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About Chris Trump

Chris Trump is a world-renowned Natural Farmer (NF) and the first to implement NF on a large-scale. He was raised on an 800-acre macadamia nut farm on The Big Island of Hawaii and managed the farm from 2009 - 2018. While managing the farm, he led the process to convert to a certified organic farm using exclusively natural farming inputs made on the farm. After implementation of NF practices, this farm had its most profitable years in a 30-year existence.

Chris’ journey into the study of the microbiological world began at college, and over the last 13 years, he has spent a great deal of time partnering with universities for research and studying with some of the most innovative minds in agriculture of our generation. Chris is the leading US protege of Cho Han Kyu, the creator of Natural Farming. He is also a friend of Dr. Elaine Ingham who trained him in mycroscopy.

Chris is a natural educator and excels at bridging the divide between cultures and diverse backgrounds. He advises the PhD program at Konkuk University, South Korea’s leading agricultural program. Chris teaches online and has over two million viewers with online agricultural education. Chris sat on the R&D board for the International Macadamia Nut Association for four years.

Chris is passionate about sustainable farming and his heart is to equip, empower, and inform farmers and philanthropists of NF techniques. These techniques will transform livestock and crop production at very little cost so that farms and families can thrive. Chris works towards systemic change in developing nations, as well as affluent countries experiencing food nutrient poverty. From 2009 until today, Chris has been highly successful in changing the profitability/quality dynamic across multiple industries for farmers.

He is internationally recognized as the leading English-speaking expert in Natural Farming. He is the creator of the latest version of liquid IMO which has drastically reduced costs for commercial NF producers, and his ongoing innovations are sought by the international natural farming community.

Chris Trump is the first in the world to use Natural Farming techniques on a large-scale farm.

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Learn more about Chris' Courses

In Person or Online Courses

Learn more about Chris on his website biomei.solutions and on YouTube youtube.com/channel/UCus0ZO165qzh6KPlULSzs4w

LIVE Q&A

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About Robby Gass

With over 30 years of experience, Robby is a seasoned agricultural manager, consultant and trainer of large scale mixed organic and biodynamic farming, soil biology, and market gardening. Born and raised in South Africa to English-Scottish parents, Robby broadened his understanding and expertise as an educator and consultant in horticulture and organic farming, while earning an MSc in organic farming from the SRUC, Glasgow University.

In December 2022, he was appointed as the Director of Biodynamic Education at the Rudolf Steiner College Canada in Ontario to develop and direct a distance learning, private career training program for biodynamic farming and gardening, a role he continues to fulfill.

In October 2023 he resigned as the Director of Regenerative Agriculture at Refeed Canada to re-establish ALBA Organics Consulting in Canada. Robby loves to share his knowledge and experience across a wide array of agricultural and ecological entities towards improving the way we steward our planet for a healthier future.

Fun Fact

Robby loves working with horses and is a reasonably good highland bagpiper, from a distance!

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Learn more on Robby's website www.albaorganics.ca

Robby is a compost whisperer.

Dr. Elaine Ingham, World-Renowned Soil Biologist

About Dr. Elaine Ingham

Dr. Ingham uncovered the Soil Food Web nearly 4 decades ago and has been pioneering research about Soil Food Web ever since. Widely recognized as the world’s foremost soil biologist, she’s passionate about empowering people to bring the soils in their communities back to life. 

Dr. Elaine’s™ Soil Food Web Approach has been used to successfully restore the ecological functions of soils on more than five million acres of farmland all over the world. The courses offered by Dr. Elaine’s™ Soil Food Web School have been designed for people with, or without, a science background - making them accessible to individuals who wish to learn and to begin a meaningful and impactful career in an area that will help to secure the survival of humans and other species. 

B.A., Biology and Chemistry, St. Olaf College 

M.S., Microbiology, Texas A&M University 

Ph.D., Microbiology, Colorado State University 

Founder and President, Soil Food Web Inc. Director, Soil Food Web School

Fun Fact

Elaine plays the clarinet!

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Learn more about Dr. Elaine's Soil Food Web courses and training www.soilfoodweb.com

Connect with Dr. Elaine on Facebook facebook.com/soilfoodwebschool and Instagram https://www.instagram.com/soilfoodwebschool/

About Laura Decker

With 20+ years’ experience in public accounting, corporate financial reporting and planning, small business development, and management, Laura has brought her skills to Prolific Earth Sciences to grow the innovative diagnostic testing company. The company’s mission is to enable soil stewards all over the world to use mobile technology and the cost-effective soil test, microBIOMETER®, to assess regenerative soil practices, to improve soil health, and work towards increased soil carbon sequestration.

Tasked with educating regenerative growers and environmentalists in the importance of soil microbial biomass to soil health, she can often be found on Zoom talking about the power of knowledge and data as soil stewards make inroads in understanding the importance of soil microbial life to the health of soil, the food grown on that soil, and the earth. When not working to help the earth, Laura can be seen hiking, snowboarding (badly), and playing in the wonderful Pacific Northwest.

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Learn more about Laura and the microBIOMETER on the website microbiometer.com and LinkedIn linkedin.com/company/microbiometer

Connect on Instagram instagram.com/microbiometer

15% discount on your own microBIOMETER

Use code HEARTSOIL15

About Hans Forstbauer

Hans Forstbauer is a farmer, a philosopher, and a quiet activist. He bought his first farm in 1972. A pioneer in the modern organic industry, he has always lived by the mantra “growing healthy food in healthy soil.”

When asked why he farms, he will reply with simplicity and depth, "because everyone deserves healthy food."

Raised by a biodynamic scholar and farmer, Hans was never far away from the soil and its restorative and regenerative capacity.

He is one of the few farmers who understand the complexities of how soil, plants, and biology interact and how modern chemicals have altered and devastated this harmonious system.

Hans’ favourite pastime is stewarding the land he calls home: picking zucchini, weeding, and working alongside his many children and grandchildren.

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Learn more about Hans on https://forstbauer.com/

Connect on Instagram instagram.com/naturalearthfarmer

We are having difficulty with the 2024 interview. This is the 2023 interview as a placeholder. More wisdom to come... 2024 theme is 5 Principles of Farming with Nature

LIVE Q&A

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About Jo Tobias

Jo Tobias is a Regenerative Soils & Living Compost Specialist with the primary goal of assisting land stewards in understanding how they can play a role in soil health. Jo founded RootShoot Soils in 2015 and has collaborated with British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ontario farmers. Her direct tool for regenerating degraded landscapes is using rich, biologically-diverse compost. Compost can provide the foundation to kickstart microbial processes that stimulate nutrient cycling and decomposition when managed correctly.

Composting is Jo’s craft—she meticulously tends the whole process to create the ideal habitat for diverse microorganisms promoting plant health. For Jo, composting is all about finding the balance between growth and decay, and she takes this responsibility very seriously. Over the years, she has taught farmers practical strategies to leverage their compost to restore soil life. She also combines the power of microscopy with her restoration efforts to ensure she is on the right path to improving soil health, as it allows her to refine her techniques when revitalizing lifeless soils.

Fun fact

Growing up in the lush tropics of the Philippines, my brothers and I would catch houseflies with bare hands and feed them to mantids and dragonflies.

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Learn more about Jo Tobias on her website www.rootshootsoils.com

Connect on Facebook facebook.com/rootshootsoils and Instagram instagram.com/rootshoot_soils

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About David Johnson

David C. Johnson PhD is a molecular biologist researching how the adoption of regenerative agriculture practices, employing Biologically Enhanced Agriculture Management or BEAM “systems”, promotes development of beneficial soil microbial communities that improve farm and rangeland productivity and profitability, food security, and provide a cost-effective and common-sense path to reduce atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

Dr. Johnson receives funding support from non-profit foundations like the Globetrotter Foundation, the Thornburg Foundation, the Laird Norton Family Foundation, the MightyArrow Family Foundation, and Cruces Creatives to work with growers that wish to transition to BEAM. He also conducts research and collaborates with other researchers and stakeholders in collecting, analyzing, and compiling data in “whole system approaches” to better understand the mechanisms of how and what makes biologically-balanced living systems that continue to improve productivity and regenerate fertility.

Research Focus: David's research, in soil microbial community structure and function, has opened a window for viewing the interdependence between plants and soil microbes.

Optimization of these plant-microbe associations promotes:

• Restoration of soil fertility

• Improved growth of crops

• Increased plant-water-use efficiency, soil’s water holding capacity, soil microbial-carbon use efficiencies and soil carbon storage capabilities.

These benefits provide a path to significantly increase farm and ranch productivity and profitability due to better plant, soil, and ecosystem health by rebuilding a soil’s microbial community population, structure, diversity, and biological functionality. Some of the techniques used in analyzing these soil microbiological systems to produce the research data are:

• Metagenomics

• Metatranscriptomics

• 16S, 18S, and ITS

• Microscopy for Soil Foodweb Structure & Fungal to Bacterial Ratio

• Statistical Analysis

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Find David on YouTube @davidjohnson1910

Scientific American Article Can Soil Microbe Slow Climate Change? 

Adaptive Multi-Paddock Grazing (AMP) Manuscript 

About Ernst Götsch

Our whole environmental, political, and social problems humanity suffers for thousands of years, have their common roots in our misunderstanding of life on our planet and our position and function within it. And, resulting out of this, our disastrous behaviour, based on our belief, to be something dissimilar, superior in relation to the whole rest. Whereas in fact, we are part only, of an intelligent system, and not the intelligent ones. Additionally, 12¨000 years ago, at the beginning of our actual warm period, 95% of all parts by modern man inhabited areas, forests turned into the prevailing form of eco-systems.

Man, instead of trying to become serviceable in that for him uncommon eco-system, decided first to collect and to rape in it what he needed. When the resources, possible for him to be squeezed out, became scarce or exhausted, he decided, and continues doing the same up to day, this is, to remove those forests in order to cultivate - mainly without further presence of trees - his annual crops and raising domesticated animals. His great error, he commits is that " mainly without further presence of trees." I would say "employment" of trees: since 48 years, I am testing, in all types of climate, also in different latitudes and altitudes, this strategy.

My conclusion out of those experiences: the more, the better. A thousand to thousand five hundred adult trees per ha, annually pollarded on a hight - according to the crop - on 3 to 7 m results in huge amount of organic matter - in our case more than 20¨000 kg of dry matter per year and ha, high productivity, excellent crops, no weeds, no diseases, no pests, and an increase of at least a half- to 3 cm of black top soil per year... And best quality of wood for all purposes turns itself into an abundant by-product of our act to acquire, what we need in order to satisfy our day-to-day requirement of our metabolism.

Farming at service of life.

Additionally, I fully employ the dynamics of natural species succession as a second main tool in all my works with plants and animals. Doing this, allows us, at low costs, to recover all our degraded soils and re-green all the deserts, we created by the employment of our - up to now - still common strategies and tools. And transform this undertaking into a highly, not only beneficial event for all participated, submitted, influenced, and present ones, but also profitable.

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Learn more on Ernst's website agendagotsch.com

Connect on Facebook facebook.com/agendagotsch • Instagram instagram.com/agendagotsch • YouTube youtube.com/@AgendaGotschOficial

Dr. Rob Blakemore, Ecology Scientist, Earthworm Expert

About Dr. Rob Blakemore

Qualified in agro-ecology (BSc, PhD) and Bill Mollison’s permaculture (PDC), Rob has studied ‘VermEcology’ for 40 years. Growing up in the countryside near Charles Darwin’s home, Rob’s interests in earthworms commenced in 1980 with a survey of Lady Eve Balfour’s Haughley farm in tribute to Darwin’s book on “Worms.” Subsequent surveys, from Australasian tropics to sub-Antarctic including Sir Albert Howard’s Indore site, led to discovery of ~500 species new to science or new exotics reports. 

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Rob's blog vermecology.wordpress.com

Dr. James White, Professor of Plant Biology, Rutgers University

About Dr. James White

James F. White is Professor of Plant Biology at Rutgers University in New Jersey where he and students conduct research on ecology of microbes that inhabit plants (endophytes). James White is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and Associate Editor for journals Symbiosis, Fungal Ecology, MycoScience, and Scientific Reports. In 2023 James White was ranked among the top Plant Science and Agronomy researchers in the nation and world by Research.com based on research impact. 

Fun Fact

James teaches courses in mycology and mushrooms at Rutgers University.

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Learn more about James on https://sites.rutgers.edu/james-white-laboratory 

LIVE Q&A

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Gary Zimmer, Biological Agriculture Farmer & Expert

Time 90m

About Gary Zimmer

Gary Zimmer is Founder and Chief Visionary Officer of Midwestern BioAg. Known as the “father” of biological agriculture, Zimmer is an internationally known author, speaker, and consultant. He owns Otter Creek Organic Farm, a family-operated, award winning 1400-acre farm near Lone Rock, WI.

Zimmer is the author of three books, The Biological Farmer, The Biological Farmer (Second Edition) and Advancing Biological Farming, plus numerous articles on soils and livestock nutrition. Zimmer holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a master’s degree in dairy nutrition from the University of Hawaii.

Anyone who attends a meeting featuring Gary will see that he is one of the world’s leading authorities on biological farming. After several decades as a farmer, agribusinessman, educator, and author, Zimmer is recognized around the world for his dedication to improving farms by restoring soils.

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Learn more on Gary's website zimmerag.com

LIVE Q&A

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Glenn Elzinga, Organic Rancher, Alderspring Ranch

About Glenn Elzinga 

Glenn Elzinga, with his wife and business partner Caryl, started Alderspring Ranch near Salmon, Idaho, in 1992, with the purchase of 147 acres and 7 cows. They began direct marketing grass fed and finished beef in 1993 with 2 head. From these beginnings, Alderspring Ranch has grown to a 7-figure direct marketing enterprise and a 2500 acre ranch with a 46,000 acre wild rangeland permit. The entire operation is certified organic, including the 46,000 acres of permit land.

Glenn and Caryl run the ranch with their 7 daughters and a few exceptional employees. The ranch markets 100% of its production, 300-400 head a year, through an internet storefront at Alderspring.com.

After investing in a living soil over 15 years, the ranch is now profitable and expanding, with another run-down 500 acres of former potato farm added in 2022. The family hopes to regenerate that land utilizing cover crops and planned grazing into a profitable enterprise as well.

After working for several years on restoring fertility and biodiversity on the irrigated valley home ranch, the Elzingas turned to the native rangeland used for summer grazing. Seventy percent of the green forage their finish cattle consume is on these wild landscapes. By connecting technology with ancient tools of horsemanship and stockmanship, the Elzingas are working to reduce or eliminate conflicts on public rangelands between livestock and wolves while restoring native fish and wildlife habitats.

Fun Fact

Glenn likes to ski deep and steep backcountry powder.

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Learn more on Glenn's website alderspring.com

Connect on Facebook facebook.com/alderspring • Instagram instagram.com/alderspring_ranch • YouTube youtube.com/channel/UCeqm8dI1Y0fDE1lh97rWh8A

About Yannick Van Doorne

Yannick is an agronomist from Belgium living at a farm in France. He's been studying and experimenting with electroculture techniques since 1998.

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Learn more on Yannick's website electroculturevandoorne.com

Connect on Facebook facebook.com/groups/electrocultureforplantgrowth • Instagram instagram.com/electroculturevandoorne • YouTube youtube.com/@electrocultureYannickVD • Telegraph t.me/electroculture

About Chanvirak Bun

Korean Natural Farming Piggery, Freerange Pigs on Pasture, Freerange Sheep on Pasture, Food Forest, Black Soldier Fly, Worm Composting, Dairy Cow and Dairy Goat.

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Connect on Facebook fb.com/sheepcambodia