Over the years, I've spent a lot of my leisure time touring regenerative farms, talking with farmers, and interviewing them about their work. Almost every Saturday morning, my husband, baby, and I go to the farmer's market and spend a slow couple of hours walking around to get our food for the week, catching up with friends, and playing with kids under a big tree. When we get in the car afterwards, I almost always look at my husband and say: That is seriously my FAVORITE part of the week. Through these experiences, I've come to believe that developing a relationship with our food—and the people and land who grow it—is one of the most radical ways we can support healing in our lives.

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The word heal comes from the same root as whole. Healing is a return to wholeness. And I think one of the most direct paths back to wholeness is finding our place again in the web of life, and understanding how our bodies and lives are contiguous with everything around us. Collectively, we’re craving deep connection, and yet, we’re largely pursuing pleasure and busyness. It’s not working.

One of the simplest ways to find our footing in the web of all things? What we choose to eat.

Let's use the example of a burger. Two burgers can look identical on a plate, yet behind each one is a radically different story.

And each story tells a tale of a different future for humanity and all life, depending on what direction we choose to lean into as a society.

We all have different budgets, circumstances, and access to food, and this isn't about making “perfect” or “better” choices. It's about awareness, curiosity, and possibility. The more we understand where our food comes from, the more we discover unexpected opportunities to weave meaning and connection into our everyday lives.

It's a sunny Saturday morning at the Mount Pleasant Farmers Market. You stop by the Saltgrass Ridge Farm booth with a big cooler to pick up your 1/8th of a cow from Rancher Sam and his wife. You give them both a hug: You've been out to their farm many times for events, farm stands, and farm dinners, your kids love it there because of the baby goats and epic rope swings, and you follow the farm's newsletter. Sam's last newsletter talked about how being a cattle rancher is really about being a grass farmer: by working to grow the best, robust grass, you naturally end up with herds of healthy, well-fed cows. It was fascinating.

His cows spend their entire lives on pasture. He regularly rotates them to fresh grazing areas, sometimes daily, where they eat a diverse mix of grasses, clovers, and wild plants that support their health (and the nutrient density of their meat).

His pastures are never plowed. Tilling breaks apart the soil's structure, tearing up fungal networks and exposing organic matter so it breaks down and escapes as carbon dioxide. Researchers have measured water soaking into untilled soil up to 43 times more than into tilled soil. Instead, the cows play a role in maintaining the pasture. Their hooves can press seeds and plant material into the ground, while carefully managed grazing allows grasses to recover and helps maintain the soil structure that lets rain soak in. Their manure and urine return nitrogen and other nutrients, feeding earthworms, dung beetles, fungi, and soil microbes, which build topsoil and grow more nutrient-rich plants. Then the herd moves on, and the land rests and regrows. A single tablespoon of living soil can contain billions of microorganisms, including bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and nematodes.

Healthy soil holds water, largely thanks to organic matter. Organic matter is the living and once-living part of soil, including roots, decomposing plants and manure, microbes, and the dark, crumbly humus they leave behind. It acts like a sponge. By the USDA's estimate, each 1% increase in soil organic matter lets an acre hold up to about 20,000 more gallons, although this depends on soil type and conditions. One study found that a silt loam soil with 4% organic matter held more than twice the water of the same soil at 1%.

That matters for a few reasons. According to the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service, soil that absorbs water reduces the runoff that causes flooding and erosion, recharges groundwater, and leaches less into the water supply. The same water stays available to plants during dry spells, so the land needs less irrigation and holds up better in drought. Rodale Institute's 40-year Farming Systems Trial found that organic corn yields were 31% higher than conventional in drought years. Organic matter also feeds plants: each 1% stores about 1,000 pounds of nitrogen per acre, which soil microbes slowly release for plants to use.

Grass roots also store carbon underground. One life-cycle analysis of White Oak Pastures in Georgia estimated that its soils more than offset the greenhouse gas emissions associated with its cattle.

Typically, no pesticides or herbicides go on the pastures, and sick animals are treated with antibiotics only when absolutely needed.

The difference shows up in the meat. A 2025 study from the Bionutrient Institute and Utah State University found that beef from diverse pastures had about twice the omega-3s of grain-fed beef, plus more calcium and more beneficial plant compounds. 

Very little transport is involved. Because you bought your share of the animal before harvest, it can be slaughtered and processed right on the farm or nearby. From there, Sam brings it to the market. No feedlot, no cross-country refrigerated trucking, no distribution centers. State rules vary, but this kind of cow share is legal in many places.

Your money goes directly to Sam's family. You load the coolers and head home with an eighth of a cow and a relationship.

On another Saturday, you drive to a big-box store on the outside of town, park in a crowded lot, grab a shopping cart, and walk into a fluorescent-lit, windowless store lined with packaged food.

You wander through row after row of sodas, packaged cookies, chips, and boxes until you reach the meat aisle in the back. There, rows of plastic-wrapped styrofoam trays carry a USDA stamp, a sell-by date, and a price tag.

Most of the beef in this store comes from cattle that did begin their lives on pasture. But many spend their final months in feedlots, where they're fed energy-dense feeds typically built around grains like corn, along with other ingredients, to gain weight quickly. These high-grain diets can increase the risk of ruminal acidosis and liver abscesses.

According to the FDA, cattle account for about 41% of the medically important antibiotics sold for U.S. food animals. By one NRDC estimate, about two-thirds of all medically important antibiotics sold in the U.S. go to food animals, which contributes to antibiotic resistance.

The feed for these cows comes largely from conventionally grown corn and other feed crops, often produced in monoculture systems using synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, and insecticides. These systems can reduce biodiversity and degrade soil health, particularly where fields are intensively tilled or left bare. Fertile topsoil can wash into waterways, carrying fertilizers and pesticides with it, or blow away as dust, stripping the land of nutrients, organic matter, and its ability to retain water. The harvested feed is then processed and transported, often hundreds or thousands of miles, before it reaches the cattle.

Synthetic pesticides are often sprayed directly onto the grain fields grown for cattle feed, exposing surrounding communities to chemicals increasingly linked to serious health harms. A UC Davis study found that pregnant women living within about a mile of fields treated with organophosphate pesticides were about 60% more likely to have a child with autism. UC Berkeley's CHAMACOS study found that children whose mothers lived near heavier agricultural use of neurotoxic pesticides during pregnancy had lower IQ scores at age 7. UCLA researchers found that people living within about 500 meters of fields sprayed with the pesticides paraquat and maneb had a 75% higher risk of Parkinson's disease, and a follow-up study linked simply working near such fields, as teachers, firefighters, or clerks, to as much as triple the risk. There are dozens more papers with results similar to this linking pesticides, herbicides, and insecticides to cancer, endocrine disruption, infertility, and more.

Four companies, JBS, Tyson, Cargill, and National Beef, process about 85% of U.S. beef, which is then packaged and shipped through distribution centers, often across the country.

In 2024, farmers received 11.8 cents of every U.S. food dollar, according to USDA. The rest went to processing, packaging, transportation, marketing, and retail.

After getting your meat and other groceries, you head to self-checkout, where you scan the barcode on your meat package, pay with Apple Pay, load it into a plastic bag, and head back to your car.

Burger One is part of a cycle. Sunlight becomes grass, grass becomes a healthy animal, the animal feeds the soil, the soil holds the water and microorganisms, and a farmer you know stewards this whole process to help provide nutrition for your family, while your money helps supports the farmers’. It's a cycle of life, reciprocity, cyclicality, and biodiversity that can sustain itself for generations when managed well.

Burger Two is part of an industrial chain. Fossil fuels become fertilizers and pesticides, which are used to grow monocrops that become feed for animals raised in confinement. A handful of large companies then process, package, and ship the meat. The costs show up in fossil fuels burned to grow, process, and transport feed; water consumed for irrigation and polluted by fertilizer, pesticide, and manure runoff; antibiotic use that contributes to the spread of resistant bacteria; declining biodiversity above and below ground and in our waterways; the erosion of fertile topsoil that can take centuries to rebuild; and human health risks associated with air pollution, pesticide exposure, and contaminated water.

So why does any of this matter? Why make such a big deal about a burger?

Because I just don't think the different levels of life are separate. I can't prove that what happens on our plates is mirrored in what happens across the planet, but I find it hard to believe these things aren't connected. When so many of us feel unsettled by the division, conflict, and devastation in the world, I wonder whether the way we relate to the seemingly “small” things—like our food—shapes how we relate to each other on a larger scale. A culture that knows where its food comes from, that honors the land, the farmers, and the animals, may be practicing the very connection the world is hungry for.

Regeneratively raised beef may seem more expensive at first glance, but there are ways to make it surprisingly affordable.

I think we are all craving grounding, belonging, and meaning. Food can weave us back into the web of life: the grass, soil, sun, rain, billions of microorganisms beneath our feet, animals, farmers, and communities we share meals with. It reminds us that we are not separate from nature, but deeply embedded within it. If we practice reverence, awe, and connection in the “small” choices we make every day, perhaps we cultivate those same qualities in the larger world. And when we know where our food comes from, we're more likely to cook with care, savor each bite, and linger over meals with people we love—all things that support our health.

With good energy,

Dr. Casey

👩‍🌾 P.S. Wondering where to start? Google “regenerative farms near me.” You might be shocked by how many there are! Plan a family outing to tour a farm, volunteer for a day, or attend a farm event. Or head to your local farmers market, strike up a conversation with a farmer, and ask if they welcome visitors. You might be surprised by the connections you make, and how it changes your whole life! Another great place to start? Watch the documentaries Biggest Little Farm, Kiss the Ground, or Common Ground.

🗞️ Missed an issue? You can read all past Tuesday newsletters on my website here.