(The following is from my monthly newsletter. This series began in March 2022 and has continued for nearly a full year, with its final installment in February 2023. Below is the “better” edited version from what I originally emailed to my followers.)

The Primary Limiting Factors

Despite our primary focus being on both money and labour–actually, more money than labour but more on that later–we still can’t ignore how creativity still fits into how to make regenerative grazing work. You could consider this as a “part two” from last month.

Without labour and money, creativity is meaningless and amounts to nothing. It’s just ideas put out on a piece of paper. However, creativity still remains the primary limiting factor to being able to do anything. Labour comes second, and money is third. You might disagree, but allow me to explain.

Without some form of creativity, no matter if it’s your own ingenuity or some amazing idea you decided to copy and incorporate into your operation from someone else, you can easily get stuck in a rut. Easily. Creativity allows us to not only expand our knowledge of the “raw resource” (land, animals, soil, plants, water, and so on) but find the means to make products from it. Creativity also allows us to find ways to manage the resource so that we don’t deplete them. Creativity is what helps us figure out what is sustainable and how to be regenerative.

Both creativity and labour are applied to the raw resource in order to get a desired product. Creativity is used to find ways to still produce a product from that resource with as little labour as possible. Essentially, creativity is a fun way of finding ways to make our work (and lives) easier.

Human ingenuity is pretty cool, eh?

Creativity, though, is more than just the invention of convenience. It can be the very thing that saves our skins when money is terrifyingly tight.

Greg Judy, a regenerative rancher in Missouri, is a great example to uphold in this context. Greg loves to share his story of how he got started in regenerative grazing with barely $10 in his bank account. Money was extremely tight after a horrific divorce, yet his creativity and labour were anything but. And look where that’s got him into today!

Far too many of us have been led to believe that money is the primary limiting factor. That, nothing can be done without [having enough] money, or without investing in… something. But, money can’t buy human ingenuity. It can “buy” labour (as in hiring someone), but your creativity comes from you and what you can make from what you have existing around you. From there, you can create money or “wealth.”

It is true that insufficient money limits what you can do. But, again, that should not stop you from figuring out what to do with what you already have, or can get for super-cheap or free.

Labour is the work that is put into the generation of cash or wealth after creativity has created the thing (good or service) that requires work to create. Money comes into play when you look at the costs of creating that good or service. Labour still carries a cost. So, if there’s no money in doing the work, what’s the point of doing the work?

Labour can be limiting if your health and well-being do not allow you to do what you wish you are physically able. However, if you’re able to hire someone to help you, the more the merrier.

But, if you find you’re limited in all three areas… God help you!

Money in Its Many Forms

Historically, “money” was more or less a mere token considered as an important aspect of trade. A trade for a service; an exchange (or trade) for goods. Money wasn’t necessarily considered in the concept of bartering for goods and/or services; for example, exchanging a prized bison pelt for a set consisting of a well-made, hand-crafted hunting knife and a set of arrows and a (traditional) hunting bow. Money was also mere tokens made of precious metals: gold, copper, silver and nickel. Prized and coveted items to have in one’s possession.

Money, though, has been taken to a whole different level. “Money” is now considered as a development of a line of credit, the centralized creation of money, interest or compounding interest on a loan or bank account, cyber-coins, or electronic transfers. Sadly, such modernized concepts of money have destroyed that old-school, token-style trading relationship.

Today, money is seen as a form of reward in the end for both creativity and for the hard work involved. That reward = wealth.

Wealth is much more broad than the numbers you see in your bank account. Wealth is more broadly described in terms of the goods and services and natural resources available to us. the homes that shelter us, and even the closeness of the ties to one another.

Money is still the oil that keeps the big machine of society moving. Money remains a vital and useful tool in all aspects of our lives and our business.

There are three types of dollars generated–Mineral, Solar, and Paper.

Mineral Dollars

Briefly, mineral dollars are the wealth that is generated from turning ancient sunlight into wealth. Any kind of wealth derived from coal, oil, natural gas, gold, nickel, copper and even soil is considered a mineral dollar.

Unlike solar dollars below, mineral dollars are not renewable (or not sustainable), and will eventually dry up. Poor agricultural practices that mine the soil cannot sustain themselves for long, in other words.

Solar Dollars

It’s a different story when mineral dollars are produced while building soil. Potentially, these can be earned forever and potentially increase for as long as there is the care taken to take care of the soil. If suddenly things change and the soil is no longer being cared for properly (as in, if a healthy pasture with healthy soil is tilled up to grow corn and soybeans using synthetics and chemical inputs), these gained mineral dollars “get spent” and are lost.

Plants (and us) are very dependent on soil. Because of this, a farmer/rancher is not strictly producing solar dollars unless soil life is being supported in some way, and the soil quality (or soil health) itself is being enhanced and maintained.

Solar dollars are the best source of wealth to generate for regenerative grazers, bar none.

Paper Dollars

Paper dollars, funnily enough, are based no deeper nor more solid than the public’s own confidence in the economy or the government.

This is probably the single most unstable form of money. Paper money can be increased or decreased as land values, interest rates, stock prices, inflation or currency exchange rates fluctuate.

What to Base Success on? How is this important?

Solar dollars are the best form to measure success with for my fellow farmers and ranchers. The more you can generate and rely on regenerative grazing practices, the more insulation you have for yourself and your operation from unpredictable swings in commodity prices, interest rates, and so on.

However, it’s also not healthy to ignore these things. In order to keep up with their unpredictable fluctuations, it takes a nimble and flexible attitude towards them to be able to manage life and the business around them.

All forms of borrowing, especially if it’s based on current real estate markets, involve paper dollars to some extent. Your position is more stable and reliable if you can finance your plan out of solar dollars that are generated by your operative creativity–or, the creativity you put into running your operation as smoothly as possible.

Money & Labour in Terms of Quantity, Time and Energy

How much are you willing to spend? How much money, and how much hard work can and will you spend?

Can you borrow money? Can you hire someone to do the work for you? Your time and energy is precious, and a limit needs to be put on how much you are willing to spend.

This requires going back to your grazing plan[s] and determining how to efficiently (time and energy) and effectively (financial cost) make it work.

For instance, are you able to set up permanent interior fencing, or is it better in your context to start with temporary electric fencing?

What about water? Will animals need to travel for water, or can you find a way to bring it to them with a mobile watering system? It’ll take money and labour to set up any kind of watering system. A mobile watering system may be cheaper than one that is more central in the pasture. It depends on what materials you use and how much you’re comfortable spending. It also depends on how you’ve laid out your grazing plan where you would’ve incorporated a pasture watering system into it.

You might find you’ll have to go with the cheaper stuff first before moving to the better, more expensive materials. Especially if money is tight at the get-go. Or, you may have to get innovative and find some farmers or other people willing to part with certain materials they don’t need anymore… you never know until you try, right? Right!

Once you get going and get a bit more income, then you can consider upgrading. Then again, that’s all up to you and your context. Maybe you won a million bucks and can afford some of the more expensive stuff at the beginning, who knows?

In the End…

In the end, it’s all up to you. For this newsletter, I couldn’t get into stuff about ROIs or gross revenue or gross margin analysis or anything like that, as that would take up way too much time for you to read. Maybe in a future newsletter…?

Today, I wanted to leave you with some nuggets of information to take home and to simmer your thoughts on in this regenerative grazing journey.

The next post is the final chapter of this series. We will be discussing technology, and rumour has it that I might have some interesting stuff to share… stay tuned!