(soft music) - Do you know where your food comes from?

If you're like most Americans, your typical interaction with food means driving to the grocery store and picking out whatever's on your grocery list.

But do you know how that food has grown?

Like does it give back to the planet instead of taking from it?

Let's do a deep dive into this thing called regenerative agriculture.

(upbeat music) According to leading climate experts, agriculture, forestry, and other land uses account for 22% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

So, needless to say, this sector is one of the leaders in triggering global warming.

In this episode, we're going to speak with winemaker Ames Morrison about how a special type of agriculture can help our climate, food, and even community.

(upbeat music) Okay, so you may ask, what is regenerative agriculture?

To put it simply, regenerative ag strives to work with nature instead of against it.

This type of farming focuses on holistic approach to restoring degraded soils using practices based on ecology.

A cool fact indigenous communities have been incorporating elements of regenerative ag for a millennia.

We can learn a lot from the stewards that came before us, especially since the western world tends to prioritize profit over planet.

(upbeat music) The industrial agriculture system that dominates the western world prioritizes yield over environmental health.

This causes soil erosion at a rate 10 to 100 times higher than soil formation.

Yikes.

On top of that widespread monocropping, a prominent feature of industrial farming threatens local biodiversity and critical pollinators.

However, switching to regenerative agriculture can allow working landscapes to provide both food and ecosystem services, including absorbing carbon from the atmosphere and recharging water resources.

(upbeat music) California winemaker Ames Morrison is a leading expert on regenerative agriculture and its widespread benefits.

He spoke with us about his vineyard in California and how it happens on his farm.

Good or bad impacts the wine in your glass.

- I love wine.

I grew up on a farm, and so when I first started drinking wine, what really appealed to me about it was the impact that the farm, the weather, the soil, even the people in the vineyard and the decisions they make to how they prune the vines.

That has a tremendous impact in what you taste in the glass.

In 2019, the Kincade Fire swept through here at the end of October, and if you look around and see pretty much everything you can see that was, that it's green now was charred black.

We lost about 20% of our vines, thousands of of trees, a luckily unoccupied house, a couple miles of deer fencing.

And it was just a really, like, shocking occurrence.

And I started to really question everything that we did.

And it was really a wake up call to reexamine everything we were doing.

We've been farming organically for 20, 25 years, but I started to wonder if that was enough.

And so I just did a lot of research and learning, and I just kept hearing this word pop up continuously.

Regenerative.

- [Host] Evidence shows that industrial agriculture contributes to global warming, and in a changing climate, there are more extreme weather events like drought, fire and invasive pests that affect yields.

So it creates this kind of negative feedback loop.

- The biggest challenge to farming organically is managing the weeds.

We don't use synthetic chemicals, but we, in addition to doing that, we have, have eliminated tillage farmers for as long as agriculture has existed, have been tilling their ground, which is a great way to eliminate the competition of weeds.

Most farming is very, it's tough business, very low margins, and there's a risk.

And so people are willing to pay more for the chemicals they use to help minimize the risk, but they're, I think they're not seeing the long term risk of using those chemicals that is going to impact their farm directly or impact consumer consumer preference for their products.

There's a whole suite of practices you can do that will lead you towards the regenerative path.

And if I were starting over and had never done it before and were a little bit nervous about it, I would just pick one thing, maybe do one thing every year, and that way you sort of get your toe in the water and feel comfortable.

- Some of these regenerative practices include using cover crops to improve water retention and soil health, holistically managed grazing, moving livestock between pastures, no-till farming and composting to name a few.

There's a lot of amazing progress happening in the world of regenerative agriculture and Ames walks us through one of the most important parts.

- The people who work here are what makes it, makes this business exist.

And so we've always recognized that and celebrated our vineyard team.

But when we decided to follow this regenerative journey, we applied for and got certified as regenerative organic, and one of the criteria for that is worker fairness.

(upbeat music) And in the past we had just felt like we were, we respected our workers and wanted them to know that.

But by going through this process, there is this checklist of about, I don't know, 50 items that, and things we had just never considered before.

Going through this process, we realized that they are a really key part of the whole process.

They know the vineyard better than I do.

They know every little nook and cranny.

And so we have this saying that in the wine industry, that great wine is made in the vineyard.

And it's sort of a saying, I think it's true, but if we really believe that, then we need to treat our vineyard workers with the same respect that we treat our winemakers because they are the winemakers.

- So what we've learned is that regenerative agriculture is not just about food, it's also about people.

And this people, planet, profit alignment is key to safeguarding the future of farming and also the sustainability of our food.

Until next time, happy exploring.

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