(soft piano music)
- [Kelly] Welcome to
The Leading Voices in Food podcast series.
I'm Kelly Brownell,
director of the World Food
Policy Center at Duke University.
Today, we're digging into
the little known origins
of regenerative agriculture,
a conservation approach
to farming and raising animals
that focuses on soil health,
biodiversity, improving the
water cycle and resilience
to climate change.
My guest today is Dr.
Michael Kotutwa Johnson,
a 450th generation Hopi
farmer in the dry lands
of Arizona and a research associate with
the Native American Agriculture Fund.
Michael, thanks so much for joining us.
It's really a pleasure to have you here.
- [Michael] Thank you,
sir. Thank you very much.
- [Kelly] So to begin, can you
help our listeners understand
the Hopi peoples theological
and cultural grounding
in what's now called
regenerative agriculture?
- [Michael] When we came
here over two millennia ago,
we were just given what
we'd call this covenant.
We'd be allowed to stay here,
but it all would be based upon our faith.
We have to have faith in everything we do.
And if you were to come out to Hopi,
you could understand how
difficult it would be
to live here and to actually grow things
like corn and beans and melons and squash.
Our belief system is tied
directly to our agriculture.
They support each other 100 percent.
So one without the other, we
wouldn't be as sustainable.
So some people often ask me,
"What is the reason
your agricultural system
is so resilient?"
I say because it's based upon our faith
and it's based upon our ceremonial cycle.
And so, when you combine those two,
you have pretty much a perfect match.
And so that's how we look at things.
- [Kelly] So I'm assuming
the faith dictates
a series of practices that are what make
the system resilient. Is that right?
- [Michael] It's not so much
the ceremonial practices
or the concept of faith,
but it's just actually doing
something when you do not know
what your results are gonna be.
For example, like in 2018,
we were gonna have a drought
and we could tell that by just looking
at some of our biological indicators.
But a lot of us planted anyway.
We didn't plant our whole entire fields
but we planted anyway,
because we knew that we must do that
because that's what our
faith tells us to do.
It says that we must plant every year.
And so that's what we did.
- [Kelly] Such an interesting story.
So, Michael, you studied
conventional agriculture
at Cornell University,
then earned a master's
degree in public policy
from Pepperdine,
and ultimately a doctorate
in natural resources
from the University of Arizona.
So, and I understand
that you've experienced
some cultural dissonance as
you pursued the doctorate
in conventional agriculture techniques
that heightened your
appreciation for the practices
and food ways of your people.
Can you say a little bit more about that?
- [Michael] Well, I think
it was mainly the fact
that everything that's based
upon conventional agriculture
is geared towards economics.
I mean, there's really no
way, once the farmer buys
into this system, that they
have no clear way of getting out
or even you know, their
profit margin is so, so slim.
And so every little input they have is,
it's costly to the environment.
For example, the USDA market system
is based upon higher yields.
And to create higher yields,
you need to have more efficiency,
and by more efficiency you need to start
to use all these things
that the seed companies
and the chemical companies give you.
And that means things like
herbicides, pesticides.
And unfortunately, it just drains off into
the environment and drains
off into the waterways.
My cultural dissonance came
into thinking that, you know,
we don't raise out here for economics.
We raise them for sustenance.
It's you know, it's small
farming, subsistence farming.
And so that's how come I
was kind of disillusioned
by what I saw.
And, you know, I'd say we
don't have that great burden
that the American farmer has, you know.
And it's unfortunate because that burden
is also caused psychologically.
Just recently in this 2018 farm bill,
there was money put aside for...
to prevent suicides that are
happening in the Midwest,
because when people lose their farm,
they feel like they lose their life
and that's just a very
unfortunate situation.
At our place, at Hopi, our
psychological well-being
is kind of built into our
agricultural system in many ways.
You know, for an example,
time I was up plastering
the walls in my beautiful
Hopi sandstone house
and an elderly gentleman
came by and he said,
"Did you put seeds? Did you
put seeds in the plaster?
It's very important Michael.
It's very important."
And I said, that is
kind of crazy, you know,
being that he's kind
of old and everything,
but, I did that, he came back
a week later and he says,
"Did you do it?"
And I said, yes.
And I said, but how come
you ask me to do that
since I can't eat those?
And he says,
"That's because you will always remember
that you have food in the house."
He said when we're going through drought
and those type of things,
we always had this way
of trying to deal with
that psychologically.
So that's how come when I
look at the American system,
how come I was kinda
disillusioned with it.
- [Kelly] What an interesting story
about the seeds in the house.
Can you say a little bit
more about the relationship
that a farmer has with the
land using conventional
versus regenerative approaches,
or traditional approaches?
- [Michael] Well, you know,
from the Hopi standpoint of view,
you know that corn is
touched at least seven
or eight times throughout its life.
Everything from harvesting,
to shelling, to planting,
to preparing it for food.
So there's this very intimate relationship
that we have with the things
that we grow and their land.
For example, when I was out
gathering plants one day
with my grandfather a long time ago,
we found the plant that we needed,
but he told me to leave it.
He says, "We need to keep
that for the next generation."
So we went on for another half an hour
till we found some more.
And so it's that type of relationship
that we have with the land.
It's one of caring and
it's one of reverence.
And I'm not saying that a
conventional agriculturalist
doesn't look at the land that way,
but because of all the inputs
that he uses and, you know,
he's up on his big
combines and his tractors
and everything like that,
he doesn't really get
to actually understand
the value of that,
the reverence for that,
the respect for that.
And so it kinda taps out I would say,
in sort of in a belief system fashion that
he just doesn't quite understand
the value of what he's doing.
I could be wrong, but
that's how I look at it.
- [Kelly] Can you paint a picture for us
of what your farm is like
and what you grow there?
And what sorta practices do you use
to try to keep consistent with
your principles and values?
- [Michael] I'm at the
Hopi Indian Reservation
in northern Arizona.
We're about forty five
to five thousand feet.
We have sandy clay loam soils.
Lotta desert shrubs and brushes.
We only receive six to 10 inches
of annual rainfall a year, you know.
And that's an important factor
because when I was at Cornell,
they said I needed thirty
three inches of rainfall a year
in order to raise things like corn.
So I raised things like
corn, different varieties.
We have over 21 different varieties.
And I also raise squash and melons,
different types of melons,
and gourds and even cotton sometimes.
And all this is done without irrigation.
Now it's done this way because
we have something like three paces,
which is almost like
six feet between rows.
And a lot of that has to do with the fact
that we are trying to
conserve soil moisture.
So when you talk about regenerative
and you said the water cycle,
we use very little
limited amount of water.
And our seeds have adapted
for over two thousand years
to go through things like droughts.
And our planning depths are also anywhere
from six to 18 inches deep,
depending upon what we
see in the springtime.
And so there's a lot
of different techniques
there that we use, that
we have used that allow us
to preserve the land.
For example, we just don't take all
the corn plant away like
they do in conventional.
They'll cut the thing off.
We leave everything there.
We'll just take the cob off.
And that cluster will act
as windbreaks in the winter,
in the springtime when winds
are blowing across the field
or it'll also catch snow
when the snow falls.
And so everything at Hopi
has three or four purposes.
It's just not one single
linear approach like
that I see conventional farmers use.
- [Kelly] So you mentioned 21
different varieties of corn.
So why not just find
the one or two varieties
that work best under those
conditions and grow just them?
- [Michael] So a lot of them are just used
for different purposes.
A lot of them, they're all
eaten when they're fresh.
And we have like six
varieties used for ceremonies.
That's how come we grow a lot of varieties
because our crops are tied directly
to our ceremonial goings on and things.
- [Kelly] So this idea of
regenerative agriculture,
the term "regenerative agriculture",
most people would consider
relatively new on the scene
and you're saying, "Wait a minute.
People have been doing this kinda thing
for a really, really long
time and paying attention
to some traditional practices
might make good sense."
Am I hearing you right?
- [Michael] Yes, you are.
I mean, we can go down the list
like biodiversity, you know.
There's no place in the United States
that I know that there's
this kind of biodiversity
as far as domestic crop production.
Things like corn, beans and squash.
And when I mean biodiversity,
that means if we get
one disease on a plant,
it doesn't necessarily
mean that it'll jump
to another plant like you would have in
the conventional agriculture
and what happened back
in the 70s during the Texas tea blight
that wiped out monocrops across the board.
Soil health.
I gave a few examples of that,
of just leaving everything on
the field when you harvest.
Also, we plant in areas that are conducive
to bringing in new soil,
on alluvial floodplains.
And therefore, our pH levels
on our fields are about 8.8,
which is about perfect for corn
and this is our seventy five
to a hundred year old
fields in some places.
Also, this resiliency to
climate change, you know.
I mean, nowhere else can
I see corn grow in a area
that doesn't receive
any rainfall from April
all the way up until the end of July.
That's resiliency in a nutshell, you know.
It's resistant to climate change.
And so we're able to try to
overcome some of those things.
Every year we do not have a
crop. So that's the other thing.
But we're also smart enough to plant
enough to last us three to five years
to help us get through some of
these longer drought periods.
- [Kelly] And in addition,
there are many, many generations
of wisdom built into an
agriculture system like that.
In wisdom, not only of the
people who are growing the food,
but, you know, wisdom in the plants
and a wisdom in the lands.
Would you say that that's true?
- [Michael] That is
true, sir. That is true.
I mean, there's two thousand
years of replication, you know.
And I'm still trying to
get NRCS to understand that
and why we have to use
their conservation practices
when ours are just as good if
not more valid for our area.
And also the fact that, you know,
those conventional agricultural
techniques are subsidized,
whereas ours are not
because they're not
scientifically validated.
And I still have a problem with that
because you have two
thousand years of replication
on the ground, where you
only have two hundred fifty
or less for these natural
resource conservation
standard practices.
And so I'm just trying
to figure out, you know,
why that's so?
And I'm developing some policy
to try to rectify that situation.
- [Kelly] Do you see things as changing?
Are more and more people kind of aware
of this type of an approach?
- [Michael] I think if they get to see it,
they'll become aware of it.
Unfortunately, a lot
of indigenous practices
that we still see going
on aren't really given
that much credence unless they're aligned
with what Western technology is showing.
They're kind of looked
out as informal knowledge,
which is not really true.
Our biggest problem
right now is just to try
to tell some of our stories
and what we're doing.
And so working with the Native
American Agriculture Fund
is allowing me to start to do that.
And I've also been able
to speak at a couple
of regenerative agricultural conferences.
That's also important,
too, because as you know,
if you're not out there
talking about things
and looking at things,
you'll never hear about
these beautiful things
that have been going on for
well over two millennia.
- [Kelly] Do you see hope
that these kind of practices
could be used on a broad scale?
Let's say you have thousands
of acres as some farmers do.
Could this be done on a
larger scale? Do you think?
- [Michael] I think it
could be done, you know.
Taking our healthy cropping system
and putting in Iowa wouldn't be,
wouldn't do any good cause it
just wouldn't fit in there.
Cause everything that we
do out here is place based.
By looking at some of what
regenerative agriculture
is trying to do, some of the
techniques are very valid
but the biggest problem that I
see is the financial segment.
There's about a three or
five year gap of trying
to figure out, well,
what's the farmer gonna do
when he switches over?
You know, he's gonna lose money at first
because he's switching
over to a whole new system.
And so that gap needs to
be filled somehow by banks
or something like that,
that would allow the farmer
to do that, you know,
to improve soil health
and all those things
that you just mentioned.
- [Kelly] So what sort of advice
or guidance would you give
to conventional farmers who
wanna shift their operations
toward a more regenerative model?
- [Michael] You know, I would
have to tell 'em to look at
the regenerative model.
You know, I know like there's
some people up in Wisconsin
and probably in the Midwest
there that are already doing
some of this stuff, but they're
just few and far between
and their stories aren't
really talked about too much
that I see.
There's nothing better than
talking to your neighbor.
I mean, in the farming world,
I think when somebody does
something and it's successful,
a lotta people start to buy into it
and things start switching.
I think the only resistance we'll get,
to be honest with you is
like from agribusiness
and some of the seed companies
and the chemical companies
that produce the stuff
that the farmers need
to grow a good high yielding crop.
But I think over time, especially
with this recent pandemic
that we're having right now,
I think farmers will
get smaller, you know.
I think we're seeing big
bottlenecks in the supply chain
because we're just using a few facilities
to distribute a lotta things.
And so we need to get back
to the smaller family farm
that American farmers were founded on.
- [Kelly] You're probably
one of the few people
who has a deep understanding
of both conventional farming
and a fully regenerative
orientation to farming.
What do you see as the
challenges and opportunities
for both the Hopi people
and for the nation at large?
- [Michael] You know, the
challenges for us is just
to get more people to farm.
We've bought into a
lot of the Western ways
of doing things like grocery stores
and everything else like that.
And I'll never get it back to 100 percent,
probably like it was in the 30s
during the Great Depression,
where we didn't actually
feel that, out here at Hopi,
but I'm talking about at least get it up
to at least 50 percent.
Right now, it hovers around
25 percent I believe.
There's an assessment being done by
the Hopi Foundation to
take a look at that.
Far as the conventional
thing is concerned,
their thing is gonna be
just trying to find people
to buy in, you know.
There's people that wanna have
a regenerative agriculture
but those same people
that want it to happen,
they also need to find ways to supplement
what the farmer's gonna lose for a while
as he goes through this
cycle of changing up.
- [Kelly] Is there
anything else you'd like
to have people know about
this kind of approach?
- [Michael] For me, it's
just, it's pretty simple.
We farm because this is
what our belief tells are.
I think that's very important.
I kinda look at, you know,
all this pandemic crisis
of people getting away from their values
and just trying to figure
out who they are again.
It's a great time of reflection.
And I think when it all comes down to it,
everybody comes outta this,
I think we're gonna see
a big surge in trying
to get back to things that will help us.
A thing that we value the most.
I hope it goes that direction
and I feel it's gonna go that direction.
And it's just people helping people,
neighbors talking to neighbors
and so forth down the line.
It's the old way of doing things
that I think that has more value in it
than people can see right.
- [Kelly] Well, thank you, Michael.
It's a very helpful approach
and you're very inspirational
in the way you talk about this.
So I very much appreciate you joining us.
- [Michael] Thank you so much.
- [Kelly] So our guest
today has been Hopi farmer,
Dr. Michael Kotutwa Johnson
of the Native American Agriculture Fund.
And thank you for listening.
If you'd like to subscribe
to The Leading Voices
in Food podcast series,
you may find it on the Apple podcast,
Google Play or your favorite podcast app.
And the podcast and
transcripts are also available
on our web site at the Duke
World Food Policy Center.
This is Kelly Brownell.
(soft piano music)
