Podcast appearances and mentions of ryan slabaugh

In this episode of The Regenerative by Design Podcast, Joni hosts Ryan Slabaugh from Think Regeneration to discuss the importance of systemic thinking in building resilient and healthy food systems. The conversation begins with Ryan sharing his background in regenerative agriculture and the challenges that come with promoting regenerative practices in a world where industrialized and globalized food systems dominate.Ryan emphasizes the importance of community-based decision-making in establishing regenerative systems, highlighting that real change occurs when local communities prioritize supporting farmers and sustainable practices. He shares anecdotes from his experience, such as working with AcresUSA (www.acresusa.com) and witnessing the backlash farmers faced when the public began blaming them for environmental issues. This experience underscored the need for systemic approaches rather than finger-pointing.Joni and Ryan delve into the challenges posed by large-scale industrial agriculture and the loss of human connection in food systems. They discuss how the dehumanization of farmers and the consolidation of food production have distanced consumers from the sources of their food. The conversation also touches on the broader implications of this dehumanization, drawing parallels with other societal issues like law enforcement.Ryan shares examples of innovative community-driven projects, such as the work being done in Tucson by an organization called Flowers and Bullets (www.flowersandbullets.com), which revitalized a vacant school for urban farming. This project not only improved the local food supply but also addressed social issues like rising rents in the area. The discussion highlights the importance of maintaining local ownership of farmland to ensure that communities retain their resilience and volunteerism.The conversation wraps up with a discussion on the challenges of engaging large corporations in the regenerative movement. While Ryan and Joni acknowledge the efforts being made by some companies, they stress the importance of grassroots leadership and the need for these companies to genuinely commit to improving human health outcomes through regenerative practices.Overall, the episode emphasizes the importance of systemic thinking, community involvement, and the need for a more human-centered approach to food systems to create a truly regenerative future.Think Regeneration (thinkregeneration.com): This is the website for Ryan Slabaugh's organization, which focuses on accelerating changes in the food supply through community-driven regenerative agriculture practices. The site provides information on their programs, events, and how to get involved.Regenerative by design is hosted by Snacktivist.  Snacktivist Is an innovation company that helps bring regenerative and organic supply chains to life through product development, ingredients sales and market building.    Visit snacktivistfoods.com to learn more.

“[Regenerative Agriculture] is a mindset that early adopters and farmers have, and it's a love of life that we're translating into the food supply, how we look at our food, how we look at our farming, and how we look at our agriculture. This is a multi-generational mindset shift that is dependent upon us.” —Ryan Slabaugh  Our current agricultural system revolves around sustainability— maintaining the status quo while doing minimal damage. But our world can no longer afford this argument. We need a better narrative, a regenerative one that encourages growth, revitalization, and improvement.  By realigning our agricultural practices with the ecological realities of our time, we will be able to approach the future with a hopeful lens. And this requires a shift not only in our mindset but also in our actions.  Think Regeneration, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, was established by Ryan Slabaugh with a focus on the regenerative movement. They are actively developing programs throughout the nation that aim at assisting farmers and ranchers. Their strategy includes revitalizing food cultivation ecosystems, curbing chronic disease rates, amplifying the perspectives of regenerative cultivators, and enhancing community resilience. Listen in as Justine and Ryan present a different perspective on regenerative farming and how education plays a role in getting the outcome that we want. Plus, they also discuss the challenges faced in the regenerative space, the indispensable role of education in changing the narrative around regeneration, the importance of building the vision before the policy, ways to provide support for farmers and ranchers, and facing the question of long-term sustainability.  Meet Ryan:  Ryan Slabaugh is the founder and director of Think Regeneration and former executive director of Acres U.S.A., a 51-year-old education and media company known for being the Voice of Eco-Agriculture. Ryan has more than 20 years of experience leading businesses and individuals through change. Ryan is also the chair of the board of directors for Resource Central, a diversified nonprofit in Boulder, Colorado, that supports water management, landfill diversion, and energy use reduction goals for thousands in Colorado and students around the country.    Website Facebook Twitter LinkedIn YouTube   Connect with NextGen Purpose: Website Facebook Instagram  LinkedIn YouTube Episode Highlights: 01:38 Meeting Different Needs  04:23 What is Regenerative Agriculture 08:03 The Role of Education 14:03 The Challenge in Changing the Narrative 20:32 The Future of Regenerative Agriculture 23:34 The Biggest Concern  

On this episode we welcome Anne Biklé and David Montgomery, as well as co-host Sarah Day Levesque, to the program. Anne and David recently published What Your Food Ate, a deep dive into the research around regenerative agriculture tactics. They read hundreds of research papers, talked with dozens of practitioners and ended up … hopeful. Listen in as they talk about their book, how they see us building a more resilient human being through changing our food supply to focus on nutrient density, microbiology and plain old common sense. 49 minutes. Hosted by Ryan Slabaugh. Listen to the episode to find a way to save 10% on their new book at Bookstore.AcresUSA.com.

In this episode of the Direct Farm Podcast, we're excited to welcome back Ryan Slabaugh and Jorge Abrego for another podcast at Barn2Door HQ. Ryan and Jorge share the origin story of ACRES USA and the mission they have pursued ever since. Show Notes:https://www.acresusa.com/https://www.barn2door.com/resources

Two great guests on the podcast this week in Ryan Slabaugh and Sarah Day Levesque of Acres USA, North America's oldest publisher on production-scale organic and sustainable farming. We discussed how to better communicate the importance of soil health for sustainable farming, the lessons regenerative agriculture can learn from organic farming, soil carbon sequestration markets, how to better engage conventional farmers on sustainability, the agtech landscape and more!

Hosted by Ryan Slabaugh & Ben Trollinger / Sponsored by BCS America Good day and welcome to Tractor Time podcast, brought to you by Acres U.S.A., the Voice of Eco-Agriculture. I’m your host, Ryan Slabaugh, and as always, I want to say thank you to our sponsors, BCS America. Today’s theme is all about happy pigs, and profitable pig operations, and an interesting breed called Guinea Hogs.  First, I’ve got someone to introduce to everyone this episode. It will be the new host of Tractor Time, which I’m proud to say is Ben Trollinger, the new editor at Acres USA. I’m not going too far, but will stay involved helping Ben produce and grow the podcast, while I get to go focus on getting a few new exciting projects up and running. Ben will join before he interviews Cathy Payne, our guest on this episode. Cathy is the author of Saving the Guinea Hogs, a new book that is on sale in the Acres U.S.A. bookstore. First, I recently took a trip to Rodale Institute in Pennsylvania, and got a chance to tour their hog operation. To make sure this episode is all pig-themed, I thought I’d share some audio I got from touring their operation.  Thanks again to our listeners and our sponsor, BCS America. You can find this podcast at ecofarmingdaily.com, acresusa.com, or anywhere podcasts can be played. Thanks, and have a great week.  If you want, shoot a note to Ben at btrollinger@acresusa.com. He’d love to hear from you.

Episode 2: Fungal Disease (7:28) How can you prevent fungal diseases that will affect your crops and soil? Learn more from soil expert Glen Rabenberg in this Soil Works episode focused on correcting the cause to fungal disease pressure. It is always cheaper to correct the cause than react to the symptom. Questions include: Will a good crop rotation reduce fungal disease? Is there a certain growth phase more susceptible to fungal diseases? How do I correct the causes of fungal disease? Hosted by Ryan Slabaugh, publisher of Acres U.S.A., the Voice of Eco-Agriculture. Learn more at https://www.soilworks.com/.

Episode 10: Climate Change (7:41) In this episode, we are going to expand on that topic and talk about how you can help offset climate change with soil and carbon management techniques. It is always cheaper to correct the cause than react to the symptom. Questions include: What are you seeing as far as climate affects on farms? Can agricultural correct the cause of the climate crisis? If so, why isn’t it? Hosted by Ryan Slabaugh, publisher of Acres U.S.A., the Voice of Eco-Agriculture Learn more at https://www.soilworks.com/.

Episode 9: Carbon (7:49) Why is carbon important to your plants and soil health? Learn more from soil expert Glen Rabenberg in this Soil Works episode focused on correcting the cause of imbalanced carbon:nitrogen ratios. It is always cheaper to correct the cause than react to the symptom. Questions include: Why is carbon important? And what should the carbon:nitrogen ratio be? Hosted by Ryan Slabaugh, publisher of Acres U.S.A., the Voice of Eco-Agriculture Learn more at https://www.soilworks.com/.

Episode 8: Biological Farming Problems (7:21) So you’re trying a biological program and it failed. Why? Learn more from soil expert Glen Rabenberg in this Soil Works episode focused on correcting the cause of biological programs that aren’t working the way they should. It is always cheaper to correct the cause than react to the symptom. Hosted by Ryan Slabaugh, publisher of Acres U.S.A., the Voice of Eco-Agriculture Learn more at https://www.soilworks.com/.

Episode 7: Nitrogen Deficiencies (8:36) How much nitrogen do you really need to buy every year? Learn more from soil expert Glen Rabenberg in this Soil Works episode focused on correcting the cause of rising bills related to nitrogen inputs. It is always cheaper to correct the cause than react to the symptom. Questions include: Why is my N bill increasing? Does synthetic nitrogen decrease soil carbon? Isn’t the air full of nitrogen? Why can’t I utilize it? Hosted by Ryan Slabaugh, publisher of Acres U.S.A., the Voice of Eco-Agriculture Learn more at https://www.soilworks.com/.

Episode 6: Unhealthy Soil (7:30) Many farmers inherit or develop unhealthy soil, but how do you fix it? Learn more from soil expert Glen Rabenberg in this Soil Works episode focused on correcting the cause of unhealthy soil. It is always cheaper to correct the cause than react to the symptom. It is always cheaper to correct the cause than react to the symptom. Questions include: How do you define healthy? Will soil testing tell me if my soil is healthy? How do I correct the cause of unhealthy soil? Hosted by Ryan Slabaugh, publisher of Acres U.S.A., the Voice of Eco-Agriculture Learn more at https://www.soilworks.com/.

Episode 5: Herbicide Resistance (8:14) How can you better manage weeds, and learn the good ones from the bad? Learn more from soil expert Glen Rabenberg in this Soil Works episode focused on correcting the cause of herbicide-resistant weeds. It is always cheaper to correct the cause than react to the symptom. Questions include: People tell me a weed just a plant growing out of place; what do you think? What is the problem a weed is trying to solve? Hosted by Ryan Slabaugh, publisher of Acres U.S.A., the Voice of Eco-Agriculture Learn more at https://www.soilworks.com/.

Episode 4: Mineral Deficiencies (9:17) How do you know what minerals you need or have too much of? Learn more from Glen Rabenberg in this Soil Works episode about correcting the cause of mineral deficiency. It is always cheaper to correct the cause than react to the symptom. Questions include: My soil test shows excess minerals, so why do I have a deficiency on my sap test? What makes my soil minerals bio-available? Is there one key element that makes all minerals available? And if so, how do I get that in my soil? Hosted by Ryan Slabaugh, publisher of Acres U.S.A., the Voice of Eco-Agriculture. Learn more at https://www.soilworks.com/.

Episode 3: Tilling (7:54) To till, or not to till, that is one of the questions. Learn more from Glen Rabenberg in this Soil Works episode focused on correcting the cause of your tilling issues. It is always cheaper to correct the cause than react to the symptom. Questions include: Does tillage really kill microbes? Doesn’t no-till increase organic matter? What is the right answer, to till or not till? Hosted by Ryan Slabaugh, publisher of Acres U.S.A., the Voice of Eco-Agriculture. Learn more at https://www.soilworks.com/.

A brand new series from Acres U.S.A., the Voice of Eco-Agriculture! Episode 1: Compaction (7:25) Compaction is a common issue for all growers. Can you tell if you have a compaction problem with your soil? Learn more from soil expert Glen Rabenberg in this Soil Works episode focused on identifying and correcting the cause of soil compaction. It is always cheaper to correct the cause than react to the symptom. Questions include: How do I know I have compaction? What are the symptoms of compaction? How do I correct the cause? Hosted by Ryan Slabaugh, publisher of Acres U.S.A. Learn more at https://www.soilworks.com/.

Hosted by Ryan Slabaugh Sponsored by BCS America Good day and welcome to Tractor Time podcast brought to you by Acres U.S.A., the Voice of Eco-Agriculture. I am your host, Ryan Slabaugh, and we are humbled to bring you the 30th episode. Today’s topic is one we have to talk about, but it’s not a whole lot of fun – Monsanto. Our guest today, Carey Gillam, is a veteran reporter who has been covering corporate America for 25 years, including Monsanto and most recently, Bayer. This year, she’s been busy covering the Monsanto trials, suing agencies under the Freedom of Information Act, and discovering an amazing array of corruption that is fueling the more than 11,000 lawsuits against the company. Mainly, she’s uncovered the fact that Monsanto has lied to and tricked farmers, land managers, growers, ranchers and city managers for 50 years about RoundUp. That as they tell their employees to behave differently around the product than they do consumers. And that they paid for fake science, paid off reporters, and got especially cozy with politicians around the world. France’s Parliament is exploring charges that they kept a list of politicians they liked and disliked. That’s nothing new to us here in the U.S., but that level of targeted lobbying does not go over so well elsewhere in the world. But the bottom line is, it’s toxic to human and animal health, and juries around the world that have heard their defenses do not see any redemption in them – in fact, it is quite the opposite. The lying has only added to their penalties, and their liabilities now range in the trillions, and Bayer’s stock price is 40% declined from where it was at the time they purchased Monsanto.’ Here’s a clip from the Canadian Public Broadcasting Channel’s recent coverage, which summarized the issue: To be clear, we are talking about the specific formulation Monsanto uses in its RoundUp product that includes glyphosate – that’s an important distinction. Monsanto’s spokespersons deny all this and say there is no proof their product is unhealthy or shouldn’t be used. You can still find it everywhere, and even though towns and ciiteis are starting to make it illegal to use, it’s use is still prolific. And who is fueling this worldwide coverage? Our guest today, Carey Gillam. She wrote a book called Whitewash: The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer & the Corruption of Science, published by Island Press, in 2017. The way she threads her reporting in with current events paints a damning picture of Roundup, even garnering praise from Erin Brockovich. And our guest today makes the strong point that banning RoundUp or glyphosate, or suing for billions, does not solve the real problem we are facing: an agriculture and food supply dependent on the lies that Monsanto has been giving farmers, and the safety nets are a bit too far down to feel comfortable leaping. It’s our listeners who will really be solving this problem, but taking the information Carey gives us today to educate us on the forces at work in the herbicide world, and how we can make informed, healthy choices. You can make a difference by how you grow food, the food you buy at the store, and by the manner in which we defend eco-agriculture. So, let’s get into the interview with our guest today: As a former senior correspondent for Reuters' international news service, and current research director for consumer group U.S. Right to Know, Carey Gillam's areas of expertise include biotech crop technology, agrichemicals and pesticide product development, and the environmental impacts of American food production. Gillam has been recognized as one of the top journalists in the country covering these issues. A special thanks to our episode sponsor, BCS America.

Hosted by Ryan Slabaugh Good day and welcome to Tractor Time podcast brought to you by Acres U.S.A., the Voice of Eco-Agriculture. I’m your host Ryan Slabaugh, and today our episode is focused on soil health, and the philosophies of Glen Rabenberg. Glen has spent a lifetime journey building a system that works across climates and soil types, and in the next hour, we’re going to ask him to walk through his journey, and how he piece together the knowledge – and wisdom – he needed to eventually start his company, Soil Works, which helps so many farmers around the world. As you will also hear, Glen will be leading a farm tour at our Healthy Soil Summit, August 21-22 in Davis, California. Registration is open at www.acresusa.com, and we are only allowing about 150-200 into the event, so sign up soon. Glen is also working with us to produce a series of podcasts we will release this summer focused on short, simple tactics you can employ on your farm to increase and improve your soil life. One other announcement: We will also be opening registration to our annual conference, this year in Minneapolis, Minnesota, December 9-12, in May. We have a ton of great speakers — some new, including Marty Travis, the start farmer in the movie, Sustainable. We really want to see you there – we’ll be talking about biodiversity, regenerative agriculture and diversification tactics and a whole lot more. But today’s program is soil-soil-soil with Glen Rabenberg, and his life journey. Our guest today, Glen Rabenberg is the founder and owner of Soil Works LLC. Born and raised in Bancroft, SD, he graduated from Desmet High School in 1980. He was awarded a Bachelor of Science in Animal Science, General Agriculture and Agriculture Economics from South Dakota State University in 1985.  Glen then went to work for Walco International as an Animal Science Technical Advisor. He spent most of the following years with Walco working with animal pharmaceuticals, veterinarians, and farmers. Through his experience he began to notice trends in the animal science industry.  He saw that many of the diseases he was employed to treat were the result of nutritional deficiencies from poor grains and forage that the animals were consuming. Rather than conforming to the traditional methods of soil science, Glen brings his knowledge of animal science and applies it to the soil. Glen continues to search for new ways to restore the soil and aid in the production of quality food.  He aims to “bring soil back to the way nature intended.” He still maintains his third generation farm in Bancroft, SD and travels the world solving the world’s soil problems with a little bit of simplicity and the “rite” tools.

Good day and welcome to Tractor Time, brought to you by Acres USA, the Voice of Eco-Agriculture. I’m your host, Ryan Slabaugh, and it feels like a spring day here in Greeley, Colorado, where we are recording episode 27 on this 20th day of March in 2019. It’s been a very interesting week in eco-agriculture, and while I don’t want to get too much into the news, it’s worth mentioning that we have a bunch of customers lose buildings to the heavy winds and flooding in the Midwest and out near our offices, we are following another Monsanto trial that decided the behemoth is responsible for informing its users about the potential risks, including cancer, and the European Union has decided to investigate both Monsanto and Exxon’s involvement in climate change denials. So the pressure’s on. A lot of people I’ve talked to think a vacuum is coming, where Roundup will be replaced by something … and we know the toxic race is on, but we sure hope some farmers can find a way to use nutrient-based farming techniques on part of their land. At least, that’s why we are here today. We are going to talk to Jodi Helmer, a journalist, gardener and author of six books, who with Island Press is releasing a new book, Protecting Pollinators (Island Press, available in the Acres U.S.A. bookstore.) We wanted to take this chance to talk bees and butterflies … and even long-nosed bats. We haven’t had an episode dedicated to this topic yet, so we needed one, as we know pollinators are one of the secret ingredients for growing food that we’ve neglected to include in a lot of our commercial agriculture systems. We’ll learn more about where we are with this today, how the protect the bees movement is doing, and what we can do with the land we own, rent and work at to help foster a better environment.

Good day and welcome to Tractor Time, brought to you by Acres U.S.A., the Voice of Eco-Agriculture. I’m your host Ryan Slabaugh, and I’m happy to bring you the 26th episode of our podcast. Thanks again to Albert Lea seeds for making this episode possible. A few announcements — Minnesota is the theme of today’s show. Acres USA will be in Minnesota in December for our annual conference, and one of the reasons — other than the great December weather there — is the amount of trailblazing agriculture that is going on in that region. You can learn more about our event at www.acresusa.com — tickets will go on sale later this spring. But before that, we’ll get into some of that agriculture, and talk to some of the country’s original grassfed beef farmers.  Today, we’re going to have two cattlemen on the show to discuss their operations and some current topics, a few of which are creating quite a debate: Matt Maier, with Thousand Hills Cattle in Minnesota, and Will Winter, a teacher of holistic animal medicine and founder of the American Holistic Livestock Association. I met Will at our annual conference a couple years ago, and recognized his trademark cowboy hat and beard. He’s written for our magazine and spoken to our audiences before, and we’re excited to have him on the show today. I met Matt’s team at our conference last year and learned that they had pursued Savory Institute Hub certification, and are — and have been —leading the way with regenerative agriculture. Their cattle were grazing 365 days a year in Minnesota, which is not an easy thing to accomplish, and takes a disciplined system. Will and Matt worked together in Minnesota at Thousand Hills. During our talk, they walked me through the Polar Vortex experience, where temperatures reached -30 on their farm, and their reactions to the Green New Deal, as well as sharing some ideas and inspiration for new cattle farmers.  Here’s a video that shows off the environment at Thousand Hills: https://youtu.be/5ZezvrKOxS4

I met a brilliant man in the 1970's a couple of times in Kansas City, Missouri. His name was Charles Walter, Jr. I was living in California at the time (the state was in much better shape than it is under today's maliciously insane state government). His greatness was not because of his intellectual brilliance (lots of brilliant men and women have chosen paths of destruction), as much as the fact that his intelligence and deep perception were combined with a genuine desire to see a better life for generations to come. His focus was agriculture. To him, it was not just our source of food, he also understood it was the origin of economic wealth. A single seed of corn planted in good soil can return hundreds of similar seeds. This is a pure gift from nature, from God. Not a trade or a business deal, but a pure gift, the origin of wealth. Once the gift of corn is received, creativity and labor are added, and it is turned into many useful forms and traded into the economy to become wealth. But it's all possible because of the original gift of nature. Charles connected to his understanding of economics all based on what can happen after nature's gift is received by humans. He said, "to be economical, agriculture must be ecological." So he was responsible for the term Eco-Agriculture. Now the magazine that Charles started, Acres, USA is headquartered in Colorado (www.acresusa.com). It's General Manager, Ryan Slabaugh, a friend of Lost Arts Radio who has been on the show before, is going to be talking with me about where we are in agriculture in America today, with all the GMO's and toxic methods that most farmers use, and what he thinks is going to happen in the years ahead. We'll talk about the Green New Deal, free market capitalism, socialism and a lot more. It's going to be an incredible conversation, so I hope you can be there with us.

Welcome to Tractor Time, brought to you by Acres U.S.A., the Voice of Eco_Agriculture. I’m your host Ryan Slabaugh, and lucky enough to be the GM/Publisher of Acres U.S.A., and very lucky enough to sit down and produce our 25th episode of Tractor Time. And thanks again to BCS America for being the sponsors of today’s program. Today’s guest – I met Fred Provenza, professor emeritus in the Department of Wildland Resources at Utah State University, at our annual conference last December. We talked a bit about farming and soil, but in all honesty, we talked more about our common hobby of skiing and winter sports. When it came time to scheduling guests, I knew I needed Fred on the show so we could actually talk about our day jobs, and his lifetime of research into animal and human health. So, today’s guest – Renowned animal behaviorist Fred Provenza has spent his academic career researching how animals respond to an intricately tuned system of flavor-feedback relationships. In other words, animals somehow instinctively seem to know what foods they need to stay alive and healthy. But what about us humans? Do we possess that same wisdom? He wrote about that in a new book from Chelsea Green called Nourishment: What Animals Can Teach Us About Rediscovering Our Nutritional Wisdom. We’re going to get into that book, but more importantly, we’re going to use that book to talk about the larger health issues, and how our own bodies and own biology often can defy us – but they can also tell us exactly what we need to know. We’re doing to cover that and a lot more in this episode of Tractor Time, brought to you by Acres U.S.A. We recorded this interview on Wednesday, Jan. 23, via phone.

Hosted by Ryan Slabaugh. Sponsored by Albert Lea Seed. Good day and welcome to Tractor Time podcast brought to you by Acres U.S.A., the Voice of Eco-Agriculture. We are happy to be bringing you another episode, our 1st of season 3 starting this year, and 24th overall. On today’s program, we’re going to honor our 2018 Eco-Ag Award winner, who we celebrated in December at our 43rd annual conference. Jeff Moyer, is a longtime organic farmer, author, lecturer. His work with Rodale Institute, both in hands-on farming and as executive director, is advancing the state of the art of organic agriculture and building bridges to bring these methods to mainstream, conventional farmers. His talk at our conference was aimed at helping farmers see the future of the organic certification industry, and how words like “regenerative” and “sustainable” are already being fought about in the advertising board rooms across the world. “Like it or not, we’re in a food fight,” he says. “Right now, organic is in the middle of that fight. So is the word regenerative. And sustainable. And sustainability.” Other past winners who have showed up on the Tractor Time podcast have included Dr. Vandana Shiva, who won in 2017, Gary Zimmer in 2011, Ronnie Cummins in 2009, Joel Salatin in 2006, and Neal Kinsey in 2003. Learn more about Rodale Institute here.  

Good day and welcome to Tractor Time podcast. I’m your host, Ryan Slabaugh, the GM of Acres U.S.A., and we are excited to bring you another fun hour of conversation about ecology, agriculture, smart farming, human health – and more. I want to thank our listeners. We recently went over the 20,000th download as a podcast, which is exciting for us. The world of eco-growers is always larger than we anticipate, and to us, that means things are changing for the positive. We hear so much about degenerative agriculture and its toxic toll on our world, but there is a silver lining – you. The listeners who are fighting tradition and convention with smart growing tactics, by understanding the soil, are the solution, and slowly but surely, we are making progress. It’s important we all agree on that one. It’s not that we don’t have challenges, and that they are not large and complicated, but we do not that the base-level agreement we want to get to is that the Earth, and its complicated and resilient life forms, will tell us what we need to know to grow our food. But it does require us to listen. Okay, the high horse is getting tired, but it’s true. Our listeners are the silver lining, and one of the brightest spots on that lining is our guest today. Daniela Ibarra-Howell is a native Argentinian, an agronomist by profession, and has more than 25 years of ranching experience. In 2009, she helped start The Savory Institute, headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, and became its CEO in 2011. Since then, she’s served on initiatives as wide as the UN Global Impact study, among a number of other roundtables and think tanks for healthy food and healthy agriculture. They are just too many to name. Daniela will be a big part of Acres USA in the next couple months, a fact that we are very grateful for. She will be speaking at our annual conference in Louisville, Kentucky, Dec. 4-7, and keynoting an evening there. She will be featured in the November issue of our magazine, with an interview with Chris Walters. And, of course, we’re proud to have Daniela Howell on the Tractor Time podcast today. Learn more about the Savory Institute at https://www.savory.global/. Learn more about Acres U.S.A. at www.acresusa.com, or read our free, helpful content at www.ecofarmingdaily.com. You can find this contest on both sites, or for free in the Apple Podcast store.

Good day and welcome to Tractor Time podcast brought to you by Acres USA. I am your host, Ryan Slabaugh, and we are excited to bring you another episode – this one will be about advocacy, and how to get involved to make real change happen. Our guest today embodies that sentiment, Judith McGeary. Those who attend our conference every year should know her name, as she is a frequent speaker. But why we ask her to speak is most important – that she is the founder and leader of the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, and represents about 1,000 ranchers and farmers in Texas who help advocate for government to better represent all of its constituents, not just the huge corporate farming interests. She’s also a rancher herself at the McGeary Family Farm a couple hours outside of Austin, Texas. How she found her way into this role is something we’ll discuss during the podcast, and her story is inspiring. It involves a career change, and some life-changing moments with farmers and politicians.  Not only does Judith lead FARFA, but she serves as the executive director of the Council for Healthy Food Systems and on the board of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund. And this year, she’s leading the Raise Your Voice Tour to learn more about what type of advocacy farmers and ranchers need the most. We’ll get into that, and more, in this 40-minute talk. You can learn more about FARFA at farmandranchfreedom.org, and their October conference. You can learn more about the Acres USA conference, where FARFA will be presenting, at www.acresusa.com.

Welcome to Tractor Time, brought to you by Acres U.S.A., the Voice of Eco-Agriculture. I’m your host, Ryan Slabaugh, the GM and publisher of Acres USA. Last week, I took a trip. I spent about 36 hours in the car driving from Colorado to Illinois, down to Columbia, Missouri, back to Illinois, and back home to Colorado. For a few days while I was in Missouri, I spent time at a sacred ground to us. At the University of Missouri, hidden among the tall brick buildings, is an open space called “Sanborn Field,” run by a guy named Tim Reinbott. You probably recognize the name if you’ve ever been to our conference. There, Tim has built and preserved what a professor named William Albrecht built there a century ago. Prof. Albrecht started test plots in hopes of showing what happens when you grow corn, continuously without fertilizer or manure, and what that does to the soil. I’ll save you the suspense. It looks terrible. The stalks, miniature compared to the other, more well-fed test plots, were brown and only about two feet tall. The video’s on our website, ecofarmingdaily.com, if you want to check it out, too. But it’s him talking about how, because Missouri’s soil has natural phosphorous and nitrogen, it wouldn’t take much to regenerate that continuous corn plot. But they aren’t going to do it. It’s too good of a reminder. It was near these fields that Charles Walters met William Albrecht for the first time. Charles, while trying to piece together the information that would build the foundation for Acres USA’s belief in ecology-based agriculture, found scientists he kept interviewing telling him about Albrecht. Charles being Charles, he did his research and found out Prof. Albrecht was just down the road a couple hours. He called the university, and they told him not to bother. But, again, Charles being Charles, he got in the car anyway and drove to meet the scientist. When he knocked on the door, a voice boomed out, “Don’t knock when you enter and leave the same way.” Charles walked in – and I learned all this from his son, Fred – and when Charles walked in, without even an introduction, said, “You must be from Western Kansas. You have good teeth.” Albrecht had pioneered research to connect local food to local health. It’s science that more should understand today. He pulled dental records from the military and matched those with the amount of calcium found in the soil and they matched. It’s an incredible study, still available for free on the University of Missouri’s academic research site. Anyway, the conversation sparked a longtime friendship. Charles would edit more than a dozen volumes of Albrecht’s research, and used that research to develop his stubborn and accurate view of agriculture – that the only way to make money, to make farming a viable job, is to work with nature. He met other Albrecht students like Neal Kinsey, and founded a lifetime friendship – in fact, Neal and Charles may have been Albrecht’s last students. In Columbia, we heard from more than a dozen farmers and consultants who employ the Albrecht system of growing, and have proven results. Most of them are using the mineralization techniques Albrecht preached – balancing magnesium and calcium – and advancing on that research with biological techniques of composting and manure and the like. Nobody walked away with a question of whether or not the methods lead to results. The irony – was that all this was being presented in Monsanto Auditorium. Their hold on farmers being educated is not lost, but the biological processes we were sharing in its halls were far more important. In a cynical way, it just reinforced why we were all there, and why Sanborn Field down the street is so sacred. So anyway, all this driving and inspiration got me thinking, that for our next show, we needed to go back in time and dip into our archives, and find a good conversation with Charles Walters. We found one of the last talks of his career, and it was aptly titled, “Then, Today & Tomorrow.” Given in 2006, you will find it’s still relevant today. Charles passed away a couple years later, so I guess we are in his tomorrow. To all those listening, let’s keep up the good work, keep our food connected to nature, and feel blessed to have those who came before us pave such a clear path ahead.      

Welcome to our 16th episode of Tractor Time podcast, brought to you by Acres U.S.A., the voice of eco-agriculture. My name is Ryan Slabaugh, and we are fired up to bring you another hour of conversation about ecology, agriculture, and this hour, we’re even talking about saving the world. We have two guests on our show today. One is Mary Battjes, and I have the pleasure of working every day with Mary. She’s our project manager, and recently wrapped up a survey of young farmers around the country and world. We spoke with a lot of them, and found their look at the world and their role in the world so inspiring. Speaking generally, they want the same things most of us want — safety, security, family and a healthy environment. Yet, they see the obstacles very clearly. Climate change. Technology disruption. And an economy that favors the big devouring the small. Yet, there is hope. And it comes in the form of our second guest, Douglass DeCandia, a young farmer from New York. He grows food using natural methods, but he does so with an even greater purpose – to serve those who are forgotten by our food system, who are systematically discriminated against because of who they are, where they are from or where they live. His “farm,” and he uses quotation marks around that so I will ask him about that later, serves youth and adults who are incarcerated, students at a school for the deaf, and young adults who are part of a residential treatment program. He also supports a number of his area’s food growing products, and when we talked to him today, he was wandering around the gardens at the school for the deaf.

Good day and welcome to Tractor Time Podcast by Acres USA. I’m your host, Ryan Slabaugh, and today’s guest is Dr. Nasha Winters. I met Dr. Nasha Winters last year at our conference in Columbus, Ohio. I had heard about her talk from the large number of people who walked out inspired. After meeting her, I can understand why. She was unassuming, funny and presented a message about human health that made a lot of sense. About how we create environments in our own body – similar to how we create environments in our physical world – that either promote and foster health, or the opposite – disease and injury. On this subject, she wrote her book, The Metabolic Approach to Cancer, which quickly became a hit with our audience of farmers and good food advocates. So much so, that at last year’s conference, we sold out of her books before her book signing. Oops. We’ll bring more this year, as she is returning to teach a full-day class on her approach to health in Louisville, Kentucky, Dec. 4-7. Dr. Nasha Winters is the founder, CEO and visionary of Optimal Terrain Consulting. She is a naturally board certified naturapathic doctor, licensed accupunturist and a fellow of the American Board of Naturopathic Oncology. She lectures all over the world and consults on projects, including the ketogenic diet, which is showing huge promise.  Learn more about her at https://optimalterrainconsulting.com/. Learn more about the 2018 Acres U.S.A. Conference at www.acresusa.com/events.

It’s that sound again – tractors, the voice of Charles Walters, and that happy little strum. It all means we are launching into a second season of Tractor Time Podcast by Acres U.S.A., the podcast for farmers who care about the Earth. My name is Ryan Slabaugh, and I’m lucky enough to be your host for a second season. We have a lot in store this year. We are going to talk about a lot of eco-farming tactics and methods. We’re going to go back in time and listen to age-old talks that still apply today. We’re going to talk about with surveyers about the loss of farmland, and what you and I can do about it. Our goal this year is to also make sure we are talking with young f armers, to better understand how they see themselves fitting into the future of agriculture. Anyway, we’re so excited, we hope you are too.  Today’s episode, like our very first episode, starts with the voice of Charles Walters. Charles started Acres USA in 1971 as a vehicle to report on the challenges facing small farms, and to help give farmers a resource for good, healthy, ecological growing in the face of large-scale toxic takeovers of our methods. In today’s talk that we are re-airing from an Acres USA Eco-Ag conference in 1993, Charles introduces us to Neal Kinsey, who at the time, was new to the Acres USA family, and working on his legendary book, Hands on Agronomy. The book has sold thousands of copies to farmers and growers all over the world. In this talk, again from 1993, Neal talks about the premises of his book, Hands on Agronomy. Enjoy, and thanks for joining us again for another season of Tractor Time. Find all the Tractor Time episodes here, or on iTunes.   

In the Acres USA world, Andre Leu is becoming much more than a household name. Leu, who has written for our magazine for years, published The Myth of Safe Pesticides in 2014. He has spoken on the dangers of pesticides for years several times at our annual conference, and will join us again this year. Leu is currently the president of IFOAM – Organics International, and has more than 40 yeas of international experience in all areas of organic agriculture. He has been one of those human advocates, one of those forces of nature, that are pushing the agriculture movement into healthier directions. We spoke with Andre Leu on Thursday, July 20, from his office in Queensland, Australia. Hosted by Ryan Slabaugh. To learn more about Acres USA, visit www.acresusa.com or www.ecofarmingdaily.com.

Charles Walters, Sr. started a newspaper exclusively devoted to ecologically sound agriculture in the early 1970's. Today it is still a powerful voice for eco-agriculture (www.acresusa.com), letting farmers, and those who would like to be farmers, know that there is a way to make an economically sound business out of producing healthy food. This is an incredibly important contribution to the future of America, where our food supply has become ever more polluted by chemical agriculture and factory food processing since around the time of World War II. Acres USA features educational articles and real-life stories of farmers who are large-scale farmers committed to care for the Earth and producing food that can help us regain our health through clean nutrition. I was fortunate to meet with Charles Walters Sr. twice during his lifetime, and was very impressed with his depth of insight into how to heal American agriculture and the American economy at the same time. Ryan Slabaugh is General Manager of Acres USA, keeping alive the Legacy of Charles Walters, Sr. He is leading an operation that is not only educating farmers and those interested in moving agriculture toward a more sustainable future in harmony with nature through the monthly magazine (subscribe at www.acresusa.com), but is also doing this through the medium of workshops and conferences, two of which are coming up this summer. We will get a chance to talk in some detail about what will be taught at these events, and get into what Acres USA sees as the future of American food and farming. Everyone is concerned about GMO's and chemicals in the food supply. But some like Acres USA are working toward solutions, and I urge you to learn about them and listen in on my conversation with Ryan Slabaugh. His work is a sign of great hope for the future.

We know how busy farmers are this time of year, so we feel especially lucky to have our guest on today’s show. He really needs no introduction, but we’ll give it a shot anyway. Joel Salatin is known around most agricultural circles as the most famous farmer in the world. He calls himself a Christian libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic farmer, which is a mouthful, both in words and in meaning. More practically, he’s a successful author and speaker, has written dozens of pieces for Acres USA magazine through the years, has spoken at our Eco-Ag conferences, and through all that, we’ve learned that he is not afraid to be funny, educational, or to step into controversy when he needs to. But his belief in honoring the land and the animals is something we respect the most, and why we are glad to call him a friend.  He spoke to us about the challenges in the eco-agriculture movement growing around the world, and answers some questions about how ecology, agriculture and the food supply can work together. He also talked about how to create a truly "sustainable" farm. "Unless you are generating two salaries from two different generations, you do not have a sustainable farm," Salatin told us.  Hosted by Ryan Slabaugh.

On this week's podcast,we thought it’d be good to turn back the clock to a talk from 2009 at our Eco-Ag conference. Jerry Brunetti, rest in peace, was a fearless advocate for soil management and gave a presentation then called “Soil as a SuperOrganism.” In other words, a super computer built to process everything efficiently and create answers for us that are accurate.  “There is life in rock. There is life that comes out of everything,” he says in this talk. We like that so much, we want to share it with you today. We wish Jerry could still be here today to speak to us in person. We’ll settle for the best that we’ve got — his talk, “Soil as a SuperOrganism.” We hope you enjoy it.   Introduction by Ryan Slabaugh. Learn more at www.ecofarmingdaily.com or www.acresusa.com.  

In this week's episode, we had the pleasure of sitting down with Susan Sink, vice president of development and external relations at American Farmland Trust, a nonprofit organization who collaborates with farmers around the world to help save farmland from development, among many other things.  Susan and the team are based in Washington D.C., and work with policymakers as well to craft major legislation like the Farm Bill, which affects almost every farmer in the country. She and her cohorts travel around and talk with farmers, both conventional and organic, and see how different environments — both political and geographic — affect the agriculture industry across the country. Susan is also a farmer who has diversified her cattle farm in hopes of finding a way to keep her farm going in a very challenging environment for cattle farmers. She speaks to her own experience, and provides words of wisdom and hope that every farmer out there can hear and appreciate. Hosted by Ryan Slabaugh.