- We are here at Wild Harmony Farm today in Exeter, Rhode Island.

I'm here with Ben Coerper.

And Ben, you work this land with your wife, Rachel?

- Yep.

- And we are here to talk about the livestock that you raise.

I mean, there seems to be a bad rap going on for a while now about cows being a bad thing.

- So for reference, 300 years ago there were about the same number of bison in America as there are cattle today.

And so the fact that that people are now blaming, you know the emissions on cattle doesn't actually make any sense because they're the same amount of emissions 300 years ago just from the wild bison.

It's how the cattle are being managed and the what else is going on in our agricultural system supporting cattle and meat production and even a lot of the grain production that is, in my opinion a lot bigger issue than just the fact that there are cattle that are burping out there.

- Yeah.

Now, one of the reasons we came out here today was to talk about climate change in terms of the way you graze the animals.

- The fundamental piece of it is organic matter.

Like that's the part of the soil that is supporting all of the soil life that is making the nutrients in the soil available to the plants.

And so our primary focus is on trying to increase the amount of organic matter in the soil.

So what's organic matter?

Well, that's anything that was ever alive that isn't anymore.

Basic.

That's like the very simple way to state it.

And so all that could be dead plant material that's breaking down.

That could be poop from worms, that could be bugs that have died.

That could be an animal that's died that is breaking down into the soil.

And the organic matter is, it's primarily carbon.

About 60% of the organic matter in the soil is carbon.

- Okay.

- Which is, you know, that's like the buzzword in all the climate stuff.

And so that's why we've kind of latched on to this piece of it, of working on increasing organic matter.

How plants grow is like, they need sunlight, they need carbon dioxide, and they need water.

So H2O, CO2 and sunlight and then the minerals that are in the soil.

And what they do with that is as they're breathing in the carbon dioxide, drinking up the water, they're converting that into oxygen.

So they're, you know, releasing oxygen into the atmosphere and carbohydrates, C6H1206, which is glucose.

And so that's like the plant material.

And so what's happening is essentially is like the plants are taking carbon dioxide out of the air and converting it into a different form like the plant material, which is what the animals can eat.

And so the way that that can be helpful for us is that the plant material is both what you see above the ground and what's below the ground.

- Yes.

- So if the, you know, if the grass is a foot tall then the roots are a foot tall, a foot deep.

- Yep.

- When the top is eaten or mowed or whatever, say you cut it from 12 inches down to four inches.

- Yeah.

- The same thing happens to the roots.

They die back.

It basically in reverse.

So the animal takes eight inches, the roots die back eight inches.

Well, those roots are carbohydrates.

They're carbon and they're underground.

They actually die back because they're using the stored energy to help regrow the upper part.

- Oh.

- So okay, as that dies back, it's planting carbon in the soil.

So the, you know, the upper part of the plant has taken the carbon dioxide out of the air.

The lower part of the plant as it dies back is putting the carbon as glucose into the soil.

So that's building organic matter and sequestering carbon out of the air into the soil.

So what we can do to help with that is just try and maximize that system, try and get the plants to do that at the fastest rate possible.

And the animals are the ones that help us with that.

So what we know about grass growth is if you think about grass that's this tall, you know the blades are an inch long or something, like one of the other things I said the plant needs is sunlight.

- Yes.

- The plants are just solar panels basically.

They're like nature's solar panel.

So the bigger solar panel you have the more energy can be collected from the sun.

So if you graze the grass down to that short there's almost no solar panel.

So what ends up happening is the plant has to regrow again.

The plant has to use all the energy reserves from the roots and then it just very slowly will start to grow out until the solar panel's big enough that it can really start to speed up.

So what we want to do is maximize the area of the solar panel basically.

- Yeah.

- And the way that we do that is we don't want to graze too short.

And there's this kind of, this sweet spot which in this region is typically between four and 12 inches where the grass is growing really fast.

- Okay.

- Beyond 12 inches, then what the plant wants to do is go to seed.

And so it sends up a stalk with seed heads on the top.

It pretty much stops growing leaves.

So the stalk isn't collecting any solar energy.

And so as soon as it gets the 12 inches we can graze it again back down to four.

Eight inches of roots die back.

- Yeah.

More carbon goes into the soil, organic matter goes up which helps all of our production.

Organic matter helps everything about the water cycle.

If we get very little water, it makes better use of it.

And if you get too much water it allows it to drain through better.

So you don't end up with puddling that, like that's kind of like the whole crux of like what what we're dealing with is taking this soil that has been for a few hundred years plowed, which every time you plow, the carbon that was underground is released.

Some of it is in gas form.

Like there's, you know, the pores in the soil, there's carbon dioxide just sitting there.

- Yep.

- And so that's instantly released.

And then any carbon that was in organic matter form once it's plowed is more apt to erode away.

And so, you know, you might.

- Water.

- And so our priority is keep all the soil covered with something green and growing as much as we can.

And then again, as much as possible we want to keep the grass in the like four to 12 inch range.

- And do you also use the same type of system for the other animals?

- It's the same idea, the same principles that are involved.

They're obviously very different animals and they have different tendencies and different needs.

And so we've had to adapt each system to still aim towards the same goal, but to also accommodate for what do they eat, how do they eat, how do they live, what do they do to the ground?

So with the chickens and the turkeys, it's quite a bit simpler.

We do still want to keep them moving regularly.

So they're helping us with some of the grazing.

They don't eat nearly as much grass as the cattle do, but they do eat some, and they're you know, they're also dropping their manure and fertilizing the ground and that's for them, that's kind of the primary purpose of of having the birds here is that they're such good fertilizers.

And so they drop a really nitrogen rich manure which really speeds up grass growth.

And so it's aimed back at that same principle of like if we can maximize grass growth and then cut it back and get it to grow back as fast as we can and do this as many times as we can in a year then we're maximizing the amount of carbon dioxide we're taking, the amount of carbon that's going into the soil, the increase in the the organic matter and therefore the improvement of the soil and the production.

So the pigs were way more complicated.

Pigs are so good at destroying everything, including soil.

Like they have the capacity to just completely destroy it.

They will eat just about anything.

We had 'em in the woods.

They were killing the trees.

They'd eat everything else in the ground.

And then they'd kill the trees.

And I had this like light bulb moment one day.

We were already recognizing that this was a problem.

So we were experimenting with having one group of pigs out in a pasture.

I was doing chores one day.

We had just moved the pigs into a brand new spot they'd never been in.

And one of the pigs walked right over to a tree and just ate the bark right off the tree.

There was plenty of other green stuff there.

- Yep.

I mean, within minutes the pig was gonna kill this tree.

And I looked at the tree, I was like well that's probably, I don't know, an 80 year old tree.

So you talk about recovery rate of the plants.

It's gonna be 80 years to replace that tree.

- Right.

- And I was just like, what are we doing, you know?

And the next chore was the pigs out in the pasture.

And I go out there and I'm watching a pig, not really thinking about it at first but I'm watching this pig rooting through the ground digging up a whole plant, a grass plant just digging it up, throwing it over.

It's like, oh, the pig just killed that grass plant.

It's gonna be 60 days before we have a replacement grass plant.

And I was like, wait a second.

So 80 years to recover from the pigs being here and 60 days to recover from the pigs being here.

So I just thought, okay, so how do we use this to our benefit rather than just seeing it as a problem and trying to figure out a solution to this problem?

Like let's look at the actual, the root and let's look at the resources that we have and the ultimate goal of what we're trying to do if we're trying to increase organic matter.

It all comes back to like keeping the grass at that right stage.

So it's growing as fast as possible.

So I was thinking about what vegetable farmers do.

Organic vegetable farmers grow what's called a cover crop.

- Yes.

- The purpose of a cover crop is to kill it, to feed the soil.

To plant your cash crop after that.

We could just do that with the pigs.

In an organic vegetable system, you know, you might plow it, you might roll over it to kill it somehow.

- Yep.

- So that your new cash crop can come up through it.

I know the pigs are gonna kill it.

So let's just, the term in vegetable farming is terminate it.

- Yeah.

So you terminate your cover crop to plant your cash crop.

So we're just letting the pigs terminate our cover crops.

So now we have all of our pigs in a field, wide open field but we have 'em far enough out from the trees.

They can't even affect the roots.

We have to give 'em shade out there 'cause they will sunburn otherwise.

So they've got shade, they've got food, they've got water.

It's out there.

And then we give them these little strips where we plant cover crops and we bring 'em in.

And the whole intention is that we just we want them to terminate it so we can plant another one.

- Yeah.

- So, you know, our grasses, our perennial grasses in the fields this summer with how dry it's been they stopped growing, which is why we're feeding hay right now to the cows.

You know, we grazed it down to four inches.

We didn't get enough rain.

I didn't want to go any shorter.

So we fed hay for 10 days just to allow the rest of it to get back.

So we're just waiting for the grass to get back up to 12 so we can start grazing again.

And so it's kind of the same thing with the pigs.

Like we're using these specific species that even if it's really dry, are still growing fine.

So we can maximize the amount of organic matter that we're growing above ground.

So we're maximizing the amount of organic matter that's going down into the ground.

- It's a good plan.

Ben, I want to thank you very much for having us out here today.

Very educational and the land is beautiful here.

You couldn't ask for a better spot for the animals.

- Well thank you so much for coming.

You know, part of our mission at Wild Harmony Farm is to be spreading this information that like I feel like so much of the problem systemically is just a lack of knowledge.

- Yeah.

- And I, you know, I didn't know any of this 15 years ago when I started farming.

And I've learned it all since then.

And it all just makes so much sense.

But it's not what we're taught, you know, it's not the system that we think is actually happening out there.

It's not what farmers are being taught in universities.

So I like, I just wanna share like, this works.

It works really well and we need it to work.

We need it to be the system for us to have a future here.

- Yeah.

Thank you.

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