Does Regenerative Agriculture Scale? w/Zach Bitter | Joe Rogan

We definitely go down a bunch of different rabbit holes. Like we did, um, we've had a lot of like, uh, some of the protein researchers come on and talk about some of that stuff, like, uh, Dr. Stu Phillips or Professor Stu Phillips, uh, Professor Don Lehman, Professor, uh, Jose Antonio. What do you mean by proteins? Toughly different qualities of protein. Yeah. They're doing like the protein research. They're kind of the guys who are on the, doing some of the more recent research and looking at like, well, what are our protein needs for, uh, across like a variety of ages, as well as when you introduce athletics and then like, what is the quality versus. Or like, I guess maybe the best way to look at it is like the bioavailability of different protein sources and things like that. And, um, I think there's a, it seems like something that we've figured out already. Uh, but there's, I guess some nuance with that even. And, uh, now we're, they're, they're saying that there's, there's probably reason to believe that our, our recommendation should be higher than what they have been historically, especially for athletes and elderly folks. And you mean the RDA? Yeah. Yeah. The RDA as it currently stands is basically just to prevent disease, right? Yeah. Something like that. And I think they're, I think they maybe are learning more too about just kind of what rural protein plays in bone health too, as opposed to just people think of protein as just this building block for muscle. But, um, there's a lot that goes into it with, with bone, bone health as well. So those guys that were really interesting to hear, hear about and, you know, we've done a lot of stuff with, uh, ranchers and, uh, some of the, like the savory Salatin folks come on the show and talk about kind of that practice versus kind of your standard agricultural production methods and things like that. Savory Salatin, you mean Joel Salatin? What is, what is savory? What do you mean? Oh, like Alan savory. So we've had Alan savory, Joel Salatin, Will Harris from White Oak Pastures on, um, Bobby Gill. He's part of the savory Institute. Come on and just kind of share with us, like kind of where that stuff is at. Cause I think there's a lot of, uh, guesswork and unanswerable questions at this point with, with some of that stuff. Cause we're projecting like, you know, way down the road with some of this stuff. Are you talking about the difference between grain fed versus grass fed meat? Yeah. And most specifically with those guys too, just like kind of what it's doing to the soil health and the soil quality. So one thing that I've learned that was interesting was that, uh, I mean, we kind of start to like throw a lot of these different, like quote unquote regenerative type, uh, regenerative type practices into one like bucket or one category. When in reality, there's a lot of different variants within them. So someone can say like, oh, regenerative agriculture is going to save the planet. And then someone will go dig up a bunch of studies that show like, well, no, it actually doesn't do anything. And then like, yeah, I'm confused now because Chris Cresser is all in on this regenerative agricultural thing. But is there, is there real evidence that you can have a zero carbon gain? Yeah. I mean, it's, uh, that's the, that's the, the, the, the net positive. The idea is that if you use regenerative agriculture, meaning the animals graze, there there's, you're not talking monocrop environments that these cows graze on open fields of grass and then they shit all over the place. And then, you know, that, that shit becomes manure and that this actually helps the plant life grow and all this stuff sort of, it all becomes a part of a cycle and that this regenerative practice is actually, instead of raising the carbon footprint, it actually makes a carbon neutral footprint. Yeah. Yeah. And I think where sometimes it gets confusing is if you go and you just look at studies on regenerative agriculture, you get a lot of mixed information. So what I was told, um, and I'm still kind of going down this rabbit hole and the way I like to look at all these types of things is I try to like look at one side of the story and then look to the other side and see where the counters are to that and just kind of go back and forth until you hit a dead end. And then, you know, if you hit a dead end, like that's where you're at for now until something else gets introduced. And where I got to now is, uh, I think it was maybe Will Harris told us this, uh, that, um, when you're looking for these studies on kind of what practice is going to be good in terms of like soil regeneration, you have to look up, uh, adaptive, multi-patic grazing because if you look up like holistic or regenerative agriculture, you're going to see, going to get a whole mess of like different ranges or different types of it. And you know, some are effective, some aren't. So it's really hard to kind of piece out, you know, who's got the accurate stuff and not. And I mean, I think ultimately some of this stuff is we just don't know yet. And what was the one that's most adaptive, multi-patic grazing? And what does that mean? It just means like you're, instead of kind of your, your, it's a rotational grazing from what I understand, but you're kind of moving the, the herd along to these different products. And then they're like, you know, they're doing their thing in a, what would you consider like a natural way? Like it would have been before we came in and shot all the Buffalo and all that stuff. And, uh, then they're rotating it. So the way I've been under, I've understood it like the more of those products you can get the better because then you're letting the, the soil and the, um, and everything in there like really heal and develop that deep root system as well as some of that microbiome, like all the insects and things that would be in there and all that stuff. So you would need massive amounts of land and massive amounts of areas for them to graze. Yeah. I mean, I think you would need, I think the more, the better is probably the way to look at it. But, um, hopefully the, the soil biologists aren't. They must be cringing. I'm sure they are. And we apologize in advance, but like, the interesting thing though is like, uh, I mean, I think there's a lot of work to be done in looking into this and finding out the best way to maybe utilize it. But, uh, the thought, the part that I thought was really interesting is with the Will Harris white Oh, pastures thing. They just, I think this study is maybe overutilized by, by like the, the pro, um, regenerative or multi-patic group, uh, to a degree. Cause it's like, it's what they have. And it's what they're looking for. They're looking for a specific answer. Meaning this is good. This is the way we found a way where you can eat meat and not feel bad. Yeah. Yeah. And it's the thing that's compelling about that study to me is the, the way it kind of happened was essentially what happened was Will Harris and white Oh, pastures, they were, they were raising, raising animals for, for Epic bar like that. That was one of their buyers and Epic bar got acquired by, uh, I think it was general mills. And so general mills looked at what Epic bar was claiming when they were the independent and they were saying like, our, our stuff is regenerative ours, you know, you, you buy our product and you're giving back versus taking kind of a mindset. And I think general mills was skeptical about that. So they spent, I think it was like $80,000 to go in and have a study done on, on Will Harris's, uh, white Oaks pasture to really see if they could back that claim up. Um, and they went in and they did the study and it actually showed like a net carbon sequestration versus like they weren't even neutral. They actually pulled in more than they put out. So this is from Epic's particular type of farming that they, they, at least at white Oaks pasture. So, I mean, again, that's one specific situation or one specific environment or area. So I think where people run into maybe a potential problem is, can we extrapolate that forward to other areas? Are we going to get that same result or is it going to be different? Right. That's what's important to, I mean, and it really is important to, to look at that honestly, because even though you do have this one area, is that because of the environment where this farm is taking place? Is it because of the particular soil quality? Like what are the factors that allow them to have, so it's, it actually takes carbon out of the atmosphere, like a certain percentage. So instead of adding carbon, it actually removes some. Yeah. Cause I guess the, the way it was described to me is that the inputs of that type of system are so low that like you're not, like, cause if you'd look at a, just a normal like agricultural setup, you know, you have all these inputs of like manure and all these other things that are going to add to that, that net effect or that, that, that negative effect of animal agriculture. So when you reduce the inputs down to next to nothing, because your inputs are all kind of just manpower, where you're moving these things around and letting the natural course of things happen over time. That's where you can maybe minimize some of these, like, I guess what you maybe call it, like a tertiary damage of animal agriculture. But, you know, I think, I think we probably have a lot to learn and stuff with that stuff too, but it's, it's one of those things when I think about it, it's like, it, hopefully we're spending a lot of time looking at that stuff because if they're right about the number of harvests we have left, I think what did that mean? We have 60 harvests left. I mean, clearly, regardless of whether you're vegan, carnivore or somewhere in between, you know, we need quality soil, right? Right. What about hydroponic? Because I know that there are some large scale hydroponic operations that are growing vegetables and things along those lines. And some people think that there's a real promise in that because you're not, you're not using soil at all. You're not using, you're not devastating the already depleted ground soil. And you also don't need to do all the harmful things that are involved in monocrop agriculture, right? Like the devastation on the wildlife, the displacement of wildlife, pesticides, combines that are indiscriminately chewing up small rodents and bugs and rabbits and anything else that gets caught in their blades. Yeah. Yeah. You know, that'd be interesting. I don't know a whole lot about it other than what it is. So, I mean, I'm all for solutions. Yeah. Somebody sent me a link to something that some indication that there might be some promise in hydroponic agriculture. But the thing about this whole idea was the name of the farm where this was done where there's the white oak pastures. Is that sustainable, like nationally? Forget about globally, but even nationally in terms of like the needs that people have for beef. I mean, we use so much beef in this country. Yeah. I don't know for sure, like what the scalability of that would be. My guess is like at this point it would be, because it's pretty small, like even from a percentage standpoint of what is being, or how much of that type of a process is being used. It's like a single percentage or something like that. So. Well, all grass fed meat, right? All grass fed meat is like less than 3%. Yeah. So, it seems like we'd have a long ways to go. But I mean, I guess the counter to that would also be, we're essentially going back to what we would have been doing historically. And so it's not necessarily reinventing the wheel as much as it is just saying, okay, what we did here obviously is not sustainable or potentially not sustainable. So let's look at, well, what did we do to get back to where we were before? I guess maybe is the way to look at that.