So let's start with the foundation for truly solid genetics, and that's healthy soul. That seems sort of antithetical, right? You would think I would start with some kind of genetic factor, or EPDs, or EBVs, or pedigrees, or DNA markers, or whatever, or even crossing of breeds or strategies for line breeding.
And we're going to talk about all of that, but the foundation, if you want truly solid genetics, you've got to start with the foundation of everything, of all of life, and that's the soil. And that gets us to regenerative agriculture.
So regenerative agriculture is farming and ranching in synchrony with nature and the four ecosystem processes to repair, rebuild, revitalize, and restore ecosystem function, starting with life beneath the soil and expanding to life above the soil.
Success hinges on applying the six principles of soil health and the three rules of adaptive stewardship, and it allows us to be able to have continuous improvement of our degraded soils, ecosystem, and climate.
Here's the four ecosystem processes. This is what we have so heavily damaged, and this is why we have broken genetics today and epigenetics. Energy, water cycle, mineral cycle, and community dynamics.
All of those are critical and crucial if we want to have really solid functioning genetics in our livestock. So if we look at energy, that's sunlight and photosynthesis. The water cycle is our ability to capture and cycle water through soil and plants.
The mineral cycle is the ability to function nutrients through our plants, through the soil. And it includes a fully functioning carbon cycle and then community dynamics. This is ecosystem biodiversity with complex plant life, which leads to resilience and productivity.
So it all starts beneath the soil surface, the soil food web. Everything beneath the soil impacts the microbiomes and the genetics of everything above the soil surface. And if we look at what's going on beneath the soil, there's more life or should be in healthy soils.
There's more life beneath the soil surface than above it. 90% of soil function is mediated by microbes, but the microbes depend on the plants. So the way we manage our plants and the way we manage our livestock is crucial to what's going on beneath the soil surface.
And what we now know is that plant growth and health is highly correlated with how much life and what kind of life is in the soil. That means microbes matter. The microbial community structure is crucial.
And these two ratios, the fungi to bacteria ratio in the soil and the predator to prey ratio in the soil, are very, very critical. These two things right here, most people from a genetic standpoint never even consider those or think about them.
But those two things have a profound impact on epigenetics far, far more than we may ever think. Far more. So the more we do to get those two things right, to have fungi and bacteria in balance in our soils, and to have that predator to prey relationship in the soil correct, the better our genetics are going to be.
So let me ask you all a question. In the vast majority of soils, not just in North America, but globally today, where do we stand with that fungi to bacteria ratio? What do you think most of our soils are today?
Okay. They're way, way too high in bacteria. Way too high in bacteria. Way too low in fungi. Particularly mycorrhizal fungi. So we describe it like this. Most of our soils today are highly bacteriocentric.
Highly bacteriocentric. What about what's predator and what's prey in the soil? What am I talking about there, that predator to prey relationship? What would be prey in the soil? Nematodes. Well, the bacteria would be the prey.
What about the predators? Nematodes. Nematodes. Okay. Nematodes would be one of the predators. What else could be a predator in the soil? Protozoa. Protozoa. So protozoa and nematodes are both key predators in the soil that prey upon the bacteria and keep the bacteria in check.
But what do you think we're lacking in most of our soils today? The predators, those beneficial nematodes and protozoa that prey upon those bacteria. So we're heavily lacking those. This is what an acre of very, very healthy soil should look like in terms of numbers of microorganisms and in their total weight in the top six inches of that soil per acre.
So, you know, we won't talk about it in terms of numbers per acre. That almost reaches our national debt figure. Not quite. So we'll talk about it in terms of pounds. So in bacteria in healthy soil, we should have 2,600 pounds or more per acre.
Actinobacteria, 1,300 pounds or more. Fungi, 2,600 pounds or more. Algae, 90 pounds or more. Protozoa, 90 pounds or more. Nematodes, 45 pounds. Earthworms, 400 plus pounds. Insects and arthropods, 800 plus pounds.
How many of you can say in an acre of your soil today that you could stick a shovel in the ground and find those kinds of numbers? Very few of us, right? Very few of us. Now, we have on a number of regenerative farms and ranches that we're working on now, we've made enough progress that in doing earthworm counts and all of that, we have found upwards to more than 2 million earthworms per acre now.
More than 2 million earthworms per acre. So we have been able to make significant restoration. So what about the role of these microbes in the soil? Well, one is the production of glomelin, which is a soil glue.
It glues these particles together to produce aggregates. And why are aggregates important? Holds the soil together. Exactly. Aggregates are important because they hold the soil together. And what does that do?
They glue the smaller particles together to make much larger particles. And what does that do? Okay, increase water holding capacity, increase water infiltration. What else? Far less compaction. What else?
How about oxygenation of the soil? What do these microbes require? Are they like us? Are they living, breathing organisms? Yeah. So they require oxygen. They require water. So the more aggregates we create in the soil, the more microbes we can have, and the better they're going to function.
Now, why is that important genetically? Anybody know? Okay, they're nutrient cycling. And because, overall, because the microbiome is the microbiome is the microbiome. So in other words, in a truly healthy ecosystem, the microbiome beneath the soil surface and those actual microbes, the microbiome owning in the plant, the microbiome in our livestock and wildlife, and the microbiome owning in us, should be essentially the same microbiome.
We should all, in a truly healthy ecosystem, we should all be sharing the same microbiome. That's what's really, really important. So that's why creating a soil aggregate is very important, because it helps us to build and support a very strong, highly populous microbiome.
It also facilitates nutrient exchange and water movement, reduces ponding and runoff, slows down the rate of water entering the aggregate, and these aggregates also act as a soil carbon vault. And this is where these microbes live.
So if we think about a specific type of fungi, our muscular mycorrhizal fungi in the soil, these produce these glomulins, these glues, that aggregate these soil particles and allow for better genetic impact.
These fungal hyphae in the soil, they're much more efficient at grabbing nutrients than the plants are. So what they do, and I'll show a picture here in a minute, but they attach themselves to the plant roots and greatly extend the reach of those roots.
And they're far more efficient, six to ten times more efficient than the plant root at picking up mineral in the soil. And then they feed those minerals to the plant itself. They require far less carbon as fuel than the plant roots themselves.
They have very powerful enzymes that allow them to dissolve chemical bonds in the soil like bound phosphorus and all of that so that it can be utilized and taken up for plant utilization. They connect the roots from different plants and they transfer nitrogen and other nutrients from plant to plant to plant.
So they perform a critical function. Where are we today in terms of mycorrhizal fungi populations in most of our soils? Very low, very low, right? So we should have between 10,000 and 50,000 microbial species in a single gram of soil.
Their nutrient cycling services worldwide are worth more than $20 trillion annually if we have it functioning in the soil. And that makes them the world's most valuable ecosystem and we call them our soil livestock.
And as a matter of fact, the life beneath the soil should be more numerous and diverse than in a tropical rainforest. These are just examples of some of the life that exists, different types of bacteria.
This is the mycorrhizal fungi. These are the plant roots themselves right here. And all of this that you see are not roots of the plant. That's the mycorrhizal fungi that has attached itself to the plant roots and greatly extended the reach of those plant roots to be able to take up nutrients and water.
So again, genetically, this rhizosphere is critically important because that's going to determine what happens to all the genetics above the soil surface. So we've got to pay attention to what's happening down here with the DNA and the RNA and all of that to fully understand and comprehend what can happen up here.
In other words, I can go buy the very best seedstock genetics I want, but if I'm pretty crappy down here, guess what's going to happen to those seedstock genetics up here? They're not going to do very well, or they're going to perform far under their true genetic potential.
And if we start to break down what's happening right around that plant root itself, we've got bacteria, we've got the fungal hyphae that penetrate into the plant roots and bring nutrients to those roots.
The plant roots themselves exude exudates that feed these bacteria and the mycorrhizal fungi so that they in turn can feed the plant roots. Roots of different types of plant species up underneath the soil surface and exchange nutrients constantly 24-7, 365.
So the mycorrhizal diversity drives plant diversity and ecosystem productivity. Remember when I talked about protozoa? So protozoa are critically important in controlling those bacterial populations.
And in doing so, they not only regulate those bacterial populations, but they mineralize nutrients. They release ammonium as a nitrogen source for plants. And they facilitate total nutrient cycling. There's numerous nematodes that are very, very beneficial.
And we need these beneficial nematodes to control disease and cycle nutrients, to disperse microbes, and for disease suppression and development. And most people think of nematodes as what? The cause of disease, right?
And issues. And there are some that are not favorable. But many nematodes actually are highly favorable for this reason. But when we apply chemicals to control nematodes, what are we doing? We're changing the ratio.
Well, we're also killing the beneficials, aren't we? We're killing the beneficials as well, because there's no such thing as a nematicide that targets only the undesirables. Exactly right. So as you stated, the problem that we have is that the non-beneficial nematodes are a sign of a degraded system in sick soil.
They're a sign of a degraded system in sick soil, as well as plant fungal diseases. They are a sign of a degraded ecosystem and a sick soil, as well as many of our livestock diseases and maladies. They are a sign of our degraded ecosystem and sick soil.
So what are some of the indicator species that we need to be paying attention to? Well, insects, arthropods, we should just have huge arrays of them in healthy farms, healthy ranches out in our fields.
You should see a lot of this, spider webs. If we've got a lot of insects, we're going to have a lot of spiders. These spiders are the predators, right? And so if we've got a lot of prey, then we're going to have a lot of predators showing up.
So we actually want to see a lot of spiders. Earthworms. We should be seeing a ton of earthworms and earthworm castings. And all of those castings and the dead and dying insects on the soil surface become new organic matter, new carbon.
Remember how many total pounds did we say of microbes and insects and earthworms should we have in a single acre of healthy soil? Okay, it was more than three total tons, right? So think about that. Think about how much three tons of dying organisms can contribute to new organic matter and new carbon per every acre of soil if we just have those there.
It's enormous. It's an incredible contribution. Dung beetles. How many of you have dung beetles today? Good. Good, good, good. What's one of the major reasons most people don't have dung beetles today?
Cattle wormers. Okay, any of the Dwormers. Yes, Ivermac, but any of the D-wormers. Because they all not only kill the target organism, the internal brown stomach worms and other things that we're targeting, but they also kill dung beetles, earthworms, and many other types of beneficial insects.
So as we use a lot of dewormer, we actually are harming other life as well. So the more we can move our way away from that, the more we're going to see the return of the beneficials that are going to be very good for us and our livestock.
So now let's relate that back to genetics and epigenetics. So as we use a lot of chemical dewormers and those types of things, how do you think that affects the epigenetics of our animals? Negatively.
Negatively, exactly. And when we get into our epigenetics presentation, we'll talk more specifically about how and why. But yes, negatively. A lot of different types of dung beetles, many, many different species worldwide, but three main classes, we call them drillers, dwellers, and tumblers or rollers, are the three main classes of dung beetles you're likely to see.
And here's just an example of some of them that you could see here in North America. We'll see the return of pollinator insects. How do they play a role in epigenetics? Well, for plants to thrive, what has to happen?
Pollination. Pollination. Pollination. And what's been happening to our honeybee populations across the U.S.? Crashing. Crashing. Y'all have heard of seed treatments like neonicotinoids, neonics? Do you know that there's enough neonic on a single kernel of corn to kill over 100,000 honeybees?
The neonic on a single kernel of corn can kill over 100,000 honeybees. Do you know that there's actual farmers today, I'm not talking about non-farmers, farmers today that have never seen a yellow kernel of corn.
Now why is that? They think kernels of corn are a different color. What color do they think they are? Okay, the purplish or the orange, depending on the specific seed treatment that's on them. They're colored the color of the seed treatment, right?
Many farmers today think that's the color of the seeds that they plant. But yet they're harvesting the yellow corn and they're literally not making that connection. So we have become wholly reliant on C treatment, neonicotinoid C treatment, right?
And that's producing a profoundly negative influence on epigenetics. Are you talking about like the corn stalk? The seed you treat. So I'm talking about not the cob, not the ear of corn, but the seed that you plant.
They have covered it with the seed treatments, you know, the neonicotinoids that colors each kernel. And like I said, there's enough neonic, the work of Dr. Jonathan Lundgren has proven this, there's enough neonic to kill more than 100,000 honeybees on a single kernel of corn.
So what happens to pollinators, what happens to all of these creatures, is critical to epigenetics and then ultimately the full genetic genome. And even to that critter, do y'all know what that is? That's a water bear.
Yeah. Water bear. As a matter of fact, that's the toughest creature ever. Toughest creature ever. They're microscopic and they look like, you know, they have that teddy bear look to them or whatever, but it's the toughest creature known to man.
That's what highly aggregated soil looks like. That's what we want to be able to achieve. And this is what they look like microscopically, those aggregates. So you should see aggregates clinging to roots of your plants.
And aggregates are the lungs of the soil, the lungs of the soil. Very critical. Very critical to the soil being able to function properly. I'm going to show you some stuff later today that basically is representative, unfortunately, of the vast majority of soils across North America.
Bricks. How many have heard of bricks? B-R-I-X. So the higher the bricks, the healthier the animals are going to be, and therefore, epigenetically, they're going to perform a lot better. So it positively, higher BRICS positively impacts epigenetics, positive epigenetics.
So BRICS is just simply a measure of the dissolved solids in the sap of a plant or in a fruit or vegetable. And those dissolved solids represent, yes, sugars. Many people think that we're measuring just sugars when we measure bricks.
Well, we're measuring far more than that. We're measuring minerals, amino acids, proteins, lipids, and pectins. So it's really a measure of nutrient density, nutrient density in that soil or in that plant.
And we can measure it using a refractometer, either a digital or optical type. Pretty simple to do this. You just pluck the plant leaf material. I form a ball with it, roll it around in my hand until I feel moisture on the palms, and then put it in the reservoir of a garlic press or a vice press.
And then we just squeeze out the sap onto the stage of a refractometer, hold that up to the sunlight, and measure the bricks. But this is why bricks is so important epigenetically. Higher bricks forages increase animal performance and increase animal health, period.
Higher bricks in the plants themselves makes them more drought tolerant, more frost and freeze tolerant, and greater resistance to disease and pest. Does every bit of that influence epigenetics? You bet it does.
Hugely. Hugely influences epigenetics. And we know this, we've done more than 20 years worth of research in bricks. The higher the bricks, the greater the gain is going to be on our animals. With 3% bricks being our base, for every 1% increase in bricks in our forage species over that 3% base, we get an additional tenth of a pound average daily gain.
And think about that. The same plants, the same pasture, same rangeland, I can have low bricks, moderate bricks, or high bricks, depending on my soil health and my microbial population. So if I can increase that bricks, I'm going to increase their performance on the exact same forage species.
I don't have to change forage species to have higher bricks. What do I have to change to have higher bricks? Soil health, exactly. I have to change soil health to have higher bricks. This is taken from our research.
You can see that as we increase bricks in our plant species, average daily gain steadily goes up. It doesn't really tail off until we get up into the 20% or greater bricks. This is research we did in six different states where we looked at conventional grazing versus adaptive grazing on the same farms.
We just split the herd, randomly split the herds, and in a single season, look at what happened with bricks, plant bricks, just by changing the way that we graze. Now, why did it do that? Why did change in the way that we graze influence the plant bricks so profoundly in every single situation?
Okay. Exactly. By using adaptive grazing techniques where we're built, so the ultimate was that we built soil biology, right? We built biology that then allowed us to build plant bricks in return.
