I'm Cody jolliffe.

I'm the chief executive officer here at Po.. Gardens, Kansas City's botanical garden.

We are all about the Midwest spirit of place here at Powell Gardens.

So come and learn about Midwest plants and also botanical plants from around the world.

Paul Garden's history starts back in about 1988 with the establishment of the Botanical Garden.

Before that, this was a Boy Scout olive branch,.. and before that it was the Paul's family dairy farm.

So has a long history with the Paul family, and now it's something for all Kansas City to come and enjoy.

So Paul Gardens has ..

So not only on site here.

We also, manage some prairie land off site of Paul Gardens.

You know, we're in several, projects about soil health.

So in terms of soil health, it's estimated that perhaps we only have 60 years left of, soil health as it is today.

And so that's something we're very invested in here, is figuring out that in this education institution with, Midwest Center for General Agriculture.

We also have great partners.

We have universities in the area.

So we're also really excited to join with the National Audubon Society and their certified ranching program.

So this is the way that the cattle and sheep graze the property.

So they're moved every couple of days on to ne.. And this really creates great habitat for bird life.

So already in some of the studies we've done here at Powell, we have a very diverse, bird life.

And we're continuing, those practices thro..

So everything we do from how we cut hay, how we, move the cows from place to place grazing or the sheep.

It's just really great to see those, processes in place.

So the Midwest Center for Regenerative Agriculture, launched this past spring, and this is a huge initiative for us, you know, globally and especially here in the United States.

We have to figure out where food is coming from.

And, soil health is declining and we only have a certain number of years left, for that.

So here at Paul Gardens, we have kind of three different phases with our, Midwest Center for General Agriculture.

We have some grazing, conservation grazing that's going on with sheep and a small herd of cattle.

We also are raising, bees and as well as, agroforestry.

So we have some, trees that we are growing, saplings and such for it.

So that's kind of the firs..

But the main purpose for the Midwest Center for General Agriculture is an education institute.

And so we have partners across the region, not only in the state of Missouri and Kansas and, you know, to come and learn these new processes.

And it's not going to be overnight.

You know, as we look throughout history, it's taken a lo.. for these methods to change, in agriculture.

And so we just want to be, a small step and a help, in our region to get that accomplished.

My name is Dan Croll, and I'm a co-founder of Good Oak, which is a regenerative agriculture company that's in a partnership here at Bell Gardens.

Good Oak is a regenerative agriculture company that my business partner, Jacob and I and some friends of ours founded, with the intention of finding a way to scale regenerative agriculture in a way that spreads some of the great ideas that people are doing on smaller scales, to larger acreages.

I think our long term goal is to take tilled ground where we're growing annuals, you know, like corn and soy and these sorts of things, and turn it into a more perennial agriculture that mimics the ecosystems of our region.

And we're in the process of building towards that.

And one step in that process has been this partnership here at Pal Gardens.

My name is Jacob Canyon.

I'm a co-founder of Good Oak.

Paul Gardens is already has a really robust conservation program, and they've got almost 800 acres of land outside the botanical garden that needs to be used and utilized in a better way.

So this partnership allows us to demonstrate our regenerative farming techniques in a space that has lots of engagement with the public and is with an organizatio.. Regenerative agriculture is any form of agriculture that grows the commons that makes the soil, makes the land better than it was when you worked on it.

We do that by mimicking natural ecosystems.

So every piece of food that was ever grown on the planet that was ever eaten by any animal was grown through natural processes that didn't have humans involved in..

So how did all these trees get here without fertilizer or being watered or tended?

Well, there's there's some way.

Right.

So what we do is we try and find how that works and mimic it, and then we try and make our farm sy.. would work.

Right?

So we put in fewer inputs, we do less work, and all the animals around us can live off of and interact with that ecosystem while we're also getting food from it.

So I can definitely say, for example, that my sheep here are highly regenerative in reducing carbon emissions because they're eating only the vegetables that are growing on this site.

We're not bringing in grain from anywhere else, so it's really hard to see how this is creating any carbon emissions.

And on the flip side, as they graze this pasture, they're stimulating .. to actually put more carbon in the soil.

So we're sequestering carbon.

So it's very carbon positive.

So we try and think of things holistically back out like what what can we do that leaves the ground healthier than it was before.

That makes it stronger and more productive every year.

The farm that we're building here will involve large agroforestry plantings, which is just a fancy word for using trees as crops.

And the advantage there is you can plant the tree like a pecan or a walnut or a chestnut, or a persimmon or a plum, or any of the maybe 30 species that we're using.

And that tree will live decades or centuries and continue to produce fruit, as opposed to doing cereal crops like corn or, crops like soybeans that you have to till and replant every year.

So that shift to a perennial agriculture system, again, just helps build the integrity of the soil.

And those trees themselves are sequestering carbon, providing shade, providing habitat for wildlife.

The whole time.

Some of our goals for the future here at Powell are to convert a lot of this scrub land by removing invasive species and creating savanna and grassland that can be used for grazing, but also production of food for people.

We have plans to plant, large scale agroforestry systems, and using that to educate the next, the next generation of farmers at the same time.

So that'll be some of our long term goals.

Right now we're standing at Powell Gardens on their thousand acre property, near Kingsville, Missouri, and Johnson County, Missouri.

And there is a beautiful world class botanical garden.

There's three miles of hiking trails.

There's sheep, there's cows, there's hogs.

Please come and visit.

If you want to find out more information, you can find us at Powell gardens.org.

So if people want to become involved with the Midwest Center for .. you know, you can become involved even if you're not in farming or agriculture business.

Obviously, you can come and give your, your time and talent to help v..

So to learn more about the Midwe.. you can always visit Paul gardens.org.

You can also find out about our other conservation projects that we have here.

Learn about all of the plants here at Paul Gardens.

They're even catalog.

You can see that on there.

And you can follow our blog and social media.

So we're always talking about what's upcoming at Paul Gardens and what's new and conservation, as well as community events.