A Farming Odyssey: Avocado Ranches, FFA Success, Prairie Grass, and the Path to Regenerative Agriculture

I was raised in La Jolla, California in San Diego County. Just before I entered high school, my family moved east from the coast to Poway, “The City in the Country”. There we embraced the country lifestyle. My family had a small avocado ranch and my mother had chickens, baked her own bread and had an organic garden. Although I was a beach girl, and initially against the move from the coast, I eventually joined Future Farmers of America (FFA). I raised a pig for FFA which won a blue ribbon at the Del Mar Fair. My FFA advisor was my best and favorite teacher and my experiences in FFA were some of the best of my high school years.

I decided to pursue a degree in biology from the University of California at Santa Barbara. I earned a bachelor’s (BA) and a masters (MA) degree there, specializing in cell and molecular biology. I also met my husband, Jay who was a PH.D. student in the lab next door to the lab where I did undergraduate research. For my master’s thesis, I studied the genes responsible for ripening in avocado. After college, I worked for 5-years as a molecular biologist for a Danish Medical Diagnostics Company.

In the early 1990’s the Swiss National Science Foundation funded a series of integrated research programs called the Swiss Priority Program Environment (SPPE) which lasted from 1993-1999. I was invited to participate as a doctoral student in the Integrated Project Biodiversity, together with roughly 100 other scientists from a variety of disciplines, from around the world. Together we studied the effects of elevated atmospheric CO2 and habitat fragmentation on ecosystem function in forage grasslands. For my “model organism” I chose to study fungal endophytes living inside grasses. 

After returning to the States, after 7-years in Switzerland, I decided to leave science to homeschool our daughter Caroline. She and I homeschooled in La Jolla, San Antonio and eventually Dallas, from pre-K through college. In 2011, when Caroline was 14, we bought a horse property 30-miles south of Dallas, Texas. We also bought the adjacent land which was literally a dump. We decided to clean up the dump and try to restore native prairie on the land. We removed dumpsters full of debris, recycled 12 truckloads of tires, recycled multiple truckloads of metal and we even mitigated 4 barrels of acid, all of which were dumped on the land over the course of several decades. After the land was cleaned-up we shredded and aerated the pastures regularly. Eventually, we added cattle. Today our land is a thriving native prairie and we have a successful cow-calf operation.

In the fall of 2020, I watched the movie “Kiss the Ground”. I immediately knew that I wanted to return to science to do whatever I could to help promote the idea of regenerative agriculture. I have spent much of the last four years learning about agriculture in general, and regenerative agriculture in particular. I went to lots of meetings, watched videos on YouTube, read books, listened to Podcasts, took Dr. Elaine Ingham’s Soil Food Web foundation course and conducted soil studies on our land. I am also writing a college textbook on regenerative agriculture.

 At first it was confusing, what exactly is the difference between conventional, organic, sustainable, and regenerative agriculture? When I asked one of my USDA NRCS representatives about regenerative practices, during a site visit at our ranch, I heard him utter to the other, “We just got used to sustainable and now they want us to discuss regenerative.” I expect in the intervening years USDA employees have come to terms with the terms, as have I. As I understand it, conventional agriculture refers to farming practices used since the end of WWII. Conventional agriculture uses synthetic inputs: fertilizers to encourage plant growth, herbicides to control weeds and pesticides to control pathogens or pests. It uses tilling to mechanically aerate soil. Conventional farmers usually plant a single variety of crops and leave croplands fallow when not in use. Conventional farming does not incorporate the use of livestock. Conventional farming was responsible for the “Green Revolution”, feeding billions of people worldwide. It does not, however, consider the microorganisms in the soil and as a result has often led to degraded soils.

Organic agriculture refers to methods of farming and ranching that prohibit the use of synthetic inputs with the exception of organic pesticides such as pyrethrin isolated from chrysanthemum flowers, which is toxic to insects. Organic agriculture does utilize tilling and does, at times, leave land fallow. Fertilizers used in organic systems are of organic origin such as compost, compost teas, vermiculture, bone meal, biochar and manure. Organic agriculture prohibits the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). This is due, in part, to the fact that many crops modified with GMOs are used in conjunction with glyphosate, the key ingredient in the herbicide Roundup. 

Sustainable agriculture refers to methods of farming that strive to produce crops or livestock without damaging agricultural ecosystems. The goal of sustainable agriculture is to maintain the integrity of farmland in order to enable future generations to farm or ranch. Examples of sustainable practices include varying the types of crops grown on land from year to year, integrating pasture or crops with trees and shrubs, growing crops and raising livestock simultaneously on the same land and growing two or more crops on the same land at the same time.

Regenerative agriculture is a method of farming and ranching that seeks to improve agricultural ecosystems, particularly soil and soil life.

There are 6 principles of Regenerative Agriculture: 

1. Maintain soil armor. Regenerative systems strive to always keep the soil covered with “soil armor” preferably in the form of vegetation. For farmers the best strategy to achieve this goal is to plant cover crops instead of leaving land fallow. When the ground is covered, soil life is fed and soil erosion is prevented.

1. Minimize disturbance. Regenerative agricultural practices strive to minimize tilling and the use of heavy machinery on soil. Although there will be circumstances in which tilling or heavy machinery are required, such as in the case of heavily compacted soil, tilling is to be avoided whenever possible. Tilling kills soil microorganisms and destroys soil architecture.

1. Incorporate Biodiversity. Regenerative agriculture mimics natural plant communities by incorporating a diversity of crop species and cover crops. Greater plant diversity leads to greater diversity of life above and below ground.

1. Incorporate livestock. Integrating livestock into agricultural ecosystems through adaptive grazing mimics how nature works. Livestock fertilize the ground, encourage the growth of plants by grazing, and encourage germination of seed banks by trampling.

1. Living Root. Regenerative agriculture practices strive to continually keep living roots in the soil. Maintaining actively growing living plant roots is encouraged to “feed” soil biology and keep soil biology processes working, even when crops are not being grown. 

6) Consider the Context. Given that each farm or ranch has a unique set of circumstances, individual farmers and ranchers need to determine how best to apply principles of regenerative agriculture and soil health to their specific operation. Individual circumstances can range from geological conditions such as weather, water availability, soil type and the degree of previous damage to the soil, to economic and social considerations. This principle applies to all types of agriculture.

Dr. Kathleen Groppe is a molecular ecologist turned soil scientist, regenerative rancher and aspiring author.