Rising Food Prices Part 4: Can Regenerative Agriculture Solve the Food Crisis?

This is the 4th in a series of interviews I am conducting to try to better understand why food prices have been rising, where they are going as we move toward a potential food crisis, how this will impact the evolving landscape of food availability, and what we should do about it.

Allen Williams joins me to talk about conventional, organic, and regenerative agriculture, and how fuel and fertilizer inputs differ between them, and why regenerative agriculture offers the best resilience in the face of what looks like an emerging food crisis.

Allen Williams is a 6th generation family farmer and founding partner of Grass Fed Insights, LLC, Understanding Ag, LLC and the Soil Health Academy. He has consulted with more than 4000 farmers and ranchers in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, South America, and other countries, on operations ranging from a few acres to over 1 million acres.

Allen pioneered many of the early regenerative grazing protocols and forage finishing techniques and now teaches those practices and principles to farmers globally. He is a “recovering academic”, having served 15 years on the faculty at Louisiana Tech University and Mississippi State University. He holds a B.S. and M.S. in Animal Science from Clemson University and a Ph.D. in Livestock Genetics from LSU. He has authored more than 400 scientific and popular press articles, and is an invited speaker at regional, national, and international conferences and symposia.

Allen and his colleagues specialize in whole farm & ranch planning based on the concept of regenerative agriculture. Their approach creates significant “value add” and prepares the landowner for multiple enterprise/revenue stream opportunities that stack enterprises and acres. This approach allows for enhanced profitability and/or investment value. They routinely conduct workshops and seminars across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.

This series started from a Substack post I wrote, The Emerging Food Crisis:

Over the next month, as part of this series, I will conduct interviews and panel discussions on my podcast in an effort to better understand the issue and what to do about it. Relying primarily on interviews will allow me to better understand the issue while staying focused on finishing my vaccine research so I can ultimately return to finishing my book.

I will eventually be concluding my work on the vaccines with a COVID Vaccine Guide, which I will distribute for free to paid Substack subscribers, those who have pre-ordered my Vitamins and Minerals 101 book, and members of the CMJ Masterpass. Articles in this series that lay out actionable foundations of my future protocol for vaccine side effects will be for paid Substack subscribers and Masterpass members. However, most of them will available for free for the first 48 hours, and all of them will be readable with a free trial. Paid Substack subscribers get immediate access to my COVID Guide, and are entitled to 50% off a membership to the Masterpass as well. You can subscribe or upgrade your subscription here:

And you can join the Masterpass here:

Masterpass members get to watch these interviews live, and also have monthly access to a live Q&A with me. The next Q&A session is Wednesday, May 18, 12:00 PM Eastern.

[CarolBlaneyPhD]

Hello, I'm spreading the word on #savesoil, and Sadhguru is traveling the world 100 days to inform governments about the need for soil stewardship, b/c soil is a living entity, we depend on it's life force for our own life. It must be at least several percents organic for healthy living food production. Peace and blessings. Thank you for your work.

[albeth]

Thanks Chris! I’m a farmer trying to move our farm to a regenerative approach. I appreciate this info!

[daughterofthekingofkings]

I love hearing about real solutions rather than just gloom and doom. I have believed for many years that we need to revolutionize our food system towards a much more regenerative system. Such changes would revolutionize our environment and our health.

[Mike-bspi]

I'm currently working on setting up a regenerative farm, so these kinds of talks are invaluable to me.

[CarolBlaneyPhD]

synthetic nitrogen is like a synthetic vitamin that may boost growth IF PLANTS ARE ALSREADY FARMED. You cannot live on chemicals alone. Soil must be organic, that makes it living full of good bugs. I love seeing this awareness become everyday practical knowledge. It makes me very happy and optimistic. thanks.

[albeth]

The issue we are facing raising beef and pork is that we don’t have anywhere to take animals. The lockers are all full till 2024 and we don’t get a premium at the conventional packers. So he is correct, I can’t wait until the additional lockers are full. Problem is, finding workers. I would build my own right now if I thought I could find workers!

[emilymacdonald]

I can see how you can grow food year round on ground in mild, humid, favorable climates but how does that work in climates with freezing winters or very little or un-even distribution of moisture?

[emilymacdonald]

So why don't we see wide spread use of cover crops in crop farming in the corn belt if it reduces the cost of production by reducing the need for chemical inputs and fuel and labor? Wouldn't farmers jump on this immediately?
Are there disincentives in crop insurance, crop subsidies etc.?

[emilymacdonald]

It would be helpful for consumers to be able to explain to others what regeneratively sourced food is when we ask for it in stores and restaurants. We need a clear definition. Since( as you said) all farming practices (tools) can be used in the process of improving ecosystem processes and soil health, the practices used are not the hallmark. We'd need some historical data from a farm to know if ecosystem processes are improving and we'd need some specific metrics.

[mikeymileos]

What about things that need long term farming like olive trees and fruit trees?

[CarolBlaneyPhD]

My notes:
26.36, supply chain vulnerability, dirven by 'just in time' mentality. Abundant N2 in air can be utilized as natural fertilizer via living organic content in soil.

28.28, No need to buy toxic fertilizers from overseas mining of potash etc,
due to naturally bound fertilizer/N2 already in soil, now is able to be utilized by healthy soil microbes.
(standard tests may show a false 'soil deficiency' in nitrogen etc. but this is false.
IF you use the proper test you will see soils are NOT deficient in nitrogen, phosphorus and zinc, they are only 'bound up' and not bioavailable, ' due to soil imbalances and lack of microbial/organic content of soil.
Instead of toxic fertilizers, do regenerative practices and you get organic living soil content, and therefore the previously "bound" nutrients are solubilized and Plenty of N2, Phosporus, Zn... Excellent!!
33.22 micro-rizal-fungi are chief good bug in soil you want to keep (so minimize tilling as it damages fungi and therefore decreases nutrient availability that the fungi provide. ) We love our fun fungi. SAve thes by stopping fungicides, tilling, pesticides, and instead do sustainable regenerative farming which is the superior and MOST EFFICIENT nutritious and tested-over-time sustainable no-harm method.
45:00 regenerative farming has (in the long term) many financial benefits. Current food may seem cheap but consider all the tax we pay to sustain "poor farming' via subsidizing conventional methods which operate on a fragile system that has a 'just in time' mentality, barely subsisting, and catastrophicall affected by little blips in supply chains (which we expect will continue to worsen with storms and other upsets).
1:04.14 Pasture raised eggs have much more phytonutrients! (an egg is not an egg). 87% differences in nutrient density depending on soil health and production method. I'd surely pay more for that if i can avoid disease and live longer higher quality life. And i do (I buy the pasture raised eggs)

[emilymacdonald]

No-till? Doesn't that require herbicide and genetically modified seed when used for grain/ bean farming?

[David-kdmf]

Transitioning from cover crop to cash crop without tillage is a challenge.

[evanb]

A good question to ask him if it's true or myth that the US govt is paying farmers to destroy their crops. I've seen multiple videos about that on the internet the past few years.

[dmg]

Nice interview. I have two related comments/queries.
1) Over the last 150 years, food yields have sky rocketed as farmers have abandoned older methods. Yet Allen asserts that he is getting more yield than conventional farming by adopting some older methods. This creates a *paradox*. No doubt the solution is a more granular treatment of methods. It would have been good to ask him what his opinion &/ data is available to determine which methods explains what proportion of the variance in the historic rise of yields. Was haber bosch responsible for less of the yield rise than say tractors? If so, why and why was it not appreciated? You paid lip service to the idea that the costs may be more expensive at 1:00:25, but Allen only suggested downstream costs being disadvantageous, and not the yield!
2) A related query is given the market has been an amazing mechanism to iterate to discover yield, what forces have prevented farmers from filling the gaps? It sounds like a no-brainer to plant a 2nd crop as long as the marginal gain to profit is above zero. It's hard for me to believe that farmers wouldn't have figured that out years ago (I know strawberry farmers well in South Africa and they are not asleep at the wheel). Sometimes there is a competing interest that removes the incentive to do that. What would explain this?

[emilymacdonald]

But why have there been food/ nutrient shortages since the beginning of civilization that have led to the collapse of a succession of civilizations? Can large populations of humans feed ourselves sustainably?

[edilvanozanella]

Would you help me? And I wanted to ask for a little time of your precious time! I have MTHFR 1298 heterozygous mutation, I have severe refractory depression and severe anxiety unresponsive to psychotropic meds, I have already taken 15mg of methylfolate and B complex for 1 year and it has not helped at all. Folate levels in the blood are always very high, it remains at 23 ng, without supplementation and with supplementation the folate levels are 23 ng in the blood, it is the maximum result that the exam marks for high folic acid in my blood, I suffer from I've had this problem since childhood, but I've had severe refractory depression and anxiety for 8 years and it's gotten worse in the last 5 years. I wanted your opinion and help, and I find it strange that my blood folic acid is always high, even if I don't supplement if supplementing methylfolate remains equally high.