Regenerative Skills

Helping you learn the skills and solutions to create an abundant and connected future

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Episodes

Friday Aug 27, 2021

Over the last handful of weeks I’ve had the pleasure of managing an ambitious new project in my role with Climate Farmers, an organization working to build the infrastructure to scale regenerative agriculture in Europe. We call it the Pioneer Program. What this is essentially is a collaborative effort between us and some of the most prominent and experienced educators in regenerative agriculture. In this first program we partnered with Richard Perkins of Ridgedale Permaculture in Sweden and his online masterclass to guide farmers from all around Europe to redesign and transition their farms and businesses towards regenerative models. Through the incredible education provided in Richard’s course and guided facilitation from our team and other knowledgeable practitioners around the world, we’ve helped our group to develop their holistic context, analyse new enterprise options, and map a course for a regenerative future for their land. In a short time we’ve seen dramatic transformations and progress in both the farm ecology and the mindsets of our program participants. 
During this journey I had the pleasure of interviewing Will Harriss of White Oak Pastures in Bluffton, Georgia and guiding a Q&A session with our Pioneer farmers. 
Since Will does a great job of giving his own introduction early in this interview I’ll cut this preface short and jump right in. Don’t forget to stick around till the end where I’ll tell you how you can join the next Pioneer Program with Climate Farmers and now I’ll hand things over to Will Harriss.
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Links:
https://whiteoakpastures.com/
https://www.instagram.com/whiteoakpastures/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-6RVpGF4tM
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTmheMIkvmt2T2k62oo-Yfw
https://youtu.be/nnYR7onhwc4

Friday Aug 20, 2021

It was a couple months ago that Nathan Fournier joined the Patreon community and we began a correspondence. I quickly realised that he had followed a similar path as I did in getting into ecological design. Nathan first studied engineering and pursued that career path only for a short time before realising that there was a lot missing in the pursuit. Fast forward to today where he’s running a successful ecological landscaping service offering edible gardens, tree planting, and much more to a wide range of clients in his community. 
I’ve often thought about getting into landscaping work myself and nearly started a company before some different opportunities came up, so I was excited to hear about Nathan’s journey into the profession and what he’s learned in the process. 
In this interview, we unpack all of the potential in offering ecological repair and optimisation services and just how many interests and skill sets that it can accommodate. Nathan gives some great insights into the business end of things which is often where permaculture design courses and other ecological learning leaves off. There are also a large range of side businesses that can help to support the transformation of whole communities through the production of high quality seeds, trees, compost, tools, and much more, so this really serves to open a range of options outside of just farming and gardening for people looking for career paths to support this movement. 
I really hope that you find some inspiring information here, but I’ll start from the beginning with the story of how Nathan got started. 
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLUh-ip5MTw
Links:
https://www.homeharvestcentralma.com/

Friday Aug 13, 2021

Welcome to the seventh of the monthly expert panel discussions. As I mentioned before, each month I’ll be hosting discussions and debates between some of the most prominent voices in regenerative agriculture, soil science, restoration land management and more.
In this session I hosted a discussion on the importance of restoring proper hydrological function in a landscape and the steps to achieving it with my friends and colleagues at Climate Farmers, a non-profit organisation working to advance regenerative agriculture in Europe.
In this panel I got to speak with three of the most experienced and influential educators working on this from a farming perspective. Since landscape hydrology and its proper function is often overlooked in its importance in regulating global temperature, I wanted to focus on this specifically. I was lucky enough to bring together three of the experts that have most guided my learning in this field, Zach Weiss, Nicole Masters, and Mark Shepard.Don’t forget that if you want to see the video of the full event, you can check it out on the Climate Farmer’s Youtube channel through the link in the show notes for this episode.
Zach Weiss is the protégé of revolutionary Austrian farmer Sepp Holzer, Zach is the first person to earn Holzer Practitioner certification directly from Sepp. Zach went on to create Elemental Ecosystems to provide an action-oriented process to improve clients' relationship with their landscape. Elemental Ecosystems is an ecological development, contracting, and consulting firm specializing in watershed restoration and ecosystem regeneration. The firm’s work includes Aquaculture, Agroforestry, Water Retention Landscapes, Terrace Systems, Spring Development, Natural Building, and more.
Mark Shepard is the CEO of Forest Agriculture Enterprises LLC, founder of Restoration Agriculture Development LLC and award-winning author of the books, Restoration Agriculture and Water for Any Farm. He is most widely known as the founder of New Forest Farm, the 106-acre perennial agricultural savanna considered by many to be one of the most ambitious sustainable agriculture projects in the United States.
Nicole Masters is is an independent agroecologist, systems thinker, storyteller, educator and author of the book “For the Love of Soil.” With over 20 years of practical and theoretical experience in regenerative agriculture, she is also recognised as a knowledgeable and dynamic speaker on the topic of soil health. Her team of soil coaches at Integrity Soils work alongside producers in the U.S., Canada and across Australasia supporting producers and organisations who cover over 24 million acres, to take their landscapes to the next level in nutrient density, profitability and environmental outcomes.
Join the discord discussion channel to answer the weekly questions and learn new skills with the whole community
Links:
https://www.integritysoils.co.nz/
https://www.elementalecosystems.com/
https://www.waterstories.app/
http://www.restorationag.com/Check out some of the previous expert panels:
https://regenerativeskills.com/the-broad-applications-of-the-holistic-management-framework-expert-panel-6/
https://regenerativeskills.com/farm-economics-with-mark-shepard-and-michael-ableman-expert-panel-5/
https://regenerativeskills.com/regenerating-the-biology-in-your-soil-expert-panel-4/

Saturday Aug 07, 2021

Today’s session is an interview that I’d been looking forward to doing for a while. Since last year in fact, when I found Shane Simonsen’s blog and began corresponding with him online. That correspondence turned into one of the most popular and talked about episodes from that season due to the ingenious way that Shane approaches farming his land in Northeastern Australia. 
In that first interview Shane gave an overview of the experiments in biological succession and food production on his homestead. His blog follows these experiments and speaks from a deep understanding of plants and how they live. In my opinion, it’s one of the most original approaches to large scale food production that I’ve come across in a long time and asks the simple question of “how might we still be able to produce enough food for ourselves and our communities if we no longer had access to all of the inputs and fossil fuels of our modern times.”
In this episode we get to pick up where we left off last time and see how some of these plant breeding efforts have paid off. Shane speaks about how he’s shifting phases at the homestead and focusing more on refinement of his system rather than broad experiments and the increase of diversity. Now that he’s seeing results from his consistent efforts over the last 5 years, he has a better idea of what thrives, what fails, and what’s worth pursuing to greater fruition with his limited time as the primary caretaker of his land. 
Beyond that we get to talk about a new book he’s writing which is something of a post post-apocalyptic future sci fi novel based on biological advancement rather than technological, which normally defines the genre. Though he’s still early in the manuscript, I loved talking about the concept of a post global collapse that envisions how our species might recover by returning to our reliance and relationships with the living world. 
This conversation meanders through a lot of topics so I hope it’s not too tricky to follow along. For plant nerds like Shane and I, I think it’ll be a real treat. So let's jump right in
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Links:
https://zeroinputagriculture.wordpress.com/

Friday Jul 30, 2021

This episode is the second part in our interview with the cofounders of Climate Farmers, an organization I’ve been working with for almost a year now that is working to build the infrastructure for regenerative agriculture in Europe. In the first part of the interview from last week we’ve covered the challenges of modern farming in Europe and the niche that Climate Farmers is hoping to occupy in the transition to a regenerative agriculture future in Europe. We talked about our own strategy of focusing on direct support for farmers through the different projects and departments within the organisation from the ever growing academy making quality educational resources easy to find, to the remote sensing team helping to gather data and metrics on the improvement of the soil and other ecosystem services as these farms transition to regenerative methods. 
To wrap up the conversation we’re going to go back to the beginning and recap the crazy turn of events that got us to where we are less than a year from launching. You’ll get to hear how this small agtech startup has gone from a loose idea to attracting collaboration and support from industries and farmers alike. 
The journey is certainly not over, in fact the really challenging parts are still ahead. If you haven’t yet heard the first part of this interview I’ll encourage you to go back and have a listen because it’ll give a lot more context to the wild story that’s about to come. So let’s check back in with Ivo Degn and Philippe Birker to see how this all started. 
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Links:climatefarmers.org

Friday Jul 23, 2021

If you’ve been listening to more than a few episodes this season, you’ll certainly have heard me mention a few times that I’ve been hosting the monthly expert panel discussions with Climate Farmers, an organisation that is working to promote regenerative agriculture in Europe. The truth is that there’s a much bigger story behind that collaboration and a whole lot more going on than just the panel discussions. 
Today I want to begin to share the story and the journey that my colleagues and I have been on for almost a year now. Until recently I’ve been a bit apprehensive to talk too much about the work I’ve been collaborating on with the team at Climate Farmers because it’s still a very new project and it’s taken us a while for us all to get clear about our direction, strategy, and path towards our goals. All of those have become much clearer in the last handful of weeks however and it’s time to unveil this ambitious project and the remarkable people that have worked together to get it off the ground. 
So today is going to be the first in a two part interview with Ivo Degn and Philippe Birker, the co-founders of Climate Farmers. In this first part, we’ll be talking about the concept of the organization, the current state of modern agriculture in Europe, and the goals that we’re working towards in order to directly assist farmers in their transition to more profitable and ecologically viable business management in a challenging and fast changing industry. Next week, in part 2, we’ll go back to the beginning and hear from both of them about the wild ride that has brought us so far in such a short time and all the brilliant people that make up the team that is making it all work, so be sure to stay tuned next week as well. 
But before we get into the bigger concepts, Let’s start by getting to know Ivo and Philippe, and the ideas that turned into this initiative. 
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Links:climatefarmers.org

Friday Jul 16, 2021

Welcome to the sixth of the monthly expert panel discussions. As I mentioned before, each month I’ll be hosting discussions and debates between some of the most prominent voices in regenerative agriculture, soil science, restoration land management and more.In this session, I hosted a discussion on the holistic management framework with my friends and colleagues at Climate Farmers, a non-profit organization working to advance regenerative agriculture in Europe.In this panel I got to speak with three of the most experienced and influential educators from the global network of Savory Hubs to share their knowledge about the wide applications of the holistic management framework. Since holistic management is often only associated with animal grazing, I wanted to hear from the women today about how relevant and influential it can be for people, not only in other types of farming businesses, but also in other aspects of life. In my work with the farming community that we’re building across Europe, the topic of holistic management keeps coming up because of this frameworks’ focus on managing the complexity that other forms of decision making work to simplify and reduce. In contrast to those methods, the idea of managing anything, from a business, to a community, relationship, or government, holistically involves understanding the whole and all the complexities within it. This is especially necessary when working with living systems and the unpredictable aspects that come with it.Since these discussions are longer than the regular weekly episodes, I’ll keep the intro short and jump right into the introductions for our panelists.
Precious Phiri: is a member of the Regeneration International (RI) steering committee and also serves as RI’s Africa coordinator. She is also a training and development specialist in regenerative environmental issues and community organizing. She recently founded an organization called EarthWisdom, a network which she formed immediately after her full time nine-year career with Savory hub in Zimbabwe. Her work focuses on training rural communities and collaborating with networks in Africa to reduce poverty, rebuild soils, and restore food and water security for people, livestock, and wildlife.
Sheila Cooke: works to enable farmers to regenerate soils whilst attaining a higher quality of life. As hub leader for 3LM, Land and Livestock Management for Life, and an Accredited Field Professional with the Savory Institute, Sheila is developing a network of Learning Hubs, Accredited Educators, and Ecological Outcome Verified producers of food and fibre.
Sarah Gleason: is a first generation bison rancher based in Hesperus, CO. She entered ranching after building a career first in consumer marketing and later in advocacy for regenerative agriculture and conservation. After working for multiple years with the Savory Institute and Holistic Management practitioners worldwide, Sarah launched into full-time ranching herself. She began her business in 2016, when she purchased her first 15 bred bison. Gleason Bison is a holistically managed, grass-fed bison operation committed to serving its community, regenerating the environment, and producing thriving animals.
Join the discord discussion channel to answer the weekly questions and learn new skills with the whole community
Links:
savory.global
https://www.3lm.network/
http://gleasonbison.com/
https://regenerationinternational.org/

Friday Jul 09, 2021

A topic that I’ve been exploring personally for a long time is the concept of regenerative travel. I’ve been travelling my whole life in some way or another from when I was born in Tokyo, Japan and then emigrated to the US with my family when I was 7, through moving 9 times as a kid to taking off independently when I was 17 and traveling and working around the world. Travel has been a lifestyle for me more than a hobby or vacation and I’ve often wondered if my actions and contributions to the places I’ve lived and visited could justify the environmental impact of that way of living. 
Through reading and mentorship, my understanding of the concept of regeneration has evolved. I now understand how true regeneration goes beyond the “do good” paradigm to development of the full potential of any whole system you’re working with. Luckily, a dear friend of mine from my time in Guatemala is working on exactly this challenge through an initiative called Naturally Smart Travel. 
Leilani Yats is the Founder of Naturally Smart Travel, a tour coordination company partnering with impact investors and social entrepreneurs in the developing world through immersive travel. Previously, her unique experience in the Los Angeles startup industry helped small domestic teams grow into international success. Since 2017, she’s focused on connecting individuals with resources to community and environmentally focused businesses in Guatemala to help all parties thrive.
In this interview Leila walks me through the thought process that went into creating the tours and experiences that foster real connections and contributions that go both ways. She explains how tours can break out of the mold that often shows local and indigenous people as exotic and in need of help rather than fostering a deeper understanding of the lives of the people that you’re visiting. We cover some uncomfortable observations from having both lived in popular tourist areas in Guatemala for years and the patterns and assumptions that are often made by visitors who are just passing through. 
This is certainly only one part of a much longer conversation that I hope to continue to have around the subject of regenerative travel, but I think that Leila is the perfect person to kick off the dialogue through her work and experience. 
So let’s jump right in from the beginning. 
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Links:
Website: www.NaturallySmart.meFacebook: https://facebook.com/naturallysmarttravelInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/naturallysmarttravel/Video: https://vimeo.com/566235203

Friday Jul 02, 2021

A lot of the farms that come to mind when I think of regenerative agriculture are smaller, more diverse and quite intensive, with many different crops and animals working in closer proximity with many stacked functions and a niche business model, but what can be done for all those vast fields of monoculture plantings of crops like corn, soy, and wheat that take up so much space in the heartland of the midwestern and western US? Are there regenerative solutions for these massive farms of thousands of acres? Is there hope for farming the plains and savannas through ecological management?
For answers to these questions I reached out to Gabe Brown of Brown’s Ranch in North Dakota. A historically challenging environment for agriculture, North Dakota is a place dominated today by massive cattle ranches and monocultures stretching beyond the horizon of dry and windy plains. But in this challenging environment, Gabe has been a pioneer of the soil-health movement and has even been named one of the twenty-five most influential agricultural leaders in the United States. Gabe, his wife, Shelly, and son, Paul, own Brown’s Ranch, a holistic, diversified 5,000-acre farm and ranch near Bismarck, North Dakota. The Browns integrate their grazing and no-till cropping systems, which include cash crops and multi-species cover crops along with all-natural, grass-finished beef and lamb, pastured pork, and laying hens. The Brown family have received numerous awards including a Growing Green Award from the Natural Resources Defense Council, an Environmental Stewardship Award from the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, and the USA Zero-Till Farmer of the Year Award.
In this interview I asked Gabe about how he managed to persevere through some very challenging years in the beginning to develop the diversified and healthy landscape that his family manages today. He also tells me a lot about the invisible challenges to this way of farming such as the counter productive incentives of the US Farm Bill and the cultural stigma that can be difficult when making unconventional changes to your farming practices. We also dig into some crucial advice that Gabe has for farmers looking to make a transition to regenerative agriculture from industrial management. This interview gave me a lot of hope that the American plains can be restored without risking food shortages or spikes in food costs. I really hope that any of you listening to this will share this episode with someone you know who works in farming who perhaps hasn’t heard of these possibilities or who thinks that their mechanized monoculture operations can’t be converted or don’t lend themselves to ecological transformation. 
Get the resource packet for this episode!
Join the discord discussion channel to answer the weekly questions and learn new skills with the whole community
Links:
Get the book From Dirt to Soilhttps://brownsranch.us/
understandingag.com
soilhealthacademy.org
Chelsea Green Publishing – the leading publisher of sustainable living books since 1985.

Friday Jun 25, 2021

Three weeks ago I published the episode with Tomas Viguurs on circular mushroom production here in Catalunya and I gave a sneak peak at the second interview I did that day with Sven Kallen. Well today the wait is over and we’re going to dive into the details of Sven’s work of reforestation and agroforestry in some of the most degraded and endangered areas of Europe from the Iberian Peninsula which includes Spain and Portugal, and the Mediterranean basin.
This includes many of the most popular vacation destinations on the continent, but also the most rapidly desertifying areas. As the effects of climate change increase and become more severe, we collectively need to rethink how we respond to the geographical zones on the front lines.
Luckily, this is Sven’s specialty and life’s work, so I’ll let Sven introduce himself before we dive into the actionable steps to regenerate these high risk zones.  
Get the resource packet for this episode!
Join the discord discussion channel to answer the weekly questions and learn new skills with the whole community
Links:
https://landlifecompany.com/news/better-faster-stronger-the-new-cocoon-lid/
https://volterra.bio/
https://lifeterra.eu/

Oliver M Goshey 2023

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