientific and popular press articles and was a university professor for 15 years before becoming a widely-respected and sought-after consultant to farm and ranching operations. Dr. Williams has been a pioneer in developing and demonstrating methods to improve productivity by improving soil health and in helping farmers and ranchers improve their profitability by developing additional agriculture-based revenue opportunities and enterprises. His ability to combine sound science with personal experience and to explain basic principles and concepts in a clear and engaging way have made him a speaker in high demand both nationally and internationally.
QUICK OVERVIEW: In this 42 minute presentation, Dr. Williams provides a useful overview of the problems facing agriculture and food production both in the U.S. and internationally and discusses the basic principles and concepts that help explain the causes of these problems and can also be applied to resolve them. The last portion of his presentation is devoted to case study examples of successful application of these principles and concepts. Particularly useful is his review of his own four year demonstration of revitalizing former worn out cropland to highly productive pasture in four years using only grazing impact and sequestering over a half percent of soil carbon per year on average during that time.
QUICK OVERVIEW: In this 81/2 minute video, Dr. Williams answers the questions he is most frequently asked about transitioning from conventional to regenerative agriculture practices. His emphasis is primarily on the economics of making such a change, including how reducing a range of input costs as well as access to rapidly developing new specialty markets makes the transition profitable even in the first year.
QUICK OVERVIEW: This is a one-hour keynote address to the 2019 Sustainable Agriculture Conference in which Dr. Williams provides an overview of how European settlement has changed the ecosystems of North America, with consequent loss of fertility and biodiversity. He discusses the concept of “adaptive stewardship,” a universal set of basic rules, principles, practices, and guidelines for restoring soil and ecosystem health to grazing and agricultural lands and what it means for producer profitability, human nutrition, and increasing food production.
There are no big, well funded and well-organized groups pushing for this approach because they do not stand to make the huge profits they will with the mechanical alternatives to dealing with CO2 that they are pushing. So, if this win/win approach is to become the first policy choice for dealing with excess CO2 it is up to people like you to help make it happen. You can easily and securely donate to support our efforts here.