Soil health, regenerative practices,  emerging technology, grower insights, and research — The AgEmerge Podcast.

Join our host, Monte Bottens and producer Kim Sheese, as they engage with guests from diverse agriculture interests to discuss experiences, practices and scalable applications for any operation.

Tune in to new episodes every other Tuesday to regenerate your ideas, soil, crops, livestock and livelihood.

At the end of 2023 we took the AgEmerge Podcast on the road to the Big Soil Health Event in Cedar Falls, Iowa. It was a great event where hundreds of farmers and ranchers from all over the country gathered to learn, share and encourage each other to continue to adopt soil health strategies. We asked attendees to join us in our “on the road" studio to share their soil health journey and I want to tell you, get a tissue. These are heartfelt, raw stories of family, legacy and amazing soil health.

We’re bringing you a great conversation with Dr. Liz Haney, Founder of Soil Regen and co-founder of Regen Mills and Heritage Ground. Liz is a soil and ecosystem scientist with experience in regenerative agriculture education, soil health testing and analyses, carbon as well as conservation practice modeling.

Jay McCaman. Jay is the author of “When Weeds Talk”, a top ten book on Acres, USA’s 2019 list. (Acres is North America's oldest publisher on production-scale organic and sustainable farming). And more than a book, “When Weeds Talk” provides a comprehensive list of weeds and the soil conditions that enable those weeds to grow. On his mission to discover what weeds are telling us about the soil conditions in the field, Jay has amassed almost 20,000 note cards cataloging research that’s been done to uncover the weed soil connection. Jay says, “It all fits together; weeds, insects, and disease are all connected to the soil.” Jay is a proverbial wealth of information sharing his findings about weed conditions in association with soil macro and micronutrients to porosity and drainage, Jay graduated from Michigan State University with a major in Agricultural Mechanization and went on to work in the implement business, farming and managing an organic orchard.

Gabe Brown, our first on-stage AgEmerge Keynote speaker and one of the influential forces that challenged our thinking about the way we farm. There’s a great conversation ahead as Monte and Gabe take a three-hour deep dive into all things regen ag. Gabe Brown is one of the pioneers of the current soil health movement which focuses on the regeneration of our resources. Along with his wife Shelly, and son Paul, Gabe owns and operates Brown's Ranch, a diversified 5,000 acre farm and ranch near Bismarck, North Dakota. The ranch consists of several thousand acres of native perennial rangeland along with perennial pastureland and cropland. Their ranch focuses on farming and ranching in nature's image. The Browns holistically integrate their grazing and no-till cropping systems, which include a wide variety of cash crops, multi-species cover crops along with all natural grass finished beef and lamb. They also raise pastured laying hens, broilers and swine. This diversity and integration has regenerated the natural resources on the ranch without the use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and fungicides. Gabe authored the book, “Dirt to Soil, One Family’s Journey Into Regenerative Agriculture.” He is a partner, along with David Kleinschmidt, Shane New, Kathy Richburg, and Dr. Allen Williams, in Understanding Ag LLC. He is also an instructor for Soil Health Academy, which focuses on teaching others the power and importance of healthy functioning ecosystems.

Dr. Stephanie Seneff, a Senior Research Scientist at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. On this podcast Monte and Dr. Seneff discuss her research and work in understanding the role of toxic chemicals and micronutrient deficiencies in health and disease. Sometimes our topics are hard but necessary to hear. Hopefully this conversation will encourage you to do some critical thinking about our production systems and how we can continue to work to improve not only soil health but human health. Dr. Seneff has a BS degree from MIT in biology and MS, EE and PhD degrees from MIT in electrical engineering and computer science. She has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals and conference proceedings. Her recent interests have focused on the role of toxic chemicals and micronutrient deficiencies in health and disease, with a special emphasis on the pervasive herbicide, Roundup, and the mineral, sulfur. Since 2008, she has authored over three dozen peer-reviewed journal papers related to biochemistry and toxicology, and has delivered numerous slide presentations at conferences around the world. She is the author of a book on glyphosate, titled "Toxic Legacy: How the Weedkiller Glyphosate Is Destroying Our Health and the Environment," which was released by Chelsea Green publishers on July 1, 2021. This book was selected by Kirkus Reviews as one of the best non-fiction books of 2021.