Gabe Brown is a world renowned farmer chiefly for his success with multi-species cover cropping.
He is also a great educator committed to helping ALL farmers succeed to farm in tune with Nature
Listen to what he has to say:
The greatest geological force on earth is life itself. We have to grow things. We have to restore that liquid carbon pathway. This is what … people ask: “Gabe, what’s the key to your operation?” I say, “It’s simply life.” You know? I tell people that I used to wake up every morning trying to decide, “What am I going to kill that day? Am I going to kill a weed? A disease? A pest? A fungus?” Now, I wake up every day, “How do I get more life on my operation?”
Once you do that, this becomes very, very simple. Farming and ranching become much, much easier. Much, much more profitable and more importantly, much, much healthier and regenerative for the next generation because all we’re doing is taking sunlight through photosynthesis and a plant, translocating it to the root, pumping it out into the soil as liquid carbon or root exudates, whatever you want to call it, and having it consumed by microbes.
I set this up this morning to show you, this is how my operation now operates. We focus on having life on the operation. You must have a living plant in order to do that. That living plant, then, allows you to propagate mycorrhizal fungi in your soil ecosystem. Now, what’s the importance of mycorrhizal fungi? If you don’t have mycorrhizal fungi, you’re not going to build soil aggregates. Mycorrhizal fungi secretes a glue called glomalin. It’s that glue that’s, is the sticky substance that starts soil particle formation. A soil particle will last approximately four weeks, and then it’s got to have the glue from glomalin and biology in order to build a new one. If you have poor infiltration into your soil, it’s because we don’t have enough mycorrhizal fungi.
The greatest geological force on earth is life itself. We have to grow things. We have to restore that liquid carbon pathway. This is what … People ask, “Gabe, what’s the key to your operation?” I say, “It’s simply life.” You know? I tell people that I used to wake up every morning trying to decide, “What am I going to kill that day? Am I going to kill a weed? A disease?A pest?A fungus?” Now, I wake up every day, “How do I get more life on my operation?”
Once you do that, this becomes very, very simple. Farming and ranching become much, much easier. Much, much more profitable and more importantly, much, much healthier and regenerative for the next generation because all we’re doing is taking sunlight through photosynthesis and a plant, translocating it to the root, pumping it out into the soil as liquid carbon or root exudates, whatever you want to call it, and having it consumed by microbes.
I set this up this morning to show you, this is how my operation now operates. We focus on having life on the operation. You must have a living plant in order to do that. That living plant, then, allows you to propagate mycorrhizal fungi in your soil ecosystem. Now, what’s the importance of mycorrhizal fungi? If you don’t have mycorrhizal fungi, you’re not going to build soil aggregates. Mycorrhizal fungi secretes a glue called glomalin. It’s that glue that’s, is the sticky substance that starts soil particle formation. A soil particle will last approximately four weeks, and then it’s got to have the glue from glomalin and biology in order to build a new one. If you have poor infiltration into your soil, it’s because we don’t have enough mycorrhizal fungi.
