At first glance, not much sets Joe Frey’s acreage just west of Fallon apart from the surrounding Northern Nevada farms and ranch land.

Golden stubs of alfalfa and grass poke pointy heads out of the earth; cattle huddle in a corner of a field as the Carson River meanders nearby. 

It’s what the naked eye can’t see that sets Frey’s operation apart.

Only organic products and processes are employed across the 1,000 acres of working land. But farming organically isn’t enough for Frey, who considers himself not just a producer but a “land steward.” His farm is also certified regenerative.

“When people say, ‘What is regenerative?’ I say, ‘It’s beyond organic,’” Frey said on a sunny February afternoon while driving down one of the many roads that cross the property.

Regenerative agriculture is a growing movement that focuses on restoring soil and ecosystem health through changes in agricultural production — emphasizing soil, water, plant, animal and consumer health over industrialized, chemical-reliant production.

There are no formal definitions of regenerative agriculture, but there are some agreed upon basic tenets such as reducing chemical inputs and working with natural systems rather than controlling them. Its implementation can lead to improved soil health, water conservation and a healthier food supply.

It’s a concept that some land stewards are now looking to expand in Nevada through legislation.

“Soil is a living thing. If it’s not alive, it’s just dirt,” Frey told lawmakers in February. “There should be tons of life teeming in the soil.”

“Better soil grows better plants; better plants provide more nutrition.”

For the second consecutive session, Assm. Selena LaRue Hatch (D-Reno) is championing a bill that would implement a soil health program “to facilitate the conservation, protection and development of the renewable natural resources of this State, which includes soil.”

AB80 would create an advisory board and a healthy soils initiative to encourage the voluntary adoption of soil health practices by agricultural producers.  

If the bill passes, Nevada will join 19 states that have codified soil health programs and would allow the state “to basically hit the ground running,” said Jake Tibbits, Eureka County natural resources manager. “It may be an initiative on paper right now, but it would create the formal space to bring in partnerships … to get a groundswell of support to stand it up.”

The proof is in the soil

Although soil appears lifeless on the surface, it’s not an inert substance — it is filled with bacteria, fungi and other microbes.

Healthy soil regulates water, sustains plant and animal life, filters pollutants, cycles nutrients and supports plants.

While the widespread understanding of the importance of soil health has only gained traction in the last several decades, nearly a century ago, the importance of having healthy soil was front and center.

In the 1930s, severe dust storms and drought dubbed the Dust Bowl plagued the Great Plains in the central United States. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, soil conservation was a priority; the Soil Erosion Service was created in 1933 under the Department of Interior and, in 1935, Congress directed the secretary of agriculture to establish the Soil Conservation Service (later renamed the Natural Resources Conservation Service) under the United States Department of Agriculture.

Roosevelt also encouraged states to create conservation districts; there are now roughly 3,000 districts across the nation, including 28 in Nevada. Those districts assist with management of Nevada’s natural resources — including soil. 

During the 2019 annual meeting of the Nevada Association of Conservation Districts that had an emphasis on soil health, attendees expressed a “groundswell of support” for starting a healthy soil program, said Tibbits, who serves on the association’s board.

“Farmers have been leading the soil health movement,” said Chuck Schembre, a regenerative specialty crop consultant and former director of UNR’s Desert Farming Initiative who helped work on the bill, told The Nevada Independent. In his experience, he said academics and others wanted to first see tangible results of regenerative agriculture practices and “farmers have really created the proof in the pudding.” 

In 2021, Nevada lawmakers passed a resolution (AJR2) recognizing that healthy soils are linked to the quantity and quality of water. In 2023, LaRue Hatch (who grew up on a ranch) introduced AB109, a soil health bill that mirrors her current legislation. While AB109 passed unanimously out of its first committee, it eventually died because it requested $250,000 in state funds to begin the program. Last August, the Interim Joint Natural Resources Committee voted to bring the concept back to the 2025 session.

As talks of budget constraints swirl this session, LaRue Hatch has already introduced an amendment to AB80 that strips it of requests for state appropriations, instead allowing for private donations and federal funding.

“We made that change in hopes we can stand up the program,” she said.

If the bill passes, an advisory board can be put into place and regulations can be developed, she said, and although the program won’t have state funding for grants, it can offer education and provide a mechanism for the state to pull in federal money.

‘There are people out there who are searching for this’

In 2019, the same year the Nevada Association of Conservation Districts held its soil health meeting, Frey attended a Texas conference where he heard a former federal soil scientist discuss regenerative agriculture. Frey, who’d grown up watching generations of his family work the land, also farmed in a conventional style, but what he heard at the conference struck a chord in him.

When he returned to Nevada, he jumped “whole hog” into trying regenerative practices.

He diversified the crops on his property, focusing on growing a mix of alfalfa and grasses. He eliminated all synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. He eschewed a prescriptive rotation schedule for cattle for one that paid attention to how the soil looked beneath their hooves.

It took some time for Frey’s new business model to catch on. For decades, his family’s operation had catered to local dairies and feedlots. As Frey started focusing on regenerative practices, traditional dairy farmers and feedlot owners weren’t interested in working with him anymore, his business partner Adrienne Snow said.

“It was too new, too different,” she said.

In addition to switching up their ranching and farming practices, Frey and Snow had to focus on cultivating new customers.

“I know not everybody will see the value, but there are people out there who are searching for this,” Snow recalled telling Frey.

In the past decade, they’ve created a business that is certified organic, certified regenerative and certified weed free.

“There’s doing some soil health practices, and then there’s being 100 percent intentional where all your farming is centered around soil health,” Schembre said. “It’s a big commitment that requires a lot of education and support.” 

Not everyone can do what Frey has done, Tibbits said. Some producers need more direction, education or help to try new practices. That, proponents of AB80 say, is something the bill could do.

And with about 8.5 percent of Nevada’s 70 million acres dedicated to farming and ranching, small, incremental steps by producers could have large-scale effects, Frey said.

“If you got 80 percent of the people to convert 10 percent of their practices, you’d have way more of an impact than if you got 10 percent of the farmers to convert 100 percent of their practices,” Frey said.