"Dirt to Soil" by Gabe Brown - What farming could be?

Twenty years ago, I read "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" by Jared Diamond. That book described how ancient civilisations collapsed through environmental degradation caused by deforestation and unsustainable agriculture. It gave the example of Easter Island, where deforestation left its society unable to sustain itself, resulting in ecological and cultural collapse. A clear illustration of how short-term thinking and overexploitation of natural systems can undermine long-term stability. To me, the problem was obvious; the solution, less so.

That changed in 2019 when we began applying regenerative practices at The Land Group to restore soils depleted by years of intensive monoculture. Since then, we have developed a highly scalable regenerative grazing model that we use to improve productivity and restore ecological function in Uruguay, Paraguay, Portugal, and soon Brazil.

Regenerative agriculture has recently gained mainstream attention. But its core ideas are not new, which is why it helps to revisit the original thinkers who shaped this space, from André Voisin, who laid the foundations for rotational grazing, to Allan Savory and Gabe Brown, who linked them to soil health and ecosystem function.

I recently reread Brown’s Dirt to Soil, one of the most grounded and valuable books on the subject. The author explains how years of crop failures and financial pressure led him to question conventional practices and completely rethink his farming methods.

The agrochemical industry has spent decades pushing synthetic inputs and standardised protocols. However, no two farms are alike, and one-size-fits-all approaches do not work in the long term. I appreciate how this book challenges the industry’s long-standing assumptions, making a strong case for observation, experimentation, and the importance of stepping back to reassess how we work the land.

Unlike Savory, who provides a prescriptive framework, Brown shares practical experience and the reasoning behind it, interspersed with personal stories. He never comes across as dogmatic in this book or the various documentaries in which he appears. He is a grounded, thoughtful farmer who learns by doing and sticks to what works.

We often refer to this book when facing unusual questions. Recently, one of our newly converted farms experienced a tick infestation. The conventional, chemical fix is expensive and often worsens the problem by increasing resistance. We need a better solution, so our team member, Gonçalo Pereira Miguel, began researching the use of chickens for pest control, a simple, natural approach inspired by examples in this book.

If you work in agriculture, land management, or sustainability, and you are serious about building something resilient and scalable, read this book. Dirt to Soil will not hand you a step-by-step formula, but it will make you think outside the box.

It has worked for us.

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By Francisco Roque de Pinho