This edition of Full Belly Files was originally emailed to subscribers on March 31, 2023. To receive Matt Kettmann’s food newsletter in your inbox each Friday, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.
Alejandro Carrillo is considered one of the leading voices in the regenerative ranching movement, having shifted his family’s 30,000-acre property in the Chihuahuan desert of northern Mexico from conventional to holistic management over the past 20 years. He was in Santa Barbara County this past weekend, leading a two-day workshop at the Las Cumbres Ranch near Los Alamos and then giving a free public talk at the Santa Barbara Wine Collective in the Funk Zone on Sunday.
We spoke on the phone for nearly an hour last week, primarily about how he went from IT wizard to ranch hero — “I watched too many Western movies,” he theorized — and about the techniques that he’s using to alter the landscape in favor of nature on his Las Damas Ranch, which is located in the wide open space between El Paso, Texas, and Chihuahua, Mexico. That’s what I focused on in this feature about Carrillo that we published on Independent.com last Sunday: Mexico’s Regenerative Ranching Wisdom Comes to Santa Barbara: Grasslands Regeneration Project’s Alejandro Carrillo Syncs Cattle Grazing with Nature .