Michael Thiele was raised on a farm west of Dauphin, Man.
Back then, about four decades ago, Thiele and his dad talked frequently about farming, discussing tractors, equipment, land prices and of course, the weather.
However, one topic never came up.
“In all that time growing up, I never had a single conversation with my father about soil,” said Thiele, a grazing club co-ordinator and regenerative agriculture consultant in Manitoba.
“We bought land. We farmed land. But we never talked about soil. Or what’s going on in soil, the life in soil.”
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These days, Thiele spends most of his time talking about soil and the biology of soil. For more than a decade he has been studying and learning about regenerative agriculture, a philosophy where livestock, cover crops, diverse crop rotations and zero tillage are used to rejuvenate soil health and improve farm productivity.
In July, Thiele will spend three days talking about soil at a Soil Health Academy event in Brookdale, Man., about 60 kilometres northeast of Brandon.
The Soil Health Academy is an American organization that teaches farmers how to “increase profitability, build resiliency into the land, decrease input costs,” says the group’s website.
The three-day workshop is the only Soil Health Academy event in Canada this year. The scheduled featured speakers are Gabe Brown, a farmer from Bismarck, N.D., Allen Williams, a grazing management and soil health expert from South Carolina and Ray Archuleta, a soil scientist who worked for the United States Natural Resources Conservation Service.
The cost of the three-day workshop is US$1,275.
“Some would argue that’s a lot of money,” said Thiele, adding the amount is tiny compared to the annual cost of fertilizer, seed and other inputs.
“Sometimes you’ve got to step up and say education is important too.”
The price tag isn’t scaring away farmers because the event is three-quarters full.
“It will be full. We cap it at 40 or so,” Thiele said.
The fact that some farmers are willing to pay more than C$1,500 to attend a workshop on soil may indicate that soil health is becoming a topic of conversation and regenerative agriculture is gaining traction in Western Canada.
While it is difficult to estimate how many farmers are practising some form of regenerative agriculture, General Mills hopes the numbers continue to grow.
In February, the Minneapolis company, with annual sales of $17 billion, announced a formal commitment to regenerative agriculture.
It wants to see one million acres of farmland managed with regenerative practices by 2030. General Mills is providing $650,000 to teach farmers about cover crops, diverse crop rotations and soil health.
The investment is having an impact.
Thiele helped organize two regenerative agriculture workshops this winter on the Prairies: one in Yorkton and the other in Brandon.
Both events, paid for with General Mills money, were packed with farmers.
“(There) isn’t a lack of interest. There’s a lack of people … that know (enough) about regenerative ag that can be useful to farmers,” Thiele said. “I’ve been hanging around this for about 15 years now and nothing happened. Then, all of a sudden, when it rains it pours.”
