Whether you call our obligation and calling to tend God’s earth “stewardship” or “Creation care,” it’s easy to feel like the concept is a little vague. This is especially true when it comes to producing food.
So I encourage you to watch this video of a webinar hosted by Food Animal Concerns Trust (FACT) to get a sense of what Creation stewardship looks like on a small scale. In the video, Kirsten Robertson details how she creatively found natural solutions to replace the chemical dewormers she had previously been using on her goats and sheep at her family’s 10-acre farmstead in South Carolina.
As you’ll see, Kirsten brings both an engineering background and extensive grazing experience to her situation. I believe you’ll enjoy the thoughtfulness and logic of her presentation’s structure while also appreciating her tenacity and values. Please enjoy.
There are several things that struck me about the story of Kirsten’s creative stewardship journey.
The first was how it occurred to her to study how grazing animals in nature generally avoid dying from parasites.
In my interview with John Kempf, he shared one of his favorite Bible passages – Job 12: 7-10 That passage especially resonates with Kirsten’s story.
The passage reads: But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you, or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish in the sea inform you. Which of these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this? In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind.
How often do our systems of producing food and even living itself come out of careful learning from Creation? They should.
The second was how Kirsten learned as she went. She didn’t have all of the details of her new systems in place when she stopped using chemical dewormers. She had to make adjustments. New insights came to her as she proceeded. Her faith and persistence were rewarded. Creation stewardship is a lively, interactive endeavor. It builds our wisdom muscles.
Another thing that stood out to me was how the characteristics of specific plants, like black locust and chicory, were helpful allies to her. What a wonderful example of how knowing the “players” in Creation is valuable and fascinating. I encourage you to launch into the study of Creation as a lifelong pursuit.
You can’t help but notice that Kirsten’s approach was complex. She made the farmstead landscape more complex in terms of layout and vegetation management. This is a far different from relying on chemicals while ignoring the factors that made the parasite infections happen in the first place.
The chemicals-dependent approach that she moved away from is a microcosm of our dominant food and farming system. Our tendency is to create “simple” industrial approaches built on our chemistry and engineering prowess without caring about the impacts of those approaches on our neighbors and Creation. We need humility to learn from Creation. We need to consider its needs and patterns.
Perhaps this is why the Bible teaches us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. When we work with Creation, we should remember that God is looking over our shoulders and observing whether reverence for God is in our hearts.
And what I ultimately responded to in Kirsten’s story was the joy and life that emerged from it.
Stopping the use of the chemical dewormers allowed dung beetles to return with benefits for the soil. Diversifying her homestead’s landscape attracted other wildlife as well.
And that changed the direction of Kirsten’s life. She was once close to giving up on their farmstead. By learning from Creation and creatively applying its lessons, she ultimately found her enjoyment of life there resurrected.
When you think about farmers, you probably assume they own the land they farm. And you may well assume the farmers are the only ones who can decide how farming is done on the land.
In fact, there are many farmland owners who do not do the farming. And, in fact, those farmland owners can decide what kind of farming they want done on their land.
According to an insightful report from The Nature Conservancy, 41 percent of all U.S farmland is owned by a non-farming landowner and that figure is 62 percent in Midwest. In McHenry County (just east of Lake County, Illinois, where we live), that figure is over 80 percent!
If someone uses your property in a way that you agreed they could, the logic is clear. You are responsible in part for what they do and the impacts of what they do. This means that farmland owners who don’t farm are still important decision-makers in our country’s food and agriculture system.
And that means they have a whole lot to do with the stewarding of God’s earth.
After all, fifty-two percent of America’s land mass is used for agriculture.
But do farmland owners apply stewardship values to the management of their farmland to the degree they could and should?
The answer is generally not.
That same report from The Nature Conservancy I quoted from earlier revealed that 80 percent of the landowners surveyed relied more on their farmers for information about conservation than any other source.
It is true that many farmers do take conservation seriously. They do so, however, within the paradigm of farming as they know it. That paradigm is a production-oriented, industrial approach. That paradigm, even if tweaked and refined, generally results in declining soil life, erosion, a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, and miles and miles of land where a monarch butterfly cannot find a single milkweed.
But thanks to pioneers in regenerative agriculture (which is rediscovering principles of food production indigenous peoples have known for millennia), we now know there is a very different paradigm for agricullture that is better for God’s earth and good for the farmer, too. Gabe Brown, a Christian farmer, exemplifies what that kind of farming can look like. Check out his book, this podcast, and this video to learn more.
If you are a farmland owner who doesn’t farm, I urge you to apply your Christian faith to how you manage your farmland.
Ask yourself these questions. How well that does the farming on my land reflect the values I find in the Bible? How well does the farming on my land reflect what I know of God and God’s Creation through the Bible and my own experiences in Creation?
Our faith is clear that we do not own this earth.
As Dr. Allen Williams puts it, God put us here to be both servants and masters of that earth. We are not here just to use the earth and then escape to heaven.
It is clear, especially from the Old Testament, that we are to have limits to how we use Creation. Remember that for the Israelites even the land was to have its sabbath every seventh year. This was likely, in part, a wise systeming for maintaining the fertility of the soil. But the command was also teaching the Israelites that the land, too, had its own needs that mattered to God.
That priniciple has not expired. Efficiency and economic production are not the greatest good for God.
It is also clear, especially from the New Testament, that our hearts are remade by faith in Jesus. When they are, we will reflect the fruits of the Spirit (Galations 5:22-23) – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control – in all we do. I believe those principles apply to how to we treat people and how we treat God’s earth.
From the Bible, we see, too, that the living things of this earth have their own relationship with God and are sustained by God. In fact, from Psalm 148 and Revelation 5:13 we can conclude that the living things of this earth are part of the choir of Creation that we are also members of.
In other words, the land a Christian owns, whether it is a suburban lot or a 500-acre farm, is not just a financial asset. It is not “real estate.”
The land you own is a unique portion of the living earth that is part of the overall world that God so loves. It is alive. It supports other life in complex ecological relationships. What is done to the portion of God’s earth that you temporarily steward impacts land and water and living things far beyond it.
I don’t mean to suggest that being a fully engaged steward of your farmland with the goal of prospering Creation is easy.
You may rely on the income from the land for a significant portion of your yearly budget.
Agriculture and the ecology of soil, land, and water are complex. Farming has its own language, its own tools and equipment.
And the status quo approach to agriculture is a powerful status quo. It takes energy and tenacity and conviction to persist in a different approach. What’s more, you likely have an existing relationship with the farming renter who is likely a family member or friend in your community.
Complexity, however, is not a justification for inaction or procrastination.
Through its wisdom literature, the Bible prepares us for applying God’s values in a complicated world that is not always black and white.
Jewish and Christian thinkers have also produced wonderful writings and bodies of wisdom guidance. Use those resources to grow your wisdom and apply what you learn to your farmland management.
Wisdom also requires you to learn more about soil life, the realities of conventional farming, regenerative agriculture, farmland ownership, and the situation of your current farmer in your county. Being responsible for your farmland requires that you know enough to judge whether the farming is contributign to the life of God’s earth or depleting it. Loving your neighbor means being as fair as you can be to the farmer you lease to.
Then apply your faith-based wisdom to how you manage your farmland in your particular situation.
For example, if you are asking the farmer to invest in new, complex practices that will have long-term benefits for your land, then you should give the farmer long-term lease so he or she can also enjoy some of those benefits they are making possilbe.
You can also learn wisdom from other farmland owners. An Illinois landowner I know made clear to her renter (who happened to be here nephew) that she intended to move the farming of her land in an organic, sustainble direction. When the nephew showed no willingness or interest in learning more and adjusting to her values, even in an incremental way, the landowner had no choice but to not renew the lease when it expired. Sometimes, making those hard decisions are the only way to be true to God’s values. I’m happy to report, by the way, that the landowner eventually found a farmer completely in synch with her values.
In a different case, a landowner with land in Iowa planned to move that property to organic as a better way of caring for it. The farmer was uneasy because organic farming approach is quite different and requires much more documentation. But both the farmer and the landowner wanted to maintain their relationship. The farmer was open to changing his ways.
The landowner applied wisdom and love of neighobr. She is paying for an organic farming agronomist to advise and help the farmer during the transition process whenever the farmer needs it. This is enabling the farmer to feel more comfortable and be more successful. Its a gesture, too, that shows the landowner is willing to share the risks of the change.
As part of my work that I mentioned earlier, I am helping to organize an event on Tuesday, August, 2nd for non-farming farmland owners. The event will feature three farmland owners who will share their experiences and lessons from moving towards better stewardship of their farmland. It’s extremely helpful to learn from other farmland owners.
I’m happy to report that more and more private and public farmland owners are working to improve their farmland stewardship. If you own farmland, I hope you will be bravely take full ownership of the responsibility and opportunity you have to prosper God’s earth. If you know a farmland owner on the journey of improving the stewardship of that land, please help them and encourage them and pray for them.
Don’t hesitate to reach out to me if I can I help you connect to the resources that would help you.
My tendency, as you’ve seen from my past blog posts, is to think big picture. I learn towards theology, ideas, trends, analysis of verses,patterns of people marring God’s Creation, and patterns of people regenerating God’s Creation through ingenuity and commitment and faith.
In this post, I go in a different direction. I share some moments in my life in the month of April that relate in some way to God’s earth.
April 10 – I volunteer along with other residents here in the Prairie Crossing conservation community to burn several sections of the prairies and other habitats of our community’s common areas. Our burn leader – Jim O’Connor – takes extreme care in the planning of the burns so that homes are never in danger. Jim also keeps track of when areas are burnt. It’s not good to burn at the same time of the year every time. Prescribed burns are essential to keep prairies healthy.
April 16 – This is the same area six days after the burns on April 10. Look carefully in the bottom left corner of the image. Can you see the mound that has a different texture than everything around it? And can you see the robin just to the right of the mound? The mound is that of a colony of prairie ants (likely Formica montana). With the weather warming, the ants had begun to appear on the surface. And that had drawn the robin which had been scarfing them down like a famished guest consuming a tray of hors d’oeuvres. Prairie ants play an important role in prairie ecology and provided a useful, high-protein, high-fiber diet supplement for the robin early this cold spring. I wonder what King Solomon would make of this.
April 19 – Many residents in Prairie Crossing have native habitats on their own properties as well. Here Jim O’Connor (yes, he is everywhere) and Bill Pogson (not in the picture) are helping me burn the natural habitats of our yard. Further down the alley we have a small open prairie. Here we have three oaks whose leaves burn nicely, contributing the fire ecology of the habitat. Prairie Crossing HOA regulations require us to have at least 3 adults carry out any burn and to also make sure that the weather is suitable for a burn that day. Burning together with neighbors brings us together. After the burn was completed (and perhaps inspired by the beer), Jim expertly recited portions of a Robert Burns’ poem.
April 21 – Any ideas what this is? A lunar landscape perhaps? It’s been a wet month. Rain the previous day turned some eroded soil along the edge of Harris Road near our non-profit organization’s office into mud. These are worm trails visible early on a weekday morning. The ephemeral trails were ever so faint traces of creatures whose lives are usually invisible to us.
April 21 – Another burn in a Prairie Crossing common area. My friend and neighbor Bill Pogson uses a drip torch to spread the flame. Earlier we had burned to the right of the image so the flames you see that are being pushed by the wind will only go a short distance and then run out of fuel. I had more work to do at the office that Friday afternoon, but I felt I needed to help out as good burn weather can often be rare. Glad I did. The needs of people and nature don’t always fit in nicely with our plans for a day.
April 25 – It’s a weekday night, and Mayumi and I need to figure out what to make for dinner in a hurry. We had leftover basmatic rice I had made over the weekend, so Mayumi created a quick stir-fried rice dish with organic peas, onions, carrots, and pasture-raised eggs.
April 25 – Gus, one of our two cats, enjoying a nap in covers we’ve pulled up around him. I believe our love of our pets and how our homes feel much better with plants in them remind us of something profound we see in Genesis – we are meant to be in a state of shalom with the rest of life.
April 26 – Our small garden at the south end of our home. You can see the compost bins in the background. To the right of the bin is a choke cherry and a shagbark hickory, both native woody plants. And at the right edge of the image is an Asian pear tree. The abundance of vegetation you see in the garden itself is winter rye, a cover crop that my wife Mayumi planted last fall to build the soil. The winter rye stayed green all winter, and with all of the rain, it is now growing quickly, which means it is pumping dissolved sugars (liquid carbon) into the soil which feeds the microbes and fungi there. This is our first time using cover crops in these beds. We keep trying to learn.
April 27 – It’s not exactly in my job description, but on this Wednesday I led a tour of our farm and Prairie Crossing for ~40 students of AP Human Geography classes from a local high school. Here my colleague Meg Runyan explains how she gets 8,000+ plants germinating and growing in our greenhouse for our annual organic plant sale. Earlier I had shared why it makes such a big difference to human health and nature how food is farmed. One of the teachers said at the end of the tour, almost as an aside, that just reading about sustainabilty has little impact and meaning. Youth need to experience what it actiually looks like.
I also gave a sermon to the North Suburban Mennonite Church and Christ Community Mennonite Church on the Sunday after Earth Day. In preparation for the sermon I reviewed my notes from a book I had found inspiring some years agao –The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church by Alan Hirsch. A quote I found that I couldn’t squeeze into the sermon that I still find compelling and want to share is:
“To say this more explicitly, there is no such thing as sacred and secular in biblical worldview. It can conceive of no part of the world that does not come under the claim of Yahweh’s lordship. All of life belongs to God, and true holiness means bringing all the spheres of our life under God.”
I’ve forgotten how I first became aware of John Kempf, but I do know that fairly quickly I realized that he was a gifted man of deep faith following his calling with all of his heart, soul, strength, and mind. His calling is to change agriculture. He believes it is possible to grow crops in such a way that nature is renewed, healing food is produced, and farmers prosper. He is a leader in the regenerative agriculture world that is all about working within the template of how God’s amazing earth works when given the chance. Through the founding of Advancing Eco Agriculture, speaking, and his podcast, he has directly and indirectly impacted thousands of farmers and their families.
I’ve come to know him best through his Regenerative Agriculture Podcast through which I’ve learned a great deal and been profoundly inspired. So I had long hoped to interview him for this blog and was delighted when he accepted my invitation. You will find his story and words wise, surprising, provocative, and abundant in Christian faith.
John is a man of paradoxes. He is Amish and has been fundamentally formed by that unique Chrsitian culture. (You’ll note how easily he can quote Bible verse from memory, translating them effortlessly from the Pennsylvania German in which he first learned them into English.) Yet, he has a global perspective and spiritual gifts that most Christians might not know what to do with. To the best of my knowledge, he has not attended college but is one of the most erudite agricultural experts in the world. Despite his knowledge and having the entrepreneurial gumption to found Advancing Eco Agriculture and three other organizations, John is humble. In his podcasts, he genuinely seeks to learn all he can from every guest and gives them ample time to speak and tell their stories. He is a man of strong ideals and speaks his mind with blade-like precision. Yet, he is compassionate and has a delightful sense of humor.
John spoke to me from his front porch of his family’s new house with his new orchard in the background. It is one of the most stimulating conversations I’ve ever had. Enjoy.
Nathan: I’ve been grateful for all that you have done for regenerative agriculture. The fact that your podcast allows so many people to hear from so many people with knowledge and experience in the field is a great gift. I appreciate, too, how you tease out of the guests’ stories and insights. It’s especially interesting to me how woven into your conversations from time to time are clear indications that your faith is part and parcel of who you are. You don’t beat anybody up over the head with it, but it comes through. That’s a powerful witness.
John: Thank you, I’m glad for that feedback. I’m glad that it does come through. I am hesitant to make it overt. I want to lead people to that gracefully without beating them over the head with it. There have been times when I’ve wondered whether I need to be a bit more overt about it.
Nathan: It’s fun to hear you on other people’s podcasts as well. You were on the Thriving Farmer podcast back in 2020, and the podcaster asked you, “What books do you recommend,” and you said, “Secrets of the Millionaire Mind.” My wife and I were driving in the car, and I remember saying to my wife, “That doesn’t sound like John at all. It wasn’t about agriculture, and the title sounded a little gimmicky.” But because you recommended it, we bought the book. Well, it’s so good we’ve now shared it with some family and farmer friends. Thank you for recommending it.
John: What I’ve found particularly intriguing about the book is that it’s framed around money, which is a turnoff to some people. That’s unfortunate, because I think the digging that he does into our subconscious patterning is so important. It’s relevant and important for all of us to dig into that, and not just about money, but about all the facets of our life. That is what I really came away from the book with. Financial management is one window into understanding our subconscious biases, but what if we evaluated our approach to health, food, and medicine through a similar lens?
It’s been very humbling for me that the podcast and the work that we’re doing are having an impact. On the one hand I always had this dream of having a global impact and really being able to impact the entire beautiful planet that God has created, that he has put us here to be stewards of. But it’s still something to see that actually happening in reality. Some days I’m like, “Oh my goodness, is this actually happening?”
Nathan: Since your faith is clearly a part of what you do and why you do it, I thought it’d be wonderful to ask you questions and to share your answers with people who read the blog. So would you mind, first of all, John, just sharing some insights into your own spiritual development? You’ve often shared about what opened your eyes to a different paradigm of farming, but would you feel comfortable sharing anything about your spiritual development?
John: So I’m going to give you a very different narrative than of what I’m sure you might be anticipating. Growing up on the farm, I always felt very connected to nature, to wildlife and particularly to plants. And for me, being out in nature and observing plants and kind of communing with nature was worship. And in many ways I got as much or more out of that and developing a relationship with God than I did from reading the Bible. To me, the outdoors really was my Bible in some ways. Not that it was a replacement for the Bible obviously, but it really was a very worshipful experience.
There aren’t good words to describe this, so I’ll try my best. I’m going to use the terms observe. I was able to observe kind of the hidden nature of things. I was able to observe what the mature plant would look like when it was still only a seedling, even though I hadn’t ever encountered the mature plant before. Or vice versa. I was able to look at a landscape and just kind of have this intuitive knowing, this spiritual knowing, of what was the highest and best use for this landscape and how it would like to develop and to evolve. And as a part of this, I was also able to have a very strong connection to individual plants and groups of plants. Out on the farm, if we were growing a cantaloupe crop or a cucumber crop, if we made a foliar application of fertilizers, or pesticides, or whatever the case might be, or even not having made an application, I could walk into a field and kind of intuitively, instinctively feel what those plants were feeling. In some cases, I was even able to observe the energy flow around them.
You may have heard the interview that I had with Pascal Fafard where he spoke about actively fostering that ability, and developing the capacity to communicate with plants. I think this is a capacity that all humans have to varying degrees. It’s really Spirit-led communication through the Holy Spirit with God’s creation.
Associated with that ability to observe, there were also some really amazing experiences where I was able to work with plants that were unhealthy, or were perhaps being consumed by diseases and insects. Just by being able to be present with that plant for just a few moments and intend a different outcome and intend for this plant to recover and to express gratitude for the gifts that this plant was bringing into the world and by expressing love and appreciation, I would have problems completely resolve. In a few cases within hours or certainly within days. And then shifting that from plants to entire landscapes and having experiences with entire landscapes where I would ask certain pests to leave and they would leave, they would all move. I would designate one part of the field or one corner of the field and say, “You can come over here, but I need you to leave everything else alone.” And they would do that.
So, that then led to a deep study, because I grew up within the Amish culture in which those types of conversations were not considered acceptable or appropriate. I wanted to deeply understand what is happening, what’s going on here, from a spiritual perspective. And that really led to an in-depth study of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and what they really mean. Some of the things that Jesus meant when he said (I’m used to reading this in German, so I’ll paraphrase in English, and I’m sure you’ll pick up the reference), “Be perfect as I have been perfect,” which I think is in Mark. Our understanding of the word “perfect” is to mean without fault, but that’s not actually what Jesus meant in the original Hebrew. He did not mean to be without fault or without sin. What He meant was to be fully functional in all the gifts of the spirit.
Because that is what He was. He was fully functional in all the gifts of the Spirit, the nine different gifts (1 Corinthians 12: 1, 8-11). And so, to the best of my knowledge, he’s the only person that was fully functional in all nine of the gifts of the Spirit. And so I think when we read the parable of the talents and we read the parable of the different things that we are given, those to me are really an expression of the different gifts of the Spirit that we have been given.
And so we have this perception that the gifts of the Spirit are something that were active in the early Church, but are not active today. And yet there is no good rationale or justification for that. And in fact, there are many people who experience those gifts of the Spirit on a routine basis. And so, that really was what led me into kind of a deep spiritual search initially and was also kind of the foundation for what led to my scientific inquiry.
I then started trying to have this conversation with my family and parents and people around me about the gifts of the Spirit, about what I was experiencing and observing in working with plants in a spiritual framework, in a spiritual context. But that was not an acceptable conversation. I was misled and lots of other things, but that has now dramatically shifted. My family has come to a very different perspective over the last decade.
Nathan: As a result of your experience and what you’ve explained?
John: That may have been a contributing factor, but I think they were on their own personal journeys. So they’ve come to their own realizations as well. I think they’ve been led by the Spirit also. So, since that was not an acceptable context and not an acceptable framework, that then led me into a deep scientific pursuit to try to kind of work myself out of the corner that they thought they had worked me into. By being able to describe these phenomena from a scientific perspective… (I thought I could do that).
Nathan: So, it sounds like you had these personal experiences while also being immersed in the Amish culture of Christian faith. One of the things that strikes me about the Amish approach to Christianity is that it ties faith and life together. That was part of the fabric of your life.
John: It’s absolutely supposed to be a lived faith. It is not supposed to be something that you practice on Sunday and then you do something else the rest of the week.
Nathan: Exactly. In John 3:16, which is often used as the Gospel in a nutshell, Jesus declares that God loves the world. And then, Jesus states that whoever believes in him will have eternal life. From my understanding “eternal life” is describing a very abundant, full, complete whole life rather than only a life that goes on after death. I believe Jesus meant for us to make a connection in the verse that he did not spell out explicitly. He loves the world so much that helping people to have eternal life now, providing them all the gifts of the spirit to live out a full God inspired life now will actually help heal the world. His way of loving the world is to get more people to care for the world. Does that make any sense?
John: It makes perfect sense. And I think it aligns with another very common, incomplete understanding of what was Jesus really here for. You ask people a question, “What was He here for? What did He come here for?” The first answer is for the purpose of salvation. But, I think that’s only a third of the answer in my understanding. Yes, He did come for salvation. And salvation was a part of a much bigger piece, which was establishing His Kingdom here on earth. And not just here on earth, but also in heaven. Jesus had a kingdom message. We are actually here to be in His Kingdom while we are here on Earth.
Another aspect is He came to heal us physically. Not just at that moment in time, and not just spiritually, but He came to heal us spiritually and physically, then and now. So He was the great physician. He was the healer. And there’s so much reference to this when you start digging into it.
When we look at the gifts of the Spirit and when we look at, really having His Kingdom here on earth, and you talked about the aspect of eternal life in John 3:16, there’s a very simple question – “When does eternity begin? Does it begin when we die?” No, it is now present in this moment. This is a part of eternity.
Nathan: Absolutely. We’ve already talked about some Bible verses, do you have any favorite Bible verses or stories that kind of connect with this theme of the fact that being a Christian is about being here now and also caring for the Earth?
John: I have lots of favorites. One of them that I really enjoy is in Job 12:7-8 which says something like, “But ask the beasts, and they will teach you; the birds of the heavens, and they will tell you; or the bushes of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will explain to you.” And to me, that is an expression of God’s capacity to speak to us through His Creation, and to have His Creation teach us if we are willing to learn and to adapt the insights that we gain to our own spiritual development.
I’ll give you one example. When I look at the process of photosynthesis, there are so many incredible parallels between plant growth and development and our own spiritual growth. In the process of photosynthesis, plants collect light energy, while the sun is shining, and they store that energy temporarily for a short period of time. And then they use that energy to grow at the darkest time of the night and at dawn. So 80% of plant growth, 80% of cell division, happens between 3:00 AM and 8:00 AM. So think about the spiritual parallels for that. We are also to collect energy from God’s light while the sun is shining on in our lives, so that we have the energy to grow during our trials and tribulations.
Nathan: How has reading the Bible and thinking about faith informed your farming and the agricultural consulting, and how has farming and consulting effected the way you read the Bible?
John: So it’s difficult in retrospect, to look back and see how our perception or how our frame of reference has evolved. But I think one of the foundational reasons for our success in our work at AEA and our consulting work is that I always try to deeply understand what are the root causes of why we have a certain symptom. And, of course, we must try to identify the root cause at different levels.
So if you look at an individual green bean plant, you ask the question, “Why does this green bean plant have aphids?” you will arrive at a certain set of answers that include mineral nutrition and the microbiome and how the soil was managed. And then you can back up and ask that question one level higher – “Why is this field being managed in a way that produces plants which are conducive to aphids?” And you go to another level, and you ask, “What is it that this farmer believes to be true that has led him to managing this field in this way?”
If you keep backing up and you keep digging deeper, this then leads to the question – “How is it that we, the farming community, profess to be composed primarily of Christians and yet we have this incredibly destructive model of agriculture?”
And so I tried to dig into that by asking these root cause questions of why? What is it that we as farmers believe to be true that has allowed us to adopt this destructive model of agriculture that is so degrading to God’s creation?
I believe that there are two fundamental misbeliefs or two beliefs that are fundamentally incorrect about the Christian worldview. And one of them is the belief that the Earth is cursed. We will always have diseases and insects. We will always struggle against nature. The second is the incorrect belief that we are here to dominate, we are here to have dominion over.
This, of course, leads to the verses in Genesis, where it says that we are to have dominion over all these animals. But when you look at what was intended to be communicated there in the original Hebrew, there’s actually a very different meaning than the way we perceive the English word dominion today. It is really meant to convey “to minister” or “to be a steward of.” And this is obviously reflected very clearly in Jesus’s New Testament teachings. We are here to be a minister. We’re here to be a steward. And I think on a kind of an intuitive soul level, on a spirit level, we all instinctively know that we are here to be stewards. It is not the correct framing for us to think that we are here to subjugate and to dominate.
But when you think about mainstream agriculture that has so tremendously degraded the environment and ecosystems and a planet that God has created, it is really based on this ethos of domination and subjugation.
The second misconception I noted earlier is that the Earth is cursed. And anyone who believes that the Earth is cursed and always will be cursed has not fully read and appreciated Genesis 8:21. Genesis 8:21 takes place after Noah emerged from the Ark, and he offered a burnt offering to God. The first part of the verse goes, “The Lord smelled the sweet savor and said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground any more for man’s sake for the thoughts and imaginations of a man’s heart are evil from the days of his youth.”
We all are, at least in my experience, taught and hammered in the second half of that verse: “the thoughts and imaginations of a man’s heart are evil from the days of his youth.” But we missed the first sentence, which is, “I will never again curse the ground any more for man’s sake.” It’s right there.
So if we’re a farmer and we believe that the land is cursed, then it is for us (despite what the Bible says.) That belief will create the reality that we are farming within. I think there is, in fact, a third belief that is also perhaps inaccurate or incomplete, but I don’t yet have the arguments to refute it, and so I’m not quite ready to tackle it yet.
The third belief is that it’s all going to burn up anyway. This belief, in combination with the other two beliefs I’ve mentioned, gives people permission to pillage and destroy.
Nathan: Have you read anything by N.T. Wright?
John: No. I have not.
Nathan: He’s an Anglican bishop, and he has written a book called Surprised By Hope, which is primarily about what happens to the world and us when we die. It is very biblically based and also very rich in a very different understanding. One of the points he makes is that the real point of the Bible is not whether you and I go to heaven. The real point of the Bible is that God is out to restore and recreate all creation. That’s His goal. There’s going to be a new heaven and a new earth according to N.T. Wright. Wright even notes that Paul at one point refers to us as being fellow workers with God. So there’s some positive role for us to play with using our human creativity and innovation to do things that God wants only us to be able to do.
John: I think that is such a very important point. I believe that creation is not something that happened at one moment in time in the beginning, but creation is something that happens new each and every moment. And that if we believe that we are the sons and daughters of God and brothers of Christ, then that means that we are co-creators with Him of the new reality each moment in time. And I think it is accepting that it’s a responsibility and accepting that ministry and that calling is really what gives us the capacity to create a new reality, to create a new future. Within that, I believe that as the sons and daughters of God, the integrity of our intentions, what we intend is what we create and what we intend is also what we become. Going back to where we started this conversation with our subconscious beliefs, the intentions of our hearts are ultimately who and what we become in our lives.
Nathan: And the faith that we have in Jesus and the Spirit that God sends us helps us to have different intentions?
John: Yes. I’m using the word intentions because it’s a word that a popular audience can relate to, but you could also use the word prayer. You could also use the word or the thought process of being led by the Spirit because I’m not excluding the Spirit from this. I think that we have to be Spirit-led and when we have Spirit-led intentions, we are the co-creators of what is happening here on this planet.
Nathan: I think this is a good segue into your work with Advancing Eco Agriculture. Can you share just a little bit about what AEA does? And if you wouldn’t mind, do you have a story of how AEA has helped a particular farm family and how that has changed not only their agriculture but maybe even the spirit of their family?
John: Yes. I have many of those stories. They’re so powerful and they’re often very emotional. So what does AEA do? Well, it’s difficult because we do many things. We are agronomists. We are crop scouts. We do consulting for plant nutrition. We do consulting for microbiology. We make recommendations on nutrition management and microbial management. And we have products. So it’s this really multifaceted approach.
It all came together for me in a flash of insight when I realized that what we actually do as a company is we redefine relationships in a farming operation. We redefine the relationships between farmers and their soil, between soil and plants, between plants and insects, and we help to facilitate and bring all those relationships back again closer to what they were originally intended and created to be. So that may not be a very clear answer for your audience, but I’ll expand on that just a bit further.
We have demonstrated that it is possible for plants to be completely resistant to all diseases and all insects and completely eliminate the need for pesticides when we manage nutrition and biology differently. Particularly, when we manage nutrition and biology, where the primary consideration is health rather than exclusively yield. When we do that, when we manage nutrition and biology differently and we produce plants that are completely resistant to diseases and insects, they can also transfer this immunity to livestock and to people. We can then have a legitimate conversation about growing food as medicine. Ultimately, this is about a return to a deeper understanding of God’s design and allowing God’s creation to fully express itself the way that it was designed to rather than trying to force it and direct it and manipulate it into unnatural directions.
Here’s a story of a farmer that perhaps might be a clear description of this process, of what this relationship process looks like. About seven or eight years ago, we started working with a cherry grower. He had heard about us, and he came to visit our exhibit at a trade show. He stood at our trade show table and he said, “I have no desire to be organic. I don’t want to reduce fertilizer applications and don’t have a conversation with me about reducing pesticides. What I really want to do is I want to grow large firm cherries that qualify for the export market, and I’ve heard that you can help me do that.”
And that’s where we started. So we started working with this grower to help him produce large firm cherries from about 370 acres in Oregon that qualified for the export market. On this path, he was very open-minded and very engaged. He started using compost. He started using cover crops, started managing nutrition and biology.
Obviously, the transition doesn’t happen in the field first. It first happens in our hearts and minds and then the fields follow that. At the end of three years, we sat across his desk for an annual review meeting and he looked at us for a moment. He was just silent. And then he said, “When I first met you, I told you that I have no desire to be organic, but I don’t have powdery mildew anymore. I don’t have bacterial tinker anymore. If I wanted to, I could be organic.”
This was a farmer that over the course of three years had shifted from being one of the most intensive fertilizer and pesticide applicators in the region to applying none. And his yields had increased. His profitability has significantly increased. And his relationship with his farm and with his land had changed as well.
As we work with farmers, we specifically seek to develop an empathy in them for the landscape and empathy for the crops. I think people are specifically here to minister. The function of administering and being a steward is a function of having empathy with the landscape.
There is this characteristic that is considered to be perfectly appropriate or normal for livestock farmers, but not for crop farmers. This is the characteristic of being intuitively connected to their livestock. So when you have a dairy farmer, a smaller scale dairy farmer, a hundred or a few hundred cows, or perhaps even less, there’s the expectation that a good dairy farmer will be able to walk into a herd of dairy cows and say, “Something is off with that cow,” when there is nothing visually observable that you can point to. It’s an intuitive, spiritual if you will, process that they just know. So we consider that to be appropriate for livestock farmers, but that hasn’t been considered to be a part of the required stewardship lexicon for crop farmers.
But yet when we work with growers who make this transition the most rapidly, and this cherry grower’s one example, they move very quickly to having that intuitive empathy and understanding. Three years is a rapid transition for the type of crop that he was working with. But we would walk with him through his orchard, and we would walk into a block of trees and he would say something like, “There’s something off with this block. I don’t know what it is, but it doesn’t feel right.”
Nathan: Wow.
John: And it’s when you have that empathic connection and you start sensing where the crop is and where the plants are and that they need something, that you get these extraordinary responses and turnarounds. So that is really, I think, one example of us helping to transition the relationships that farmers have with their crops and with the landscape.
Nathan: That’s really interesting because I’ve been reading some Jewish thought as well and one of the Jewish tenants or principles is that sometimes the doing of things can actually shape our spiritual character. I think sometimes in the Christian tradition, we believe we have to think our way to things and new behaviors and new understanding, and in the Jewish tradition, whether it’s ceremony or ritual or doing the right thing, doing those things in real life can reshape our hearts and build new understanding. That seems like in a way that that’s happening right there.
John: Yes.
Nathan: John, you have a remarkable breadth and depth of knowledge, and you’re able to articulate and communicate so clearly. Clearly, learning is a fundamental part of who you are. What have you learned about learning? What can you share with people? Because it seems to me anyone can benefit from learning. But this is especially true of farmers who are working with so much interrelated complexity. Do you have any tips or any advice or insights about how to learn?
John: Oh, my. I’ve got so many I don’t know where to begin. Well, I’m actually not going to talk about the process of learning. Instead, I want to talk about the types of learners. There is a difference between heart knowing and head learning. And there have been many times where as I was working in the field, being closely led by the Spirit, where I knew something to be true, but I did not know how to describe it scientifically, only to have it validated scientifically some period of time later, sometimes a decade later. I think it has been harmful to us that we have given so much credence to the scientific method and to mechanistic, linear, logical learning, because that is not really how the Spirit works. The Spirit speaks to our heart, not to our minds.
I think being open to and actively seeking that spiritual knowing will bring us to answers and to places that intellectual knowledge learning never can and never will. And in some ways, this is almost a parallel conversation to the discussion of indigenous peoples and their indigenous knowledge of knowing and grasping the complexity of a whole without knowing all the intricate details of the whole. So that’s one thought that comes to mind.
I frequently hear people make the comment that, “You are so smart. You’ve learned so much.” They’ll also say I have such a depth of knowledge. And there’s actually a part of that that really distresses me, and the reason it distresses me is because I was born with the same potential, although perhaps with different innate skills and talents, as anyone. Each one of us is unique. Each one of us has our own skills and talents, but we all have the same or a similar raw potential. And I don’t believe that the potential for intellectual knowledge that I have been given is significantly greater than a large majority of the population. And again, we’re all on a spectrum, but I don’t have a particularly extraordinarily high IQ for that matter, or EQ or whatever parameters you want to use to describe it.
The point that I’m trying to make is that every one of us has incredible potential that we consistently fail to tap because we don’t believe we can. We believe it’s beyond our capacity.
Nathan: Yes.
John: We should actively cultivate a desire to constantly expose ourselves to new situations and new ideas. Many of us prefer comfort, and we find the exposure to new ideas that challenge our preconceived ideas or beliefs to be uncomfortable. But it would be wonderful for us to shift and become comfortable in those contexts, because it’s in that manner that we can expand our breadth and depth of intellectual knowledge. So I don’t know. I’ve not really spoken to this before, and I don’t know how much sense I’m making, but…
Nathan: You’re making a lot of sense. In your podcasts you often ask your guests something like, “What question didn’t I ask that you wish I would have?” So I’ll ask that question.
John: That’s my question. And you can’t do that. (Laughter)
Nathan: I will pay you whatever copyright fees there are. (More laughter)
John: Give me a moment to consider. Well, a question that you didn’t ask that is perhaps worth digging into a bit more is that the distinction between heart knowledge and mind knowledge and the distinction between spirit and soul and heart versus mind. It’s very clear in the Bible. It’s hidden, but it’s very clear once you know what you’re looking for.
Let me give me a moment to paraphrase this verse from German to English. “The Word of God is like a two-edged sword; so sharp that it divides heart and mind.” (Hebrews 4:12) Rather than going too deep into the scriptural explanations for it, we know that there is a clear distinction. It is sometimes difficult for us in our world today where Greco-Roman thought dominates, and we have become so consumed by this mechanistic, linear, science-based belief that it is sometimes difficult for us to really capture or to really feel what heart-based knowledge is actually like and to learn more about it.
I would suggest that if people want to dig into this topic more deeply, I would recommend an author, Stephen Harrod Buhner. He’s written quite a number of books. Unfortunately, I do not believe that he’s a Christian. He is a very talented author, and he’s one of my favorites for his writing style, but he has written a trilogy of three books that I think if people were to read those and internalize them, would completely shift the way they see the world. The first one is titled The Lost Language of Plants. The second is titled The Secret Teachings of Plants, and the third is Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm. In each of his books, he approaches each topic from both a heart and mind perspective in alternating chapters.
I find the topics themselves to be incredibly, incredibly fascinating, but the way he approaches the conversations is a really incredible as well.
(Above is an episode of John Kempf’s Regenerative Agriculture Podcast you will enjoy. In the episode, he interviews Ray Archuelata, who is a tireless and dynamic educator for a soil-life-building approach to farming and whose faiht also comes across loud and clear. Here is the podcast link for the interview.)
Nathan: Excellent. You might take this as a strange diversion, but I don’t think it is. If you look at websites for a lot of more mainstream Christian churches, there’s an incredible focus on this intellectual theology of what they believe and what they don’t believe, and there’s really no sense of what their heart is or how they’re trying to live with a heart-led faith in God. I don’t know if mainstream Christianity knows how to help shape people’s hearts so they have open hearts, that they fully have empathy. Maybe that’s part of the missing link.
John: Well, I think modern Christianity for the most part, at least what I’ve been exposed to (and this is a very strong statement and I’m almost hesitant to make it and yet I do believe it to be true) has largely denied the gifts of the Spirit. Because that’s really what we’re talking about and we’re using the language of the heart right now. Most people today don’t believe that those gifts of the Spirit are relevant for us in this day and this moment in time. So they disavow the gifts of the Spirit. And as a result, they are never going to experience what you and I are talking about.
Nathan: Wouldn’t it be interesting if you had a spreadsheet, and you had the fruits of the Spirit each in their own columns, and each agricultural practice (like prophylactic use of antibiotics) was a row? And you considered whether each practice exhibited each fruit of the Spirit by checking or not checking the appropriate column.
John: That’s fascinating.
Nathan: So let me come to a close here with sort of two related questions. One is – how dire is the situation we face in terms of how we currently do agriculture and how it affects the health of people and the planet? And what can non-farming people who want to live out a God-fearing, God-focused life, do about it?
John: If we were to approach the question of how dire is the situation from a purely secular point of view, then it appears to be exceedingly dire. We are actually insulated from the majority of the severe climactic changes that are happening around the world here in North America. We actually see some climactic fluctuations and weather fluctuations, but we don’t actually see what is happening in the world’s oceans and what is happening in large forested areas around the world. We are, at this moment, experiencing the most rapid extinction events in recorded history. And it’s really interesting to consider that the earth is experiencing this extraordinary ecological disaster, if you will, and that it has been caused by human hands, which are to be stewards and ministers. And instead they are dominating and subjugating into extinction.
So when we look at it from that point of view, the situation can appear to be almost hopeless. But then when we consider our capacity as co-creators, and God beside us, with us, helping us to create the reality that we want to see in the future, then it actually appears extremely hopeful. It’s extremely hopeful, because for the first time these issues that have been compounding for generations are now entering the collective consciousness in a significant way. In a significant way that hopefully leads to action and changes the reality that we want to see in the world. So I’m actually very hopeful.
I’ve set as a mission for myself that regenerative agriculture becomes the global mainstream in the next 20 years, by 2040. My metric for that is that I want to see 80% adoption on all agricultural lands globally of these regenerative agriculture ecosystems. I believe that that’s a very reasonable and realistic and achievable goal, and that we’re well on the pathway to achieving that goal.
Now, along that pathway though, there’s a very real possibility, actually I would say that it’s a probability and that some of it is already coming to pass, that there will be a great deal of human suffering along that pathway. And we’re seeing this already in our modern civilized societies, where we have this epidemic of degenerative illnesses, diabetes, stroke, heart disease, cancer, et cetera.
Today, basically, one out of two people living in America today is going to have cancer sometime in their lifetime. Autoimmune diseases for people under the age of 18 has gone from 10% of the population in 2010 to 20% of the population in 2018. And perhaps one of the very significant trends worth mentioning is the rapid decline in fertility where we’re actually looking at tremendous losses in the human population’s ability to reproduce as a result of toxins in the environment and in our food supply.
Nathan: What can we do if we’re not farmers? Obviously, eating choices are obviously super important, but is there anything else we should be doing?
John: It’s not a question that I’ve prepared for, but remember that each one of us, as stewards and ministers and co-creators, is co-creating the reality that we want to see in the future. We need to fully invest ourselves in our own personal health and journey. And that’s not just food choices. It goes deeper than that. It means taking full responsibility for our health and our family’s health. That means you do not delegate responsibility to the doctor. You don’t delegate responsibility to other people. You take full responsibility yourself for learning and implementing.
There’s a great book that I’ve just read a little while ago that I would recommend people read, entitled Health for All of Life. It really encapsulates this whole personal responsibility and spiritual perspective on health and food, dietary choices, and lifestyle choices as well. Then, beyond that (and I’m realizing as you asked the question that I actually need to think about this more deeply and provide a more comprehensive answer) I would also suggest that obviously we have a lot of power in prayer and in action beyond just the food choices that we make and how we lead our daily lives.
So are we invested in the stock market? How are we managing our money? And if we’re invested in those places, why not invest in local farming? Why not invest in the solutions? It’s about managing all the different aspects of our life to create the change that we want to see in the world and living it. But then also doing more than just living it, also communicating it to others through our values and our actions and our business decisions.
By and large, the majority of farmers profess to be Christians. And yet we have adopted a model of agriculture that is directly the antithesis of these foundational Christian values.
And to a similar degree, we can say the same thing about businesses. Think about all the businesses that interact with agriculture and our food. If we picked some of the Christian nonprofits that feed lots of people, they buy a lot of food. If they were to change their food purchasing decisions, to bring about a different reality, they would have tremendous power and tremendous clout.
Nathan: That is an excellent point. I have pretty well given up on finding a church where I feel like I can be true to all of these things that we’re both sharing and discussing and I feel so strongly about. I read the Bible every day. I pray every day. I read a lot. But clearly in the Bible, it’s hard to get away from the fact that we need to have some sort of communal gathering of faith with other people. Do you have any advice for me, John?
John: Well, I have the same question. I have an incredible group of people that I commune with and that I fellowship with that are not in close geographical proximity to me. That’s been very valuable for me, but I would like to have geographical proximity and actually commune with people locally.
You know, Nathan, I think you are doing powerful work by sharing this on the blog, and you are attracting those people to you. So perhaps you should approach that question from the T. Harv Eker (author of Secrets of the Millionaire Mind) perspective and ask the question, “What can I do to become a like-minded believer magnet (instead of a money magnet)? What are the subconscious beliefs that I have that might push people away from me?”
Nathan: John, it has been such a pleasure and a blessing to have this conversation with you. Blessings on your family and on your new farm.
I want to share news of an unusual and free webinar by Allen Williams, Ph.D. on what the Bible presents on earth stewardship next Thursday (December 30) at 7 p.m. CST. I’ve registered, and I hope you will, too.
The webinar is entitled Biblical Stewardship: What the scriptures tell us about our role as Earth’s caretakers. Go to this page, and you’ll find the link to click on to actually register.
I felt compelled to share news of this because of who Allen Williams is. As this profile details, he is a sixth generation family farmer and, as he says it, a “recovering academic.” He is one of the tireless, dedicated regenerative farmer pioneers who has been teaching other farmers how to achieve the same success and satsifaction while rejuvenating God’s earth. I’ve read articles of his. I’ve attended presentations and field walks. I’ve heard him on podcats (this is a great one, by the way). His faith and his convictions come through in all he does.
In short, Allen is a gifted and passionate teacher whose energy and insights are inspiring. If he is going to do something, it will be good and thoughtful. I am very interested to hear what he has to say about the Bible. Are there things he’ll share that you and I have not heard before? There may well be.
Allen Williams, seen here educating attendees of a field walk about adaptive grazing, is a Christian and former academic who has dedicated his life to helping farmers adopt regenerative practices.
The webinar is being organized by Understanding Ag. Based in Alabama, Understanding Ag is a company that provides consulting and advising to farmers who want to move their operations in a regenerative direction. The company’s consultants include some of the most successful and pioneering regenerative farmers and experts in the country.
The vast majority of Understanding Ag’s webinar are on agricultural thinking and practices that, when used by farmers, can bring back life to their soils. So it’s intriguing that a company like that would offer a faith-focused webinar.
But it’s not completely surprising.
In fact, I think it’s brilliant.
Many of the best and most pioneering regenerative producers and experts are Christian. The way they farm is a reflection of their faith. And a large percentage of farmers around our country attend church and take the Bible seriously.
Changing how our country farms is more of a question of values than practices. Changing how our country farms will require that our country’s farmers rethink the values behind their farming.
They, like all of us, need to see that that we have a responsiblity and a creative calling to steward God’s earth in a way that honors God. And then we must all act.
When a fellow Christian farmer speaks that truth to them with conviction and knowledge, perhaps the hearts and minds of some will be turned.
And, of course, you and I are part of our country’s agriculture as well. What we buy tells farmers to produce more of. Our hearts and minds also need to be turned and kept turned in the right direction.
I urge you to join me.
P.S. Are you interested in an online discussion about the webinar right afterwards? if so, please email me at wholefaithlivingearth@gmail.com. If I have at least five people interested, I will send out a Zoom link to those who email me. We could have a great conversation.
Nathan believes that a whole Christian faith includes an imperative for us, individually and collectively, to actively show God’s earth mercy and compassion every day. For more than 15 years, he has worked for non-profit conservation groups that restore and protect natural habitats, change the relationship people have with nature, and promote sustainable farming. To learn more, click here.
