Episode 97: Integrating Trees Into Working Pastures with Austin Unruh

Regenerative Agriculture Podcast

AEA Marketing

Earth Sciences, Science, Natural Sciences

4.7 • 546 Ratings

🗓️ 7 December 2023

⏱️ 77 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Austin Unruh founded Trees for Graziers to help farmers establish trees in pastures on a large scale. Austin has worked on over 400 acres for 25 different working farms. Getting trees planted at a large scale and an affordable price led to lots of experimentation to ensure protection and integration into pasture that was minimally intrusive.

It's his goal to make silvopasture as easy and cost-effective as possible for farmers. Trees for Graziers offers everything from planning, planting, and aftercare to growing silvo-specific nursery stock.

In this episode, Austin and John discuss:

The importance of integrating trees into pasture
How to protect young trees from rodent damage
The many benefits that trees provide
Tree species that have the greatest opportunities in silvopasture
How to best match tree characteristics to farm goals

Additional Resources
To learn more about Austin Unruh and Trees for Graziers, please visit:
https://treesforgraziers.com/

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/

VIDEO: To learn more from John Kempf about regenerative agriculture, watch this conversation between John and three AEA grower partners about how regenerative agriculture is changing lives and conventional farming: https://youtu.be/n9U6GwbYPDk

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi friends, this is John. Welcome back to the regenerative agriculture podcast, where we talk about all kinds of fun stuff related to agronomic sciences and human health and cultural management practices that can regenerate our ecosystems that we're a part of. I'm really been looking forward to this conversation. My guest today is Austin Unru, who is perhaps of the various people I know, if he's on the forefront of innovating
0:24.6	and leading and thinking about opportunities for silo pasture that can be developed in the future
0:30.7	and is actively doing this work in the space now. So Austin, thank you for joining me here.
0:35.7	I've really been looking forward to this discussion. Can you tell us a little bit about your journey, your pathway,
0:42.4	and the work that you're doing today, and what got you here?
0:45.5	Absolutely.
0:46.5	Thank you, John, for having me.
0:48.0	Well, so I'll introduce myself a little bit,
0:50.7	and the company that I run, so Austin Unruh,
0:54.0	and I run trees for grazers.
0:55.6	And as the name of the company suggests, our focus is indeed on integrating silvo pasture,
1:01.9	integrating trees into pastures. And it's been a very circuitous route in order to get here.
1:08.1	By no means did I intend to get here, maybe 10 years ago, if you
1:12.3	told me 10 years ago that I was going to be leading a civil pasture focus company, I probably
1:17.0	would have asked you what silver pasture was. So I did not grow up on a farm. My dad grew up on a farm,
1:22.4	a Jersey dairy in Minnesota, but I myself did not grow up on a farm. But came out of college wanting to get
1:29.4	my hands in the ground and wanting to do something where I had a lasting impact in the natural world.
1:36.7	And I wanted to have something involved with agriculture. I had read the book Restoration
1:41.2	Agriculture by Mark Shepard, and that inspired me to the vision of
1:46.4	landscape scale agroforestry and wanting to see agriculture that was both economically
1:54.7	and also ecologically viable, sustaining, and led to thriving both ecologically and economically. So that was kind of my
2:04.3	guiding star, as it were. And I started out with a company, well, company, it was just me. It was just
	...

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