Growing Soil By Steve Kenyon

Episode #117 October 28, 2026

In this episode of Regenerative Wisdom, Steve Kenyon challenges an idea he was taught years ago in college—that it takes 100 years to grow an inch of topsoil.

After more than 25 years of working with livestock, plants, and soil health, Steve has come to a very different conclusion: with the right management, we can grow soil much faster.

In “Growing Soil,” Steve takes us below the surface to explain how carbon sequestration, living roots, soil biology, and grazing management work together to build soil. He also shares results from his own Alberta ranch that demonstrate just how dramatically soil can change under advanced grazing management.

At the heart of Steve's approach is a simple shift in thinking: instead of focusing only on growing plants from the soil, what if we focused on growing soil from the plants?

🔑 Key Points Covered

Why Steve challenges the idea that it takes 100 years to grow an inch of topsoil.
The difference between leaving plant residue on the surface and building soil through living plants and roots.
Why carbon sequestration is central to Steve's approach to growing soil.
The three processes Steve identifies as essential: photosynthesis, exudation, and biological conversion.
How plants capture carbon from the atmosphere and convert it into glucose.
Why root exudates are important for feeding soil biology.
How the relationship between plants and soil organisms helps cycle nutrients and build stable soil carbon.
Why increasing soil carbon can improve water-holding capacity, fertility, and soil structure.
The role of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi and glomalin in Steve's explanation of long-term soil carbon.
How plant roots and soil biology help turn sand, silt, and clay into functioning soil.
Why capturing more sunlight with a full canopy of living plants can increase carbon sequestration.
The importance of keeping living roots in the soil for as many days of the year as possible.
Why Steve believes graziers should strive to keep pastures in a growing, vegetative stage.
How improving the water cycle becomes especially important in dry environments.
The results Steve has observed after years of advanced grazing management on his Alberta ranch.
How his Five G.R.A.S.S. Concepts provide the management framework behind those changes.
Why regenerative agriculture should be viewed as a whole system rather than a recipe.

🌱 Three Steps to Growing Soil

Steve breaks carbon sequestration into three basic processes:

1. Photosynthesis
Plants capture carbon from the atmosphere and use sunlight to turn it into glucose.

2. Exudation
Plants send a portion of those sugars through their roots and into the soil, providing food for soil biology.

3. Biological Conversion
Soil organisms use those root exudates, with some ultimately contributing to longer-term stable soil carbon.

For the grazier, Steve says the job is to manage the tops of the plants so the roots can continue doing their work underground.

☀️ Capture More Sunlight for More Days

If the goal is to grow soil faster, Steve says producers need to sequester more carbon each day—and do it for more days of the year.

That means maximizing the amount of sunlight captured by green, growing plants rather than allowing it to hit bare soil or be reflected away.

It also means extending the growing season whenever possible.

Can you maintain living roots in early spring? Late fall? Can your pasture remain vegetative longer? Can you capture sunlight and feed soil biology for 200 days? Or even 300?

Steve's goal is to keep living roots working and feeding the underground system for as much of the year as the environment allows.

📊 The Proof Is in the Puddin'

Steve shares two examples from his Alberta ranch to demonstrate what he says can happen under advanced grazing management.

In a research project with the University of Alberta, two pastures with similar histories, topography, and soil types were compared. Steve's pasture had been under regenerative grazing management for 15 years, while the other had been continuously grazed.

Steve reports that his pasture averaged 11% soil organic carbon, compared with 5.2% in the continuously grazed pasture. His side also had a distinct dark soil horizon averaging 10.8 inches deep.

A second pasture demonstration compared soil samples taken in 2006 and 2023. Steve reports that soil organic matter increased from 2.6% to 7.1% over those 17 years, along with the development of approximately 6 to 12 inches of dark topsoil.

For Steve, these results demonstrate that management can dramatically influence the rate at which soil develops.

🌾 The Five G.R.A.S.S. Concepts

Steve credits much of the change on his ranch to managing a perennial polyculture using his Five G.R.A.S.S. Concepts:

Graze Period — Manage how long livestock remain in a grazing area.

Rest Period — Give plants adequate time to recover before being grazed again.

Animal Impact — Use livestock as a tool to influence plants and the soil surface.

Stock Density — Manage the concentration of animals at a given point in time.

Soil Armor — Keep the soil protected with living plants and plant residue.

Together, these concepts help Steve manage the plants above ground while encouraging roots and soil biology to do their work below ground.

👨‍🌾 About Steve Kenyon

Steve Kenyon ranches in Busby, Alberta, Canada, where he has spent decades developing and teaching practical grazing strategies through Greener Pastures Ranching.

His book, The Calendar of the Year-Round Grazier, is available through the Stockman Grass Farmer Bookshelf.

📅 Learn From Steve Kenyon In Person

Want to take these principles beyond the podcast?

Steve will be teaching the Year-Round Grazing School in Omaha, Nebraska, November 6–7, 2026.

Join Steve for two full days of practical, field-tested, profit-focused grazing education designed to help you improve your grazing management and build a stronger operation.

Seats are limited, so early registration is encouraged.

Learn more and reserve your seat at stockmangrassfarmer.com.

🎧 Listen, Learn & Subscribe

If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to Regenerative Wisdom for more practical lessons and timeless insights from the farmers, ranchers, and grazing experts featured in Stockman Grass Farmer.

📌 Be sure to check out our monthly magazine, live events, books, online schools, and the latest specials for even more resources to help you build healthier soil and a more profitable grazing operation.

Episode Transcript

Growing Soil By Steve Kenyon

BUSBY, Alberta

When I went to college many years ago, I was taught that it takes 100 years to grow an inch of top soil. That’s a long time. Why would I even try? After 25 years of working with livestock, plants and learning about soil health, I know now this is not true. We can grow soil a lot faster.
The thought process behind academia is that we leave residue on top of the soil and have that dead plant material break down and turn into soil. Most of this carbon cycles above ground back into the atmosphere. That is not how I grow soil. Leaving residue is very important but that is for managing the water cycle, not for growing soil.

Let’s take a look underground. We normally start with a combination of silt, sand and clay. This is our base. None of these are soil. What we need to do is convert this into soil by adding carbon to it. It’s pretty simple and our only tool that can accomplish this is the act of carbon sequestration. Carbon sequestration can be broken down into three processes.
1. Photosynthesis is how the plant takes carbon out of the air and turns it into glucose. Most of this glucose is used by the plant for growth and reproduction.
2. Next we need exudation. The plant will push about 40% of this sugar out into the soil as exudate. This is food for the soil biology. The plants provide glucose to the biology and in return, the biology brings nutrients, and they help to maintain overall plant health.
3. Lastly, we need biological conversion. We need this biology to convert some of this exudate into a long term stable soil carbon. That’s it. Pretty simple. It is our job to use the livestock to manage the tops of the plants, to allow the roots to do their job.

As a producer, I get everything I need if I focus on sequestering carbon. The more carbon I add to the soil, the more water holding capacity I have, which means more production. As I add carbon, I also get free fertility because of the soil biology. Arbuscular Mycorrhizae Fungi is an example of this symbiotic relationship with the plants. In return for nutrients they gather from the soil, the fungi gets glucose to survive and converts it into Glomalin, a long term stable carbon that stays in the soil for decades. Another job of this soil biology is to balance the Carbon Nitrogen ratio. In the soil, my biology will balance this out at about 24 to 1. So, as my carbon increases, so does my nitro gen availability. It is a win, win, win. This exudate is what glues the silt, sand and clay together and causes good aggregation. We are building soil structure. It doesn’t matter what your soil base is. We are going to use the plants to literally convert whatever your base material is into soil. We add this exudate to sand to make soil. We add it to silt to make soil. We add it to clay to make soil.

It is simple, if we want to grow soil, we need to sequester carbon. If we want to grow soil faster, we need to sequester more carbon per day and for more days of the year. To sequester more carbon per day, we need to capture more sunlight. Our job as a producer is to increase albedo. This is a measurement of how much sun light is coming down vs how much gets reflected back. Don’t waste your sunlight. Don’t let it reflect. We need more living plants covering the soil to absorb more sunbeams. I don’t want sunlight to hit bare soil. We need a full canopy of green living plants for as long as possible.

How about increasing the number of days that we are collecting sun beams? I don’t want a crop that only grows for 100 days. We need living roots in the soil for a longer season with more ground cover. As a rancher, can you keep your pastures in a growing vegetative stage for as many days as possible? If you are a crop farmer, how do you get a green living plant in your soil during the shoulder seasons? Early spring? Late fall? Do you have living roots in the soil then? Can we get 200 days of sequestration? 300 days? A big reason for this is to feed the biology. If you have an active soil biology during the summer, and you suddenly remove the crop, what will they eat if exudation stops? They start eating carbon. Don’t let them eat your hard-earned carbon. You added it, now do whatever you can to keep it. Keep that living root in the soil for as many days as possible. I live in Alberta, Canada, and I can sequester carbon through the snow late into the season.

Of course, this is easier in a wet environment. Just keep your graze period and rest period in check to keep those plants vegetative and exudating glucose as much as possible. Of course, in very dry environments, this is a lot slower to get started, but it is your job to change the environment. We need to first fix the water cycle to hold on to more water. Then we can start maximizing albedo and sequestering more carbon.

But the proof is in the puddin’, right? I have a couple of examples from our ranch that shows how fast we can build soil. The first one was a research project with the University of Alberta. We were one of 30 different locations that compared a continuous grazing system to an advanced grazing system. The two pastures were chosen because of their similar history, topography, soil type etc. The only major difference was my change to regenerative grazing management 15 years earlier on our land. The other pasture has always been continuously grazed. We are in the grey wooded soil zone, which has a very heavy clay base and we start with very little top soil. After 15 years of my advanced grazing system, the average SOC% was 11% on our side of the fence, which compared to the continuous grazed pasture at 5.2%. There is a very distinct, dark Ah layer on our side that averaged 10.8 inches deep. There is no visual Ah horizon in the control. Here is the puddin’. We grew almost 11 inches of topsoil in 15 years and more than doubled the SOC%. It does not take 100 years!

Just to show that this is not a fluke, we had another pasture demo that was done by the Gateway Research Organization. We took soil samples in 2006 that showed an OM% of 2.6. After 17 years of our management, the Average OM% was up to 7.1% in 2023. And again we have between 6 and 12 inches of beautiful black topsoil. Again, we are in the grey wooded soil zone. We converted our clay into soil through the root systems.

How did we do this? I will give credit to the five grazing concepts. G.R.A.S.S. Graze period, rest period, animal impact, stock density and soil armor. By managing these concepts on a perennial polyculture we were able to sequester carbon at a much higher rate than what academia thinks. As Gabe Brown says, “Nothing builds soil faster than a well managed perennial polyculture.”

As a society, we need to start looking at net carbon as a whole system, rather than just trying to measure emissions at a single point in the carbon cycle. We just need to sequester more than we emit. There is no magic bullet when it comes to carbon. It’s a cycle. Matter cannot be created or destroyed. It just takes management and as farmers, we are one of the very few industries on the planet that can actually sequester carbon.

Regenerative Agriculture is not a recipe. We are looking at a whole system that works together to build soil. The livestock, the plants and the soil life, all working together. It’s just a simple mindset change. Instead of growing plants from the soil, let’s aim to grow soil from the plants. God bless

Steve Kenyon ranches in Busby, Alberta, Canada, and can be reached at skenyon@greenerpastureranching. com, www.greenerpasturesranching. com or on Facebook at Greener Pastures Ranching. His book The Calendar of the Year-Round Grazier is available from the SGF Bookshelf

Growing Soil By Steve Kenyon

🔑 Key Points Covered

🌱 Three Steps to Growing Soil

☀️ Capture More Sunlight for More Days

📊 The Proof Is in the Puddin'

🌾 The Five G.R.A.S.S. Concepts

👨‍🌾 About Steve Kenyon

📅 Learn From Steve Kenyon In Person

🎧 Listen, Learn & Subscribe

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