Board of Directors

Terms Served: 2024-

Roy Thompson farms and ranches with his wife, Meredith, and their three children near Akaska, SD. They use regenerative practices to grow crops and manage their grazing land, and they have begun a grass-fed and grass-finished beef enterprise. Thompson credits consuming regeneratively grown food with curing his Crohn’s disease.

“I started watching YouTube videos featuring Gabe Brown,” Roy says. “What he was saying about regenerative agriculture and soil health made sense to me. At the end of one of the videos, Gabe included his phone number, so I called it, expecting a secretary or someone else to answer. Instead, it was Gabe who picked up. I was shocked that it was actually him. After chatting with him for a while, Gabe recommended that I read Jon Stika’s book, A Soil Owner’s Manual. After more reading and learning, I began implementing soil health practices and following the six principles of soil health.”

Roy and his wife, Meredith, also started looking to stack enterprises by raising grass-fed and grass-finished beef, using adaptive stewardship grazing methods to maximize soil biology and improve the nutrient density of their beef. Roy says Meredith wasn’t initially sold on the idea, but then she tasted some steaks and burgers from their cover crop-finished beef.

“She said, ‘This is alright. I can definitely eat this beef.’ So that got me really excited,” Roy says.

Roy says that had it not been for the adversity he experienced through his battle with Crohn’s disease, he probably wouldn’t have been led down the path of regenerative agriculture—a path that has transformed his health, his soil, his farm and his family’s future.