Gabe Brown: Keys To Building a Healthy Soil

NOTE to anyone filming speakers - If the speaker is showing slides, PLEASE spend at least 2/3rds of the time on the slides, NOT the speaker. In this presentation, viewers cannot even SEE many of the slides at all. As cute as Gabe is... we can learn more from what he is trying to show us than by looking at him. That said, THANK YOU for posting this presentation!

I used to be into circus and dance videos, life changes, this is my favorite video on the internet

Am I the only one to notice that farmers need to know as much as lawyers, programmers, engineers and scientists? I listen to this kind of stuff very frequently, and despite my best efforts, starting from the ground up (no pun intended) I find that there is still an infinity to learn. There are a number of subjects that I talk about, but this is what really gets my yayas off. At the end of such a video, I feel inspired, invigorated and the world becomes a bright, shiny new place. It is the same feeling I had as a small child. Maybe that's a clue as to what I should be doing. Now, all I have to do is figure out what to do with winter.

This should be made available on all long haul Flights.

There is so much hope in this path. Never stop spreading this message tell everyone you know about this

I created a thriving garden out of hard clay...just place a lot of discarded vegetables, sometimes fruits, on the land. The discards come from the local market where merchants will throw out what they cannot sell or those that are discolored, etc. Free. Zero cost, gave me good excercise daily as I lugged home some 20kg. After 12 months it is thriving with some 40 species of plants were donated, migrated in from elsewhere. Birds, bees, spiders, earthworms, geckos, snails, etc. Even an occasional monitor lizard. I live in Singapapore, hot, humid, sunny. No till, no pesticide and the plants sort themselves out and reach for the sunlight. I trim some so that they do not crowd out others. Nature is fun.

Look at how many people he was speaking to, maybe 50, 60. Look at how many people watched this video. 67,000 THIS is the power of the new printing press. youtube combined with mobile devices and high speed wifi. Let's all video record, with permission, anyone who has expertise on this subject and does a great presentation, adn upload them , so that more people can learn and educate themselves and we can bring about the age of aquarius and the return of eden.

For Farmers out there who actually wish to replicate Gabe Brown's success, you literally have to go through a sort of therapy of deprogramming from the industrial business model and first understand how nature installs and maintains all of it's ecosystems around the globe. The same basic fundamentals and principles work universally. For example, when purchasing a pouch or bag of mycorrhizal fungi, don't expect it to be some quick fix magical dust that will poof profit that first season. You MUST gradually build up the soil health through cover cropping with plants that are truly mycorrhizal colony hosting, not with ruderal plants like Radish, Canola, Mustards, etc which ONLY thrive in a bacterial system. The soil has to be gradually built up, much the way Gabe intelligently illustrated a drug addicted must slowly be weaned off heroin. I think people often miss that very important point.

My back yard is about a 1/3 acre. I.m thinking of turning the whole thing into a garden after watching this! Monsanto must not like this guy! The most important point Gabe made is that we need to work with nature not against it. It has always amazed me how much time, effort, and money we spend on having a nice green lawn. Imagine if every American yard was producing food instead of pretty green grass.

Brilliant! And I see no reason all these principles can not be applied to the home gardeners operations, or small farm, too. Thank you for sharing your knowledge.

I would like to personally thank Gabe Brown and everyone who helped him develop this system. I am not from a farm neither is any of my family so when I decided to go to school and become a farmer it seemed more and more like it just wasn't possible to start from nothing but by using this system to build healthier soils, it might just be possible to be successful.

Thank you Gabe Brown for creating something that moms can be happy to feed their family.  I learned a lot listening to this.  Now I need to go out and get some dirt under a ground cover.

I could listen to Gabe Brown speak all day!

I'm not a farmer but I love Gabe Brown. Listening to what he has to say gives me some hope for the planet.

I am not a farmer but enjoy learning things of nature for my own entertainment. I enjoyed your entire video and have no doubt of your methods effectiveness. I hope all other farmers will follow in your footsteps.

I am convinced that we must work on several fronts in order to produce the food needed for 7 billion people in a regenerative way. First, let’s start with the idea that we already produce (conservatively estimated) twice the amount of food needed to feed everyone on the planet. Production isn’t the main issue, localization and distribution is.  Secondly, we need to educate consumers to make healthful choices that will regenerate their own bodies. This will shift demand, to a degree, in order to deal with the economics of our food system. Thirdly, we have to get at scale in order to regenerate the landscape on a level that will have the requisite positive impact in 2-3 generations. As several NRCS experts I am aware of point out, and something they deal with on a daily basis, we can’t preach from a soap box at American farmers and think we’re going to convince them to change their ways. We have to approach the American farmer as a partner in making needed changes in agriculture and not an enemy or obstacle. We must stop vilifying the majority of American farmers who are simply trying to earn a good living for their families, send their children to college, and save for retirement.  Why must we partner with them? Scale is why. We who are permaculture enthusiasts are not going to change the actual landscape to sequester enough carbon, regenerate enough soil, and purify enough water if we’re doing it 10-20 acres at a time.  Yes, many people have had a change of heart about their own personal lives this way, but this pace of change won’t ramp up to the scale we need for this planet. If so, the needed change would have already taken place because tens of thousands of people are PDC certified.  This is only a part of the total equation. To get at the larger part of the equation, we must convince the owner or tenant of the broadacre landscape – the “conventional” farmer – to look through a different lens in order to view their landscapes differently. The key to gaining their attention is to demonstrate to them in real and actual examples, that they can increase their profitability by adopting a new approach to agriculture. Even operations such as Joel Salatin’s or Mark Shepard’s aren’t at enough scale to make the changes needed to reverse the negative effects. But, their operations are examples of a model that’s working to produce a good income while being largely regenerative. Rather, I’d look to the farmers that Raymond Covino and Ray Archuleta are helping to make changes to adopt polyculture no-till cover crop systems with a diverse cash crop that include animals in the matrix. Gabe Brown is a prime example of someone who is stewarding thousands of acres with such a system. He is outcompeting his neighbors in productivity and profitability while holding water in the soil, eliminating synthetic inputs, building soil, sequestering carbon all while securing a future for his family. We can make this happen, in my opinion, if we don’t lose the key audience in the dialog of regenerative agriculture – the conventional American farmer.

*I love that he refers to Nature as "Her'. Well done, Mr. G... 🥰

Thank you so much for this extermely important information. This info will be incorperated into our farming operations here in central Texas. It confirms a lot of the research that we have been doing, but it also takes it too a new level. Our farm team looks forward to a visit to the Brown ranch at some point in the foreseeable future. May God continue to bless all of your hard work and your sharing of this wonderful knowledge which make so much common sense. Thanks again

Thank you for taking the time to upload this.

I've been trying what principles I can in my backyard seems to be working phenomenally. My cats also love all the new hiding spots.