Acres U.s.a.

In this week's podcast, we’re going all the way back to last year’s Acres USA Eco-Ag Conference in Omaha, Nebraska. There, an author-farmer named Ben Hartman spoke for more than an hour about a little miracle he and his wife, Rachel Hershberger, created in southern Michigan. On The Lean Farm, also the title of his book, Ben and his family connected with local restaurants in Chicago and the southern Michigan area to create a sustainable, profitable farming venture on less than one acre of land. His talk last year at our conference was educational, inspiring, and one worth sharing. For those who want to attend our conference in Columbus, Ohio, from Dec. 5-8 this year and talk with hundreds of farmers and experts, including last week’s guest Andre Leu, you can learn more at www.acresusa.com, or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and of course, subscribe to our monthly magazine. Learn more about Ben Hartman at http://claybottomfarm.com, or by buying his book at www.acresusa.com/the-lean-farm.

In the Acres USA world, Andre Leu is becoming much more than a household name. Leu, who has written for our magazine for years, published The Myth of Safe Pesticides in 2014. He has spoken on the dangers of pesticides for years several times at our annual conference, and will join us again this year. Leu is currently the president of IFOAM – Organics International, and has more than 40 yeas of international experience in all areas of organic agriculture. He has been one of those human advocates, one of those forces of nature, that are pushing the agriculture movement into healthier directions. We spoke with Andre Leu on Thursday, July 20, from his office in Queensland, Australia. Hosted by Ryan Slabaugh. To learn more about Acres USA, visit www.acresusa.com or www.ecofarmingdaily.com.

This week, we’re dipping into the archives back to 2005. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans and YouTube was founded, and in 2005, John Slack also took the stage at our Eco-Ag conference and spoke about rocks. But we are not really talking about rocks. We are talking about geology. And even more so, geology-micro biology, or as Slack puts it, “Bugs eating rocks.” The basis of all this, and why it’s interesting to us and other eco-farmers: the industrial chemical revolution that occurred after World War II caused scientists, or geologists, or just rock fanatics, to pause in their research in regards to agriculture. Yet a few passionate folks, like John, continued. They avoided the noise of short cuts and pollution and learned how many living things manipulate rocks to get the nutrients they require. John Slack does not call himself a geologist or a farmer. He calls himself a prospector. “We went out and looked for calcium,” he says in his talk. He talks about what he looks for when he walks the field

We know how busy farmers are this time of year, so we feel especially lucky to have our guest on today’s show. He really needs no introduction, but we’ll give it a shot anyway. Joel Salatin is known around most agricultural circles as the most famous farmer in the world. He calls himself a Christian libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic farmer, which is a mouthful, both in words and in meaning. More practically, he’s a successful author and speaker, has written dozens of pieces for Acres USA magazine through the years, has spoken at our Eco-Ag conferences, and through all that, we’ve learned that he is not afraid to be funny, educational, or to step into controversy when he needs to. But his belief in honoring the land and the animals is something we respect the most, and why we are glad to call him a friend.  He spoke to us about the challenges in the eco-agriculture movement growing around the world, and answers some questions about how ecology, agriculture and the food supply can work together. H

On this week's podcast,we thought it’d be good to turn back the clock to a talk from 2009 at our Eco-Ag conference. Jerry Brunetti, rest in peace, was a fearless advocate for soil management and gave a presentation then called “Soil as a SuperOrganism.” In other words, a super computer built to process everything efficiently and create answers for us that are accurate.  “There is life in rock. There is life that comes out of everything,” he says in this talk. We like that so much, we want to share it with you today. We wish Jerry could still be here today to speak to us in person. We’ll settle for the best that we’ve got — his talk, “Soil as a SuperOrganism.” We hope you enjoy it.   Introduction by Ryan Slabaugh. Learn more at www.ecofarmingdaily.com or www.acresusa.com.

In this week's episode, we had the pleasure of sitting down with Susan Sink, vice president of development and external relations at American Farmland Trust, a nonprofit organization who collaborates with farmers around the world to help save farmland from development, among many other things.  Susan and the team are based in Washington D.C., and work with policymakers as well to craft major legislation like the Farm Bill, which affects almost every farmer in the country. She and her cohorts travel around and talk with farmers, both conventional and organic, and see how different environments — both political and geographic — affect the agriculture industry across the country. Susan is also a farmer who has diversified her cattle farm in hopes of finding a way to keep her farm going in a very challenging environment for cattle farmers. She speaks to her own experience, and provides words of wisdom and hope that every farmer out there can hear and appreciate. Hosted by Ryan Slabaugh.

As Charles Walters, founder of Acres U.S.A., said in his talk in this week's podcast, if he had asked his father in 1945: “Are you an organic farmer, he would have said 'What’s that?'" In less than a century, we’ve come far enough to forget how we have farmed for centuries. And how new the introduction of industrial pesticides and herbicides is for farming, and how little we truly know about the massive effect it’s had on our health, on our environment and on our food supply. In this talk from an archival Eco-Ag Conference presentation, Charles spoke to this point with the help of Lee Fryer, and a few farmers in the audience. He will tell you that even today, the effort to, as he put it, “to liberate the organic farmers,” goes on. With truth on our side. That the challenge now is to return the burden of proof to the conventional agriculture systems, to those who want to coat our foods with poison, to prove that it is as safe as organic farming, and not the other way around.

On this week’s Tractor Time podcast, we interviewed author and regenerative agriculture guru Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin. His story is not only inspirational, but transcends genres.His book, “In the Shadow of Green Man,” documents this. It speaks to growing up in poverty, through civil war, learning from his father, moving to Minnesota, graduating from school and leading an organization focused on regenerative models of agriculture. “Knowledge without wisdom is a more dangerous weapon than the most dangerous weapons we use in wars,” Haslett-Marroquin said in the podcast. “Why? They are the silent killers.”  You can learn more about his work by ordering his book, or by visiting www.mainstreetproject.org.

In our inaugural episode, we interview Abbey Smith with the Savory Institute about her travels, sustainable grazing methods, and how she manages her own ranch in Northern California. Then, we finish with an archived speech from Charles Walters, the founder of Acres U.S.A., who challenged his audience about the differences between eco-agriculture and conventional agriculture.