#71: Regenerative Farming and Lectin-Light Chicken with Dan Walter

A mechanical engineer turned regenerative farmer, Dan Walter has changed his career and lifestyle to raise healthy, nutritious food from his farm, Pastured Steps Family Farm in Midlothian, TX. Pastured Steps Family Farm operates with an emphasis on regenerative farming practices to promote soil health and animal welfare.
In this episode, Dan talks about regenerative farming and how his farm practices regenerative techniques with their animals. We talk about the health and environmental impacts of this farming practice and why it's beneficial for both animals and humans. Dan also talks about his novel product, lectin-light chicken, which is on Dr. Gundry's "Yes" list for people with auto-immune disorders. Their homemade chicken feed is soy-free, corn-free, and wheat-free and does not contain any of the typical lectin-heavy grain substitutes.
Thanks for listening!

Connect with Dan and Pastured Steps Family Farm:
www.pasturedsteps.com
www.lectinlightchicken.com 

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Transcript

[00:00:00] to the Plan to Eat podcast. Where I interview industry experts about meal planning, food and wellness. To help you answer the question. What's for dinner. 

Roni: Hello and welcome to the Plan to Eat podcast. Today I have an interview with Dan Walter of Pastured Steps Family Farm. They are a farm based in Texas with a mission to produce the highest quality protein products on the market.

Their chickens and eggs are pasture raised on organic and soy free feed. Their cattle are grass fed and finished and organically managed, and they use regenerative farming practices to promote Soil health and animal welfare. And, Dan goes into a little bit more about what regenerative farming is. Um, we talk about some of the regenerative farming practices, why it's beneficial.

And then some of their unique products that they sell at, pasture [00:01:00] steps. So they have a chicken that is called a lectin light chicken. Um, this is something I never heard of before talking to Dan and, it was really interesting to learn more about it. 

So without further ado, here's the interview with Dan and I hope you enjoy.

Dan. Thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today.

Dan: You're welcome. Thanks for inviting me. It was, it's great to be here.

Roni: Yeah. So why don't we just start by having you say what you, who you are and what you do?

Dan: Okay. Well, my name is Dan Walter and I've got a farm, uh, in Midlothian, Texas. And then we recently purchased another 200 acres near Corsicana. Uh, we're running a regenerative farm and we sell protein products. So eggs, chicken, pork, uh, we've started turkeys this year. And we also do grass fed, uh, beef, grass finished as well.

Roni: Oh, wow. What part of Texas is that? I'm not familiar with that area.

Dan: So Midlothian is south of Dallas Fort Worth area. It's about [00:02:00] 45 minutes from here to either one of those two cities.

Roni: So then what brought you to be a pasture raised, um, farmer and rancher? Is this something you've done since you were a kid?

Dan: No, actually my degree was in mechanical engineering and I spent about 15 years doing that, mostly sitting behind a desk and just wanted to change, wanted to get outside and do something different. I've always enjoyed animals, so it was kind of a natural fit. I had become interested in permaculture. Uh, which is kind of working with nature to garden.

So that's what led me into farming.

Roni: Oh, wow. And then what's, uh, what was specifically special about, um, pasture raised farming compared to just going into like a conventional model?

Dan: It was more doing things naturally in a way that kind of helps the environment rather than degrading the environment. It's better for the animals. [00:03:00] We'll get into some of those details later, but it's just doing things more naturally than what the conventional system is doing.

Roni: Yeah. So just in case anybody listening isn't quite sure, can you define what regenerative agriculture is?

Dan: There's no standard definition for it, but generally it's a way of increasing the soil biology, increasing nutrients in the soil, and just regenerating the productivity of the soil that's been lost over the years. Our conventional practices have really degraded the soil. We've added a lot of chemicals.

I've just killed off the life that's in the soil, so we're trying to reverse that process and bring the life back to the soil and then increase the nutrients that are available for plants and animals.

Roni: Right. Uh, what's, what are some of the, so what are some of the practices that go along with that? I think like one thing that [00:04:00] you mentioned when we talked previously is like rotating your animals through different pastures, right?

Dan: Yeah, so there's many practices with regenerative farming, and a lot of it goes from things like no till, um, cover crops. And since we're focused mostly on animals, it's mostly moving the animals around the pasture, so we don't keep anything in one spot for very long. And this allows the animals to add their nutrients to the soil, graze off just a little bit of the grass, and then they're moved on the chickens.

They're only in one spot for one day. The pigs are in one spot for a couple of days. The cows. For one day, but that constant movement, uh, keeps the animals more healthy, allows them access to a brand new, fresh pasture, new grass, new bugs, um, and also helps break their parasite cycle. So the parasite.

It is excreted from the [00:05:00] cow and the dung, and then, uh, the egg hatches, it crawls up on the plant, and it's pre ingested by the cattle. But that cycle takes seven to ten days. So if the cows are constantly moving, they don't have a chance to re ingest those parasites. and the parasites die off by the time the cattle come back.

The same process happens with the other animals as well. Oh, it's just, it's improving the life quality of the animal and then helping the pastures being eaten all the way down to the ground and eroded.

Roni: Oh, that's really interesting. So then is it the same pasture and just different animals are in different sections at different times or are they kind of co mingling with each other?

Dan: In theory, it would be ideal to have all different animals on the same ground at different times. In practice, it doesn't work out perfectly like that, uh, just because the chickens move a lot slower than the cattle. The cattle move throughout the entire farm. [00:06:00] Uh, the chickens are still grazing the top pasture.

They haven't made it down to the lower pastures yet. Um, the pigs, we've built a five acre fenced in area for them. And then they get a half acre that, uh, they get rotated each week. Um, so they stay within that five acres right now, but we're going to expand that eventually. And if we add sheep or goats, they'll move across the whole entire farm as well.

Roni: Oh, wow. Yeah. So are your, um, Have you expanded yet into your extra 200 acres that you recently bought, or is that yet to come?

Dan: We've actually moved most of our animals down to the other farm. So the cattle, the pigs, turkeys, most of the chickens are down there. What I've got here in the Midlothian now is, uh, egg layers and then also we're building fence for goats and

Roni: wow. I don't feel like I hear a very many people doing this style of farming and [00:07:00] ranching. Um, I mean, I guess it would be specifically smaller farmers and ranchers who'd be able to do this maybe more easily. But I guess like, what's the reason that you don't hear of much regenerative farming happening?

Dan: Well, up until about 100 years ago, all farming was regenerative farming, and we've really moved away from that in the last 50 years or so, as things have been centralized and, uh, companies have gotten larger and larger, and they're running more and more animals through these confined feeding operations, and trying to just make everything as efficient as possible.

It's better for the people, but worse for the animals. Um, but there is a movement of younger farmers that are starting to, to see things differently and starting to move towards some of these regenerative practices. And I would say the majority of new farms that are being started now are doing these sort of regenerative practices.

Roni: Oh, that's great. Was the, do you, maybe you. I'm not sure if you [00:08:00] have an answer to this question, but, um, that more centralized model is that just based off of higher demand for protein products in the grocery stores, or was it simply just because it was more cost effective and efficient.

Dan: I don't know if I have a good answer for that. I believe most of it was, uh, just the larger corporations. We're trying to, uh, just scale up as much as possible, make as much money as possible. And then they started squeezing some of the smaller farmers out of business. A lot of those farmers disappeared.

So it's, it's corporate greed probably as much as anything else.

Roni: right. Yeah. so Then I imagine there's a, a cost difference. Well, I've looked at your website a little bit and stuff, and there's a bit of a cost difference in the kind of protein products that you sell versus what I could probably find in the grocery store. What, you know, obviously this regenerative model is a little bit different, but what are some of the specific things that, [00:09:00] might contribute to somebody spending more money on something that would come from your farm?

Mm hmm. Mm

Dan: it's every component along the way. It costs more the way we do it and that it starts with the feed. You can buy conventional feed for 15 to 20 cents a pound. We buy high quality organic feed and it's 75 cents a pound. So that's a huge difference just in chickens. Um, and then our management style is more labor intensive.

They build these big, massive bird houses that have 100, 000 birds in them. It's all automated, so there's very little manual input. Their chore is to go through every day and pull all the dead chickens out. So we move our chickens every day and we feed them by hand. And then the scale of their operation, uh, they're doing so many birds at one time that they're able to lower the cost of that as well. They just optimized every [00:10:00] single level along the way. And then, uh, the corporations that run, it's like Tyson and Purdue. They subcontract all the, the growing out to the independent farmers and they pay those farmers very little. It's on the order of 15 cents per chicken that they raise. So they have to raise 50, 000 to a hundred thousand chickens at one time in order to make any kind of living doing that. So it's, it's just a system that's been set up to optimize everything. As low cost as possible, and then they're using subsidized grains, um, soy and corn. The government subsidizes those, which artificially lowers the cost of the feed. Since we're doing everything completely different to produce a different product, we're not taking advantage of all those lower cost opportunities.

Roni: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, particularly I think with the government subsidies of the soy and [00:11:00] corn products. So without using the soy and corn products to feed your animals, like what's the general benefit to doing that? I guess both for the consumer and for the animal.

Dan: Both of those items are inflammatory, and a lot of people have Side effects consuming lots of them are very high in omega sixes, which are unhealthy fats. So when you feed your animals that comes through the meat, and then we're eating that product as well. Just take the omega 6 and omega 3 ratio as an example.

A chicken you buy at the store, and we've tested this, comes out as a ratio of 28 to 1. That means there's 28 times more omega 6. Then there is omega three and then our chickens, on the other hand, are closer to five to one. So it's a much lower ratio and a much healthier meat to consume.

Roni: Wow. I guess I, uh, didn't fully understand that the, the things that the, [00:12:00] that the animal, like the animal consuming soy and corn actually led to like traces of that being in the meat and, I mean, uh, I've heard more about this, uh, the omega, um, imbalance in recent years, but it doesn't seem like it's a very common knowledge.

I feel like you have to really, want to get that knowledge in order to really learn about, uh, the differences in the omega levels in the food that you're eating.

Dan: That's true. Um, there's, there's a lot more nutritionists that are now making people aware of these sorts of things. But just like in people, you are what you eat, right? Well, you're also what your food ate. So it, it just moves through from one to the next.

Roni: Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. Uh, my husband and I are hunters and, I definitely, you can almost, well, certainly there's like a A gaminess aspect to, to wild meat like that, but there's also like, there's a, you can sometimes when, when I'm cooking, you know, like an [00:13:00] elk steak or something, there's almost like a fishiness smell to it of like, that Omega is so strong and potent that you can, that you can like smell it in the meat.

That's very different from anything that you would ever get from the grocery store,

Dan: That's right. Um, I would say the same thing happens with our chicken and especially in the grass fed beef. You can't taste it in the meat at all. So it's not a flavor that translates through, but you can kind of smell it. You can pick it up in the fat or the oil that comes off of it.

Roni: Yeah. So since we're, since you were kind of talking about, um, chickens there and talking about the way that you feed your chickens, you raise two different types of chicken. Um, and one of them is called a lectin light chicken. Can you give a little more info on what that means?

Dan: So lectins for anybody that's not aware is a protein that's in plants. And that protein is part of their defense mechanism. And the idea is that when something eats that plant or that fruit or vegetable, whatever [00:14:00] it is, that their body reacts negatively toward that, and they'll be less likely to eat it again later.

So it's, it's the plant trying to keep itself alive, essentially. And so gluten is probably one of the most common lectins that people are familiar with. And a lot of people have gluten insensitivities now. But lectins are in nightshade vegetables. probably the main thing that they're in. It's a lot of legumes, beans, those sorts of things. But they harm the bacteria that's in your stomach. So it's destroying your microbiome. And people that have autoimmune type disorders are really affected by lectins. So there's a doctor named Dr. Gundry that came up with this lectin free diet. And we essentially are feeding these chickens to comply with his diet plan, to help the [00:15:00] people that have those sorts of disorders.

They can eat chicken again, whereas they can't eat the regular chicken that comes from the store.

Roni: Oh, wow. Is this, is this a pretty severe food sensitivity that these people are experiencing or is it one of those things that, a lot of, a lot more people are affected by this than they actually realize? Yes.

Dan: I think we're all affected to it, to some degree, and it's, it's, Mostly a matter of time. So the older we get, the more our body breaks down, the more some of these things start to show up. And there's even links with things like Alzheimer's, to autoimmune. There's a strong correlation there. So some people it may take 70 years for this to show up.

Some people it shows up in their 20s or 30s.

Roni: So you told me that you're the only farm that you know of that produces a lectin light chicken, correct?

Dan: As far as I'm aware.

Roni: Yeah. So what's the story behind, um, you know, so you're working with Dr. Gundry and his way of eating. Is [00:16:00] that because you or somebody in your family, um, like needs to eat in that specific? Wait.

Dan: Yes. Uh, let me tell you how we got started in it. We were, we had started the farm and we were doing things the best way we could. We found the best organic feed that we could find. There's conventional feed, there's non GMO feed, and then the organic feed is kind of the top of the line. Uh, and then we had a farm tour and some customers came over just to see what we were doing and how we were raising the animals. And. One of the ladies, you asked me what was in the chicken food. I said, well, it's got soy, it's got corn, it's got wheat, oats, there's peas. So I started naming off all these things. And after she, each item, she's like, well, I can't eat that. I can't eat that. I can't eat that. And I was like, well, what can you possibly feed a chicken that you could eat? So we started looking into it and she's like, if you can raise [00:17:00] chickens without all those things, I'll buy 50 of them. I've got some friends that'll buy some. We're like, okay, we'll, we'll take a stab at this and it was pretty difficult to come up with that, the diet and get something that would work with the chickens.

Um, and it took several iterations to get it working properly. We finally got it and the chickens do well on the feed we have now.

That's how it began. And then it turns out my wife has Hashimoto's and I've got a psoriatic arthritis. So it's actually, the more we've learned. about the nutrition and the things we're eating, the more that it happens to be that the food that we're producing is helping both of our situations.

Roni: Yeah. What was the response from the chickens when you started to change their feed? Was, were there points in time where they were like, yeah, we're definitely not going to eat this. Yeah.

Dan: We didn't transition existing chickens. We started with a new batch, [00:18:00] but the first attempts, uh, we had just mixed all those grains together. Not the grains, but the, the, the, the products in the new feed. And they would kind of pick through and eat certain things and then kick out. It's called sorting in the, the chicken world.

So they were sorting through their feed, uh, just being very picky about what they're eating. And they weren't getting a proper nutrition. They weren't developing and growing. Uh, so we learned we had to mill the feed and then pelletize it so that they're getting pellets that contain the balanced nutrients that they need.

And then they started to thrive after that. So we've been tweaking the formula somewhat, but they seem to enjoy it now.

Roni: Wow. So you do all of that yourself, just with the small team that you have at the farm.

Dan: We do. Uh, we, we were working with the mill at one point to produce the feed for us, and then it became cost prohibitive after [00:19:00] a while. We're bringing in equipment to do it ourselves and scaling that up just to try to keep up with the demand, but we're, we're making all the feed ourselves. Now,

Roni: Wow. Wow. That sounds like a lot of work. How, how do you keep up with all of that work?

Dan: well, you have to find the right help. And we've got a great farm manager. That's. Helping them to of course, scan a location. Now him and his wife are living there full time and, uh, he's kind of in charge of making the feed and feeding out the animals and moving them every day. And then I go down there quite often, um, helping build the infrastructure. So, and then my wife helps with the delivery routes and her in law or her, her mother and father helped with the deliveries. So we've got a small team, but everybody works hard and getting things done.

Roni: Wow. That sounds awesome. That's, a real family farm effort there. That's really [00:20:00] special to hear., would someone who's eating your lectin light chicken, or is there a taste difference in that compared to, you know, even just your regular pasture raised chicken?

Dan: That was one of the surprising benefits that we hadn't necessarily considered. Um, everybody that tries lectin light chicken just raves about how much better it tastes than the regular chicken that they've been eating. And I think a lot of it is just the diversity of the products the chickens are eating and just being pasture raised helps a lot as well.

They're getting a lot of forage, they're getting bugs. Plus the feed, the supplemental feed that they're eating. And then all that comes through the flavor of the meat. So I've had a number of customers tell me it was the best chicken that they've ever had. So it's been very encouraging.

Roni: Wow. That sounds great. That sounds like I should try some.

Dan: We'll have to send you some.

Roni: Yeah. So one thing I wanted to talk a little bit [00:21:00] more about is, Essentially, like all of the things you're doing to, create like a high level of animal welfare. what is the, what are some of the benefits of that? So like, clearly it's beneficial for the animal to live in a happy environment, but does that get translated into the final product?

Just talk to me a little bit more about the benefits of that.

Dan: It's very similar to people. If you live in a very high stress environment, that's going to affect your health and it produces hormones in your body. So high levels of cortisol, um, when animals are under stress or they have a lot of adrenaline and those hormones, they show up in the meat as well. Plus, just being in stress all the time is unhealthy for the animal and, uh, it's gonna get sick.

It's just not gonna thrive. It's not gonna put on weight. As people. If you're unhealthy, if you're stressed, if you're confined, if you're crammed in a house with a whole bunch of other people, you can just imagine [00:22:00] how unhealthy that situation is going to become quickly.

Roni: And then, what are some of the environmental benefits associated with as well? Me and my coworkers went to a, um, like a conference last year and the whole point of it, they were talking about, um, regenerative agriculture. And, one of the things that I learned is that they were talking about like the steepe. Grasslands in like the essentially like the whole Midwest of the United States, and how, um, a lot of our conventional agriculture has really reduced the carbon sequestration that the grasslands can have, um, because of like the tilling of the soil and just monocrops and like that kind of stuff, just like the degradation of that and actually that grassland that is, properly rotated with animals. essentially when like hoved animals step on like grassland areas, it helps promote the growth of more grass and, just like general, positive environmental [00:23:00] impacts because the grasslands can actually have a really high level of carbon sequestration, from these like natural farming and ranching practices rather than conventional farming models.

Dan: Yeah, so there's a balance. If you leave the animal on a certain spot for too long, it's just going to consume all the grass and turn it into desert. And eventually that's what's happened in the Middle East and Arab countries. Those places weren't desert all the time, they've become desert. And then, if you take animals completely off the land, you get the situation we have in Arizona, New Mexico, where those national forests have been fenced off to remove all the animals.

We killed off all the Buffalo that used to graze those property and it turns into desert too. So you really need that cycle of animal eating grass., leaving its urine and dung behind and then moving on, [00:24:00] which is what the buffalo did. They rotated throughout the United States. instead of just staying in one spot.

And it would take them a year and a half to come back. They followed the weather patterns, they followed, the predators pushed them off, but there was a high concentration of buffalo in one spot for one day, and they moved to the next spot. So that, they eat the grass, they eat about half the grass down, they leave all that fertilizer behind.

And then, uh, nature, microbes, they break that down, they turn it back into soil. That's keeping the carbon in the soil, like you were saying. when you take the animals off completely, you get a plant that just dies, and then a lot of that carbon just gets evaporated through oxidation into the air. You're moving the carbon from the soil into the air. Also, if you overgraze it, you kill off the roots of the plants. And you'll eventually lose all the carbon through the roots as well.

Roni: Mm hmm.

Dan: So it's a balance[00:25:00] between the two.

Roni: Right. Well, is there anything else that, we've missed that you wanted to be able to talk about today?

Dan: I would think, one thing that would be interesting that I would love to see is a way for the amount of nutrition in a food product to be displayed on the packaging so that a consumer can see what they're buying. A tomato is not the same as this tomato, it's not the same as that tomato. There's a nutritional difference on that depending on how it was grown, what chemicals the farm used.

Uh, how they maintain their soil. Same thing is true for meat, obviously, but there's no direct way for the consumer to see that other than trusting the farmer and how they raise it at this point, but we came up with some kind of nutritional label that was more than just calories and carbohydrates that showed macronutrients, for example, then I think these sorts of things.

There would be pressure on the farmers to [00:26:00] increase the health benefits of the products they're raising rather than just growing things that look well look appealing that have no nutrition in them.

Roni: Yeah. When I think that you were saying, people have raved about your, the chickens that you raise, if, um, you've ever had the experience of, you know, growing something in your own garden, like growing a tomato in your own garden, it tastes. It's so much better than the, you know, a hothouse tomato that you buy at the grocery store.

Particularly if you buy a tomato like in January or something, it just tastes like blah, like water, like mushy water. And you know, growing things yourself. I, I feel like the, that flavor improvement, also translates into the nutritional value and um, And so I feel like there's a, there's a natural understanding that, that we have that like, oh, this tastes better, like I want to eat more of this, but, like you're saying, you can't, you don't always know what that [00:27:00] is when you're in the grocery store and you're shopping for things and, you know, your grocery budget has already, you know, shot because everything is increasing at the grocery stores.

So it can be really hard. Choice to make, I think sometimes to, like, make that healthier option. And particularly if, uh, there isn't any information in the grocery store to tell you which option is the. Is the more nutritious option.

Dan: I don't know, I guess, to wrap it up, the farming is good for people. It's good for the animals and it's good for the environment. It's kind of a win, win, win situation. I just wish that more farmers would do it and more people would be able to take advantage of that.

Roni: Yeah, hopefully we'll see, as you're saying, the younger, there is a younger generation of farmers who are interested in this and so hopefully we'll see more and more of it, a less, a less centralized farming practice and more, you know, local farming practices and things like that, taking advantage, people taking advantage of those things.

Dan: I think small farms actually feed about 80 percent of the [00:28:00] world's population. It's just not that way in the U. S.

Roni: Yeah, yeah. Well, thanks so much for joining me today, Dan. I'll include a link to, um, your website and stuff in the show notes. Is there anywhere else where you'd like people to connect with you and your farm?

Dan: We have the two websites, pasturedsteps. com and then lectinlightchicken. com. They can find all of our information there and get a hold of us if they need to.

Roni: Cool. And you ship, throughout the United States, correct?

Dan: We do, we ship to the lower 48. We can ship to Hawaii and Alaska, it's just incredibly expensive and difficult, so we prefer not to, but we will if somebody really wants us to.

Roni: All right. Well, thanks again for joining me today.

Dan: You're welcome, thanks for having me.

Roni: Thank you for tuning into this episode. I hope you learned a little something new about farming. I know I learned some things from Dan and I have links to both his pastured steps [00:29:00] website, as well as the lectin light chicken website in the show notes of this episode. Dan was also kind enough to send us some of his lectin light chicken and it is.

Really good. Everybody on the team was really impressed by it. So if you're interested in this product, definitely go check it out. Whether or not you have, food sensitivities or autoimmune disorders, this chicken was absolutely delicious. 

So find those things in the show notes and. As always, uh, if you'd like to support the podcast, subscribe, wherever you get your podcasts and share this episode with a friend and I will see you in two weeks with a new episode. Thanks so much for listening.