2min chapter

Working Cows - Regenerative Ranching to Maximize Profitability and Soil Health cover image

Ep. 290 – Gabe Brown and Dr. Allen Williams – Three Rules of Adaptive Stewardship

Working Cows - Regenerative Ranching to Maximize Profitability and Soil Health

CHAPTER

The Positive and Negative Feedback Mechanism of Fertility

If we think of the soil microbes, the soil and the plants as one intact functioning organism, then that organism has physiological positive and negative feedback. And so as you're saying, if we buy and apply a lot of fertility, the plant is saying, I've got plenty of fertility here. So it stops producing and spewing out those redecidates. Then the microbes say, well, wait a minute, you're not feeding me. That whole bartering system just absolutely shuts down. However, on the flip side, if those plants are relying on the microbes and the soil to feed them, then we get a positive feedback mechanism. It's back to that thing that you said about

00:00
Speaker 3
And in our own bodies, obviously, we have positive and negative feedback relative to our
Speaker 1
endocrine system, our hormone production, and so forth. So it's no different here. If we think of the soil microbes, the soil and the plants as one intact functioning organism, then that organism has physiological
Speaker 3
positive and negative feedback.
Speaker 1
And so as you're saying, if we buy and apply a lot of fertility, the plant is saying, I've got plenty of fertility here. I've got plenty of in or whatever the case may be. And I don't need to produce redecidates to signal the microbes and the soil to feed me in. And so the plant gets lazy. It stops producing and spewing out those redecidates. And then the microbes say, well, wait a minute, you're not feeding me. So I'm not going to go to work to feed you. I need the energy that you're going to feed me from those redecidates, that liquid carbon, to fuel my effort to go find nutrients and feed you. So that whole bartering system just absolutely shuts down. However, on the flip side, if those plants are relying on the microbes and the soil and the fertility and the soil to feed them, then we get a positive feedback mechanism. And the plant, as it's soaking in sunlight and photosynthesizing, knows that it's got to divert a certain amount of that energy to producing redecidates to feed the microbes, so that the microbes then go pick up the nutrients and feed back to the plants. That's how we want things to function. And that is how we are far more profitable in our operations.
Speaker 2
It's back to that thing that you said about the latent seed bank. Though it's there. You don't need to go buy native seeds and plant them. They're there. And the underground microbes are there, and they'll do the work for you if you create an environment that is conducive to them doing that work. Gabe? Yeah.

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