How Gabe Brown Saved His Farm By Turning Dirt to Soil
Farmers everywhere could be growing health soil, which would be more profitable and better for our climate as well as the water and the wildlife. Fear and public policy stand in the way.
Farming was all Gabe Brown ever wanted to do. In 1991, he took over management of his in-laws’ farm outside Bismarck, North Dakota. He farmed it the way they had always done, raising Gelbvieh cows and growing grains such as peas, barley, oats and spring wheat.
But the years 1994 to 1997 brought a string of bad luck and crop failure. Hail and drought had destroyed crops for four straight years between 1994 and 1997. And a 1997 winter storm killed 14 Gelbvieh calves in a single night.
Gabe could not get the usual bank loans for the spring planting.
Whereas some farmers forego fertilizers and pesticides for ecological reasons, Gabe simply could not afford them.
Financial hardship made it tempting to quit. He had a college education and could have pursued another career. But all Gabe had ever wanted to do was farm.
Spoiler alert: Gabe turned his farm into a profitable operation. He did this by imitating nature, by treating his farm as an ecosystem and by practicing the Principles of Soil Health.
Gabe knows that healthy soil makes his farm both ecological and profitable.
But what is healthy soil, and what does it do for you?
What is healthy soil?
Healthy soil teams with life, starting with bacteria, which begin the food chain.
Healthy soil is an underappreciated microscopic metropolis.
The microscopic metropolis digs tunnels that make soil porous. These tiny tunnels are like streets and roads, avenues and boulevards, lanes and cul-de-sacs that deliver the water and nutrients that make life possible.
Without these streets and roads, the soil has no organisms, no water, no nutrients and NO LIFE.
Healthy, living soils deliver life and health to plants making Gabe Brown’s farm both profitable and ecological.
Healthy living soils feature a balanced set of soil organisms, including bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes and earthworms.
Healthy living soils make plants nutrient dense, so they are nutritious to the animals and people that eat them.
Healthy, living soils make plants resistant to pests and pathogens, eliminating the need for toxic biocides.
How do you get healthy soil?
By practicing the principles of soil health.
The Principles of Soil Health.
Avoid tillage.
Avoid chemical fertilizers.
Avoid insecticides, herbicides and fungicides.
Keep living roots in the ground as long as possible.
Always keep the soil covered, with organic matter.
Employ a diversity of plants.
Incorporate animals.
The Principles of Soil Health
Avoid tillage. Tillage destroys the very structure and function of the soil. It’s like taking a city and destroying all its buildings. There is no place left for the life of the soil to conduct its business. Tillage thus destroys the soil’s ability to hold water and deliver nutrients.
Avoid chemical fertilizers. Chemical fertilizers are toxic to the life of the soil. This includes fertilizers that deliver NPK: nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. They are all salts, which suck vital water out of living things. Plants need these nutrients, but they are already in your soil.
Avoid biocides. Biocides are life killers. All biocides have two thing in common. They kill things, and they have a ripple effect, that kills other things. Fungicides, insecticides and herbicides all kill more than their intended target, thus eliminating vital members of the soil food web.
Keep living roots in the ground. Keep living roots in the ground wherever possible and as long as possible. Otherwise you’re wasting solar energy. Plants use the sun’s energy to feed the soil biology. They use the sun’s energy to make myriad varieties of sugar, which they feed to bacteria, thus jump starting the soil food web.
Armor the soil. Always keep the soil covered, with organic matter. Never let soil lie bare for very long. Organic matter holds in water. And it provides food for soil biology.
Diversity. Employ a diversity of plants. Plant diversity improves soil biology, because each species supports its own little ecosystem. Diversity and abundance occur when these little ecosystems interact with one another, creating a community of plants, bacteria, fungi, etc. that cooperate to share nutrients and water, making the plant community resilient.
Incorporate animals. If you have farm animals, you should allow them to graze in crop fields, typically after harvest. If you don’t have farm animals, then make compost that includes animal manure. All ecosystems have animals. An ecological farm or garden will involve animals or animal products.
Let’s compare the Principles of Soil Health with the prevailing practices in agriculture and horticulture:
Practice tillage.
Use synthetic fertilizers.
Use insecticides, herbicides and fungicides.
Let bare ground sit idle with no living plants. If weeds show up, till them under or spray with herbicides.
Don’t cover the ground with organic matter.
Focus on monocultures, not diversity.
Keep animals out of crop fields.
How can you grow plants without fertilizer?
The truth is, we buy way more fertilizer than we need.
We are trying to get our nutrients from a bag when they are hidden in our soil.
When Gabe tested 45 farms in North Dakota and southern Canada, he discovered that every single farm contained more than enough of all nutrients tested including nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, sulfur, calcium, magnesium, zinc, iron, manganese and copper.
But farmers end up buying these chemicals from a bag because 95% of soil tests only look for INORGANIC nutrients.
But what about ORGANIC nutrients.
Every acre on average contains 9000 pounds ($4500) of nitrogen, if you include the nitrogen that exists in organic form, i.e., in the proteins of living organisms.
And phosphorus exists in abundant quantities if you look at all of the phosphorus that is available in healthy, living soils.
So, Gabe concludes, most soil tests are “useless.” He might have added that they are misleading or even fraudulent.
Soil tests--most of them--do a tremendous disservice to farmers and gardeners by underestimating the amount of available nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, and overestimating the need to buy NPK from a bag.
There’s lots of talk about the world running out of phosphorus. But Gabe will tell you that your soil contains plenty of phosphorus, if your soil biology can access it.
This is great news for farmers who want to lower their expenses and improve their profitability.
YOU MIGHT ALSO BE INTERESTED IN THESE VIDEOS FROM MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL:
Gabe Brown’s Principles of Soil Health
The Underappreciated Soil Food Web
My interview with Mexican rancher Alejandro Carrillo.