From Our Experts

Where Human Health Begins: One Farmer’s Story of Regeneration

By Ron NicholsSometimes, adversity is a blessing, though rarely does it seem so in the moment. Just ask Roy Thompson, a 33-year-old farmer from Akaska, South Dakota.At age 20, Roy was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, an inflammatory bowel condition that the Mayo Clinic’s website describes as “both painful and debilitating, and sometimes may lead to […]

‘Dad, I think you’re the greatest farmer in the world’ Checking in on the regenerative journey of Macauley Kincaid

By Ron Nichols I first spoke with the then 25-year-old Macauley Kincaid a little over a year ago, shortly after he attended a Soil Health Academy school. After that experience, Macauley went back to his Southwest Missouri farm and began applying the insights and recommendations from SHA’s experts with what can only be described as […]

Don’t Let it Bug You Six Steps to Control Internal & External Parasites

Allen R Williams, Ph.D. Parasite control in livestock is a major issue and has been heavily focused on for several decades now. There are numerous anthelmintics (chemical dewormers) available for internal parasite control and a host of pyrethroid and organophosphate products available for fly control. The issue with any of these products is that they […]

A Tale of Two Industries

Allen R Williams, Ph.D. The 1859 novel written by Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, was required reading for millions of school kids in English Literature classes and is one of the best-selling novels of all time. The story is set in the late 18th century against the background of the French Revolution. Just […]

Can Food Be Our Medicine

Allen R Williams, Ph.D., Understanding Ag, LLC Did you know that the health of plants, animals, ecosystems and humans is inextricably tied to plant phytochemical diversity? So, what are phytochemicals? In short, they are compounds naturally produced by plants that help the plants thrive in challenging conditions, fight off competitors, pest insects and disease. When […]

The Most Radical Act You Can Do: Grow Your Own Food!

Ray Archuleta, Understanding Ag, LLC Concerns about the US food chain supply made their way into the mainstream this week, as more meat processing and packaging plants suspend operations temporarily due to coronavirus outbreaks in the workforce. When Smithfield Foods announced it was shutting its Sioux Falls plant indefinitely, CEO Ken Sullivan warned that doing […]

Dr. Allen’s 10 Tips for Summer Grazing Success

Allen R Williams, Ph.D., Understanding Ag LLC By the time you read this we will be fully into summer 2020. In many parts of the country it has been much cooler than normal well into the month of May. Even here in Mississippi we have had a very pleasant spring. Nighttime temperatures in the 40s […]

It’s Time for a Change

by Shane New and Gabe Brown Empty shelves and meat cases in grocery stores, oil at negative prices, record unemployment, skyrocketing national debt, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected many aspects of our lives. This crisis has exposed the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of our current system, prompting the need and opportunity for a change. Change has […]

Nurturing a Healthy Relationship with Our Food

By Ray Archuleta, Understanding Ag, LLC Food is relationship In my previous blog, I examined several institutional, philosophical and educational issues that have created unintended social distancing in agriculture. In this article, I want to shift the focus to examine another type of “social distancing.” This one involves the “relationship” we have with our food. […]

Regenerating Human Health & Building a More Resilient Food System: Calls to Action Among Farmers, Consumers, and Healthcare Practitioners

By Sara Keough MS, CNS, LDN – Eco-Nutritionist “People are fed by the food industry, which pays no attention to health, and are treated by the health industry which pays no attention to food.”-Wendell Berry It may have been this quote from one of my heroes, farmer and activist Wendell Berry, that inspired me years ago […]

Education and the “Social Distancing” of Agriculture

Ray Archuleta, Understanding Ag, LLC Recently, I went to a local sandwich shop, hoping for a sit-down lunch. But instead I walked into a nearly empty restaurant. This empty area made me feel uneasy, like I had walked into a futuristic sci-fi movie displaying the de-population of humans by some strange pestilence. A sense of […]

Time for a Garden

By Gabe Brown, Understanding Ag, LLC It’s the time of the year when many of us are thinking about growing a garden. With the ongoing pandemic highlighting the importance of having a healthy immune system, it is more important than ever that we do what we can to ensure that we are growing and consuming […]

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Where in the World is Understanding Ag?

“When I was a young kid, my grandfather had a painting of a Gaucho riding a horse at full gallop chasing down a cow in the Patagonia Steppe. The Gaucho was swinging a set of ‘boleadoras; above his head, which is the traditional tool to help them wrangle cattle. Ever since I first saw that painting, […]

Closing the Soil Health ‘Knowledge Gap:’ Lessons from the FFA Convention

We recently had the privilege of attending the National Future Farmers of America convention in Indianapolis, Indiana to represent Understanding Ag. Mingling with a sea of over 70,000 kids wearing the classic blue and gold FFA jackets with their home states emblazoned across the back is an unforgettable experience. It brought back memories of my […]

Our Broken Water Cycle and What Can We Do About It

“It’s not how much rain you get but how much rain you can keep.” As I write this in late Oct 2024, we have had no measurable rainfall for the entire month here in west-central Indiana. If you look at the August-through-October total rainfall here, we have not been this dry since 2010, and we’ve […]

A Real Solution to the Cattle Industry’s ‘Methane Problem’

The headline in The Washington Post article, published August 25, 2024, proclaimed “Scientists may have found a radical solution for making your hamburger less bad for the planet.” The article, written by Shannon Osaka and Emily Wright, examined research currently being conducted at the University of California-Davis using gene editing techniques on rumen microbes to […]

Part 2 Erosion: How Much is it Costing YOU?

In part one, I outlined some of the societal challenges linked to soil erosion and poor soil function. Now let’s take a look at some of the economic costs and benefits of addressing erosion on farms and ranches. To determine the cost of erosion, first we must assign a value to soil. In truth, topsoil […]

Part 1 Erosion: How Much is it Costing US?

Soil erosion has been one of the most persistent challenges humanity has faced since the advent of agriculture over 10,000 years ago. Loss of productive capacity of the supporting land base contributed to the collapse of numerous civilizations during that time. Poor grazing practices and tillage were the main causes of land degradation historically and […]

A Better Way to Grow Agave Leads to World’s First Certified Regenerative Tequila

Life is short so embrace change.” That’s the “distilled” philosophy Rodrigo Mestas brings to his tequila business, his regenerative agriculture management style and his outlook on life. In the acres he’s transitioned to regenerative agriculture, Mestas allows naturally occurring cover crops to emerge between the rows of the agave, and then grazes livestock- including […]

A Satellite Image Exposes the ‘Bare Facts’ About Conventional Ag

I pulled this image up on GoogleEarth yesterday. The photo below shows an area 12.5 miles wide, by 6.5 miles vertically, much of it in Rock Dell Township, Minnesota where our farm is. Hayfield is in the upper left-hand corner. The green area in the middle is along Hwy 30, and at the top is […]

From Symptoms to Solutions: Addressing the Underlying Causes of Water Quality Degradation – Part 5

In Part Four, I discussed the importance of keeping living roots in the soil and avoiding overapplication of nutrients at the wrong time. In this final post I will examine nitrogen sourcing options and how plants acquire nutrients in a healthy soil. To understand what the ‘right source’ of nitrogen is, we first need to […]

Will I Really Benefit from Grazing My Cover Crop?

God designed the world to function as a perpetual motion machine. If done right, it should always be building fertility, not extracting it. But you have to understand the principles of soil health, and the four ecosystem processes, in order to achieve that outcome. While many individuals are content with simply “growing a cover crop” […]

From Symptoms to Solutions: Addressing the Underlying Causes of Water Quality Degradation – Part 4

In Part Three, I reviewed the concept of using marginal nitrogen use efficiency and zero N check strips as tools to evaluate application rates. Now I will shift the focus to problems with overapplication, how to determine the right timing for application, and the consequences of not doing so. The fastest way to diminish the […]

From Symptoms to Solutions: Addressing the Underlying Causes of Water Quality Degradation – Part 3

In business, it all comes down to profit. In farming, profit comes down to things we can’t control like the weather and the markets, and the things we can control like our management decisions. One of those key management decisions is determining how much nitrogen to apply to our crops. In part two of this […]