Robert F. Kennedy Jr. praises regenerative ag efforts at North Dakota event
Lillian Becker has been a health reporter for over six years and graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree in Public Health. She has worked for various local publications and has contributed to health segments for Prairie Public Radio.
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MCKENZIE, N.D. — Jerry Doan's family homesteaded at Black Leg Ranch, named for the Black Angus cattle that Doan's grandfather brought to the prairies of North Dakota. The homesteading family survived in a sod hut on the land in the 1880s. But Doan also survived hard times a century later, during the Farm Crisis of the 1980s. Doan, during an event at Black Leg Ranch attended by the North Dakota congressional delegation, Gov. Kelly Armstrong, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., told a story he's told many times before about attending conservationist Allan Savory's Savory Institute in the '80s after which Doan transformed his thinking around ranching, leading to a move to adaptive rotational grazing. Jerry Doan, at right, listens to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. talk about regenerative agriculture while at Doan's Black Leg Ranch on Nov. 5, 2026. At left is North Dak