Soil expert Cuauhtemoc Villa restores ecosystems
Biochar, bokashi, guerrilla gardening, food sovereignty, and giving former felons a chance.
Cuauhtemoc Villa is a soil expert. He restores soil ecosystems.
Cuauhtemoc is, without hyperbole, one of the best in the world at what he does. He consults major players in cannabis, food, and wine. He also spends a lot of time inspiring the next generation of regenerative farmers.
Here's a very off-the-cuff conversation that Cuauhtemoc and I had together. I hope you enjoy it. I loved it so much that I ran it as the first ever interview for Down-To-Earth. Audio available on Spotify, Apple, and Stitcher.
Before we even get into bokashi, biochar, all the ways that we can make soil better and help support it, what is the state of soil in the United States? Why do we need to do this in the first place? What's going on with soil?
Picture soil in the same way that you look at your bank account, for example. We've been withdrawing, and withdrawing, and withdrawing, and withdrawing, and nobody's putting money back into the bank, so funds are low. Funds are low. That's what regenerative farming is about - putting resources back so that we can continue to withdraw from those systems.
Okay. We basically have been, through the way that we're farming, just depleting the soil? And that's bad because there's only so much of it that we can use? Are we running out of soil, or is it what's in the soil that counts?
Well, if it was just the soil, that would be more easy to deal with, but we have runoff going into the water, into the streams. That's affecting the ecosystems. There are so many ways that we affect the ecology of natural systems. We've just been doing this badly for so long without incorporating the natural ways in our productions, and now we're sick. The ground is sick. That's what regeneration's about. We're bringing it back. We've got tools to bring it back.
The way that I hear you talk about soil in the videos about you online and the interviews that you've done, it's almost as if you're a master chef. It's like “you're going to mix this in, add in a little bit of this, sprinkle this in, stir it real well.” Right?
Girl, you broke the code!
My wife loves to watch cooking all the time. I thought about how things are set up for cooking and thought, "Wait, why don't I just teach the classes that way?" No one's ever caught on to it, you're the first one. But I really feel that's how people relate. You've got to find the way people relate to information, and then go off of that. It makes sense, even the way you composite the bokashi - mixing your dry ingredients first. All these pieces are part of the cookie, that's how they cook.
You make a valid point. You are so keen. I love it.
You're a soil chef, and you're basically mixing all of this stuff into the soil to make the soil healthy again. All that living life in the soil needs a lot, and you know exactly what it needs - certain kind of microbes and things. Then what happens? I saw that in the past you've worked with wineries and you're working with the cannabis industry. Is this just a pour-it-in-and-see-what-happens type of thing, or what's the result? How do you test? How do you know when the soil is healthy?
Nobody in those industries knew that this was going to work. They kind of did a Russian roulette and let me do my thing, luckily.
In the cannabis industry they do a lot of testing. They test for something called terpenes, which we know are flavor. When we grow an apple or an orange with organic conditions, we know they taste good, but we don't go far enough as to send them to a lab to look at the exact terpene density of those fruits. Cannabis does.
As we incorporated regenerative farming, we knew already that these guys have been growing these particular strains of cannabis for several years, and conducting terpene testing. When we administered these components and compounds to the soil, the flavor increased, but now with testing turpenes we know *exactly how much they increased.* This is really what they're after - the spreadsheet writers don't really care about the environment. They're the bottom-line crew. But now that I have something that can benefit the environment and their bottom line… we're real popular guys now.
Indicator species are what we look for. Go out to the field, and just dig around a little bit. If you're not finding worms, and you're not finding the type of things that live in the soil, you can scope that soil and then find the microbiology is really low. In a field where we've applied regenerative techniques, when you go out and dig in, you see bugs everywhere. It's so beautiful. Birds are eating those bugs.
Just look at nature; they'll tell you where the stuff's living. When you put that under a scope, there's no doubt that it's a living system.
We're learning that these living systems are direct contributors to the overall canopy, whether you're growing a grape, cannabis flower, or a hemp flower. Those deeper profiles mean you're pushing more oil out in the final oil production. We almost doubled our oil production from 4% capture to 7% capture, with double the flavor increase. These are the type of things that spreadsheet people love, but us regenerators love even more, because I know every time it rains, all those microbes are going into that creek, and they're helping clean that creek, and they’re going into the river; and have the same job cleaning the river, all the way out to the ocean.
It's much different, now. I can satisfy the ecology side and also the spreadsheet side.
I think the same thing will happen to our crops, too. Our orange farmers are delivering oranges that are incredible, and farmers markets... People are tasting them direct from the farmer, and then they're buying produce based on how that tastes. It gives us a market niche too, so it's not just isolated to those industries. People eat what feels and tastes good. Their bodies tell them. They look for that food - I know I do.
Let’s say I buy a really good mango. I'm at that store all the time until they're out of that specific kind of mango until I find the next one. You look for the good fruit, you know?
Something that I think is really amazing about how you've set up your mission is that you're working with the soil and making the soil healthy again, which makes the ecosystem healthy again, which helps all these people farm delicious food, but you're also focusing on carrying the torch the next generation and inspiring young kids to have a different type of relationship with the environment. There's this video where you made ‘bokashi balls’ and you threw them into a river with kids.
Number one, what is a bokashi ball? Number two, does that guerrilla gardening practice work? Can we really see a difference by throwing a tiny ball into a giant river? It actually cleans up the river?
That was the first time I ever did this at a macro scale like that. I've always made my own bokashi balls, but didn't know how they would work on a bigger scale. I think we made maybe 350 bokashi balls with that school, gave them away at Earth Day, and told everyone to go toss those things in. I couldn't imagine how it was going to work.
Bokashi balls are, first of all, what we call effective microbes (EM). Think of them as basically a yogurt culture, if you will. This yogurt-type culture of living microbes can then be poured onto different mediums. In this case, we used wheat brans to grow those little culture microbes. They then grow even more and grow even stronger.
Then, what we did was we took mud from a sick part of the river. That part of Napa River has been sick because of all the vineyards. There’s a lot of silt and sediment in there. We could never swim in there, ever, but we took the mud from there and then mixed it in with the good mud, the yogurt mud, the EM mud, and made these little balls.
Microbiology tells us that microbes have a way of communicating. They speak many kinds of languages. You have the good microbes from the EM that worked on the wheat bran and fermented it, but now they're going to meet the sick mud. Then they make these balls with the sick mud and they begin to work out what the problem is with that river system. The microbes from the river system have their own language, but they communicate with these effective microbes and they begin to make a relationship in the ball so that when we throw them out in nature, they already know how to speak all these languages. They’re not foreign to them, and they don't lock up, and they perform the symbiotic relationship quicker.
Well, we gave them over 300 balls. We threw them all into that riverbed. It was all silt, you couldn't see nothing. We went back and took a look at that thing a week later. We began to see the top of the rock. The microbes were starting to eat the little silt and wash it out. Two weeks later, more rock. Every week, more rock showed on that bed until you could see every little pebble.
That just blew my mind. It just showed me right then and there that we cannot wait. We cannot wait, and these little kids love to make these balls. Let's keep going with it.
Then the basis of my education became written towards the soil, and teaching those little ones about soil being alive. The key is that all them babies... they all own vineyards. We were in a very good part of Napa, and they are going to inherit those vineyards one day. I knew that if they know that the soil was alive, they'll make different choices about management and care for the properties.
That's really what happened, but it happened a lot quicker than I thought. These kids would go home and watch machinery being sprayed on the vineyards and scream at their parents to turn the things off.
The parents have the vineyards under management systems. They don't even know what they're spraying. They'd come seek me out and say, "Hey. Timmy's over there crying about the machinery, telling me about bacteria we're killing? What's this kid talking about?"
They'd come seek me out and say, "Hey. Timmy's over there crying about the machinery, telling me about bacteria we're killing? What's this kid talking about?"
Then, I had a chance to then tell the real owner what was happening out there. They have no clue what's going on in their vineyards. No clue at all. I could tell them all day long. They're maybe not going to listen to me, but they're going to listen to the kids. I knew that if I told the kids, the kids would echo that Earth song all the time to them. Their kids are really who they’ll react to.
Then, pretty soon they wanted to learn different ways, and plant gardens in their homes, and it snowballed. I couldn't believe what was happening, out there, all based around rolling mud balls. It was just like, "What?!"
It was truly, truly incredible… the miracles that can happen to the water, to the community, to the families, all because of these living mud balls.
I think it's hard for a lot of people to understand that you're dealing on such a small level. You need a microscope to look at the things that you're talking about. I'm curious how you handle that when you're speaking with people and trying to educate them and bring them closer to nature. How is it possible to talk about something that's this small?
Oh, it's easy. I do this with the kids all the time:
“Imagine you're holding a cup of milk.”
I have them reach down into the soil and pull up some dirt and put it in that cup of milk and shake it around. I say,
"What do you think you're making? Let's pretend you're making something."
Somebody might say, "Cheese!" and someone may think, “Well, yeah. That's where it comes from.” Then I say,
"All right. Get rid of that, get some more milk and reach in the dirt and grab some more and put some microbes in the cup again and shake it around. What do you think we might be making now?"
Somebody might then say, "Yogurt!"
You see? Now they're getting it.
Then, you might say, "Get rid of the milk and let's pick up some grape juice," and you can continue to do this and people begin to see all these things I'm telling you about.
"Wine."
We use this approach all the time.
These microbial things are all already around us, like bread, but we forget where they come from. They don't come from the store. They come from the soil, from the air. They live on plants. They're all around. They live on you.
So cool.
Understanding the relationship we already have with these unseen things, then you realize and think, "Well, how else do I have these things? Soy sauce?" There are so many ways that microbes contribute to us, and we don't realize.
Then, the kids don’t want to stop there. Once we've realized all the things they've given us so far, without you even recognizing, then you we can start to imagine:
"Wow, what else can they do for us?"
Let’s talk about your work with adults again. Cannabis is a hot industry, right now, especially in the States. And I know a lot of people, including myself, who enjoy a good glass of wine. I'm curious how the message changes. When you're with kids you can play around in that kind of way but I feel that sometimes adults might be a little bit trickier to get onboard.
You know what? You'll be surprised. Most of the time, when you’re authentic and trying to teach people, and not try to belittle them, you can do the same thing for an adult and they'll get it. It's weird how it unfolds, but people always seem to tell me how my information's digestible. Adults get it just as much as the kids and I think the problem is actually that we sometimes undermine how much our children get. When we talk to our children like we're truly talking to them like a person, and say "Little one, this is going to be with you forever," that kid can grab more than you can imagine.
I'm telling you, right now, I've seen kids grab way more data than adults, sometimes. They don't have those blocks up. We should upgrade how we teach our children.
Treat the child like a true, authentic self, and big things happen. Big things happen.
It all starts there. That's cool.
Next question: You lived in a community like Napa, and now you're based in Portland. Oftentimes you're hired to consult and look at the state of the soil and find ways to make it better. I know that your Taíno heritage is really important to you, and I'm wondering how it is, navigating that. Navigating that in a world where you're consulting people who are trying to have the right wine varietal for that year, and that there's a lot of money that goes into that, but then, there's also this beautiful history and culture that you're a part of, that these people might not be a part of. What’s the interplay between that? You're doing so right by your heritage by doing what you're doing and helping the soil to heal itself. I'm curious about that interplay, because it's got to be hard sometimes, coming in there and being like, "Well, look. We're all connected."
Whoa. You see things girl, I'm telling you. You see things. People have never asked me… This is the most critical part, because when you move forward on these things, people love it.
People really are waiting for it and ready for it, but then, there are some that… are not ready to delete the information they have. They don't want to be part of it. It can be so painful, so painful. It comes from... it's almost in waves from different areas. It can come from the outside, it can come from school administrators, it comes from your own family even, sometimes, because this kind of work... It doesn't generate a lot of money. You're always one step above destruction and I feel like it's the same thing with education.
If I have just 51% of the people wanting more of this, I'll stick with the storm. I can deal with it because 51% is really all you need to keep moving forward, but you have to be ready for resistance. You have to have your mental place continually developing, because we are in a forever-changing time, and it's not always embraced, even amongst my own Indian community, talking about things. They say some things are things "white people that shouldn't know." This, to me, is ridiculous, and I feel like if a person's heart is in the right place, there's nothing to be withheld. Every time I've given something else freely, it comes back 10 times but it also... There's resistance. There's a lot of sadness.
Things get unbalanced for me, especially in this work, because there are so many things I can do. With a cannabis background, you can just go farm cannabis and ignore the rest of the world, but I'm not even farming cannabis this year because I know the situation we're in. This is about food sovereignty now. I get resistance from my own community about that, but the fact remains that when you find things imbalanced, you have to look at systems that are in balance. That's why having these permaculture gardens are important. That's why looking at nature, being in nature, is so important, because you can see there's a greater balance that takes place. Although our world becomes unbalanced from time to time, the rest of the orchestra is still playing, and it's waiting for you to join in with your instruments.
Always finding your place of balance within these natural systems allows you to navigate the turbulence of the people that just want to shut it down, and shut it down all the way. You can't take it personal when they want to shut it down. It's not me they want to shut down, it's the whole framework of thinking, the whole way we learn.
Talking about myself: I hate relearning new stuff, but I have to, to keep moving forward. I'm a farmer, and I have to connect with all these new video systems I never used before, but it's like this is what it's about. If I can't relearn new things, and I expect other people to learn new things, that's not going to happen. That’s really where the change starts: here, with me, me, me.
There’s all this stuff I'm trying to weed out of my own life. I noticed that when I can finally work it out and find the balance, all these other systems around me that were holding me back collapse. It allows freedom of movement, but it really starts from within to deal with all of that turbulence, and with nature.
That's really who I work for, nature. Nature’s really the system I want to be part of. That's really the main system I want people to remember, and that's been healing for me.
I didn't always do this. I'm a street kid. We had a whole different life. I got a GED education. All of everything I learned came from listening to the Earth songs that drew me towards a direction.
I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing. I'm working on food sovereignty. I'm going to teach black African Americans how to farm, native Americans how to farm. I’m going to give access to affordable foods to the community with regenerative-career education for everybody.
With me everybody can come, and learn how to take this home.
So awesome. I'm just in awe of what you do. I feel like that's got to be really difficult because there's not that much money for regenerative farming. When you say ‘permaculture,’ even within gardening circles, it's kind of like, "Ooh, that woo-woo stuff over there." I think it's really noble that you're doing this, and that you're fighting the good fight. Something that we said in our first conversation last week, together on the phone... Something that you said really has stuck with me since. You said that you felt like you were kind of on the sidelines and now, now you've been called into the game. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? It sounds like you've been in the game for a very long time?
I have, but I’ve been in the game within my own circles. The cannabis-garden circles love to learn about living soil. That industry is probably beyond any other agriculture industry we have, when it comes to learning about soil. I felt like I was able to give segments of data to those areas.
Now we need local food systems. Up until recently, the call for local food systems and food sovereignty was falling on deaf ears. People just had other stuff going on. Now people are realizing and saying,"Hey, this is broken. This is really broken, and we have all this land over here. You think you can help maybe get some farms going over here?"
I feel like that's happening in so many places.
I hear so many people in my circles now, talking about wanting to grow food. CSAs (community supported agriculture programs) are picking up. These were something that people did as an option, and now they’re really a necessity.
There are no sports going on now [this interview was recorded in March 2020 during Covid-19 crisis], so it looks like the farmer now is stepping up to the plate. People are looking at the farmer now as a form of entertainment, and education is coming with that entertainment. I feel like that's happening in so many places.
I just feel like everything we've ever done, all these small components now, can now be composited into a true system for integration. It's going to be way easier to integrate everything now because there's scarcity. Money scarcity… all kinds of scarcity going on.
People are realizing and saying, "We forgot how to do what Dad and Grandpa did. What happened to us!?"
That's why I feel and say that the coach is putting us in now. What are our other options? If there were other options, I guess I'd be on the sideline waiting, but there aren’t any options. This is us now. This is us now, to come in and build these food systems, and bring food directly to the people. They need it now. If we're going to keep everybody healthy, they can't be eating chips. They can't be eating the foods that have left them requiring all this medical attention.
You've got to think back to history. Your food was your medicine, at one time. That really is where all the chemistry you need for a healthy body is - within your food systems. Getting seasonal-food access back gets people back to work.
For instance, let’s look at the farming community. Those guys can really put it down all day. They're your farm group. But what most people don’t realize is that you can also extract them from those other segments of the community people really don't want to interact with.
I find the best farmers coming from those kids going through juvenile detention centers, or people who just got let out of jails and prisons. Veterans too.
If you give those three groups of people a mission, and put them all on the same team…
The vets are going to farm like they're going to war. They'll work all day and night for you, and they'll sing songs and keep the whole thing going.
“I find the best farmers coming from those kids going through juvenile detention centers, or people who just got let out of jails and prisons. Veterans too.”
That's what we need now. We're going to start bringing those in, those areas of the community that were on the backdrop. We're going to start making some serious food out of the Nootka Farm Collective we have going at Sauvie Island here, in Portland. That's the direction we're going in; a lot of food, regenerative people.
Get ready for a good meal. It's coming.
Can we talk a little bit about how messed up the food system is in the United States, currently? A passion of mine is plant-based nutrition. I'm very into it. When you see the food that is available in the US, especially for people who don't have a lot of money to buy food… it’s chips and sodas. It's really depressing to me, and I'm curious if you could talk about the transition of what happens when people who had Doritos as their option learn how to grow kale? Does it really make a difference? After doing a community-gardening program, do you see that has a lasting effect?
I used to have a stand that I would put out near the community-gardens I worked in. I' would put them in places where people were around within the communities. I would invite anyone to put different extra food from their gardens on that, so that people could come and grab it.
Persimmons, for instance. Persimmons were one of the big foods we had in Napa. When parents would come and pick up the kids after class they’d see their kids eating persimmon after persimmon. They would say, "Mr. Villa, she hates persimmons. What's going on here?"
When you have good-quality foods in community, they taste different. They taste better. They're more enjoyable. Pretty soon, the kids always ask for them. They don't want the chips no more. They want to sit and talk with their friends, peel the orange or tangerine, and eat it. There's something therapeutic about it.
When you give a kid the choice, they're going to make the right choice, if they have the option, but if that other stuff is all that you have to eat, man, it's either that or hunger. I think we've kind of made it that way. There's no food access in any of those communities. They can use their EBT cards in a liquor store. That kind of stuff needs to be translatable so they can use it in farmers markets. Cut EBT out of the liquor stores. That's just going to cause more health problems down the line.
It’s just making food accessible, and letting them enjoy it. People don't turn back. That's what changed me, I'm sure you too. When you eat good, you have more energy, you feel better, and when you do it more, your brain starts to reward you. Why would you go back to the other self-abusive way?
Give it a shot. It's the best medicine that you can do for yourself, right now.
A big word lately, that everyone keeps on throwing around, is ‘community.’ People say, "We need to build communities, we need to go back to community, this is my online community, etc." but if you look at the research, people have never felt so alone. It sounds like you have a really amazing community going. You know the people, you know where you're growing your food, you're constantly around these awesome kids. According to you, what do we need more of in today's society, in order to build resilient communities?
As I said, it starts with you. When you start to feed yourself good food, when you start to stretch your body out, and that you're supposed to take care of yourself, you're able to think and appreciate those around you and then, when you're taking care of yourself, you then make room for the next step. A lot of times, we don't.
To take on something new, you have to cut out something old. That's just the way it is. We can't keep growing all these branches, or you're not going to grow, or do a good job at everything you're trying to do. Really taking care of yourself allows you the energy to then make the next step to take care of your direct people, your family, your network, and then your community.
When we have all those things in line, then a community, at a greater function, can take care of way more things than you can by yourself.
You have to realize it and say, "I can't do it all, and nor do I want to. I just want to do what I'm good at and then team up and be respectful with others so that they can do what they're good at, and then we can all meet at what we're good at and then push this thing forward."
Doing things you're not good at puts you into a bad mood - you got no energy. Try to take care of yourself and then find your gift. Find your gift, and know what you're good at, and share that thing with the world. Don't hesitate to share your gift with the world. Then so many people will need or want to know what you're doing. This is happening to me right now and it blows my mind.
Look, you're interviewing me. I used to just do this stuff just to make my gardens grow. Then it expanded from one thing to another, to another, and then, all of a sudden, I was in schools, and people wanted to know what I was doing. I would be doing this anyway. I love doing biochar and microbes and things like that, but the fact that people want to know about it… I want to share it with you guys too so that you can find what your gift is, what your co-creation gift is, to the world.
Taking care of yourself allows you to do that. You come to this planet in your mama's womb with a mission. We forgot what it was through all the time and struggle, but when you get yourself healthy and meditate and stretch for a second and put yourself in place, you’ll remember, "Bam! That's what I came for! This is my gift! How did I forget?!"
I'm curious about what you're working on now, just your day to day, especially in the time that we're in currently, with COVID-19. I'm curious about what you're doing now, and what your master plans are for the future.
I just finished up some work with Sound Native Plants, we work for the city of Portland and Gresham doing conservation and stormwater management. These are infrastructures that maintain the stormwater. We run the water through rain gardens so that they capture a lot of the contaminants before they exit out to stormwater. They just called us off of work due to COVID-19, so we're going to be held out on that until the 10th of April. Maybe the contracts will be regained. This was a lot of the conservation work that I did this year. Last year I farmed cannabis for Bobsled Farms. During off season, when we're not farming, I love to do conservation work.
I just got onto Nootka Farm Collective, where I'm going to be leading the education internship, teaching all of the stuff we've talked about today and other things, like Hügelkultur, EarthBox farming, a lot of different components.
The Nootka Farm Collective focuses on getting Native-American farmers, African-American farmers access to land out on Sauvie Island. Anybody who knows me knows Sauvie Island is my spot. I farmed there in 2018, and it was such a healing place for me. When my friend brought up Nootka Farm Collective in a conversation, as soon as she mentioned that island, I must have started glowing because she invited me, right away, to become part of this thing. As soon as she mentioned Sauvie Island, I was like, "Okay. I'm there, next day."
Sauvie island is in an amazing spot. It sits between two major river systems here in Oregon, the Willamette River and the Columbia River. The Columbia river deposits sediment into this big, giant track of land, which is, I believe, the second-biggest island in North America. It is also home to some of the most beautiful ecology. You're going to see migrating birds of every kind come through there. It's just a playground for nature.
To be able to be back out on Sauvie island with this project in mind… to keep people who are disadvantaged in farming going, and provide direct access to farmers markets and restaurants with their goods, all while they develop the skills that they need to continue to providing food for their communities… most of all, what I like is it's a place where other brown people can come and see other brown people farm.
They can see it, and feel like, "We can do this, too. Yeah, we farm. We can do all this, man. Come take a look. We do it all," I love it. I love it. I love it.
We need more of this. Up here, in Portland, there's not a lot of that sector happening yet. Being able to be back at Sauvie is great. That whole island is special. Everyone on the island does a “U-Pick” [where people can pick their own food directly from a farm], so when people come to Sauvie, they want to connect. They enter into a space where they’re like "I want to see nature. I want to be in nature. I want to touch and make bokashi," and all these things.
Yeah, this is the space we need right here, where it's very receivable for people. I’m very excited about Nootka Farm Collective. •
By Jenna Matecki
Photo from Nootka Farm Collective
Special thanks to Matt Powers from the Advanced Permaculture Student Online for introducing us.
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