Author: Leonore Salvado

In 2022, Greenacres introduced a unique research collaboration with Dr. Stephan van Vliet and Utah State University (USU). You can learn more about this project here. The research aims to study the connection between agricultural practices and human health using the science of metabolomics, which is the study of metabolites (small molecules such as organic acids, secondary compounds, vitamins, etc).

We are currently wrapping up the second (and final) year of the clinical trial, where study participants are undergoing dietary changes for 14 weeks. For 7 weeks the participants ate a diet of foods produced in an agroecological manner (e.g., pasture-based meats, eggs, and dairy, generative no-till vegetables) with the vast majority of those foods being raised at Greenacres. After a 2-week “washout period” (i.e. going back to their traditional “Western” diet), the participants wrap up the remaining 7 weeks by switching to a comparable whole foods diet as before, only this time the ingredients are grown using conventional practices (e.g., commodity feedlot raised meats, conventional eggs, dairy, vegetables and greens).

In October 2023, Dr. van Vliet visited Greenacres to report preliminary data from year one of the study. To reiterate, these were all preliminary data. The USU research team still has a lot of data to analyze prior to making any conclusions, however, the initial results showed some promising insights. Perhaps most importantly, irrespective of production practices, switching to a whole foods diet consisting of fresh meats, vegetables, grains, and dairy products has a beneficial effect on human health markers, including a 40% reduction in triglyceride levels. This is important because both diets were high in meat intake, often above the level that the participants reported as part of their normal diet. Also, the intent was for the participants to maintain their pre-study weight; however, participants on average lost weight. In addition to the improved health markers, there was also evidence to suggest that many of the agro-ecologically raised products displayed higher levels of metabolites, specifically several secondary compounds that are produced by plants and then found in pasture-raised meat products.

Have you ever wondered why fertile soil tends to be darker in color? Soil fertility is largely attributed to soil organic matter, and higher levels of soil organic matter usually correspond to higher water and nutrient holding capacity as well as darker color. Many people think of soil organic matter as primarily coming from soil microbes decomposing biomass and root exudates, but historically a significant portion of soil organic matter in grassland ecosystems came directly from fire—pyrogenic carbon. Some of the most fertile soils in the Midwest experienced repetitive fire in the natural ecology of tallgrass prairie ecosystems, but 3-5% of the total biomass in a prairie fire would burn incompletely and leave a “char” residue on the soil surface. Nutrients released as a result of the fire generated highly palatable forage that was preferentially grazed by bison in a phenomenon known as “pyric herbivory.” In short, repeated applications of pyrogenic carbon and bison manure over hundreds to thousands of years created highly fertile soils that persist to this day, and we are trying to emulate this process in our integrated crop-livestock system known as the Ley Field. However, instead of using fire and herds of bison, we are using compost and a material called “biochar.”