[00:00:08] Speaker A: Good planets are hard to find out Temperate zones and tropic climbs and merge through currents and thriving seas.
Winds blowing through breathing trees and strong ozone and safe sunshine.
Good planets are hard to find. Yeah.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: Hello, K SQUID listeners. It's every other Sunday again and you're listening to Sustainability Now, a bi weekly Case Good radio show focused on environment, sustainability and social justice in the Monterey Bay region, California and the world. I'm your host, Ronnie Lipschitz. Our food system is in crisis. Degradation of topsoil and depletion of water resources are endemic. Supply chains are fragile, corporate farms dominate the industry, contamination is a recurring problem, and much of the nation's food is of questionable nutritional value. Can anything be done, and who will do it? For a growing number of farmers and specialists, the answer is regenerative agriculture, which has become something of a buzzword and a silver bullet. But what exactly is regenerative agriculture? How does it differ from agroecology, organic agriculture, and polyculture? Who is practicing regenerative agriculture and what are its prospects? My guest today on Sustainability now is Stephanie Anderson, assistant professor of creative nonfiction at Florida Atlantic University. She's author of the recently published book from the Ground up the Women Revolutionizing Regenerative Agriculture, which explains how women are leading the movement to transform the US Agricultural system and inspire hope in in the face of environment and social challenges. She's also the author of One Size Fits A Farm Girl's Search for the Promise of Regenerative Agriculture. Having grown up on her family's ranch in South Dakota, she often focuses on rural life, agriculture, food, the environment, personal relationships, and animals in her writing. Stephanie anderson, welcome to Sustainability Now.
[00:02:13] Speaker A: Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
[00:02:16] Speaker B: Usually I begin these these conversations by asking how you got into this business. How did you end up becoming a professor of creative nonfiction? And what is creative nonfiction? And how would you categorize your writing?
[00:02:30] Speaker A: So creative nonfiction is this lovely genre of nonfiction with a capital N that simply uses more literary elements in it. So, for example, if you're going to describe something like, I've given my students a passage about, I hope this doesn't come off as morbid about drowning. And if one is from the encyclopedia and it gives a description of that from that perspective, and then I give them another passage from a work of creative nonfiction, which the author is imagining what a drowning person may think and describing the sensory experience, it's still true, but it's using more creative language. So that's a really good way to describe the difference between nonfiction and creative nonfiction. So how I got to be a professor of creative nonfiction, I got an MFA in that in creative nonfiction. So it's always been a passion of mine, that form of writing, writing memoir and personal essays, but also more literary journalism, which is a form of creative nonfiction as well. And my writing is grounded in my growing up on my family's ranch in South Dakota. That's often the basis for a lot of my writing. And it's definitely a jumping off point and a growth point in my work.
[00:03:38] Speaker B: Well, the focus of your book, of course, is on the role of women in regenerative agriculture. Could you first give us a sort of an evaluation of agriculture in the United States and then explain your focus on women and why you believe that's important for the future of U.S. agriculture?
[00:03:53] Speaker A: Well, right now we have a fairly industrial system. We call this the conventional agricultural model. And it's sort of an odd term because conventional doesn't, I believe, describe what it really is. And that form of agriculture that's industrial and conventional is often reliant on a lot of inputs that are not natural or conventional. They're things like genetically modified seeds and synthetic oil based fertilizers, monoculture cropping, things like that. So that's the system in a nutshell of what we have now. And my book from the Ground up argues that we need to transition away from this model and move toward what we call regenerative agriculture. And we can think of regenerative as an outgrowth of sustainable, of organic. It really just means that we are taking those concepts and we are not just sustaining a degraded resource or following the National Organic Product Program rules, but we are actually revitalizing our soil resources. We're drawing down carbon, we are moving into more diversification on the land and so forth. And I believe women are pioneering this movement in a lot of really exciting ways. The research shows it, but also anecdotally, when I speak with women in various leadership positions, not just on the land, but also within the food system, things like distribution, contribution, things like research advocacy, and, you know, prod, food product company management, things like that, women are taking the role. So I wanted to focus on that because historically women's work in the food system and in agriculture specifically has tended to be somewhat ignored. Women have been sort of written off in the system in favor of the white male farmer stereotype. And so as that changes, I thought that I would want to represent the true diversity when it comes to gender, when it comes to race, when it comes to background within the regenerative movement.
[00:05:47] Speaker B: Well, we're using the term U.S. agriculture and U.S. agricultural system, and I think you mentioned what it might cover. But could. Could you tell us how you think about this, the system, this industrial system, and then vis a vis these alternatives that you might say are returning since. Since their historical practices that are returning now to agriculture?
[00:06:10] Speaker A: Our model is really based on a post World War II situation in which we decided to apply some of the systems of industrialization that we were using in factories and also for the war effort. Leftovers from the war effort speak specifically from chemicals, a chemical perspective. Nitrogen, nitrogen fertilizer, all nitrate used to build bombs was converted into fertilizer. And we began sort of converting a lot of that wartime machinery and thinking and that industrial mass production, quality over quantity over quality, to agriculture and making the farm run like a machine. And so that really ramped up in the 70s with Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butts, who went with the model or the mantra of get bigger, get out. So that was the message delivered to farmers. And that's kind of been the message more or less since from the USDA when it comes to their programming and when it comes to the types of farms that they tend to support and encourage through that programming. And farmers have been forced to scale up, whether they want to or not, just to compete in a globalized market. We talk about agriculture, you know, US Agriculture, but our agriculture is global now. It is tied to these systems in which farmers are in Iowa, for example, are raising pork that's going to Chinese customers, or soybeans that are going to the Chinese market, for instance. That's just one example. But it means that farmers are at the mercy of global markets, global demands, and have found that scaling up, they feel, is the only way to compete. And so you mentioned the opposite thinking, which is to scale back, actually through regenerative agriculture. And we don't mean scale back in the sense of make less money or do less with the land or be less productive. It means going back to some of those historical principles of complexity and diversity. We can actually be far more productive on our farmland. If we incorporate regenerative thinking, where we stack enterprises, we are allowing more to be produced per acre when we think about layering different products. So, for example, on an acre of land, when we add cover crops, when we add livestock, when we add multiple crop rotations, intercropping, things like that, we can become even more productive. And so farmers can afford to scale down a little bit in terms of from an acre perspective, but still be more productive. And so that does rely on, as you said, time tested, indigenous and Afro wisdom, Afro American wisdom that's rooted in principles of efficiency and soil management and health and working within ecological systems rather than against them through chemical management. So there's so much more I could say about that, but I hope that answers your question because it is, it is a big. We have to kind of think about it from a big picture, as you said.
[00:08:59] Speaker B: I wanted to just pick up two things that you just said which I hadn't realized. That the fertilizer industry is largely a product of the production of nitrates. Did you say for bombs?
[00:09:12] Speaker A: Yes, in World War II.
[00:09:13] Speaker B: So it was that capacity that was transformed, which is so like so many things that we have, have come out of military research and, and development. The other one had to do with the globalization of agriculture, which to my understanding was largely driven after World War II by the United States in terms of production of surpluses and export. And industrial agriculture is very, very, has been very productive in terms of sheer volume. But by the same token, the markets have not existed. Can you talk about that at all?
[00:09:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Specifically when it comes to the production of corn and soybeans, which are two top row crop commodities in this country, those crops we produce far more than we need as a country and far more than the world needs. So we've had to develop ways to offload these products without having the prices fall too dramatically. And prices are, you know, not great for farmers most of the time within these two markets. But one way was, yes, globalizing and opening up those commodities on the world market to try to help farmers receive a fair price and have steady demand for their what they were growing. But you know, those products ended up flooding the market in the same way they were flooding the the US market. And so then we turned to ethanol and we turned to. So that only encouraged more production. Every time we open up a brand new market like that encourages more, more production of the same crop and the cycle of depressed prices continues. And same with things like soy beans, we are able to put those into concentrated animal feeding operations for the mass production of beef. And so these, these cycles sort of feed on each other. And we saw this really come to a collapse during the pandemic. And that's another thing I explore in from the Ground up. Because suddenly these globalized and national markets did not have the demand to meet them anymore. Farmers were discovering that especially the time sensitive products, they couldn't find markets for those. Whereas a regional and more localized supply chain, if they were able to put their products There they could actually reach consumers without having to go through this tangled web. So it definitely has gotten to where farmers feel like they are at the mercy of these forces and that these forces really dictate how they produce, you know, their commodity, their chosen commodities, their chosen crops, their chosen livestock.
[00:11:43] Speaker B: Well, one of the things that we know is that most of the farms in the United States are relatively small ones. Most of the acreage is in very large ones. And the smaller farmers aren't doing all that well, financially speaking. Right. A lot of them depend on second jobs to keep the operation going. Do small farmers have a chance in this kind of system? What do you think it would take to rejuvenate the smaller farm sector?
[00:12:09] Speaker A: I would fully agree that it is very, very difficult, if not impossible, especially for those just getting started, smaller farmers, to make it in this system. It is designed for a small number of very large producers to thrive. But that's the so exciting thing about regenerative, in my mind, is because it does create space on the land and economic space for more people to participate in this system while still ensuring a steady and robust food supply. So to kind of go back to this idea of layering, regenerative farms can support more people per acre, more families per acre, as I demonstrate in several examples in the book and through the research, that when we have a more complex farm and more productive farm, the farmers don't need to be so large when it comes to, from an acreage perspective. And so 100 acres may be small in one environment and very large in another. But if we just sort of stick with that example, that could potentially have room for several families if managed in a regenerative way. So where there's more income streams, there's more cushion and more resiliency in the case of one market being depressed for one reason or another. And when soils are healthier, they're just more productive. And so regenerative helps build back that soil health, that ecological health, and reduces the number of inputs. So, and also regenerative, too, when farms are smaller, they can have closer relationships with consumers or whatever entity is buying their product. They can actually sell to a distribution company, for instance, that they know they can actually sell into a food label where they're not just some invisible producer to that company. They can have close relationships that. Where they're actually a stakeholder at the table and not just sort of at the whim of these globalized and nationalized markets. So it does feel like regenerative has promise, especially for younger people. And I see Women working on that too, creating pathways for young people to access land who want to farm regeneratively, young people who want to come back to economically depressed or, or sort of emptied out rural areas where we can revitalize those, those places. And those are things that conventional agriculture has sort of ruined through the large scale nature of, of it is pushing producers out where regenerative invites more people in and onto.
[00:14:27] Speaker B: I meant to use 100 just as a benchmark. I mean, I think the official definition is less than 50 acres. You're listening to Sustainability Now. I'm your host, Ronnie Lipschitz. My guest today is Stephanie Anderson, who has authored the recently published book from the Ground up the Women Revolutionizing Regenerative Agriculture. And we've been talking about the US Agricultural system, which is an enormous monster in many ways, which tends to work to the benefit of large corporate industrial farms. But as I tried point out, I think most of the farmers in the United States operate farms that are certainly less than 100 acres. I seem to recall reading somewhere, and this might be for California, that the average size of the farm in California is 2 or 300 acres, but the median size is down around 25.
So the median is the middle right, and the average is, is what's averaged over everything. And I think that's true for the United States as a whole. The US Agriculture faces a number of environmental, economic and social challenges, and that includes soil degradation, water depletion, climate change, you know, on and on and on. How has that come come about? How could it be addressed? Regenerative farmers are trying to address this. But again, in the big picture, how is it that farming has essentially moved into this kind of crisis position?
[00:15:50] Speaker A: It seems as though most US agriculture has divorced the idea of the farm from the natural environment, from the ecology in which the farm exists. And that is a large part of how we got here. When we were able to supply nitrogen to our soil with a chemical solution, with a fertilizer solution, rather than relying on natural processes as had been done for 10,000 years for the history of agriculture up until the 1950s or so, we were suddenly able to farm in such a way that we didn't need to cycle nutrients, we could supply them ourselves in an artificial way. So that was sort of like the beginning of this ecological crisis that we find ourselves in. And so one result of such chemical use has been soil depletion, decreased soil health, natural sort of processes that have been interrupted water filtration through the decrease in soil health. Being one a natural species, you know, the surrounding ecological environment has been very much harmed by a lot of these things. Pesticides and agrochemicals being big driver behind that. And then also the idea that the farm is something to manage, to control, nature should be kept out. And so when we think about farming from a command and control perspective, it becomes a lot easier to engage in practices that are not helping when it comes to things like climate, climate, global emission, carbon emissions, greenhouse gases, things like that. We do see some greater adoption of things like no till to help reduce our carbon emission. But overall, things like tillage and chemical management have all supplied a lot of the climate reactions that we're seeing. And so of course, now we're in a system where we're having more severe droughts, we're having more severe fires, stronger storms, floods. And farms that are managed in a way that don't have, that, don't have that sort of resilience from environmental standpoint are not as equipped as farms with healthy soil, with good water infiltration, with a lot of COVID on their soil, and healthy prairie land, for example, pasture land can better withstand things like that. So in a nutshell, that's kind of how we got here, by seeing the farm as some sort of factory that we can control through things like monoculture, chemicals and things like that. And so as regenerative moves away from those practices and engages in the environment and welcomes the environment to the farm and sees the farm as part of that environment, then we can start reversing some of that damage that's been done.
[00:18:30] Speaker B: Farming is inherently a risky business, right? On the one hand, there is the, the impetus to control, as you say, to manage, to make things come out as you plan them. And on the other hand, both markets and weather can be highly uncertain and drive things completely in the wrong direction. Why don't we turn to regenerative agriculture now and have you again define it more clearly before I say that? I'm sure you know that the state of California has a commission to define regenerative agriculture. And I don't know if you've been following that or not, but we can, we can come back to it. How do you define regenerative agriculture? What does it entail specifically?
[00:19:10] Speaker A: First of all, when I think about regenerative, I think about One Size Fits none. And that also happens to be the title of my first book. But it means tailoring your practices to the environment and allowing your practices to mimic that environment. So, for example, regenerative in a low moisture grazing grassland area, like where I came from, in Western South Dakota is going to look like high intensity, short duration grazing management. That's going to mimic the movement of bison, the historical movement of bison across the prairie. It's going to give the land time for recovery. That also the species that evolved to follow herds of bison or herds of elk and herds of deer and antelope and things like that to follow their disturbance, they will have plenty of time to recover. So it, that is moving livestock in a way that mimics the environment. So that would, that would be a regenerative practice. But absolutely. Like when we talk about California trying, you know, making sure that we have a one definition, I think that that's important. I mean, Chico State has, has, you know, the six principles of regenerative agriculture that things like keeping the covered, keeping a living root in the soil at all times, you know, things like that. So I think those are important baselines for regenerative. But then also understanding that there is flexibility within that to make your practices match the needs of your environment and the natural processes that are taking place in that environment with or without your agriculture. You know, your, your farm being there. So inherent in that is some flexibility. Right. But that's where we get the strength of regenerative that we don't necessarily see in an industrial or conventional model where the same practices of management are applied across pretty much any landscape in ways that are disastrous, that don't, that don't work. I think that some of the hand wringing about the regenerative movement not being as defined or that term, it will. One of the women in the book I talked to, her name is Tina Owens, she works with larger food companies. She's worked at places like Kellogg's and Danone. And she, she said, and I think about, I think this really helped me understand this is how a movement begins. You know, this is, it starts broad, it starts where we, we gather, try to get as many people involved and, and the definition of things as welcoming as possible. And then we sort of gradually come to a consensus about that. And so I think we're in that consensus building phase. And so the work of, of the California Commission, as you mentioned, is one of those consensus building things. So I think as we start to get that consensus, something like a regenerative label on a product will come to have a clearer meaning like we do with organic, where we standards of what, of what that means. So it's defining it, yes, but also being able to live in and relish that flexibility that farmers can have. Because I think farmers also want flexibility. They don't want to be forced into anything that would go against what they think is going to fit their environment and the surroundings that they're in.
[00:22:07] Speaker B: Well, farmers tend to be risk averse. Right. It's a very risky business. And so making changes if they can't be demonstrated. There's a certain caution about adopting those kinds of new practices. You've, you keep generating new questions for me as you, as you're talking to. Just to get back, is the purpose of the US agricultural system to feed people or to make a profit?
[00:22:30] Speaker A: Oh, that is a very good question.
[00:22:33] Speaker B: Yeah. The organic movement began in California among small farmers. And as it proved that there was a market for organic food, larger corporations got into the business. Now isn't that a risk for something like regenerative agriculture, especially if there's a, something that can be put on label? I'm getting ahead of things here, but since you brought it up, I wanted to, to ask.
[00:22:55] Speaker A: I think that we ought to use the organic movement and where organic is now as both an inspiration and a cautionary tale. Because I think you're right. There is demand for organic. We saw that sustained even during the pandemic in terms of sales. We saw that organic grows at a consistent rate. We see that big food companies are willing to incorporate organic into their brands and they wouldn't do that if it wasn't going to be profitable for them. And so with that, I mean, that's good, that encouraged movement or growth within the movement of organic. So that of course is good. But the problem has been the watering down of the organic rules which once Big Food gets involved, they will lobby to and have and have been successful in cases to weaken the organic rules to allow conventional thinking to creep back, back in. Conventional practices that drive down, that will allow their profit margins to increase and drive down their costs. But we do need them to be, to have the pull, you know, to get the, the products out there and increase, encourage farmers to adopt the practices. So for instance, we're seeing companies like General Mills helping farmers transition grain acres, you know, so things like wheat, barley, oats, small grains, things like that, to get into their supply chain for some of their, you know, cereal bars and their, their grain based products and so forth. So if Big Food can be the partner that they say they want to be, then I think it can be, it can be good. And I am. So I think we ought to go into it with a green, you know, a grain of salt and with some caution. But also realizing that without adoption too by the Big Food companies, we won't see the type of progress and I would rather see regenerative implemented, you know, at a sort of at scale, then kind of stay on the sidelines. We can and. But as we see these, these operations grow in number and more farmers adopting, you know, regenerative grains and, and other products that can go into those supply chains, the idea of keeping farmers at the center of that, keeping our what's good for the farmer at the center of the conversation will, I hope, be a remedy to some of the damage that we see that has been done in terms of getting organic to where it is today.
[00:25:10] Speaker B: You're listening to Sustainability now. I'm Ronnie Lipschitz and my guest today is Stephanie Anderson who recently published from the Ground up the Women Revolutionizing Regenerative Agriculture. She's also the author of One Size Fits A Farm Girl Search for the Promise of Regenerative Agriculture. And we've been talking about what regenerative agriculture is and the mechanisms, you know, what it involves and, and how it could be encouraged. I want to shift a little bit to the, the educational system, the U. S. Agricultural educational system. The people that you interviewed, maybe you can give us a few stories. Did they come through college? How did they get into what they were doing? So, you know, give us a few cases to start with and then how they got into that.
[00:26:05] Speaker A: Sure. So a couple of people come to mind with that question. So one is Kelsey Scott, she's.
Sorry, one is Kelsey Scott. She is a cattle rancher out in South Dakota. She's working on the. She's a Lakota woman who is managing her family's cattle operation. Just an amazingly talented and smart young woman. And she did get a master's degree, also a bachelor's degree. She went to South Dakota State University.
And so she also has that range science background and is able to use that on the ranch while also relying on the traditional indigenous practices and thinking and holistic outlook that come from her, from her Lakota background too. So she's kind of marrying this traditional indigenous thinking with the modern science based approach too. Not that indigenous wisdom is not scientific, it absolutely is. But the kind of educational, higher educational model of things like a range science degree which she has. So. So yeah, she was able to do both and lean on both of those backgrounds. When I look at another family in North Carolina, a young woman who entered agriculture with her mom after the pandemic, she does not have a formal education in agriculture. Her experience is completely hands on through work, learning from her mother. So that was kind Of a, a way in which we see the generations passing on that knowledge.
And I saw that too with brother and sister duo Jordan Josh out in Missouri where it was a very typical midwestern situation in their family where Josh was the, you know, being the son, received all the agricultural training from his father and grandfather, while Jordan being the woman was not, you know, so as a girl she was not encouraged to work on the farm. But as this farm transitioned to regenerative practices and management, she was welcomed back and, and all was able to get that experience that she needed.
So and, and Josh too, he did not have a traditional sort of agricultural education background in the sense that he didn't go to school for anything involved with agriculture. He was actually an English teacher. So it, it. The really interesting thing about regenerative and I think, you know, any form of agriculture is that hands on experience is important and, but also we have or institutions, we have people on the land, we have organizations that are very willing to bring people who have no experience in. And so I think what the book demonstrates is that you can come from a background of not really knowing anything about agriculture, but also get involved. And so I think I've seen a range of different experiences and that's been exciting to me. But one thing people have in common that I've spoken with was many of them are younger people who are wanting to see a different future for the US agricultural system and they want to be part of that change.
[00:29:19] Speaker B: In the case of family farms, things that are already in operation and have been operating right, the hands on experience is obviously quite important.
My question was more sort of pointed towards the higher education system and the land grant colleges, universities which tend to teach one size fits all, I think.
I mean you get out there and you find your farm is somehow topographically and in terms of soil and water access different from even the one down the road. Right. And you have to adapt. But when you get, and I'm not trying to down to dis the education system, but it, it tends to teach right around these sort of central principles and of course it's, it's inherited. The, the, I don't know the structure and the history of the, the land grant approach which was very focused and technology and so is your impression of people getting, of younger people getting into the, the sector into regenerative agriculture, that most of them have college educations or not? I'm just curious if you have a, a sense of that.
[00:30:38] Speaker A: Yeah, within the regenerative movement a lot of people move toward the internship model or the Farmer training model rather than moving through an institution like a university, like land Grant University. I'm not that, that that's not possible because we do see a lot of regenerative programs coming up. I mean not to go back to California, but Chico State has the, you know, a really great regenerative program.
And so we, we do see universities bringing that in a little bit. I wish the pace would be accelerated so that we could reach the next generation more quickly. But we do also have a really robust system of hands on farmer training that works without, I mean it works from the outside of that system as well. I will say that one reason our land grant universities have become almost like a factory for churning out people who will just get into the industrial model in some ways is that we have a lot of corporate infiltration, revolving doors between the university and corporations. So when you have someone who's in charge of, of, you know, in charge at Monsanto going to the board of directors at South Dakota State, as there was at one time, you're going to see where we have some conflicts of interest and why it's not no surprise that a university would teach a model in which a product that, you know, Monsanto makes, glyphosate, is a cornerstone of the system of corn and bean rotation that we have and the seeds that go into the ground for on so many farms. So, you know, and we have big money coming in to fund research, right? Where they companies will fund research that supports their own agendas and that is testing their products, they will build the research centers to do it as well. So we have a situation that too, it's, it's, there's a little bit too much comfort in the relationship between our land grant universities and some of the largest food and chemical companies that are involved within our agricultural system that have a little too much influence.
[00:32:48] Speaker B: As you've been going, you know, going around the country, to what degree do you see the results of agricultural research turning up amongst the people that you've visited and interviewed?
[00:33:03] Speaker A: Yeah, I interviewed a number of experts, people whose stories may not be the feature of the book, but people whose research formed the foundation. I mean we have scientists at some of these universities, even if they're within, working within a program that's largely teaching conventional and industrial principles, we have researchers out there demonstrating the, the results of regenerative practices on soil health and management. And so we have, we actually have a really broad base of knowledge that supports regenerative even if a lot of that information was sort of suppressed or similar to Climate science that has been discouraged for a long time. We do have it, and so we have it coming. We have that, that research as that base now and it's becoming more mainstream in that sense. In terms of farmers that I interview, you know, talking about the science, that's pretty rare. You know, they're, I'm sure, I'm sure there are many who read a lot of it, but I mean it's definitely not something that they're implementing for the most part on a conscious level, although I know that there are certainly exceptions out there. But the science that, that is behind it is sort of, that's intuitive to a lot of these producers that they're, they're, they don't maybe need to read the scientific paper to understand, oh, I, that field needs, you know, more rest or this field needs to have a cover crop on it and so forth.
[00:34:30] Speaker B: Yeah, the, the reason I, I raised that is the last few years I've been doing a lot of reading in agricultural journals, you know, and my general. And, and then working with small farmers. And my general impression is that it's an industry. The research is an industry unto itself. And a lot of it, you know, never sees the light of day. And for that matter, farmers don't have time to, to, you know, to read the journals and say, oh, I'm going to, I'm going to try that. And your, your argument about, about intuition or intuitive or learned right. From experience, that doesn't stand, usually stand the test of the scientific method. And so. Right. And I mean something that may be obvious is not credible until someone has done the research.
And it's easy to become cynical about that. As you can see, I have become.
[00:35:31] Speaker A: Well, I think that's, that's an opportunity and I will pull, put a little plug in here for writers, people, journalists, writers of creative nonfiction, storytellers who can be that bridge between the science and between the producers or, or just the general public for that matter.
We need, we need people working within that space to help translate some of that knowledge and also to convey it in a way that's engaging and more, a little bit more broad based. So I would say, you know, writers out there, this is the challenge of our time. Whether it comes, you know, we're working and thinking about agriculture or climate, anything where science is a basis. But we, there's a gap between the science and the, the general public's understanding of it and the necessity of it.
[00:36:21] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I guess that's a, it's a fairly broad gap, but, but that points me to ask, you know, who. Who's the audience for your book then? I mean, who. Who would you hope reads it?
[00:36:35] Speaker A: Oh, well, I. There's. I have a lot a big audience in mind. When I was writing. I mean, I first. Yeah, I. I definitely want. First of all, I want women to see themselves in these pages and just because I want the sort of recognition of women's work and within agriculture and just the food system writ large, but also to serve as an inspiration, whether people are from an agricultural background or have any interest in that or not. I mean, some of the women, many of the women I interviewed in the book are not from farms at all, but they're working on foreign policy in Washington or they are, you know, working in bringing capital to. To, you know, help scale up regenerative, things like that. So to kind of open up the door with the food system for people. And I think, you know, young people generally. So I also say that in the sense of young men and young women alike, to see how they and their work and their thinking can impact the system. So I envision those people as my audience. I always write with my dad in mind, actually, because he's. He's a more conventional rancher out in South Dakota. And I always want to be mindful of things like tone or things like too much judgment or too much. I would never want anybody who is working in that model, in that space to ever feel like their work doesn't matter or that they're not doing a good job. I think farmers are great and wonderful people that are often trapped in a bad system. They've been given tools that are not for their benefit, but for. Are the benefit of corporations or big business and so forth. So I write with that farmer in mind as well.
And I just, I think, you know, people are interested in food, especially since the pandemic. People realize they don't know their local farmers and ranchers very well, and they rush to get to know them, and they realize that a local food chain, a regional food chain is really important, whether it's a pandemic or a climate emergency or any kind of disaster, that they want to be able to feel secure in that. So I hope that the book will reach people who are interested in those issues as well.
You know, when it comes to what they eat, the security and resilience of that. But also health. Regenerative has. The science has backed it up that regeneratively grown food is more nutrient dense and we have so many health issues in our. In our nation right now. And so many of them can be attributed to poor nutrition, poor quality food. And so that's going to be, I think, another reader that I would love to reach.
[00:39:10] Speaker B: Yeah. You're listening to Sustainability Now. I'm Ronnie Lipschitz, and my guest today is Stephanie Anderson, who's written a book about women in regenerative agriculture, Revolutionizing regenerative agriculture. Stephanie, why, you know, you write about, about why women are such an important element in this movement, and why is that? I mean, you know, I don't think we've. We've really addressed that particular point. So, you know, as opposed to. Well, the average farmer is, is a white male of about what, 60 or 65 at this point?
You know, so it's a new demographic in many ways. But, but why are, do you think women are particularly suited or probably not a good word, but for, for this movement, for pushing this movement forward?
[00:40:02] Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you for asking that. Because, you know, like so many industries in this country, agriculture, you know, grew up mostly with male leadership. Right. You know, women didn't hold positions of power within, you know, agricultural companies or at the USDA or even at the. On the farm. The farm was conceived as being the man's farm, and he was in charge. And that was sort of a traditional kind of patriarchal way of thinking about it. But we could see it in things like calling women who would work alongside their husbands every day. They were farmers, they were ranchers, but the term for them was farm life. And that, that can even still linger in some, in some corners today.
And the idea that the real work of the farm is the physical work that sometimes men are doing a little more often, versus the work of running a farm business and a farm as a whole. You know, things like accounting, but also some of the less exciting work that's not as physical that women are often doing, often, by the way, because tools are meant and designed for men to use and operate. And so we're seeing ways in which that's being addressed, too.
But. Right. So the reason women are a focus of my book and also getting involved in the regenerative movement in a way that it took them much longer to be recognized in the industrial side of things and the conventional side side is that regenerative is a very holistic way of thinking. It's thinking about how can food production, agriculture, not just benefit me and my pocketbook, but how can it make my environment better, and how can it provide better quality food for my kids and other people's kids all over? How can it help revitalize my community and bring more jobs and to, you know, help grow my schools, grow my church, grow my whatever.
How can it help address something like climate change? Because, you know, women are understanding that their children are going to have to deal with a change, a very changed world. So how women are really good at thinking holistically like that, and I don't mean that in sort of a blanket way, but when people do studies, for example, they say in the book of how women lead, they tend to lead from a position of empathy and sort of communal thinking. And so when we are seeing women take leadership roles on the farm, especially within a regenerative management style, they're able to see how regenerative touches all those things and prioritize a little bit differently. So where, yes, of course, your bottom line is super important, you have to keep food on the table for your family. But understanding that their practices impact their neighbors, impact the next generation, impact everybody else around them. And even on this, this planet, not to make it too dramatic, but kind of seeing those connections. And so women are often, and not that men don't and can't do this, but historically industrial and commercial agriculture has been led by men, specifically white men. And so it has evolved under that leadership into a profit driven sort of bottom line is the most important approach. And so once we think about the regenerative movement and the diversity on the land, that it calls for a similar diversity of the people involved within the movement.
So it's not exclusionary, but welcoming no matter what.
That's the kind of thinking that often women are really good at. And so the women I spoke with were, you know, very cognizant of want, not wanting to be, you know, I am sort of some sort of hero in this story. But when I observed their work and listened to them speak, I mean, I could hear the way that they wanted, that they were prioritizing these things and helping others reach that similar place.
[00:44:08] Speaker B: So much more sort of social awareness of the, of the implications of just farming and make and producing food. But one of the women you interviewed interviewed suggested, and here to that, setting aside, making big profits is critical to these alternative models. But profits, access to new capital is contingent on being able to show profits, right? Investors want to make something, something back. And to use an inapt metaphor, can this circle be squared?
[00:44:46] Speaker A: So we have an idea that when we say making profits, we mean big profits. And so I think we need to sort of scale back the way we think about a sustainable and responsible and ethical profit.
And so I think about the company, one company that I interviewed for the book Veritable Vegetable. They are have been in business since the 70s. Clearly they work very well. They are a profitable company. But they are able to allocate their profits in such a way that their CEOs are making money, but not so much that they are sort of going past that model of ethical profit and that they're able to invest money back into their business to keep it going, but also implement climate measures and reduce their carbon footprint and things like that. So yes, could that money all go back to, you know, their. The bottom line, you know, and be set profit in that sense of dollars and cents. Yes. But it is sustainable for everyone that works there. Everyone gets a living wage and those profits are recycled back into the business to keep it. To keep it going.
So I think, and I believe you must be quoting Esther park in there, I didn't make. That's all right.
It's either that or Sarah de Lac, the two people who are. Are involved with venture capital in the book. And so they both kind of made this point and I think you're right that we in order to square this circle of profits, right and to be able to have profit to where we farmers can stay in business and the people who invest in them don't lose their money. We want to make sure that we have. We're thinking about profit in terms of reasonable profits and not just exorbitant, you know, profits that there's going to be some. We want to. So balancing a portfolio in a way that allows for some of the maybe slower growth or building our expectations around the realities of regenerative and the time it takes. So thinking taking a longer time horizon as well. So adjusting our sort of profit is the only, you know, dollars and cents profit is the only way we can measure success. That there are other measures involved in that.
[00:47:15] Speaker B: Well, I know if you want to get a loan, you know, a farm loan and you have to show usually through records of three years and if you haven't made money over those three years, then you know, how is the loan going to be paid back? And that's. That's what I was thinking about out. Right. That I know there are successful businesses and Veritable.
Does Veritable actually grow anything or do they just. Are they just more or less a distributor?
[00:47:42] Speaker A: They are a distributor. Y. They. Yeah, they do work with.
[00:47:45] Speaker B: And I had in my notes here that farmers typically receive about $0.15 of the retail food dollar. You know, that's kind of the. The average which is Not a terribly great return on the investment of their time and labor. Right. So, I mean, it's a really, a really tough haul. I, I asked you about the, the 2024 farm bill, which I see is stuck in Congress. It's been, I think, reauthorized for one year. But I, I wanted to ask, is there any support in Congress for regenerative agriculture in, in something like the Farm Bill that you're aware of?
[00:48:22] Speaker A: There is, there is, is support and we actually, there is some bipartisan support for that. Because even though maybe some lawmakers might come from a political leaning that may not support, want to talk about things like climate change, they also represent farmers and farmers know what's happening on the land. And so farmers, they might want to talk about it in a different way, they may want to call it something different, but there is support for that. I think, you know, we'll see what happens.
It seems like they're, the reason that this is stuck is that, you know, they're waiting for a new administration to come in a new Congress.
And so there's just not been a push to get it done. And it's been unfortunate for farmers. I mean, I know that the outgoing administration has done things like the Climate Smart Commodities program and various other things to try to, to, you know, provide for support for regenerative in lieu of the Farm Bill.
But I do hope to see the farm Bill prioritize regenerative. They can call it whatever they want, I suppose, but support for things that will help our farmers become more resilient, less chemical dependent, less input dependent, and most importantly, get access to land for young people who want to get involved and also to adapt programs to regenerative. Like you mentioned a lending program, you know, or loans. Farmers are struggling to get a loan that's, that's more suited to the model that many unconventional producers are in. So we need lending products or other sorts of institutional support that will be more flexible, that will be more tailored to the regenerative model that will allow for more time, perhaps for that profit making to begin and help with that transition. Because we do, I think we know we have farmers that want to make the regenerative transition, but they don't have the support to do it. So I really hope that the Farm bill will also prioritize not just new producers. We definitely need more producers, but to help our existing producers begin that transition. It does take time. Anything worth doing takes time. And so, so we can't allow that to wait any longer for our farmers. We need to Help them make that transition soon.
[00:50:51] Speaker B: Well, we're about out of time. Is there anything you want to mention that we didn't talk about?
[00:50:57] Speaker A: So I just want to say, you know, to your listeners, they may be asking, you know, why do I need to care about the food system? Why do I need to care about how my food is produced? You know, an apple is an apple or, you know, whatever. But I, I want to talk about, or I wanted to just point out the way that regenerative agriculture addresses so many other issues beyond food. And so the way we produce our food touches things like reducing our carbon emissions and helping to address climate change. It addresses social inequities and that it brings more producers to the land, more producers of color, historically marginalized groups, women. It helps, helps address things like that. It helps our nutrition. It helps human health. It helps so many other goals that maybe listeners have or issue areas that they may be concerned about.
Regenerative agriculture is a way to help remedy so many other things beyond just the, the food itself or the land itself. It, it is bigger than that. So I hope that listeners will, will consider that as they think about where their food comes from and how it's produced and how that touches everything else in their lives.
[00:52:11] Speaker B: Okay. Well, Stephanie Anderson, thank you so much for being my guest on Sustainability Now.
[00:52:17] Speaker A: Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.
[00:52:19] Speaker B: You've been listening to a Sustainability now interview with Stephanie Anderson, assistant professor of Creative Nonfiction at Florida Atlantic University and author of the recently published book book from the Ground up, the Women Revolutionizing Regenerative Agriculture, which explores how women are leading the movement to transform the US Agricultural system.
If you'd like to listen to previous shows, you can find
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[00:53:11] Speaker A: Good planets are hard to find out.
Breathing trees, strong O zone and safe sunshine.
Good planets are hard to find. Yeah.
