ep. 57: Gabe Brown - Innovator, farmer, businessman, author & soil health pioneer

Jan 18, 2019

On episode 57 we welcome Gabe Brown - farmer, businessman, author and soil health pioneer.   Gabe, along with his wife, Shelly, and son, Paul, own and operate a diversified 5,000-acre farm and ranch near Bismarck, N.D. Their operation focuses on farming and ranching in nature’s image. The Browns holistically integrate their grazing and no-till cropping system, which includes a wide variety of cash crops along with multi-species cover crops and all-natural, grass-fed beef, poultry and sheep. This diversity and integration has regenerated the natural resources on the ranch without the use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides or fungicides. Over 2,000 people visit the Brown’s ranch annually with visitors from all 50 states and 16 foreign countries

Brown has recently released the book "Dirt to Soil" - which described their personal voyage into regenerative agriculture.  This insight gained over a these decades has established a knowledge-base.  In his this first book Gabe Brown has distilled all that complexity into five (5) principles of a healthy soil-ecosystem:

• No disturbance (no-till, no-synthetics)
• Bolstering Soil's Natural Defense (the outer-layer protecting all that life)
• Bio-diversity (marrying nature's way keeps the system healthy)
• A living root in the ground as long as possible (covercrops & seasonal diversity)
• Animal & Insect integration (nature relies on the entire system working together)

Nutritionist Jay Vilar joins again as co-host.  Vilar is the founder, and a practitioner at ‘Nourish’ – a bespoke consulting company with a mission to educate, teach, and train people on the benefits of using food to heal your body and optimize your health.  Jay has always been on the forefront of using optimal health techniques, and bio-hacking his nutrition to achieve remarkable results in his career. Jay now spends his time teaching people how to use food to heal their body and speaks to businesses on how to optimize focus & productivity using nutritional and behavioral science.  Jay recently completed a Fellowship at the Rodale Institute, and just relocated from DC to join our crew in Boston.

It's a fascinating 45 minute conversation with a guy who has a unique ability to tell it like it is.  To clarify and simplify some pretty sophisticated subject matter so that we can all better appreciate the broad-reaching values that soil health and regenerative agriculture can bring to our world.

 

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