Peter Byck is showing his results to farmers to try to win converts. And after generations of fertilizer and pesticide use, tilling and overgrazing, millions of acres of naturally rich soil have become lifeless dirt, devoid of the microbes and insects that create a healthy system, and unable to draw down carbon and lock it underground.īyck first discovered the carbon-gobbling power of healthy soils while making the documentary “Carbon Nation,” and in 2014, he assembled a team of scientists in to launch a first-of-its-kind study of five pairs of neighboring farms across the Southeast. It is not how the vast majority of America’s roughly 100 million cows are fed. “The trick is to eat half of the forage like we eat the tips of asparagus, stomp down the rest and cover the soil so it stays moist and the microbes thrive.”

“The animals hit an area really hard and then they leave it for a long time,” Byck explained.

Instead of the common practice of letting cows graze for months in one big field, AMP farmers use a single line of electric fence to pack their herd into smaller areas to maximize manure distribution, and then move them to the next patch of high grass in a day or two. Also known as “mob grazing” in the UK, the technique feeds cattle in a way to mimic how millions of wild buffalo, elk and deer munched wild forage across North America and, with only their poop and hooves, built a layer of rich, fertile soil across the Great Plains up to 15 feet deep.

He calls the trick “Adaptive Multi-Paddock” or “AMP” grazing, but it is just a new branding for an ancient relationship between animal and land. Cows graze in a field in Jasper, Tennessee.

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