Episode 168: "Debunked by Nature" and Lessons from Farm Life with Mollie Engelhart

Regenerative Agriculture Podcast

AEA Marketing

Science, Natural Sciences, Earth Sciences

4.7 • 548 Ratings

🗓️ 25 September 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After growing up on a farm, Mollie Engelhart built a vegan restaurant empire in Los Angeles, which she planned to sell before COVID disrupted her plans. During the pandemic, she lost her income and spent time back on the farm, using nature's lens to question societal constructs like veganism. These experiences inspired her book, Debunked by Nature, where she shares her shift to truth-seeking based on natural cycles. She now lives on a Texas ranch, advocating for authentic living through storytelling.

Mollie experiments with regenerative techniques on her Texas ranch, like mulching to combat oak wilt and bale grazing to boost soil health in caliche soils. She advocates for local food systems, resilient communities, and soil stewardship through her book and Epoch Times writings. She aims to inspire sustainable farming through her innovative practices, like propagating adapted trees and hedging crop plantings.

In this episode, John and Mollie discuss:

Shifting away from veganism and recognizing life-death cycles in food production.
Building resilient communities through local food systems and family governance.
Using deep mulching with juniper chips to reverse oak wilt in Texas' calcareous soils.
Enhancing soil fertility through bale grazing, leveraging carbon to boost pasture growth.
Adapting crop plantings, like late-season corn and sesame, to hedge against erratic weather and pests.
Propagating locally adapted tree varieties to support regional farming success.
Observing local ecosystems to inform management, avoiding blanket solutions for diverse soils.

Additional Resources
Click here to order Mollie's book.

To read Mollie's opinion section of the Epoch Times, click here.

About John Kempf
John Kempf is the founder of Advancing Eco Agriculture (AEA). A top expert in biological and regenerative farming, John founded AEA in 2006 to help fellow farmers by providing the education, tools, and strategies that will have a global effect on the food supply and those who grow it.

Through intense study and the knowledge gleaned from many industry leaders, John is building a comprehensive systems-based approach to plant nutrition – a system solidly based on the sciences of plant physiology, mineral nutrition, and soil microbiology.

Support For This Show & Helping You Grow
Since 2006, AEA has been on a mission to help growers become more resilient, efficient, and profitable with regenerative agriculture.

AEA works directly with growers to apply its unique line of liquid mineral crop nutrition products and biological inoculants. Informed by cutting-edge plant and soil data-gathering techniques, AEA's science-based programs empower farm operations to meet the crop quality markers that matter the most.

AEA has created real and lasting change on millions of acres with its products and data-driven services by working hand-in-hand with growers to produce healthier soil, stronger crops, and higher profits.

Beyond working on the ground with growers, AEA leads in regenerative agriculture media and education, producing and distributing the popular and highly-regarded Regenerative Agriculture Podcast, inspiring webinars, and other educational content that serve as go-to resources for growers worldwide.

Learn more about AEA's regenerative programs and products: https://www.advancingecoag.com

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi, friends. Welcome back to the Regenerative Agriculture Podcast. This is John, and we're back with
0:04.9	Molly Englehart. But I wanted to have you back because I think your current work and the book that you're in
0:11.1	the process of releasing is so relevant for our times where we have this increasing polarity
0:18.4	and this division between farmers and their consumers.
0:24.3	And there is this moment following what happened with COVID and with growing awareness
0:30.4	of food supply chain issues and collective public health issues over the course of last three
0:34.8	or four years, that people people there's an openness to asking
0:38.5	questions that hasn't existed for quite some time it feels like and your your message and what
0:47.9	you've been working on here over the last year or two addresses this so directly so um i don't
0:53.7	want to to put to use my words to describe what you're doing.
0:57.9	Tell us a bit about your book and your message and what it is you're working on.
1:02.1	Well, my book really came out of my relationship with nature. And I was living, I grew up out of farms, so I have like a farming
1:13.4	childhood background. And then I moved to Los Angeles and lived a very modern LA life for many,
1:21.0	many years. I was, I would say, a feminist and a workaholic and all of the strive to do, can do what men can do, da-da-da-da,
1:30.5	all of that was very loud in me. And I built up this empire. And at the beginning of COVID,
1:37.8	before COVID started, I was selling it for between 25 and 31 million dollars. And so I thought I had succeeded.
1:45.5	I had built this thing.
1:47.0	I grew it bigger.
1:48.4	I'm selling it to a venture capital firm.
1:51.1	And I could just be a full-time mom and shift what I was doing.
1:55.9	And somewhere along the way I'd learned about regenerative agriculture
1:59.0	and really had shifted what was important
	...

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