Professor and filmmaker Peter Byck says lessons from ancient bison herds can make cattle farming less of a climate disaster and more profitable. Merryn speaks to him about his latest 4-part documentary series “Roots So Deep (you can see the devil down there)” and the future of farming.
With Bloomberg you get the story behind the story the story behind the global birth rate behind your EV batteries environmental impact behind sand yeah sand you get context and context changes everything go to bloomberg.com to get context John man’ you’re always going to listen to the monists now aren’t you
Actually I am even although as I said earlier this morning there’s going to be unbearable for the next kind of like year and a half at least they are going to be unbearable but but there they were right and we talked about this before and we have actually this is one one of
The few things that we’ve got very right on this podcast is we have been talking to people all year who have been saying inflation is going to fall it’s going to fall fast look at the money supply numbers the bank or the central banks have been unbelievably stupid they
Didn’t watch money supply on the way up even though it was perfectly obvious that the sharp rise in money supply would lead to inflation with the normal 12 to 18 month lag whatever it is and it’s also been perfectly obvious this year that the Fallen money supply would
Lead us into sharply falling inflation possibly even deflation by the beginning of next year we’ve had a couple of guests on who’ve talked about that and low and behold they were absolutely right so this week’s inflation numbers came in very low much lower than expected right yeah dropped to 3.9% year
On year and that’s the that’s CPI which is the thing that the bank of England’s meant to Target but every every other measure now I mean there’s about five of them now all fell and they all fell by more than expected um and than expected more than expected monitor yeah
Um and it’s I mean it’s it’s good news obviously um the the the one tricky thing of course is you know is this happening because the economy is actually slowing down and it’s much worse out there than anyone thinks and therefore 2024 is going to be horrible
Recessionary and we’ll see a series of panicky rate Cuts spiral downwards from the bank of England and it’ll be too late to do anything or actually we’re going to see real incomes rise slightly more significantly than we thought next year um the pain kind of like the wage squeeze will come
Off the state pension is set to rock it along with the minimum wage um so actually people are probably going to have quite a bit more spending power come the spring um and also what’s his name Jeremy Hunt is going to have quite a bit more leeway in the budget because
The notional you know kind of amount of interest that we owe on our national debt will fall and so you know the OB will be able to say actually he’s got say 11 billion Headroom um so that’ll go up and I mean obviously all of this
Stuff’s just made up anyway but it gives them something Point going to say that is made up numbers made up entirely made up yeah it’s but the point is like we’ve got to this point where we kind of have to make all these things up because the national debt so
High anyway and so Jeremy will be able to say oh yeah I’m still being fiscally responsible even as I cut income tax by XY Z amount or whatever giveaway he decides to do ahead of the election so yes so basically yeah is it going to go
Is it going to go the negative way or the positive way I’m not sure yeah and I suppose the the takeaway from all this is that the bank of England really is absolutely useless they didn’t see it on the way up and now it’s coming down faster than they expected and they were
Probably right in some degree that it was transitory but they got every part of that transitory bit wrong right and now they’re going to look at it coming down fast looking to next year start uh cutting rates when you and I might say wouldn’t this be a great opportunity to
Normalize and when it also isn’t certain that inflation is definitely gone and we can see that there’s going to be um although trouble in the Middle East is going to lead us into more Supply crunches possibly that the geopolitical situation still suggest that things aren’t quite as they should be so now we
Worry having previously worried earlier in the year that they might leave that they might raise rates too fast and leave it too late to cut now I’m beginning to get worried on the other side because there is seemingly no end to their incompetence the other thing actually that fascinates me is the the
Fact that the FED kind of changed his mind so aggressively makes me wonder if actually maybe they are paying more attention to the money supply figures finally um and it’s just on this side that Atlantic the the uh well the group think remains you know very intense um I
Mean but yeah I think the the thing that I’ve still got a lot of and I guess is maybe just um maybe probably just a cognitive bias but I’m struggling to see actual deflation kicking in again and I do think that long term we’re in a more inflationary environment but that
Doesn’t preclude interest rates maybe going down to you know 3 and a half % and just sitting there you know for as long as we can keep it at that level roughly um and that would be nice to get back to something more normal although it probably does also mean that house
Prices are going to um you know fail to fail to fall once more so maybe the 18-year property cycle guys are right along with the monetarists they may be and they have been historically which means by the way if the 18year property cycle people are right at 202 six when everything goes
Horribly wrong so it’s still not not that far off not that something to bear in mind and I have a feeling we’re going to come back to house prices over the next little while but John before we finish I want to go back to what you said about Jeremy Hunt and his entirely
Notional and imaginary headr to um come up with a tax cut of some kind before the election but assuming that uh the next government is a labor government both in Westminster and in Scotland at Hollywood it seems likely that there’ll be a a a degree of tax convergence
Between Scotland and the rest of the UK do you think that that will involve ta income taxes in England coming up to the new dramatically and bizarrely high levels in Scotland or taxes in Scotland coming down to meet taxes in England if you ask me about it have to
Be taxes in Scotland and but it’s only assuming that labor does get in there um I haven’t been paying attention to the polls closely enough um to be 100% confident that that’s what’s going to happen but no I’m not 100% confident either but um it does seem that the S&P
Seem incapable of getting anything at all right I mean that’s been the case for a long time but finally people are beginning to notice that you know it’s a very high tax environment public services are not that great the L of fundus has received absolutely uh no appraise from anybody anywhere although
To be honest I haven’t looked at the headlines of the national yet they may be praising the budget God knows how we better go and look at that later but we now we now have taxes in in Scotland we have income taxes at we now got six
Bands which is slightly nuts in itself um and if you are earning over £75,000 you will now pay the advanced rate of 45% so 47% with your ni if you are paying the top rate you’ll be paying 4 8% plus 2% of course your ni so
The top RA in tax of 125,000 is now 50% and that means that if you’re earning say 120,000 in the UK you’ll be paying very very significantly more Tax £5,000 Plus more than you would be paying in England which brings me to asking you John what’s your personal finance tip of
The week move out of Scotland move out of Scotland fine but all I would say about that is that it’s very very very tempting but England looks like a safe haven right now will England still be a safe haven after the next election we will find
Out um but yes there will be a bit of a brain drain from Scotland now because everyone assumes that the UK government could conceivably be as stupid as the Scottish government but I wouldn’t bet on that I don’t think I can handle a 69.5% marginal tax rate over
£100,000 no you can’t handle that kind of rate John and KN in the economy and now imagine just imagine that you move to Scotland and you had your um student loan repayments on top of that can you handle that no you can’t you wouldn’t come welcome to Marin talks money the
Podcast in which people who know the markets explain the markets I’m Marin Somerset web this week another topic slightly off the beaten Market SP for your holiday listening it’s a conversation with filmmaker and Professor Peter Bick bi is a director producer and writer of carbon nation and a professor at Arizona State University
In both the school of sustainability and the kronite school of Journalism he’s also the director of roots so deep you can see the devil down there which is a four-part documentary series looking at how cows can affect help us combat climate change by embracing a different way of grazing
Cattle up next we’re getting some breing there’s so much news happening around the world that we’re somehow supposed to stay on top of and with the constant flood of information coming at you it can feel impossible to make of it all that’s why we launch the big take
It’s a daily podcast from Bloomberg and iHeart radio that turns down the volume a bit to give you some space to think I’m West Cova each weekday I dig deep into one important story and talk about why it matters you’ll hear from Bloomberg’s journalists and analysts
Around the world and the people at the center of the news that that affects all of us and we do it in plain English listen to the big take on the iHeart Radio app Apple podcast or wherever you Listen Peter hello thank you so much for joining us today oh nice to be here Marin thank you this is such an important topic I want to just start by first telling the the listeners that we’re going to talk about agriculture we’re going to talk about in particular
About cattle and about farming cattle and how that the effects that might or might not have on the environment but I think pretty much everybody who is listening to this podcast will have an idea in their head that beef in particular is incredibly bad for the environment in every possible way so we
Read this in the newspapers all the time I’m just going to read you a little bit from a magazine called the week which summarizes news stories here in the UK very popular eating meat significantly increases your carbon footprint and beef is one of the worst culprits a 2020 22
Study found that beef production produces over 99 kg of greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram of meat far higher than any other meat cattle is the animal species responsible for most emissions and the article like almost all other articles on the topic goes on to explain that something like a quarter
Of the global greenhouse gas emissions in the food industry come from beef production alone and therefore we must all stop eating beef uh stop stop livestock farming eat nothing but chickpeas forever and as I particularly don’t like chickpeas or lentils for that matter what I’m hoping is that you will
Explain to us today that that simply isn’t necessary and cow’s that just not that bad so the idea that that meat is bad for the planet that cattle are ruining the planet that’s studying a sick system that I agree with industrial cattle production is really really bad
For Planet but what we’re looking at is cattle production that’s really really good for the planet and it it comes down to how the animals are grazed and replicating the way bison and great hurting animals moved across for example the Great Plains of the United States and and so that what we call
Adaptive multi padic grazing is proving to be an an enormous environmental benefit could you tell us in a couple of sentences why it is that beef farmed in the traditional manner well traditional but the the modern Manner and particularly in US is so awful because actually cattle farming in the US is
Different to cattle farming in in much of Europe what makes it so uniquely horrible in the in the US uh when folks overg graze their cattle which is kind of the norm where you get the the blades of grass really short so you could you
Know look it look like a golf course um you’re you’re not allowing nature to live in the way it wants to live you’re not allowing the plants to grow up to the height they want to grow up you’re not allowing birds and bugs to come into the system well the grazing we’re
Talking about adaptive multi padic grazing or holistic planned grazing or mob grazing or strip grazing lots of names basically produces on any size Farm the animals all in one herd and they move around in very tight packs for very short periods of time so it’s a short duration grazing and then they
Move on to the next little piece and then what happens is most of the farm gets to rest most of the time and the farmers that do this type of grazing they’re focused on soil Health First and one of the ways to get there is to let
The grasses and the Forbes and weeds and everything else to grow up to about waste height during the growing season the animals eat half of that Stomp the rest of it down to give the soil a nice cover their manure and urine is evenly spread and then the land gets to rest
And that’s the replication of the way the bison moved across the Great Plains here in the US and built incredibly deep rich top soil so the B the Bison moved around the plains in very tight groups right so huge herds very tightly together grazing one section and then
Moving onto another section to grave it graze it and obviously no fences they can go for miles in these tight groups moving across the plains so the majority of the planes at any one time were not grazed at all right it’s it’s a long rest period between grazings and you
Know whether it was tight or not tight those sorts of things you could you could debate but they were massive massive herds and they always went to where there was better food or they went to where animals weren’t hunting them and so that’s why they kept moving on so
The farmers are replicating that movement on their Farms whether it’s 40 acres or you know 20 hectares or 100 hectares it’s totally doable and it it’s an amazing thing to hear from Farmers how well it works how many more species of plants they’re seeing growing in their fields when they just don’t let
The animals overgraze their fields seeds they didn’t even plant they’re just sitting there in the soil not expressing themselves and when those plants grow up they’re attracting so many different insects so you have this great balance of insect Community which then brings in a whole lot of birds and here in the
United States our grassland bird population is over 50% depleted since 1970 and on the farms that we’re studying that are doing the Adaptive raising they’re having 300% more of those uh endangered birds on these Farms Wildlife is coming to these Farms I just was at a conference with 700 farmers and
People were just coming up to us coming up to us coming up to us same story same story we’re seeing many more birds much more Wildlife our water cycling is better we don’t have huge input costs um our animals are selling for more it it’s just a consistently good store story for
The farmers but what we wanted to know was whether it was good for the planet and so we went to Great Lengths and and raised a lot of money to study the greenhouse gas cycling on these Farms comparing it to their neighbor across the fence and five replications in the
Southeast us and the greenhouse gas data that that we’re it’s pre-published right now um so it’ll it’ll be a bit different but close um we account for all three of the major greenhouse gases so a lot of the studies that you quoted at the top of the piece they’re looking at methane
Methane methane methane methane methane but there’s three greenhouse gases on on these agricultural systems that are that are important carbon CO2 methane nitrous oxide and so when we account for all three of those greenhouse gases the method of grazing is drawing down so much carbon that it overtakes the
Warming of the methane and the nitrous oxide we don’t even begin to say that cows don’t emit methane of course cows emit methane and nitrous oxide is a natural byproduct of their urine on the fields and things like that um but the greenhouse gas snc of what we’re seeing
In our research of all three greenhouse gases all being accounted for in a very very conservative way it’s called gwp 100 um we’re seeing a draw down of 12.1 tons of CO2 equivalent per hectare per year on the Adaptive side of the fence and we’re actually seeing draw down on
The conventional side of 2.9 tons of CO2 equivalent per hectare per year again those are numbers that are not yet published but that’s what we’re looking at right now so so the idea that that grazing cannot be a a climate solution does not work with our data and we’ve
Spent 10 years on this we’re looking at this I personally you know I’m just looking for solutions to climate change this is the thing that caught my eye this is the thing we’ve been looking at for a long time and so this is what we found animal
Impact properly used on land is what nature developed for us for the planet not for us for the planet it’s incredibly effective and to act like we should just take all the animals off the land because we don’t like people eating meat is not really looking at what Nature has provided the planet
Let’s look again at it because not not everybody will understand how it is that this type of grazing creates a carbon sink so what you’re telling us is that the carbon sink created by this grazing offsets all the farting and the burping of the cows right and as I understand
Don’t correct me if I’m wrong as I understand that this is about um a the depth of the roots of the plants so the deeper the roots of the the grasses and the other plants and in the pastures the deeper they go U the more carbon can be
Held in the soil and as the microbes in the soil develop and are not churned up there’s no plowing Etc that also helps is that how it works yeah those are all accurate accurate statements for sure so when you have plants that are being overgrazed think of it as as sort of a
Mirror the the roots are very short on the bottom too and the the longer you let a plant grow and the higher you let a plant grow above the soil surface the roots are growing deeper into the soil surface and so what that does is that brings carbon down into the soil
Community bring helps create channels for water to absorb into the soil and when you have a lot of different types of plants not just one or two or three types of plants growing in that pasture but if you have seven or more 10 12 then you’re you’re creating a situation with
Enormous increases of the soil microbial diversity and also the the soil microbial abundance and so when you have a lot of microbes in the soil doing their job the plants are actually feeding the microbes carbon and so when those plants are eaten half like we were talking about the the the Cattleman have
The animals eat half of that plant above the surface they stomp the rest down they keep the soil cool keeping the soil cool keeps the microbes thriving exposed soil can get insanely hot insanely quickly like you can have soil on an 80° day if it’s exposed be 105 110° so
You’re actually killing your microbes but when you keep the soil cool the soil surface covered the cool soil the microbes they’re thriving the plants are bringing carbon into the soil system the microbes are feeding the plants all the minerals and nutrients they need so you actually get nutrient
Dents forage being grown from that microb rich ecosystem below ground where carbon is the currency I know your shows about money well carbon’s the currency with microbial Life below ground and and diverse plants big plants tall plants those are bringing more carbon into the system so that’s how these these farmers
Are drawing down so much more carbon than the warming of the methane and the nitrous oxide that’s coming up out of the system and from the cattle that’s how it’s happening it’s photosynthesis it’s just simply photosynthesis that’s everything we learned at school when we were 12 right um and presumably the
Depth of the the deeper the roots of the plants go the more resilient the land is to Drought is that right that’s accurate and I’ll just give you a little bit more Nuance um when you have Deep Roots you’re you’re you’re you’re breaking up the soil so the soil is porous and when
You have a lot of microbes the soil is also porous because the soil itself is actually made of dead microbes like up to maybe maybe 50% of healthy soils are dead microbes and so that’s like a sponge it’s very a very porous very aerated so those roots are aerating the
Soil right so You’ get different types of roots that are breaking through compacted soil so all of that air through the soil system is allowing the rain to go in to the soil system itself so the the Adaptive side of the fence in our study is getting two more inches of
Rain soaking in per hour than their neighbor and that’s a huge amount of water when you’re thinking about you know 1 acre inch of water is 27,000 gallons 2 acre inches of water is 54,000 gallons and if you have a th Acre Farm which is not unheard of over here
Not as common over there but if you just use the math that’s 54 million gallons of water per hour that the Adaptive folks are getting so all that water is going into their system when it rains and all those porest spaces are holding that water so when the droughts come
Which they will come and they’ll come more and more we’ll have heavier rains and bigger droughts as climate change takes off this Global weirding it’s doing that water is staying in the soil in these little pockets and it’s actually more resilient in drought uh for the farmer and we’ve had farmer
After farmer after farmer still growing their their their forage when their neighbors are feeding hay to their animals at a very high expense because their land is more resilient and drought which is exactly what you said it’s also more resilient and floods it’s more durable the the soil soaks up more water
So there’s less flooding Downstream so farmers you know if a whole Watershed of farmers is focusing on soil health and getting their soils super healthy super porous then the flooding Downstream is going to be mitigated it’s going to be much much less okay interesting so what we’ve got
Here is as you as you describe it and I would encourage everybody to watch the the documentaries you’ve done on this as you describe it you’ve got something that massively improves biodiversity improves the resilience of the soil and H of the land um is a great assistance in the fight against Rising global
Temperatures but sounds like an awful lot of work for Farmers I’ve spoken to some regenerative Farmers using these amp systems and they tell me that they’re moving their their cows every day or twice a day so there’s an enormous or twice a day so you’ve got an
Enormous amount of planning to do apart from anything else you know how we all hate admin this is admin for starters and then there’s the actual work of of moving moving cows around the place so this is something of a of a barrier presumably to getting Farmers to want to
Use these systems rather than just you know shove more fertilizer on the land as as they used to doing it would be a barrier if it were true but I’ve just met so many farmers like I said I was just at a conference with 700 none of
Them are complaining about more work uh they’re actually enjoying their work more because they’re not in a tractor making hay they’re on the land watching their animals and the movement of the animals is super super easy it’s just putting a polywire polywire fence up and then putting a gate on it and opening
The gate the animals move quite naturally to the next spot because they know there’s better food they know what’s coming they know it’s going to be a better a better diet for them across the fence so we’ve made 10 short films about AMP grazing that series is called
Carbon Cowboys it’s carbon cowboys. org that’s the historical sort of catalog of watching this type of Grazing In a lot of different ecosystems including Cornwall and Devon and all over the US and some in Canada the new work that we’re doing right now that is based on
The research that we’ve been doing over the last well it’s a 10-year project we’ve been out in the field for five is called root so deep you can see the devil down there and so that webs s it you can also go to carbon cowboys. org
And find out all about that as well that film is not yet released to the public we’re screening it in screenings in Barns and churches and people’s homes and theaters all over the US and we’ve done a bunch of screenings in the UK as well and so that’s that’s the film
That’s about all the research it’s about all the farm families it’s about the scientists on our team and and and you just see how easy it is how much more enjoy it is for the farmers to be doing this way so it’s not there is some
Planning but they it’s not a it’s not a barrier it’s not a burden from the hundreds of farmers that I’ve spoken with I’m not a farmer is it commercially viable I mean this is the maybe not viable but is it better financially and one of the things that I’ve been
Wondering about recently I was um helping judge a series of awards for for small companies the other day and they were all absolutely fascinating in company after company after company came in and talk to us about how they were more sustainable than a company that did something similar and how they did it
Better and how they were you know the way that they did it improved carbon emissions etc etc and my question to each of them was okay that’s great but if you were to put the environmental impact of your work aside is your product also absolutely better than a
Product that does not have the sustainability attached to it or is it the same just a bit more expensive and I suppose that’s sem my question to you as well farmers who take on board the information and the research that you’ve done and move over to a more regenerative style of
Agriculture do they find that their income goes up or down and is there meat of a higher quality when you or I might get to eat it so on the income side the farmers tell us that they’re getting themselves out of debt by going to regenerative agriculture um um conventional
Agriculture is creates a lot of debt for the farmers it’s not based on profit per acre it’s p it’s based on uh yield per acre but when you talk about profit per acre the farmers who go towards regenerative agriculture are making a lot more money for themselves their
Operating costs go way down let’s just talk about nitrogen so nitrogen um in our study the farmers were reporting about 50 Grand a year they’re spending on nitrogen and that was before before uh uh Putin invaded the Ukraine and that numbers now up to$ 100,000 $150,000 a
Year on nitrogen fertilizer to then grow all the hay they need to grow to then feed their animals hay when the Adaptive Farmers don’t grow hay they don’t put nitrogen on their ground and they don’t have that huge expense or that stress because if you put nitrogen on the
Ground and it doesn’t rain in a couple of days you’ve lost it’s a Gamble and it won’t it won’t benefit you at all it’s like throwing that kind of money away the Adaptive Farmers don’t put nitrogen down have grown forage around their Farms enough that they don’t have to
Feed hay except for in the winter time and sometimes even then not that much so huge huge cost reduction right there and then according to our study they actually have more functional nitrogen in their soil then the folks who are spending tens of thousands of dollars applying nitrogen to their Farms
And so naturally working with nature the nitrogen is there and it’s doing its job for them whereas the folks who are putting nitrogen down are in a in a spiral in the wrong direction so just the operating costs right there the they all talk about how um their medical
Bills are much much less they’re all talking about um because CS are happier in eating a more diverse diet well I don’t know about happy but they’re healthier healthier healthier normally means happier I’m with you I’m with you but uh but but we can’t prove that I’ll
Give you that yeah right yeah so but they’re they’re healthier animals they don’t need the antibiotics they don’t need all these medicines that farmers are having to do conventionally and therefore the costs are a lot lot less um the pesticides these Farmers aren’t spraying pesticides because they’re having such a diverse forage Community
Such a diverse plant community that the bugs are as equally as diverse and it’s a much more functional bug Community um and our in our research it’s 33% more diverse and functional insect community on the amp side versus the conventional side so what does that mean that means that bugs
That are pests if you just have a monoculture that one bug’s just rampant in that monoculture and it’s destroying everything well if it’s in a situation where there’s 12 types of plants and it’s not in a monoculture it’s actually a functional citizen of that Community when the bug Community is more
Functional and more balanced it’s much more um it’s actually cycling carbon more it’s all part of a system and so a lot of the science that’s gone on in the past is looking at pieces of this system looking at the methane only from animals and um and getting a picture where you
Really have to look at the system which is what the scientists on our team have taught me and have demanded to even be a part of this team that we do look at the system and that’s that’s a part of that so so so less pesticides less herbicides
If any sometimes folks are putting some herbicides down sometimes they’re putting them down to to kill a cover crop other people are crimping the cover crop um so it’s just a lot less input costs then the animals themselves from the data we got from the farmers they’re selling their animals for hundreds of
Dollars more per head and so there’s there’s you know money to be made on that side money to be saved on the other side why are they selling them for more per head because they are marketing them as a premium product or because they are heavier yeah yeah more of a premium
Product okay interesting so they and do you have to reduce the number of animals in your herd for a given amount of land to do this so the her size Remains the Same no these farmers are doubling and tripling and quadruple the amount of animals they can produce on their land
With the same rainfall because they’re producing so much more forage so everybody doing this why are there any nonre farms left they don’t know about it they are they will know some of them will know I’m not sure how many farmers listen to this podcast but I think we
Can we can get it out there a bit well we’re that’s obviously what we’re working on too is is you know Farmers love their land and they don’t love being in debt I guarantee you that um and you know the suicide rates in the US and the UK are
Incredibly high for farmers and debt is a lead leading cause for that um it’s the third highest rate in the US is it but by profession any group yeah yeah and can this translate across to Aral farming I mean I’ve written quite a lot over the years about soil health and
About soil depth and about The Disappearance of top soil across well across the world actually not just in the US and I don’t know if you remember a few years ago there was a a lot of talk about how we only had 10 10 good harvests left globally Etc because our
Soil was so thin top so I think it was 60 that was out of the U that was 60 was it 60 okay not 10 then I go can’t help but exaggerate so how do you translate this across to arabel well you can you can you can uh integrate the livestock
Production and the arable production and then you’re going to be fertilizing your land for a profit rather than having to pay for fertilizer and that’s being done I mean that’s how it used to be done all the time and now um colleagues of ours Alan Williams and Gabe Brown and their
Group um understanding a they’re they’re working with General Mills and a lot of other big companies at scale doing that work and teaching Farmers about this um Farmers love it and that’s a big sign I mean what you’re describing here as something where you can do a lot less
Work uh have more animals uh make more money and uh create a wonderful environment on on your on your farm and be a carbon sink at the same time there’s got to be a downside here Peter there’s got to be a downside providing wildlife habitats for for endangered animals is what’s also
Happening so I’ve been looking for a downside for 10 years but you were saying that it was less work I’ll say that farmers are telling me it’s either less work or it’s the same amount of work but a lot more enjoyable able work so I’m hearing that kind of spectrum um
But the downside that I’m discovering right now is secession it’s what happens to the Next Generation the farmers that are doing it right now their kids aren’t necessarily wanting to be Farmers themselves so what happens to that land after this generation passes that to me is the weak
Link to having you know you’re you’re building up the soil you’re getting all that carbon into the soil system but you’re what’s going to happen when those Farmers pass on that to me is a is a really important thing to be looking at how do we keep the land in agricultural
Production we don’t need more neighborhoods we need more Farms it seems to me that that’s something that you may find happens naturally I would have thought there’s an awful lot of people who would love to to work on the land if as you say it’s a it’s a much
More enjoyable environment and it it’s also a lower chemical environment and a less labor heavy environment I would have thought that would be very attractive to the young particularly if as you say people are making an awful lot more money now money is attractive yeah there there are
Definitely people who want to work on the land but they might not be the land owners and so if the farmers children aren’t into farming and they want to make money from the land when their parents pass that’s what I’m talking about and so folks are working on it
It’s definitely a a thing that’s being looked at and talked about and farmers are making their land into easements so they’ll have to stay in agriculture from in perpetuity um finding the managers training the managers those are all the issues it was just like uh you know when
Renewable energy is coming in you got to train all sorts of new skill sets to to be installing the solar panels to be putting in waterless toilets and those sorts of things it’s it’s the same kind of thing where we need a lot more Farmers trained in these methods but
It’s it’s certainly happening but you asked me for a weak link and that’s that is the weak link that I see Peter this all sounds absolutely brilliant and I I really appreciate you coming on to tell us about it but let me just ask you one
More thing before I let you go um obviously I’m based in the UK and most of my listeners are based in the UK if they would like to buy beef that is raised like this and feel good about them meeting eating habits I certainly
Do is there a mark of any kind is there a way that we can bu produced beef and know that we’re buying it or is there not yet any kind of I don’t know kite Mark for for beef yeah no that’s a great question um I know
Folks are working on that I I know of one company it’s called regeni and it’s regenify decom they’re working exactly on that and they have a very rigorous uh system where they go to the farms and they measure what the Farms are doing and they assess the
Farms and then when the Farms get to a certain level they can use that badge that’s the one I know about the other thing you can look for is grassfed grass finished that doesn’t mean it’s going to be ampg grazed but at least you’re on
The right path um but yeah that that’s a that’s a needed thing but it’s you know this is this is not a a it’s not everyone’s not doing it right now you know what I mean it’s it’s like 3 4% of us farmers are somewhere along the path
Of this type of grazing so there’s a lot of uh opportunity a lot of opportunity I know this shows about investment and I know a lot of people are talking about investments in land if you invest in the land and then you regenerate the land is the land more valuable that’s definitely
Something people have been looking at for a while now and then the whole issue of carbon credits can you trust soil carbon credits can you trust the measurement can you trust the models those are all really important questions that are being answered on a day-to-day basis and
It’s sort of a wild west right now with people claiming that they can prove carbon credits where sometimes their their claims are thin and other times their claims are accurate there’s actually there’s a there’s a company there’s a company here in Scotland up in Dundee that does exactly that does test
Soil every three years for Farmers to see how they’re doing on building up the carbon and then that allows them to claim carbon credits on it so in in that sense you know there is a a financial incentive to improve the carbon content of of your soil although one would like
To think that it was about more than just credits but there you go that’s that’s worthy of a whole show talking about the the voluntary carbon market right now yeah it’s an interesting one and Peter we will leave that for another day but I think there’s a lot to come
Back to here so thank you so much for joining us today really appreciate it so interesting thank you Marin I appreciate It news when you want it get the latest headlines with the Bloomberg News Now podcast a major development in the Israel Hamas War the top headlines from Bloomberg News updated continuously throughout the day signs of improving us China relations get the latest news when you want it with Bloomberg News Now
President Biden is facing a tough reelection fight listen on Apple carplay and Android auto with the Bloomberg business app and anywhere you get your podcast Bloomberg News Now context changes everything so John this was all slightly off topic and I know you’re not an agricultural expert nor am I but what
Did you think about this I thought it was really interesting um I I mean i’ had a few questions but they were sort of similar to the ones that that you raised but I mean it kind of struck me is Ian you know much more
About fman than I do but it it’s kind of like rewilding but practical rewilding know that thing of like letting letting nature look after itself and being a bit more in harmony with the you know biodiversity and things like that and that actually being a better
Way to you know just do everything um I mean so from that point it’s not it’s not quite reing I mean I see what you mean but it’s um you know actually the the the cattle in something like this are very coralled you know they’re very
Controlled you to be in this bit now and they’re very crowded together um and then they moved on very quickly so it’s very controlled environment in in in some ways but it also works to replicate a natural environment for herd animals so you can do the same with with any
Posture posture fed animals um but the really interesting bit for for me in it I think is the uh is the soil Health bit and i’ I’ve been to visit a couple of regenerative farms in in Scotland that do exactly this or try and do exactly
This you know you have to quite a lot of work to trans transform a farm from traditional traditional agriculture to regenerative agriculture but I have been to a coupl and when you look at you know going to the fields and yank out a clump of grass that is part of a traditional
Uh farming method and then yangc out a bit that is part of this new style of farming or old style of farming should I say and you can really see the difference in in and going back to the roots so deep you know you can really
See how the roots of the of the grass and it’s not just grass of course it’s much more diverse inside the um the field you can see how deep it goes and you can see how the clumping is different you can see how the soil is different and understand how that works
With the microbes it’s absolutely fascinating to see it in real in real life so you know it works and soil health is fashionable subject at the moment but it it simply couldn’t be more important I mean that’s all we’ve got right the health of our soil that’s all
We’ve got that fails everything fails and so because this was the the I mean and you actually did ask this question but but all the way through I was thinking right well what’s the downside um is this one of those things where it’s like say organic farming where it’s
All very well but you get like maybe one cow that costs you know1 per kilo of steak as opposed to 10 that mean everyone can eat meat because obviously that democratization of the food supply etc etc is one of the the issues on which all of this pivots you know the
The whole thing about um you know supermarkets versus local shops and all that sort of stuff the reason we don’t the reason we do things in a high intensity way is so that food is Affordable for The Wider population but I I got the impression from what he’s
Saying that a l Farm can sell it at premium prices because of the method if everyone adopted this we’d still have as many Cs and you probably wouldn’t be able to charge premium anymore is that yeah I think that’s the that’s the basic point I mean this this is still
Experimental right I there not that many farmers doing it and I think that the main problem is the transition as everything you know persuading people to take the risk of making this kind of transition so in the beginning it’s only going to be the rich Farmers that do it
Right because they can they can afford the risk and they can afford the experimentation um so bit by bit as it starts to work it should be easier for other Farmers to to make that transition but I suppose that the the important thing about it is that you and I have
Often talked about how economies should work with how people are and you always say that capitalism is the only answer for people because it is the only system that is natural to us because we’re accumulators and barterers and self-improver Etc we’re natural capitalists we’re also natural teachers
It turns out yes and so we’re beginning to see a little bit of reversal in veganism and beginning to hate mail the US address of course and we’re beginning to see that all the um the artificial uh meat companies I don’t mean the um that
The lab grow Meats but I mean the very processed food that pretends to be meat Etc these companies are failing and various companies that only produce vegetarian food are failing I saw he Heather mills’s company went down the other day so you know it’s not necessarily something that that in the
End people love the idea the moral idea of becoming a vegetarian or a vegan but in the end people tend not to stick at it so it may be that like we’re natural capitalists we’re also natural meat eaters and if we are then we need to
Find a way to produce meat in a way that is both Humane sustainable and and carbon friendly and if we’re going to do that this is a very very clear answer to that conundrum well I think I mean on on that point I thought it was really interesting about the carbon credits cuz
Obviously and I s some a wonderful producer that we should do a show on the whole mess of the carbon credit sphere because we should yeah I mean as Peter says it is the wild west but the point is if you can have you know Farms particularly in the developed world
Where where where confidence in institutions and regulations is very high and people will actually be checking this stuff as opposed to you know pretending that they’re protecting a chunk of rainforest that doesn’t even exist um then I mean that would also be a great way to get Farmers to do it
Because it’s kind of like the wind farms it’s like you know know the turbines all went up because the the owners got paid absolutely you know tons for allowing them on their land and if if you’ve got the kind of carbon market and you know premium carbon credits to go along with
Your premium beef then um I mean yeah I mean this hly it’s very exciting it is yeah we talked a bit in there about um about not much but about how that can transfer across to arabel farming as well because of course the Arab traditional arabel farming really does
STP the health out of the soil and it’s a it’s a long-term worry we talked briefly in there about the the constant scam mongering about how many harvests there are left and I remembered reading somewhere that it was 10 years like no it’s 60 but even if if it were true that
There were only har that’s still really really bad really bad um so and that’s that’s one of the reasons why there is this very intense focus on on soil health and so if you can shift the ideas of the regenerative Farmers over from um from pasture pasture meat farming to
Arable farming as well I think that really does become very interesting yeah know I thought it was great we should I yeah we should do more oning we do more we should do more on these slightly kind of edge case subjects and uh you know readers write in and let us
Know if there’s anything that you’re particular right every everybody talks about interest race right we we can we can we can go a little more Niche well but this really matters for the entire economy doesn’t it because you know what’s more fundamental than food that’s
True why am I saying this is Niche this is not Niche this is vital right listeners um if you’d like to hear more of this kind of thing uh let us know in fact do you know what we’re coming into Christmas year coming into the end of
The Year John and I have been doing this for a year now we would really like to know what you think we’d really like to know what you want to hear more of do you want to hear us talking more about how how cheap UK equities are and which
Investment trusts you should buy as a result I think you probably do or do you want to hear more about what you should be doing in Japan what should be doing in Asia should you be buying equities in China or not are you growth are you
Value this kind of thing let us know do you want to hear more about the bond market do you actually want to hear more about arable farming or about space I would like to talk more about space our producer says have obsessed with space but I am
Obsessed with space you know the Earth is finite look what look what else is out there we’re going to do more podcasts on face anyway let us know what you want we would really appreciate that and then we can tailor tailor what we talk about more to you although you may
Still not agree with some of the things we say right and All That Remains for me to say to you is do have a very very happy Christmas John would you like to say happy Christmas listeners as well Merry Christmas listeners okay thanks for listening to this week’s Maring talks money we’ll be
Back in time for the new year in the meantime if you like our show rate review And subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast and do please talk about us over Christmas if you would would like to introduce the subject of something we talked about in our podcast
Over your Christmas lunch and encourage your relatives to listen to the podcast we would appreciate that this episode was hosted by me mar andet web it was produced by sadii additional editing by Blake Maples special thanks to Peter bck and to John steepe as usual and of
Course our weekly reminder to sign up to John’s daily newsletter money distilled the link for that is in the show notes and we will also put in a show not a link to some of Peter’s work Osage County Oklahoma is getting a lot of attention right now it’s the setting
Of Martin scorsese’s latest film killers of the flower Moon the movie is based on a book about the 1920s Osage murders when white men poured into Osage County and killed Osage people for their oil wealth I’m Rachel Adams herd the host of Intrust a podcast from Bloomberg and iHeart media
For over a year I was reporting a different story about other ways white people got Osage land and wealth and how a prominent ranching family in oage County became one of the biggest land owners here their ranching Empire was built on land that at the turn of the century was
All owned by the oage nation so how’d they get it listen to the award-winning podcast in Trust on the iHeart Radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast