I had two inspiring conversations this week that gave me hope for the future. On Monday Jen and I spoke to Ryan Slabaugh, founder of ThinkRegeneration, a non-profit that’s helping advance the regenerative agriculture movement forward. They’re doing this in a few different ways.

One way is by securing capital for farmers who want to transition away from conventional agriculture (i.e. growing methods that use harmful chemicals and inhumane animal practices), or who’ve already made the change and need funding to expand or upgrade their operations. Access to capital has been cited as one of the biggest challenges farmers face, so anything to help in this regard, like securing government grants, is welcomed.

Another key tactic is hosting regenerative agriculture programs that bring like-minded people together. In a recent newsletter they announced a program being held in Colorado later this year. Colorado is my new home, so I replied to the email with excitement about the prospect of attending. Ryan in turn extended an invitation to connect via zoom.

As my luck would have it, the program being offered will focus on expanding Food Is Medicine, a program launched in 2023 by the Biden administration that grants states permission to use Medicare and Medicaid funds to provide beneficiaries with nutritious food. The program recognizes the important relationship that exists between food and health. Two areas with the potential to heal a lot of what ails us.

According to Ryan there are ~20 states taking advantage of the program. FreshRX, based out of Tulsa, OK, is one company that’s leading the way. They provide food, cooking classes, and nutritional programs to beneficiaries with Type 2 Diabetes. Patients enroll for 12 months and on average have experienced a 2.2% reduction in A1c levels and a 13-point reduction in blood pressure. Pretty remarkable results.

The goal of the ThinkRegeneration event is to find ways to make a program like this available to everyone. It’s been reported that 50 percent of the adult population is diabetic or pre-diabetic making the success of programs like this extremely important. It’s so exciting to be a part of supporting this initiative.

The second conversation was on a ski lift with an eighteen-year-old college student from St. Louis. He’s majoring in business, and minoring in outdoor management. But his dream is to take over the 500 acres of pasture his family owns and turn it into a regenerative farm. He told me one of his school mates is in a similar position. His family owns over a thousand acres in Montana, and once he inherits it he also plans to flip off the conventional switch.

Hearing him talk about their future plans gave me so much hope and filled me with excitement. We’ve been led to believe that the generations coming up behind us are not interested in taking over and putting in the work, but this conversation gave me insight into what’s really happening.

Everyone is waking up and the movement is gaining steam. Things need to change, and doing what’s right is starting to take precedent over chasing money. It’s only a matter of time until the movement becomes the standard.

Cheers.

James

An easy way to get involved: Tell Congress: Prioritize TEFAP and SNAP in the next farm bill

This Week’s Posts

The Comfort Crisis Reveals the Importance of Intuition

They say that the key to life is being happy. But what exactly does that entail? Ask 1,000 people and you might get 1,000 different answers. It’s been my belief recently that happiness boils down to the ability to listen to and follow your intuition. But it’s occurred to me, and Michael Easter points out, that we now live in a society where our natural instincts are muted by all the “comforts” around us. Read more here…

Ruck Plate Series: Workout 4

The Ruck plate’s unique one foot rectangular shape lends itself to a lot of different movements. The morning after I got mine I put together this four workout progression series. This is workout 4, the most challenging of the series. Get the workout here. And check out the first three workouts: Workout 1, Workout 2, Workout 3.

Homemade Veggie Stock and Soup

I’ve been keeping all of my food scraps in a plastic bag in the freezer. I hate throwing away food so when I learned this technique of making vegetable stock out of scraps I went all in. This was my second time trying it which is always better than the first because I got to try things I missed the first time to make it better. Read more here…