Green Cover Podcast

Kevin Wiltse is a fifth-generation Kansas farmer who has spent over a decade transitioning from cash cropping to perennial pasture and grazing cover crops for more profitable grazing. Five years into one of the worst droughts in recent memory, his cattle herd is bigger than it's ever been. In this episode, Keith sits down with Kevin to talk through his shift to a forage-based, perennial-centered operation, including how he cut inputs, built grazing infrastructure, and kept his herd intact through drought years that would have broken most operations. Kevin also shares the enterprise economics behind his decision-making, what winning the 2025 Leopold Conservation Award in Kansas means to him, and why he believes this kind of change has to come from within before it can show up on the balance sheet.

Kelly Ryerson and Ryland Englehart co-founded American Regeneration to close the gap between what the best regenerative farmers know and what policymakers have never heard. In this episode, they share their unlikely journeys — from fighting pesticides and running vegan restaurants — to becoming two of regenerative agriculture's most passionate advocates. They dig into their work connecting soil health, human health, and policy at both the state and federal level. They also preview their upcoming New American Dream Conference in Bandera, Texas, where farmers, doctors, homesteaders, and policymakers will gather around a shared vision of healing the land and the people on it. If you believe a nation that rebuilds its soil rebuilds itself, this conversation is for you.Learn more about the American Regeneration Conference on May 1-2, 2026: https://events.acresusa.com/american-regeneration

Glenn and Carol Elzinga of Alder Spring Ranch were losing cattle to wolves, losing money, and ready to walk away from everything — until they discovered that the answer wasn't new technology or better systems, but going back to the way God designed animals and land to work together. By stopping fighting creation and starting to work with it, they watched their soil organic matter triple, plant diversity explode from just two dominant species to over 80, and beavers come back to restore their waterways. In this episode, Glenn dives deep into the relationship between grazing animals, living roots, and soil biology — and how understanding that connection transformed not just their land, but the quality and flavor of the beef it produces. If you believe the land can do better tomorrow than it does today, this conversation is for you.

In this episode, Keith welcomes back Greg Thoren, a regenerative farmer from northwest Illinois, for a highly anticipated follow-up conversation. Greg farms approximately 2,400 acres that are all no-till, non-GMO, and cover cropped. This time around, Keith and Greg discuss Greg's 60-inch row corn system, sharing why the wider row spacing has been a game-changer. Greg has found that 60 inch spacing work better for capturing the sunlight necessary to produce enough forage value to offset the yield tradeoff. Greg also discusses his custom cover crop and forage mixes, and using virtual fence collars with his cattle. Finally, the conversation turns to the future. Greg and his wife have spent decades building a thriving regenerative system on land they're unwilling to watch revert to conventional farming. So rather than selling or renting to the highest bidder, Greg is charting a unique path for transition: bringing in three young families with regenerative mindsets to farm the operation together. Greg's innovative approach extends not only to day-to-day operations on his farm, but to securing its future. It's not just regenerative farming, it's regenerative community building.

In this episode of the Green Cover Podcast, host Keith Berns welcomes Abe Collins of Vermont, an innovative farmer and systems thinker who has spent decades developing tools and practices to rapidly heal degraded land. Abe shares how combining deep rooted plant diversity, custom rip sower technology, and biological inputs can dramatically improve soil health, water infiltration, and drought resilience. The conversation then expands into Abe's compelling vision of "watershed contracting," where farmer cooperatives organize to heal entire watersheds in service to their communities, moving agriculture beyond commodity pricing into a transparent, cost plus model that benefits everyone. If you're passionate about the future of regenerative agriculture and building resilient communities from the ground up, this is an episode you won't want to miss.