Home » News » Remembering Dave Brandt: The Revolutionary Farmer Behind the Honest Work Meme and the Regenerative Agriculture Movement

Remembering Dave Brandt: The Revolutionary Farmer Behind the Honest Work Meme and the Regenerative Agriculture Movement

Dave Brandt died at the age of 76 on Saturday May 27 in a car accident. He leaves behind not only the famous meme of “honest work” on Twitter, but above all a plea for regenerative agriculture, without tillage. A revolution in the United States.

In the land of mega-tractors and bodybuilt combine harvesters, he is an outstanding farmer from Ohio who has struggled all his life to defend the agricultural world and revolutionize its practices, making them sustainable. David Brandt, 76, is no more, and since this weekend, tributes have been raining from all sides, especially on the social network Twitter, since in addition to being a farmer, Dave Brandt was also (well in spite of himself) what is called a meme, that is to say an image, accompanied by a quote, used, reused, overused to joke on Twitter.

On this meme, we can see him in blue overalls and a plaid shirt, in the middle of his field lined with young plants under this title: “It’s not much, but it’s honest work” Phrase he said once and which immediately became legendary. It’s simple, this meme has been used millions of times, pell-mell by students coming out of an exam, by apprentice cooks presenting a photo of their first dish, by sportsmen who came dead last, in short, by as many people who today pay homage to him, in unison with the agricultural world that his honest work has considerably upset.

His experience began in 1971, when he returned from his military service in Vietnam and inherited his father’s farm. Brandt is young and penniless, so he sells part of the land, and decides on the remaining 400 hectares to produce corn, wheat and soy while saving as much as possible. And the first item of expenditure that he will reduce is that of fuel. He opts for non-tillage: no ploughing, no harrow or roller to turn the soil in depth. Result: the earthworms brew the soil for free, enrich it, and very quickly, Dave Brandt realizes that in addition to saving gas, his soil produces more, faster and above all does not turn into dust like that of his neighbour. It develops crop rotation, the fact of not growing the same thing in the same place, the permanent cover of the soil, the fact of cultivating both summer and winter. And it works.

It’s called regenerative agriculture and Dave Brandt has made himself the number one popularizer of it in the United States. He has trained thousands of young people, worked with conventional and organic farmers, co-signed scientific studies, multiplied conferences, including one at COP21, the climate conference in Paris in 2015. And that’s all that is praised today, his work by the proof, as he said himself: “honest work“.


2023-06-01 06:37:39


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