On Restorative Agriculture and Medicinal Herbs

With Amy Kousch, food systems expert and head grower of Berchta Botanicals

Jun 06, 2023

It’s simple. Amy Kousch wants answers. A lifelong grower and competitive open-water swimmer, Kousch has a natural curiosity for plants and water, and how their interaction shapes our landscapes and watersheds. In chasing this curiosity Kousch has forged a career managing farms, working for non-profits, mentoring students, and heading a business of her own, Berchta Botanicals. She’s also just launched Aggregate Inc., a non-profit seeking to restore the green water cycle through aggregate-building plants.

Specializing in medicinal and perennial plants, Kousch understands and appreciates healing at every level, from the cellular to the personal to the continental. Below is a conversation about her work and insights into the world of restorative agriculture.

This Q&A has been slightly edited for length and clarity.

Austin Lammers: Let’s take it from the top! Where are you from and what drew you to a life in agriculture?

Amy Kousch: I’m from the Westfield River Watershed in Massachusetts. I’m a fourth-generation Polish herbalist who grew up in a family of dairy farmers, vegetable growers, and New England cattle. (We'd say farmers, not ranchers.) That smaller, New England world of plants and woodlands and water always surrounded me. My immediate parents were not farmers, but everyone else in the family was, so it was very much in my blood. In my early 20s, I transitioned from teaching special education in Springfield, Mass., to farming, which, at that time, was large-scale CSA, diversified specialty crop production.

Before moving to Fort Collins, I had a bachelor’s degree in English and Ethnography and had graduate studies in special education. When I came out here, I wanted to build up my science background, and, more specifically, field research and experimental design in the context of natural resources. I received a second bachelor’s in natural resources, specifically environmental communications at CSU, and then jumped into a graduate program in ag sciences, where I received my master’s in 2014.

AL: I first learned about you and your work through your business, Berchta Botanicals. Can you tell me how that came to fruition?

AK: I’ve been growing vegetables for a long time, whether in my 20s as the co-manager of the CSU student farm, or running and owning my own CSA when my child was an infant in Loveland. I moved back east to manage a 60-acre property when my kiddo was a toddler. Eventually, I came back to Colorado and settled into non-profit farm management, and I had a little more freedom to experiment with things that tugged at my deep, deep farming interests and passions.

I started diving into the propagation of nursery plants, specifically medicinal plants. I loved growing cut flowers and the handful of herbs that I did grow, but I wanted to know more. That’s been my theme as a grower. I want to know more. It’s just an endless stream of information, and that’s a beautiful thing about plant, water, and soil science. And it’s what spurred the birth of Berchta Botanicals in 2018.

To me, the evolution of a farmer who doesn’t own land in northern Colorado is interesting. It’s fascinating to hear how people have made it work. Here, there’s a real hustle in the specialty crop world. And I think that’s due to a lack of land ownership opportunities for folks to “make it work.” Many farmers are stretching beyond human limits to grow vegetables and I was no exception to that. But I knew in my bones before I knew cognitively that I needed to find a different way to work with the land and the plants. I think the plants showed me more than anything. Medicinal plants, by their perennial nature, invite the grower to really slow down. You can’t speed up nature.

AL: I know you’re about to launch a new initiative called Aggregate Inc. Can you tell me about the vision there?

AK: For the past few months, I’ve been building out collaborator sites with Guidestone Community & School Farm (Salida, CO), Sproutin’ Up (Fort Collins), Well Fed Farmstead (Fort Collins), and other independent growers. The Aggregate project incentivizes farmers to establish medicinal and perennial crops in their operations, restoring the green water cycle through aggregate-building plants. I do that by teaming up with partners to provide assurance buyer channels for harvested plant materials. What that means is I’ve created a virtual marketplace — The Drying Shed — where growers and buyers can list themselves. It’s a place for growers to attain materials if they want to experiment with new crops. Aggregate also provides grants to these farmers for plant material and technical assistance.

Basically, we’ll supply farmers with a bulk amount of medicinal perennial plant species. All the species I put out are either drought tolerant, native, build aggregate stability, support biodiversity indices, or in some way shape, form, or help build soil as well as farmer business viability. The 1% For Local Soil fund, which will launch this week, will invite relevant local businesses — whether it’s an apothecary or a pizza food truck that wants to use medicinal wild oregano — to tag on an optional 1% of each sale.

AL: Can you expand more on the science of the Green Water Cycle?

AK: When water is held in the environment, whether by soil aggregation (subsoil) or vegetation, it tends to hand around through various ecosystem cycles. When we have bare unhealthy soil, we know that water is lost: aquifers do not recharge and groundwater levels do not benefit. And I do want to say water science and water behavior in the West defies oversimplification with the exception of maybe one statement: we are still in the midst of a megadrought. You know, lovely rain! There was just a headline on CBS News that stated drought is now almost nonexistent in Colorado. Things like that are not accurate, and they give the public both a false perception and a false sense of security.

This comes from a study called The Water Footprint of Food: growing a pound of tomatoes requires 82 gallons of water. Growing a pound of dried medicinal herbs requires far, far less and yields quite a bit more on the market for a farmer.

I have varieties of medicinal plants that have undergone drought trials for three years. And it’s remarkable how plants evolve to thrive under stress, to be more efficient at photosynthesis, to utilize biomass, rapidly quilt soil together and continue to flourish year after year with little to no inputs or maintenance plots.

Alternatively, in the struggle to find available nutrients, more water is used, and that’s on a cellular level. So, at that cellular level, I’m interested in pushing forward these medicinal and perennial plants, which, at the end of the day, are going to help us thrive as farmers and consumers in the midst of a megadrought.

AL: It’s great that medicinal and perennial plants can serve as a low-maintenance, water-effective source of revenue for our farmers. But for you, what’s it like to solely rely on these specialty plants to keep your business afloat?

AK: It’s a lot of hard work, which includes subsidizing my efforts with things like contract writing and research projects. I also work as the director of soil health and research for a national agricultural nonprofit. So it's a lot of hustling. But I believe in my heart that it’s worth it. I also don't know how to do anything other than to keep trying.

It’s a lot to build a business in a specialized market. I think having wonderful connections and partners and communicating with community members is always going to be the best pieces of any business model I’ve created.

For any new grower who reads this and wants to start growing medicinal plants, there's no straight, easy linear path. And farmers here will say the same thing. It's a matter of how joyfully one can jump into challenges and turn them into opportunities.

AL: If you're trying to help someone who's not so familiar with medicinal plants understand the benefits and why they're important, what would you say? Why are you so drawn to them?

AK: Healing has happened on almost every ecosystem scale, from soil biodiversity to continental landscapes. Whether it's the healing of a field in a larger farmscape, or seeing a watershed that's bounced back after a five-year restoration project, whether it's my friend whose kiddo is on the spectrum, and she reports to me that he’s always more verbal after drinking fresh Tumeric tea, and on and on and on. This is not at all to engage in like a pharmaceutical versus medicinal plants total. But I’ve seen the most impactful healing in my time, and in research from other times, come from the interaction between plants and other living beings.

Medicinal Plants are for everyone. The science is pretty irrefutable that land with higher biodiversity indices can better tolerate pest insects, drought, and deluge. By virtue of their root architecture gradients — the way roots are shaped and sized — and the aerial canopy diversity of these plants, they support lots of life. All that to say, healthy plant communities beget healthy plant communities.

The closer we move to creating healthier plant communities at the landscape scale, the healthier we are all collectively, even if you're an individual who has no interest in drinking nettles tea. At least we've got a cleaner watershed for you, or we're helping green lacewings take care of aphids on the tomatoes, you know?

AL: In the industry of Experimental Design, are you seeing anything interesting or new emerging, either regionally, nationally, or globally?

AK: I think that we're shifting toward a much greater interest in quantifying how certain treatments, applications, and manipulations are impacting biodiversity. And in the biodiversity market sphere, that’s going to be much more relevant to investors and venture capitalists. Much like the carbon market has had its own world of credit verifiers, I think we're going to start to see that grow with the same momentum.

I'm also seeing lots of citizen science efforts, which is a wonderful thing. (Here at Aggregate, we ask our partners to gather data about their plants.) Folks are becoming more and more interested and re-prioritizing their time to get out there and become engaged with the natural world around them.

AL: What similarities and differences do you see between food systems in the northeast and ours in northern Colorado?

AK: I feel like there are lots of similarities in the initiatives and efforts. What it really comes down to is passionate people who want to see and build healthier communities, and that, I think transcends geopolitical state lines. But I also don't want to oversimplify the nuances of water, for example — access and availability to it. But something amazing about northern Colorado’s food system is a huge support for innovative and entrepreneurial efforts. It’s present on the east coast, sure, but it feels much more salient here.

AL: Anything else you’d like to add?

AK: I'm fortunate to be able to do this, to carve out time to do it. I’m grateful for every scale of efficiency, all the way down to having legs that move quickly from one place to another. I'm grateful for those pieces that, on a larger scale, have allowed me to stumble upon this method of agroecology that compels me to just slowwwww down.

Calendar

June 7: Community Convo: Let’s talk Regenerative Ag with Amy Kousch

Want to learn more about drought mitigation and medicinal plants? Join us tomorrow, June 7, 4-6 p.m. at Stodgy Brewing Co. as Amy expands on her deep well of plant and ecological knowledge.

June 10: Pride Day at the Market

Swing through the Larimer County Farmers Market (200 W Oak St.) from 9 a.m.-1 p.m. to stock up on local goods and celebrate Pride.

June 9, 16, 23, 30: Friday Markets at Well Fed Farmstead

Good food. Good vendors. Good music. Good people. 4-7 p.m. 2229 W Vine Dr, Fort Collins, CO 80521.

June 16: Applications due for Colorado State Fair Food Truck Competition

Calling all food trucks! Applications are now open for the 2023 Governor’s Plate competition scheduled for Tuesday, August 29, at the 2023 Colorado State Fair in Pueblo. Click here to apply.

June 16: Workshop: Automated Weeder Demo

Join in a first-ever event for Colorado, a demonstration of industry-leading vegetable farm automated weeders at the CSU Arkansas Valley Research Center (AVRC) Friday, June 16, 9:00 am – 1:30 pm, hosted by CSU Extension and the Colorado Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association. Learn more and apply here.

June 21: Webinar: Data to Support Local/Regional Food Systems

When developing a food systems map, having a clear idea of what data to include, and the processes for maintaining it is a vital first step. In this webinar, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Marketing Service (USDA AMS) and Colorado State University's Food Systems Institute will explore and showcase a new data resource available to you to help make some of these essential early decisions. Wednesday, June 21, 12 p.m. Zoom link here.