Profit on Purpose: Lessons from Leo Ranch in Texas

Tim Sandoval discusses hairy vetch maturity with participants as part of a ranch tour on his property near Greenwood, Texas.

There's a question that sits at the heart of every ranching operation, whether you've been at it for four years or forty: can I make this work — financially, physically, and for the land?

That's exactly the question we brought on May 19, 2026 to Leo Ranch in Decatur, Texas for the latest stop in HMI's Rancher Discovery Series: Profit on Purpose. Hosted in partnership with Dixon Water Foundation, the Texas Grazing Lands Coalition, Texas Agricultural Land Trust , and Grassroots Carbon, we gathered producers at different stages of their journeys to share what's working, what isn't, and why the path to profitability looks different for everyone.

What unfolded was one of the more honest, wide-ranging conversations we've had in this series.

Personal Context Provides Direction

Wayne Knight, HMI's Executive Director, opened the day by framing what participants were there to discover: that in regenerative agriculture, there is no single road to success.

Enterprise structure, intensity of management, genetics, land variability, market access — all of it shapes what's possible. The goal of Holistic Management isn't to pre- or pro-scribe one approach. It's to give producers the planning framework to navigate complexity, make decisions that fit their context, and keep improving over time, both profitably, and in a way that's good for the land, the animals, the food, and the people producing it.

The question, as Wayne put it, is: how well can we mimic nature's ability to produce abundance and harvest enough of that abundance to keep the whole system building?

You Don't Have to Know Everything To Start

Zach Abney of ReFarm, ReSupply and Frontier Ranching Company runs a cow-calf operation, a grass-fed direct-to-consumer beef business, as well as a consulting practice. What struck the room wasn't the scale of it. It was his honesty about how he got there.

Zach's message was refreshingly straightforward: trial enterprises with the expectation that some of them will fail. Not everything will win, and that's fine. The learning is in the doing. He's been chasing double-digit gains in production and profitability — not by piling on enterprises until the complexity becomes chaos, but by working with nature and staying within the family's actual capacity and comfort. That last part matters more than most people admit.

The cost savings for Zach come from working with nature. That's not a philosophy statement, it's a line item.

Equity, Community, and The Real Challenge of Healthy Food

Joel Hollingsworth and Tim Sandoval discuss forage utilization levels next to animal performance of cows with calves and heifers.

Joel Hollingsworth of Smoke River Ranch came to regenerative agriculture the same way a surprising number of producers do: through his own health. A diagnosis, a deep dive into food quality, and a growing interest in Holistic Management led him to a clear conviction: produce a superbly adapted herd of animals that rapidly improves land health, and build the kind of community where healthy food, healthy land, and healthy relationships reinforce each other.

Joel was candid about the headwinds. Producing a profit from healthy food in the current US economy is genuinely hard. Federal subsidies, crop insurance structures, and the pressures of the US dollar as an international trading currency all tilt the playing field against domestic producers.  This is especially true for  young or beginning ranchers facing agricultural land values that far exceed productive value. Joel's response isn't despair. It's intentional investment in assets that build real equity, and in communities that build collaborative capacity. His determination was contagious.

Simplicity is a Strategy

Jake McNamara, Vice President of Ranching at Dixon Water Foundation, walked participants through a mixed sheep and cattle operation that is quietly remarkable in how little it asks of itself. Running sheep and cattle together in one herd, Jake's approach centers on genetic selection for well-adapted, low-maintenance animals — and rigorous simplicity everywhere else.

For the sheep operation specifically: minimal vaccinations, no supplements beyond mineral, and a solid investment in livestock guardian dogs to manage predators. That's it. No complexity for its own sake.

The learning here was sharp and practical: it's costs that throttle a ranching business. Reduce them through selection, observation, and smart use of technology, and the margins open up. Every speaker echoed this, each with their own version of the same discipline, including  rigorous budgeting and a willingness to adapt quickly to what the animals and the land are actually telling you.

New Incentives for Good Stewardship

Two presentations broadened the financial picture considerably.

Rebekah Tasker from Grassroots Carbon explains the carbon contracts they offer to producers at the Josey Pavilion at the Dixon Water Foundation.

Rebekah Tasker of Grassroots Carbon explained how producers who are committed to improving their management can generate meaningful additional income through carbon capture credits, which provide direct compensation for the soil health outcomes of good stewardship. For ranchers already moving in the right direction, this is an incentive that rewards what they're doing anyway. It also reinforced a larger point: well-managed animals are essential for healthy ecosystem function. Healthy plants, clean water and thriving wildlife all illustrate the economic value of that, and it is starting to be recognized and compensated.

Chad Ellis from the Texas Agricultural Land Trust highlighting the loss of ag land in Texas and the essential role animals play in providing ecosystem services.

Chad Ellis, Executive Director of the Texas Agricultural Land Trust, closed the formal presentations by connecting the dots. Keeping agricultural land working and in the hands of committed stewards is not just a conservation goal, it's also an economic one. TALT's conservation easement programs offer cash and tax incentives to landowners willing to commit their land to agriculture for future generations, protecting productive land from development while providing real financial benefit to the families who steward it. Chad's synthesis drew together the threads of the whole day: good management creates valuable ecosystem assets, and there are growing mechanisms to be compensated for delivering them.

Results From the Day

100% of participants said they would recommend the experience to others. 98% said they learned something new. Those numbers matter, but so does the texture of the conversations that filled the breaks, the lunch tables, and the drive home.

The Profit on Purpose workshop isn't about one answer. It's about sitting with producers who are figuring it out in real time, sharing their mistakes as freely as their wins, and showing that the path into regenerative agriculture is as varied as the land itself.

Thank you to Dixon Water Foundation, the Texas Grazing Lands Coalition, Holistic Management International, TALT, and Grassroots Carbon for making this event possible. Thanks to our hosts at Dixon Water Foundation for a genuinely inspiring venue, and to Dana, Hilary, Becky, and Jake for all the work behind the scenes.

And to our speakers — Zach Abney, Joel Hollingsworth, Jake McNamara, Rebekah Tasker, and Chad Ellis — thank you for sharing your knowledge, your opinions, and your stories. We all left a little better equipped.

For resources on managing your finances and economics holistically, visit HMI's website. We hope to see you at an HMI event soon.