Skilled Labor Series: Ranching with Alejandro Carrillo
*This episode is part of our new Skilled Labor Series hosted by MCJ partner, Yin Lu. This series is focused on amplifying the voices of folks from the skilled labor workforce, including electricians, farmers, ranchers, HVAC installers, and others who are on the front lines of rewiring our infrastructure.
Today's guest is Alejandro Carrillo, a rancher who lives in El Paso, Texas and stewards his family's ranch in Mexico's Chihuahuan Desert.
Maintaining grasslands is important for preserving biodiversity, ensuring clean rivers, and storing carbon. In fact, since grasslands store carbon underground in their roots and soil, some would argue that they are better carbon sinks than forests. As stewards of these habitats, ranchers like Alejandro who focus on regenerative practices play an important role raising livestock and maintaining carbon sinks. After a successful career as an IT consultant, Alejandra joined his family ranch in 2004. Tired of the constant drought and suffering that came with traditional ranching in a desert climate, he'd been searching for ways to adapt and rehabilitate his family's land. Since 2006, Alejandro has adapted the principles of holistic grazing or regenerative ranching as we'll learn about in this episode. He’s also the president of Pare Del, a nonprofit organization that provides ongoing education for cattle ranchers as well as promotes holistic plant grazing across the world's deserts.
In this fascinating and meandering conversation, Yin and Alejandro discuss regenerative ranching, why dung beetles are so important, the epigenetics of cows, the differences between Mexican and American agriculture policies, their effects on ranching and a whole lot more. Enjoy!
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*You can also reach us via email at info@mcjcollective.com, where we encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.
Episode recorded on September 1, 2022.
In this episode, we cover:
[2:23] Alejandro's background and ranching experience
[5:47] An overview of his family's ranch in Chihuahua, Mexico
[8:24] Differences between farming and ranching
[16:28] Symbiotic relationship between grasslands and cattle grazing
[19:47] An overview of the water cycle, issues with management today and impacts on soil
[25:45] Regenerative ranching principles
[32:24] How ranchers make a living
[39:45] Policy differences for ranching between the U.S. and Mexico
[43:18] What keeps Alejandro optimistic about the future of ranching practices
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Jason Jacobs:
Hello everyone, this is Jason Jacobs.
Cody Simms:
And I'm Cody Simms.
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Welcome to My Climate Journey. This show is a growing body of knowledge focused on climate change and potential solutions.
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We appreciate you tuning in, sharing this episode, and if you feel like it, leaving us a review to help more people find out about us so they can figure out where they fit in addressing the problem of climate change.
Yin Lu:
Today's guest is Alejandro Carrillo, a rancher who lives in El Paso, Texas, and stewards is family's ranch for hours south in the Mexican Chihuahuan Desert. We were introduced to Alejandro via Russ Concer of Blue Nest Beef, who's a member of the community. Russ introduced us to Alejandro because we were putting together this mini-series to hear the perspectives of the skilled labor workforce, the ranchers, the electricians, the HVAC technicians, the farmers, the women and men on the front so lines, we're of rewiring our infrastructure in the face of climate change.
After a successful career as an IT consultant, Alejandra joined his family ranch back in 2004. Tired of the constant drought and suffering that came with traditional ranching in desert climate, he'd been searching for ways to adapt and rehabilitate his family's land. Since 2006, he adapted the principles of holistic plant grazing or regenerative ranching as we'll learn about. Alejandro is also the president of Pare Del, a nonprofit organization with a goal to provide ongoing education for cattle ranchers as well as promote holistic plant grazing across the world's deserts. Those were such a fascinating and meandering conversation, where we talk about why dumb beetles are so important to the ranch, to the epigenetics of cows, to the differences between Mexican and American agriculture policies and their effects on ranching and a whole lot more. I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. With that, Alejandro, welcome to the show.
Alejandro Carrillo:
Thanks for having me here. Thanks for the opportunity to share this great information that we are going to be sharing today.
Yin Lu:
I am so excited to learn from you. To start, you have such a fascinatingly background. You graduated from Johns Hopkins, you had a career as an IT consultant for a number of years, and then you became a rancher. Just tell us a little bit more about yourself.
Alejandro Carrillo:
When I was a kid, I used to go to the ranch in summers and I really loved the land. I really loved the soil, the cattle, the wildlife.
Yin Lu:
Is this your family ranch that you used to? Yes. Okay, got it. Did you grow up on a ranch or did you visit?
Alejandro Carrillo:
I grew up in a city. My dad was a banker. We also got the ranch. We love to go hunting mostly, but also as a kid you wanted to be a cowboy and you'd hang out with the cowboys and do all these chores, so that was pretty exciting.
Yin Lu:
What city did you grow up in and where was the ranch?
Alejandro Carrillo:
Mostly northern Mexico in multiple cities because my dad moved multiple times trying to get better opportunities to grow, but mostly in Chihuahua, the state of Chihuahua in northern Mexico. Pretty much, it's a more arid area, more desert. So, I'm really used to the desert. At some point, there was a time to decide what to study and then I told my dad in college, "Should I study something related to animal science?" He said, "No, no, I think you should study something else." I was curious about the computers. So, I said, "Well, let's see what is inside those computers." That's how I ended up studying computer science in Mexico. And then I worked for 15 years in Mexico and the US. I was always waiting for the opportunity to go back to the ranch. So, when my dad turned 70, he said, "Why don't you go back and help me at the ranch?" I said, "Yeah, let's do it."
I knew at some point I would join the ranch. The point is that when I joined the ranch, I really did not want to do very conventional ranching. I really wanted to do something different because there's a lot of suffering when you do conventional ranching because you are always in this drought mode every year and it's not really fun, much less if you are the owner. You make a profit one year and then the next two years you lose that profit. I really wanted to find something that would be different, that would give us some consistency in terms of the business and also something that you could work with nature, because I love nature. I was very fortunate to have these mentors, really very seasonal folks, practicing holistic management in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico.
I was blessed because they knew a lot. I took my first holistic management training back in 2006. And then the beauty of this is that then I have access to these folks since 2008 saying, hey, how do you do this? How do you do that? That's why we always emphasize that we need to build a community because we by themselves, we will not be able to go far on this. You're pretty much isolated in the ranch and you want to actually not only ask questions, but share the excitement of things that are coming based on the new management.
Yin Lu:
Can't wait to get into all the exciting things that are currently being practiced and on the horizon. Before we get there, I'd love to just learn a little bit more about the ranch. Sounds like your family ranch that your family had stewarded for years, that your dad when he was 70, passed onto you. What's the name of the ranch? Where's it located? How big is it? Maybe if you could talk a bit about you growing up and what are the memories that you have of being on that ranch?
Alejandro Carrillo:
I really love riding and love looking at the cows and love those rainy seasons when everything just flourish. I was really able to deal with the hot weathers, the cold weathers and so on. The name of our ranch is Las Damas, which in English is called the ladies. Why the ladies? It goes beyond having three daughters. That name has been there for the early 1800s, actually. It was originally a mining town, so if you see the old mines, at least Spanish names, they all have female names. There were so many mines across our mountain range, so many females, that they decided to call that Sierra or that mountain range the ladies mountain range or Las Damas. We still have a lot of those old buildings and a lot of those shafts at the ranch. These little cars that they used to carry material and all that stuff.
It's been there for a while actually. I don't know if you know this, but miners used to raise cattle, not actually because they wanted to be on the business, because they used the leather to carry whatever they're getting from the... to actually build these leather bags and they carry all the material through mules. At that time, there were no engines or anything like that, and also for meat. There were some cattle since then at the branch. Actually, the ranch is located in the Chihuahuan Desert, which is the largest desert of North America and probably the more diverse desert of north America.
We actually got a very low precipitation. Our average precipitation is nine inches or about let's say 220 millimeters. You really have to find a way to find that resilience in your ranch because for me, the beauty of doing the cattle business is that you have that beautiful machine, which is a cow, or it could be actually horses, donkeys, sheep, goats, where they can actually sell fertilize and actually grow their own grass. For me, it's very important to be able to close the gates and see, okay, what else do I need to be self-sufficient here?
Yin Lu:
Got it. For me, as someone who doesn't know very much about ranching at all, I think about farming and I think of agriculture, I think about ranching and I'm asking myself like what's the difference between farming and ranching? At a most basic level, can you talk about the maybe similarities and differences in those two practices?
Alejandro Carrillo:
I think at some point in time, ranchers were also farmers. Ranchers raised livestock and farmers actually grow crops. I remember on my parents' time, they actually were for farmers and ranchers and then we ended up just being ranchers of the ranch because remember, we're in arid very environment. Even if you want to grow a crop without some kind of irrigation, it would be very risk because there's very low precipitation. There's actually some lands are more prone to raise livestock, which is I think is my ranch. We don't really grow any crop. We are relying on the native grass that we grow and we care for based on our management and for the cows to go year round using those native grasslands.
Yin Lu:
Got it. One, when you say cattle and land size, are we talking about couple of acres? Is there a definition for what is a ranch? Is there minimum amount of land that you need and some type of volume of cattle?
Alejandro Carrillo:
That's not necessarily to have a limit on the number of cattle. You can have two cows, one cow, and one hectare or acre. In the case of our context, we actually have large ranches of our arid area, very brittle environment. So, a particular ranch is 30,000 acre ranch, which is like [inaudible 00:09:49].
Yin Lu:
Did you say 30,000?
Alejandro Carrillo:
30,000, yeah. It's pretty large ranch though. I feel that at sometimes, I don't even know the whole ranch because it has a big mountain ranch in the middle. Even if you ride it, forget about walking the ranch. If you ride the ranch, it's hard to know the whole ranch. You usually stay where the cattle is, where the cows are. Just for you to know we have... What we're trying to do at ranch is just mimic nature. We feel that we will do much better if we actually biomimicry, if we do mimic nature. That means that in our area, in northern Mexico, actually there were bison, there were elk, we still have pronghorn or antelope and all those creatures that go all the way from Canada all the way to northern Mexico. What we're trying to mimic is those great migrations where these big migrations where deer, bison, antelope, they walk the land and they keep moving.
I think we need to think about moving the cattle as a way to improve the grasslands. Maybe they were moved based on the weather or things like that, or the rains as well because they're always looking for the green stuff. But because we don't have really the conditions that we used to have before, we have to rely on certain technology like electric fans, water wells and also water pipeline. We are able to move the cows every day to a new paddock or new pasture. You're giving the cows a new plate every day, like a new salad, a fresh salad. So, you're leaving behind all the manure, all the urine, all these... remember that the cows have eight tools to help us regenerate the grasslands. Kind of cheating here because the first four are the hoops. That hoops that break the hard pan, those are really important. And then you also have the saliva effect. If we cut the grass with scissors and you let the cow cut the grass with their mouth, that grass that was cut by the cow will grow faster because of the saliva effect.
Yin Lu:
Fascinating.
Alejandro Carrillo:
Yeah, I saw this change of microbiology. Microbiology goes back and forward. The urine has a lot of fertility. The manure is amazing. The manure, it's a lot of carbon in the manure. If you allow the dung beetles, for example, these dung beetle creatures to work your cow pie, it's incredible. They will put most of the cow pie into the soil. While also, they will be moving a lot of ground. And even the cow breathing, the breath that it takes place when they're grazing, that also helps grow more grass. This is incredible machine, it's a bioreactor. The cow, you can say that is a bioreactor machine. Not only the cow, you're talking about the sheep, the goat. We have at the ranch, one mob or one herd that is comprised of cows mainly, but also horses, also donkeys, sheep and goats.
Yin Lu:
Do all those animals get herded together or are they all on different rotational schedules?
Alejandro Carrillo:
Horses, donkeys and cows, they're on the same paddock. And sheep and goats go around the same area. Why are we doing that? Because you don't want your animals to stay in the same area because they will end up overgrazing certain plants and over resting other plants. Some people really believe people actually living in a less brittle environments, like more rainy. They always think, oh, we need to get rid of the cows because they're destroying the environment. But we need to start with how the grasses evolve and they really need to be eating. They really need to be worked for them to thrive. If you remove all the cows from all these places, then you will see the desertification taking place. There are more than one way for us to desertify a place. One, is continuous grazing where you never move the cows. That's not natural. They will be over grazing from plants and over resting others so they will die. The other is removing all the cows. Even having very few cows in a place will actually desertify the place as well.
Yin Lu:
I think it was you who told me this when we chatted the first time, if you just search for pictures of the Chihuahuan Desert one desert 100 years ago or the first pictures taken of the Chihuahuan Desert to what it looks like now, it's completely different. There was grassy fields and now it is desert unless you actively ranch and graze.
Alejandro Carrillo:
Oh yeah. It's incredible. In our place, what we consider the Chihuahuan Desert, there were only tall grasses. Grasses that were at least five feet tall. These days, a picture on the [foreign language 00:14:54], Facebook, where I'm standing, like last week on grasses are seven feet tall. And then I compare that to another picture on not too far property from mine. We were very blessed this year to get 12 inches of rain. That's a lot for us because average is nine. But with those 12 inches, we grow a lot of grass, seven feet tall grass in certain places. You compare that to land that is actually not far from mine on the same week, there's really nothing. I mean still nothing growing. It's not really the rain that you get, but what you do with that rain.
Yin Lu:
Talk more about that. Also, can you talk to two things that stand out. One is the cow is a machine. When you said that the first time, I was like, what does he mean by that? The cow is a machine just knowing [inaudible 00:15:46], saliva, poop, what was the other ones?
Alejandro Carrillo:
Urine and....
Yin Lu:
Urine and breathing and how that symbiotically plays with the grass growing and perhaps even the rain falling. That's fascinating. And two, just you're providing a different perspective on cattle being good because I think in the mainstream, like you hear like, oh, cattle is taking up too much land and it's leading to deforestation, cattle's bad. But you're reframing in a way where you can see cows and other animals working in symbiosis with nature to get it back to the state that it was 70 or 80 years ago, which is very cool to see.
Alejandro Carrillo:
Yeah.
Yin Lu:
Go on.
Alejandro Carrillo:
No, I know, I know. Our minds are just getting crazy on this conversation. The thing is that, for example, think about the... because I'm in a place where it's supposed to be a desert, now we're converting that into beautiful lash grasslands. Think about that, all the benefits that it brings. We're not letting the... when it rains, you don't really see all this muddy water. You see clear water running across the ranch. When it rains all the runoff, we infiltrate a lot of water, we recharge the aquifers and the water that actually we are not able to infiltrate is clear water. It's just amazing. Just so beautiful to see because most places when you see rains and there's no good skin in the soil, like no good cover, you see all these muddy water and it's very destructive water, a lot of flooding and then the temp... We just recently measured the temperature.
We're already in the fall. There was a 40 degree Fahrenheit difference between where we have grass and where there was bare ground. Think about for the millions of acres or hectares across, for example, the whole western US where you have a lot of bare ground. What is that doing with the climate? We're creating this big heat wave because it's almost 40 degree above what it would be if you cover this all with grasses. Grasses are just beautiful plants to insulate this all from high temps. For example, when it snows and you have good grass cover, you will see that the snow... let's go to the end, you will see that the snow doesn't remain there. In two or three days you will not see snow. Why? Because the grasses help us keep the temperature very consistent year around. Not only in summer, the temperatures are cooler in the soil. But in winter, the soil temps are warmer than when you have bare ground. So, it's so beautiful that it works.
We can add on top of that, the wildlife. We've been working with these bird organizations for 10, 15 years and they're getting really excellent results. Birds are coming from southern Canada and northern U.S. that they migrate and pass most of the time on the Mexican side. They are protected first and they are fed as well, grasslands. It's this really very nice interaction and benefits that are brought by growing better grasses, more grasses.
Yin Lu:
Can you talk a bit more about the dung beetle and cow pie effect that you were... I'm saying earlier you were talking and then I was just thinking like, okay, I sort of understand the dung beetles, they break down the cow pies, the cow poop. And then what does that do to the soil to make the grass grow and does it have other impacts on weather patterns? Does it impact the rain? Does it impact fog? Talk more about that.
Alejandro Carrillo:
Let's start talking about the water cycle.
Yin Lu:
Yes please.
Alejandro Carrillo:
You may or may not know this, but 100% of the rainfall that we get, 60% comes from the sea. And we are responsible in land, to create or promote the other 40% through vegetation. As we desertify more land, we're losing that 40%. That's a problem. I mean I've been in many, clearly in many U.S. Western states and they're in a drought. But when you go and visit those places, the grasses are really very sick. Very shallow roots, very small solar panels. When the grasses have no solar panels, what I mean is they have a lot of stems and very little leaves. With this kind of management, that ratio of leave to stem actually improve the panel. The same kind of grass on the same spot will have many more leaves than stems or just leaves, a big canopy.
Why is that? Because as you improve the quality of the grasses, and most important as you grow the population of microbiology in the soil, which we call micro herd, that micro herd is going to start asking the grass, hey, we need more feed. We need more foot here we are more people down there. And the grass automatically is going to say, okay, let me actually get more leaves so we can capture more energy from soil and we can give you more food through exudates. That's good for the cows because remember the plans really do not have everything integrated like our tummies and microbiome in our stomachs. They have to rely on the soil on the microbiology. So, why are we expecting to have great plants in poor soils? That really doesn't make sense to me. Our focus is always on how can we feed more microbiology by doing more photosynthesis, by having plants greener, longer year round.
Going back to the water cycle. What's going on there is the water cycle right now in most land is broken. I mean more brittle environments is broken. Most northern Mexico, western U.S. is broken. Why? Because when it rains, the good water cycle is when it rains, it will infiltrate that water. How do you infiltrate that water? For thousands of years, since the Egyptians, because they were great farmers. At least they were the big barn for the Romans. We believe on tilling the land. All the land is compacted, let's till the land with a ripper, whatever. Now we know that what really puts some air in the soil is the fungi. The fungi is that microbiology which creates these crumbles in this hole, these aggregates. This is spaces, so when it rains and you have good microbiology, that grain is going to infiltrate. Instead of that moisture going back to the sky as just evaporating, it will go as an evapotranspiration through the plants. And then it will go up to the sky with microbiology, which we call aerial bacteria.
That would help condensate the clouds and it will rain again. I think for us ranchers, that's the most important cycle we want to fix, the water cycle because it doesn't matter if I get nine inches per year, if I'm only infiltrating 30%, which is the average, I'm only getting the three inches.
Yin Lu:
Help me understand this. Is tilling good or is tilling bad for the land?
Alejandro Carrillo:
I'm sorry. Tilling is pretty bad for the land because tilling is actually what we thought it was good until recently. But really, tilling the land you are actually killing... it's like a earthquake for the microbiology. Because we thought that yeah, we have to till the land to get some air. Reality, the more you till, the more you get the soil more compacted and more compacted and so on.
Yin Lu:
Got it, got it. And all that richness of the fungi and the microbiomes just then dries up because then you're letting the water that was in the soil evaporate. If you don't have water, then all of that rich bacteria dies and then doesn't feed the plants.
Alejandro Carrillo:
Exactly. That's why it's one of the regen principles, don't till the soil, minimal disturbance of the soil.
Yin Lu:
We're going to take a quick break so you can hear me talk more about the MCJ membership option. Hey folks, Yin here. A partner at MCJ Collective. Want to take a quick minute to tell you about our MCJ membership community, which was born out of a collective thirst for peer-to-peer learning and doing that goes beyond just listening to the podcast. We started in 2019 and have since then, grown to 2000 members globally. Each week, we're inspired by people who join with different backgrounds and perspectives. While those perspectives are different, what we all share in common is a deep curiosity to learn and bias to action around ways to accelerate solutions to climate change.
Some awesome initiatives have come out of the community. A number of founding teams I've met, nonprofits have been established. A bunch of hiring has been done. Many early stage investments have been made as well as ongoing events and programming like monthly women in climate meetups, idea jam sessions for early stage founders, climate book club, art workshops and more. So, whether you've been in climate for a while or just embarking on your journey, having a community to support you is important. If you want to learn more, head over to mcjcollective.com and then click on the members tab at the top. Thanks and enjoy the rest of the show. All right, let's get back to the show.
Can we talk about the other regenerative ranching principles? We had a guest on recently who is a farmer that was doing regenerative agricultural practices, but with crops, and he'd mentioned crop rotation is so important. I'd love to hear what the key principles are of regenerative ranching.
Alejandro Carrillo:
If you'll see nature, it all comes from nature. If you see a grassland, a healthy grassland, it's always core with grass. There's no bare spots. That's one of the first principles. Put skin in the soil. Don't let your soil be bare ground any time of the year. Think about very conventional farming. We only have green for four or five months and the rest of the year it's just bare ground, which is not good. There is animal integration, which is also happen in nature. You don't have really any environment on earth that don't have animals working on it. Diversity, it's on our principle, very important principle, and we're trying to mimic not only in our grasses that we are trying to grow, but also the animals that we're grazing. We want to promote more multi species grazing.
Yin Lu:
Can I ask, are certain animals that are bad for the ranch?
Alejandro Carrillo:
No, not really. Not really. I think all of them are good. As they say, it really is not the cow the problem, but it's the how. How you manage the cow, it could be detrimental to your land or it could be a place into your land. It's all about how you manage the cow. That's why we call this as well knowledge ranching because you really need knowledge to manage your property well.
Yin Lu:
Maybe where my question was coming from is I think about invasive species. Maybe this is the context of just farming, they'll eat crops. Do you run into any situations like that where there's an unwanted species that's eating the grass or maybe because you just let nature balance itself out that you don't get any of those unnecessary... ?
Alejandro Carrillo:
That's a really wonderful question. I was with some ranchers lately and they were invaded by grasshoppers. They were pretty frustrated because grasshoppers were eating all the grass. Every time we see something happening, we got to stop and think about what's going on. But also, not only it's negative side, because remember nature is always trying to help us one way or the other. If nature, in those particular areas, if nature knows that you have very weak grasses that will not survive, that they're dying because of whatever management we're applying, nature is saying, okay, I'm going to send you some of these micro herd, which are the grasshoppers. They're going to eat that grass. And while they're eating that grass, they're going to play the same role as cows. They're going to poop and they're going to die there. So, nature is trying really to put more fertility instead of having this wasting of sick grasses.
How about the weeds? That's also very interesting topic because when we see weeds, we are trying to kill the weeds. But in our context, where you have actual little bare ground, I'm telling ranchers, if you see a lot of weeds next year, you got to do a party to. You got to celebrate because you cannot go from bare ground to large perennial grasses. You have to follow the natural succession. And the natural succession is from bare ground to weeds to annual grasses and then to perennial grasses and then to better perennial grass and so on. So, we do celebrate having more weed because remember the weeds are there to actually fix something that is the soil is actually not having. That's why weeds and [inaudible 00:29:19] are really always good as some medicine. Through a lot of trials, through a lot of centuries or millennia, we know as humans or the non-traditional medicine, they use [inaudible 00:29:32] and weeds to cure sickness because we found out that they have certain concentration minerals every weed.
If you see certain weeds, just by looking at the kind of weed you're having, you know what it's like in your soil. And the weed is trying to fix that. The wheat is preparing the soil for better things to happen. So, killing the weeds really doesn't make any sense. You also mentioned about invasive cacti, cactus or woody plants. We just did not care about that. We're not trying to kill anything. Remember, every morning we say how can we promote more life? What's been happening in the ranch in the last years is as grasses are really taking over, what you have is nature saying, you don't really need these woody plants anymore or even these nauseous weeds, which may kill the cows. Grasses are really displacing all that.
I think we do believe that it may be that we're retaining more moisture with the grasses or we have a more balanced fungi to bacteria ratio. But the point is that we're killing a lot of those woody plants just by focusing on what we want, which is growing more grass. We did not use any mechanical, we did not use any chemical to kill any invasive species. They are there for a reason and they reflect their management.
Yin Lu:
It's interesting to think about what we see as this is an invasive species, we have to kill it. We have to get rid of it. It's bad for the land, whereas actually it's good, but it's more of a longer-term horizon versus-
Alejandro Carrillo:
Exactly. Exactly.
Yin Lu:
... we to get rid of it now. That leads me to a question of how do ranchers make money? I know it's a very generalized statement, but from what I can intuit, ranching and livestock is a cashflow business and you are raising cattle to sell it. So, the margins are thin and a lot of these regenerative practices take time. I wonder how ranchers balance that duality of it takes a long time to do regenerative agriculture and do it well before the ecosystem works like clockwork, with we need to make money and we need to raise this cattle and be able to sell them and sell them fast. Is that a incorrect way of thinking about the ecosystem?
Alejandro Carrillo:
No, no.
Yin Lu:
You tell me.
Alejandro Carrillo:
No, no, I think it's fine. It just that ranches are not doing well for the simple reason that the costs are very high. Those costs are actually even worse this year because of all the turmoil that is happening worldwide. All the hay and all the proteins and grains are going to the sky. Our first goal-
Yin Lu:
What do you mean by that? The grains are going to the sky?
Alejandro Carrillo:
They're just pretty high in prices. All the hay, all the grains, all that, they're really much more costly. All the inputs when simple, works. Our first objective for the ranchers is to lower the costs. For them to lower the cost, they actually need to grow more grass because the easier and less expensive way to put a pound on a cow or a calf is on native range land. Once you start bringing things from the outside, you got to pay for that. How we make money? First of all, it's not spending money. How we can make more money? Let's not spend more money. That's why we strive for the ranchers to be low cost producers. How? Growing more and better grasses. Eventually, if you are growing more grasses, you can increase your numbers. You can increase because your land is the one that is going to tell you, hey Alejandro, we need more cows because we're growing more grasses.
Remember, that process have a life cycle as well. You got to use them at some point, otherwise they're going to start decaying. When I say decaying it's when they get oxidized, when they turn into gray or black. At that point, not yellow, yellow is still fine because it has some nutrition in it. So, we had to really be very turban on making sure that we're going to graze that paddock or that pasture. Really, as you improve the soil fertility, then the grasses are going to stay in good health longer. But at the beginning, those life cycle are going to be pretty short because they're sick. Sick soils, means sick grasses and a grass that is a perennial grass, which never dies, it may behave like an annual grass because they're so sick that the green season is very short. That's another goal that we have for ranchers.
First of all, it's lower the cost. When they sell, even in the commodity market, they can keep more money because they're not spending that much money anymore. The second one is to increase the numbers based on how they increase the... because remember, cows are a way to sell your grass.
Yin Lu:
Say more on that.
Alejandro Carrillo:
Cows or sheep or goats or whatever you're selling. They're byproduct of the grass, at the end of the day. Many people says, okay, yeah, I want to buy the most vegetarian product. The most vegetarian product on the stores is the grass-fed meat really, because cows only eat vegetables, but in a more bio digestible way, you're going to eat that stuff. It's up to ranchers because some ranchers really want to keep on the production, they don't want to get into direct marketing. But that would be another option. While you get good soils and good grasses and good cows, you can actually start getting more into the direct marketing. And then that's going to add more margin into your sales, better prices.
The other thing that sometimes we forget is to adapt our cattle or land onto out management. This is not like, oh yeah, I'm going to buy a bull from Kansas and bring it to the Chihuahuan Desert. Why I don't want to do that? Because I don't want to create this artificial environment for my animals. What many ranchers we are doing that we're practicing this holistic regenerative management, we're raising our own herd. Because cows learn what plants... cows are really selective in terms of, oh, I need this plant because I don't feel good. They are great pharmacists. They're great chemicals. They can select this and this and this. That knowledge, is building into their epigenetics. Even when they are born, and I think that applies to us, really, let me tell you, when they are born, they already have some knowledge and wisdom of what is good for them and what is not good for them and what do you eat?
It's pretty impressive. That part is really impressive and we're trying to highlight that to the ranchers. Stop selling your [inaudible 00:36:35] first. The female, young females because they're your gold mine. They have all that wisdom and those epigenetics that will pass on each of us, how to develop their own herd, that will be adopted to their own environment. And that's putting together your genetics. You improve in two ways. You're going to improve in your genetics more adapted to the environment and you will improve on the quality and quantity of your grasses. That's where you're going to start having much more fun because then you're going to start building consistency in your operation. We're getting a little bit deep into this, but...
Yin Lu:
I love it. I love it. I didn't expect this conversation to even touch on epigenetics of grasses and animals, so that's fascinating. It sounds like for ranchers, if they're just thinking about the longevity of their ranch for the next 100 years, it's really focusing on enriching the soil and enriching the grass and thinking about the types of animals that then feed on that grass and having that cycle evolve naturally.
Alejandro Carrillo:
Like a friend of mine says, "Are you going to be able to grow papayas in Canada?" I don't think so. So, you better have the kind of genetics that can thrive in your ranch. For example, my ranch is very limited in forage and so on. I'm not pretending on having milking cows there because I need to feed the,, but whatever animal you have and you buy, then that's just the beginning of the journey. It's not like a magic bullet that, oh, yeah, I bought this animal and it's going to hit the ground running. No, it's just the beginning of you trying to select your animals that thrive. At times, you are with your herd and you're the shepherd because your animals really know that you're going to take them to greener pastures and they trust you, they follow you. That's pretty amazing. It's this cow talk that you do with your animals. It's pretty amazing.
We always tell ranchers, you need to have happy cows. You always try to have happy cows year round, but there are other times where you're trying to trim the bottom and then you have to act as the predator. Cows are struggling keeping up with the herd because they're thin, they're losing body condition, they have some issue. Then you take those cows and then put them in a large pasture so they recover and then you sell them. So, you're always trimming the bottom trying to keep your herd... I mean, trying to mimic nature pretty much. Sometimes you're wearing the hat of the shepherd and sometimes you're wearing the hat of the predator.
Yin Lu:
I know that we have limited time. You and I both need to go pick up our daughters from their after school activities soon. I wanted to ask you this question because I feel like you're super well positioned to give a perspective. So, you live in Texas right now. You live in El Paso, Texas. Las Damas Ranch is in Mexico, and you have to drive the four and a half hour from El Paso to the Chihuahuan Desert to get to the ranch. I'm curious from a policy perspective, if you see any differences in American ranching versus Mexican ranching and what are the policies that are created by the two different governments and their impacts on ranching practices?
Alejandro Carrillo:
What we may consider a disadvantage in Mexico has been a blessing because in Mexico really we don't have subsidies. We don't have water rights, so we don't have irrigation. That really has forced us to be a good grazers on native range land. In the U.S. at times, subsidies are actually stopping people from getting more innovation and getting [inaudible 00:40:18].
Yin Lu:
Can you talk more about what subsidies are for people that are not familiar?
Alejandro Carrillo:
For example, if you're hit by a drought, you may get some support from the government. If there's some natural event, also, you may get some support. In Mexico, you don't really get any of that. Also, for example, water rights allow a lot of ranchers to have these pivots and irrigation and they get used to do their grazing on this pivots and then they forget about the range land. Running cows on pivots, that means that you got to seed them, you got to fertilize them, you got to irrigate them. Now, the cost is just pretty high cost to producing beef on those land.
Yin Lu:
Can you talk about what pivots are? I'm not familiar.
Alejandro Carrillo:
It's irrigated land that they have because when there's no melts, then you have some water rights to that in spring. And then they are able to open up some land to irrigate that land. That really gives them some certainty that they will have that green grass.
Yin Lu:
Yeah, the predictive that it's always going to be there.
Alejandro Carrillo:
Exactly. But then that going to stop you from thinking, how can I go year round without any irrigation? Some ranches in the U.S. have move away from irrigation because I think the greatest potential is essentially on range land. Restoring range land and the costs are going to be pretty low and so on, but that's one of the main difference. Other than that, I think we're pretty common. Ranchers in the U.S. and ranchers in Mexico, we have a lot of commonality, a lot of common things, very common beliefs, and it's a great community actually. A lot of traditions.
Yin Lu:
Tell us more about that.
Alejandro Carrillo:
We are hardworking people. Most ranchers have strong beliefs. You have to have a lot of faith because you're now just waiting for nature or for rains to come. And very family oriented as well. These values haven't really changed for many, many years.
Yin Lu:
I love that. When you turn 70, I wonder what your daughter's roles are going to be on the ranch because this is something that's been passed down from generation to generation.
Alejandro Carrillo:
Yes, that's right. That's our idea, to actually get the place better than how you get it. We know that if we actually can build in more carbon into the soil, the likelihood of the ranch to be sustainable will be much greater. As you start losing carbon like vegetation, all that stuff, then that's going to bring just poverty and immigration and things like that.
Yin Lu:
To ask one more question before we take off and pick up our kids, we always like to end this show on a note of optimism. So, Alejandro, what are a few things that really keep you optimistic as you look forward to the next 100 years of ranching practices?
Alejandro Carrillo:
This is really very excited what we do because to be honest with you, I think we're the heroes of today. Think about all the issues we are having right now. Issues with nutrition. We can provide very high nutrient food because the nutrient density of, for example, meat ties back to the plants that the cows eat. You're talking about our cows or sheep eating more than 50 different plants. All those hydro chemicals are going to be reflected in the meat. The wildlife, a lot of wildlife has been gone because of the lost of the environment where they used to live, the loss of habitat. We are creating those habitat for all that wildlife, which is beautiful as well. Water is an issue. Flooding is an issue. We can control the flooding. Climate change, we're a really big one there because as we cover more soil with grasslands... It's like the study that they did in Russia with this Permafrost. In Northern Russia, all the Permafrost is melting and there's a lot of forest there. So, what's going on?
They concluded that really what is missing there is grasslands, because grasslands really play a much more important role insulating soil than forests. I would like to see more forests anywhere you go, like in the western U.S. or northern Mexico and so on with grass underneath. We not only need grazing animals on grasslands, we also need these grazing animals on forests as well. There's so many benefits, which is incredible. Really, restoring the communities that... When you go to little towns, they're pretty much, some of them look like a ghost towns. People are struggling to get their kids to schools because they're even closed in schools.
So, we need really these strong economies of tangible products. How much more tangible than producing food? I'm pretty optimistic. We know how to do it. We're trying to educate more ranches. We're trying to get more ranches on board. A lot of young people are very excited about this because at times, some people, some young people or not so young people tell us, this is a message of hope. We're lacking that kind of messages nowaday. This is not a high tech thing. I'm from technology and this is more a biology solution than technology.
Yin Lu:
If the listeners and myself included in that want to learn more about regenerative ranching, what are some good resources that you can point us to?
Alejandro Carrillo:
Yeah. Just search about regenerative agriculture, regenerative ranching, rational grazing, holistic management. The Sever Institute. There's plenty of information. Obviously, one of the greatest videos is Kiss the Ground. That's actually, that Kiss the Ground documentary, has been changing a lot of people, has been brought a lot of hope for a lot of people.
Yin Lu:
Alejandro, thank you so much for spending time with us and teaching us about regenerative ranching as well as your perspective on the future of the industry. Something that I think is really cool hearing you speak is, I feel like I'm inundated with a lot of data every day. The [inaudible 00:46:37] report, pitch decks where everyone's trying to make a case for the importance of climate action through data and the fact that you came with just these very visceral stories and helping me see, helping us see the importance of a cow just from looking at the different parts of the cow and to talk about the role of a grasshopper on a piece of land. That's super powerful. Thank you for bringing the storytelling piece to this conversation. I really appreciate you very much. Thank you.
Alejandro Carrillo:
No, thank you very much for having me here. It was great to share it with you.
Jason Jacobs:
Thanks again for joining us on My Climate Journey Podcast.
Cody Simms:
At MCJ Collective, we're all about powering collective innovation for climate solutions by breaking down silos and unleashing problem solving capacity. To do this, we focus on three main pillars, content like this podcast and our weekly newsletter, capital to fund companies that are working to address climate change and our member community to bring people together as Yin described earlier.
Jason Jacobs:
If you'd like to learn more about MCJ Collective, visit us at www.mcjcollective.com. If you have guest suggestions, feel free to let us know on Twitter @mcjpod.
Cody Simms:
Thanks and see you next episode.
