My son asked us to turn off one of our favorite farming podcasts. Turns out he said what the whole family was thinking. by Chad
Call us weird. Call us soil nerds.
This past month our family spent a lot of time in the pick up driving to FFA events & soccer all over the state. On one particular drive, we’re all in the pick up and we decided to catch one of our favorite regenerative ag podcasts — I won’t say which podcast — naming it would make me the one throwing stones. The person being interviewed was hurling insults & “villainizing” conventional Ag. As we all listened, it sounded maybe like the person was inexperienced — but nevertheless — Carston said — can we turn this off? He said what we were all thinking… and the sense of relief as it turned off was palpable. We found ourselves at first being roped into the debate, but then quickly realized – no.
Quite a moment to reflect upon. Our oldest, a regenerative native, asking to turn off one of our favorite podcasts. It took me right back to some of the conversations in our tasting room. We’ve created a safe place for people to share their experience and opinions. But what I’ve found myself doing is bringing people out of “villainizing” — “Oh, farmers are ruining our food?” or “Big Ag is messing up the whole system” to more of a middle ground. Of course every story loves a villain and people will change more readily with pain — but in order to sustain change we need pleasure.
We’re not going to connect with one another and solve things like how we farm if we create division.
Big Ag. I wrote about this — here, here and here. It seems clear, who better to help us scale than Big Ag and Big Farmers. In my experience – they all care deeply for the farmer (Big Ag that is) and care deeply for the health of our planet and soil. Example: imagine if Costco (Big Corporation) only carried regenerative meat… 1st, there’d be a shortage of meat, 2nd there’d be huge demand at the regenerative grower level. The benefit of the Big is scale.
We need all of us — big and small — to work together. And I prefer the carrot not the stick. Logic over finger pointing.
The science is clear. We have an incredible opportunity with the way we farm to capture more carbon — AND — put more nutrition in our food and wine. If we lead with logic and bring solutions to the table we can help influence the future of farming.
How do we know? Because we’re seeing it on our own farm. Our crops are healthier. We’ve seen earth worms show up. The ecosystem is kicking in. The sheep love it — The shearer said recently: “I’m so surprised your sheep had never been fed grain — only grass, they look great”.
This is what inspires us — not stones. Togetherness inspires us. Not finger pointing. Come talk to us. Ask Jeana, or me, or the boys. We’d love to share more about what we’re doing. We’re inspired. But we won’t listen to stone throwing podcasts. And we’d love to bring more people to “purple”.
June 5th — Watch “Groundswell” on Amazon Prime. Get ready to be inspired.
And — stop tilling your garden!!!
Cheers!
