e148. Roots So Deep with Peter Byck

Transcript generated by Podium.page Help us spread the word by tweeting about us at @podiumdotpage and including us in your shownotes! https://podium.page NOTE: There were 2 speakers identified in this transcript. Speaker separation errors can arise when multiple speakers speak simultaneously. 0:00:03 - Cal On today's episode we have Peter Bick, the producer and director of Roots so Deep docuseries. First off, if you haven't seen it, you should go watch it. You should also listen to our conversation about it. Today we talked about what brought him to this docuseries, some surprising findings from it and what to do next. So let's get started with the Fast Five. What's your name? 0:00:31 - Peter My name is Peter Bick 0:00:33 - Cal , and Peter, what's the name of your documentary? 0:00:35 - Peter The docuseries is called Roots so Deep you Can See the Devil Down there, and it's available at rootssodeeporg for anyone to go on our site and rent it right now oh, very good. 0:00:46 - Cal Yeah, when did you start making a docu-series? 0:00:51 - Peter well, the team. The docu-series is about a science project really ended up being much more about the farmers, but the science is at the core and it is a science project. The science team got together for the first time at the beginning of 2014, and so that's when we started putting the team together, designing it fundraising for the first time at the beginning of 2014. And so that's when we started putting the team together, designing it, fundraising for the science. And then, in 2018, we started filming. We scouted in 2017 to find all the farms oh yeah, in the Southeast US and we finished filming in 2022. Some of the science continues, but we had enough preliminary data to share it in the movie, and so it's ongoing. 0:01:30 - Cal Oh, very good. 0:01:31 - Peter And where are the farms? 0:01:32 - Cal located for the docuseries. 0:01:34 - Peter The farms are in the Southeast US. There's one farm in Adolphus in Scottsville, kentucky, it's farm pairs, right, right, and so that's about 45 minutes northeast of Nashville. Then we have a farm pear in Tennessee and Jasper and Sequatchie Cove, which is about 45 minutes west of Chattanooga, and then you go down to Fort Payne, alabama, that's Fort Payne, and then down in the Piedmont Jacksonville area there's another farm pear, and then Woodville, mississippi, is our fifth farm pair oh, very good, excellent which is about an hour north of Baton Rouge. 0:02:09 - Cal Oh, okay. 0:02:10 - Peter Yeah, yeah, If you're not familiar with the area, that helps out a lot. Try to give everyone some spots there. So the Alabama farms are sort of in the northeast chunk about Fort Payne's an hour south of Chattanooga and Piedmont Jacksonville's two hours south of Chattanooga. 0:02:26 - Cal Oh, okay, Very good. Welcome to the Grazing Grass Podcast, the podcast dedicated to sharing the stories of grass-based livestock producers and exploring regenerative practices that improve the land, animals and our lives. I'm your host, Gal Hardidge, and each week we'll dive into the journeys, challenges and successes of producers like you, learning from their experiences and inspiring each other to grow and graze better. Whether you're a seasoned grazer or just getting started, this is the place for you. Attention ranchers are you ready to boost your ranch's profitability in 2025? Join Noble Research Institute for Noble Profitability Essentials in McKinney, Texas, this January 28th 29th. This transformative two-day course will help you unlock the full potential of your land and livestock. Noble's experienced advisors, with over 200 years of combined experience, will guide you through proven strategies to enhance your bottom line. You'll learn how to improve soil health, maximize forage quality, reduce costly inputs and optimize stocking rates. This course is designed to address your unique challenges and build lasting solutions for your ranching operation. Through hands-on activities and interactive conversations, you'll gain valuable skills to create a more resilient, productive and profitable ranch that will thrive for generations. Don't miss this opportunity to learn from the best and secure your ranching legacy. Don't miss this opportunity to learn from the best and secure your ranching legacy. Register by December 30th to save $50 with our early bird discount. Visit nobleorg today to enroll in Noble Profitability Essentials in McKinney, Texas, January 28th-29th. Invest in your land, livestock and livelihood this January. Ten seconds about the farm. I finally got rams turned out. Yes, I'm a little later than I planned to be by about a week, but we got them turned out so we're looking at May lambing for the sheep. Progress is progress, no matter how small. For ten seconds about the podcast, I have two things today. First, the drive to 300,000 downloads. Share this episode with someone, Tell someone about the podcast. Greatly appreciate it. Would love to end the year with 300,000 downloads for the life of the podcast. And secondly, the hardest part about the podcast producing it, getting it together, getting it to you is volume. I check volume levels numerous times through the progress or process. I'm listening in it, I'm listening to it in my ear and I think it sounds good, and then I go listen to it in a vehicle or something and there's some variation. I would love to get any feedback you have on the volumes. Are they good? Is overall it's too soft, too loud, or is there too much variation between the sections. I know I go over it a ton of times, but that doesn't mean it just it just sounds different when it's not in my ear. So let me know what you think about the volume. So, Peter, making this was a huge undertaking, but how did you end up wanting to make this docu-series? 0:06:05 - Peter About farmers and regenerative grazing and things like that. 0:06:08 - Cal Yes, how'd you end up? 0:06:09 - Peter there. So I've always been someone who loved nature. My dad, my mom, we did a lot of hiking when I was a kid. If I ever littered, it was a big deal and actually we picked up other people's litter. We always left it better than we found it and that was just the way I was raised and so all my life I felt like that and like getting to Sequoia and Edgewood Park and Yosemite and just being in nature is always my happiest place and I don't get it nearly enough. And I made a movie. My first documentary features a film called Garbage, which is about garbage problems all across the? U. And then my second documentary features a film called Carbonation. And that was my response, my team's response, to an inconvenient truth Like, okay, there's climate change. I didn't really know about climate change, so my first thought was is it solvable? Can we fix it? What's going on? And I know people know about climate change. So my first thought was is it solvable? Can we fix it? What's going on? You know, I know people debate whether climate change is real or not, but we wanted to show a film that wasn't a bitch and moan film, but it was a solutions film. Oh yeah. So in that film, we realized there's just so many solutions that work. Whether you are worried about climate change or not, it's just a simple fact of you want a cold beer yes. Do you want to give a kid asthma getting your beer cold no. Do you like clean air and clean water yes. And so we really found the common ground amongst the various parts of that debate and we were able to show people that, hey, you don't have to be worried about climate change, but isn't it cool that you can power your house with the sun? And isn't it cool that you can use less energy and still have the same performance of whatever it is? Refrigerators are much more efficient now than they used to be. Tvs things like that In the making of that movie is when I discovered soils as a solution to a lot of things and a problem for climate change and a problem for a lot of things. When you treat the soils well, it's a solution. When you treat the soils poorly, it's a problem. And so when Carbon Nation was done and we had been on the road for three years, I started focusing in on the soils and I quickly found that grazing adaptive multi-paddock grazing rotational some people call it, but you got to be specific about the rotation. Mob grazing is what a good friend of mine calls it. Neil Dennis called it because he's gone and I realized, wow, there's something here. And so I was fortunate enough to meet Alan Williams on the phone and I said hey, I want to make this film that's going to inspire McDonald's and Walmart to buy meat from folks growing it like you're growing it. That's my point, that's my purpose. That was the end of 2012. And I filmed Alan in the spring of 2013. And then he said well, if you film me, you got to film Gabe Brown. So I called Gabe Brown, I'm on up, and if you're going to film me, you got to film Neil Dennis, up in Saskatchewan and Wawona, and Gabe's in Bismarck. So by August of that year I'd filmed the three of them. And then by December of that year we were premiering that short film, actually in Johannesburg for a conference. Oh yes, and that film's called Soil Carbon Cowboys. It's a 12-minute film. It was astoundingly hard to make and I don't know. I just remember when we were making it. Don't forget how hard this film is to make. 0:09:39 - Cal Oh yes. 0:09:40 - Peter That short film led to a $10 million research project, no question. And that short film led to nine more short films about amp grazing in different regions, different ecosystems, and so, while I was working with the science team to develop and then fundraise for the science, from 2014 to 2018, we made 10 short films, the last one being we filmed in the end of April in 2018, and then we were filming Roots so Deep in May of 2018. So it was very much a line, and just seeing farmers succeed in the most trying circumstances, just by the way they were grazing their animals as opposed to their neighbors, it was so fascinating and so inspiring. And that's why we were working on the science, because there was no science studying all the pieces of that puzzle. Nature is vastly multifaceted. But we as a team said, well, let's study the soil carbon, soil, nitrogen. But we as a team said, well, let's study the soil carbon, soil nitrogen, water infiltration, the plants Are they nutrient dense? Are they covering a lot of the soil or not? Birds, bugs, microbes, greenhouse gas, cycling, animal well-being, farmer well-being. So we cooked it down to those metrics and beautiful science team came together for this and and so that's what we decided to measure on both sides of the fence the adaptive side and the conventional side and we were able to. Well, the adaptive farmers couldn't wait for science. They were chomping at the bit, I can say they were as impatient as me in getting the results, and the conventional farmers were naturally wondering what is it you're trying to do here? Are you trying to show us in a bad light? Are you trying to show something wrong? And it was very easy for us to just say to the farmers on the conventional side there is no wrong. We truly believe that. We know you love your land. We know that Every farmer I've ever met loves their land, right? 0:11:54 - Cal Right. 0:11:54 - Peter It's just we think we found a method of grazing your animals that'll cost you less, be more enjoyable and increase your profit per acre and possibly remove your debt. That's the stories we found with the short films that we were making, which is the whole Carbon Cowboys series, which, if you go to YouTube and type in Carbon Cowboys, you can see all 10 of those short films, and all the conventional farmers said yes, they felt that that was a reasonable thing to participate, and so we had all these scientists on both sides of the fence, for some of the science took two or three years and we filmed everything. We filmed everything. 0:12:36 - Cal How many scientists, how many people did you have involved in this project? Because I know from watching it there's a, it's a ton of people. 0:12:45 - Peter Yeah, not even all the scientists made it into the movie, actually into the docuseries. We had more than 20 scientists from seven universities, three private research entities and the USDA ARS, and so it was a big team. It was a lot of scientists, so I think it was 10 research entities, 10 farms, 10 different funders, $10 million. And so it was good that I have all my fingers because I could count on that stuff. Right, right, yeah, and it was enormous amount of work, hardest thing I've ever done, most rewarding thing I've ever done, and that's just from my point of view. Everyone worked on it, had their challenges, had their complications, and I know some of the scientists would say it was very valuable for them. I don't know if all of them felt that way at the end of the day. But I know all the farmers still return my emails and calls oh well, good, that's good. To me, that's huge. Yeah, that's there. Personally, I feel like I made a lot of friends on the farming side. Oh yeah, and you know, for the science team I made a lot of friends and a few folks, you know, we probably realized, hey, you know, this was good, we did good work, but maybe that we, maybe they want to work with me again, or you know that kind of thing. 0:14:13 - Cal Yeah well, everyone's got their own personality. It's hard, man, it's hard, it's hard to it's people. 0:14:18 - Peter It's hard to wrangle that big a team and you know, and scientists are trained to be skeptical, trained to be free thinkers, I think, trained to be certainly the ones on our team and therefore they're not easily put into a box or anything, which we didn't do in our study. But that leaves a lot of folks who might want to sort of go it alone. As opposed to teammate oh yeah, so we had a couple of soloists and as opposed to teammate oh yeah, then a number. So we had a couple of soloists and we had a lot of team team members. 0:14:49 - Cal Yeah, I want to jump back just a little bit. We started this conversation and you're you're talking about filmmaking and now you're into the science part. 0:14:59 - Peter Yeah. 0:15:00 - Cal Um what's, what's your true love in their true passion, soil health and and how it, how it is. 0:15:09 - Peter That's, that's our, why you know soil health yeah is is the reason why and I thought I was looking for a solution for climate change. I thought that was my why oh, soil health sort of superseded that, because our soils are in such bad shape around the world. And by healing our soils, we enable farmers to get out of debt, create healthy food, make the land much more resilient to floods and droughts, floods and droughts, and it is a powerful solution to climate change when enough farmers choose to adopt regenerative practices. It's not a solution globally until it's a global practice, right, right, but our research shows that farmers can be a greenhouse gas sink while they're creating wildlife, habitat, making more money, making us healthier, enjoying themselves more and bringing their communities, their rural communities, back to life. There's so many positives to folks working with nature, and so that's what drives me day in and day out. Of course, I'm a dad, and so do I leave the planet better or worse for my boys. Um, you know, I'm working hard to leave it better, and that doesn't mean we'll achieve it. It doesn't mean we'll succeed all the way across, but I feel better across, but I feel better trying rather than not trying. If I'm in action, I'm much more happy. 0:16:58 - Cal And when I'm not in action I'm not that happy. So, talking about the soil, health and what you got from the docu-series and we'll dive deeper into that docu-series Yep, but did that change your practices for your yard, around your house and what you? 0:17:07 - Peter do locally Cal. I am such a poor example of treating the land well on my own property. 0:17:17 - Cal I live in. 0:17:17 - Peter Phoenix, and trying to keep a yard here is incredibly challenging. 0:17:23 - Cal Well, phoenix is its own challenge. 0:17:26 - Peter Yeah, why is this the fastest growing city in the United States when we have such a water limitation here? I do not know. I'm certainly in Phoenix because I have an incredible job at Arizona State University that's enabled me to do all this work. Oh yeah, we'll stop. I am from Kentucky, I miss the trees, I miss the seasons, and so that's just, that's just my, that's just how it is right now, and I travel so much and I try to be away from Phoenix for the two months my boys aren't in school in the summer. It's kind of hard to even be a good gardener, but I do dream of being a bit more settled back in Kentucky where I can, of being a bit more settled back in Kentucky where I can do stuff. Now, that said, that said, I have a part of my yard that never really seeds well with grass and I just sort of let it go. Oh, yes, a lot of plants growing in there, and so I let that happen. We planted trees because that's a cooling function, and so those are the only things I've done here. Man, it's. You know, I have solar panels and I have electric cars, so I'm using photons to drive around. So that's taking advantage of what Phoenix has to offer. Oh, yes, it is. Our house has some energy efficiency, some insulation that we put in, but I need to do it around the windows and the doors more. But having solar energy is great, because then I do all my laundry in the daytime, so my dryer's going in the daytime and we use appliances in the daytime, and so that makes me feel better. But I fly, I fly, so my carbon footprint's off the charts, and so I am in no way, shape or form, a preacher on this stuff. I'm a consumer of fossil fuels at a great amount, and it's just the way it is. Right now I have friends that work at Boeing. They're working on fuel cell planes. 0:19:17 - Cal They're working on planes That'll be cool that will be, and you're really in a difficult environment there, even beyond your travel and other obligations. I can remember first time I went to phoenix I was just shocked when we flew down. I'm looking out of the airplane and I'm like where's the grass? It's northeast oklahoma to phoenix is a lot different. 0:19:42 - Peter So yeah, yeah, yeah. So northeast oklahoma, you get. What about 35 inches of rain a year 40. Yeah, so that you can do a lot different. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Northeast Oklahoma, you'd get what about 35 inches of rain a year About 40. Yeah, so that you can do a lot with that. 0:19:50 - Cal Oh yes, and in fact we've had 12 inches this month, which is not normal. It's a record month. 0:19:57 - Peter But if you get healthy soils, you'll absorb all that water. Oh yeah, and that's another thing about soil health is how much. It's, how it enables you to get all the rain to stay on your farm, or if it goes off your farm, it's clean and it's not a, it's not another way of polluting our waterways and killing the Gulf and all those things. Oh yeah, yeah. 0:20:17 - Cal But let's let's dive deeper into Roots so Deep our overgrazing section, sponsored by Redmond. At Redmond, we know that you thrive when your animals do. That's why it's essential to fill the gaps in your herd's nutrition with the minerals that they need. Made by nature, our ancient mineral salt and conditioner clay are the catalyst in optimizing the nutrients your animals get from their forage, minimizing the nutrients your animals get from their forage. Unaltered and unrefined, our minerals have the natural balance and proportion that your animals prefer. This gives your herd the ability to naturally regulate their mineral consumption as they graze. Our minerals won't just help you improve the health of your animals, but will also help you naturally build soil fertility so you can grow more nutrient-dense pasture year after year. Nourish your animals, your soil and your life with Redmond. Learn more at redmondagriculturecom. We take a topic and we go deeper into it. So Roots, so Deep. We've already talked about a few things about that, but one thing you mentioned. You mentioned adaptive multipathic grazing, and I know this is readily apparent to most of my listeners. In case someone's new here, what's the difference between adaptive multipathic grazing and what you normally see? 0:21:46 - Peter Yeah, so adaptive multi-paddock grazing is a method of grazing that emulates the way the bison roamed across the Great Plains, and, of course, the bison and the grasslands and the beaver and the prairie dogs created an amazingly gorgeous and the humans that were here too, it was all, everyone was all interacting to create 10 to 12 foot deep, 15 foot deep topsoils. It's just an amazing system of health. And so the animals go in a herd and they're on a piece of land long enough to eat about half of it, and then they move on because the food's better over there or there's wolves chasing them. They stomp the rest. Their urine and their manure has been evenly spread over that area that they've been on, and then they leave. And so all those plants that have been half munched cannot wait to grow back, thus shooting roots even deeper down. As they're growing up, they're completely fertilized and they're just sucking down enormous amounts of CO2, burping out the oxygen for most of us to breathe and then sending carbon down into the whole microbial community. And that microbial community they're the real grazers, they're the engine, and every farmer I know that works in a regenerative fashion will focus on the microbes, and then everything else follows, and the more plants you have, the more diverse the microbial community. And the more diverse the microbial community, the more protected the plants are from pathogens, the more the carbon cycles, and then what's really cool? What's really cool is the more microbes you have, because you have more plants growing and the more plants growing are putting more carbon into the system and more microbes are forming. Literally the population's exploding. Those microbes die and then they they become part of a good, spongy, healthy soil, texture and volume. So those dying microbes actually become soil and so they're building the soil back up. These farmers and and and all of that entails, with porous soil, water infiltration, soil holding on to water in the drought times and we're getting spikes of both. I would talk to a farm the other day? who who was in drought and flood in the same week? 0:24:19 - Cal Oh well, we just had a fast drought, or flash drought, July 4th. It stopped raining and we didn't get rain until November, and now it started raining and we're 150% of our normal amount for November. So it's kind of crazy with that this year. 0:24:30 - Peter So those spikes that are happening more and more. Healthy soil sort of levels off the spikes for the farmers and gives the farmers more resilience, and also for us downstream it helps reduce the flooding impact and it also helps provide us with healthier food. And so AMP grazing is a method to get all that going. Conventional grazing is where folks are letting their animals roam in a large area, not in small paddocks that people are building with their polywire electric fence, but in large areas and instead of letting the animals stay in that area for a day or move their animals twice or three times a day, I was in South Africa. They were moving their animals 10 times a day, oh wow, in a very semi-arid area and it was working really well for them. It blew my mind. So they're moving a lot, letting the land rest most of the time. That's the game. That's what amp grazing is about. Conventional grazing, the area is large that the animals are grazing and they're grazing it down pretty short. Therefore the roots are pretty low, not very long. Therefore the carbons aren't going deep. Therefore the water's not infiltrating very deep. Spoils are getting hard and the animals are sort of overeating the things they like and not eating the things they don't like, and the cowpats aren't recycling quickly like they do on an ant farm because of all that microbial activity and bug activity that's there. So every cowpat that doesn't recycle quickly becomes a part of your farm that can't grow grass and the animals avoid it. Then all this stuff the animals don't like grows up around it. You've got these little patches of lost farm, and so that's the system. That happens in a compounding way on the conventional side. And no, we've met very, very good conventional farmers in our study, very good conventional farmers, but what we discovered was they could be even better. Oh yeah, and so? 0:26:36 - Cal yeah, with your, your amp grazing and conventional grazing, was that the main variable in the two farms as they were pairs that was the variable how they're managing their animals. 0:26:43 - Peter We spent a lot of time scouting the farms. We spent a lot of time then matching soil types across the fence, oh yeah, and then slope and aspect to the sun and all those things. In a real world study like this, where you're not on a, you know, a farm that's built to study what could. It's iron with plots and stuff like that. It's messy, and all of our scientists had messy moments where they're like you know it's messy and all of our scientists had messy moments where they're like you know it's frustrating. But as much as we could, we made it an apples to apples comparison and in our soil types we, you know I do this because the graph that shows are they different or the same? The graph was just like tight. It was really really cool to see that afterwards, Cause that's what we were aiming for, but you don't know until you go to the lab and check this stuff out. But yeah, apples to apples. The farmers needed to have been doing their method. In the Southeast we figured with rainfalls being pretty good and long growing seasons at least seven years. One of our adaptive farmers had been going seven years, but everybody else was decades, on both sides of the fence oh yeah, decades. 0:27:52 - Cal And you brought in all these scientists and you mentioned earlier all the different things they covered. I know from watching Roots so Deep, just that initial data gathering, the thing that surprised me the most was the grassland birds. There Was the difference in population between a AMP managed farm and a conventionally managed farm. I see birds out here. I see we have bobwhites, meadowlarks, we have keel deer that nest in the driveway, but I see these birds out here and to me I make the assumption that's just everywhere, that people have it. But through the documentary, that's the thing that stuck out. Or docu-series, that's the thing that stuck out the most to me. That across the fence line series, that's the thing that stuck out the most to me. That across the fence line. 0:28:51 - Peter that population varied greatly. Yeah, three times just across the fence. Three times more grassland birds on the AMP side than the conventional side, and we knew we wanted to study birds. We had people on our team that insisted we study birds. As a matter of fact, steve Affelbaum and his company that insisted, we steal birds, as a matter of fact, steve Affelbaum and his company, which he's since sold. But Steve insisted that we do the birds and actually we didn't get funded for the birds. 0:29:16 - Cal Oh yes, we got food for everything. 0:29:17 - Peter but we didn't get funded for the birds and since his company was doing the soil core sampling, the plant sampling, that they kind of made it work to get the birds in there too. They squeezed their budget, they, they squeezed their budget and that was actually Steve Affelbaum's company paying for the bird study out of their own pocket. They could have pocketed that money. Oh yeah, and thank God they did, because the birds in the Bobwhite quail specifically became such a a a place of interest for the farmers. And oh yeah, I just didn't know that. You know, city boy from louisville, I didn't know much about bob white quail. I can now hear them and I know they're there, but I didn't realize, like you said, how different the grazing was like. So really, it's just it comes down to to to height as much as anything. If you're letting your forage grow to waist high, then those birds have a nice place to nest, and if you're mowing your fields to to to bale hay, then you're not providing that area. But what was really interesting was we learned our Tennessee pair, the Spangler family, who were doing conventional grazing then and cut their own hay and all those things they hayed late and so they actually provided habitat for those nesting grassland birds to then go through that whole part of nesting, so then the birds could fly off. So we learned that even if you're doing conventional grazing, if you just wait a couple of weeks into the end of June or whatever it is in your region, it will provide habitat for those grassland birds. And, like I said, every farmer I've ever met loves their land and every farmer I've ever met and they want to have wildlife on their land. They, they love it. 0:31:08 - Cal Yeah, yeah, and for me that was the. The thing that really stuck out to me was the difference in bird populations. What was what really stuck out to you or was surprising for you? That's one of them. 0:31:21 - Peter That's a big one, the other one that I was told by a lot of people when we made all those short films for the Carbon Cowboys series. I was told that the neighbors thought the adaptive farmer was crazy. Oh yeah, there's a lot of judgment across the fence just but whispers. And what we found in our study was there was a lot of curiosity from the conventional farmer looking over the fence, seeing the forage so high, seeing the animals looking good, seeing more animals than what they've got. I didn't know there was that curiosity. And once I learned that there was, as I was talking to the farmers, as I was filming, I then said hey, do you guys want to talk together? You guys want to ask each other questions? The conventional farmer do you want to ask the adaptive farmer anything? Hey, adaptive farmer, do you want to hear from? So, like in Woodsville, mississippi, wallace Ferguson was curious. His parents were curious of what the Hearsts were doing, what Cooper and Katie were doing, but they just they didn't want to get in their business to ask about that. They were friends, they talked about everything, but there was something that they didn't want to get in their business. And Cooper and Katie they're first-generation ranchers, they don't want to brag. They don't want to be seen as different people. What to do. It was actually this sort of very polite way of treating their neighbors that was preventing conversation about it. It came from a good place, I think. So that was a huge surprise to me that there was that curiosity across the fence, and we saw that a number of times in the study. That surprised me and I thought that was a huge opportunity, because now that we've done the research, I can tell you I know farmers will benefit if they work with nature. I know farmers will benefit if they work with nature. I know farmers will benefit if they adopt these methods of grazing that we're talking about. I know it. And so if the conventional farmer is already kind of curious, if they have a neighbor that's doing this work, then that's a way to get folks to be open to change much more than I think everyone was telling me before I started this project. Oh yeah, so now I feel like it's kind of my responsibility with this knowledge to share it, and it's not just me, there's a bunch of people. 0:33:44 - Cal Right, right Me personally, when you think about what can I do? 0:33:44 - Peter right, Right, right Me personally when you think about what can I do right. I want to enable as many farmers as possible to know that this is an option, to know soil health can be on their farm, to know that they can do these things. It's just a lot of farmers aren't taught about their soils. They're not taught about soil health and it's no fault of theirs. I don't even want to point a finger at anybody, it's just here we are and guess what? Oh yeah, Pretty powerful stuff. If you see, if your soils are exposed, how hot they get in the summer versus the area where you have grass growing on your soils, you know, and it could be 150 degrees on bare soil in Oklahoma in the summertime. I met a guy from Texas. It was 170 degrees. 0:34:29 - Cal Oh yeah Well, I just talked to someone a couple episodes ago and his tool that he uses quite a bit on his farm is a thermometer, one of those infrared ones, so he can measure soil temperature. And I'm sitting there thinking, not that I know everything, I barely know a fraction, but I'm thinking why did I never think about that? That would be great just to have that observational data, to go with the data on my own place to see what I have so Well that right there. 0:35:04 - Peter That right there, I think, is a way to communicate this stuff cleanly, simply, cheaply, quickly. 0:35:13 - Cal Oh yeah. 0:35:13 - Peter You know I mean that soil in the summertime, wherever you live, the covered soil is going to be 70 to 80 degrees down there and the exposed soil is going to be 100, 110, 120. 0:35:27 - Cal Right. 0:35:27 - Peter That's killing all your microbes. 0:35:29 - Cal They're either stopped or they're dead. 0:35:32 - Peter And it's like I said before. Every farmer I know that's really working on this regenerative way of growing their food. Their microbes are their bread and butter. 0:35:43 - Cal Oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah yeah. So just getting that conversation started, going through this and seeing the curiosity from the conventional and then getting the data back to hey, there's some real benefits to doing this, all through the ecosystem. How do we get that conversation with more farmers? 0:36:05 - Peter I want everyone to watch our film, I mean our docuseries. Is that conversation? It's farmers talking to farmers. It's scientists showing results to farmers. It's the game, it's what we want. And you know, I'll have as many one-on-one conversations as I can have in my lifetime, absolutely. But when 1,000 farmers watch our docu-series and then we do a Q&A afterwards, that's bigger numbers, right, it's scale. And so when we translate our documentary into Brazil to Portuguese, right. When we translate our documentary into Spanish, which we've done it's just we haven't gotten that up running yet in those countries that we can get to a lot of people. 0:36:52 - Cal Oh yeah. 0:36:54 - Peter And I've been studying this type of grazing 12 years now and it just seems to me that it's benefit, benefit, benefit for the farmers, benefit, benefit, benefit for the farmers, benefit, benefit, benefit for the animals and the wildlife and the people eating the food and the neighbors of that farmer. You know, that's another thing that I've come to realize, Cal. You know I've said that every farmer I know loves their land and I believe that Every farmer I know also wants to be a good neighbor, oh yes, and would do anything for their neighbor if asked, and might not even need to be asked if they see there's a problem. 0:37:38 - Cal Right, if there's a need. 0:37:39 - Peter yeah, they'll just be over there. What I've realized is, when you're an adaptive farmer, when you're a regenerative farmer, you're an even better neighbor. You're providing wildlife, habitat that will then improve your neighbor's land. You're providing water infiltration that will then not flood your neighbor. You're actually providing a landscape. That's a better neighbor, better neighbor, and so I think that when conventional farmers understand that this is also a way, by adopting regenerative practices, they can be a better neighbor. I think that'll be. I haven't had that conversation with farmers yet, but that's something I've been thinking about is we've been on the road for over a year showing the series in churches and barns and universities and companies and all sorts of places Around. Well, so far to date we've been all over the US and in parts of Europe and South Africa. I'm going to go on an Australian tour in February. There's a guy who's just doing his own tour in this unit right now. He's like I've got to take this film around. I think he's got seven or 10 screenings set up. It's amazing. Oh yeah, and we, we, we want. I've just been learning and learning and learning on this tour and it's that neighbor to neighbor piece that's, it's exemplified in our series but it's not spelled out that whole idea of being a good neighbor by having healthy land. Oh yeah, it's there, but I didn't highlight it or put an underline on it in the film. But I'm learning that. 0:39:16 - Cal So for my particular case, I ran it and my wife and I watched it Yep, and that doesn't get the conversation going to other people, but I know you're doing screenings around. If someone's like, hey, we need to do a screening here, how do we go about that? 0:39:31 - Peter Yes, our website has a lot of resources. It's roots so deep dot org. Under info there's a set up, a screening tab and we've got a team that'll help. We're going to expand our team. We have just expanded our team to help even more people do that, so that's easy. 0:39:49 - Cal What kind of cost is associated with that? 0:39:52 - Peter They're really reasonable. I don't know exactly what those costs are, but if you have 10 people it's going to be five bucks a piece or 10 bucks a piece when you spread it out you have a hundred people. It's $1 a piece. I think it's in that $200, $300, $400 range. Oh yeah, which? 0:40:08 - Cal is not bad at all. 0:40:09 - Peter But we've never said no to anyone who wants to screen it as well. Oh, yeah. So the answer is always yes. It's just, we're a not-for-profit, so if we can generate income from this project, that's good for everybody as far as we're concerned. 0:40:23 - Cal Oh yeah. 0:40:24 - Peter So I can be here with you right now. The website also has a lot of resources for folks who want to learn, so we basically just steer people towards our good friends Alan Williams and Gabe Brown's Soil Health Academy. 0:40:40 - Cal Oh yeah. 0:40:41 - Peter Right, soilhealthacademyorg. You got a lot of resources there. Go to one of their, one of their schools in an area near you. They're doing them all over the country and and they're, to me, the best teachers. So why? And they're friends and I've learned so much from them. They're teachers of mine and they're actually heroes of mine and and there's other groups that are teaching as well, that's just the one we know best. Oh yeah, so someone watches our film, they'll see that. If anyone watches all the way to the end of the credits, they'll see Soil Health Academy on there. And if you go to our website, it's very clear. And then, if you want to dig into the research, if you want to I know a lot of farmers who love reading science, who love reading the research. There's a research tab on our website and the first dropdown is published research. That's our team. We have 12 published papers to date. We'll probably have six or seven more before this thing is done on our research. And then we have a tab that is related research. So it's just enormous amount of research. We're just building that and building that. And so we have a tab that is related research. So it's just enormous amount of research. We're just building that and building that, and so we want to help connect to resources and we also want to help people, our friends at Kiss the Ground. They have a beautiful tab that shows where you can buy this food around the country. Oh, yes, and so because the farmers adopting regenerative practices, that's an action. But consumers, we need to buy from these farmers, right? Oh, yeah, and so that Kiss the Ground resource we have connected on our website. It's quite good and so those are the reasons. So that's really you're asking like what's next right? What can people do? Farmers go to SoilHealthAcademyorg Consumers. Check out our site. Go to the Kiss the Ground site. Find out where they can be buying stuff and meet your farmers right. And what's really interesting is, if you can buy a quarter and freeze it, you're actually going to be spending less money than you think. It'll actually be more economically viable for you than most conventional meats. That's just what I'm learning. And so even that cost barrier it's not really there. If you can go in with friends, buy a quarter, get it chopped up and then you all get your pieces of it, you'll save a ton of money. 0:43:08 - Cal And you're supporting a farmer using these practices that's showing to be very beneficial for the ecosystem. And then you're being a good neighbor and they're being a good neighbor and you're being a good neighbor, yes. 0:43:20 - Peter And so it's a virtuous cycle, virtuous cycle of good stuff. 0:43:26 - Cal So you mentioned there what's next for the consumer, what's next for a rancher, what's next for you Sleep? 0:43:34 - Peter I actually slept in this morning. I needed an extra hour. In wintertime, you know, when it's dark, when you wake up, oh yeah, I'm like I'm going to take an extra hour. Yeah, I had to like I'm like I'm going to take an extra hour. Promoting marketing, distributing the series is top of mind. We've got an amazing social media team, an amazing social media campaign that's going on right now, so we've got. It's called Carbon Cowboys is our handle, based on the short film series. So if you go to any of the social channels you'll see us there and continuing that filming at conferences and getting farmers to tell us and ranchers to tell us their stories, to collect more and more stories. We couldn't possibly film all the success stories that are out there right now, but we want to try. We actually have a contest right now where Soil Health Academy is going to give away a scholarship for one of their schools. If you go to rootsodeeporg you'll see our contest, and that's the Tuesday after Thanksgiving is Giving Tuesday, where everyone's all the not-for-profits saying donate to us, which I think is fantastic. We've decided to flip it and say we're going to give. So we're going to take Giving Tuesday and we're going to give a scholarship to. 0:44:54 - Cal Soil Academy. 0:44:55 - Peter Oh, very good the contest is for people to nominate somebody to get that scholarship. So then we're gathering stories, right, and we'll pick the winner. But then we'll probably go and try to get folks to film their stories for us so we can post them. So then 50,000 views can happen, 100,000 views and, to date, with all the pieces on our social campaign which are clips from Roots so Deep, clips from the Carbon Cowboy series, clips of people responding to seeing Roots so Deep, clips of people just telling us how life is going on their farm right now, we've got almost 90 million views. 0:45:37 - Cal Oh, wow, I'm not even close to 90 million with the podcast. 0:45:42 - Peter That's what it's about. We weren't either, and now we are, and so hopefully we can help everybody grow. But what's really amazing is how everyone's saying our country's divided and you can make the case for it, but I actually personally feel that we have a lot more in common than not If you just sit down and speak one-on-one. I know that from my experience. Oh, yes, yeah, but what's happened with soil health as developed through regenerative grazing is we're finding that it's attracting everyone In our solution campaign, in the responses we get, in the comments. We get across the channels, across the board. It is across all political social filters. Right, it's everything. Yeah, and that's to me, the power of soil health. It's hard to argue with it, and it's it's. It's easy to love, easy to love. There's a billy holiday song called easy to love. It's easy to love, easy to love. There's a Billie Holiday song called Easy to Love, it's easy to love. 0:46:47 - Cal Oh, yeah, yeah. And one last thing before we get to the famous four Yep. Are you, I think you mentioned earlier that you all released and produced the docuseries but you still had more data coming in? Is there going to be more parts to that released or are you working on a future project with that? 0:47:08 - Peter Yeah, so the data coming in from the Southeast project is captured in the documentary. It's just a couple pieces of data were in the film before the papers were published. Oh, okay, okay, and so it's reflected in. And you know, what we say in the documentary, especially about the greenhouse gas stuff, is you know, all science, our science, like all science, is evolving Right. Here's where we're at right now. So if, when those papers are published, we have to adjust the data in our film, we will, we'll make it very clear, and what I asked the scientist who's leading that team was just give us conservative numbers Come in underneath what you're seeing right now, so that if they change, they'll probably change where the impact is even greater than what we've seen. But whatever it is, we'll change it to whichever way it goes. This is a science project right, right but if I didn't finish the film a couple of years ago and then start releasing it last summer. It wasn't good for my health to not have it finished. Oh yeah. 0:48:15 - Cal I mean, I'm sure. 0:48:16 - Peter I needed that flow of energy to get me out of the house, out into the world and sharing this stuff and and this stuff and enjoying the impact. Seeing the impact Farmers are changing from screenings. Oh yeah, it's real, it's cool, it's so cool. 0:48:33 - Cal It's so cool. Well, Peter, it's time for our famous four, sponsored by Ken Cove Farm Fence. 0:48:39 - Peter Yep Ken. 0:48:40 - Cal Cove Farm Fence is a proud supporter of the Grazing Grass Podcast and grazers everywhere At Ken Cove Farm Fence. They believe there's true value within the community of grazers and land stewards. The results that follow proper management and monitoring can change the very world around us. That's why Ken Cove is dedicated to providing an ever-expanding line of grazing products to make your chores easier and your land more abundant. Whether you're growing your own food on the homestead or grazing on thousands of acres, ken Cove has everything you need to do it well, from reels to tumbleweels, polytwine to electric nets, water valves to water troughs, you'll find what you're looking for at Ken Cove. They carry brands like Speedrite, o'briens, kiwi Tech, strainrite, jobe and more. Ken Cove is proud to be part of your regenerative journey. Call them today or visit KenCovecom, and be sure to follow them on social media and subscribe to the Ken Cove YouTube channel at Ken Cove Farm Fans for helpful how-to videos and new product releases. Same four questions we ask of everyone and we're going to adjust them just a little bit for you, but we're going to maintain that same theme. What's your favorite grazing grass related book or resource? 0:50:00 - Peter You told me to be prepared for this, so this is the first one. A Sand County Almanac. 0:50:06 - Cal Oh yes. 0:50:07 - Peter By Aldo. 0:50:08 - Cal Leopold, you know that one's recommended a lot and I've not read it yet. So I really need to read that. 0:50:14 - Peter Yeah, but Don was just, he was just so ahead of the game and this was March 4th 1948. I mean so ahead of the game. And then this book by Nathan Sayre called the Politics of Scale oh yes, this one's showing that pretty much all grazing decisions were based on a very wet decade in Nebraska. Oh yes, it's like so many of the US grazing decisions that are now like part of BLM regulations were based on one part of the country during an abnormal weather. Oh, interesting, and it's just, it's really interesting. And then this one I'll put this at the top Shred, influenza, nourishment, and Fred's to cook it down. He's showing that animals know how to balance their diet if they're given the right choices of biodiverse forage. They know how to balance their diet on a daily or hourly basis if they have the choice. They know what they eat at that moment. And he's asking the question do we as humans still have that with all the sort of fake food that are coming at us and all the engineered tastes and engineered making you feel full when you're not full of nutrients, all those things? And so those are the three books that I would recommend Excellent resources? 0:51:43 - Cal Yeah, excellent resources. Are the three books that I would recommend Excellent resources? Yeah, excellent resources. Our second question what's your favorite tool? And usually we say for the farm, but let's just say what's your favorite tool for this project? 0:51:56 - Peter The drone, the drone, yeah, my drone oh yeah, I, it's the one I use is called the Mavic Pro by DJI. It's a beautifully engineered product. It's easy to use. I got to film the farms from a vantage point that I don't have, that I've always wanted to have. Oh yeah, I could see the difference in grazing clearly from up above. I love drone shots. I just like them myself. I agree, it's such a good tool to use. I think every farm should have one, because then you can send that drone way away and you can see stuff without having to go all the way out there, especially for the ranchers in the West who have big tracts of land, oh yeah. 0:52:44 - Cal Yeah, so it's the drone. Yeah, I think that's probably the first time the drone's been mentioned as a favorite tool, but I love my drone. Yeah, I could see. Yeah, very beneficial. 0:52:55 - Peter That's a tool that works for me as a filmmaker and for you as a farmer, right? Yes, it does. And just to say it, at the end of episode four I'm showing this shot that I took with my first drone on the film, and then I pulled back and I treated, I treated my drone. My drone got stuck in a tree. That can happen. I had to get a new drone. That's what happened. 0:53:20 - Cal That can happen. I saw a video the other day. That can happen. Just when I saw a video other day, a guy with a drone flew it through and I don't know what type of drone it was. Flew it through a tire rolling downhill. 0:53:32 - Peter Wow, that's skill. That was crazy. Precision, that's skill. Yeah, anyway, what advice do you give to someone just getting started? And let's, let's break that into two parts right In filmmaking. Start making a film, and there's so many applications for editing, they're real easy to use. Just start making short, short films. That's, that's what I would say. Just get going, but don't try to do a big film, don't try to do a 10 minute film. Do a one minute film and film people in your family. Ask them questions, find out things about your family members that maybe you didn't even know, and be curious. Be curious. 0:54:13 - Cal I love that Be curious, yeah, and excellent advice, that advice of just getting started. We share so much, just on the agricultural side. 0:54:22 - Peter Yeah. 0:54:22 - Cal As as a second part of that question, what? Do you recommend for someone just getting started in agriculture? 0:54:30 - Peter Well, I am not a farmer, and so I know what Alan Williams says, I know what Gabe Brown says, and so go to I'd say go to SoilHealthAcademyorg. But one thing that I know in animal agriculture they say start small, right, start with chickens. And if you want to get a ruminant, start with a small ruminant, like sheep. Don't buy land, get yourself a lease on land and try to. I would say, from my perspective, from what I've learned, go work for the farmer you most respect. Oh, yes, and learn on their nickel while you learn, yeah, and don't worry about debt and all that stuff yet and land acquiring. And there are a lot of farmers in their 50s and, well, a lot of farmers in their 60s and 70s whose kids don't want to continue the farming that would love to know their land's going to continue in this method of farming and and they're looking. I, I, I know that that alan talks about connecting people like that. You know those, those, those things, because I, I think there's a huge need that I've seen where farmers need that next generation. It's not necessarily coming from their children, but what I've also seen is when farmers go towards adaptive practices, their kids are much more it seems like much more apt to come back to the farm. 0:55:58 - Cal I can see it because, to be honest, it just looks a little healthier out there. 0:56:04 - Peter And the parents look a bit happier. 0:56:06 - Cal Oh, yeah, oh yeah, and that makes a big difference. Their bank account's a bit better. That makes a big difference. Excellent advice there, peter. And lastly, where can others find out more about you and the docuseries? 0:56:18 - Peter Well, if you go to rootsodeeporg, you'll see everything you need to know about seeing our series, and if you use Carbon Cowboys as our social media handle, you'll get a lot of new stuff all the time, all the time. That's really where it's at right now. 0:56:34 - Cal Oh, very good. Yeah Well, peter, thank you for coming on and sharing with us today. Really enjoyed it. Thank you, cal, appreciate it. I really enjoyed it. Thank you, kyle, appreciate it. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Grazing Grass Podcast, where we bring you stories and insights into grass-based livestock production. If you're new here, we've got something just for you. Our new listener resource guide is packed with everything you need to get started on your listening journey with a grazing grass podcast. Gives you more information about the podcast, about myself and next steps. You can grab your free copy at grazinggrasscom slash guide. Don't miss out. And hey, do you have a grazing story to share? We're always looking for passionate producers to feature on the show. Whether you're just starting out or have years of experience, your story matters. Head over to grazinggrasscom slash guest to learn more and apply to be a guest. We'd love to share your journey with our growing community of grazers Until next time keep on grazing grass. Transcribed by https://podium.page