A Profitable Climate Change Approach For Some Midwestern Farmers: ‘We Are All About Regeneration’

Grant and Dawn Breitkreutz and their daughter Karlie manage a 950-acre farm in Stoney Creek, Minnesota. Like many farmers, they turned to Round-Up Ready crops as they became available, which are genetically engineered to withstand the herbicide glyphosate.

When disease spread and the health of their herd drastically declined — cattle were dying and breeding wasn’t successful — a nutritionist told them that the genetically modified feeds, grown on their own family farm, were at the heart of the issue.

This was the start of their transition to regenerative agriculture, a practice based on the potential for a string of benefits to the farmer, the Earth and society. Proponents see a path to reverse climate change by revitalizing the organic life of soil, balancing biodiversity and sequestering atmospheric carbon in the ground.

The Big Picture

A United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report this week warns that our global agricultural system is at risk, with soil degradation and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as main contributors to instability.

“Land provides the principal basis for human livelihoods and well-being including the supply of food, freshwater and multiple other ecosystem services, as well as biodiversity,” states the report. “Human use directly affects more than 70% of the global, ice-free land surface. Land also plays an important role in the climate system.”

The report also points to desertification, land that is stripped of fertility through deforestation or inappropriate agriculture, as a major threat. Among possible solutions are soil management, crop diversification and a change in consumer behavior when it comes to food choices, all aspects addressed by the practice of regenerative agriculture.

Regenerative Agriculture and Midwestern Farmers

Regenerative farmers, like the Breitkreutz family, have practical insight on moving the needle in the right direction — they are featured in a new documentary, Farmer’s Footprint: A Path to Soil Health and Food Independence, which illuminates the impact of chemical-based farming on human and environmental health.

Originated by Zach Bush MD (and available to watch for free online) the film promotes the concept of regenerative agriculture, removing the need to use chemicals and instead relying on natural balance restored through a change in methods.

Dr. Bush, an endocrinologist in Charlottesville, Virginia, noticed that maps of the water supply associated with the Mississippi River and its tributaries align with cancer death maps. Looking for answers, he turned to farmers to help determine the impact of chemical runoff on human and environmental health.

Rick Clark is a Warren County, Indiana farmer running a 7,000-acre farm with non-GMO seeds, no-till farming, crop rotation, cover crops, green farming (planting into cover crops) and an active organic transition plan that he hopes to see fulfilled in five years.

Clark contributed to a panel screening of Farmer’s Footprint this week in Springfield, Illinois and he says that his “profitability is high,” serving as an example of a Midwestern farm that balances regenerative practices and financial independence. Clark has scaled his enterprise, selling non-GMO corn and alfalfa to Dannon (Danone North America), and non-GMO soybeans to a Cargill facility in Lafayette, Indiana. 

“You’ll never hear me talk about sustainability because it means staying the same,” says Clark. “We are all about regeneration.” To achieve regeneration, Clark insists that soil health is paramount and that “increased soil health will increase human health.”

Also on the panel was Chase Brown, a family farmer in Macon County, Illinois. Brown farms with his father and uncle, and his wife is a soybean merchandiser, buying and selling food-grade soy such as tofu and soy milk, primarily organic and non-GMO.

Brown says he’s done it all, when it comes to farming: “If there’s a buck in it, we’ve tried it.” A turning point occurred in 2012, when his farm was hit by a drought and the Browns planted cover crop as emergency feed for their cattle.

Cover crop isn’t necessarily a money maker like corn or soy, and because of this it isn’t always viewed as a productive choice. But the benefits are there, say Brown and other farmers on the panel.

Traditional crops are in the ground during a few months of the year — the remainder of the time, that precious soil is vulnerable to erosion. Cover crops protect valuable agricultural material and revitalize the ecosystem of the field through nutrient conversion and added organic matter. When the soil is reanimated, the microbial community provides benefits that, as of recently, many farmers feel can only be obtained by chemicals.

Cover crop can be practically anything — wheat, rye, clover, millet — and Brown says it “protects and feeds life below the ground.” When the land isn’t planted, this life is exposed, and often lost. At risk soil can lack nutrients and become degraded, prone to runoff and unable to hold water.

Soil that can retain water mitigates flood and drought. As soil health consultant David Kleinschmidt said at the panel, “We create our own droughts and our own floods with the way we work our soil and destroy structure into fine particles.” A room of Midwesterners can’t help but tense at the word flood, after the ongoing damage and threat of 2019.

Cover crops also provide a physical barrier on the soil and can contribute to weed suppression as an alternative to herbicides.

Rick Clark points to another benefit of cover cropping: “We can combat climate change with more green things growing to filter carbon from the air.” Earlier this year, a report published in the journal Science indicated that planting trees (green things) can help capture excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

A Vision for Scale

Near the end of the evening a question was asked of the panel: Where do we buy this produce? For now, purchasing face-to-face is an excellent option, but the elephant in the room is global climate change and food supply for a growing population.

The idea of scale — making healthy food available to more people and greater swaths of land being revitalized — means that normalization of regenerative practices is the key to impact. Both land management and revised consumer behavior (particularly reducing food waste and meat consumption) are implicated as solutions in the United Nations report.

Connecting farmers with their peers, regional-based mentors, and investment in regenerative agriculture all help shape policy and behavior that makes chemical-infused agriculture unnecessary for farmers to thrive.

Rick Clark puts faith in the next generation, sharing what he’s learned with Future Farmers of America. “Plant the seed today and when they are in charge, maybe they can get it all implemented,” says Clark.