[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hey everybody. Welcome to the show today. Excited to have Alan Williams back with us today from Etta Hills Farm. I've been announcing the past few weeks about a big conference inaugural conference at Etta Hills. Would love for y' all to join us there in October. We'll talk about that conference here in a minute. But before I do that, I always forget these announcements. I'm going to knock them out right here. My team gave me this to tell y' all. For Texas residents and I'm sorry about the non Texans for right now, but we're working on non Texan options too. But for Texas residents who are members of our wellness community online, Texas telehealth is coming soon. In September is what we're targeting for. So look for the exact date coming soon. But guys, the goal of Texas telehealth, if you're in the wellness program, you're learning how to get to the root of your disease, your chronic disease and reverse it. But what we've seen is some of our clients actually need help with deprescribing their doctors won't or don't know how to de prescribe to bring them off the medications and treat acute illness. You know, as you steward your health, your internal train gets strong, your immune system gets strong and Covid and flu and measles and whatever germ can be dealt with. No problem.
Of course we have home remedies page on your well if you're a wellness member you have access our home remedies over the counter things for these different illnesses. But there's an occasion where you might need a doctor who will actually prescribe ivermectin or whatever else you need in an acute illness. For the measles, budesonide nebulized work great for the respiratory component of that measles outbreak last year.
So the Veritas medical practitioners are available through telehealth special. You can self book through the website once we launch this make it very convenient, very easy when you do need that extra level of support. Now for those outside of Texas, we're working on getting licensed in other states so stay tuned for that.
We're really excited about that option for our our wellness members who need that in Texas. Next announcement, the 90 day reset. We've got eight more slots available that'll launch in September. We just launched our 18 in August. Now we have more availability on our Wellness Navigator schedule for August. So if you've got a chronic disease you're ready to commit, you want weekly visits, a blood test Pre and post 90 days to see how much you can change in 90 days. You want to reverse your diabetes in 90 days, your hypertension, your IBS.
This will greatly increase your odds of being able to do that. We have lots of testimonies. Check out the testimony page for that. But the 90 day reset eight slots for starting in September. Check out the link in the show notes.
Last thing is pretty quickly we're going to have open enrollment coming for insurance every year, in the fall into the new year, we hear open enrollment. My insurance rates are going through the roof and I just want to encourage you. And it kind of goes to the 90 day and the telehealth announcements. If you reverse your chronic disease and you shouldn't need a doctor, you're in the wellness program to learn how to not need a doctor, then potentially you don't need health insurance, especially health insurance that keeps costing you more and more and more every year. Fifteen hundred dollars is what mine was going up to years ago. And I'm paying 500 bucks a month for a Health Share Christian Health Share ministries. And there's a lot of them, our Christian Health share ministry. It's $500 a month that I share rarely, if ever. I think we had a broken arm a few years ago. One of the kiddos broke his arm. We needed a little extra care, urgent care, and that's it. It got shared. It's great. It's a great option, especially for those that are healthy and for those that are believers in stewarding their finances as well as stewarding their health. And it's a way to share with other believers. So I would strongly encourage you to combine your Veritas wellness membership, reversing your chronic disease, do the 90 day reset to reverse your disease and then kick that expensive health insurance to the curb. We're trying to create a parallel economy, a parallel society and culture in the kingdom where we love our neighbor and we learn how to listen to God and trust him and steward all the resources, financial health and as we're going to talk about today, agriculture and agriculture education.
You know, my wife actually volunteered at a little homeschool co op we're a part of to be the ag teacher this year.
And she was looking for some curriculum for regenerative ag and maybe it's out there. So if you're listening and you got some kind of junior high curriculum, high school curriculum, we'd love you just email the clinic. We'd love to see that.
But talking to some guys out there, there's what it was hard to find any and well, Alan Williams has a vision for educating young people or middle aged or older current farmers or people wanting future farmers on a different way to do it. A more kingdom aligned. So today's show, guys, hopefully it encourages you. There's many, many people listening and being obedient to go against the grain and do something different in the world, not of the world. Get their creative instruction from God most high and then walking it out and doing it even if it looks like it's impossible or where how are we going to pay for this? Or how's this? We're going to pull this off with God. Nothing's impossible. So super encouraged about what Alan's doing and I'm gonna let him just talk about it but just wanted to let y' all know today's going to be an encouraging show. Alan, thank you for coming back. Welcome to the show.
[00:05:34] Speaker B: Well it's an absolute pleasure to be here.
Very happy to once again share with your audience and I know we're going to have some great conversation today.
[00:05:44] Speaker A: Yes we will. And Alan and I were just at a conference. Need your cure in Oxford, Mississippi is a great weekend. I've come back. Super encouraged. So many good folks there and great speakers, great topics. And guys, there really is a movement afoot to, to build something different and, and really it's the kingdom as it is in heaven on earth.
So we're going to get into some of that today. But Alan, real quick for new listeners because you were on probably a year and a half or so ago, a little background and, and you and I were talking this week in such a parallel. I shared in my talk this weekend about the 1910 Flexner Report. The audience here knows about that when medical education got real, real, real narrow to allopathic only, pharmaceutical based treat a symptom only. And we've been doing that for 110 years now. And the outcomes over those past hundred years we went from the healthiest to the sickest and it's unsustainable, it's bankrupting us health wise and it's bankrupting us financially too. And there's just so many parallels in this medical system and the failure of it and the agricultural system from the education to the outcomes of. So we'll get into all that but first just share a little bit about where you came from and how you got to where you are today and then your vision for the future of where you're going.
[00:07:00] Speaker B: Yeah, be very happy to.
So first, I am a sixth generation family farmer and rancher.
I grew up on My family's farm in South Carolina. They've been there since 1840 and are still there. So I'm very happy to say that.
And I, I reside in Mississippi now. I've been here in Mississippi since the 1990s.
I intended to go back home to the family farm, the oldest son, but I got derailed academically, you might say, and talked into going to graduate school and all of this. So I got my master's degree and then a PhD in genetics and physiology and then felt almost obligated, I guess, to go into academia after that instead of going back to the family farm.
And, and So I spent 15 years in, in academia being, doing research and teaching and all of that.
And I'll have to be very honest with you, I swallowed the mantra, you know, of conventional agriculture and this whole feed the world deal and everything else, hook, line and sinker.
And, and so I became very, very just, you know, dove in headfirst into that conventional lag system, believing that that was the only way that as, as the population of the world grew, that we were truly going to be able to, you know, to meet everybody's needs in terms of the production of food.
But slowly, over time, I began to realize that what we were doing was not really making a difference. And, and I guess I had to keep. Well, I know I did. I kept going back and thinking about growing up on, on the family farm and that it had supported, you know, all of those generations before me and, and you know, even through my lifetime, there had always been four generations alive on the farm that were supported by the farm.
And yet I started seeing that in spite of all the so called advancements we were making in technology and products and pharmaceuticals and supplements and so on and so forth, it wasn't getting better. The picture on the farm was, was eroding. Farmers were incurring more debt than ever. The soil was not getting better, it was becoming more and more degraded. Our animals were not getting healthier in reality, instead that just like many people, they were becoming more and more reliant on supplements and pharmaceuticals.
And, and I began to realize that the vast majority of research that I was involved with and that we were doing was what I now call putting a band aid on a gushing wound. We were always address, addressing symptoms and never addressing the root cause of the issue. And principally that was because for the pharmaceutical industry, the supplement industry, the feed industry, the seed industry, the fertilizer, you keep naming them, they make a whole lot more money treating the symptoms than they do with us. Solving the root cause.
So I was 15 years in, a tenured full professor. So in that world that means you sort of got it made. You know, I can't be fired unless I did something really stupid.
You know, I've got all the benefits, the retirement, everything else.
But I began to heavily question what was I doing.
And it, I became convicted, you know, there's no other way to say it, I became convicted.
And I knew at that point I had a decision to make. And that was that decision was either I continue to stay in the university system, in academia and do business as usual and just accept that, or I leave. And of course, leaving meant I left that tenure, that security, I leave all of that behind.
A very, very difficult decision at the time, I'll have to confess a lot of doubt, but ultimately I made the decision to resign and go back into farming and ranching full time and then into what we're doing today, a lot of advisory, a lot of consulting and all of that.
And that was 26 years ago now that I left the university.
And what I'll have to say is that in spite of that fear, in spite of that trepidation, we have never gone hungry once.
I have not ever not been able to pay my bills, you know, and even though we rarely have advertised or anything like that, God has always placed the work in front of us and he's continuing to do that and to this very day.
And so here we are 26 years later and we have been so very blessed to be able to have worked in all 50 US states, 45 plus countries around the world, on six different continents.
And that impact continues to grow.
And we have been able to impact thousands upon thousands of farming families and their quality of life.
And we have been able to impact more than 50 million acres now for the better transition into regenerative agriculture and regenerative food.
And to me, there's no better work that you can do with your life.
To see lives changed, to see farms transformed, to know that we are now able to put truly good, nutrient dense, phytonutrient rich food into people's mouths on a day in, day out basis is, you know, the very best thing that I can do with my life. And, and so along the way I was a founder of Understanding Ag and the Soil Health Academy. And now our newest venture, Libertas Land.
And we can talk about this later, but we are also getting ready, Ben, to launch Libertas University.
So the first ever regenerative program university focused on immersion into the principles the contextual Application of the principles of regenerative agriculture and food. So that's where we are now. That, that's sort of a synopsis of my story.
[00:14:09] Speaker A: That's amazing.
Well, I want to address what sounded like the main question or goal or the motivation, it sounds like, of going that conventional route. What you were told was you got to feed the world. We can't feed the world.
Your, your great granddad's way. It almost reminds me of in medical, we can't be healthy without doing a whole lot of vaccination starting day of life one.
And that's what I believe for a long time until I went back and read Suzanne Humphrey's book Dissolving Illusions. And I saw this graph that I showed at the conference. A 99 drop in infant mortality from 1900 to 1950 pre vaccines coming out. Just that one graph got my mind to open and go, whoa, I thought we had to do vaccines to, to prevent infant mortality. But something happened to drop infant mortality 99% before vaccines ever rolled on the scene. So just it opened my mind to the possibility that what I was told wasn't true. So when it comes to feeding the world, because that's probably the number one thing I do here also, and you mentioned it, where's, what's the truth in that? Because I, you know, maybe to play the devil's advocate if someone else is here would say, well yeah, maybe your regenerative stuff is getting healthier soil. Maybe there's ways to, to stack different economies on that farm now where you're producing lots of different things so economically the family can survive and support two or three generations even maybe so maybe for that farm it's better. But what about all the consumers? Or they're all going to starve if you, if all the farms turn back into mom and pop regenerative and multi stack enterprises and all that. So what would your answer be to that?
[00:15:50] Speaker B: So very good question. And back when I was in academia and on faculty at the university, my answer would have been it's impossible. You can't do it through regenerative agriculture.
But now I know very, very differently. And as a matter of fact, my answer now is the complete reverse, that if we continue on our present path of conventional agriculture that is going to create future famine, pestilence and disaster.
And, and it already has begun to do that. Okay. Where it's not that it's going to, we're already edging closer and closer to the precipice of falling off the cliff, you know, in that regard. But Let me give you a few very pertinent facts here to back up my contention.
Number one, we're already producing enough food in the world right now to feed between 12 and 14 billion people a year, okay? We already are.
So hunger in the world right now, and there is hunger in the world right now. It's not due to the lack of production of food. It is due to socio political
[00:17:07] Speaker A: issues,
[00:17:08] Speaker B: things like that, okay? The food not getting where it needs to be, that's the problem. And it's also due to food wastage. So as an example, in the U.S. alone, we are wasting, wasting more than 133 billion pounds of food a year.
Now we've got 333 million people, men, women and children in the U.S. so when you divide 133 billion by that 333 million, that means that we are wasting three hundred and ninety nine pounds of food for every human being living in the U.S. today.
Being that 399 pounds of food would feed all of us each year, just the waste, just what we waste would feed us for the year, much less what we're producing that we actually consume. Okay? So that's fact number one, globally we are wasting more than 1 billion tons, not 1 billion pounds, but more than 1 billion tons of food annually. And that amounts to more than $1 trillion worth of food waste a year globally.
So we're already way over producing, okay?
And that flies in the face of everything that people are being told.
But here's the second thing we are seeing, and I live this every day I'm on, you know that I'm on farms and ranches every single day all over the world.
And I can tell you what I'm seeing is we are in the midst of a crisis.
We have soils that are heavily degraded, not just a little degraded and heavily degraded. We have soils that can't infiltrate and hold water anymore. We have soils that to grow a decent crop requires that everything be purchased and applied over top.
Very little is being contributed by the soil biology and the soil fertility itself.
So that's what's occurring. We are severely depleting our aquifers, like the Oglala aquifer and many others and many of our natural water systems. So that's also what's occurring in conventional agriculture.
Now you contrast that with what's happening on regenerative farms. So we have documented that the average regenerative farm is producing 4 to 11 times more actual food per acre than all the neighboring conventional farms. To think about that, that we can't grow enough food. Are you kidding me? We can more than feed the world. Farming regeneratively and as a matter of fact, that's the way we're going to be able to continue to feed the world as we go forward.
[00:20:07] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I mean, can just imagine just my little garden at home.
It's trying to be regenerative, but it's got a long ways to go. And you know, just the okra that's coming off right now, the black eyed peas, the tomatoes four to 11 times more probably both in size and quantity. Just the bountifulness that could come out of just my garden.
Four to 11 times, it's almost unimaginable. In fact, it makes me think back to the Garden of Eden. I can't imagine the amount of just how big and plump and luscious and not only tastes good, but full of nutrients. And when you put that in your mouth and you flood your cells with this deep nutrition, you're satisfied you actually don't need to eat as much because what you just ate was so power packed full of nutrients because of what was in the soil. The biology, putting the, the vitamins, minerals into that plant. It's just, it works. This is a kingdom way, this is God's way you do things. God's way. It all works. All that water cycle restores, the whole thing works and translates to human health too. Well, that was a great answer. I would say that kind of if someone has that question about how can we feed the world 4 to 11 times more food on regenerative farms than the neighbors next door.
[00:21:25] Speaker B: And let's look at one other thing here, okay?
We are planting every year in the US alone more than 90 million acres of corn, okay? And between 85 to more than 90 million acres of soybeans.
Now nobody eats field corn and field soybeans.
No one sits down to a plate of field corn for dinner or a bowl of field soybeans for breakfast.
They're practically inedible. If you, if you tried to eat those, if anybody, if any of the listeners here today tried to go eat field corn, field soybeans, they would spew them out of their mouth, okay?
Those are produced for biofuels, ethanol, biodiesel, all of those types of things.
And feedstuffs for livestock, for farmed fish, you know, you keep naming it, that is what all the corn and beans are being produced for, not for human food. So we're talking about almost 200 million acres a year in the US of crops that are being grown that are not feeding humans. Okay, think about the Corn Belt. The Corn Belt. And here's another little fact that I think will blow a lot of your listeners away.
Do you know that the vast majority of conventional farmers today do not eat anything grown on their farms. They don't even grow their own gardens anymore. They buy all of their food from the local grocery stores or go down or go to the fast food places or whatever, just like everybody else does.
Okay, that's pretty sobering.
[00:23:13] Speaker A: Yeah, it is.
Talk about a need for revolution.
You know, I think we're at a point in history not only the agricultural system, the medical system, financial system, political system, religious system, all of them, people are waking up to the fact that we are off course. It's all broken and politician ain't going to fix it. And I'm not saying there's not some good guys and gals in there trying to do something, but it's going to be individuals like yourself in the private world being led by God, the spirit of God, the spirit of truth, doing it for the benefit of the people, for God's glory and the benefit of his creation. Stewarding the creation like we were originally told to do Adam in the garden.
That this thing is going to get turned around.
For those who, I'm talking specifically farmers, and maybe this isn't a great question because you need to see the actual farm, but I'm sure on all these farms you've, you've walked over and looked at and consulted on, there's probably some common themes that come up. I'm a little partial to West Texas farmland being dry land, cotton and irrigated cotton. There are some other crops out here, but those are the big ones. If a farmer's listening right now and is interested in learning more, I'm, I know you, you mentioned the universities coming. We want to talk about that for sure.
But in your consulting, what are the common, most top one, two or three practical, actionable steps that they could be looking at doing? And maybe they do need to call you and have you actually consult with them. But what give an idea of what that looks like.
[00:24:45] Speaker B: Yeah, first and foremost, you can't implement what you don't know. Right.
And so many farmers out there now have at least heard the term regenerative. They've heard a little bit about this, but they really don't know exactly what it's all about. And many of them don't understand the principles at all and how to contextually apply the principles. And that's really what it's about. The Principles are universal. They don't change no matter where we go in the world. But the way you apply them does. You have to apply them contextually according to where your farm is and the conditions that you farm under.
So the first thing is you need to, you need to begin to educate yourself. And there's a myriad of resources out there. We have been involved in, you know, more than 50 documentaries and films now that are out there and are readily accessible. And they include things like the Roots so Deep docu series that you can
[email protected] they include the Carbon Cowboys series that you can find@carbon cowboys.org we, we have a brand new set series that we're coming out with that people can find on our website at Libertas land.
So libertas-land.com and we're constantly producing, you know, articles and research and things like that. So you know, they can certainly visit our website to be able to begin to glean and to learn.
But the second thing is, is that you really need to understand what a regenerative farm looks like. So don't just continue to sequester yourself on your farm.
Right. Which is what most farmers do. A lot of farmers don't really get out and really look at other people's farms and, and see what's going on. So the second thing is I would encourage them to go visit farmers that have already made this transition and are already farming regeneratively, see what their land looks like, talk to them about that transition, what they're doing and what they're, the speed bumps were and all of that, what, what the issues were that they encountered and how they overcame those.
And then finally, yes, oftentimes for a successful transition it does take, you know, some one on one advisory.
And, and that is exactly what we provide to be able to help farmers and ranchers successfully make this transitioning and to get them over all of those speed bumps and to help them build confidence.
Because confidence is huge, you know, in, in all of this. So, so really those are the most important steps to take. And there's a quote that I use often by W.C. loudermilk in his book Conquest of the Land Through 7,000 Years. And, and the quote goes like this.
The land does not lie.
It bears a record of what we write on it. A record that is easy to read by those who understand the simple language of the land.
So bottom line is this. Our management, the way we manage our farms and ranches is written on the tapestry of the land. So whenever we step foot on any farm or ranch anywhere in the world, that farmer cannot lie to us about what they've been doing. The moment we look and observe, and especially the moment we, we stick a shovel in the ground, it reveals everything. You know how when somebody opens their heart, it's completely revealing, right?
[00:28:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:46] Speaker B: Well, when we. The soil is the heart.
The soil is the heart. We have to think of it like that.
And when we stick a shovel in the ground, we're opening the heart of the soil and we are revealing not just the last few years of what has been happening, but decades upon decades of what has been happening in that soil.
And so we can show these farmers a few simple tools to get a baseline assessment of exactly where they're at right now and then help them design a program.
We call it an adaptive stewardship program.
A program that then allows them to be able to make this transition in a very successful and a very profitable way.
[00:29:34] Speaker A: Yeah, that's awesome. And I imagine they could potentially get a lot more jump start if they came to the conference that you're hosting at Etta Hills Farms in October. Talk about that a little bit.
[00:29:48] Speaker B: Absolutely. It is a unique opportunity.
It's going to be held October 8th and 9th in South Haven, Mississippi. That is just south, just across the state line from Memphis, Tennessee.
So super easy to get into, whether you're driving, there's multiple interstates that converge there, I55, I40 and so forth, or very easy to fly into and easily get to the conference center there in South Haven. And they can go to the farm website at eta etta et hills farm.com to be able to take a look at our lineup of speakers, our agenda and to register.
But you know, we're going to have an absolutely outstanding lineup of plenary or keynote speakers along with some excellent panel discussions.
Obviously, you know, you're going to be there. So, folks, Dr. Ben Edwards is going to be one of our keynote speakers.
We're going to have Dr. Stefan Van Vliet, who is one of the absolute leading experts on cutting edge nutritional research, particularly phytonutrient research, to share the latest and the greatest in that regard and to basically share with us that, you know, a tomato is not a tomato, blueberry is not a blueberry, beef is not beef. And here's why.
And how do you know the difference? Okay. Because that's what's most important. How do you know the difference?
We're going to have Christine Martin, who is a outstanding holistic educator.
We're going to have Peter Bick, who is the award winning filmmaker who did carbonation, the Carbon Cowboy series, the Root so Deep docu series and so forth, speaking. I will be a keynote speaker as well.
And we'll have Bishop Vincent Matthews, who's going to tie it all in with the Scriptural foundation.
Why is the way we manage our land and steward our land so important? And why is eating scripturally so important?
And, and then we're going to have incredible panels. So we've got regenerative farmers who will be there and they're going to be sharing in a panel why they made their transitions and what a difference it has made, you know, in their lives and in the lives of many others, how they have literally changed the landscape through regenerative farming. We're going to have a health and wellness panel, you know, that obviously will include you, you know, that, that, that is going to be talking about, you know, how is this important to all of us, you know, as a consumer of food.
We're going to have a culinary panel that's going to be talking about why this is important to restaurants, to grocery stores and, and so forth. So we're going to have award winning chefs there and grocery store owners and all of that serving on that panel. And so really what we're going to do. This, this is not, this is not what I would call an agricultural conference. So we're not looking to attract just farmers and ranchers. Yes, we want them there. But this is a conference for absolutely everybody because we all eat and we all are concerned about our health and the health of our planet, the health of this creation.
And so the whole purpose of this conference is to tie it all together, to close the loop between the soil and ultimately our health and the health of this creation. You know, and I said this at the conference, you know, this weekend, but before there were plants, before there were animals and before there were humans, God created soil.
The soil was the foundation that was required before any of these other living beings could be created.
And, and the soil was so important and so filled with vibrant life, so alive, that God grabbed a handful of soil and formed it into man and created man out of soil.
So that's our common ground.
[00:34:28] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. We get into trouble when we start dividing things, putting them into individual silos. Like, like we're a separate. Separated. I mean, that's, as Jamie Winship would say, kingdom versus Empire. And empire is all about separation and division, division, division. Using fear to do it. Like the fear of, oh, no, we can't feed the world versus the abundance that's in the kingdom and it's all opposite. It's, it's all upside down. I mean I had so many people at the conference this weekend talking about their cholesterol and how their doctors want it so low. And I would just look at them say no, it needs to be so high.
It's exactly 180 degrees opposite of what the world says. And that's what's awesome really about everything is. But you have to have an open heart and an open mind, just like I'm imagining. I mean, you can correct me, but a lot of this dirt out here that blows around that has no life in it anymore because of the way the farmers have been kind of forced in that system to, to manage that, to, to restore that. It's to do what's behind you on the screen. Putting some hooves on it, putting some animals on that, getting that hoof impact and the manure and the urine and just all of it to, to restore that. Well, that may for some farmers that think will, I'm not a cow man, I'm a cotton man and even won't even have an open mind to the possibility of animals. And that's where I'm going to encourage folks to keep that open mind.
Because when I came out of that medical system, I had to have an open mind that nutrition actually matters, which sounds so simple. But as a doctor, I didn't think nutrition mattered at all because they didn't teach me in school that it mattered. So if I got no nutrition education, how in the world could that matter about health and disease? I mean that's how crazy that sounds.
And so for a farmer who maybe is closed minded to have animals combined in or how can that work? How does that just be open minded? Because so things, things operate 180 different upside down is right side up and all that in the kingdom. So just keeping an open heart, open mind.
So, and maybe with that we can talk more about the university that you have kind of dreamed up in your heart and are now actually materializing. I heard this weekend from your son Chris. It may be fall of 27 is what we're looking at, but let's talk about that some share with the audience your dream there.
[00:36:52] Speaker B: Absolutely. So.
And I guess first let me, let me just say a couple of things back on what you were saying about the reintegration of animals and all that.
See, that's a very recent phenomena that a farmer would not have livestock.
See, this has just been in the last 80 plus years that that has been the case Prior, you had to have livestock. Where in the heck did your fertility come from? You know, and if you go back and you look and you study our patriarchs in the Old Testament, you know, if we, if we study Moses, if we study Job, we look at Abraham, Isaac, Jesus, Jacob, David, and on and on, we just keep naming them.
They had massive, massive herds of livestock and multiple species of livestock. You know, when we talk about a shepherd in the Bible often today, people think, well, that just means they only had sheep. No, they had sheep, they had cattle, they had oxen, they had horses, they had donkeys, they had camels, on and on. And when you look at the numbers, I mean, go to Job and read the numbers, the sheer numbers of livestock he had. Look at the sheer numbers of livestock that Solomon had, you know, so they relied on those livestock in a, in a mighty way. And that's what we need to do again today. We don't. It's not that we need to get rid of livestock. We need a whole lot more livestock on our landscape because they are, they are healers of the soil. If we allow them to be that. That's why God created them. That's why he placed them here.
So that being said, yes, we have, coming out of that academic sector, that formal academic sector, and having been there, done that, I can legitimately critique it, I can legitimately criticize it. I know the weaknesses of that system.
And what I will tell you is that no one out there, no land grant university, no university, period, right now, is doing a truly adequate job of regenerative agriculture and food instruction. Not a single one.
And again, a lot of it is due to the fact that you can't teach what you do not know and you can't do research, adequate research on what you do not know.
So I've wrestled with that for some time now and I've looked at, you know, okay, what university is going to take on this mantle and do this? And none of them have. Okay, none of them have.
So finally I became convicted that, you know, Alan, why are you not doing that?
Why are you and your team not doing that? You know, and, and I heard that loud and clear, you know, and, and, and so now, yes, we have picked up that mantle.
And so what we have designed is a comprehensive and immersive curriculum that's also multifaceted.
So we've got a curriculum that will immerse people in the principles of regenerative agriculture and the contextual application, the hands on, boots on the ground application, because you've got to have that. This is not theory only, okay?
You got to put your hands on it. You got to do it to be able to really know how to do it.
Imagine Abraham trying to teach and instruct his children and grandchildren how to shepherd all the livestock. And Abraham had never actually done it himself.
[00:40:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:47] Speaker B: Would he have been a good instructor? No, not at all.
He was able to instruct them because he had boots on the ground. Knowledge.
Practical knowledge.
So we have assembled a team of world class faculty and as you well know, I have also asked you to be a part of this faculty. Okay?
So we have assembled a team of world class faculty that have agreed to be a part of this regenerative university, Libertas University.
And yes, we are going to launch in 2027 and we're going to have basically three types of students. We will have multiple campuses, both here in the US and in other countries around the world. We're working on campuses in Germany, the uk, Australia, different places where we'll have students in residence. Okay.
But we will also have what we call hybrid students.
And those will be students that do a lot of their education online, but then they will do internships, you know, in person on our campuses. And then we'll have online students as well. So the three different trenches of students.
And then in terms of the schools, just like a normal university has a school of agriculture, a school of engineering, a school of business or whatever, we're going to have multiple schools where you are going to have, yes, a school of agriculture, quite obviously, because we're going to be training people to be farmers and ranchers and to manage farms and ranches and all of that.
But we're also going to have a school of wellness and nutrition.
Okay.
Where if that's what people want to really focus on in their education, once they receive the basic principles, then they can, they can major, so to speak, in that. We're going to have a school of culinary and hospitality arts, but regenerative culinary and hospitality, we're going to have a school of regenerative business.
Yeah. So this is going to be a full fledged university.
We already have a number of different key players around the world that are keenly interested in this, including investors.
We already have, for instance, Tony Robbins is already very keen on this and has agreed to be a part of this and what we're doing with the regenerative university.
And obviously Tony has a worldwide audience, you know, at his disposal as well and brings a lot of experience in that regard. So we have, we have a number of key folks and key entities that are all converging to make this a reality.
So we'll be taking in our first class that'll start in the fall of 27 and we're just gonna go from there.
[00:44:06] Speaker A: Wow, that sounds amazing.
So encouraging and hopeful for the future and, and that's really one of the messages I want to get through in the show today and in the last few shows too is, is that there are answers and there is hope. Things are happening.
We see a lot of negative in the world. We see a lot of, a lot of things have been revealed to us, a lot of corruption in all these different institutions and some people are getting even hopeless.
Where in the world is, who's going to fix this?
You know, some people are putting their hope in the next election.
I'm not and I'm encouraging people to not. That's not where the solution's going to come.
The solution is going to be in what Alan just said.
There are people God has gifted. He's gifted all of us. We all have giftings and talents. He's called us all and made us all with a unique identity and given us gifts and talents to steward.
And there's people with the experience and the know how and the maturity to be able to do something like Alan Williams is doing, him and his team are doing to pull this off. It's amazing. And of course it's going to take a team and all the, from investors to faculty to all of it. But that's the beauty of, is you have people that see the vision, they, they see the need and it's going to happen.
So that's so cool.
Alan, I kind of want to just let you opine or just really, you can speak on anything but with the thought of just trying to encourage the audience.
Kind of like what I've just been saying, there's just so much negative out there and I, and what I'm learning more and more is our thoughts. That's what I talked about partly this past weekend, how impactful our thoughts on our DNA, on our mitochondria, on the water, that, that we're one big bag of water. And our thoughts change the shape of that water.
Our thoughts impact. I learned recently from a study the microbiome in our gut can be completely transformed just from our thinking.
Of course, in the negative, if you're stressed, stress, stress changing the ph and that kills the microbes. But in the positive restoration of those microbes just by your heart beliefs.
And so I think the enemy, one of the enemy's tactics is to get us to consume oftentimes through this device right here and scrolling negative, negative, negative. And as a corporate, all these humans in the earth are in a negative mode in their mindset of oh no, another corrupt thing, another corrupt thing. Oh that's awful and horrible. And if we can shift, shift that and all corporately get thinking and scripture tells us to do this. Put your mindset on the things that are true and righteous and good. And I forget what verse that is, but if, I mean it sounds woo woo almost. But if we can all actually take captive our thoughts and don't let it go down that negative path and actually trust God will not leave us or forsake us. And his kingdom is coming more and more, but the kingdom is within. We gotta trust that we gotta walk in it just like Alan and his team are doing.
So just maybe speak to that because you could, everything you just said, you could plop into the medical realm, you could pop it into the financial realm. The, the, the world's way of doing stuff has led us to on the brink, on the precipice in agriculture, but everywhere else too. So it applies everywhere. But maybe just encourage the audience in these last few minutes in any way you want to.
[00:47:32] Speaker B: Absolutely.
The first thing I'll say is this. You know, I've spent my entire life in agriculture. And, and I'm in my 60s now and I've been through periods where I've just been in despair about agriculture and food and what's really facing us.
But I will say that now I see the greatest hope I've ever seen.
We truly, truly have an opportunity to make a dramatic change for the better here.
And, and, and I've already, I witness it every day. I witness it every day.
And it, it starts with the power of God's creation, right?
What he originally placed here and the abundance that he created.
You know, we all think back on Adam and Eve and just how incredibly abundant everything must have been in the garden.
And then we think, oh well, that you know, when Adam and Eve fell, then that all went by the wayside and that just doesn't exist anymore. But no, what I have discovered is that abundance is still here. All we got to do is tap into it and allow it, allow it to express itself. Okay?
And, and, and that's what we're finding. And here's the other thing that I'm discovering and I'm saying this as a scientist, okay? And many scientists can't bring themselves to say this because again, as you said, they think it's Woo woo, okay. Or whatever, fairy dust. But I'm, I'm now pretty well convinced there is no limit on the abundance of this creation. There is no limit.
I don't know that there's a limit to the number of microbes that can exist in the soil, that there's a limit to the amount of diversity that can can be growing on any acre anywhere on this earth.
I'm becoming more and more convinced that the better we steward this creation, the more abundance we're going to see.
You know, and you look at it, God, multiple times through the history of man has tried to get us back to Eden, right? I mean he, first of all, he created Eden to begin with and plot man right down into the middle of it and said, here, steward it, care for it, tend it, right? And then we messed it up, right?
Then he tried again with Noah and his sons after the flood, right? Said okay, here, here it is, I cleansed it. Here's a new Earth, the new world.
Take it. Run with it, guys.
And then we messed it up again.
And then he said to the nation of Israel, I'm gonna pull you out of Egypt and I'm going to take you to the promised land, okay? A land flowing with milk and honey. And if we truly understand what that means for something to flow with milk and honey, that means that the abundance is absolutely beyond our wildest imagination, okay?
And, and when he sent the 12 spies in, that is exactly what they saw. This incredible abundance. A bundle of grapes so huge that it took two men to carry it on a pole in between themselves. You know, I mean, I can pick up a bundle of grapes with two fingers today, you know, so why are we doubting God? Why are we doubting the abundance? Why are we doubting his creation?
When we stop doubting that and we understand that it is still here, we still have the promised land available to us today.
All we got to do is tend to it, we got to care for it, we got to steward it. That to me is the best news out there, you know, and, and again, what we're seeing every day on our farm and on many other farms that we're working with, that is exactly what is happening.
The abundance returns, the productivity returns, the profitability returns, the quality of life returns.
And then the other thing that we as farmers can feel real good about is that we are now growing and placing truly nutrient dense, phytonutrient rich food into, into people's mouths every day. So we are contributing to their health essentially. We're becoming a Part of the medical community. Right.
In essence, we're producing. We're the producers of the medicine rather than the pharmaceutical companies.
[00:52:40] Speaker A: Y.
[00:52:40] Speaker B: And. And I love that part about it. And.
And the other thing that I'm seeing being relative to the university itself, is that we.
We haven't even got this thing started yet, you know, in terms of launching the first class.
And we've had incredible uptake. We haven't had any naysayers. I've had lots of parents and lots of young people that say, my goodness, why would I go to a regular university?
[00:53:11] Speaker A: This is.
[00:53:12] Speaker B: This is where I want to go. Where. This is where I want to send my kids.
And I haven't had a single person that I've approached to be a part of our faculty turn us down. They all say, I want to be a part of that.
[00:53:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:53:25] Speaker B: So that's what I see. I see real hope, real change.
And the other thing that happens here, Ben, that to me is just absolutely phenomenal, is that we begin to steward his creation like we should.
Then guess what? Everything else in our lives changes for the better as well.
[00:53:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:53:54] Speaker B: Yeah, everything.
It really does start just like it started with Adam. It started with the stewardship of the garden that was the foundation for everything else in his life.
It's the same with us. And. And I want to say this to. As my final thought here, do not think this is for farmers and ranchers only. Folks, for all of you out there that do not farm and ranch, you do something else as a vocation and with your lives.
You are not absolved from the responsibility of stewardship of this creation.
You also bear that responsibility.
So that means that the way you manage even your yard, okay, or your backyard garden, the food that you choose to buy, to feed your family, the health decisions that you make, those are all critical stewardship decisions and are stewarding God's creation. So all of us bear this responsibility. And the last thing I'm going to say is, I'm going to issue this challenge to our churches because our churches have been very guilty, very guilty of ignoring this form of stewardship, and we need to quit that. Why do we think of stewardship? We think about the monies we give to the church or the service we give to the church, but yet we don't think about stewardship with the foods that we put in our bodies and the foods that we even serve at our churches. When we're. We're feeding people donuts in our Sunday school classrooms, we're feeding them the goldfish and the honey Nut Cheerios. And, you know, keep naming it. Okay. The junk. The junk, you know, being.
We have prayer boards, you know, at church every Sunday.
You know, if we had somebody that was having health problems because they were addicted to alcohol or drugs or cigarettes, we would pray for them. But we wouldn't just pray for them. We would also say, brother, sister, you need to get off your drugs, your alcohol, your cigarettes, because that is the crux of your problem. And we can pray for your healing, but if you keep doing that, you're going to go right back to where you were. But yet we see all of these things that are caused by our poor eating habits, Right?
And we know that that's what generated that disease, that chronic issue.
And we say, well, we're going to pray for your healing, but I'm not going to say a word to you about how you eat.
That's your own business. And you know, brother, I'm not going to bother you with that. Really?
Really.
I think we're wrong in that, Ben.
[00:57:03] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. And it's actually a very touchy subject, but I'm glad you brought it up. It's a word that needs to be spoken. It's. It's a heartfelt. I know that's in love that you just said that. I concur a hundred percent.
There were some stories I heard this weekend.
I won't. I don't think I need to share right now. We're out of time. But just. It reinforced what Alan just said, and I want to end it on this, too.
And mainly because this AI data center thing is just so in the news and now. No, it is a big deal in the water consumption in that thing.
And this isn't to defend those AI centers at all. I mean, I think they're being put up for nefarious reasons to control us all. That's another conversation for another day.
But going to the. What Alan was talking about, the waste, the food waste, there. There's plenty in God's kingdom. There's an abundance. It's a lack of proper stewardship, utilization, distribution.
It's that simple. We've got to rethink how we distribute stuff, how we utilize stuff, how we take care of stuff, how we don't waste stuff, and just how we produce things. That's where it's all at. I mean, all that water that's running off this cotton field out here, that's because it's not regenerated and can't hold the water and it runs off into the ditch and run. Well, it runs somewhere, it's running off somewhere, but it's still in the overall scheme of the environment. It's either down in the Gulf of Mexico or it's, it's somewhere.
But we're, it's not being utilized and distributed properly because those water cycles have broken. Because we don't have roots in the ground and we don't have the biology and we don't have the water cycle going. We don't have the clouds and we don't have the humidity and we don't have all the things. But all that can come back and it can come back quick. When you ask God about it, what do you want me to know? What do you want me to do? Boom. He'll reveal it and he'll show it. And when the enemy comes and says, no, you can't do that, what will people think? Or there's no money or whatever, then you, you take that lie and you shove it and God will show you the way to do it and the provision will be there.
This is the way the kingdom works. So don't let that fear and scarcity mindset keep you in that old box of the world's way of doing things or we are going to fall off that cliff, but we're not going to fall off that cliff. There's enough people that love the truth and are moving in that and I encourage the whole audience to do it in your life every day, just like Alan said, especially buying that food. And is it a little more expensive? Maybe, but you know, I just said at the top of the show, get off that expensive health insurance. Get well, get, get off your 15 to $2,000 a month health insurance. That's not good Stewardship. Get a $500 a month health share or even cheaper than that. There's some out there. I take that extra thousand bucks and go buy the food and that keeps me healthy and it supports the farmer at the local farmer's market. So it all works, guys, just like Alan said. It's a win, win, win all the way down the line when everybody gets in to the kingdom and doing it a kingdom way.
All right, Allan, last thing real quick. Just want to tell everybody again about the conference. Etta E T T A Etta Hills farm dot com. You can go there and scroll down to events and click on that. Get your tickets. What was that date, Allen? October 8th and 9th.
[01:00:22] Speaker B: Is it October 8th and 9th? And again, this is for absolutely everybody.
So it's where we can unite farmers and ranchers with the consumer.
It's where we all can interact together. And that's pretty rare at a conference that we can get everybody together and interact together. So we want to see you there.
[01:00:46] Speaker A: Yes, sir. I'd encourage you all to go. Like you said, not just farmers and ranchers, everybody especially just to get more encouraged. It's so encouraging. When we come back from these conferences, we're like minded believers are together, fellowship and in the truth. So y' all check it out@a hillsfarm.com and and we'll be back next week with another great show. Alan, thanks again for joining us.
[01:01:04] Speaker B: Thank you.
